Paul Schrader, Revisiting Transcendental Style in Film, 2017

Paul Schrader discusses his 1972 book at the Toronto Film Festival.

An hour and twenty-eight minutes.

The Delivered (2019)

I've been watching these recent, extremely cheap westerns. I just wanted to know what they looked like, what you could get away with if you wanted to make a commercially viable three-day movie. No sex or nudity. They make up for the lack of drama, stunts or excitement with sheer brutality. In one, the villains kick and beat the sheriff, nail him in a coffin while he's alive, fire their guns into the coffin then douse it in kerosene and set it on fire while the man's son watches from a jail cell they locked him in.

So, for a change of pace, I watched this movie. It was an hour and fifty minutes, made in England, set in the 17th century. A puritan couple and their son come home from church and find a naked degenerate couple in their barn. Cromwellian law enforcement is on their trail. They seem like a nice couple. The man plays with the Puritan couple's poor son, so the kid's father canes him (the son).

I won't go into it, but it becomes terribly violent toward the end.

It made me think a little of The Virgin Spring. Devoutly religious farmers are tough customers, not that it did this fellow much good.

Free on Tubi.

Art Carney, 'Twas Night Before Christmas (1954)

Since Art Carney came up on here a few days ago, here he is again. Something I posted before a year or two ago.

Last Days of Billy the Kid, Jesse James vs the Black Train

Watched two movies even I couldn't take: The Last Days of Billy the Kid and Jesse James vs the Black Train, apparently filmed back to back. Had many of the same people and same locations. Very cheap. They were just terrible.

The movies weren't like Plan 9 where every problem was blatantly obvious. My impression was that if you were there at the filming, you'd know they weren't Lawrence of Arabia, but you wouldn't realize how bad they were going to turn out.

It was hard for me to tell and this isn't a criticism, but I think a lot of the dialogue was filmed in a studio in front of a green screen. 

I'd feel guilty writing this if director Christopher Forbes hadn't made thirty-eight other movies. 

They had nice cover art.

There was a difference in the user comments on IMDb. There were no clever put-downs. They felt no need to explain or justify themselves. They were brief and to the point. A lot of them paid to see the movies and felt ripped off.

Free on Tubi.

Thought Spiral podcast: Jeff Garlin

Transcribed from the Thought Spiral podcast. Andy Kindler and J.Elvis Weinstein have no personal knowledge of and little insight into Jeff Garlin's problems on The Goldbergs. But that's okay. 

 Andy Kindler: "I don't know if we should talk about this and maybe we shouldn't, but--and I don't know what's happening with it, but Jeff Garlin seems to be in trouble from his behavior on the set or if he didn't have behavior on the set, and all--I'm not saying yea, I'm not saying nay."

J. Elvis Weinstein: "Yeah." 

AK: "I'm just saying, should I withdraw my apology?" 

JW: "I think you can just let it lie..."

AK: "Well right and initially when I had the falling out with Jeff Garlin and I felt like I needed to apologize because I felt I sandbagged him a little bit, you could not believe all---not millions of them, but, like, John Henson---you know John Henson?"

JW:  "Yeah."

AK: "He's nice. Very sweet guy."

JW: "I don't know him."

AK: "Yeah. But you know of him, right?"

JW: "I know mostly because he replaced Kinnear on Talk Soup."

AK: "Right. So he--so he contacted me and said that Garlin had screamed at him to do cleaner ma--he DOES clean material. I don't know if you've ever seen him. He's a clean act. Garlin was yelling at him to clean--I mean, I think he's had this kind of behavior for years and years, so I had lots of people come up and tell me about these horrible stories--"

JW: "Right."

AK: "--about him---I know he threw--I believe he threw something across the room at an assistant."

JW:  "Yeah."

AK: "Things like that."

JW: "Yeah. I don't know him at all so I can only go, Hmm, doesn't seem that inconsistent with the public image."

...

AK: "...People have disliked him for many many years, for many different reasons."

JW: "It doesn't seem like impulse control is really his forte."

AK: "You know what else is not his forte? Being that funny. And yet he has convinced people that he is hilarious, that this act of his is off-the-charts original. I think he's a good actor when he's on Curb and things like that, but I don't see him as a-----Why am I doing this, Josh?"

JW: "I don't know."

AK: "Why? Why? Josh, you must know why! You've known me long enough to know why I bring these things up."

JW: "Because every apology is a wound to you."

AK: "Yeah. So what's the point of apologizing? What was the point of it? Lou Schneider--I can say this. Lou Schneider--"

JW: "Who I like. I like Lou Schneider."

