Depp-Heard closing arguments which I didn't watch

In a happier time.

I looked on You Tube. I could have watched the closing arguments in the Johnny Depp/Amada Heard trial, but, no.

I watched a little of the testimony. One psychologist spoke freely in psychological gobbledygook, not simplifying for the jury, which must have been refreshing.

I know that Johnny Depp fans have overwhelmed Amber Heard admirers online, but, in theory, that shouldn't affect the outcome. I'm rooting for Amanda just to see Depp's fans struggle to cope with the verdict. Marrying a drug addict/alcoholic couldn't have been easy for her.

Think of Ronnie Howard, Ricky Schroeder or---I don't know---Booboo Stewart. Ronnie and Ricky now call themselves Ron and Rick. Mr Stewart now puts "Booboo" in quotation marks. Maybe there's already an actor named "John Depp" which leaves Depp with little choice but continue calling himself "Johnny" into old age.

You know what good names would be for aspiring actors? Tonto Depp for boys and Amber Depp, Jr, for girls.

Vampire's Kiss (1988)

My friends and I watched this around the time it came out on videotape. I don't remember why we picked it. Watched it again on Pluto. 

Nicholas Cage gives an uninhibited performance as a yuppie literary agent. He hangs around clubs at night, brings home strange women, and he's being treated for depression. After a bat comes fluttering into his apartment, through a mixture of mental illness and misunderstanding, he comes to believe he's a vampire. 

I admired Nicholas Cage after seeing this. I don't remember seeing any of his movies for years after that, but I heard that his acting had become weirder and weirder, although that's hard to imagine. I read a few years later that he had taken up bodybuilding so he could do action movies. 

At one point, he's shot with a gun loaded with banks which confirms in his mind that he's now undead. I think audiences now would know or suspect that the blanks would have killed him.

I don't know how people in small towns would have reacted to Cage's character, but New Yorkers seemed rather kind at times, helping him when he collapses on the street at the sight of a cross.

How should we react to a horrible, soulless yuppie who commits terrible crimes but only after becoming insane?

Brits charge Kevin Spacey, 62

And now Kevin Spacey is in trouble with the law in Britain. According to Variety:

The decision was unveiled Thursday by the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which has spent over a year reviewing a file passed to them by the Metropolitan Police.

“The CPS has authorized criminal charges against Kevin Spacey, 62, for four counts of sexual assault against three men,” said Rosemary Ainslie, head of the CPS Special Crime Division. “He has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent. The charges follow a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation. The Crown Prosecution Service reminds all concerned that criminal proceedings against Mr Spacey are active and that he has the right to a fair trial.”

Sounds like he was making a bit of a comeback with Peter Five Eight and a movie called Gateway to the West. 

Don McLean: This is weird

After the mass murder of nineteen children and two teachers in a Texas grade school, Don McLean has backed out of performing at a National Rifle Association annual meeting in Houston.

McLean is listed alongside several other musicians for the NRA’s Grand Ole Night of Freedom concert on Saturday at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Also included in the lineup are country artists Danielle Peck, T. Graham Brown, Larry Gatlin, Larry Stewart, Jacob Bryant and Lee Greenwood, whose song “God Bless the U.S.A” has become a conservative anthem and is played regularly at Republican events, including rallies hosted by former President Donald Trump.

Like Greenwood, McLean is best known for one song, the iconic and lengthy 1971 hit “American Pie.” Unlike Greenwood, McLean has not been linked to conservative causes.

Why would he take that gig in the first place?
 

And Soon the Darkness (UK, 1970)

A British movie filmed in France and at a studio near London. There was a remake in 2010. 

Had a small cast, only nine speaking roles. And there was only one scene with any extras.

Two young English women are bicycling through France. They're on a side road going through farm country. They get into an argument, split up and one of them goes missing.

The girl searches for her friend, learns there was an unsolved murder there a few years earlier. There's a language barrier and the French all seem unnecessarily suspicious. She doesn't know who she can trust.

The story covers a period of just a few hours.

Even if I wanted to bicycle through France I wouldn't do it. By the time you realize you've made a terrible mistake it would be too late. You'd be miles from nowhere with no choice but to carry on. I'm not talking about the danger of being murdered---just having to ride a bike. Always give yourself a way out.

Free on Movieland Tv.

 

Kevin Spacey back

At Cannes.

Someone thinks it’s a good idea to produce a thriller starring Kevin Spacey, accused and sued as an alleged sexual predator. He hasn’t been seen in a movie in five years.

