Woody Allen's Whatever Works (2009) Evan Rachel Wood, Larry David

There were a few old Warner Bros cartoons that made reference to people in the audience. It seems like one had a silhouette of a guy getting up to leave so Yosemite Sam threatens or shoots him. The main thing I remember was being surprised that they ever showed cartoons in movie theaters. I knew some of them were made in the thirties or forties. I knew they didn't have TV then. Where did I think they were shown?

In Whatever Works, Larry David looks into the camera and speaks directly to the audience. Other people ask who he's talking to and he explains that there are people out there watching them. This might have been amusing in a theater, but I was in bed watching it on TV. 

A southern family blossoms when, one by one, they come to New York. It made it look so easy. Ed Begley, Jr, as Evan Rachel Wood's concerned father who finally tracks her down might have been like Buddy Ebsen in Breakfast at Tiffany's if Buddy Ebsen had experienced a sexual awakening when he came to the big city.

Larry David was a little hard to take in it. He's mean to the children he teaches chess to. Woody Allen wrote the part long ago for Zero Mostel. I kept trying to picture him in the role.

John Waters briefly on Bones and All

I haven't seen it, but I keep railing against Bones and All.

Here's from John Waters' ten best list:

Is there such a thing as a butch twink? Yes, there is, and Timothée Chalamet goes all Larry Clark on us here, a soft-trade hetero cannibal who kills an evil closeted gay trick so he and his flesh-eating girlfriend can feed. Is that gay-bashing or cannibally correct love? Just asking.

Shirley (2020, Josephine Decker, director)

There was a school movie of Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery”. My older brother saw it in junior high was really shocked by it. I saw it in school myself a few years later. Maybe his talking about it had ruined the surprise ending, but I was so used to TV violence, I couldn’t see what the big deal was.

This came up in conversation recently. He's still unnerved by the memory.

I’ve read a couple of stories by Shirley Jackson. For some reason, I didn’t think of her as a horror writer.

The movie Shirley is about a young couple who move in with Shirley Jackson and her university professor husband. Turns out, if this movie is to be believed, she was a morbid, socially aggressive eccentric.

I don’t know why that surprises me. I guess I had this vague picture of her as a sort of Erma Bombeck.

Four Frightened People (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934)

Passengers on a ship discover that the bubonic plague is spreading among the Chinese crew. If the passengers had holed up in their cabins avoiding human contact, it might be a movie for the pandemic, but it starts with four passengers having escaped on a small boat. I don't know why they weren't free to leave, but they pay the native working the rudder and one of the guys holds a gun on him.

They go to an island. They need to get to the other side to catch another boat out of there but they'll have to go through the jungle on foot and do so in formal dress, one of the women carrying a little dog.

Claudette Colbert as a spinster geography teacher who blossoms in the jungle. Picking up the gun one of the men dropped during a brush with hostile natives did it as much as anything else.

Colbert tells off her two companions the natives left tied to a tree.

"What's got into her?" one of the men says. "She's turned into a woman."

It was reminiscent of a line from Tennesse Williams' Night of the Iguana:

"I thought you were sexless. But you've just become a woman. You know how I know that? Because you, not me, are taking pleasure in my being tied up."

Pre-code. A little implied nudity. Claudette Colbert's body double bathes in a waterfall wearing a body suit.

    

78 minutes. I watched it on DVD from Netflix.

Ms.45 (Abel Ferrara 1981)

I am reminded of the words of Black Panther Party Minister of Defense Huey Newton in a short poem: "Army .45 will stop all jive."

I remember when this movie was presented as revolutionary. It was more Death Wish than Battleship Potempkin and even then, she was as much spree killer as vigilante. 

The star described herself as a revolutionary in an interview. She was disgusted when people cheerfully told her that they used to be revolutionaries, too. If they were ever revolutionaries, they still were.

I can't remember where I read that. She was only 17 when they filmed this thing which explains a lot. 

 

The poor girl was thirty-seven when she died of heart failure caused by prolonged cocaine use. She switched to cocaine when she moved to Paris. Before that she was an enthusiastic heroin user. She was described one place as the "epitome of heroin chic".

Zoe Tamerlis plays a mute garment worker who is raped on her way home from work and again by a burglar when she gets home. She kills the second one with a household object, and good riddance to him. Then she uses his gun which I assume was a .45 automatic to kill other would-be rapists or guys she thought were would-be rapists or just guys. 

It was still a 1981 movie and one of her victims is a wealthy Arab in an elaborate keffiyeh. It wasn't so revolutionary after all.

