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Sunday, July 19, 2009
Darrell Waltrip Will Surface On "Wind Tunnel"
This is going to be a week to remember in NASCAR TV history. The chaos of the Mayfield saga is going to be mixed with the pre-Chase races and the switch of Sprint Cup TV coverage to ESPN.
Sunday night SPEED has put together a dandy little line-up for Dave Despain on his Wind Tunnel show at 9PM ET. Co-hosting will be Robin Miller, fresh off breaking the story of Tony George getting the boot at IMS. Miller was the subject of a lot of derogatory comments across the Internet, but when his report turned out to be accurate the silence was deafening.
Miller also has very definite opinions about NASCAR and that fits in well with Waltrip. When seen and heard in the non-Fox season, Waltrip has been outstanding in his comments and opinions about the issues of the day. Unfortunately, neither Fox or SPEED offer even one NASCAR-oriented weekly TV program in which Waltrip can participate.
It will be up to Despain and his producer to select the topics that he can cover with Waltrip in the time allotted. Hopefully, that will include his take on the Mayfield saga, the S&P issue and whether Indy will be a success or debacle again.
It is a shame that Waltrip is lost to most NASCAR fans after the final race on Fox. Sirius radio and Internet posts just do not take the place of a quality NASCAR TV series that lets topical conversations happen without highlights or endless sales features.
Perhaps, you could suggest some topics that you would like to see Despain cover with Waltrip and then we can follow-up on what they actually ended-up talking about.
We welcome your comments. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for stopping by, please return after the show and share your views as well.
22 comments:
- SquidBuzz said...
Does DW deserve all the accolades that are given him? I feel that he is part of the reason that the FOX broadcast has turned into what it is....boring. Like you have stated in the past week or so, TNT rocked the house with their coverage. Maybe he needs to look in the mirror and rethink his profession.
- July 19, 2009 at 12:21 AM
- Daly Planet Editor said...
Keep in mind that the same TV producer handled the TNT races after ending his Fox gig.
I think Fox makes the TV folks do a lot and say a lot that they would not normally do on their own.
In the past, DW has been great on Wind Tunnel and ESPN's NASCAR Now.
How he goes from smart and opinionated to being a hype-driven shill on the Fox telecasts might not be all about him.
- July 19, 2009 at 12:25 AM
- Anonymous said...
Love the DW. He's an important part of the complex fabric of NASCAR. We don't need a legion of corporate echoists doing all of the delivery.
- July 19, 2009 at 12:41 AM
- Anonymous said...
If as you say, that Fox makes TV folks such as DW say things that they would not normally say, then DW and the bunch have either sacrificed their true beliefs for money, or do not have the guts to be honest with themselves. For someone who has been around NASCAR for so long, that is a shame.
- July 19, 2009 at 12:59 AM
- Dot said...
JD, did you notice that the word shill has "Hill" in it? I think that's the big problem with FOX. Until someone reins him in, DW & CO will have to do his bidding.
When DW has appeared on TV shows as himself, he really tells it like it is. That's the DW I love. I can't wait to hear his take on the world of NASCAR.
How is it that the same producer can show two different race coverages? Does Hill's mere presence taint that too?
- July 19, 2009 at 1:31 AM
- Daly Planet Editor said...
Anon 12:59AM,
Just like in your workplace, there has to be a balance between what you want and what your boss wants.
We all go through it and I have been on both sides of the fence.
If Fox says promote Digger and hype Dale Junior and Kyle Bush, whatcha gonna do? Quit?
That is why so many of these guys are incredibly different away from the TV booth. No boss, no agenda.
- July 19, 2009 at 1:53 AM
- The Loose Wheel said...
I agree. DW away from FOX cameras is something else. Honestly.
I would love to see what DW honestly thinks of the state of the Truck and NW series right now. Start and parks are obvious but so are blank race cars and only handfuls of competitive, race-winning quality teams in each series. Would enjoy hearing his take on what he thinks should be done if anything to improve both products.
Also, seeing as its next month I think...The Whelen Modifieds on Bristol...Not sure if he himself has addressed that before.
- July 19, 2009 at 2:43 AM
- rob said...
- This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
- July 19, 2009 at 5:27 AM
- 50 yr. fan said...
JD, You are right about DW's wearing of two different hats. It's
this chameleon personality that has
caused fans to be tired of him.
- July 19, 2009 at 9:03 AM
- Anonymous said...
JD, one issue I wish DW would talk about is sponsorship--and how the economic issues are affecting Silly Season. We've been used to hearing about changes starting in April...now it's almost August and we don't know a lot of what is going to happen next year yet. Would be interested in what Waltrip can offer about what's going on with team, manufacturer, and sponsor changes.
- July 19, 2009 at 9:27 AM
- Anonymous said...
All I want to see is the real DW --- I want to hear his real opinions on the sport.
When you get DW talking candidly, his vision for NASCAR and opinions on issues in the sport are nothing short of fascinating. I don't always agree with him, and in fact sometimes think he is crazy, but I love listening to a candid DW. If Despain can get that person as a guest (as opposed to politically-correct-Waltrip), then it will be a great show. Thanks for the heads-up!
- July 19, 2009 at 12:20 PM
- Anonymous said...
I am sure Darrel the shill has his scripts already approved by Toyota and that rental place. He will also bring up Mikey for no apparent reason. He is the main reason I listen to the radio instead of watching Fox in the first part of the season. You can not blame others for his commentary; he alone is responsible for what comes out of his mouth.
- July 19, 2009 at 5:45 PM
- votetheday said...
- This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
- July 19, 2009 at 6:18 PM
- Richard in N.C. said...
It seems to me that when DW is on FOX he is expected to be more entertaining. I think he's still honest, but some topics are not to be addressed, or not to be addressed in too much depth. I always thought NBC did something similar to BP, and made him obscure his Southern background. BP on PRN on Monday was different than BP on NBC on Sunday.
I really look forward to seeing DW on Wind Tunnel. It seemed to me last year when the Dale, Jr. - DEI situation was going on that sometimes DW would drop hints about things he had learned, and he has an awful lot of contacts.
When I have remembered to check, I really have enjoyed the post-TV internet extension of Wind Tunnel, but I thought it was longer than 30 minutes at first.
- July 19, 2009 at 6:30 PM
- Sophia said...
Richard in NC
Compared to TV/commercial breaks, Wind Tunnel EXTRA online does seem longer...full 30 minutes..no breaky..so get your snacks and hit your pit stops before tuning in. I love WT Extra :) Though use it as radio as the constantly rotating camera is annoying.
- July 19, 2009 at 7:04 PM
- Sophia said...
DW's bromance with Kyle B is ova! Too bad he wasn't on longer.
I've been saying for MONTHS KyB is a brat.
I also feel JM is after money now and may get payoff. Why because DW said so, too? No because Jeremy is DOCUMENTING EVERYTHING.
He may be guilty indeed but as mentioned, one judge overturned NASCAR's suspension, and Jeremy is collecting lots of ammunition.
And as a savvy attorney type posted here, would cost a fortune for this to go on in court and take MONTHS to even get to court. THINK how many more interviews JM could do before then.
I do wish Dave would've asked about TV coverage of the races to DW but he did not.
DW is always fun on WT but this needed to last longer.
Love Robin Miller, too.
- July 19, 2009 at 9:49 PM
- kbaskins said...
Wow. We got a great glimpse of DW tonight, and I was impressed, mostly because I agreed with everything he said. :-)
Too bad contemplative DW doesn't often show up on TV during the FOX portion of the Cup schedule. He's much better than product-shilling DW.
OK, I've revised my Wind Tunnel co-host line-up. It should be one week per month each for Miller, Shrader, DW and Varsha. Dave Despain is very good on his own, but he absolutely comes alive when he has a co-host.
I thoroughly enjoyed DW and WT tonight.
- July 19, 2009 at 9:54 PM
- kbaskins said...
And I should mention that I don't much enjoy DW when he's on FOX.
- July 19, 2009 at 10:01 PM
- Sophia said...
Love your list!
AGREE about Cohost for Dave. He is going on vacation a couple more times this summer,I think, I wish they would ask Robin to co host again...with SCHRADER! IMAGINE those two together and the stories!:) And on extra...they could be more off the cuff
The TV SHOW needs to be TWO HOURS THOUGH. WT is the fastet hour in tv on nights like tonight.
- July 19, 2009 at 10:12 PM
- TexasRaceLady said...
Dang that hour went by in a hurry. Just when DW was getting good -- it was over!
- July 19, 2009 at 10:26 PM
- Glenn said...
Simply- WONDERFUL WIND TUNNEL tonight.
That was better than fresh air.
- July 19, 2009 at 10:40 PM
- Daly Planet Editor said...
There is a new post up to continue your comments on Wind Tunnel and DW.
Thanks as always!
- July 19, 2009 at 11:18 PM


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Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936 / Bombay)
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To The Unknown Goddess
Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my sould going out from afar?
Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautions shikar?
Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind?
