Category Archives: Popular culture

Happy Birthday, Mel! Now, the rest of you — let’s have this out, right now!

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I really enjoyed the tribute The New York Times posted today, on Mel Brooks’ 100th birthday.

And it was certainly well-deserved. Mel is a genius, and maybe the funniest guy to live anytime in the past, well, century.

I liked that they included this Brooks quote, which I read a bunch of years ago, but enjoyed reading again:

My God, I’d love to smash into the casket of Dostoyevsky, grab that bony hand and scream at the remains, “Well done, you goddam genius.”

It makes me want to do the same with regard to Mel. Trouble is, I can’t dig him up, because he’s still alive. Is he actually shooting for 2,000?

But while we’re on the subject, I want to settle something. The NYT’s piece today makes the same mistake people have been making since 1974. When it says….

In 1974, two of his most beloved hits, “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein,” began their climb to the top of the box office.

It shamefully neglects to add: “Of course, ‘Young Frankenstein’ is at least 10 times better than ‘Blazing Saddles.”

They’re always leaving that out. Worse, a lot of people go so far as to say that “Blazing Saddles” was his best, funniest movie — which of course is raving nonsense. It’s embarrassing.

Sure, it was funny, in a “let’s see how tastelessly outrageous we can be” kind of way. I mean, stuff like that can be funny — or rather, could be funny, back in the days when you could get away with it.

And let me defend it from the low opinion of very young people who congratulate themselves that they are part of a society that has grown beyond laughing at scenes such as this:

These enlightened young folks don’t know that in 1974, we lived in a society that had much earlier ceased to laugh at such things, like a decade or two earlier. And Brooks was rebelling against that self-restraint. He was removing certain fetters of decency from comedy — as he had done with “Springtime for Hitler” and as SNL, building on Brooks, would do one year later with this skit.

Now that I’ve stuck up for that freedom of expression, and admitted that it made me laugh, I have to be honest and add that… it’s not really for me. I laugh, but then I’m embarrassed for laughing. Especially if my wife is in the room.

But “Young Frankenstein” gives me guilt-free laughter. And the humor is on a higher plane. Sure, there are laugh lines like this one:

But that’s not only funny, it’s positively genteel compared to half the humor in “Blazing Saddles.” Also, it shows that Mel Brooks is still running the show. And it’s good to be the king. And the king is in on the joke that sex makes us, up to a point, very comical creatures.

Speaking of being in charge — you may say I’m taking away from Mel by preferring YF, because it wasn’t his idea. It came from Gene Wilder, who pitched it to him when they were making BS. But beyond that, it was a collaboration that has Mel Brooks’ fingerprints on every monochromatic frame. If Wilder had tried to make it on his own, or with a different collaborator, it would have flopped.

In the end, it just has a magical, special feel to it — a feel that has a lot to do with the faithful reproduction of presenting the brilliant humor within the context of an early-30s horror flick. It has class, at least in an aesthetic sense, all the way through it, a kind of class that BS not only lacks, but fiercely rejects. And that raises it to a level well above the junior-high humor of the predecessor. Even though a lot of it is the same humor, from the same guy.

Beyond that, it’s just funnier.

Many of you will disagree. This is a fact of life. There are still people going around insisting that “Godfather II” was better than the original. Which is nuts, but — despite our current president’s most determined efforts — it’s still a free country. I defend your right to say such things, despite the fact that you are so clearly and embarrassingly wrong…

You thought Madeline Kahn was funny in ‘Blazing Saddles?’ Fine. But for FUNNY, see her in ‘Young Frankenstein.”

 

 

How famous are these celebrities to you?

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Robin Thede, Patton Oswalt, and Margaret Cho on Celebrity Jeopardy.

Here’s another one for my “Aging” catergory — although I suspect that’s not the whole story.

For quite some time — for decades, really — I’ve had this happen a lot: I’ll see someone on a magazine cover, or on a TV screen. This person is being presented in a context that indicates that he or she is a celebrity, and I as the beholder am expected to know who that is. There are hints. For instance, the magazine will be one that pretty much only features “celebrities” on its covers. Or the person will be identified by first-name only, as though I were a fantasist who imagines that I am on such intimate terms with that person. Or, the writer of that text believes that I would be insulted by anyone assuming that I would need to see a surname to know who it is.

As for television… I’ll give you an example from this evening. I was over visiting my mother, and she was watching “Celebrity Jeopardy.” Only I didn’t know who the people were. There was a man flanked by two women. The man looked familiar, but I couldn’t name him or recall where I had seen him. I had no clue with the women.

Fortunately, there’s the Web. I looked, and saw they were Robin Thede, Patton Oswalt, and Margaret Cho. Patton was the guy who seemed familiar, and now that I saw it, so was his name. And I had heard or read Margaret Cho’s name quite frequently in recent years, in connection with comedy, but I could not have identified her by her image. This was worsened by the fact that when I Google her image, she looks different. But I wouldn’t have recognized her when she looked like that, either.

I thought “Celebrity Jeopardy” had more recognizable names and faces. Admittedly, I’m basing that on those SNL spoofs, which at least in the past have been hilarious. My favorite might have been the one with “Sean Connery,” “Burt Reynolds” and “French Stewart.”

And I actually knew whom they were impersonating.

Now I’m going to really embarrass myself. When I was quite young, I watched pretty much everything on the three channels available, and that includes the game shows. And I knew who all those people were — even on “Hollywood Squares.” Do you know who all these people were?

Well, I did. Even though that’s a very blurry picture. (I probably wouldn’t have complained about that in 1968, though. I was also watching it in black and white.)

I’m pretty sure that if I were younger, I would have known who those affable people were on Jeopardy tonight. After all, I knew the guy’s face and one woman’s name! I must apologize to Ms. Thede, though — I had no idea.

But I knew all those people on the Squares, and looking back, some of them were pretty marginal celebs. But I knew them, and could tell you where I’d seen them. For instance, Wally Cox had once played a birdwatcher on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” I think I’d also seen him do standup. So there.

There were some people who were famous to me simply because they were on game shows a lot. I’d known Kitty Carlisle and Orson Bean for a couple of decades before I learned they were actors.

So some of it’s age. But here’s something I think is a significant contributing factor. I’ve mentioned this before in a different context:

It’s the profusion of available media in the post-cable, streaming world that makes it impossible to see and know everyone being beamed at us. So many people who are intensely famous within genres and subgenres of public entertainment, but not as known to the full population.

Back in the day, we ALL knew who all the “famous” people were.

I wasn’t the only person watching those three stations all the time in the ’60s. Everybody was, to some extent. Even old people saw The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Peter and Gordon, Robert Goulet, the inescapable Topo Gigio, and the guys who spun plates atop sticks. And with the possible exception of the guys with the plates, people of all ages could probably name them. That’s because they HAD to come to their fans and everyone else through the Ed Sullivan Show, or the Smothers Brothers, or Dean Martins’ show, or Andy Williams’, or Merv Griffin’s daytime talk show.

The supply was limited. That’s my excuse for sort-of knowing who “Charlie Weaver” was.

 

 

Remember that noise on ‘Lost?’

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After the infinitessimal bit of “rain” we got this morning, I went out to look at the garden — my fig trees, and the okra I recently planted.

And it was nice out there, with the world slightly moist, and everything green except the grass.

But it was hard to fully enjoy for the noise. I shot some footage (above) of the “forest” behind our deck, which has a sort of subtropical lushness, to capture the difference between that and the obscene, crashing mechanical noises filling the area.

It immediately reminded me of the bizarre noises the people on “Lost” kept hearing in the jungle, before they ever knew about the “smoke monster.”

That’s not what this was, though. About two houses away from us, workmen with large, clanking vehicles — including a huge, self-propelled chipper-shredder — were chewing up some trees that were recently felled in a neighbor’s yard.

