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The Autobiography Of Nicolae Ceausescu on DVD
To average Americans of the 1960s Eastern Europe was a mysterious and fearsome place. We learned about what was happening in those dreaded Iron Curtain countries only through snippets of Television news film, almost always accompanied by negative commentary. Eastern Europe was portrayed as a collection of slave states that either supported the Moscow bosses or found themselves occupied by Russian troops. The news coverage of the internal politics of the satellite countries was slim at best, unless there was a Soviet outrage to report. In a way, the propaganda prevented Americans from realizing how oppressive the basic living conditions in Eastern Europe really were, especially in a totalitarian regime like East Germany.
When Nicolae Ceauşescu's socialist government in Romania fell in 1989, he had held power for almost 35 years. Ceauşescu's image in the West was actually fairly positive, as he had made many speeches proclaiming Romania's independence from the USSR; the leader had visited Washington and London and been given awards. Only after his fall were we suddenly made aware of his regime's brutality and corruption.
The fascinating documentary The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu concerns itself exclusively with the dictator's own filmed propaganda. It has no narration, no thematic through-line and no thesis or mission statement. It is instead a chronological assemblage of largely uncut film and video. It's called an Autobiography because it's Ceauşescu's story as told by himself -- as the president controlled all of the state media and information sources, the lengthy newsreel shoots and public appearances were all staged and designed as self-promotion. Students, historians and those viewers already familiar with the facts of Ceauşescu's reign in Romania from 1965 to 1989 will be fascinated to see all of this material intact. This is how a Communist leader handles his public relations, and it is one long and uninterrupted charade. The lengthy (three hour) film is less of a conventional documentary than it is a prime-source historical archive. Viewers willing to access Wikipedia and use the disc's Who's Who DVD-R guide will be able to learn a great deal.
The filmmakers received access to the entire state-run film and video archive, which seems to have been the personal resource of Nicolae and his wife Elena. We see thirty or forty years of news film coverage, much of it in perfect condition, accompanied by extensive home movie footage. Ceauşescu is seen at the funeral of his predecessor, giving unusually dull public speeches, addressing party conferences and touring construction sites. Some of his speeches are quite vocal about Romania's independence, proclaiming that he will help protect neighboring Czechoslovakia from outside aggression by the Soviet Union. This diplomatic balancing act earns Ceauşescu visits from most of the Western heads of state. Charles DeGaulle, Prince Philip and even Richard Nixon are given huge public receptions. Interestingly, Nicolae repeatedly brings touring visitors to a bakery stocked to the rafters with delicious breads and pastries. The setup looks completely phony, especially after Ceauşescu makes the same comments, etc., during visits years apart -- it's all for show. We're told that Romania propped up its sagging economy by exporting a huge portion of its agricultural output, leaving its own people to suffer.
We see the Ceauşescus visiting other foreign capitals as well, including the U.S. -- by openly defying the U.S.S.R. on some issues Romania was able to play both ends against the middle.
The coverage of Ceauşescu's visit to North Korea is astounding. The Korean host appears to have spent his country's GNP on outrageously flamboyant spectacles to impress visiting Socialist dignitaries. The roads are lined with thousands of carefully costumed and color-coordinated greeters waving flowers. A massive square must hold 50 or 60 thousand costumed dancers holding flowers and parasols, all moving in unison. Moving shots from vehicles show endless lines of performers, with the most beautiful women smiling up front. A rally at a sports stadium is more of the same. A giant decorative biplane 'flies' over the field and a vast card section in the stands depicts enormous artwork and lengthy slogans in Romanian. Ceauşescu and his interpreter are dazzled, while the North Korean dictator smiles at his "little amusement thrown together for the afternoon."
When Elena Ceauşescu appears in official footage she always wears fairly drab clothes, as if playing the Pat Nixon role of the humble wife of an honest politician. She's careful not to look too elegant in the home movies either, even when the family is photographed on fancy boats, etc. Nicolae begins the show looking quite young. In his 40s he's gained weight but has a look of experience about him; photos from this era would remain his official image even as his appearance changed with age.
One interesting kinescoped episode at a big re-election meeting shows a speaker rather lamely expressing displeasure with the president's rule. He's shouted down by a chorus of delegates shouting Ceauşescu's name. The moment seems so unlikely, that we wonder if the guy were asked to fake his speech, so as to trigger a "spontaneous and unrehearsed" group endorsement of Romania's unopposed leader.
We do note that events don't always seem to be in chronological order, at least not at first glance. The one major editorial imposition is the use of a crude videotape made on December 22 1989, during an ad hoc trial. Just a few days earlier Ceauşescu had ordered his troops to fire on demonstrators in the city of Timisoara. His government immediately collapsed and he and Elena were arrested as they tried to flee the country. In the videotape we see Nicolae and Elena refusing to answer questions (which he does anyway) and proclaiming that he is still president. Director Andrea Ujica places parts of this footage at the very beginning and very end of the show. What the docu presumes we already know, is that Nicolae and Elena would be shot by a firing squad just a few minutes later.