“Peter Five Eight” indeed marquees Spacey, wearing something dead on his head, a strange guy in a small town who stalks one woman and beds Rebecca DeMornay. (It’s hard to imagine she needed money this badly or couldn’t get other work.)

The director is first timer Michael Zaiko Hall.

Spacey’s co-star, Jet Jandreau, who, no you’ve never heard of, is listed as a producer. There is no distributor so far.

This was from Showbiz 411.

There must be a better way to bring back a #MeToo guy, to exploit a disgraced star at a deep discount. Maybe have a him play an ex-cop kicked off the force for being a sexual predator. He now has to work as a private eye while going through therapy for his problem.

Richard Linklater's SubUrbia (1996)

I'm sure there are people who achieve success in a creative field at a young age who are perfectly nice guys. And there have to be at least some losers in the world who can't conceal their bitterness or are violent racists. So the film is plausible enough.

A successful singer-songwriter in his 20's returns to his hometown. Most of his slacker friends from high school are happy to see him.

The ones who succeed or have hope of success are the good ones. Lack of ambition is the hallmark of a bad person in this thing. There's a pleasant but unambitious guy who is rewarded anyway.

I hope my seeing it this way doesn't say more about me than it does about the movie.

Based on the play by Eric Bogosian.

Available on the Criterion Channel.

Zelensky regime supporter protests at Cannes

I'm not sure what these people think. They take the exact same position as their government and mass media but think they're really socking it to---somebody.

A protester from S.C.U.M. slipped onto the red carpet at Cannes and threw off her gown. Her body was painted with the colors of the Ukrainian flag with the words "Stop raping us" in English for some reason. Screamed some things until security dragged her away.

Did she think Cannes was a hotbed of English-speaking pro-rape Russia supporters who would tremble in impotent rage at her protest? This was before a screening of George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing. Makes me wonder what it's about.

John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust (1975)

There was a wave of films in the 1970's about Hollywood of the '20's and '30's. I saw a few minutes of The Day of the Locust on HBO at the time, but I was 13 and it wasn't my thing. It was set in the 1930's so I assumed there were actual locusts on top of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

What stood out to me now were Donald Sutherland playing a character named Homer Simpson, the one nice guy in the movie although he did something awful later, and Jackie Earle Haley as a weirdly androgynous child actor named Adore. I didn't recognize him and wasn't sure he wasn't a girl. He did a Mae West impression. His character was a truly horrible brat but who can blame him.

I was happy to see Natalie Schafer---Lovey Howell from Gilligan's Island---running an escort service and high class pornographic film parlor.

About a perfectly nice man who came to Hollywood to design sets and costumes, but then tried to rape Karen Black who played a failing starlet. Her father (Burgess Meredith) is a chronically ill vaudevillian. The closer he is to the brink of death the more he falls back on his schtick, creeping people out or at least annoying them with his mirthless laughter.

Even studio executives enjoy cockfighting. Billy Barty as a foul-mouthed racist. Fans bring cameras to strangers' funerals hoping to spot a celebrity.

A big budget movie based on Nathanael West's 1939 novel of the same name.

Free on Movieland TV.

Commentary on American Movie available on YouTube

Someone posted the DVD commentary from American Movie on YouTube. The movie itself doesn't play---just stills. 

Director Chris Smith, producer Sarah Price, Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank comment.

Recorded in 2000, just a year after the movie came out. I don't know what effect the documentary had on Borchardt's life at that point, but he says at one point that he was still paying on the same bills he did at the beginning of the movie. 

https://youtu.be/VJFWmY_sLPU

Twitter won't get better

There was one time I was sorry I wasn't on Twitter. I clicked on a tweet by J. Elvis Weinstein. His brother was a teacher who was tweeting from a Jeopardy-like game they were playing with students at his middle school. There was a question, what is an implement used for spreading butter? He made fun of the children for not knowing. I assume the answer was "butter knife" but none of the kids ventured a guess. 

If I had been on Twitter, I would have pointed out that you don't spread with a butter knife. The whole point of a butter knife is to not get crumbs in the butter. The tweenagers just had better table etiquette than their teacher. I could have shamed a teacher who was humiliating his students, but signing up on Twitter would have been a high price to pay.

I don't think Twitter is going to get better. Elon Musk's talk about free speech sounds good in it's way, but it doesn't work out.

There was a pacifist group here that would have a different speaker each week. These were public events. They were under constant attack from local Zionists, so the founder of the group who was about to have his 100th birthday decided to make it a "free speech" group instead. It was a disaster. It resulted in an influx of white supremacists, white separatists, anti-feminists; there was a white guy who had converted to Hinduism in old age and used this as an excuse for hating Muslims. Another was an old Jewish guy who was a Holocaust denier.