Sounded like more than that, though…

Uh… what’s that noise in the jungle?

Impromptu Top Five List of Favorite Painters

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This is not a thoughtful list. I’m just throwing it together because something made me think about John Singer Sargent, and that made me want to do a Top Five list, so I’m assembling this hastily because I’ve got a lot to do today.

It’s also not an honest list, because an honest list of favorites would consist entirely of people in my family, but my wife would give me trouble if I showed any of her watercolors, so consider this a Top Five List of Painters to Whom I Am Not Related by Blood or Marriage.

Maybe I’ll do a more thoughtful one later.

Here goes:

  1. John Singer Sargent. Y’all are probably tired of him because I know I’ve mentioned him before, such as when we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Now I’ve gotta to BACK to Boston because I just learned about his Triumph of Religion set of murals that he spent the last 29 years of his life trying to finish. I love his range, as well as his mastery in achieving he’s trying to do. He’s called an impressionist, but he’s good at whatever style you choose. Check out his use of light in this, or the hypnotic eyes in this. And dig the shadows in my very favorite, El Jaléo, which I encountered at Isabella’s museum.
  2. Caravaggio. I learned about Caravaggio from a print that hangs in a hallway of my church, The Calling of St. Matthew. That’s it at the top of this post.
  3. Vermeer. Everybody talks about the Girl with the Pearl Earring, but my fave is Het melkmeisje, which I saw at the Rijsmuseum in Amsterdam. It’s not very big, but it is very impressive. I saw a lot of Rembrandt there, too — some greats including The Night Watch and those dudes from the Dutch Masters cigar box, but that would be so cliche to choose him, right?
  4. Anders Zorn. OK this is almost the same as picking Sargent, because I mistake his work for Sargent’s sometimes, but I like his work on its own. Especially his portait of the aforementioned Isabella (which is better than Sargent’s portrait of her), and The Omnibus. Although, as I’ve said before, I like George William Joy’s version of the omnibus them better (more communitarian, or something — more people, anyway). Y’all know how I love public transportation. And though I definitely don’t love tobacco, I like this one as well.
  5. Boticelli. Nope, not the Venus one. My fave is Primavera, especially this detail.

That’s it. Thoughts? I know a lot of this is repetitive, but I don’t remember doing a Top Five on painters, and am curious to see what y’all will tell me I left out.

Don’t mention Michelangelo, though. I’ve got a bone to pick with him, which I’ll explain in a subsequent post…

On the brilliance of Christopher Guest’s voices

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Thinking back to my “Top Five Best Actors” list from last month…

One thing that was wrong with the list — not as wrong as leaving out Gene Hackman, but wrong — is that it fails to acknowledge comic actors.

I thought about that the other night while rewatching “Best in Show,” that descendant of the ultimate mockumentary, “This is Spinal Tap.” This is the one that did for dog shows what, say, “A Mighty Wind” did for folk music. Or “Waiting for Guffman” did for… well, you get the idea.

It struck me again that Christopher Guest, who is in all of those films (and I think directed all of them but Spinal Tap), is a wonder. Let’s just focus on one of the essential skills that distinguish a great actor — accents. (Or perhaps I should say “voices.”)

Among all those mockumentary roles, it’s easiest to remember Guest as Nigel Tufnel in “Spinal Tap.” Listen:

It’s a good accent, although that doesn’t really set him apart. Michael McKean and Harry Shearer are just as good as his bandmates. Americans can take pride in their portrayal of the Three Stooges of rock. We see Brits put on convincing American accents all the time (Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, or about half the “American soldiers” in Easy Company in “Band of Brothers,” or Hugh Laurie as Dr. House, and so forth). It’s nice to see we have some talent over here as well.

(Of course, one might note that Guest had an unfair advantage — his Dad was a British diplomat, and he spent part of his childhood in his father’s country. In fact, he ascended to the House of Lords when his father died. But Nigel Tufnel displayed an accent that was very different from the RP we generally associate with lords.)

But what really got me was his accent — and general characterization — of the man from a small town in North Carolina who brings his bloodhound to the dog show. It’s not just the accent, as perfect as that was (definitely not a cheesy Hollywood imitation of a generic Southern manner of speaking). It was the quality of his voice behind the accent, his facial expressions and other facets that made me like he was a true, unique individual I had met sometime in the past — not a “type.” Listen:

Hear it? There’s finesse in that voice, as well as in the accent, that few actors are able to display.

And it’s much the kind of finesse that Robert Duvall brought to his roles.

I just thought I’d acknowledge that…

Top Five Actresses ever in film history

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Listen for the family whistle… and don’t take drugs!

OK, I hurried up a little too much on the Top Five Actors post — so much that I left off Gene Hackman! — but I confess I’m going to hurry even more on this one, because it’s already been a couple of days…

I limited the men’s list to the last 60 years because I was doing it in the context of thinking about Duvall. I’m going all-time on this one. Well, all-out regarding the history of film (and TV), which is not all that much longer. But I have no means of making an informed judgment of the acting skills of, say, Lillie Langtry. (Although she appeared on film once, in 1913, I never saw “His Neighbor’s Wife.” And even if I saw it, I couldn’t hear her voice — which is kind of key in assessing acting skill.)

Finally, I’m doing my best to make sure this is about acting ability, and not about how attractive these women were or are. Which is not easy to do. Hollywood undermines such a merit-based goal at every step, and has done so since the beginning. It does the same to men — think Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Robert Redford, Brad Pitt. But that’s nothing compared to how the principle (or lack of principle) is applied in the case of women.

Why does this happen? Butts in the seats. The casting directors look for people the slobs out here will pay to look at. American casting directors take it to ridiculous levels. You want to see at least some normal-looking people? Check out British film and TV.

Anyway, I promise you won’t find Marilyn Monroe on the list. But whatever I do, a lot of these women will be more attractive than average.

Back to the subject of actual acting…

Top Five

  1. Frances McDormand — Every time I see her, I think, “Greatest actress,” or at least “Greatest American actress.” My favorite role? The mom in “Almost Famous.” See photo above. But let’s not forget “Fargo.”
  2. Marisa Tomei — Great in everything. Who doesn’t love her in “My Cousin Vinny?” Of course, I think my fave might be her leading role in “The Perez Family.”
  3. Rosalind Russell — I’m sort of breaking my rule here of not basing my judgment on a single movie. I’m putting her here purely for her performance in my favorite comedy, “His Girl Friday.” Anyone who’s as good as good as she was in that is simply that good.
  4. Emma Thompson — Good in everything, of course, but I think my favorite three are the wife who is wronged by that scrub Alan Rickman in “Love Actually;” the lead in “Sense and Sensibility,” as my own 15th-great grandmother in “Henry V.” (Yeah, I’m still that crazy about genealogy.)
  5. Olivia Coleman — I’ve really come to appreciate her over the past decade or so. I could pick almost any of her roles as an example, but I’ll go with an unusual bit of casting. She was cast as the case officer of the title character in Le Carre’s “The Night Manager.” The character in the book was a man. But while there were some bad changes from the book in that show, this one improved the story. Oh, and remember — recently, she was the Queen! (I thought about the other Olivia — de Havilland — but I like this one better.)
  6. Jean Arthur — I’m just always so glad to see her pop up in any of those flicks from the 30s and 40s. If you wonder why, go watch “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

OK, I’m running out of time (gotta go to school today), so I’m going to have to really hurry through the…

Honorable Mentions

  1. Katharine Hepburn — Can you believe I left her out of the Top Five? Hey, I’m a rebel. But I place her here with all respect. Certainly go watch “The African Queen” again. But then be sure to check out “Bringing Up Baby.” Very silly, and nowhere near as good as Rosalind Russell’s masterpiece, but I like an occasional screwball comedy.
  2. Jennifer Ehle — Another based on a single role (she was born to star in “Pride and Prejudice“), although I enjoy her in every role — I just don’t see her enough. And before you gripe about too many Brit actresses, remember that this one was actually born in North Carolina.
  3. Emma Stone — In recent years, she’s become an A-lister who can do anything. But I especially like her first big film role, in “Superbad.” Who can blame Jonah Hill for obsessing about her? (And no, that’s not just a beauty thing; it was the kind of kid she came across as…)
  4. Sigourney Weaver — Sure, I liked her in “Alien” and “Alien 2, (speaking of which, guess who I saw at the comic-con at the Fairgrounds last month — Michael Biehn!)” but her all-time best was “The Year of Living Dangerously.” That was also Mel Gibson’s best, and Linda Hunt’s.
  5. Ingrid Bergman — I could say “It’s not because she was beautiful!,” but who would believe me? Seriously, “Casablana” is No. 3 on my all-time films list, and she was perfect in it. So there.