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu is not a conventional documentary but a record of the way a despot promoted the idea that he and the state were inseparable: the 'cult of personality'. He immodestly declared himself a genius by presidential edict. Only those that read further will get an idea of how harshly Ceauşescu ran Romania. He stacked the government with family members and cronies and his totalitarian state controlled all information sources. Dissent was brutally repressed. The visual document on view here presents a political monster playing the role of a warm and humanitarian leader.
Kino Lorber's DVD of The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu has given this recent film an excellent encoding. Much of the film footage is in pristine condition. Occasional video sources from odd formats and the much later home video footage of course does not look as good as the 35mm news film. Many sequences are in very good color, especially the spectacular North Korean gala reception. The film is fully subtitled in English but the subs are not removable. A theatrical trailer samples images with a maximum visual interest.
A DVD-Rom extra called Who's Who partly addresses an issue that many might feel is a major drawback with the disc, unless one happens to be very familiar with Cold War politics and Romanian political personalities. None of the dozens of politicians, party figures and world leaders are identified during the course of the film. Only those viewers prepared to compete on Jeopardy will be able to name many of them. It's also probable that younger viewers will need help to identify men like Charles DeGaulle and even Jimmy Carter.
The ideal solution may have been impractical -- add a second subtitle stream that displays name IDs, dates, locations. The disc distributor AnimEigo is adept at using subtitle tracks to annotate its Japanese samurai films with definitions of odd words and explanations of obscure concepts, etc. The Who's Who DVD-Rom extra is a text file packed with information on at least a hundred personages seen in the film, each accompanied by a photo. Most are Romanian party officials and Ceauşescu relatives, but the long list includes leaders from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China and North Korea. It represents quite a lot of concentrated research.
By Glenn Erickson
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New Books
A Girl's Got to Breathe: The Life of Teresa Wright
By Donald Spoto
"A girl's got to breathe!" Teresa Wright to Gary Cooper after receiving a lengthy kiss in The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Teresa Wright lived a rich and complex life against the backdrop of Hollywood's Golden Age. She worked with some of the leading actors of that generation in beloved films including Mrs. Miniver, The Pride of the Yankees, Shadow of a Doubt, and The Best Years of Our Lives
"I never wanted to be a star," she told the noted biographer Donald Spoto at dinner in 1978. "I wanted only to be an actress." She began acting on the stage in summer stock and repertory at the age of eighteen. When Thornton Wilder and Jed Harris saw her in an ingénue role, she was chosen to understudy the part of Emily in the original production of Our Town (1938), which she then played in touring productions. Samuel Goldwyn saw her first starring role on Broadway--in the historic production of Life with Father and immediately offered her a long contract.
She was the only actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for her first three pictures -The Little Foxes; Pride of the Yankees; and Mrs. Miniver), and she won for the third film. Movie fans and scholars to this day admire her performance in the classics Shadow of a Doubt and The Best Years of Our Lives. The circumstances of her tenure at Goldwyn, and the drama of her breaking that contract, forever changed the treatment of stars. She had two rocky marriages, the first to writer Niven Busch--who wrote Duel in the Sun for her but she had to drop out when she became pregnant--and then to writer Robert Anderson. Both ended in divorce.
Spoto had the cooperation of Wright's family and heirs and also had exclusive access to her papers and letters. He draws on a number of interviews and anecdotes from a variety of directors and actors who worked with the actress including Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, Karl Malden, Jean Simmons, Bette Davis and many more.
Donald Spoto is the author of twenty-nine books published in more than twenty-six languages including The Dark Side of Genius, High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly and Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn.
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The Ice Cream Blonde: The Whirlwind Life and Mysterious Death of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd
By Michelle Morgan
Thelma Todd began her career in silent movies but went on to work with Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers, and make a series of hilarious shorts with Patsy Kelly. She was a savvy businesswoman who opened her own successful nightclub and a beloved comedienne who's mysterious death has intrigued film fans for years.
This new biography of the actress dubbed "the Ice Cream Blonde" traces Todd's life beginning with her as a vivacious little girl growing up in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Her brother's death changed the dynamics of the family. Todd wanted to go to college but her mother insisted she enter beauty contests. The reluctant daughter became a beauty queen.
It wasn't long before the movies beckoned and Todd found herself in demand as an actress. She worked steadily throughout the mid-to-late 1920s and made the successful transition to sound.
Increasingly disenchanted with Hollywood, in 1934 Todd opened Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café, a hot spot that attracted fans, tourists, and celebrities. Despite success in film and business, privately the beautiful actress was having a difficult year including receiving disturbing threats from a stranger known as the Ace and having her home ransacked. It all ended tragically when she was found dead in a garage near her café. An inquest concluded that her death, at twenty-nine, was accidental, but in a thorough new investigation that draws on interviews, photographs, documents, and extortion notes-much of these not previously available to the public--the author offers a compelling new theory that the vivacious young actress was murdered.