From the director of The Bad Lieutenant. Reportedly made for $62 thousand.

The dog, Bogey, got second billing in the closing credits.

Available on Fandor.

Maybe I should do a ten best list

I just looked at some people's lists of the top ten movies of 2022. I could make a list like that, but I'd have to go to ten movies a year which would be way too much. 

The band leader in New Orleans who did the music for Woody Allen's Sleeper hadn't been to a movie since the the silent era. A producer took him to see Shaft to give him an idea of how music was used in talkies.

When I read that fact long ago, it seemed crazy. How can you go forty years without going to a movie?  It's been less than nineteen years for me, although the one I went to in 2004 was the first one I'd been to in a while. And I went to special showing of another movie my mother wanted to see at some point after that---I'm not sure what year.

I hear they have digital projectors now.

I could go to that new Woody Allen movie. He gets a percentage of the gross. I could probably calculate how many cents I'd be sending his way.

King Dinosaur (1955)

A new planet appears in the solar system and settles into orbit near the Earth. Americans fly there in a V-2 rocket and find the place is crawling with dinosaurs. It was difficult to watch and should have been illegal. The dinosaurs were mostly small alligators and large iguanas thrown together so they'd fight, filmed in slow motion from a low angle so they'd look giant.

I always thought you could do that with a couple of those weird hairless kittens, show them playing in slow motion on a miniature set with a couple of tiny palm trees. Cut to shots of people watching in horror at the giant, big-eared dinosaurs.

Available on PubDHub.

Russian movie industry breaks records

A story on RT, the Russian news service, on the state of the Russian movie industry. 

Sanctions and western boycotts have the same effect as protective tariffs for Russian industry.  Things are picking up for their movie industry since Hollywood and the EU pulled out of the country, but they don't say how movie theaters are faring.

The article discuses other countries competing with Hollywood or coping with being cut off from American movies.

Iran is becoming prominent in international film festivals, China and South Korea are competing with Hollywood and doing pretty well. I don't know about China, but in Korea's case, the average movie-goer is ten years older than the average American ticket buyer, so their culture hasn't been ravaged by the sort of superhero crap that's taken over here. France is the one of the few countries where Hollywood controls less than 50% of the market.

From the article:

2022 was the first year when Russian-made movies accounted for over half of all box office receipts with a total share of 52.1%. In comparison, at this time last year 73.36% of the content shown here was foreign. January 2023 became the best month ever for Russian cinema and box office earnings topped 8,663 billion rubles ($118 million). This was a 61.8% increase from 2022 and improved on the 2020 record by 12.3%.

This success was largely due to the release of the family blockbuster “Cheburashka”, which set a record at the national box office and collected 6 billion rubles (almost twice as much as “Avatar” in 2009) or $80 million.

Currently, there are several movies in post-production that may not break the record but will likely be successful. For example, “The Challenge” is set to be released in cinemas this April. This is the first feature film to be partially shot in space on the ISS.

The absence of Hollywood is already balanced by the development of domestic drama. By the end of 2022, the number of Russian films and TV series that went into production increased by 16%.

This growth has been prompted by the withdrawal of Hollywood blockbusters, which accounted for a major share of box office receipts. If Hollywood does decide to return, it will probably face much fiercer competition than before.

They note that the EU is more dependent on the Russian market and that France's Pathe has announced they'll return to Russia.

The article goes into the reason for Hollywoods global dominance:

Hollywood is a unique industry. Its modern movies are specifically tailored to international audiences. Their goal is to encompass the widest possible number of viewers.

There are a variety of reasons and viewpoints on why Hollywood dominates the global film market. Among other factors, this is linked to a greater urban population in the US, as opposed to other countries. In the US, the domestic market proved to be so large that movies made returns at home and were then exported abroad to compete with local film industries. Such a strategy eliminates risks, since, even in case of failure, the production can't suffer a significant financial loss. Moreover, the growth of the US economy in the post-WWII era contributed to the strengthening of the film industry, especially against the background of the economic damage inflicted on Europe.

However, even Hollywood hasn’t been able to take over all markets. It is much less popular in countries with protectionist laws in place, such as France. The share of American movies is also smaller in regions with significant cultural differences like India, China, and Africa.

Read the whole thing here:

Hollywood abandoned Russia one year ago, but the country's box office has just set an all time record: How did this happen? — RT World News

Woody Allen's Coup de Chance done already

Have I lost track of time? Seems like only yesterday they announced this, Woody Allen's latest and possibly last film, shot mostly in Paris in French, what the French call a policer, a crime movie a la Match Point.