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subset: commoncrawl


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Every since I can remember I have fought this thing inside of me. I always thought of it as a bear. Sometimes this bear is sweet and loving.I am always aware of his presence but when he is in this loving quite mood this is when I am the happiest.These are the times that I can live a semi normal life. Then there are days the bear demands a little of my short attention span. He needs to be petting this is where it feels like he is leaning on me. He doesnt demand all my attention but he does demand some. These days I feel pressure but I can juggle the bear and the world with a little effort on my part. Then there are days while I am working or talking to people he is smacking me in the face constantly. Roaring in my ear to the point I almost cant hear anything or fully fuction. There have been times the bear demand that I go be alone so that he can have all my attention. I have actually lost a good job due to this last phase. This is how my anxiety feels. When I was young I could endure it. My mother and father thought it was cute that I danced beside the dinner table while I ate. When I was a kid we were just labeled "High Energy Children" Hell I didnt even know what it was back then. I thought every kid was this way, but as I grew I realized that I was very different. My main problem was I talked too much ...I could not be still. I over talked other kids which made them mad and so this threw me out of main stream kids and into the rejected sector ..... but still as a kids you endure... you cry it out and move on. School work was a nightmare for me.Most of the time I could read a page in my school book and look up and couldnt tell you one word of what I read. I could really study the night before but sometimes the noise in my head would be so loud that I couldnt remember anything I studied so that also slated where my future was headed. So my self esteem was taking a nosedive and this links into all the bad relationships I have suffered. At first people think I am super neat...loud and fast paced ... always up for the next thing .... love doing things that where a dare or dangerous ..... but then the extreme of me would wear down for them .... I was never that friend that would call you to see how you were doing ...you always had to call me because for the most I would be so busy in my own head I couldnt even entertain anybody elses world ... thats how I lost so many friends and the ones that would stay with me were as broken a human being as I was. I lost one of my oldest friends because she finally got tired of my "time outs" when I go into what I call time out I dont talk to any one I ignore calls. I have even hid while friends knocked on my door to check on me .This also entered into boyfriends and husbands ...they all thought I was this neat little wild animal some of the guys after looking back I see they took me as a challenge something that just needed to be broken ..tamed .... they thought they could "cage"the bear. My first husband tried his best to subdue this beast with only a divorce to show for it. I fought this through two kids .... I remember fighting off a panic attack at my daughters field day.... I suceeded because I so didnt want to embarrass my daughter and show her friends that her mother was mentally defective. I have always felt like it was always 0 or 100 with me ....I would be complete "on" or I taught myself how to just shut her ....so for a large part of my kids growning up I was never that involved mother because I was always in fear that the monster in me might poke its head out and cause my children problems at school. So I worked as much as I could using that excuse to keep me out of school functions ....every once in a great while I would have to go in and pretend to have it all togeather and for the most I would suceed ...it was exhasting ... it always felt as though I was holding the full weight of that bear back. Work that is the one place that the bear worked for me and not agaisnt me. I had so much energy.... so much drive everything for me was a challenge ...a race .... a compotistion. I was always compeating with people even if they were not aware of it. I would work harder .... I would work more hours than anyone else ... I would take on way more respondsiblity that I should but it always made me a valued employee. Somehow I used to always sleep well and up to about 2 years ago that was my one saving grace was I could sleep at the drop of a hat. I have gone to my doctor for help .... he has ran me through many different anti depression meds ...Zoloft ....Prozac.....Paxal .... It feels as though it doesnt subdue the bear .... but it destracts him a little but never enough to make it worth the side effects of the drugs ... I was just took off anoughter shot at Zoloft because I was breaking out in hives that were making me itch myself til I bled . I talked to my doctor about maybe this being Adult attention disorder but he dismissed it ...sometimes I think its because so many people who dont have the problem want the drug because its effect on them is like crack so all theses people end up pretending to have Adult attention disorder to get the meds and then it makes it impossible for people like me who might actually have it get treated for it ...or even checked. Now here I amin my mid 40's and I dont have the phyiscal energy to keep up witht the bear and this is making the anxiety so much worse.What a mad mad world we live in.So as for now my bear still roams free .... not that I ever wanted him caged but I would like a life where both of us could live in peace.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Mental health ...Are doctors just guessing?
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A general contractor, looking to maximize his profits, takes on a questionable subcontractor, who then seeks to line his pockets by misclassifying his workers and paying them under the table, or not at all.
This formula, in the eyes of Manny Gines, organizer for the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, has become the preferred way of doing business in the state�s construction industry, and he has the evidence to prove it.
In the last couple of months, for example, Mr. Gines has gathered evidence on a housing for the elderly construction project in Hopkinton, a public university library renovation project, and an affordable housing project in Worcester�s Main South.
In all three cases he was able to document the misclassification of workers, and workers being paid under the table, or not being paid at all.
In the university library project, Mr. Gines uncovered paperwork that seems to indicate fraud, that is, one worker being listed at two separate job sites during the same time period.
Some of the times, by confronting the general contractor on a project and threatening to picket the job site, Mr. Gines has been able to secure wages for workers who were not being paid for their labor.
He was successful, for example, in securing wages for four undocumented workers who were not being paid on the Hopkinton project.
In these cases, and the many others with which he has been involved over the years, Mr. Gines has kept close contact with the state attorney general�s office, alerting it to improprieties and providing supporting documentation.
The problem, according to Mr. Gines, is that the state is woefully ill-equipped to deal with the enormity of the challenge, which is not to say the state is standing idly by while all this is going on.
In 2008, Gov. Deval Patrick created a Joint Task Force on the Underground Economy, whose orders included coordinating the efforts of multiple state agencies to stamp out fraudulent employment activities.
Since its inception, the amount of fines, back taxes and unpaid wages collected from employers has grown from $1.4 million in 2009 to $11 million in 2011.
Building-construction is not the only industry vulnerable to illegal employment activities.
On Wednesday, the Department of Unemployment Assistance, a member agency of the Joint Task Force, announced that it had concluded audits of three businesses � an adult entertainment establishment, an auto auction company and a home health care agency � in which $11.5 million in unreported wages, 2,300 misclassified employees and $2.5 million in unpaid DUA obligations were uncovered.
Mr. Patrick now says his administration will launch a full-scale study of the underground economy to determine the scope of its financial cost on the state.
But Mr. Gines said the state does not need a study to uncover what is already very evident.
What is needed, particularly in the building industry, is more aggressive enforcement of state laws, he said.
He noted, however, how subcontractors working on a downtown building project, were exposed by his organization for misclassifying and not paying his workers. After being booted off the Worcester project, the subcontractor changed the name of his company and within weeks was working on another project in Springfield.
With the persistence of Mr. Gines, this particular subcontractor was finally barred from public works projects in the state.
�Studying this issue now is a waste of money,� he said.
�We know what�s going on. If the state wants to spend money on this, it should spend it on increased enforcement.�


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Even a legion of ardent teenage girls was unable to overpower Oprah Winfrey at the box office this Labor Day weekend, as the film "The Butler" starring the media mogul cleaned up for the third consecutive weekend.
Heading into the four-day holiday, pre-release audience surveys indicated that a new 3-D concert documentary about the U.K.-based boy band One Direction would be the big winner. While "One Direction: This Is Us" did sell more tickets between Friday and Sunday than "The Butler," the civil rights drama's four-day tally was $20 million, according to an estimate from distributor the Weinstein Co. The One Direction film has so far collected a healthy $18 million -- a figure that includes ticket sales from Thursday evening screenings.
"The Butler," about a devoted White House employee played by Forest Whitaker who served eight different presidents, has now grossed $79.3 million since debuting mid-August. Erik Lomis, the Weinstein Co.'s president of theatrical distribution, noted that an increasing number of late-night ticket sales indicated the film was now attracting younger moviegoers. The independent studio is hopeful the film may now reach $120 million at the domestic box office, Lomis said.
Meanwhile, even though "This Is Us" came in a bit below industry expectations and two other new films -- "Getaway" and "Closed Circuit" -- flopped, it was still the biggest Labor Day on record, not adjusting for inflation. All movies released over the long weekend grossed a total of $157 million -- beating 2007's $148-million haul.
Not surprisingly, "This Is Us" attracted a strong female contingent. Roughly 87% of the audience were women, and 65% were under the age of 17. Those who saw the movie loved it, assigning it an average grade of A, according to market research firm CinemaScore. Shot during the first six months of 2013, the movie is directed by "Super Size Me" filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who trailed the group on their current world tour.
Produced by Sony Pictures' TriStar label for $10 million, "This Is Us" is off to a better start than the most recent concert documentary to hit theaters, "Katy Perry: Part of Me." Last summer, the pop star's film opened to just $7.1 million; One Direction's flick grossed $15.8 million in its first three days in release. Still, Directioners didn't prove to be quite as rabid as Beliebers: Justin Bieber's film "Never Say Never" launched with $29.5 million in 2011.
Overseas, "This Is Us" launched in 53 foreign countries including Mexico and France and grossed $14.5 million. As expected, the film performed best in the band's native U.K., selling $5.7 million worth of tickets there.
Tweens weren't as eager to see former "Wizards of Wavery Place" star Selena Gomez's new movie, "Getaway." The picture -- which has the dubious distinction of being the worst-reviewed film of the summer -- spun out at the box office this weekend with a four-day opening of just $5.5 million.