AK: "I love Lou Schneider. He works on that show--he works on The Goldbergs, so, and he's friends with Garlin, but everybody--but the thing is, he was telling me--he said, Why'd you apologize to him? Not a good idea. I think his point was that it would go to his head."

Mini-DV vs S-VHS

A few years ago, I bought an old Canon XL1 on eBay. Not a wise purchase, but I wanted one. I was like one of those guys who buys an old Camero because he wanted one just like it when was fourteen. I wanted one at one time. I also had the idea that it would impress people. It looks more like a movie camera than the dainty prosumer camcorders they have now. I got an early model so it's not widescreen. They're all standard definition. But I thought the unknowledgeable would be impressed. And they're still selling for a few hundred bucks on there. 

I bought it, tried it out a few times but did nothing with it. It's been sitting on a modestly priced fluid-head tripod in the living room all this time. And it sort of had the desired effect. My sister-in-law wants me to drive a couple of hours the day after Xmas to film her and her band. I tried to talk her out of it. I told her all that stuff about it. But she said she had the same idea I did. Just have it there for looks and it would impress the rubes in the band. 

I'll drive up there. I'll keep my mask on.

I've done that before, filmed bands, filmed, lone singers and an organist doing a pre-Halloween performance. I guess I did okay. My sister-in-law said she'd have other people there filming with cell phones. Maybe my footage can be edited in, maybe it can't. We'll find out.

I gave her plenty of warning.

I also have an old SVHS camcorder. Have some SVHS tapes which haven't been made in years. Maybe I can bring that for back-up.

Years ago, I was filming with it somewhere. A homeless guy started talking talking to the camera. I told him more than once that I wasn't from the media but he wanted me to record his message to the governor.

Can't remember what I paid for it. It was obsolete at the time. Got it from a guy on Craigs List who used it to record services at his church.

Man---they're still selling those things on eBay. They're cheap, too. I should probably buy another one just so my blank tapes don't go to waste.

I read that a guy in Portland filmed a documentary about heroin addiction. He just knew those poor addicts would steal his equipment so he filmed it with two almost worthless VHS camcorders. It turned out the low quality analog video perfectly suited the subject matter.

Barnaby Jones

 

Lately, I've been lying there awake at four in the morning with Barnaby Jones on TV. I'm okay with an action show about an elderly person, but I think Buddy Ebsen should have worn glasses, had a younger person drive him everywhere and turned down his hearing aid before shooting people.

Look at Art Carney in The Late Show. He did those things and more.

Buddy Ebsen should have been crabby instead of folksy.

Ebsen wasn't THAT old, but Art Carney was only 59. 

The lesson here for young aspiring filmmakers is that ANYBODY can be an action star.

Flip video camera

I finally found my old Flip video camera. I had forgotten or maybe I somehow never knew that it used AA batteries. It's been years since I used the thing. Standard definition. I don't remember the rolling shutter being a problem but I heard that it was on early models.

I saw Marc Cousins' documentary that he shot on one. And there was a horror movie on an obscure streaming channel which, according the description, was shot on a Flip camcorder. I thought I'd go back and look at it later but I couldn't find it again.

Wikipedia has a list of movies filmed on the old prosumer Canon XL1. Found no such list for Flip cameras although I did find a movie romance filmed on one in 2011 shortly after the camera itself was discontinued.

Roger Ebert's review:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-love-affair-of-sorts-2011

I don't know. There was a movie filmed on a Fisher-Price PXL2000 which was sort of interesting. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel made their own short films on Fisher Price cameras for their show. But a Flip camera---it's not very good but it's not bad enough to be interesting. 

You know what I thought would be a good gimmick? To make a really cheap movie and say you did it with your COVID-19 stimulus check. At least one person tried that.

Why YOU should be a comedian!

Being a comedian means never having to say you're sorry.

Jeff Garlin has been fired from The Goldbergs after a long HR investigation into complaints from crew members.

Looking at the comments from some of the articles about it online, there are people claiming to have worked on the show who said he was far worse that what's being reported.

But most of the comments defend him. And the defense is always the same. He's a COMEDIAN. People just failed to appreciate that.

When Joan Rivers revealed herself as a snarling violent racist rejoicing at the deaths of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children, some thoughtful person leapt to her defense. "That's what comedians do!" he wrote. 

Contrast that with what Andy Kindler said in a different context. "If you're a comedian and you're not funny, you're just a racist."

These people think comedians are beyond human judgement. They can literally do no wrong.

I thought comedians were traditionally viewed as bitter, screwed up neurotics using humor to cope with their awful childhoods. 

Look at Jerry Lewis, a terrible, terrible person. One of those guys who would brag in interviews about abusing his children because he thought it showed what a good father he was. Ironically, he was in a feud with Bing Crosby.