So there you go. I did that too fast, and I’m sure I left out somebody as great as Gene Hackman on the other list, but I’m sure y’all will let me know. (And no, I don’t mean Meryl Streep. She’s good but didn’t make my list. Nor did Cate Blanchett, but I thought about it.)

A single role earned Jennifer Ehle an Honorable Mention.

Top Five Best Actors of the Past 60 years

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Consider this a sidebar to the Robert Duvall obit. My headline said he was “The best actor of his generation,” and wishing to be more generous, I added “or since.” We can argue later whether that was grammatical.

But was he? And who are the others in the Top Five — to employ the Nick Hornby standard? Here’s the list. (And remember ladies, you have your own category. I’ll start thinking about a Top Five Actresses list.):

Top Five

  1. Robert Duvall — For reasons already stated. Although now that I make this list, I’m worrying that maybe he should be second to the next fellow in this lineup. But Duvall is the one we’re mourning, and he deserves it, so here he stays.
  2. Daniel Day-Lewis — I no longer need a time machine to go back and meet, or at least see and hear in person, our greatest president. I’ve seen him in the Spielberg movie, and I’m convinced that’s what Abe looked and sounded like. (This scene alone does that for me.) He was great in another movie in which he outdid our countrymen in portraying an archetypical American character — Natty Bumppo (although they didn’t call him that in the movie). Favorite line: When a British officer asks “How is it you are heading west?” at a time when the King needs him to stay and help fight the French, Nathaniel (as they called him in the film) replies, “Well, we kind of face to the north, and real sudden-like, turn left.”
  3. Denzel Washington — You might not think of him because he fits better into the leading-man movie star category that your great actors seldom enter. But he is a leading man with extraordinary depth. The first time I remember seeing him was in “Glory,” and I just thought, where did they get this guy? He would crack that odd, off-kilter smile that’s hard to read, and you’d realize there’s more to this character than just a bitter man with an attitude. Add to that his deeply flawed hero in “Flight.” Who else could have played that drugged-out pilot? No one, including the others on this list. Perfect fit, without being at all typecast.
  4. Jack Nicholson — How could I put this wiseass on the list? Because he’s a wiseass with depth and range. Consider “As Good As It Gets,” “Carnal Knowledge,” “The Departed.” And then think how his colonel in “A Few Good Men” stands up next to Duvall’s in “Apocalyse Now.” But we haven’t gotten to his best, which you seldom hear about any more. Behold Signalman 1st Class Billy L. “Badass” Buddusky in “The Last Detail.” My dad the sailor was amazed. He felt he knew that guy and served with him on numerous ships.
  5. Robert De Niro — It’s kind of a cliche to put him on such a list and crown him No. 1. Well, he has been great, especially in the first part of his career, in “Bang the Drum Slowly,” “Mean Streets,” “The Godfather Part 2” (people are wrong to say the sequel was better than the first one, but I forgive them because his brilliance blinded them) and “Raging Bull.” But after that, he started moving toward a formula that was still fun to watch, but he wasn’t growing as an actor. Eventually, we get “Analyze This,” which I loved, but he was doing the formula, with lots of this expression. He deserves to be on the list, but not first.

Honorable Mention

I add this category not because I couldn’t stop myself at five. That would be undisciplined and lazy. I think there’s a pretty clear line between those above and those below. But as the title suggests, I thought them worth mentioning.

  1. Edward Norton — He was a Top Five contender with “Primal Fear,”  “American History X” and “Fight Club.” But then what happened? Sure, I enjoyed seeing him in “A Complete Unknown,” but come on — what had he been doing since “Fight Club?”
  2. Morgan Freeman — Great in everything, but as with Norton (and de Niro), the best stuff was awhile back. He was great in “Glory,” but not as great as Denzel Washington. Great also in “Driving Miss Daisy.” I was impressed by him in “Unforgiven.” I loved him as the Lord in “Bruce Almighty,” but it wasn’t something that puts you in the Top Five.
  3. Colin Firth — Always good, and always entertaining — and he has more range than you might think. I recently enjoyed him in an early film that I had never heard of and ran across by accident — “A Month in the Country” from 1987. He was best in the BBC production of “Pride and Prejudice,” of course. No actor should even try to play Darcy after he did. Next best thing after that? “The King’s Speech,” which also featured a fine performance by the wonderful Geoffrey Rush.
  4. Michael Shannon — This is a guy who has Top Five chops, and I just need to keep watching him, in things like “Elvis and Nixon,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and the recent remake of “The Little Drummer Girl.” His agent needs to make sure he doesn’t do any more turkeys like “Pearl Harbor.”
  5. Wes Studi — I would never have thought of this guy, and maybe you don’t even know who he is. But he’s been good whenever I’ve seen him, and he was bloodcurdling amazing in a film mentioned above: “The Last of the Mohicans.” He was Magua, the truly scary guy (not that some of those palefaces didn’t have it coming). And he made him real.

OK, after thinking how scary Studi was as Magua, I started remembering how terrifying Javier Bardem was in “No Country for Old Men.” And then I remembered “Biutiful,” and that turn he did as Desi Arnaz. But I made myself stop. That’s enough for now.

You ever see his time-travel flick, “Déjà Vu?” You should.

The best actor of his generation, or since

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Tom Hagen dealing oh-so-patiently with the blowhard Jack Woltz in “The Godfather.”

Sadly, this is a week for obituaries. In fact, we received word of the passing of both Jesse Jackson and Robert Duvall in the same news cycle. It’s just taken me a few days to get to both of them.

The loss of Duvall is hard to take because he projects (still, in his films) a depth of humanity that is too often missing, or hidden, today. Not just in film and other arts, but in other aspects of modern life — especially politics. Fortunately, we still have those films. Tragically, he won’t be making more of them.

The best way I can sum him up is that as soon as I learned that would play a part in a “coming attraction,” I would think this is going to be good, and start looking forward to it. (Of course, directors and fellow performers had their own good or bad effects on the production, but having Duvall on board gave the picture a running start.)

My favorite Duvall roles are not always the most popular ones. He was celebrated for his role in “Apocalypse Now,” and loads of fans who thought they were unique could come up to him and say that they loved the smell of napalm in the morning. But while his performance in that was bright and gripping and entertaining — he occupied the screen fully in every frame in which he appeared, eclipsing the other actors — that’s not my favorite. It’s too cartoonish, and I found it distracting in a film that, after all, was a modernized retelling of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. At that stage of his career, Marlon Brando wasn’t nearly the actor Duvall was. But his character was far more meaningful to the story overall, and more in keeping with the tone.

What was his most impressive performance? I might think of something else the minute after I post this, but off the top of my head, it would be Tom Hagen in “The Godfather.” He creates a supremely self-controlled man. If you read the book, you know why Hagen was this way. He had learned it from his foster father Vito Corleone. Always keep your cool. Never issue a threat. Never let your enemy see what you’re feeling or thinking. Project yourself as the very model of reasonableness.