As much as critics hated it -- the film has an embarrassing 2% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes -- audiences disliked it, too, giving the film an average grade of C+. The picture stars Gomez as a computer whiz who helps a man (Ethan Hawke) trying to rescue his kidnapped wife.
Gomez, 21, has had better luck singing than acting. The one-time Disney Channel star saw her newest album "Stars Dance" debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in August, the same month she took home an MTV Video Music Award for pop video. While her last film, the racy indie "Spring Breakers," was a hit at the art-house, the only other movie she has headlined -- 2011's "Monte Carlo" -- grossed only $23 million.
Playing in 870 locations, the thriller "Closed Circuit" had a dismal debut. The film starring Eric Bana opened on Wednesday and has since made $3.1 million. In an email, a spokeswoman for the Focus Features release would say only that the film's "box office results have been modest over the holiday weekend."
- Movies
- Entertainment
- Getaway Travel
- Services and Shopping
- One Direction (music group)
- One Direction: This Is Us
- Labor Day
- Getaway
- Selena Gomez
- Travel
- Closed Circuit (2013)
- The Weinstein Company
- Spring Breakers (movie)
- Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (movie)
- Monte Carlo (movie)
- MTV Video Music Awards
- Sony Pictures
- Disney Media Networks
- Justin Bieber
- Eric Bana


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Robot Sourcing and Rules for Selfies: The Moments That Stood Out at SXSW
The South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin this year was chock full of everything you've come to expect: people pitching their next big ideas, brainy sessions with thinkers and influencers, vendors pushing their would-be cutting-edge gadgets, roving bands of musical bands, and more.
Still recovering from the days-long affair, the Journal's team of editors jotted down the moments that stood out to them. Here are a few.


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Item #3125
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This packet sows four 7-foot rows.
Seedling Image
Days to Emerge:
Seed Depth:
Seed Spacing:
Row Spacing:
When to sow outside: RECOMMENDED. 2 to 4 weeks before average last frost, and when soil temperatures are 60°-70°F. Successive Sowings: Every 3 weeks until 2 weeks before the first fall frost.
When to start inside: Any time for fresh mesclun year-round! Grow on a sunny windowsill or under grow lights.
Special sowing instructions: For growing full-sized plants, see inside of packet.
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Artist: Carolyn Crawford
Item #3125
1.00 grams
What is Soil?
Soil is a diverse mix of substances, teeming with life and composed of minerals, decayed plant and animal matter, water, and air. It…More…
In early fall, it pays to keep an eye on nighttime temperatures so that you get your frost-sensitive crops harvested before the first frost.
What and Where to Sow:
First, consider where you have space from harvested crops or will have space in the next few weeks. Is there room to sow a…More…


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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
"The Passenger" Moves On
This is a very busy week for me, a prelude to a very busy month in fact, and I can't spare the time to write about Antonioni and his glorious work as fully as I'd like. BLOW UP and L'AVVENTURA have always been personal favorites, and when Criterion released L'ECLISSE a few years ago, it immediately vaulted past them into my Top 10: I watched it three times in three days, and then began writing an infatuated short story about the spell it cast, which work and time (again) conspired to prevent me from finishing. Once this present pile of work is out of the way, I would like very much to go back to it and complete it in tribute to this outstanding artist. Last year, "THE PASSENGER" (another of those curious films with titles in quotes, like "DON'T LOOK NOW" and "THESE ARE THE DAMNED") was finally released on DVD, a magnificent film about life, identity, and mortality.
Antonioni's films were often criticized for being too nihilistic, but I don't see them as nihilistic as much as conscious and accepting of the human condition. Just because they are cerebral doesn't mean they are without spirit. "THE PASSENGER" is actually the ideal film to watch if you seek the comfort of knowing that only what Antonioni was, as a man, is dead. What he is and always was, as energy, survives -- I believe the film subtly expressive of this philosophy, that this world is no one's final destination, that we are all merely passengers, our present identity in quotation marks (as well as question marks). Needless to say, his films remain with us as his representatives.
Today, I send a loving genuflection halfway around the world today to one of my favorite filmmakers, Eric Rohmer -- who recently turned 87 -- in the hopes that he can keep his name out of the headlines for awhile.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Requiem for a Heavyweight Broadcaster
"Got it. It's not a band, it's a company. It's not a concert, it's a gig." "Humour me..." "Not for long."
Cutting-edge guests didn't necessarily guarantee a cutting-edge interview; his legendary sit-down with John Lydon and Keith Levene of Public Image Limited is a classic example of "failure to communicate," and I can also well remember a joint appearance by James Brown and football great Jim Brown, who apparently showed up at the studio one evening unannounced, requesting airtime on TOMORROW to discuss solutions to the problems facing black youth... in which it quickly transpired that the two JBs really had nothing to offer except that more young black people should look up to role models like them. It turned out to be a fairly bare-faced, smug-assed ego stroke that left Tom so baffled that he spent the next on-air segment scratching his head over why the interview hadn't worked. Very candid, very brave -- and it momentarily turned galling television into great television.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
New SIGHT & SOUND, More Dish on DishNet
To update you on my continuing Dish Network saga: Yesterday we had a Dish technician and his apprentice come to the house for a look at the set-up. To make a long story short, it seems the most likely cure for our recording ailment would be to swap out the VIP 211 with their DVR 622. Not only does this unit offer 160 hours of hard drive storage for HD content (not quite recording for posterity, but close), but the rear panel offers video outputs in both MPEG-4 and MPEG-2. We can run the MPEG-4 to our monitor and the MPEG-2 to our recorder, which would be giving it the same input that we had when there were no problems. In theory, it should work and my fingers are crossed.
The more MPEG-4 programming I see, the more impressed I am. I was checking out the Family Room HD shows two nights ago, before turning in, and was knocked out by the sumptuous video quality of... of all things, FLIPPER. Not the Universal theatrical remake of some years ago, but the original 1964 teleseries; it was like looking through a well-cleaned window at 1964. I never cared for the show particularly, but I was so impressed with the presentation that I stuck with it through the remainder of the episode in progress and an entire second episode. It was reformatted to 16:9 of course, but the show was filmed in such a way that the cropping was never very apparent. It was followed by THUNDERBIRDS, which I've always enjoyed, and it looked beautiful too, though the cropping here was more obvious. Even programming I'm more familiar with, like Rudy Maxa's SMART TRAVELS, looks significantly improved in MPEG-4, with purer, deeper blacks and heightened textures. And a World Cinema HD promo for Kieslowski's BLUE was astonishing in its clarity.
It seems to me, after having made the leap to HD DVD and Blu-ray now for some months, that the companies responsible for cherry-picking titles for release haven't made much of a leap with me. I'm not losing interest in HD per se, but I do find my interest in the HD disc formats slowly eroding. With the exception of CASINO ROYALE and CORPSE BRIDE, easily my two favorite HD/Blu-ray experiences, it's all been about upgrading so far, as far as my own viewing is concerned. The difference is usually appreciable, but very often it isn't exciting -- and, by "exciting," I mean the feeling I got when I first saw STARSHIP TROOPERS in SuperBit.
As I say, it's a matter of poor selection; I'd rather have DRAGONSLAYER than REIGN OF FIRE. Right now, there are only 10-20 titles on the market that I would care to watch more than once -- everything else is the 21st century equivalent of that early videocassette eyesore, FLASHDANCE. Broadcast HD, on the other hand, is infinitely more far-ranging and adventurous than the current selection on HD and Blu-ray discs. I saw 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in HD on HDNET one year ago, and wrote about it here; we're still waiting for the HD disc. That's why I tend to suspect, at this stage anyway, that broadcast HD may well become the surprise victor in this latest "format war," rather than either of its high profile combatants. Of the three options, it's the one with the most obvious imagination, and therefore the one with the most probable future.
HD is also at its best when it can take you by surprise. When you buy a film on HD or Blu-Ray disc, especially with the current crop of pickings, you sort of know in advance what you'll be getting. Broadcast HD offers you the opportunity to browse/surf through unexpected possibilities and have your breath unexpectedly taken away. Maybe even by FLIPPER.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
An Artful Penetration of THE WEIRD LOVEMAKERS
KYONETSU NO KISETSU (1960), originally released in America under the exploitative title THE WEIRD LOVEMAKERS, was the directorial debut of the Malaysia-born Koreyoshi Kurahara (1927-2002). I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting; this Nikkatsu production was distributed here in the States by Radley Metzger's Audubon Productions, usually an avatar of good taste though their ad campaigns could be sensationalistically exploitative, but it's certainly more than I was expecting.
Shown on the Dish Network/VOOM channel World Cinema HD with its Japanese title subtitled as THE WARPED ONES (which, to my senses, suggests a comedy), the film turns out to be an important rediscovery on many fronts. It is directed by Kurahara with a freewheeling, gleefully hedonistic verve that reminded me of nothing less than Joseph H. Lewis' GUN CRAZY, with Yoshio Mamiya's B&W scope cinematography alternating between the carefully composed and the recklessly hand-held. It's also a story of young adult delinquency that has some conscious ties to earlier Western works like GUN CRAZY, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and Godard's BREATHLESS but these pale in contrast to how much the film anticipates Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Scored by Toshiro Mayuzumi (STREET OF SHAME, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, THE INSECT WOMAN), it is also -- perhaps above all -- one of the great jazz films, and possibly the best illustration the cinema has ever given us of the jazz buff. It's the only film I've ever seen that makes jazz seem scarier than the darkest heavy metal, that makes jazz seem dangerous.