But by whom? The suspects include Thelma's movie-director lover, her would-be-gangster ex-husband, and the thugs who were pressuring her to install gaming tables in her popular café. This fresh examination on the eightieth anniversary of the star's death raises interesting questions and is sure to interest any fan of Thelma Todd or of Hollywood's Golden Age.
Michelle Morgan is the author of The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals, The Mammoth Book of Madonna, and several books about Marilyn Monroe: Marilyn Monroe: Private and Confidential, Before Marilyn: The Blue Book Modeling Years, and Marilyn's Addresses: A Fan's Guide to the Places She Knew.
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Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story
By Mollie Gregory
Stunt players are often the unsung heroes of filmmaking. They rarely receive recognition for the harrowing work they do to make the leading actors and villains look convincing. This is often even more true for women in the stunt industry.
In the early days of filmmaking, women were highly involved in all aspects of film production, from writing to editing to directing to stunt work. But as the movies matured and sound was introduced, women found their roles curtailed. Capable stuntwomen found themselves on the sidelines as stuntmen donned wigs and women's clothes to double as actresses. As a result very few stuntwomen found work between the 1930s and the 1960s.
Not until the political movements of the late 1960s and the 1970s raised the issue of flagrant sexism and discrimination did the number of working stuntwomen begin to increase. But even as late as the 1990s, stuntmen were still doubling for actresses and some were "painted down" for more convincing performances.
For decades, stuntwomen have faced institutional discrimination, unequal pay and sexual harassment even as they jumped from speeding trains and raced horse-drawn carriages away from burning buildings. They've traded punches in knockdown brawls, crashed biplanes through barns and raced to the rescue in fast cars.
Featuring sixty-five interviews, Stuntwomen showcases the absorbing stories and uncommon courage of women who make their living planning and performing action-packed sequences that keep viewers' hearts racing.
Mollie Gregory is the author of Women Who Run the Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood, 1973-2000 .
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Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays
By Karie Bible and Mary Mallory
We have all seen those wonderful black and white photographs of stars posing for holiday pictures--Bette Davis posing amidst a box of chocolates (Valentine's Day), Mae West as Lady Liberty (4th of July), Clifton Webb carving a turkey (Thanksgiving), W.C. Fields as old Saint Nick (Christmas), and just about everybody helping to sell War Bonds during World War II.
Marvelously illustrated with more than 200 rare images from the silent era through the 1970s, this joyous treasure trove features film and television's most famous actors and actresses as well as starlets on the brink of discovery, celebrating the holidays, big and small, in beautiful re-produced photographs.
The images were often taken by legendary stills photographers and the entire book harkens back to the Golden Age of Hollywood when motion picture studios devised elaborate publicity campaigns to promote their stars and to keep their names and faces in front of the movie-going public all year round.
From Clara Bow to Elizabeth Taylor to Ann-Margaret, there is a wonderful mix of black and white and color photography throughout the book.
Karie Bible is the 'Historian in Black,' at the famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery where she gives guided tours and shares with visitors the stories of the famous and nearly forgotten who are buried at the Cemetery. She co-authored the book, Location Filming in Los Angeles with Marc Wanamaker and Harry Medved. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Mary Mallory is a film historian, photograph archivist, and researcher, focusing on Los Angeles and early film history. She is the author of Hollywoodland and she blogs on early Hollywood history for The Daily Mirror. She serves on Hollywood Heritage, Inc.'s Board of Directors, and acts as a docent for the Hollywood Heritage Museum. She lives in Studio City, California.
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DVD Reviews
Point Blank on Blu-ray
When documentary filmmaker John Boorman made the leap to feature filmmaking with Catch Us If You Can (aka Having a Wild Weekend, 1965), a low-budget rock-n-roll vehicle for the Dave Clark Five, he transformed the quickie into a surprisingly biting satire of popular culture set to a bouncy soundtrack, displaying a remarkable sophistication and creativity unexpected from such a project. It was enough to land him his first American film, Point Blank, where he revealed an even greater ambition and talent.
Based on the novel The Hunter by Richard Stark (a pen name for Donald Westlake), Point Blank shuffles the lean, straight-forward story of a gunman named Walker (Lee Marvin), who is double crossed by his partner in crime and returns (seemingly from the dead) for revenge, into a surreal, abstracted crime drama. The plot is faithful to original novel, a hard-boiled piece of crime fiction reimagined for the underworld culture of the sixties, but Boorman and Marvin, who requested the young director and supported his unconventional vision for the film, refract it through a modern lens. Walker's odyssey from Alcatraz in San Francisco to the underworld of Los Angeles is splintered with short, sharp shards of memory that cut through his story, as if reflecting Walker's attempts to put the pieces of cause and effect together in his mind.