If the group had as its purpose to advocate or defend free speech it might have been interesting, but just having a forum for old cranks didn't work. No serious person would participate after that. 

It fell apart after a wave of protests. Anarchists and Zionists formed their own unholy alliance. Their leader was an elderly "peace activist", a Quaker who couldn't see Jews as anything but innocent victims. He thought he was sticking up for the little guy by supporting Israel's war on Palestinians. 

Swedes and Finns aren't that smart after all

When I was in grade school, I'd sit in the classroom staring a globe trying to figure out how I would have escaped World War Two, gotten out of Europe, Asia or North America avoiding any country where I'd likely be bombed, drafted or would have to live under military occupation. I wasn't completely clear at the time on what countries managed to stay out of the war. 

I liked TV violence back then, so I'd turn on World At War on public television. It wasn't what I expected. It traumatized me. But I kept watching.

Sweden and Finland have decided that this is the perfect time to join NATO. There's already a war, NATO is perfectly open about wanting to keep it going as long as possible. We're on the brink of World War Three and these people don't want to miss out. NATO won't protect them---it'll make them logical, completely legitimate targets.

Perhaps in anticipation of joining the alliance, Finland dropped the Swastika as their military insignia two years ago.

Ukraine wins Eurovision Song Contest

I don't know how many Americans have heard of the Eurovision Song Contest. I did only because one of my brothers was performing the music of Serge Gainsbourg whose song won in 1965. 

And there was an episode of the U.K. comedy Father Ted. Fathers Ted and Dougal impulsively write a song and are inexplicably selected to represent Ireland in the Eurovision contest. They perform the song and are humiliated. The country that wins the contest has to host the event the following year. Ted and Dougal were picked to make sure Ireland wouldn't be saddled with that burden.

Which brings us to this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Ukraine won. Are they going to hold the contest there next year? If they do, it will likely be in Banderite-infested western Ukraine. 

Judging a song is subjective. Ukraine probably won mostly out of pity.

Something to think about. Miss Universe hopefuls might want to find a way to compete as Miss Ukraine. There may be less competition there with things the way they are. It'd be easier to be voted Miss Ukraine, then they'll elect you Miss Universe out of hatred for Russia.

Edgar Ulmer directed Ukrainian-language movies in the United States in the 1930s. If you can speak Russian or Ukrainian or find a translator, go there to film your low budget movie! It'd be cheap and you'd no doubt get a few film festival wins out of it. 

Werner Herzog vs. Lenny Lipton

“I admire the achievements, the technical achievements, but the film is an abomination because of its New Age schlock and bullshit. When I see them sitting in some sort of collective meditation or yoga or collective yoga class, it just makes me cringe. I want to be somewhere else, far away from the cinema.”

--Werner Herzog on James Cameron's Avatar

I was surprised to learn that Lenny Lipton had invented a lot of the 3D processes they use now. In the early '70's, he had written a book on independent filmmaking with a vast amount of technical information on 16mm and 8mm film and equipment. It was aimed underground and art filmmakers. Stan Brakhage wrote the foreword. 

 

I know very little about Lipton, but he claims to have written the poem that "Puff the Magic Dragon" was based on if that tells you anything.

I assumed he turned his back on hippie cinema, but New Age schlock may have been all the guy wanted all along. He changed tactics----he switched from advocating for extreme low budget film to inventing processes for movies that cost way too much---and was triumphant.

Tucker Carlson: What is wrong with him?

It seems that Tucker Carlson has made a sort of "documentary" claiming that men have less testosterone than they used to. At some point, Carlson suggests men suntan their scrotums, I suppose as a solution, but who knows.

Carlson's not the most masculine guy in the world, but he apparently sees himself as a man's man.

I would have posted the promo here, but all the videos on YouTube came with bewildered/mocking commentary.

Ukraine celebrates Nazi troops

The Zelensky regime cheerfully posted a picture of a member of the Azov Battalion wearing a Nazi totenkopf insignia:

When I was a kid watching the old Holocaust TV miniseries (1978), I couldn't see how the Germans could claim not to know that the Nazis were evil. Michael Moriarty joins the SS only because he's desperate for work, but then we see him in his horrible black uniform with a skull on it, but his wife tells his children, "Look how handsome Daddy is in his uniform!"

A British sketch comedy noted the same thing:

Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955)

It's hard to get excited about the French Riviera when it's just a rear screen projection. 

