Terror at Black Falls (1962)

Middling low budget western. 70 minutes but seemed a lot longer.

Townspeople lynch a Mexican teenager. The kid's father tries to rescue him and goes to prison. When he's released, he and his two other sons come to town to kill the people responsible. Which should have been good, but all they do is hang around in a bar holding several men hostage. They're going to kill them one by one until the sheriff comes so they can kill him. 

If they had just gone out and killed people, peeling them off one by one, it might have been pretty good. But it just dragged on and on. The sheriff fretted in his office and did nothing. It could have been a like slasher movie where even right-minded people rooted for the slasher.

The sheriff was locked in a real Oedipal conflict. It was his actual son who wanted to get him out of the way and take his place. Which made less sense than in High Noon because sheriff is an elective office. They should have shown the son gathering signatures to get on the ballot.

Filmed in Scotland, Arkansas. It was the real town. They had to put up a big saloon sign on a building.

Director Richard C. Sarafian's first movie. He had done a lot of TV before this and went on to direct Vanishing Point and The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing among other things.

Available on Tubi. I started watching it on another obscure streaming channel but they commercials about every ten minutes.

Bruce Willis

Bruce Willis's family posted on Instagram:

"To Bruce’s amazing supporters, as a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities. As a result of this and with much consideration Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him."

 

Willis's career had taken an odd turn, appearing as a day actor in low budget staight-to-video action films. Now we know why, poor devil.

From Showbiz411:

These releases began around 2015. But even then, with real movies, directors were covering up for him. In M. Night Shyamalan’s “Glass” from 2019 you can see it: Bruce barely speaks, and is shot often in cameo or silhouette.

Willis had been cast in Woody Allen's Cafe Society (2015) and had to be replaced by Steve Carell.

How many of these guys do you think there are?

Will Smith

It's like the time I was working at the polls on election day. A guy came in. I asked his name. He said nervously, quietly, "Michael Jackson." I didn't even flinch. I found him in the book, had him sign his name or make his mark and we gave him his ballot.

Michael Jackson must be one of the more common names in the English-speaking world, but the poor guy couldn't say it without people going, "Ha ha ha ha! Your name is Micheal Jackson! Ha ha ha ha!"

This came to mind with the Will Smith thing. There are probably half a million Will Smiths in the United States alone. Of course, people in that boat could insist in being addressed as "William" or "Bill". [Turns out Smith's name is "Willard".]

I didn't know this, but according to the Internet, Guy, Gill and Liam are also nicknames for William.

Years ago, we were given a CD produced by the local middle school. Each class had written their own song, one about nutrition, one anti-racist, one sucking up to the principal. I don't remember the others. Each entire class was recorded belting out the tune they had written, and every kid's name was in the liner notes. I looked through the list of students and not one had a regular name. Not one Margaret or John or Paul, or Steve or Mary. There were dozens of Zacks and Jacquelines spelled various ways.

I thought it was crazy, every single parent giving their kid a weird name. Now I realize they were shielding their children from being associated with future disgraced celebrities. 

Here's a case in point, a couple of guys whose parents didn't have the foresight of those local kids' parents:

https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/will-smith-twitter-oscars-slap-1235221706/

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Will Smith

In happier times.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar criticized Will Smith for attacking Chris Rock.

From Mr Abdul-Jabbar's blog:

...Worse than the slap was Smith’s tearful, self-serving acceptance speech in which he rambled on about all the women in the movie King Richard that he’s protected. Those who protect don’t brag about it in front of 15 million people. They just do it and shut up. You don’t do it as a movie promotion claiming how you’re like the character you just won an award portraying. By using these women to virtue signal, he was in fact exploiting them to benefit himself. But, of course, the speech was about justifying his violence. Apparently, so many people need Smith’s protection that occasionally it gets too much and someone needs to be smacked.

What is the legacy of Smith’s violence? He’s brought back the Toxic Bro ideal of embracing Kobra Kai teachings of “might makes right” and “talk is for losers.” ... Young boys—especially Black boys—watching their movie idol not just hit another man over a joke, but then justify it as him being a superhero-like protector, are now much more prone to follow in his childish footsteps. Perhaps the saddest confirmation of this is the tweet from Smith’s child Jaden: “And That’s How We Do It.”

The Black community also takes a direct hit from Smith. One of the main talking points from those supporting the systemic racism in America is characterizing Blacks as more prone to violence and less able to control their emotions. Smith just gave comfort to the enemy by providing them with the perfect optics they were dreaming of. Fox News host Jeanine Pirro wasted no time going full-metal jacket racist by declaring the Oscars are “not the hood.” What would she have said if Brad Pitt slapped Ricky Gervais? This isn’t Rodeo Drive? Many will be reinvigorated to continue their campaign to marginalize African Americans and others through voter suppression campaign.