Boorman views L.A. through an alienated lens and edits it more like a European art film than an American crime thriller, but fills it with offbeat, ultra-stylized scenes of violence. It opens on a gunshot that should have killed him and he struggles to put it all together when he wakes up: "Cell. Prison cell. How did I get here?" Marvin is enigmatic, to say the least, as he tracks down his unfaithful, guilt-ridden wife (Sharon Acker), his wife's sister (Angie Dickinson), his old friend turned double-crossing heist partner Mal Reese (John Veron), and finally the syndicate bigwigs, all just to get his due: "I want my 93 grand."
This vision of urban Los Angeles is alternately crowded and noisy and urban, and austere and empty and dislocated. His footsteps echoing through an empty, anonymous hallway becomes the disembodied beat of his march of revenge. A scatting, screaming R&B singer at a chic night spot called The Film Club is the feral soundtrack of a brutal backstage fight, at once visceral and abstracted in the clutter of 35mm film cans and nightclub supplies. The aftermath of a suicide becomes a psychedelic vision of destruction, which disappears in a cut to the apartment suddenly empty, a ghost house with no evidence of life or death, just transition.
The dialogue is loaded with references to "a dream" and characters constant remind Walker that he's supposed to be dead. Keenan Wynn adds another level of remove as the devil whispering in Walker's ear, another unreal figure with a carefully concealed agenda who is preternaturally attuned to Walker's movements. More than an informant, he appears from nowhere to provide a name, an address, a piece of information on the trail to the top man in the Organization as Walker's debt keeps getting passed up the chain of command.
Walker is both an unstoppable sentinel who seems more than flesh and blood and a vulnerable man wounded by betrayal who has armored over his emotions with a mission. Marvin delivers both sides of the character without compromising either. There's a cold fury under his deliberate movements and his eyes betray a moment of regret and sadness when he finds his wife dead by her own hand, but it is all pushed down and kept in check by his single-minded focus. "I just want my money" is his mantra, not a matter of greed but a debt to be settled to balance the scales. Marvin is at once deliberate and relaxed, a veteran criminal soldier alert to everything, which makes his character even more fascinating. He doesn't demand attention on screen, he commands it through confidence and ability and cool focus.
That alone makes him more admirable than Mal, who is played by John Vernon as an oily, arrogant, amoral rat, selling out anyone and everyone to buy his way back into the Organization. The rest of the members of the cast don't play characters as much as cogs, functionaries in a criminal enterprise as a cutthroat corporation, simply doing their jobs as if Walker was a rival in a hostile takeover. Only Angie Dickinson's Chris has the passion and fury and emotional life of a human being, siding with Walker out of both loyalty and for payback against Mal ("He makes my flesh crawl") and the Organization that has taken over her business and her life. Sharon Acker, who plays Walker's wife, comes off less haunted than simply weak. She barely leaves an impression, which is fitting for her character but fails to offer any sense of tragedy to her story, and she's almost instantly forgotten after she exits the film. It's really the only weak element of the film, which otherwise is strong, confident, and sure from beginning to end.
Point Blank has been called a modern film noir but it has more in common with Performance, another crime thriller that fractures time, offers enigmatic and ambiguous characters, and equates organized crime with big business. Boorman delivers meticulously executed set pieces that are designed for the wide CinemaScope frame with a sure sense of space and a dispassionate perspective. He emphasizes intelligence over action and presents Walker as total professional, never flustered and always emotionally removed from the situation. And if Walker is an extreme incarnation of the revenge driven noir anti-hero, the modern syndicate has transformed the old school mob into a world of paper jungles and corporate businessmen, an alienating concept to a two-fisted, gun-wielding independent like Walker. "Profit is the only principle," is their motto. Almost 50 years later, it's more modernist than modern, a fascinating time capsule of an era when young directors brought nouvelle vague style to classic genres, and a cryptic crime thriller that turns Marvin into the most enigmatic criminal professional in the movies.
Boorman creates a hard, austere look for the film and the new Blu-ray delivers a sharp clarity to his vision of Los Angeles as an impersonal modern city. Apart from a few scenes, he strips the frame down to isolated figures in an empty urban landscape under the hard light of the California sun. It's an urban desert and the disc preserves that atmosphere of a ghost city by day and a shadowy underworld at night when the crowds gather on the streets and in the clubs. The impersonal palette of concrete surfaces and blank office interiors in the day gives way to the color of human habitation after dark, which oddly enough has a warmer atmosphere than the harsh light of day.
Carried over from the earlier DVD release is an audio commentary track with director John Boorman and fellow director Steven Soderbergh, a fan of the film who essentially hosts the commentary. He engages Boorman in conversations about the film's style, the use of color and camera lenses, working with Lee Marvin (who became close friends with Boorman), and making his Hollywood debut with a film that refused to play by the studio rules. Soderbergh's The Limey was clearly indebted to Point Blank in both its theme of revenge and in its fractured storytelling and unconventional use of flashbacks. Taking part in this commentary is like paying tribute to his inspiration.