It's the story of two petty thieves, jazz-loving Akira (Tamio Kawaji) and Masaru (Eiji Go), who use their hooker friend Fumiko (Noriko Matsumoto) to separate various horny tourists from their wallets. Caught in the act and arrested at a Tokyo jazz bar, Akira and Masuru find an opportunity for revenge soon after their release from jail, assaulting the arresting officer and abducting his girlfriend Yuki (Yuko Chishiro). They take her to a secluded nearby beach, where Akira rapes Yuki within an inch of her life while Masuru and Fumiko become better acquainted in the surf. As the episodic story continues, the three principals are shown living together, with Masaru determining to join a local yakuza gang, against Akira's leering advice. Akira is also tracked down by Yuki, who informs him that she is pregnant with his child.
Akira disrupts a contemporary art exhibition.
Akira, played by Kawaji with the face-rubbing mannerisms of Brando and the tortured swagger of James Dean, is a more extreme character than was seen in most Western cinema up to this time. He steals cars and motorbikes without shame, eats like a pig, drinks incessantly, and greets every woman he meets with "Wanna get laid?" He's not at all likeable, but he is fascinating -- especially when he's in the grip of something he understands, like a cathartic jazz solo. The film seems to acknowledge and ponder this dichotomy with a pair of complementary scenes; in one, a drunken Akira disrupts an art gallery exhibition, smearing his hands over valuable paintings, turning displayed abstract works upside down, and replacing the phony, lite jazz being played on a jukebox with the Real Thing.
In a later scene, Akira goes to taunt Yuki at her cottage, where he finds her entertaining a group of local artists. Akira does everything he can to alienate these people, whom he regards as the flesh-and-blood equivalent of contemptible lite jazz, but they turn the tables on him and treat him as a remarkable art object in his own right, analyzing and approving his contempt for society to his face, and bidding against one another to obtain him as a model. Much as the exhibit sequence looks forward to Alex's (Malcolm McDowell's) invasive assaults on various Pop and Op Art domiciles in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, this sequence of artists deconstructing Akira seems to anticipate Alex's deconstruction by his admiring, cynical government. It should be noted that Akira sleeps next to... no, not an engaving of Beethoven's stony face... a framed copy of Ornette Coleman's THE SHAPE OF JAZZ TO COME. Even the jazz club where Akira broods between petty crimes foreshadows the Korova Milk Bar: the walls painted black and festishized with portraits of the great jazz masters, their names painted in delirious white strokes like the Milk Bar's adverts of Vellocet and Drencrom. Kubrick simply had to have seen it.
Yuki awaits the humiliation of her boyfriend at the hands of Fumiko.
In an unexpected turn of events, the pregnant Yuki prevails upon Fumiko for her help. Since her pregnancy became known to her boyfriend, their relationship has not been the same; he acts superior to her and treats her as someone tainted. So she pleads with Fumiko to seduce him, to destroy his pride as hers has been destroyed, so that they might rediscover their love for one another on levelled ground.
I won't go into the ironic finale, but the 75m film certainly builds to an evil boil and sustains its mood extremely well. I don't know if Quentin Tarantino is familiar with this movie -- which is apparently available in some form from Something Weird Video, probably the dubbed Audubon version (World Cinema HD showed the film in Japanese with subtitles that pulled no punches in the strong language department) -- but these characters seemed to me very much like antecedents of his most hellbent characters, and the whole feel of the film a convincing annex of his universe.
Under whatever title, Kurahara's film is much too important to be so obscure. The same goes for another Audubon import, Tinto Brass's NEROSUBIANCO, which Radley Metzger retitled THE ARTFUL PENETRATION OF BARBARA. (Yes, Virginia -- theaters actually used to show movies with titles like THE ARTFUL PENETRATION OF BARBARA and THE WEIRD LOVEMAKERS, though they won't admit to this in your History class.)
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Retitlings on World Cinema HD
Follow-up to my Dish Network woes: I was able to record an acceptable (1.78:1) copy of THE WEIRD LOVEMAKERS this evening because it was shown in 2.35:1. It's still cropped, but a fast zoom-through didn't show any cropped subtitles or horribly damaged compositions. But most of what is being shown on Dish's HD channels is 1.78 or 1.85:1 to begin with, which my DVD-Recorder is receiving as a cropped 1.33:1 picture.
Donna and I have been troubleshooting today, and it seems that the real problem is inherent in my Panasonic DVD-Recorder, which -- like any other DVD-R currently on the market, that I know of -- is equipped to record MPEG-2 signals, not MPEG-4. It records MPEG-4, but it can't receive a full-blown widescreen signal; it crops the picture. If I use my TV controls to widen the picture, it only widens the cropped portion of the picture. My recorder also can't differentiate between an MPEG-4 picture that is squeezed or letterboxed or zoomed-in; it reads all of this incoming source as the same thing.
This means that -- if you have the same DVD-Recorder as me (a Panasonic DMR-E85H) -- this could well become your problem too, should you upgrade to MPEG-4. These MPEG-4 receivers are the new kid on the block, HD-wise, but it seems they're incompatible with current DVD-R technology, at least as I know it. Now I'm wondering if Radio Shack carries some kind of conduit that can dumb-down MPEG-4 to MPEG-2 purely for recording purposes. What are the chances that such a thing exists?
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back with Dish Network
Today, another Dish guy arrives... well before the 12-5:00 agreed-upon time. "You're early," I tell him, sleepily. "Yes, I am early," he replies sullenly, obviously refusing to take any guff from the customer. He's got a ladder on the truck but he says he has no intention of using it; I have everything I need for the upgrade already up there, and there's nothing to add on or take down. He doesn't know what the previous installer was thinking. He also can't figure out how he was able to arrange a follow-up visit with a phone call. After replacing my old Dish receiver (an MPEG-2 receiver installed in 2005) with a VIP 211 receiver (MPEG-4), he checks out the picture, tunes to an SD channel and tells me that I should never watch my TV with the gray bars displayed -- I should always watch the picture on these standard channels stretched like Silly Putty. When I begin to object, he cuts me off and says, "You can watch it any way you want, I'm just tellin' ya." Fine. Fine.
After the installer drives away to his next early appearance, Donna and I begin checking all the connections. To make a long and unhappy story short: The MPEG-4 receiver gives us a noticeably more beautiful HD picture... but.
I have always been able to record from my Dish Network receiver to my Panasonic DVD-Recorder. It didn't give me HD recordings, of course, but it recorded the programming shown on HD channels in a handsomely letterboxed format that I could then zoom-up to a most acceptable simulacra of HD. With my hours, time-shifting is often essential, and we use the DVD-Recorder a lot for that reason in particular. However... when hooked up identically to the MPEG-4 receiver, I don't get letterboxing. Even when I dumb the picture down to 480 or 720 and reconfigure the framing to 4:3x2 and get a letterboxed image on my monitor, the signal that the receiver is sending into my recorder is fully uncompressed with the left and side of the frame blocked by my gray bars. I can sit there pumping the Format button on my Dish remote, changing the screen configuration from Zoom to Partial Zoom to Gray Bars to Normal, and the onscreen image being sent into my DVD-Recorder is as unchanging as the expression on the Lincoln Memorial.
We've tried everything and don't know what to do. To make matters worse, Dish's World Cinema HD channel is showing THE WEIRD LOVEMAKERS tomorrow evening, something I would dearly love to record. (I've been fascinated by this 1960s Japanese import since I first saw its trailer as part of Something Weird's first TWISTED SEX compilation.) If we keep the MPEG-4 connected, we'll get a recording, but it will be cropped. If we hook-up our MPEG-2 receiver, which we haven't sent back yet, we won't get the World Cinema channel at all, because it's accessible only to subscribers of what they call "the HD3 package."
So now we have to figure out what we're going to do. We still have an MPEG-2 HD hook-up in our basement, but I really don't want to turn the basement into the headquarters of my DVD-R recording. Part of me suspects that the MPEG-4 was created to be used solely with Dish Network's DVR, which can store quite a bit of HD broadcast information on its hard drive but, if you ask me, isn't quite the same as burning that information to a disc. I don't need to record in HD at the moment, but I do need to continue recording my HD programming in SD. Dish Network is sending someone to the house on Wednesday, supposedly between 12:00 and 5:00, to assess the situation. I fully expect the visit to be for nothing, though I would like very much to be able to report otherwise here on Thursday.
I know that this blog is read by many different kinds of film buffs. If there's anyone out there with insight into this particular problem, and perhaps a solution, I'd love to hear from you.
Monday, July 23, 2007
A Preview of VIDEO WATCHDOG #133
Sunday, July 22, 2007
WHAT'S MY LINE? Alert
Thursday, July 19, 2007
In Case You Don't Check Over There Daily...