As for the damage to show business, Smith’s violence is an implied threat to all comedians who now have to worry that an edgy or insulting joke might be met with violence. Good thing Don Rickles, Bill Burr, or Ricky Gervais weren’t there. As comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted: “Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theaters.”

The one bright note is that Chris Rock, clearly stunned, managed to handle the moment with grace and maturity. If only Smith’s acceptance speech had shown similar grace and maturity—and included, instead of self-aggrandizing excuses, a heartfelt apology to Rock.

He's certainly right on that last point. Chris Rock was quite the cool customer.

Will Smith vs. Chris Rock

Showed a terrible lack on impulse control, attacking someone in front of millions and millions of witnesses. A mature, responsible man would have assaulted him in a stairwell and then run to the police claiming Rock attacked him.

Seems like the Oscars are the only time anything interesting happens on live TV anymore.

Elderly California millionaire Will Smith smacked elderly New York millionaire Chris Rock. Rock said something rude about Will Smith's wife whose name I haven't bothered learning. A year or two ago, Rock joked on the Oscars about her threatening to boycott the ceremony and Smith may have still had his panties in a wad about that. 

I'm pretty much neutral on it. If Rock had pressed charges I might have bothered taking sides.

Teenage Devil Dolls aka One Way Ticket to Hell (1955)

Turns out it was made as a film student's masters thesis for $4,000,  about $42,000 today. In spite of the title, it was kind of a serious docudrama, silent with a Jack Webb-like voice over, about a teenage girl who spirals into drug addiction. They blame her mother's multiple divorces and her Mexican boyfriend. 

If it had been more home movie-like, I think I would have enjoyed seeing Los Angeles 70 years ago.

They say it was 61 minutes, but the one I saw was three minutes shorter.

Oscar night

I'm sitting here with the Oscars on. I haven't seen a thing and it doesn't interest me. I used to watch in case something awful happened, and there were a couple of years where I wasn't disappointed. 

From A.S. Hamrah---read the whole thing here:

The atmosphere in which the highest honors in filmdom are now broadcast to the masses is more like an episode of Wheel of Fortune in which the contestants can’t solve the puzzle, no matter how many vowels they’ve bought. The audience on social media engages in Frustration Discourse as they watch loser-winners grapple with their moments of professional glory on live TV, all so ABC can continue to exist in a world that has left it behind. It’s also a world in which actual movies have become marginal, especially during the Oscars.

Every moment is confused, all of it a ritual no one in the film industry believes in anymore but enacts to ward off demons of their future: simultaneous release in theaters and on streaming, no back end, no residuals, voiceover work in animation and video games, shrinking foreign markets, foreign markets where film releases are moral quandaries, a series of bad decisions like the ones that led to The Suicide Squad, Cameo, and the final, furthest away specter: a world without an In Memoriam reel.

 

Okay, I turned it off

Now Gone with the Wind is on, on live so we can't go back to the start. Yes, it's racist and awful, but it was a hit in the Soviet Union.

The only credited cast member from the movie left is the little fellow who played Beau Wilkes. I've argued that there's still time to make a sequel to Gone With the Wind with the original cast, just Mickey Kuhn, now 89. His character was born in 1864 so, at age 89, the movie would be set in 1953. Beau would be living in a boarding house somewhere, perhaps supplementing his Social Security by letting the state medical school study the effects of his inbreeding.  With digital video, the whole thing could be done for a few thousand dollars if Kuhn would cooperate. I'm pretty sure you'd get sued though.

Sean Penn, Zelensky at the Oscars

I don't know. If I were Sean Penn and I got the bright idea of Zelensky speaking at the Oscars, I think I would suggest it in an understated way, because there's no telling. The guy could misunderstand, drone on and on, give a twenty minute speech. They'd have to cut him off, claim it was a technical glitch and blame Russia. I've seen that happen before. Some West Point cadet appeared on MSNBC by satellite. He did that West Point Cadet thing where they shout everything they say and the screen turned to static. If something like that happened, Penn could come out looking like a jackass.

Penn says he's going to publicly "smelt" his old Oscars from 15 years ago if Zelensky doesn't appear. Does he know what smelting is? Is it something you can really do publicly?

You look at how mad they get at the slightest political statement at the Oscars.

Don't know if this is from his TV show or him as president.

Tom Swift TV series

I tried reading a Tom Swift book when I was about ten. I couldn't identify with him at all because he had a crew cut. I kept telling myself I could imagine him with any hairstyle I wanted, but it didn't work. I can't remember if I forced myself to read it to the end. They never mentioned the Hardy Boys' haircuts.