Also features the vintage promotional featurette The Rock (in two parts), which looks at shooting the film on location in Alcatraz, and the original trailer.
by Sean Axmaker
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Ravenous on Blu-ray
Ravenous (1999) channels the story reminiscent of the Donner Party disaster and the legend of Alferd Packer (the only American ever convicted of cannibalism) into a gruesome survival thriller with a crimson-hued streak of black humor and an elemental hint of the supernatural. The resulting film takes top honors as the definitive frontier cannibal movie. Not that there's a long list to choose from, mind you, but this earns its position with honors, thanks to a gleefully weird and savagely bloodthirsty sensibility.
Guy Pearce is Captain John Boyd, whose battle cowardice during the Mexican-American war inadvertently results in making him an accidental hero. The ordeal of playing dead under the bleeding corpses of his fellow officers also puts him off meat, as the opening scenes so vividly illustrate. Director Antonia Bird cuts straight to the heart of the situation as she intercuts soldiers devouring bleeding-rare steaks at a military luncheon with the bloody casualties of battle stacked like cordwood: meat is meat, at least as far as this film is concerned. Boyd's commanding officer (John Spencer of The West Wing), who knows that his valor is a fraud, ships him out to the fringes of military reach: a fort in a California mountain pass, which runs with a minimal compliment during the impassable winter months. "This place thrives on tedium," smiles fort commander Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones), who takes everything with a bemused indulgence. How else to survive a company made up of a useless drunk second-in-command(Stephen Spinella), a giggling weed-head idiot (David Arquette), a twitchy, mumbling chaplain (Jeremy Davies), and a macho soldier boy (Neal McDonough) who holds the rest of the company in utter contempt?
The tedium is quickly dispersed when a bedraggled disaster survivor (Robert Carlyle) stumbles into camp. He spins a horrific story of a lost wagon train and an incompetent scout who strands them in the mountains, where as the winter snows traps them and desperation leads to feeding on human flesh. It's a tale right out of the Donner Party until it turns feral, but it's not even close to the real story of Carlyle's wild-eyed survivor. For a starving man, he looks remarkably fit when he doffs his shirt, and other clues suggest that this is no production gaffe. One night, while camping on the trail to his old camp to search for survivors, he's caught licking the bleeding wounds of an injured soldier. You know, tasting his next potential meal.
That's when the film takes its twist into weird and wild horror, a bizarre plot that doesn't really make much logical sense but sure makes for a wicked mix of psychodrama and visceral body horror. The Native American Wendigo myth is referenced to explain madness, but you could say it's a vampire tale without the supernatural dimension--it turns out human flesh is addictive, and it helps to have a nest of fellow flesh-eaters to keep the diet coming--or call it a particularly gruesome metaphor for manifest destiny. However you label it, it is off-the-charts crazy, an eat-or-be-eaten thriller served very, very rare.
British director Antonia Bird seems like an odd match for this material. She honed her craft on TV drama and made her reputation with the tough, wrenching dramas Priest and Face, two films with complex characters and socially conscious themes. What they have in common with Ravenous is star Robert Carlyle, who recommended Bird after the film's original director Milcho Manchevski was let go after three weeks and the producer's chosen replacement, Raja Gosnell, was rejected by the cast. Bird (who passed away last year at the relatively young age of 62 after a battle with thyroid cancer) was frustrated by the conditions of the production and the oversight of the producers and she complained that her cut was compromised in post-production. That may explain the awkward pace, jarring turns, and a climax that feels tossed together--an uninspired way to end such a devious film--but she is clearly the architect of the odd, offbeat key of the film's blackly comic tone and surreal atmosphere and Carlyle is her partner in outsized madness. He leads the cast in playing their eccentricities big, though next to Carlyle's juicy performance, Arquette and Davies come off more like actor's studio sketches in twitchy weirdness or fidgety indecision than actual characters. Guy Pearce provides the contrast, creating a character fighting to maintain control and keep his emotions and his reflexive revulsion in check as everyone else lets their freak flag fly. It oddly enough makes him the most intense character on screen. As all that fear and disgust and anxiety just bottles up behind his desperate eyes and increasingly battered body, Pearce shows us the toll this ordeal exacts on him. In this survival drama, he's the one in true survival mode.
Scream Factory's Blu-ray features a solid new HD transfer that preserves the dynamic contrast between the white-out daylight scenes of snow and the ominous shadows of the deep forest and the dark rough-hewn quarters of the frontier fort. Night doesn't have to fall for the darkness to seep into the image. Given the elemental quality of the imagery--much of the film takes place in the snowbound wilderness, with the Tatra Mountains of Slovakia standing in for California--the transfer has a satisfying level of grain that not only preserves the texture of the film but gives the entire atmosphere an added level of authenticity. These images feel like they were carved into the film.