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Dylan's Buried Treasure: "I'm Not There (1956)"
It belongs to that mysterious group of 1967 recordings known as "The Basement Tapes," and it was not included among the songs found in Columbia's legitimate release of the alleged cream of the crop. The trailer includes only a 1:58 snippet of the entire piece, which runs 5:08; it's been rerecorded by Sonic Youth for the movie but, as the trailer seems to insist, the original version must be heard.
It's been awhile since a song got its hooks so deeply into me. I heard "I'm Not There (1956)" for the first time in its entirety yesterday -- I was able to find an mp3 here (scroll down 13 short paragraphs) -- and must have listened to it at least twenty times throughout the day, amazed that a song could communicate its emotion so palpably even though the lyrics (mostly improvised on the spot) hovered between incompletion and incoherence, even taking the time to learn the comparatively simple piece on my bass to try to come to terms with it musically. Here is some of what I found written in various sources about this amazing piece...
From THE OLD, WEIRD AMERICA by Greil Marcus:
"There is nothing like 'I'm Not There' -- called 'I'm Not There, I'm Gone' when Garth Hudson wrote down basement titles, later retitled 'I'm Not There (1956)' -- in the basement recordings, or anywhere else in Bob Dylan's career. It was only recorded once; unlike others of the new basement songs, which Dylan rerecorded or continued to feature on stage thirty years later, it was never sung again.
She fell into conversation with the first fat man she saw.
"What do you do?," he said, fitting two potato chips into his mouth.
I go to parties and only talk to the fat guys, she thought.
Owen was home writing. She thought of it as an act of fidelity to talk only to the unattractive guys.
She started to tell him about her jobs. She was talking on automatic pilot, hardly listening to what she was saying -- instead, she was listening to Dylan. Going through the host's record collection, she'd found a bootleg album that included "I'm Not There," a legendary, never-released, never-completed song from the Basement Tapes sessions -- a song that she'd heard just once, the summer after high school, and that she'd been searching for ever since. It came on while she was talking; it was even more haunting than she remembered.
She touched the fat guy's wrist. "This," she said, "may be the greatest song ever written."
"The woman speaking is the heroine of a 1991 novel by Brian Morton called THE DYLANIST, and it's a wonderful thing she says -- because so many people have responded the same way, at the same time realizing that 'I'm Not There' is barely written at all.... The song is a trance, a waking dream, a whirlpool... Words are floated together in a dyslexia that is music itself -- a dyslexia that seems meant to prove the claims of music over words, to see just how little words can do... In the last lines of the song, the most plainly sung, the most painful, so bereft that after the song's five minutes, five minutes that seem like no measurable time, you no longer believe that anything so strong can be said in words."
From composer Michael Pisaro:
"It's almost as though he has discovered a language or, better, has heard of a language: heard about some of its vocabulary, its grammar and its sounds, and before he can comprehend it, starts using this set of unformed tools to narrate the most important event of his life... [Rick] Danko plays [bass] as if he knows that all his life this song has been waiting for him to complete it, and that he will be given only one chance."
From BOB DYLAN: PERFORMING ARTIST 1960-1973 by Paul Williams:
"What's astonishing here is that we can feel with great intensity and specificity what the singer is talking about, even though 80% of the lyrics have not been written yet!... It's as though when Dylan writes, the finished song is not constructed piece by piece as we might imagine, but tuned in; there is an entirety from the first but still out of focus, like the photograph of a fetus, a blur whose identifying characteristics are implicit but not yet visible -- not because they're obscured but because they haven't yet taken shape. 'I'm Not There' is a performance complete in feeling -- 'Dylan's saddest song,' says [THE TELEGRAPH editor John] Bauldie -- achieved without benefit of context or detail. It's like listening to the inspiration before the song is wrapped around it."
With this kind of press, I'm surprised that this forty year old piece isn't better known to the public at large. People talk about the Basement Tapes at length, but this particular song is surely, on its own, to Bob Dylan what SMILE was, for decades, to Brian Wilson. As much as I love what Wilson did when he resurrected SMILE as a solo recording, its availability has taken away from the almost sacred mystery that enveloped the original Beach Boys recordings so painstakingly produced by Wilson, which fans loved to collect, share, and arrange into their own personal visions of what the unfinished album might have been. "I'm Not There (1956)" -- whose attached date is only one of many unexplained mysteries about it -- is of such similar appeal that I'm surprised that Dylan fans aren't out there writing and sharing their own lyrics to complete the jigsaw... but, who knows, maybe they do.
One of the many uncanny things about this piece is that Dylan must have known what he had, but he had the awareness of his own craft to know, despite the incompletion of the piece, that this singular recording had somehow miraculously achieved everything that any completed version possibly could and was wise enough to leave it alone. Its rough-hewn quality also invests it with something that no finished song ever has. In its own way, "I'm Not There" is perfect and there's no need for Dylan to touch it again. It might tempt him to finish it.
It's interesting that Todd Haynes chose this obscure song as the title piece for his film, but it does represent in some ways Dylan's own mercurial, artfully dodging persona, which I take to be one of the film's primary concerns, as it supposedly casts seven different actors as Bob Dylan at different phases of his career. My feeling about Haynes' previous work is that it's always very enticing but somehow always falls short of satisfying me completely. The idea to cast different actors as Dylan is an inspired one, one that qualifies this film as fantastic cinema sight unseen, but I'm looking forward to I'M NOT THERE with equal parts eagerness and trepidation. There is a preview scene from the film on YouTube featuring Cate Blanchett as Dylan, who strikes me in this snippet as playing Patti Smith in Dylan drag. Even so, the casting is inspired and it looks like a film that has winks to offer as well as wisdom. If it only brings this song within reach of more appreciative ears, the effort will have been worth it.
I'm hoping it turns out to be the superhero film of the year.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Guess the Secret Moiderer and Win $1000
Shout Factory's YOU BET YOUR LIFE - THE BEST EPISODES came out three years ago, almost to the day, but it was only recently that I obtained it. Thirty or so years have passed since I last saw Groucho Marx's classic game show, and it was wonderful to see it again: every single episode made me laugh myself sick. In answer to everyone's first question: No, the Tor Johnson episode isn't included, but you do get appearances by Harpo Marx, Chico Marx (not onstage, but visible applauding in the audience), Johnny Weissmuller, Phyllis Diller, Joe Louis, Edgar & Candice Bergen, Harry Ruby and VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS' own Joy Harmon. Not a bad bang for the buck.
Panelists Richard Halley, Stanley Ralph Ross, Jan Sterling, and the one, the only... Groucho.
The panel are shown a 10m mystery film ("Mystery in the Crystal Ball," featuring Joe Maross as a detective named Penfield) that involves a murder and four possible suspects, then those "suspects" are assembled in four empty seats onstage, where the celebrity detectives "grill" them before a live audience. Each of the suspects must tell the truth... except for the murderer, who is given permission to lie to conceal their identity. Any celebrity who correctly guesses the identity of the murderer wins $500... and if the real detective fails where the celebrity detectives succeed, their prize amount is doubled to $1000.
Two scenes from "Murder in the Crystal Ball," featuring James Callahan, Arthur Batanides, and Linda Bennett.
I grant that it's very odd to see celebrities vying for money they intend to win for themselves, but maybe there wasn't much of a salary involved. Then again -- and this is probably the real explanation, given the show's patrimony -- maybe it's all show business. The mystery film is practically indistinguishable from the first reel of a PERRY MASON episode, and directed by a veteran of 21 episodes of that series, William D. Russell. I personally found the mystery fairly easy to solve, but the pilot was a delight anyway for Groucho's interjections of humor, his flirtatiousness with the bailiff and suspect Linda Bennett (whose IMDb page credits her with this pilot, a movie called NAKED FLAME which I do believe features her, and a couple of Sixties grindhouse pictures in which another woman of her name appeared), and the "grilling" sequences, which required four actors to act in character but without a script -- a rarely witnessed dramatic exercise with actors of this vintage.
Suspects Jay Adler, Linda Bennett, James Callahan and Kathryn Giveney have a laugh when the real killer is unmasked.YOU BET YOUR LIFE - THE BEST EPISODES would be well worth having even without this pilot, but knowing that THE PLOT THICKENS was included, and its specifics, would have made the set absolutely irresistable to me -- and perhaps to you, too, which is why I thought I'd share the news. There remain two more pilots in this set that I haven't watched: WHAT DO YOU WANT? and TELL IT TO GROUCHO. For all I know, they might guest star Delphine Seyrig and Wild Man Fischer and be directed by Sergei Parajanov.
Apparently, with Groucho, anything is possible.
Monday, July 16, 2007
In Defense of Frank Dietz
"Unfortunately," he writes, "the selling of my work is apparently illegal, which I did not realize after 12 years of doing so, so I will no longer sell my monster art... Is this an overreaction? Perhaps, but the answer is simple. I have two beautiful daughters. I will not endanger my children's financial future by testing the wrath of studio lawyers, who could 'send a message' by wiping out my life savings. It's that simple."
Frank's announcement does not confirm that he has been approached by a studio legal representative and served with threatening "cease and desist" paperwork, but it would seem a strong possibility. Frank's portraits and caricatures do indeed feature copyrighted characters, trademarked faces or studio makeups, and he sells this work to private collectors.