The book was Tom Swift and his Sonic Boom Trap.  It didn't live up to its cover art, but how could it?

So making Tom Swift Black and gay are huge improvements. But a billionaire? Why would they do that? I hate billionaires. He's not even a teenager.

Well, I don't think I'm the target audience.

From Variety:

“Tom Swift,” a spinoff of the mystery series “Nancy Drew,” will premiere its first episode May 31 on The CW, the network announced Friday.

The series, which was first announced in 2020, stars Tian Richards (“Burdin,” “Dumplin'”) as the title character, who was first created in the 1910 book “Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle.” Originally portrayed as a teen inventor, the series reimagines Swift as a Black, gay billionaire who is thrust into conflict with a mysterious global cabal following the sudden disappearance of his father. Richards first appeared as the character in Season 2 of “Nancy Drew.”

Ashleigh Murray (“Riverdale,” “Katy Keene”) co-stars in the series as Swift’s best friend Zenzi. Marquise Vilsón, April Parker Jones and Albert Mwangi also star, while LeVar Burton voices Swift’s AI companion Barclay. The series is created by Melinda Hsu Taylor, Noga Landau and Cameron Johnson, who executive produce with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage.

Turns out William Hurt was a monster

I had no idea. I never paid attention to him. He seemed okay. I looked at his filmography after he died. I'd seen a few of his movies. His peak didn't last that long and he did a lot of TV.

At least two of his ex-girlfriends, Marlee Matlin and Donna Kaz, say he battered  them. Each discussed it in published memoirs.

“Bill would snap, physically shove, punch and beat me, followed by tears, apologies and him offering me expensive gifts," Kaz wrote. "When the battering began I sloughed it off. He said he was sorry. Perhaps I instigated it. I only had to visit the ER once. It was only after many, many years I admitted to myself that I was the victim of domestic violence.” 

In her 2009 memoir, Marlee Matlin described him sexually assaulting her.

“My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives,” Hurt said in a statement at the time.

To hell with that guy.

See the Man Run (Made-for-TV movie, 1971)

There used to be some interesting TV movies. This one was clearly made-for-TV. You wouldn't mistake it for a theatrical film, but it was good in its way.

Robert Culp as a down-on-his-luck actor who has moved into a new apartment with his wife. They have a new phone number. Robert Culp staggers to answer the phone one morning. A kidnapper demands $50 thousand for the return of the daughter he doesn't have.

Culp realizes the call was meant for the doctor who had the number before them. He calls the doctor's answering service and they put him through. Culp should have worked out what he would say because it got garbled and the doctor (Eddie Albert) thought he was the kidnapper. The phone fell off the nightstand and they were disconnected before he could explain.

Culp could have called back, but his drunken harpy wife (Angie Dickenson) needles him into running with it and collecting the ransom himself.

"I'M SICK OF THIS DAMNED EMASCULATION ACT OF YOURS," Culp advises her. But he does what she wants.

What could possibly go wrong?

Eddie Albert drives a Mercedes without whiplash restraints. Cars didn't age well back then so we know Culp and his wife are struggling because they have a ten-year-old convertible.

72 minutes.

IMDb says there were two remakes of this in India.

Free on a streaming channel called Movieland TV, or HERE on YouTube.

Powderkeg (1971)

This was the pilot to a shortlived TV series called Bearcats!, a western set before World War One, about two handsome young mercenaries who drive around the southwest in a Stutz Bearcat. 

I only heard of the show recently. All I was able to see of it was the opening credits on YouTube and it looked like it could be interesting, made about the same time as the James Garner series, Nichols. Garner rides around on an early motorcycle. Bearcats! had machine guns and the opening credits show them being attacked by a biplane.

I never liked westerns but I like Soviet movies modeled on American westerns. They were set in the 1920's in Kazakhstan or Siberia, so I thought maybe I'd like this. A western without the ugly clothes, the ugly towns and illiterate people. They could discuss Freudian psychology and nietzschean philosophy. 

I saw an interview with a writer of the Soviet movie, White Sun of the Desert. He said that he and the other writer worked out the look and feel they wanted for the movie, but that didn't help them come up with a plot.

Powderkeg apparently had the same problem. Mexican revolutionaries have hijacked a passenger train and are holding the passengers hostage, so the railroad calls The Bearcats. The car plays no role in the story except they drive there, park it in a barn and drive away in the end. Just wasn't very good. They had a gimmick but didn't work it into the lousy plot.