The film was previously released on DVD over a decade ago with three separate commentary tracks. Director Antonia Bird and composer Damon Albarn team up for the most informative track, with Bird talking in detail about the physical challenges of the production. Screenwriter Ted Griffin and co-star Jeffrey Jones tend to lapse into silences in their track and actor Robert Carlyle is even more intermittent in his the solo track. Also carried over from the earlier disc is a collection of deleted scenes (many of them in rough-cut form) with optional commentary by Bird and a gallery of stills. New to this edition is a 20-minute interview with Jeffrey Jones, who looks back on the themes of the film.
by Sean Axmaker
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Southern Comfort on Blu-ray
A motley crew of Louisiana National Guardsman wade out into the swamps for weekend maneuvers. It's 1973, as the war in Vietnam is grinding away the soul of America and the heart of the military, and this platoon of weekend warriors--a volatile collection of rednecks, hotheads, jokers, and guys who probably signed up to steer clear of the draft--are like fresh recruits going into battle for the first time. They've got the fatigues and the cocky attitude but dubious discipline and training and their machine guns are loaded with blanks as they head into the bayou. To the Cajun swamp folk, the trappers and hunters living on the fringes of society, these men are invaders who trample their camps and steal their boats. And when one of the soldiers lets loose a burst from his weapon, laughing like the class bully after humiliating the new kid, these shadowy swamp dwellers defend themselves, becoming a guerilla strike force waging a war of terror on the utterly unprepared toy soldiers. They don't know that it's just blanks in those guns but it likely wouldn't matter if they did. They've been attacked and they will respond. These city dwellers are out their element and after their commanding officer (Peter Coyote) is gone, the first casualty in the war of attrition, they are out of their depth, flailing around with a panic that dumps their radio, compass, map, and pretty much everything else that was supposed to keep them alive.
Southern Comfort will never be mistaken for a Nation Guard recruitment tool. Call it an anti-platoon movie. Hill gives the squad the outward accoutrements of a real fighting force, down to the uniforms and weapons, but this is a military unit in name only. Beyond the swaggering banter of the soldiers and self-deprecating comments of Spencer (Keith Carradine), the self-appointed company joker, they have no real training, no experience under fire, and no commitment to one another. These guys are more like barroom buddies playing soldier than a disciplined force.
There are two voices of restraint in the wilderness, Spencer and new guy Hardin (Powers Booth), a transfer from Texas who doesn't know anyone in the company but sizes up their weaknesses quickly and realizes that they haven't much a chance as long as wild cards like Reece (Fred Ward) and Stuckey (Lewis Smith) go charging through the swamps looking for payback. Casper (Les Lannom) takes command by virtue of an essentially meaningless detail of rank and bumbles around quoting regulations and making speeches, doggedly following the book because he hasn't a clue what to do next. The filmmakers don't make him a figure of ridicule, mind you, just a guy falling back on the only thing he knows. In fact, none of them are necessarily "bad guys," though like any Hill ensemble, it has its share of jerks, bullies, racists, and anger management candidates and the pressure brings out their worst instincts.
So yes, it's a story of American soldiers in an alien land, lost in an unfamiliar landscape and outmaneuvered by a guerrilla army at home in the jungle. Director / screenwriter Walter Hill and producer / co-screenwriter David Giler insist to this day that Southern Comfort was never intended to be an allegory for Vietnam, simply a survival tale in an overwhelming and unfamiliar environment. It's hard to take them at face value but it is easy to forget the allegory in the heat of the drama. It also shares DNA with Deliverance, another film about city boys with guns who take their sense of ownership and entitlement into the wilderness, threaten the locals, and end up hunted by them. But where John Boorman's primal thriller turns his Appalachian backwoods men into brutal outlaws who take pleasure in stalking the city invaders, Hill and Giler keep their Cajun soldiers hidden, seen as figures in the distance or blurs running behind the trees, ghosts on the fringes of sight. They treat the would-be soldier like wild game, silently shadowing their progress and whipping them into a state of panic to steer them into their traps. And whatever the short-fused guys in the platoon think, this is no cultural conspiracy to wipe out the invaders. Their enemy consists of a handful of isolated hunters who didn't start the war but by God are determined to finish it. The rest of the Cajun folks they meet don't seem to be a part of it, though after a couple of days in the swamps, the paranoia is powerful enough to make every sidelong glance look ominous. Ry Cooder's eerie and haunting score only intensifies the paranoia.
What ultimately differentiates them from the soldiers of a classical platoon drama is that they haven't bonded under fire and have never had to put their trust in one another. This group unravels and tears itself apart from fear and panic and unfocused rage. And in classic Hill manner, there are no philosophical musings or existential conversations. The closest the film comes to putting its theme into words is from the mantra of a terrified Simms (Franklyn Seales), who finds himself cut off from the group and suddenly aware of just how vulnerable he is. "I'm not supposed to be here," he repeats, as if begging the universe to correct some cosmic planning error. And then he's no longer there.