That screenshot at the top of this post is from his best scene — when he goes to Hollywood to ask a cartoonish blowhard of a producer to give a movie role to the Don’s godson Johnny Fontane. See that calm, deferential look on his face. That’s all Jack Woltz — the very model of weak man who thinks he’s something special — would ever see of him, until he woke up with a horse’s head in his bed.

It’s hard to project that quality, even when you’re paid to and you’re not personally feeling what the character would feel. Sure, he was a bad guy, but at least a bad guy with admirable qualities.

I also liked his fading country music star in “Tender Mercies,” a beautiful film about redemption. My favorite scene is this one: A woman comes up to him on the street and asks, “Were you really Mac Sledge?” He sort of half-laughs (as I remember; I haven’t seen it in a while), and admits, “Yes ma’am, I guess I was.”

I was never in my life nearly as famous as his character was supposed to be, but I still experience that sort of thing when people recognize me or my name from my newspaper days. I’m no star, but it happens. It last happened just over a week ago. I still haven’t fully figured out how to handle it, beyond saying thanks, but I like the way he did it. (At least the lady didn’t say, “I love the smell of napalm…”)

Duvall traveled around East Texas with a friend preparing for that role. Finally, the friend asked what they were doing and he explained, “We’re looking for accents.”

Again, though I wasn’t a professional actor, I had enough in common with Duvall to identify. Reports The New York Times:

Across a film career that took flight in the early 1960s, he stood out for an intense studiousness that shaped his every role. Even as a boy, in a Navy family that moved around the country, he had an ear for people’s speech patterns and an eye for their mannerisms. “I hang around a guy’s memories,” he once said. Insights that he gleaned were routinely tucked away in his head for potential future use…

I did the same, growing up. I was never fully a part of the communities in which I lived, but I grew up observing them closely and with interest. I suspect that’s a reason why so many military brats become journalists. As for accents — they are a lifelong source of fascination (and imitation, although I’m not as good at them as when I was young). I’ve been meaning to write one of my too-long-to-get-around-to posts on that subject for years. Maybe I’ll get to it soon.

I look at Duvall on the screen, and I see another guy like that.

I’ll close with a mention in that NYT article of his first film role, which foreshadowed the unique power he would bring to the screen:

That Mr. Duvall could become practically whomever he chose was foreshadowed in his first film, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a 1962 classic based on Harper Lee’s novel about racial prejudice in a Southern town. He played Boo Radley, the reclusive, hollow-eyed neighbor who fascinates and ultimately rescues the two small children of the defense lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck).

As Mr. Duvall’s career flourished in the 1970s and ’80s, it surprised many of his fans, on looking back, to discover him in that film. One person apparently not surprised was Harper Lee. When Mr. Duvall landed the part, she sent him a congratulatory telegram. “Hey, Boo,” she wrote. It was, he said later, his only contact with her.

I love that story. That was a very cool thing for “Scout” to have done. And it’s a congratulatory telegram I would certainly frame and put on the wall…

“Boo” Radley at the moment Scout first sees him…

A little bit of something good

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Just thought I’d share this with you because I haven’t posted lately. Occasionally I write something, but then I’m not sure I like it, so it just sits there in draft mode — sometimes for days; sometimes much longer. This happened just yesterday.

And today’s so busy, and tomorrow likely to be more so.

So I just thought I’d share this, which I ran across last night while I was looking for a completely different clip.

And it drew a smile. A brief one. It’s not the whole song — it runs just slightly over a minute. But hey, you’re having a busy Monday, too, right? You don’t need the whole thing. I just thought you’d like seeing Johnny, looking all young and healthy and saying generous things about Bob.

So enjoy this before you move on to the next thing you do. Just give Johnny a nod and continue with you necessaries. You don’t have to thank me or anything. Don’t think twice; it’s alright…

Musicians we lost in 2025

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I almost skipped over my email about “The Musicians We Lost in 2025,” figuring it would be about people I’d never heard of. But no. It turns out that at my age, the people I remember are the ones dying. Which makes a sober sort of sense, I suppose.

The NYT’s Amplifier feature does a good job with these kinds of things. Here’s the whole article, with playlist. I’ll just share below some of those that meant most to me…

  • Sly Stone. The Amplifier chose “Dance to the Music,” which I suppose is fine. I chose to share “Everyday People.” That’s just me. It’s odd the things you remember about people. What I remember is something a psychology professor said to our class about him at Memphis State. This prof was an Indian woman, who seemed mature and sensible enough. But she was talking about drugs — the kinds kids like us tended to stray toward — and telling us that being a drug addict wasn’t a problem, as long as you had enough money to feed the habit. Look at Sly Stone, she said — he’s high-functioning. She also told us at about that time that cocaine wasn’t addictive. (And what was Sly addicted to? Crack. Ahem.) So enjoy yourselves, kids, as long as you can pay the bills! I had some good instructors in college, but some were wanting in perspicacity.
  • Roberta Flack. I’ll go with the one they picked: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” My random memory, which you will share if you’re the right age, is about hearing it for the first time in the Clint Eastwood change-of-pace film, “Play Misty for Me.” It made more of an impression than the song mentioned in the title. Unfortunately, that hauntingly beautiful song is permanently tied in my mind to the image of a sleeping man suddenly opening his eyes to see above him a murderous madwoman with a butcher knife. But it’s still beautiful.
  • Sam Moore and Steve Cropper. Wow, I didn’t know we’d lost not only the tenor half of Sam & Dave, but the legendary rhythm guitarist who played on their greatest hit. The Amplifier notes that “Moore famously immortalizes Cropper’s playing on “Soul Man” with the exclamation, ‘Play it, Steve!’
  • Mark Volman. Volman and the other Turtles were embarrassed by their first and biggest hit, “Happy Together.” They didn’t think it was cool enough. They were wrong. It’s one of the finest pop songs of the 1960s.
  • Marianne Faithfull. This is not possible, because Marianne is 17 years old and always will be. And you can’t see her picture without your heart melting, just a bit. I don’t know whether Mick Jagger was the melting sort, but he was certainly open to her appeal at one point. Of course he was. The NYT chose “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” but I’ll go with “As Tears Go By.”
  • Brian Wilson. They saved the biggest for last, and so will I. And while I was afraid they’d miss on the song, they didn’t. Good for them. They chose “God Only Knows.” If you doubt the choice, I refer you to this scene from “Love and Mercy,” in which Paul Dano, as the young Wilson, shares the song for the first time with his heartless creep of a father. It’s painful to watch, but the beauty of the song comes through. The Amplifier notes that “that Paul McCartney once called the greatest ever written.” Paul was on the right track.

May they all rest in peace. They gave us what they could while there were here.

But these go to 8

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This feels a little like déjà vu, since I just did a post about another NYT feature I’ve praised before, but here goes anyway, because I can’t resist a good Top Five list, even when it inappropriately goes to 8…

I’ve expressed appreciation for “The Amplifier” before, and I’m impressed again by their “8 really great songs from fake movie bands” list, which hit my In box about an hour ago.

Here’s the list:

  1. The Wonders, “That Thing You Do!”
  2. Stillwater, “Fever Dog”
  3. The Soggy Bottom Boys, “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow”
  4. The Folksmen, “Old Joe’s Place”
  5. Josie and the Pussycats, “3 Small Words”
  6. Sex Bob-Omb, “We Are Sex Bob-Omb”
  7. The Lonely Island featuring Michael Bolton and Mr. Fish, “Incredible Thoughts”
  8. Spinal Tap, “Stonehenge”

Excellent, excellent list. I would definitely top my own Top Five list of “songs from fake movie bands” with “That Thing You Do.” (I’m referring, of course, to the peppy version that followed Guy Patterson’s beat — the one that turned the Oneders into “teen sensations” — not the insipid original submitted by that jerk Jimmy, who also thought up “Oneders.”)