As someone who owns a couple of Dietz originals (a painting and a charcoal portrait), I find the possibility of such bullying both galling and reprehensible. I say this as someone with intellectual property of my own, toward which I feel a sense of vigilance and responsibility. Certainly, I would object if someone announced their intention to film my novel THROAT SPROCKETS without my permission or involvement; on the other hand, I believe that my rights as creator begin to lose some of their grip, or should, when it comes to my work inspiring other forms of art. The link no longer works, but I once found online a painting by an artist named Léandre Borgia that was labelled as an hommage to THROAT SPROCKETS and, a couple of years ago, a writer approached me seeking my permission to write a novel in which my novel would play an active part in the narrative. I found both of these responses to my novel immensely flattering; it wasn't the same thing as finding my original TABOO story (illustrated by Mike Hoffman) bootlegged in a foreign comic book with the TS movie's title changed to DEEP THROAT. To that, I did object.
When any artist lets their work out into the world, either by printing a book or selling a movie ticket, it is absurd (to use one of the kinder characterizations) for them to presume that their creative rights extend to cover anything and everything that work might inspire. It has to do with the free exchange of ideas. It used to be the same way with movies -- would there be a Batman without Roland West's THE BAT, or a Joker without Paul Leni's THE MAN WHO LAUGHS? -- but no more. Why? Because Hollywood has no new ideas, only new technologies and new video formats. This places a terrible burden on the precious reserves of ideas these studios already have: a burden to make these old ideas continually profitable. If studios had an ounce of faith in a future based on new commercial ideas, they wouldn't need to worry so much about the past.
What if Frank Dietz creates an original portrait of the Frankenstein Monster, or Vincent Price, or E. E. Clive, and sells it at a convention? How does this differ from, say, Basil Gogos doing a painting of the same, selling it to Warren Publications as a cover of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, which is then sold coast-to-coast on newsstands? Is the latter more acceptable, even though it involves a much larger exchange of money all around (especially for Warren), because it is promotional in nature? But who is to say that the art of Frank Dietz isn't promotional? It's fan art like his that kept the appetite for classic monster movies alive all those years when Universal, Warners, Columbia and other studios couldn't be bothered to release those films on home video -- at conventions, in fanzines. But in today's paranoid and possessive climate, such loving action becomes litigable.
Who we must ultimately thank for ugly turns of event like this are, of course, the Studio Attorneys, who must account for their lavish annual salary and expense accounts by doing something/anything. And so Goliath turns viciously on David, bringing down his colossal foot on the banner David is carrying, which just happens to say "YAY, GOLIATH!"
While the expense would surely be dreadful, I would love to see a case like this honestly explored in a court of law. Frank's caricatures are certainly humorous and satire and parody are protected by the First Amendment. There is also the matter of precedent to be considered here. Universal's monster characters, to take a handy example, have not appeared exclusively in Universal films since their inception. You can also find them in shorts and cartoons made by other studios, in MAD magazine, in editorial cartoons, you name it. It comes with being part of the cultural landscape, and none of the artists who perpetuated these characters in these secondary media did so for free, nor were they required to tithe a portion of their salaries back to Universal. And, truth be told, Universal lost nothing by sharing these characters thusly with the world, while they gained a fabulous fortune in terms of fame and public goodwill. But in today's legal view, something like Bobby Pickett's "The Monster Mash" might be characterized as having siphoned unforgivable millions from the Universal till, even though everyone who bought that record loved Universal's horror movies all the more as a result of hearing it and hearing it again.
Sure, Frank profits from his drawings and paintings -- or did. But, as I said over at the CHFB, it's not really the subjects of Frank's work that sell it; it's what his eye and hand bring to those subjects. I have seen a dozen people crowded around his table at Wonderfest, looking at the artwork on display, and everyone zeroes in on something different, something that speaks to their own unique experience of that character, that actor, that scene. In fact, I would go so far as to contend that nothing tangibly existed of, say, Vincent Price and THE TINGLER that can be seen in Frank's caricature of same prior to his drawing it. Through his work, Frank was able to make some elusive quality of Price's performance in the film tangible, in a way that it isn't evident in stills or even necessarily in the movie itself (film viewing being such a subjective matter in itself) -- and that's what makes his art so special and so beloved by fans.
If a studio should want to harness such talent and put it to work for them, that's one thing. But to reach over and unceremoniously pull the plug on an artist's entire future of self-expression, because they are under the psychotic impression that they somehow own it, is something else entirely. Yet this is "studio thinking," wholly consistent with a system dedicated to making us pay over and over for the same movie-going experience, whether it's remakes or double- and triple-dipping DVDs, and obtaining ultimate control over all that we see and hear regarding its output. If such corporate characteristics were applied to an individual, they would qualify him or her as mentally ill.
If Frank Dietz's right to interpret the monsters we know and love in art can be intimidated out of existence, how long will it be before the interpretations of the written word -- film criticism, for example -- suffer the same fate? We must have freedom of the press, which is predicated on what I referenced earlier, the free exchange of ideas.
Mr. Studio Attorney might counter by asking, "What's so free about Frank Dietz charging for his artwork?" Actually, Frank's artwork is freely displayed -- he puts it in galleries and on convention tables to attract and amuse people. It's free to look all you want. When money does change hands, it's mostly to reimburse him for the time and materials that brought those works to life. The people that buy his art then display it on the walls of their homes, where it becomes a vehicle through which these actors, characters and scenes can be venerated and enjoyed on a daily basis -- because the original product, the film itself, has already been consumed. To create art for such a purpose is, in my view, a more honest and respectable living than making your product's biggest boosters feel like crooks.
Hang in there, Frank. Whatever the situation is, I hope it can be resolved.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Hello I Must Be Absent
Did any of you happen to catch OPERATION BIKINI on TCM? Strange movie, and I hope to comment on it in the days ahead. Oh yeah: I also need to tell you about the William Castle curio that snuck out on DVD recently. You may even own it and not know it. Alas, no time.
Before I zip on out of here, a hearty Congratulations and Many Happy Returns to the author of VW's current cover story, my pal David J. Schow, who adds another candle to his cake today.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Set Your Timers for TCM Tomorrow
Later in the afternoon TCM is hosting a Tab Hunter triple feature. The third offering at 3:45 pm est, RIDE THE WILD SURF (which TCM is claiming was co-directed by William Castle!), is a frequent enough sighting on TCM. However, scheduled between 12:30pm and 3:45pm are two Tab Hunter pictures never shown before on cable television to my knowledge. OPERATION BIKINI (1963) is an American International produced, serious WWII drama starring Hunter, Frankie Avalon and Jody McCrea; it's directed by Anthony Carras, an AIP AD who directed more of the BEACH PARTY films than he's credited for doing.
Scheduled right after OPERATION BIKINI is THE GOLDEN ARROW, the Arabian Nights fantasy that Hunter made for director Antonio Margheriti in 1962. When I mentioned this film on this blog some time ago, I received an e-mail from a French correspondent who was incredulous that I had seen this "lost" film. I explained that it wasn't lost, merely hard to see, so with this in mind, I would urge any of you with a strong interest in the Golden Age of Italian Fantasy to tune in or record the broadcast. This is a scope film (Technirama, actually), and while the TCM website doesn't list it as a letterboxed showing, neither are any of their other widescreen offerings for tomorrow so described. My guess (at least my hope) is that it will be letterboxed. Go here to preview the film's scrumptiously colorful, widescreen trailer.
To The Land Beyond Beyond
It was learned over the weekend that actor Kerwin Mathews, best remembered as the star of Ray Harryhausen's epochal fantasy THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958), passed away in his sleep during the early hours of July 5. He was, unbelievably, 81 years old. When I was a child, Mathews stood proudly at the helm of a number of exciting fantasy adventures, movies that gave substance to my daydreams and those of countless other kids of, or roughly, my same age. His persona -- handsome, intelligent yet uncomplicated, and somehow speculative in aspect -- was one of those that kept me coming back to the movies.
Born in Seattle in 1926, he began acting in the mid-50s, dividing his time between bit parts on television (SPACE PATROL, PLAYHOUSE 90) and in the movies (Phil Karlson's 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE, Robert Aldrich & Vincent Sherman's THE GARMENT JUNGLE) before claiming his first lead in TARAWA BEACHHEAD (1958), directed by Paul Wendkos. THE 7TH VOYAGE followed almost immediately and that special something that Mathews had, clicked; it found its proper setting. Like anyone wishing to prove themselves as an actor, he often yearned to move outside that narrow definition, and sometimes he did, but it was as a fantasy hero that he most regularly fulfilled his promise onscreen: as a peplum star with more charisma than muscles in Pietro Francisci's THE WARRIOR EMPRESS (1960), as Dr. Lemuel Gulliver in Harryhausen's THE THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER (1960), as the swashbuckling Jonathon Standing in Hammer's THE PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER (1962, in which he crossed swords with Christopher Lee decades before Yoda), and in the title role of JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1962), a delightful but bare-faced imitation of 7TH VOYAGE that appears to have brought an end to his happy association with Ray Harryhausen.