Steven Spielberg hoplessly out of touch

Spielberg's West Side Story is bombing at the box office. 

I remember many years ago. They did the play on a tiny stage in my old junior high school. I was in high school at the time, but I knew a horrified university music major who was a student teacher there. They bought a case of novelty switchblade combs they made to look like knives. Why do they do this to children? 

Yearbooks from the school are online. I thought I could find a picture from the play to illustrate this post, but it was such an intensely uncomfortable memory that the yearbook didn't mention it.

I don't know if former young people who did the play in school would enjoy seeing it on the big screen or if it would give them flashbacks to the horror they went through. I've long thought that the real purpose of school music programs was to keep kids from ever wanting to become musicians. School plays may serve the same purpose, to keep them from running away to Hollywood.

It's been suggested that the only people West Side Story would appeal to are older and have the good sense to stay away from theaters full of possibly COVID-infected movie-goers. What's the point of having a huge, high definition TV if you're just going to go to the movies anyway? I have a smaller high def TV, but I sit closer to it.

Burying Leni Riefenstahl

Article on Nina Gladitz' lifelong crusade to expose the crimes of Leni Riefenstahl:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/dec/09/burying-leni-riefenstahl-nina-gladitz-lifelong-crusade-hitler-film-maker

 

Buckskin (2021)

In fairness, it was set in an odd time period---1820. How many movies are set back then?

About a big fur trapping operation in Texas. I didn't know any animals in Texas were prized for their fur. Indians have wiped out a bunch of trappers including the son of the guy running this fur trapping business, but the man's teenage grandson has fled into what Texans consider a "forest".  A trapper turned cook goes walking out there alone to look for the young fellow. Everyone walks very slowly in this. Even when some bad men capture the former trapper, tie his hands and force him walk behind their horses they're barely moving. 

Like most low budget movies, there was more dialogue than anything else, but the dialogue is odd and stilted. They don't speak naturally. It's like they were supposed to be speaking a foreign language but didn't want to use subtitles.

The boy hasn't been out there very long, but he's gone feral and doesn't want to leave the forest to which he attributes supernatural powers. He wears a big fur hat even though they're in Texas. Others dressed like regular cowboys. I don't think that guy's musket was going to be of much help if they were attacked by more than one Indian.

At one point, the former trapper and experienced frontiersman eats some poisonous berries. Like an idiot.

It could have been a half hour shorter. Terribly violent ending you might like.

The sets and props were good.  Directed by Brett Bentman.

Go ahead and watch it. Available free on Tubi.

Memento (2000)

 

I wasn't interested in seeing this, but I exchanged some emails with my cousin. He recommended it and he said he'd watch some crap I suggested so I owed him. Everyone else seemed to like it. I remember when it came out but didn't realize how long it had been.

Sitting through the first half, I wondered what people were so excited about. Got more interesting toward the end. The story was told in reverse to simulate the memory loss, I guess, but I don't know how much it helped.

A man with no short term memory has to take Polaroid photos and constantly write notes to himself as he hunts the man who murdered his wife and gave him his debilitating brain injury.

Lina Wertmeuller, 1928 - 2021

Lina Wertmueller died today at age 93. 

My family had HBO in the '70's and I watched a couple of her movies then. I was in junior high and watched The Seven Beauties and Swept Away.  

There was a scene in Swept Away where the bourgeois woman complains that the spaghetti was overcooked. I've been self-conscious about my spaghetti ever since. And that was 45 years ago. 

I just started watching the movie again. I was thirteen when I saw it and didn't realize it was a comedy.

Llamageddon (2015)

My cousin hipped me to this, Llamageddon, about a llama from space who kills people. Pleasant and amusing, like a toned down, less offensive Troma movie. Had some intentionally bad special effects, like the close-ups of people being battered by llama hooves and blood inexplicably sprayed from a vast distance when people were killed.

In one scene, the camera slowly pans over a cemetery. There are no people, but we know there's a funeral because we hear bagpipes playing Amazing Grace.

A brother and sister, college students, stay at their grandparents' house after the funeral. The grandparents died in what was thought to be a horrible accident. The sister invites friends over for a party which is then terrorized by the llama.

Apparently a local production from Ohio. 

University students in the neighborhood here were having a party while I watched the movie. Had to listen to their crap for two or three hours. I was rooting for the llama.

69 minutes.

Free on Tubi and Amazon Prime.

Herman Melville quote

 “Depravity in the oppressed is no apology for the oppressor; but rather an additional stigma to him, as being, in a large degree, the effect, and not the cause and justification of oppression.”

– Herman Melville, White-Jacket