I’ve never heard another fake movie band song that comes close to it. I would also include “Man of Constant Sorrow” (although I’m not convinced it fits the criteria, since it was a traditional folk song) and “Stonehenge,” which I would probably place at No. 2, after the Wonders. I don’t know at the moment what the other two would be without thinking about it awhile, and I didn’t want that process to hold up sharing this with y’all.

Enjoy. And react, if you are so moved…

Separated at birth? No, way BEFORE birth…

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As a Superman fan from the Silver Age, I’ve always been kind of frustrated with the casting of some of the key characters in the movies. Especially Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen.

The one on the TV show wasn’t TOO bad, but he could have been better. At least he had the costume right, and the attitude as well.

But the makers of the first movie got it all wrong. He acted the part OK, but he didn’t look right, and worse, FAR worse, they took the world’s most famous cub reporter and turned him into a photographer. Inexcusable. Nothing against photogs, mind you, but that not what Jimmy Olsen WAS!

From then on, things got no better. I can’t even remember the subsequent ones I’ve seen. I guess I’ve blocked them out.

But the long nightmare is over, if Hollywood would reach out NOW to New Zealand. In fact, now might be too late, since I’m seeing this guy on a show filmed in 2016. But check him out, anyway.

I’m talking about Nic Sampson, who played D.C. Sam Breen on the cop show “The Brokenwood Mysteries,” currently available on the PBS app. If he hasn’t aged too much since the third season I’m now watching, he’s perfect. Take a look:

So we’re all set, once we ditch the tie and suit, and put him in a bow-tie and sweater vest. And he can play the part. He’s the junior member of the detective (which the Kiwis pronounce “diTEECtive”) team, and his character has a definite cub-reporter feel about him. The other two main characters are sort of Clark (or a cross between Clark and Perry White) and Lois. (But alas, they don’t really look much like them.)

You doubt me? Then I refer you to the one, true version of Jimmy, that is, the Silver Age version:

Admittedly, according to the text on the cover, that’s not actually Jimmy himself, but his evil double. The real Jimmy is apparently trapped in a plastic box or something. I dunno, but a double’s a double, and Nic Sampson is definitely one of those. (Oops! I just read the cover again, and apparently the double is the one in the box, and the apparent bad guy is the REAL Jimmy. Oh, well, whatever. You get my point.)

It’s like the artist used him as a model for this cover. But that’s impossible, because this cover was published in 1965, and Nic Sampson wasn’t born yet until 1986!

Which is impressive. Maybe his mom read a lot of D.C. comics.

So that’s done and dusted. Anything else I can help you with, Hollywood?

No, it’s not the funniest. It’s No. 7

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Just a very quick note to correct something I ran across on YouTube while looking for something else.

It claimed that Woody Allen’s “Love and Death” is “the funniest film of all time,” which it is not.

It’s Woody Allen’s funniest film, (“Bananas” is second, followed by “Play it Again, Sam”). It’s also, to stretch a point, the funniest comedy ever to lampoon uberserious Russian novels of the 19th century. But that’s all that can be said, except that in the larger category of best comic films of all time, it comes in at a respectable No. 7.

I won’t elaborate. I’ll just copy and paste what I wrote three years back (in a post in which I regretted having failed to put Howard Hawkes’ masterpiece “His Girl Friday” on my overall movie Top Five, although it made my Top Ten), and then we’ll move on:

  1. His Girl Friday — Yay, it’s at the top of the list! And deserves it.
  2. Young Frankenstein — Some would choose “Blazing Saddles.” I would not. Have you seen that one in the last few decades? It doesn’t hold up. This does.
  3. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — I was looking at the AFI list of the supposed top 100 funniest movies in American cinema, and at No. 79 they had “The Freshman,” from 1925. Which I’ve never seen, but I did see “The Freshman” from 1990, and it was awesome. I mean, come on, Brando playing a guy who just happens to look like the Godfather? Still, it was not star Matthew Broderick’s best. Ferris was. And it didn’t even make this stupid list. Which is lame.
  4. This Is Spinal Tap — You can talk mockumentaries all day, but this is the granddaddy of them all, and the best ever. Because it goes to 11.
  5. Office Space — In a category by itself.
  6. My Man Godfrey — Another screwball comedy, but I think there’s room for this one and Friday both. It’s certainly different enough.
  7. Love and Death — Say what you will about Woody Allen (and there’s a good bit of creepy stuff to say), but I’ll paraphrase the fan from “Stardust Memories:” I really liked his early, funny ones. And the best of all was “Love and Death.” That’s what Tolstoy and Dostoevsky really needed — a few laughs.
  8. The Graduate — Yeah, this one is on my Top Five best ever. But it’s the only one of those to make this list. Yet I’m not sure it should be here. Was it really a comedy exactly? It’s the most category-defying of the truly great films.
  9. Groundhog Day — I had to get a Bill Murray in here, and I chose this one.
  10. The Paper — Initially, I had American Graffiti here. Or maybe Trading Places, which so brilliantly combined two Mark Twain stories, and two of his best. But I decided to end up where I started — with a film about newspapering that I could really identify with. Funny thing is, some serious journalists hated this film for some of the same factors that might cause someone to reject “Friday” — they were afraid it made us scribes look bad. But again, it was brutally dead-on caricature. Sure, we were more serious and principled that this. But I really, really identified with the Michael Keaton character, who at least had this going for him: He wasn’t as bad as Walter Burns, not by a long shot. Not as funny either, though…

I remain comfortable with those choices, although I hate that “Minions” didn’t make the list (I’m always torn on the last movie I pick). Maybe I should do a Top Five Animated Movies list…

Top Five Favorite Robert Redford Movies

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Note that this is not “Top Five Best…”

If it were that, the unquestioned winner would be “All the President’s Men.” I just watched it again recently, on Criterion. Every few years, I go back and watch it again, and every time, I’m more amazed at how much great it is. It’s the verisimilitude. Nobody’s trying to be cute, or sexy, or fun. It’s deadly realistic. The interviews conducted with people who really, really don’t want to be talking to these two reporters — the awkwardness of both the sources and the reporters themselves, polished stars that they were — is astounding. Other people like slick. I’m impressed by real.

But on this sad day, I thought I’d go with fun. What were the Redford flicks I enjoyed the most? Here they are:

  1. The Natural — It’s only my third-fave sports flick, but it’s my favorite baseball movie (with “Major League” a close runner-up, I think), and you can’t say fairer than that.
  2. All The President’s Men — OK, so Roy Hobbs only knocked it down a notch, but that’s because my appreciation grows each time I see it. I gave it a very favorable review in my first job at a newspaper. But I like it even better now. It’s just not, you know, baseball.
  3. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid — When it came out, I loved it so much that I couldn’t imagine these actors doing anything to top it (and “The Sting” didn’t even match it, despite the obvious effort). So good. Of course, it was sort of a neo-Western, with that Burt Bacharach music. Something special.
  4. Three Days of the Condor — Generally, I’m not a huge fan of paranoia movies (“The CIA’s out to get me!”) But this one really worked. Part of that was Max von Sydow as the freelance assassin.
  5. The Candidate — This one’s less-known, but it was great. The story of a candidate who didn’t want to win — and how difficult it is to maintain such insouciance in the all-enveloping atmosphere of a campaign. And it had Peter Boyle in it, as the guy who enticed him into running.

Anyway, I think those are my faves. How about you?

Goodbye to the Kid

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Robert Redford at (almost) 40.

This is the way time passes.

I had a shock glancing at the magazines at a store checkout back when I lived in New Orleans (OK, technically across the river in Algiers) when I was in junior high.

I saw a headline that said something like “PAUL NEWMAN TURNS 40!” I couldn’t believe it. This was 1965, and he had played Billy the Kid in 1958! He had been the young up-and-comer in “The Hustler” in 1961! So how could he be an old man now?

But sure enough, he was almost four years older than my Dad, so that’s getting on up there.