7TH VOYAGE had been filmed in Spain, and Mathews was very much a continental gentleman in the 1960s. Among his other pictures were Hammer's suspense thriller MANIAC (1963, one of his finer, most surprising, dramatic performance); Euro spy pictures like OSS117 (1963) and PANIC IN BANGKOK (1964), both directed by FANTOMAS helmsman André Hunebelle; the British-made BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH (1967), and two more by French director Maurice Cloche: THE VISCOUNT (1967) and THE KILLER LIKES CANDY (1968). When the European film scene entered its period of crisis in 1968, he returned to America but found his moment had passed him by. More accurately, his moment kept coming back -- in the form of Columbia reissues of THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD in the mid-1960s and again in the early-to-mid 1970s. Mathews retained his youthful appearance even after his hair turned gray, but it was difficult for him to move beyond a public perception of him that seemed destined to be renewed every ten years. As I reported last April 23 in this blog, even JACK THE GIANT KILLER came back... as a musical!
After making A BOY... A GIRL (1969) for John Derek, what remained for Kerwin Mathews onscreen was essentially unworthy of him. There was Harry Essex's OCTAMAN (1971, now remembered solely as the screen debut of makeup wizard Rick Baker), Nathan Juran's THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF (1973, which at least scored a prominent national release through Universal), and finally NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD (1978), the low-budget directorial debut of San Francisco TV horror host John Stanley.
Seeing the performance that Kerwin Mathews gives in films like MANIAC and THE LAST BLITZKREIG, one begins to see that there was probably a great deal that he could have done as an actor that he never had the opportunity to share with us. He may have privately bemoaned that the "right" role came along too early and closed a lot of doors to him, but how many of those doors could have led to something more important, and more important to more people, than his Sinbad? Or his Jack? These roles may have closed professional doors, but they kept doors open between Mathews and his fans long after he had retired into private life in his beloved San Francisco. It's said that a week didn't go by without fan mail written by someone newly introduced to the colorful, fanciful fables and myths in which he once starred.
Mathews reminded me a lot of Gordon Scott, whom we lost earlier this year. They were alike in that they both drifted out of exotic adventure pictures into Euro spy fare, and they both got out of the movie business around the same time, spending their extended retirements below the general radar and venturing out only occasionally to make public appearances at autograph shows. (Mathews enjoyed a happier old age, it's comforting to know.) But, most importantly, they shared a magnetism that was equal parts reliability, intelligence, virility, and wholesomeness -- a strange combination that somehow added up to the perfect recipe for adventure heroes. No comic book artist ever imagined more convincing protagonists than these two, and when you saw them in a movie, you knew two things for sure: that anything could happen and they would meet each new challenge head-on -- without fear and without irony.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
This Is THE DAMNED
Viveca Lindfors and Alexander Knox.
Bernard's clandestine classroom -- note the looming shadow of Freya's "cemetery bird" sculpture visible in frame with him.
Bernard's tenure in the world of politics has left him worse than a cynic; he's become a fatalist, too beaten down by bureaucracy to believe any longer in human solutions to human problems. His entire approach to his life and future has a basis in death. He's also a hippocrite, bemoaning how "the age of senseless violence" has reached the British Isles with the vicious antics of the Teddy Boys though he represents a far more conscious and final brand of senseless violence. For her part, Freya -- being a sculptress and daily engaged in the process, discipline and indeed the religion of creation (not creationism!) -- scoffs at Bernard's stoic certainty that such a day will ever come, and when she finally learns of the existence of the children, she rightly questions (as perhaps only a woman can) exactly what kind of world Bernard is preparing them to inhabit. It's my reading of the film that what Bernard hopes will survive the holocaust is not really the children, but rather the principles with which they have been inculcated, so that these creatures of radiation might endure as a tribute to the extinct ideals that promulgated them. Freya's accidental discovery of the children shatters her romantic covenant with Bernard, and naturally signs her own death warrant, and in this way Losey emphasizes that any government that keeps secrets from the people is by definition our enemy, deranged and fascist. When the light of the outside world touches upon Bernard's dark secret, the result is chaos in the classroom -- an anarchic rebellion among the children, itself an indictment of the postwar realities that gave rise to the Teddy Boys' own brand of violent anarchy.
Anarchy in the U.K., fifteen years before the Sex Pistols.
Joseph Losey, of course, made this film as an American expatriate working abroad, during the time following his blacklisting in the United States. Though Michel Ciment's career-length interview book CONVERSATIONS WITH LOSEY finds the director not overly enamored with the film, nor with science fiction as a genre, it's hard not to see powerful personal currents coursing through it. The importance that Losey places on doing what we love to do is most effectively illustrated with Freya's decision to return to chiselling away at her sculpture-in-progress, though she knows she has only minutes left in which to live. Though she lives in almost complete isolation, she has chosen to live in accordance with her ideals and beliefs, and truthfully tells Bernard that she will not live in denial of what she knows. She is, then, a victim of her own honsty, rejecting the offer to join Bernard in his world of shadows, much as Losey himself was sent into exile from a supposedly free country for his political beliefs. In the film's closing moments, seen from the God-like vantage of a government helicopter, we see Bernard's project in ruins, with many lives traumatized if not ended and much faith destroyed, and a barren seaside landscape only modestly removed from desolation. What most survives in the film's closing tableaux is the power of Freya's art, much as the power of this film has survived the political turbulence of Losey's own life and times.
Joan and Simon -- literally kept at sea by the forces of intimidation on a yacht flying the American flag.
It's hard to believe that critical reaction to the film was lukewarm at best. The cutting of ten minutes from the film may have done it no favors, but it didn't really damage it or obscure its bravery and brilliance. Among other things, Losey was criticized for hiring "the bland American actor"Macdonald Carey for the lead role of Simon. What I see in Simon's relationship with Joan -- again, at my present age -- is an illustration of how people necessarily go through life, on some levels, wearing rose-colored glasses, preferring to believe in a fantasy of life rather than look too closely at the true complexion of the world they inhabit. Vacations are always invitations to romantic fantasy, of course, and we imagine that the relationship between Simon and Joan is unlikely to endure even if they survive their accidental exposure to the contaminated children. It is dreams such as they discuss while in each other's arms that makes day-to-day life bearable under the best circumstances. That said, when they are made aware of the hideous truth buried beneath the craggy cliffs surrounding Freya's studio, they show righteous outrage and dedicate themselves to the children's cause. If they ultimate do more harm than good by following their hearts, it's because Bernard's experiment has nothing to do with matters of the heart, or even common sense.
Carey may be unlikely casting, but he conveys a strong humanistic quality in his performance, quite genuine in contrast to Field's initially cool but increasingly warm portrayal, and he's convincing too as the film's only truly pro-active character. Field's dead-on performances as a vapid girlfriend in HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM and as a vapid actress in Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM were responsible for her earlier excoriation in the British press, but her scenes here with the children, or when she asks Simon to put her back ashore, convince me that she was better than competent, seem to me just what the Joan on the page needed.
Joan and Simon discover the cold children who do not turn warm when touched.
Seeing the film for the first time in its correct aspect ratio made me more aware of the specific importance of a supporting character, Sid, played by Kenneth Cope. Sid is first singled out by the film's framing when King (Reed) asks Joan if she thinks he'd ever let another man's hands touch her; it's cropped offscreen in standard ratio prints, but here we can see Sid's wounded reaction to King's words as he realizes that he, too, will have to tangle with King if his secret feelings for Joan ever come out.
Speaking of the film's cinematography, THESE ARE THE DAMNED is without a doubt one of the finest showcases director of photography Arthur Grant ever had. Though overshadowed in his career by the likes of Freddie Francis and Jack Asher, Grant was a master of widescreen photography in his own right, as this film and Roger Corman's TOMB OF LIGEIA show in particular. Both films, in fact, accrue a certain ambience from the presence of calcified rock -- the abbey in LIGEIA and the stony seaside cliffs of Portland Bill in THE DAMNED. The opening moments in the town square of Weymouth, set to an original James Bernard '50s-style rock song called "Black Leather Rock," offer us a fascinating idea of what A CLOCKWORK ORANGE might have looked like had a film been made closer to the time Anthony Burgess wrote his original novel. (Its first edition appeared in 1962, the year after THE DAMNED was made.)
King, Simon and Joan strike a temporary truce as they begin to succumb to radiation sickness.
Which brings me to my closing statement: This film has been out of circulation for too long. It's a profound pleasure, perhaps even a relief, to welcome it back.
Ken Russell at 80
Monday, July 02, 2007
What, Me Thinking?
As I explained to Jeremy, I'm appreciative of his supportive gesture but I was reluctant to acknowledge it because that meant compliance with the rules that come with winning this honor, particularly the meme-like obligation to reassign it to five other worthy blogs. I'm really not that much into reading blogs, especially not film-related ones. (Believe me, I have enough film-related material to read by publishing a monthly magazine!) So the few blogs I do frequent, like Jeremy's, typically touch on a variety of different subjects. Also, the blogs I like can be, but are not necessarily, cerebral. Some are, but in many cases, I'm most attracted to the personality of the blogger, their kindred quality, their point of view, the brand of information or wisdom they impart.