Maybe they'll have a dubbed version. The French watch his movies dubbed into French. Why shouldn't we see this dubbed in English?

Why actors shouldn't get giant tattoos

Or maybe they should.

I read somewhere that a large majority of people, when they try out a new pen, will write their names. 

Which I assume is why so many people get their own names tattooed on them. Like they have no idea at all except they want a tattoo. Maybe they want to make sure their bodies can be identified in a timely manner. That would be a more likely scenario than ever needing to conceal your identity. How many seasons would The Fugitive have lasted if his name had been tattooed on him?

In fairness, such a tattoo probably has a deeper meaning and is more practical than any of the other crap people get indelibly etched on their bodies. Like if you lose your identification and need to cash a check. It might save you from being locked up in a case of mistaken identity.

I just saw a picture of a former child actor with a huge tattoo of his name across his chest. If it had been his first name, it might have been less of an impediment to his career. Jackie Chan has played countless characters named Jackie but none named Chan. 

It could be his way of ending an acting career he never chose, or of making sure he doesn't have to take his shirt off in anything. 

It could be a face-saving measure to explain away a failed career.

"I can't act anymore. I have this tattoo."

Butch Patrick on Adam-12

My brother's in town. He's watching Adam-12, the one where Reed and Malloy are working with kids for some reason. A girl tells them that one kid has a gun. A REAL gun.

The kid had dark hair, but I thought for some reason that it might be Jodie Foster's brother, Buddy. He appeared in episodes of both Adam-12 and Dragnet. I googled it and found it was Butch Patrick from The Munsters.

"That's Eddie Munster," I told my brother.

"It is?"

"I think so," I said to make it sound like I hadn't just looked it up.

I didn't recognize Butch Patrick at all.

I should learn more about Harry & Meghan

I don't know what I'm supposed to think about "Prince" Harry and his consort, Meghan. I quoted an article from a supposedly left-wing website that sided with Charles and William. If the article had a working class angle, I don't know what it was.

I was at my sister's house and briefly discussed Netflix. I said I had cancelled it because every time I looked at it, there was absolutely nothing I wanted to see and if there was, I could watch it somewhere else. But I said I briefly wished I had it so I could see that Prince Harry thing on there. I got over it quickly, but, for a couple of minutes, I thought I might like to see it, not out of sympathy for anyone but just to see what people were talking about, if their disdain for one snotty British royal or another was justified. 

My sister and her husband seemed angry. What did I want to watch THAT for? Like I was some kind of idiot.

I don't know what they didn't like about them. I had to explain why people called Prince William "Pugsly"----that he had bad genes. He had seemed like perfectly nice boy but it was just a matter of time before he became just like the rest of his Addams Family-like kin. And I pointed out that Harry enjoyed murdering people in Afghanistan because he said it was like playing a video game.  

I could have watched Harry and Meghan interviewed by Oprah or on 60 Minutes for free and I opted out. I think I should get some credit for that. 

Some normal people discuss E.T.

I listened to some perfectly pleasant, sincere film writers discuss E.T. on an old podcast. They  talked about their admiration for Steven Spielberg and debated whether he was the greatest filmmaker ever. They weren't sure how Elliot being a child of divorce played a role in his relationship with the space monkey. At least one of them thought it was a "perfect" movie, but I don't know how they figured that. Ironically, they kept saying "f--k". I don't like Spielberg at all and I never use obscene language.

I must have been 21 when E.T. came out. It was a children's movie and didn't interest me, but it was the first movie where I recognized a character as a Christ figure. It was some years before I started seeing Oedipal conflicts everywhere.

So am I the bad guy for not liking this thing? One of the guys now watches it with his children and has to hurry away to cry in the bathroom at the end. I don't remember having much reaction to the ending.

Ed Reardon's Week (BBCRadio4)

Ed Reardon's Week is a BBC radio sit-com about a failed writer. He sees himself as a serious author but published only one novel in the 1970's, wrote a single script for a 1980's TV series and has been reduced to hack work and abject poverty ever since. 

Is there a message? That a hack writer is still a far better writer than the rest of us? To not let early success make you to cling to a career you should really give up on? I read some Gambler's Anonymous literature for some reason. Compulsive gamblers generally start out winning, but that makes them think that if they keep doing it long enough, they'll start winning again.

I downloaded what episodes I could and have been binge-listening. 

It still amazes me that the British still have radio shows but I guess it shouldn't be so surprising.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Reardon%27s_Week