While this band of infighting brothers wades blindly through the swamp without a clue as to their bearings or direction, Hill's direction never falters. He has always had a sure hand as a storyteller, keeping his plots uncluttered and letting the details of character, conflict, and the world around them define the story. Southern Comfort limits the world to the middle of the swamp, where we (like the soldiers) are unable to find any point of reference, and observes how the discomfort of the environment and the constant disorientation takes its toll on what little good sense the characters bring with them to the mission. It exacerbates the already dysfunctional dynamics of this platoon of battle virgins and is as deadly on its own as the native hunters who use the environment as a weapon in their arsenal. It's not necessarily skill or even luck that saves the guardsmen who survive the ordeal. In classic Hill fashion, it is a matter of intelligence, awareness, teamwork, and the commitment to do what is necessary to survive. There's no sense of victory in survival, merely relief.
Blu-ray / DVD Combo Pack. Both discs feature the new HD master but the Blu-ray of course features superior clarity and richness of color. Both are clean, strong images while the Blu-ray shows off excellent detail. The Dolby Digital Mono soundtrack puts the mix right up front. A couple of scenes of chaos and confusion overwhelm the dialogue with background sound, which is surely intentional but still seems a little out of balance to my ears.
New to this release in an original 27-minute featurette with new interviews with actors Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Lewis Smith, and Peter Coyote and, on low-resolution video via Skype, director Walter Hill and producer David Giler, who collaborated on the script with Hill. The actors share stories of shooting in the Louisiana swamps in February with wet suits under their uniforms, six weeks of working in the cold and damp, and they remind us that they were all in it together. The crew endured the same conditions so no one had the right to complain. More interesting is the discussion around the themes of the film. Hill and Giler maintain that while they did not intentionally set out to make a Vietnam allegory they were aware that audiences would make that connection, while the actors admit that they knew it was an allegory from the moment they read the script. Keith Carradine's reading is particularly detailed and interesting. Curiously, none of the six participants mention Deliverance.
Carried over from the old DVD release is a brief collection of outtakes and the original trailer. All of the supplements are featured in both the Blu-ray and DVD discs of the Combo Pack.
By Sean Axmaker
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Tess on Blu-ray
Tess (1979), Roman Polanski's film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 1890 novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, has in 2014 received a sublime Blu-Ray and DVD release from Criterion. Restored by Pathe under the direct supervision of Polanski himself, the movie looks and sounds magnificent. At first glance, the lushly beautiful Tess is a seemingly unusual work for Polanski, whose films we tend to associate with horror and sex, but this was actually a highly personal project for the master filmmaker. It was his first picture after fleeing the United States in 1977, and also a project that his wife, Sharon Tate, had suggested he make as a vehicle for herself -- just before she was murdered by the Manson gang in 1969. Polanski read the novel after her death and realized it was indeed right up his alley, and he dedicated the eventual film to her with an on-screen inscription.
Hardy's tale, to which the film is very faithful, is about a poor English girl, Tess, whose father learns he is a distant descendant of a once prominent, rich family, the D'Urbervilles. He sends Tess to the home of a remaining D'Urberville to find employment (or at least a handout), but Tess winds up being seduced by the ne'er-do-well Alec D'Urberville (Leigh Lawson), who becomes obsessed with her. Fleeing Alec, she eventually finds work at a dairy farm and starts a passionate relationship with a young farmer named Angel Clare (Peter Firth). But in this society, the revelation of the sins of her past, even if they were not her fault, could doom Tess to shame, ostracism and worse. Ultimately, Tess is about a woman struggling to make her way in the world, looking for happiness, or at least survival, but finding that a judgmental society, timing and even luck are all working against her.
Polanski explores this theme vividly, sympathetically and cinematically. Costumes, speech and physical mannerisms of the actors all convince the audience of the time period and of the distinctions among the social classes, and the film's pictorial beauty does much to stress the contrasting cruelty of some of the characters. The movie is not "pretty" for prettiness' sake. Most important, one really feels the isolation of Tess throughout the film, which is at once sprawling and intimate. The plot itself, while important, feels less vital here than the depiction of Tess' emotional experience of the world she is forced to inhabit, and as a result, the long running time feels entirely appropriate and never tedious.
Tess was shot entirely in France, mostly on locations in Normandy and Brittany, because Polanski worried that if he traveled to England he would be extradited to the United States. Polanski later wrote, "To tell the story at all, it was essential to find the proper setting, a twentieth-century equivalent of Hardy's nineteenth-century Dorset. The only way to convey the rhythm of his epic was to use that setting as an integral part of the film, signaling the passage of time and the change in Tess herself by means of a visible, almost palpable change in seasons. Once our rural locations were chosen, we would have to film throughout the year from early spring, through high summer, to the depths of winter." With such a shooting strategy, filming wound up lasting nine months over 80 separate locations, and Tess became, at $12 million, the most expensive film ever made in France to that point. Freak weather and labor strikes only added to the overall time and expense.
If Tess is atypical of Polanski, it's in the way that The Age of Innocence (1993) is atypical of director Martin Scorsese. But in fact, both films are completely emblematic of their directors' concerns and are indeed suffused with violence. It's just that the violence is emotional, an undercurrent beneath a pristine surface -- exactly like the societies the films depict.