I had never seen this thing. Filmed in VistaVision in France and Hollywood.  There wasn't much tension or suspense and the big reveal at the end came as no surprise, even to the character in the movie. "I thought it was you!"

There was a rear screen projection car chase on a narrow winding road that worked pretty well. We see two French cops playing a then-exotic hacky sack-like game before jumping in their Traction Avant to give chase. Grace Kelly drives a beautiful Sunbeam convertible, but I kept thinking about the lack of seatbelts and how Grace Kelly died on a road like that years later. 

More romance than suspense. The romance didn't seem very convincing, but I don't know what goes on between really good-looking people.

Cary Grant as a handsome retired jewel thief. Someone steals his act, is robbing wealthy tourists. Cary Grant is getting the blame and sets out to find the real criminal. 

Grant pretends to be from Portland, Oregon. Grace Kelly shows some knowledge of Oregon geography.

Bridges of Madison County (1995)

I would have used a bigger camera for that sort of work.

Closed-minded provincials don’t approve of a farmer's Italian war bride Meryl Streep. She starts sleeping with Clint Eastwood while her farmer husband is out of town.

I read a critique of the movie when it came out. It argued that being trapped in a passionless marriage with a wife nobody likes was no picnic for her husband, either, but we don't see him sleeping with a female Clint Eastwood equivalent.

The story is told in flashback. The woman has died and her two adult children go through her things and are shocked at what they find.

A middle-aged version of The Titanic. If the relationship had been allowed run its course, the illicit couple would have been tired of it after a couple of weeks, but here they remain fixated on each other into old age.

Russia's doing pretty well

Russia seems to be doing pretty well. They're exporting more oil at a higher price than they did this time last year. The ruble is stronger than it's been in years. The Euro, meanwhile, has dropped in value and the U.S. has the highest inflation since 1981. 

Russia is self-sufficient as far as food and energy go. They're the largest exporter of steel among other things. They won't be getting any more cars from Europe, Japan or South Korea, so the sanctions will have the same effect as a protective tariff for the Russian auto industry. Even if their car industry doesn't take off, most Russians use public transportation. 

It's hard to imagine that being cut off from European exports would be much of a problem. Offhand, I can't think of anything the world depends on Europe for. There's an Italian brand of spaghetti I buy. Other than that, it seems like it's all luxury brands. I have French shoes, but if I were in Russia, I could get them resoled and patched a few times, keep them going a few years then switch to another brand. 

You literally couldn't get an abortion to save your life in much of the United States and it's about to get a lot worse. 

In Russia, you can get an abortion in any hospital and the hospitals are free.

When Trump became president, there was a giant women's march against him. That was quickly dropped. Anti-Trump "resistance" became nothing but attacks on Russia. And here's the result. There's a war in Europe and the U.S. openly wants to keep it going, willing to fight to the last Ukrainian to punish Russia for things they never did while Roe vs Wade is being overturned without a fight.

26 Men: A slightly better episode

I finally saw a somewhat interesting episode of 26 Men, an old syndicated western (1957 to 1959) about the Arizona Rangers. 

The Arizona Rangers formed in 1901 and disbanded in 1909---there were only 26 of them. Arizona became a state in 1912. The episodes were based on real cases and reportedly some of the episodes were introduced by surviving rangers. 

In this episode, fleeing criminals take over a mission and hold the Catholics hostage.

One confesses his sins. He has the idea that the sanctity of the confessional would then keep the priest from telling anyone they were there. I suspect he was under-thinking this.

It was a half-hour show so it had that going for it.

The show was a pretty standard western with little to indicate it was set in the 20th century. Some of the men wore slightly more modern clothing, like one guy had a denim jacket, but they could have thrown in an occasional Luger and a couple motorcycles. It just wasn't very good. I could never tell one character from another and the stories supposedly being true didn't make them any more interesting.

Watched it on Pluto.

Fred Savage fired for inappropriate conduct

Variety reports that 45-year-old former child Fred Savage was fired from his job as a director and executive producer of a Wonder Years reboot after an investigation of alleged inappropriate conduct on the set. Why would anyone behave inappropriately?

I vaguely remembered a sexual harassment lawsuit when he was a teen on that show. 

From Variety:

In 1993, original “The Wonder Years” costume designer Monique Long sued the actor for sexual harassment. People reported that Long said Savage repeatedly told her, “Oh, Monique, I’m so in love with you. Please have an affair with me.” She also said he asked her out on dates and tried to hold her hand.