While I was still in high school, he portrayed Butch Cassidy alongside a guy young enough to pass as the Sundance Kid. Appropriately, Robert Redford was almost a dozen years younger. He’d been around for a bit, but playing Sundance was his big break, immediately making him a major star.

Which is interesting, looking back. Think of all the characters he played later in his huge career — Gatsby (which came out the year I got married, which is why I wore a three-piece white linen suit that day), Bob Woodward, Bill McKay (“The Candidate“), Jeremiah Johnson, Condor, Major Julian Cook (“A Bridge Too Far“), and Roy Hobbs.

He was always the straight man. So serious, hardly smiling. Kind of grim. I’m-just-hear-to-do-a-job- ma’am. When he reassures a source that he’s a Republican in “All the President’s Men,” Dustin Hoffman is suprised, but nobody else is — he looks the part. And would you ever call Jeremiah Johnson a fun guy?

By contrast the Kid was the coolest guy in the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang. Everybody was afraid of him, even Harvey. If it had been present-day, he’d have been the one in a leather jacket. He’s the one who got Katharine Ross!

Anyway, I’m sorry he’s gone, and shocked that he was 89. But I’ve noticed that a lot of people around me are getting old. Plenty of them are over 40 now.

It’s sobering.

As a senior in high school, I had this poster on my wall.

So much for the legendary hero of McNairy County

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The Wikipedia page for Adamsville, TN, features this pic of local boy Buford Pusser’s house.

It’s been so long since Buford Pusser was a household name that this didn’t make all that much of a splash, near as I could tell (maybe it was bigger on TV, which I don’t see). Fifty years ago, it would have been as big nationally as Alex Murdaugh’s crimes — maybe bigger.

Certainly bigger. Alex Murdaugh was a prominent small-town Southern lawyer who murdered his wife and son, among a host of less-shocking crimes. Pusser was a rural Southern sheriff who impressively wielded a big stick in fighting rampant crime in his county, to the point that the bad guys ambushed him and murdered his wife, and Hollywood made him a hero — several times, if you count the two sequels and the made-for-TV movie. Apparently, a TV series as well.

Pauline Mullins Pusser

And now, the authorities say Buford himself killed his wife. This at least has made The New York Times take notice. One wonders how Hollywood will react to the news.

Pauline Mullins Pusser was killed in 1967, and her husband died seven years later. There will be no killer to prosecute, but authorities are pursuing an indictment in the cause of “giving dignity and closure to Pauline and her family and ensuring that the truth is not buried with time.” A good call, I’d say. Called for in this case, if not in others.

“Walking Tall” was something of a national hit in 1973. The NYT cites Variety in saying that it “was made for about $500,000 and earned more than $40 million worldwide.” Not one of the top-grossing films of the year, but impressive nevertheless, given the tiny investment. It reminds me in that regard of “Billy Jack” a couple of years earlier.

It’s hard for me to recall accurately how big a hit is was nationally, because I was living at the time in small-town West Tennessee, where it was a sensation. Of course, my small town was nothing like McNairy County. Millington was just a few miles north of Memphis, and was the home of NAS Memphis (now known as Naval Support Activity Mid-South). I lived on the base. I was a sophomore at Memphis State, but I knew some of the high school kids on base, who attended the local public school. And they were absolutely nuts about “Walking Tall.” Kind of the way kids my age had been about “Billy Jack” in 1971.

This one girl who lived around the corner from us on the base was certainly impressed. I didn’t really know her and don’t recall her name, but I did fall into conversation with her one day in front of her house. I say “conversation,” but I think it was mostly her talking about how wonderful the movie was. So I asked her if she’d like to see it again. She said yes, and I took her to the Millington drive-in that night.

You can forget any sordid imaginings that may conjur — the college kid taking the high school girl to a drive-in. It just seemed a natural thing to do since she was so enthusiastic about the film, and the drive-in was where it was showing.

I sat on my side of the car and she sat way over on hers, with her eyes glued on the screen, rapt. I had felt a bit awkward thinking she might be nervous about this older (like two years, I guess) guy she hardly knew taking her to the drive-in, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. I was not in her thoughts. She was just digging Joe Don Baker up there and all the awesome things he was doing. I’m trying to remember whether her lips moved along with the dialog as she saw it, because it certainly seems likely given she was so fascinated and had seen it before.

I don’t remember interacting with her in any way after that night. There didn’t seem any ground for the establishment of even a platonic friendship. She was only interested in one thing, and it did not lie within my universe of interests.

No matter. I met my wife a couple of months later. The night we met we had a long talk about Jack Kerouac and On The Road. This was a good start, and things got better from there. Did I tell y’all about our big 50th-anniversary celebration with our children and grandchildren last year?

I wonder, though, whether that girl has heard this latest news. I hope she’s not too shaken by it.

Above, I sort of wondered idly how Hollywood would react. Of course, if there is ever a new movie, it won’t be in the same vein at all. It won’t inspire folks across the nation to idolize the ex-professional wrestler who becomes sheriff in a corrupt corner of the countryside and lets no one stop him while he addresses crime by whupping bad guys with his big stick. Or to idolize anyone else.

It will instead be painfully sad. I don’t think I want to see that flick, either…

Joe Don Baker as Pusser in ‘Walking Tall.’

Here I go, dusting off my curmudgeon role…

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Screenshot

Yesterday, my iPad was dinging, so I glanced at the lock screen, and saw what you see above.

My reaction was trite. It was highly unoriginal. It was what the writers for a B movie would have written for Walter Brennan to say, or Lionel Barrymore, or maybe Ed Asner in his MTM show period (Lou Grant!). I showed it to my wife saying, “Really? That’s the most important thing going on in the world at this moment?” Yeah, it was a lame response, but I was off my game. It threw me to see these publications prioritizing this news so much: The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Washington Post… even The New York Times! I guess those were the ones I saw because, well, I don’t have a People app to pump such notifications to me. But still. I felt like I was in yet another sequel to “Freaky Friday,” in which The Gray Lady switched places with, I dunno, Teen Beat.

After a few seconds mildly brooding over it, I forgot about it.

That was, until I saw today where someone I respect personally had tweeted about the news:

 

… and other people I respect just as much — see Mandy there? — responded in a similar vein. (You can see more of those responses below.)

Now, let me be perfectly clear, my fellow Americans… I do not want anyone to think for a minute that I show you this and say these things in order to criticize these smart people, or hold them up to any kind of ridicule. (Although “Never forget where I was” is what you say about the Kennedy assassination, or Pearl Harbor, if you were around for that. Come on, folks! Now back to what I meant to say…)

It’s rather the reverse. It kinda reminds me that lots of smart, analytical thinkers in this world are better-rounded human beings than I am.

Sometimes I worry about that. Not often, but sometimes. I wondered about it back during my days on the editorial board. All of my associate editors were smart people, and most of them were good at feeling and writing about things that moved so many millions of other humans, but tended to leave me cold. You know, like professional football and 21st-century pop singers (as I’ve previously explained, rock and roll died around 1993, when MTV abandoned its mission of showing music videos 24 hours a day).

For instance, when Princess Diana was killed and the commoners reacted in ways I found peculiar, I was entirely in agreement with Her Majesty the Queen: She kept her distance and did not publicly emote over the death of her former daughter-in-law. “Bloody well right,” I thought. “Her Majesty’s a pretty smart girl. She knows what she’s about.” But my man Tony Blair, exquisitely attuned to the Zeitgeist in his early days as PM, warned her she’d better change her mind or see the end of the monarchy. He was probably right — he usually was. But my gut reaction was with Elizabeth Regina.

But I was the editor of the editorial pages, and I had enough Blair in me to realize we should probably say something — and something far more empathetic than what I was thinking. So… who should write the editorial? It wasn’t going to be me. It had to be one of the people who knew how to “resonate” to the culture of the moment. But someone else on the board volunteered, and really got into the subject, just resonating like crazy. Which I knew I couldn’t do, and didn’t want to do.