They reportedly spent $25,000 to have two replica Stutz Bearcats made at a time when you could buy a new Corvette for about $5,000. 

For $7,000 plus shipping, you can now import a golf cart from China that looks like a Model T.

Free on a streaming channel called Western Mania.

MSNBC: "Hitler was nice!"

This from an article on counterpunch.com. A few items from Twitter and comments by Jeffrey St. Clair:

+ This may be one of the most moronic things ever to appear on American television. No surprise it ran on Maddow’s show from the mouth of Obama’s former ambassador to Russia…

+ Hitler revisionism isn’t something I expected from liberals this early in the war. Neo-Nazis in Ukraine are certainly a  concern but perhaps not as big of a threat as the ones amassing in the green rooms at MSDNC and CNN…

 

+ I’m not one for comparing the crimes of autocrats. But purely for variety’s sake I’ll nominate for a Gellhorn Prize the first talking head on MSDNC or CNN who, instead of calling Putin the new Hitler, refers to him as Russia’s Dick Cheney…

 

+ Here we have the neocon/neoliberal version of “I’d rather die of Covid than wear a mask or get a vaccine.” Except in this case they’re willing to take the entire planet with them, including Cerulean warblers and snow leopards.

 

 

A Prayer for the Damned (2018)

I kind of liked this. A western. Cast of a dozen. Consists mostly of dialogue scenes, mostly two actors at a time. 

Filmed in one of those western town movie sets. I don't know if they're ever that convincing. The landscape outside of town wasn't very interesting. It wasn't Monument Valley. Maybe they just shouldn't film all these things in the desert. The East German westerns, the Indianerfilme, were refreshing because they weren't set in a barren, arid hellscape.

Set in the 1870's. It was nice to see a western where former Confederates were the bad guys.

Free on Tubi. 

William Hurt, RIP

 

I was watching an old episode of South Park on Pluto the other night. It had a reference to William Hurt in Altered States. I realized I hadn't seen that movie in 30 or 40 years. I remember being struck by the way  the woman playing William Hurt's wife shouted her odd, verbose dialogue that she could have spoken calmly.

Ken Russell directed. He hated Paddy Chayefsky's script, but couldn't change a word without being sued, so he tried different things to make it sound at least vaguely natural. I don't remember the movie that well, but reportedly he had actors talk very fast in some cases or talk while eating in others. He had to ban Chayefsky from the set.

The next day, I saw the news that William Hurt died in Portland, Oregon, at age 71. That sounds so young to me now.

From The Onion

 https://www.theonion.com/u-s-condemns-russian-bombing-of-hospital-as-horrific-a-1848636409

U.S. Condemns Russian Bombing Of Hospital As Horrific Act That Any World Power Could Theoretically Commit

WASHINGTON—Speaking out Thursday against an atrocity that officials noted is a hypothetical outcome whenever an airstrike is conducted, the United States condemned the Russian bombing of a Ukrainian hospital as a horrific act that any world power could theoretically commit. “The shelling of a medical facility is a heinous, unacceptable action that, if you think about it, is always a possibility when a really powerful country attacks a far less powerful one,” said President Joe Biden, explaining that the Russian attack on innocent civilians in the city of Mariupol was a flagrant breach of international law and definitely one of the potential results anytime a significant military force engages in a wide-ranging, open-ended conflict with an enemy. “Just know that these abhorrent deeds, which, for the sake of argument, any nation might carry out when it ranks in the top five globally in terms of defense spending, will not go unpunished. It is barbaric to slaughter blameless women and children, and while you can absolutely see how such a thing might happen from time to time, it is completely unacceptable.” Biden went on to state that Russia’s gruesome crime against ordinary citizens was a tragedy that would go down in history, unlike some others, he added, that hopefully won’t. 

Aferim! (Romania, 2015)

Wide screen black & white. IMDb says it's an "Adventure/Drama/Comedy". The Guardian says it's "loaded with laughs". I didn't see anything funny.  

The last I heard, Gypsies (Roma) are around 10% of the Romanian population. Gypsies were enslaved there until the 1840's or 1850's.

The movie is set in 1835. An aging constable and his teenage son are traveling through the countryside on horseback searching for an escaped slave.

People compared the movie to a western. It would have been an interesting setting for one, but it wasn't an action film beyond these two horrible people abusing Gypsies and threatening everyone else.

When I saw Kurosawa's They Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail I was surprised that Buddhist monks would own a slave . In this movie, a Christian monastery has a number of slaves working for them.

A priest says the same things white American Southern degenerate Christians said to justify slavery, that Gypsies were descendants of Ham and so on. He also states that Jews used to be giant but they evolved over to time to normal height.