Alley Mills, who starred alongside Savage, claimed in 2018 that the original series’ cancellation was a result of the suit. Mills called the suit “completely ridiculous,” saying to Yahoo Entertainment that Savage was “the least offensive, most wonderful, sweet human being that ever walked the face of the earth.”

Also in 2018, 20th Television (then called 20th Century Fox Television) investigated Savage’s conduct on the set of “The Grinder,” where wardrobe team member Younjoo Hwang alleged “an extremely hostile work environment” created by Savage, whose “aggressive behavior, intimidation, and constant use of profanities aimed toward female employees was left unchecked.”

But in that instance, the studio said that it “found no evidence of any wrongdoing.”

 I expect this sort of thing from Jerry Mathers, but not Fred Savage!

That was a joke. Jerry Mathers is a saint.

David Birney, RIP

I was just listening to a podcast. They were talking about CBS's old Saturday night lineup, but I was surprised they didn't remember it that well. It's been weirdly ingrained in my mind for fifty years.

All in the Family, MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show.

It took a while for The Bob Newhart Show to appear in the lineup. There was Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers that was on for a time, and there was Bridget Loves Bernie (1972 to 1973), about a Catholic girl and her Jewish husband that was controversial at the time. Their marriage would be illegal in Israel.

Rabbis secretly met with the network demanding that it be cancelled. The Jewish Defense League made threats against the cast. A JDL member named Robert Manning was arrested for phoning death threats. He was later indicted for murder in an unrelated case. He fled to Israel and fought extradition, but he was eventually convicted of killing a computer company secretary with a letter bomb. He is believed to have murdered Alex Odeh of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Once the show was driven from the air, stars David Birney and Meredith Baxter got married in real life.

David Birney died today at 83. Had a long list of credits in movies and television, his last role in 2007.

The Proposal (2009)

In reality, Ryan Reynolds is an actual Canadian and Sandra Bullock is American.

Horrible lady boss is forcing her male secretary to marry her for immigration reasons.

Sham marriages to get someone U.S. residency are a serious crime. Weird that the government will prosecute you for marrying for anything other than romantic love.  Wouldn't the government allow you to marry someone you didn't know very well due to pregnancy, or to otherwise "make an honest woman" out of her?

How about marrying to expand land holdings, or cousins marrying to the keep wealth in the family? How many romantic comedies have there been where couples who don't know each other get married only because one was stalking the other?

To help create the illusion that they're a real couple, Reynolds and Bullock travel together to Reynolds' family home where they will be celebrating his grandmother (Betty White's) birthday. This is where the bulk of the action takes place.

You'd think a rich Canadian would feel right at home with a wealthy family in Alaska, but it's all somehow alien to her.

Predictable ending. It might have been a good movie if Reynolds discovered that his horrible boss was even worse than he imagined and found a way to have her prosecuted while avoiding jail himself. Or if he killed her. Or if she killed him. 

Sean Penn, Ukraine

Sean Penn's problem is that he's preaching to the choir but still wants to be morally superior to it.

It's like wanting to be a movie star and then punching people for taking your picture. 

Penn has courageously taken a position on Ukraine that is identical to that of everyone in the U.S. government, on CNN and MSNBC and I don't know, but I would imagine most of them on Fox News. But Penn is so indignant about it, outraged that no one cares as deeply as he does.

Ukraine is the only country with a Nazi formation in its military, but Penn thinks he's a radical or a progressive or at least a humanitarian for supporting them. 

Donetsk and Lugansk have been under siege by Ukrainian Nazis for eight years. At least 14,000 people there have been killed. They had as much right to secede from Ukraine as Ukraine had to secede from the USSR and had much better reason for doing so. They had every right to ask Russia for help and Russia was right to help them.

But Penn was on Fox News and it's hard to tell, but he seemed to argue that risking nuclear war would be worth it if Ukraine got to join NATO and rule over Donbas. Even if you're in favor of those things, there's no moral principle involved.

Chris Elliott, Cabin Boy (1994)

I'll tell you the strange thing about this movie.

Nobody liked it at first. The first time I saw it, I didn't like it. But something possessed me to watch it again and, the second time, it was hilarious. Every joke worked beautifully, even the ones that were objectively unfunny. I don't know why that was.

I got some other people to watch it again. They didn't want to. They were big Chris Elliott fans and it had been a terrible disappointment to them, but they watched it a second time and had the same experience I did. 

The movie was released 28 years ago. I read it has a cult following. I guess by now people know whether they like it or not and my story isn't contributing anything.

For some reason you have to see this thing more than once. But I don't know if this is universal. 

Maybe I should have watched it again before posting this.