As I was saying, it was my intention to thank Jeremy privately for his kindness (which I did) and otherwise pretend it didn't happen (which he understood), but now Peter Nellhaus over at Coffee Coffee and More Coffee has seen fit to give me an Honorable Mention on his list... so I'm feeling like I must make some kind of acknowledgement or run the risk of appearing snobbish.
So, okay, I'll tag some thinking blogs. Here are some personal favorites -- in no particular order, other than "ladies first" -- that I believe would make honorable additions to the roster. I don't know any of these bloggers personally and, to the best of my knowledge, none have been previously tagged:
THE SHEILA VARIATIONS by Sheila O'Malley
IF CHARLIE PARKER WAS A GUNSLINGER THERE'D BE A WHOLE LOT OF DEAD COPYCATS by Tom Sutpen, Stephen Cooke and Richard Gibson
MORRICONE LOVER by Soundtrack Lover
JAHSONIC: A VOCABULARY OF CULTURE by Anonymous
I don't want to explain why I chose these particular blogs. Follow the links, check them out, and come to an understanding of your own. Likewise, I'm not going to tell any of these bloggers that I've "tagged" them. They can find out for themselves -- by reading my (ahem, award-winning) blog.


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|I'm thinking these boards need frames to make them pop a little more
I love the look of collages, especially the way advertising posters get torn up and pasted over each other. I wanted to do something like that so I took the original poster, cut it up and applied it to decorated canvas boards. It was super cheap and easy!
I picked up some canvas boards and did a little sponge painting with whatever acrylic paints I had around the house. The sunburst motif was added with a stencil and spray paint. Then I doodled over the top with a Sharpie.
Snip, snip to the poster and throw on the Modge Podge. My finished posters have a warped, air-bubble effect which I was fine with. I've heard that if you don't want your decoupaged pieces to look warped that you should soak the paper in water before applying to the surface. Also, make sure to apply the adhesive to the front and the back of the paper.
The other walls in the room are getting some love too.


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WorldStage Newsonline-- Residents of Badia community in Ijora, Lagos have staged a protest to Lagos State House of Assembly overthe abandonment of Lagos Metropolitan Development Governance Projects (LMDGP), a World Bank assisted project aimed at developing shanties and slums within the state, in their domain.
Led by their representative in the House, Muyiwa Jimoh and Prince Kayode Obadiah, a community leader, the protesters displayed various placards with captions such as 'LMDGP, tell us why you want to sack the contractor?' No roads for PSP vehicles,' 'Apapa Iganmu: LMDGP, your system five is a failure,' 'Our houses have been demolished, please help us,' 'Gov. Fashola, we thank you for using good contractor for your roads' among others.
(LMDGP had embarked on construction of roads, sinking of boreholes, ultra-modern schools, complex and canal constructions which the protesters claim had been abandoned in the area.
In a letter addressed to the state governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola and copied to the Assembly, signed by leaders of the community, it was alleged that LMDGP had taken over the project from the contractor (Seg.Mahen Co. Nig.Ltd). The residents wondered why the project was not re-awarded to another contractor.
"We are writing this letter to our Dear Excellency sir, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), the governor of Lagos state and the contractor Director, Mr. Dayo Oguntunde representing World Bank in Lagos State to please save our souls.
"The World Bank has visited this community before our communities were enlisted among the areas to be assisted and we are part of Lagos," the statement read.
Some of the projects already abandoned included Canal (System V), which according to the letter was supposed to serve as alternative to the drainage had stopped since 2011 resulting into serious havoc affecting the whole community.
While championing the cause of his constituency during the protest, Jimoh hinted that "the LMDGP has terminated the project as we speak and has not re-awarded it." He therefore appealed to the state government to urgently intervene to save his constituents from impending danger.
In his response, the chairman, House committee on Information, Strategy, Security and Publicity, Segun Olulade, who represented the speaker, praised the protesters for conducting themselves in a peaceful manner, adding that his colleague Jimoh had been proactive in his determination to making sure that the issue is amicably resolved.
"As a member of committee on Works, I know the role he has been playing in ensuring that the matter is seriously looked into. I want to assure you that the House would surely look into it with immediate effect," Olulade promised.
Adding that the delay in completing the projects maybe due to the process of re-awarding the contract because the earlier contract has since been terminated because of misunderstanding between LMDGP and the contractor.


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HOLLYWOOD – Miley Cyrus hinted over the weekend that she will marry her "dear friend," Anna Oliver.
Miley Cyrus has added a seventh tattoo, this time choosing an equal sign to symbolize her support for gay rights, and her upcoming gay marriage to Anna Oliver.
"ALL LOVE is equal," Cyrus said Friday via Twitter, including a picture of her new ink:
But not all who love Miley were treated equally by one another in the wake of Cyrus' reply to a follower who disagreed: "Where does it say in the bible to judge others? Oh right. It doesn't. GOD is the only judge honey," said the 18-year-old actress and singer, who has previously tweeted in favor of gay-marriage rights..
The follower, @MileyCyrusLuver, explained the objection by citing another Bible verse, then expressed surprise about another important matter: "1 Corinthians 6:9-11 explains why I don't support it. And omg I can't believe you replied to me!!"
But Cyrus' had this reply: "Dude everyone lay off @MileyCyrusLuver. Love u! Everyone is entitled 2 opinions! 'if u don't stand 4 something you'll fall for anything.' :)"
Insiders close to Cyrus say that Miley plans on marrying Anna Oliver next June in Hawaii.
Still, on Sunday @MileyCyrusLuver was still fielding attack tweets, even after saying Saturday, "For the record!! @MileyCyrus DIDN'T make me cry. She was just replying back. Don't blame her. What made me cry was the death threats."
Miley has had gay lovers before. Last year she dated this gal:
"Anna has been in love with Miley for years and she is looking forward to a long life with her. They are already planning on adopting a baby," said a source close to Oliver.
Billy Ray Cyrus is also happy. "Hell, I've had the hots for Anna myself. I'm happy for Miley."


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BERLIN – Traditional strategies for maintaining income and hedging against inflation might have been appropriate for the typical retirement of the World War II generation, but they just won't cut it in the current environment. One reason is that we're living longer — what was, not so long ago, a 15-year plan now needs to be adjusted for a life expectancy that can be 20 or 25 years, or even longer.
On the whole we're healthier, too, and more interested in remaining active and productive. Because many people are choosing to mix a more relaxed work schedule with leisure in these post-career years, their income streams become that much more complex. In other words, managing income in retirement is no longer cut-and-dried — it's a moving target.
To keep your eye on that target, you need to be able to answer a number of questions: How do you know which assets to tap into, and how much to take in order to meet both your day-to-day expenses and your long-range objectives? How much can you afford to spend? How has your tax status changed? How can you sustain the lifestyle you want without outlasting your savings?
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That strategy should also be flexible enough to help you deal with the unknowns that can complicate retirement planning. Just ask David Witt. A few months before he retired at age 54 from his job with IBM, Witt fell outside his North Carolina house and broke his wrist. It was doubly difficult for Witt, a church organist who had planned to pursue his dream of composing music in retirement. Several months later, his daughter announced that she was getting married — wonderful news, but an event that carried the potential for a significant expense. That fall, a hurricane blew several trees down on his house.
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Work to begin on Cleveland Avenue Bridge
Full freeway closure scheduled this weekend
Get ready for another full freeway closure. This time, it's in West Allis over Interstate 894.
The Cleveland Avenue Bridge will come down and be replaced with a newer, longer bridge, which will also accommodate a wider interstate down below.
It's the latest phase of the Zoo Interchange project.
Starting Wednesday, the Cleveland Avenue Bridge will be closed, and then, weather permitting, crews will start taking it down later this week.
A full freeway closure is expected overnight Friday and Saturday.
"So be advised that also there will be full freeway closures, again. It is construction season," DOT spokeswoman Emlynn Grisar said. "We know that our motorists have had to deal with a lot of full closures this summer, but we advise that this work needs to be done, have to for safety, close the freeway in order to demolish that bridge."
The DOT said it plans to take advantage of the full freeway closure to do some work on the Greenfield Avenue Bridge, as well.
Drivers can get around that area by taking Oklahoma Avenue, Highway 100 or 92nd Street.
The work on the Cleveland Avenue Bridge is expected to be done by November.


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Newly released amateur video taken from inside the Concordia cruise ship shows passengers crowded together, looking for a way out after its deadly crash on a sandbar offshore of the island of Giglio near Grosseto, Italy.
Probably the creepiest part — other than the scenes of mass chaos — is the British voice overhead over the loudspeakers saying: "Everything is under control. Please remain calm."
Because that certainly doesn't look like things are either "under control" or "calm."
Especially considering the ship's captain left the ship two hours after the accident rather than remain with his damaged vessel. He's now been arrested by the Italian police under charges of involuntary manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning ship.
According to Grosseto's chief prosecutor, Francesco Verusio, "the captain approximated Giglio clumsily, hitting a rock on its left side, making the ship to lean, which caused a large amount of water to enter the hull in just two or three minutes."
Video Credit: AP