Had one scene with sort of a stunt. The constable's son walks back and forth on a log in the forest several feet off the ground practicing with his sword. He keeps slashing with it.

"Stab like a man!" his father says.

Available on the Criterion Channel. See if you think it's funny.

Something about the E.T. special edition

What they should have done is made Elliott stop pedaling.

I'm not sure how many times I've seen E.T. I had a friend who wanted me to see it, so we went. Then I was hanging around with him and his girlfriend wanted to see it again so I went with them again. Later, he bought a VHS copy of it so I had to sit through it a couple more times. 

I made the mistake of telling my sister that I didn't care for the movie. It turned out that watching E.T. was the most deeply moving experience of her life, so she spent a couple of hours ragging on me. She thought that I must have found the movie so profoundly emotional that I was trying to conceal my true feelings.  I know she was sincere because, later, my brother was in town and she insisted we all watch E.T. But before she put it on, I saw panic in her eyes. Would the movie be TOO emotional? Would watching it together become socially awkward?

Yeah, I know I wrote about this before at some point. But I came across this on Cracked.com:

https://www.cracked.com/article_32919_how-spielbergs-et-special-edition-pissed-off-the-screenwriter.html

 

The Way West (1967)

It was a big covered wagon movie with Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark. Sally Field's first movie, with Paul Wexler in an uncredited role as a barber. I never met him but Wexler used to own the little house right across the street from me.

Part of the movie was filmed near here. I had never heard if it. Seems to have been forgotten because it wasn't very good. The violent deaths of at least two children (one played by Stefan Arngrim from TV's Land of the Giants) didn't do it any favors. 

But now it's showing up on streaming video.

North by Northwest

I don't have anything interesting or coherent to say about it. Just that Cary Grant was in pretty good shape. He was fifty-five years old and has a scene where he runs at full speed. This is Tom Cruise's thing---he runs in every movie. He compared himself to an Olympic athlete, but Cary Grant did the same thing without making a big deal out of it.

I recently mentioned Ralph Reed who played a 14-year-old in High Noon. There he was again in North by Northwest as the bellhop who says he's not allowed to send a telegram for Cary Grant. "I'm not permitted to do that, sir," he says. It's hard to believe his bosses told him, "And another thing---NO TELEGRAMS!"

That bellhop caused Cary Grant's whole ordeal. How many people died because of his sloth?

It was Martin Landau's first movie. He decided to play his character as gay. He thought he was subtle enough that most people wouldn't notice, but he was warned that people might think he was gay in real life. Could this be why he was in so many things with his wife, Barbara Bain? I doubt it. But he appeared with her in Mission Impossible, Space 1999, and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island, as if to say, "See? I'm not gay!"

Landau's career really blossomed once they divorced. Poor Barbara Bain was like Sonny Bono watching Cher's career take off.

The Goldbergs sans Jeff Garlin

From Showbiz411 about how The Goldbergs has been faring since Jeff Garlin's dismissal:

For weeks, “The Goldbergs” have been pretending Murray is still around. They use stand ins, make oblique references, but Garlin’s face is long gone.

Last night, fans were howling on social media that Murray’s daughter got married and there was no sign of him. His whole family was present. At one point, the narrator referred to “my parents” and there was a shot of a stand in pretending to be Murray from behind, dancing with his wife.

That doesn't sound so bad. But would a replacement need to be plausible or not obvious? Like the new Darrin on Bewitched, someone who sort of looks like the old Darrin and shares his opinions and general outlook but is a toned-down, blander version of the original.

It's like when you watch the pilot for The Waltons. Patricia Neal played the mother and Edgar Bergin played Grandpa. It takes a minute or two but you get used to it.

They should try it. If it doesn't work, they can go back to what they're doing.

Pasolini's Canterbury Tales (1972)

There used to be an art theater in town. At some point, they decided to supplement their art film revenue by showing porno films late at night. But when they started doing this, they showed only non-pornographic X-rated foreign films. Pasolini's Canterbury Tales was one of them.

I don't know what they thought it was, but my older brother and some of his friends were going to go to it. He asked me if I wanted to go. I said, well, okay. I was eighteen but I didn't drive and had no proof of age, so I didn't go. Proof of age wouldn't have been an issue. Even when they started showing actual pornography they didn't care.

I saw The Canterbury Tales a few years later on videotape and those guys had to have been disappointed. Shot without sound, dubbed in Italian and subtitled in English. I really didn't like it the first time I saw it. But I clicked on it on The Criterion Channel and it was much better than I remembered. 

Had things that were peculiar to Pasolini, like actors smiling at odd times. Like if you lie to someone in his movies, they smile to show that they fell for it.