Which probably made my colleague who undertood how people felt about the lady and could reflect it back to readers with complete sincerity a better person than I was. I dunno.

When I was younger, I could do that resonating thing. When I was younger, I was sometimes the one guy called upon to do it. At The Jackson Sun back in 1977, the paper’s editorial page editor, having no idea how to react to the death of Elvis (and John Lennon, three years later), came to me — and I was a news guy in those days, not an editorialist. So I knocked out those pieces, and felt honored to have the opportunity.

As you know, I still love pop culture. But I guess I’m picky about it.

I can’t work up excitement about a pop singer to whom I’ve never listened (seems like a sweet young woman, but I don’t even know her songs) and a man who plays a sport I generally ignore (but hey, how about them Red Sox?).

But just as Elizabeth was the queen, Elvis was the King. Even more so, in a way. One E was on the throne by birth and tradition; the other E was raised to that position by the will of the people of the world…

All the Way with LBJ

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Here’s another movie that should have been on somebody’s list of the best since the turn of the century. I had forgotten about it, then ran across it on HBO and watched it again last night. I was more impressed this time than the first time.

It’s “All the Way,” starring Bryan Cranston as Lyndon Baines Johnson. It covers his first year as president, from the moment JFK was pronounced dead in the hospital in Dallas to LBJ’s stunning victory over Barry Goldwater.

It was technically amazing. Cranston’s embodiment of Johnson, aided by remarkable makeup, made me feel constantly that I was watching and hearing the original man. If anything, Melissa Leo was even more impressive as Lady Bird, although she didn’t have nearly as much screen time.

Also noteworthy: Bradley Whitford as HHH, Stephen Root as J. Edgar Hoover, and Aisha Hinds as Fannie Lou Hamer. Towering above those was Frank Langella’s deft, nuanced portrayal of Senator Richard Russell. (I was less impressed with the portrayals of MLK and, in a bit part, our own Strom Thurmond. Sadly, I’ve yet to see any actor come close to recreating the power of Dr. King’s presence.)

Beyond the technical stuff, since I was out of the country during that year, I learned a lot watching it. Sure, I knew about (or learned later about) the events that were portrayed — the extraordinary exertions to pass the Civil Rights Act, the destruction of the Democratic Party’s Solid South, the deaths of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and much more — I hadn’t fully had the sense that they all happened in that year, when Johnson was trying to establish his legitimacy in the office while also winning an election. With hindsight, I’ve tended to think Goldwater was easy to beat. But not from LBJ’s perspective, with all those other things going on.

I enjoyed “Breaking Bad,” but maybe the best thing about it was that it gave Cranston the celebrity to do something like this. It was made in 2016, and it’s amazing to me that it didn’t make more of a splash (as in, the kind that gets you on a “Top 100” list.) Perhaps because it’s wasn’t available to anyone but subscribers.

If you have access to Max, or whatever you call HBO, watch this right away…

100 best of the century? Let’s cut that down to a Top Five

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The New York Times tried to sneak a “best movies list” by me last month, and almost got away with it — until “The Daily” hipped me to it a few days ago on the NYT Audio app.

They billed it rather grandly as “THE 100 BEST MOVIES OF THE 21st CENTURY.”

Seems they’re pushing things a bit, don’t you think? I mean this century just got started, right? This is 2025, not 2100, or even 2099. Don’t ya think Hollywood might slip in one or two good flicks sometime over the next 75 years? I certainly hope so.

But humans are impatient. Anyway, some of us might not be around in 2099 (maybe even you, or that old guy over there). So they just went ahead.

I would not have been tempted to do that. I mean, if this first 25-year period had contained a 1939, or even a 1967 — a year that just put all others to shame — I would have. But while there have been a few good pictures here and there, you have to lower your standards a good bit to come up with a HUNDRED. It hasn’t been what you’d call a creatively inspired period. It’s not just with regard to movies; look at all the sad pop music since about 1993. The recent films are a bit more inspired than that, but not by much.

A top 25 would have been more doable without lowering your aim. I’m stretching the point by going full Nick Hornby — get it down to five! But you’ll see from my Honorable Mentions list that I could easily have settled on 25.

Especially if I’d seen all the pictures.

A big disclaimer: In this quarter-century of COVID, streaming to big HD screens at home, and ridiculous ticket prices, I don’t go to a lot of movies — whereas in the last century, I made a point of seeing everything that might have made such a list. Not anymore. Here are a few that are on this NYT list that I very much wanted to see, and hope to see soon — provided they come to one of my streaming services and I don’t have to pay extra. (Actually, a couple of those have done that, and I started to watch but lost interest for the moment. I’ll probably try again, though.) Here they are:

  • “Parasite” This tops practically any list you see — if compiled by people who saw it, of course. So I need to make the effort.
  • “Get Out” I love Key and Peele, and people went wild over Jordan Peele directorial debut, but I haven’t seen it yet. I haven’t tried hard partly because it seems to kinda fit in a horror-movie slot, and I mostly don’t like those, but there’s more going on than that. Has to be, given who’s involved.
  • “Y tu mamá también“ I’ve wanted to see that, but it has a sort of sexploitation vibe that makes me feel like it’s not quite the thing, especially with that disturbing title. But hey, it’s in Spanish! So that’s good, right? It’s educational — brush up a bit on my vocabulary!
  • “Lost in Translation” Bill Murray! How have I missed it?
  • “Whiplash” The one about the young drummer with the nightmare teacher.

There are others like that. For, instance, I watched a few minutes of both “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Zone of Interest.” I didn’t get far with either. I was tired, late at night, and didn’t have the energy for “Everything.” On the other, I just didn’t feel up to dealing with such moral horror mixed with the banality that so often comes up in dealing with Nazis. I need to try again on both.

OK, here’s my Top Five:

  1. “The Departed” No question here. I go back and forth on whether “Goodfellas” or “Mean Streets” is Scorcese’s best ever, but there’s no question that this one is his best of the new century.
  2. “Almost Famous” Lots of fun, extremely engaging, very polished, and a fantastic evocation of an era. Definitely the best thing Cameron Crowe’s ever done. And the cast! Kate Hudson and Patrick Fugit were the soul of it, but look at the performances of Frances McDormand, Billy Crudup and the intriguing Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs! And let’s not forget (I won’t), this was the first time I ever saw Zooey Deschanel…
  3. “The Lives of Others” The best German film I’ve seen this century, even as good at “Downfall” was. All you libertarians on the left and right who think government is such a big, intrusive meanie need to watch this. (Of course, we could get there ourselves, with another year or two of Trump.)
  4. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” So good, and so hard to compare to anything else. What category do you put it in? Well, you don’t.
  5. “Little Miss Sunshine” I’d heard this was good, but was blown away beyond expectation when I saw it. What a cast! Another great job by Alan Arkin, of course, but you can say the same for Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear, plus the little girl at the center of it, pursuing her dream. This was the first time I ever saw Paul Dano, and he made a great impression.

Honorable Mention, in no particular order:

  • “Superbad” Excellent, often too-true, story about high school boys. Don’t watch it with your parents, though.
  • “Moneyball” This was almost in the Top Five, but got squeezed. It’s the best sports movie yet, though. Favorite scene? When Billy’s sitting around with his staff deciding what players to go after, and nobody wants to go for Billy’s plan. They all seemed very real. Also, another great performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
  • “No Country for Old Men” Not a favorite, but I was super impressed by Javier Bardem, as perhaps the creepiest killer I’ve ever seen on film.
  • “Borat” I laughed way harder at “The Dictator,” but this was the one that broke new ground. At the same time, a lot of things I didn’t like about it.
  • “Spotlight” Excellent newspaper movie. Who knows whether we’ll ever see another, except as a “period” story.
  • “Gravity” Excellent space movie. Not as great as “Apollo 13” or “The Right Stuff,” but good enough for this century. I like the contrast between the feminism (female astronaut), and the old school ultimate-hero role of her male crewmate.
  • “Gladiator” Love it. Watched it lots of times. Great story, well told. But a bit too far from historical realism.
  • “Michael Clayton” Saw this years ago and was impressed, but don’t remember the details for why.
  • “Minority Report” Great promise as a premise, largely fulfilled.
  • “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” I’m not a huge Tolkien fan (he’s good, but perhaps I read this too late in life to become a devotee the way some kids do), but I thought this did a good job with the admittedly rich content.
  • “Melancholia” A real oddball of a film, in tone as well as concept. How would you live if the Earth was about to be wiped out, and you knew exactly when?
  • “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” A lot of creative fun with a great cast and excellent dialogue, ranging from Holly Hunter’s persistent mispronunciation of “bona fide” to the KKK guy saying “They ain’t even old-timey!” Best acting: Stephen Root as the blind radio station manager, who pays the boys to sing into a can.
  • “A Serious Man” I remember being very impressed by this. But it’s been awhile, and I forget the details. Might have to watch it again.
  • “Wall-E” Another brilliant work of animation.
  • “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” I was a bit shocked to see this on the list, but hey, it was funny. I didn’t realize that the first time I saw it, because I hadn’t yet learned to appreciate Will Ferrell. Later, it was hilarious.
  • “Memento” Yeah, the backwards story. I definitely need to see that again, and not just to see “Trinity” from “The Matrix” again. I’m watching a show on Britbox in which Guy Pearce brilliantly portrays Kim Philby, and I want to go back and see all his stuff.
  • “The Hurt Locker” Speaking of Guy Pearce, who throws the audience a major curveball at the beginning… A great depiction of a man addicted to danger that most of us would want to avoid. Best performance? David Morse as the disturbingly enthusiastic colonel. Of course, he’s always great.
  • “Ocean’s 11” Way, way better than the Rat Pack original. Best evocation of cool: George Clooney, fresh out of prison, riding up the escalator in Vegas in his new duds.

Missing. I compiled my lists from the ones the NYT published (the main one from movie people, and a second one from readers). But there were some that did not appear on those lists, and should have. Not that they were all great, but they were better than quite a few that did make the lists. Here are a few that come to mind… oh, dang! I can’t find where I put my notes on that. OK, off the top of my head:

  • “Minions” I don’t care at all for its predecessors in the series, or the sequel. But this origin story may be the funniest, most engaging animated movie I’ve ever seen.
  • “Zero Dark Thirty” How can you have “Hurt Locker” and not this?
  • “High Fidelity” The film based on the novel that got me started on “Top Five” lists! I hated that they moved it from London to Chicago, but it worked, brilliantly! Since our wonderful country is falling apart anyway, maybe Congress should pass a law forbidding anyone from compiling any kind of “best of” list and leaving this out.
  • “Shanghai Noon” The best by Jackie Chan. Owen Wilson, too. If you don’t love it, your “winging it” privileges should be revoked.
  • “Unbreakable” Best superhero movie ever, largely because it never mentions superheroes. The ordinary protagonist just slowly realizes there’s something exceptional about him.
  • “Black Hawk Down” The “Saving Private Ryan” of the new century, which does a good job of relating recent history.
  • “A Knight’s Tale” Just a lot of pure fun. Best bits: When a medieval scene suddenly breaks out with a modern pop song.
  • “The Bourne Identity” A lot of people praise the novel. I’ve read it, and this was way better.
  • “American Splendor” Just to throw in something relatively obscure, and to celebrate Paul Giamatti.
  • “Runaway Jury” Possibly the best of the John Grisham flicks. Alas, one of the last really good performances by John Cusack. (He was OK in “Love and Mercy,” but Paul Dano was better.) Why doesn’t he get better roles?

OK, I’ll stop. I cheated a bit. After typing the first two, I started glancing over lists of movies by year to pad out my list. I only got as far as 2003.

So maybe my whole premise was wrong. Perhaps it is time to do a “Best 100 of the Century” list.

I’ve gotta stop now before I go back and start amending my Top Five list, after being reminded of the missing films. I’ve spent enough time on this.

Well, NOW I’m Happy!…

8 Replies

I thought I had a terrible dilemma coming up.

I don’t go see many movies in theaters. There was a time when I went to pretty much all of them, back when I was a copyeditor in Tennessee and was the paper’s film critic on the side. I wasn’t paid to do that additional work, but it wasn’t really work to me. Besides, the paper made it more than worthwhile by reimbursing me for the tickets. Not that the tickets cost much then. Fact is, I probably would have done it without the reimbursement. If, in my continuing project of cleaning out the garage, I run across a copy of my 1977 review of “Star Wars,” I’ll show to you. But I’ve promised to show it to my kids first.

Now, when I do go to a movie theater — once a year or so — I feel the need to take out a mortgage, to spread the payments out in easy installments. First, there’s the cost to get in. Of course, I can get the senior discount, but that discount is so inconsequential that the difference between that and full price is no more than the cost of a ticket in my youth. But hey, that’s just inflation over time, right? If you go to the CPI calculator, you’ll see that that the cost is about the same. Bu if you want to experience highway robbery, try to get some popcorn and a drink.

And no, the fancy recliner seats with the gigantic cupholders, arranged stadium-style, aren’t worth all that extra cost. I find myself wondering why, after the trauma of COVID and the ongoing existential threat posed by streaming and gigantic 4K screens at home, theaters didn’t go the other way — rock-bottom prices to sit on wooden benches or something. My buddy Tony and I used to go to a theater like that in Ecuador when we were about 10 to see Italian Hercules movies and “The Three Musketeers” in French (with Spanish subtitles, in case we wanted to follow the dialogue). It cost us 40 centavos to get in, which in those days amounted to about 2 cents American. And we loved it. A Coke — in a bottle — cost another 2 cents.

About now, I should start getting to my point, which is that my son who is an avid collector of Marvel comics and I were planning to see the new Fantastic Four when it comes out this Friday. (Or a few days later. You’re kind of crazy to go on opening night.) Even though we had just been to see the new Superman a couple of weeks back!

But then I found that “Happy Gilmore 2” was coming out on the same day — July 25! So what was I going to do?

OK, a word about “Happy Gilmore.” Of course, the original flick was overwhelmingly silly. But it worked! I’ve got this thing about movies (and books and other things) that work. They might be the stupidest plots acted out by actors I would never go to see under normal circumstances. But if, somehow, everthing clicks, I will watch it again and again. “Happy Gilmore” is a perfect example. “Old School” is another. They sound so stupid that you’re put off just hearing about them. But the actors — and director — take that stupid idea and make it brilliant. At least, that’s the way I reacted to it. I don’t think I’ve ever done a “Top Five Sports Comedies” list yet, but “Happy” would definitely be on it. In fact, it would be competing with “Major League” for the top spot.

And yeah, I know about sequels made 30 years after the original. They’re often sad — like that made-for-TV reunion movie for “The Beverly Hillbillies” in 1981. Buddy Ebsen had forgotten how to be Jed Clampett! But I’m not expecting brilliance — just a little bit of fun nostalgia. And I know for a fact that “Shooter” McGavin will appear!

But shell out money for a third theater visit in a year?

So imagine my joy when I got an email today from Netflix telling me it will be streaming “Happy Gilmore 2” starting Friday! I was already thinking I might wait for it to be streamed for free at home, and now I don’t have to wait! (Oh, and it had better be “free” to subscribers! They’d better not use this occasion to usher in a new class of premium “world premieres” or some such thieving gimmick!)

Well, I’m happy, and looking forward to Happy 2.

I wonder — how much longer will actual movie theaters continue to exist? The business model seems almost entirely unworkable now…