That being said, it's hard to shake some of Tess's most exquisitely beautiful imagery, such as the lovely natural light of an outdoor dance, or the riders and dogs on a fox hunt who appear out of a sublime mist, or the face of Nastassia Kinski, who is heart-stoppingly gorgeous (a quality, incidentally, that is vital to the story). Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, who had shot such films as Becket (1964) and Cabaret (1972), died a few weeks into production and was replaced by Ghislain Cloquet, who sadly would himself pass away two years later. They shared the Oscar for Best Cinematography. The film also won for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Score.
Criterion's dual-format release contains one Blu-ray disc and two DVDs, with both formats containing the film and identical extras. And there are plenty, starting with three short documentaries about the film's making (originally included in Columbia's 2004 DVD release), directed by Laurent Bouzereau and totaling 73 minutes in length. Bouzereau expertly interviews key players like Polanski, producers Claude Berri and Timothy Burrill, co-writer John Brownjohn, actors Nastassia Kinski and Leigh Lawson, set decorator Pierre Guffroy, costume designer Anthony Powell, hair and makeup artists, the crew electrician, the assistant editor and others. The artists discuss fascinating details of production, like the challenge of getting the "strawberry seduction" scene between Kinski and Lawson just right (which astonishingly was shot on a rainy day despite looking on-screen like the height of warm summer), the creation of the Stonehenge set outside of Paris, and the design of the costumes to be authentic and truly expressive of character -- beautiful without being decorative. Powell is fascinating as he discusses his approach, and also about the little splotch of blood he put on the hem of Tess' dress at a key point in the story, which Polanski shot for maximum impact.
Burrill recalls that on location the filmmakers were only able to see the rushes days after shooting, rather than the next day, and not always under the best conditions. But gradually, he says, "we started to see what was happening, the magic that was coming off the screen, and the extraordinary professionalism of Nastassia.... I don't think there was ever one day when she fluffed a line. She was word-perfect, always."
Second is a 52-minute documentary from 2006 by Daniel Ablin and Serge July entitled Once Upon a Time... Tess. This is also interesting, but it covers much of the same material as the Bouzereau pieces, with many of the same interviewees telling the same stories. It's also not as smoothly edited. But unlike the Bouzereau film, it includes composer Philippe Sarde, and delves more into Polanski's pre-Tess life and career. It also recounts the difficulties in Tess's post-production, particularly concerning the running time. Francis Coppola was brought in by producer Claude Berri to trim the film, which was deemed overlong, but Polanski hated the result, leading to a falling-out between Berri and Polanski and between Polanski and Sarde. Polanski himself eventually trimmed the film by about 20 minutes, resulting in the current running time of 171 minutes.
Third, there's a 1979 episode of the French TV program Cine Regards, running 48 minutes, that looks at the making of Tess and interviews Polanski during the film's production. The interviews with Polanski are revealing, but the real strengths of the piece are the long, uninterrupted slices of life on the set as Polanski directs and thinks through scenes, conducting his orchestra of crewmembers. These sequences go on long enough to make us feel as if we are there.
Fourth is a 1979 episode of the British TV program The South Bank Show, 50 minutes in length, in which host Melvyn Bragg interviews Polanski. And Criterion rounds things out with the film's trailer as well as a handsome printed booklet containing a fine essay by Colin MacCabe and crisp, colorful photos from the film, almost all of which feature the entrancing Nastassia Kinski. It's a beautiful package and motion picture, all very highly recommended.
By Jeremy Arnold
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Used Cars on Blu-ray
The opening of Used Cars (1980) has the ominous, wind-scoured character of a modern crime film in a desperate southwest town where a Sergio Leone western wouldn't be out of place. The camera cranes down from a high shot over a struggling used car dealership, where a few pathetic beaters line the lot, and slowly glides over to one car with someone is crammed under the dashboard. The only sound is the lonely wind--the kind of strangled, desolate howl you get in dustbowl dramas and desert survival thrillers--and the grunts of the man struggling with the mechanics under the dash. And then we see the odometer turn back, shaving some 40,000 or so miles from the record. The title hits the screen, a brass band jumps in with "Stars and Stripes Forever," and the unidentified mechanic wriggles out to reveal Kurt Russell in a cheap, loud suit making his rounds to mask the sorry condition of the cars on the lot. It turns out that this is a crime movie after all, or at least a film of multiple misdemeanors and bald-faced misrepresentation, and the perpetrators are the good guys.
The second feature from director Robert Zemeckis and co-writer and producer Bob Gale, Used Cars comes right out of the screen comedy culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the underdogs snubbed their collective noses at authority, propriety, property and privacy laws and anything else that crossed their paths in slobs vs. snobs comedies like Animal House (1978), Caddyshack (1980) and Ghostbusters (1984). Used Cars is raucous and reckless and far more gleefully corrupt than any of its brothers in rebellion, embracing the confidence games and illegal stunts pulled by the skeleton crew that works for Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden), who is the closest thing that the film has to an honest man. The devotion of salesmen Rudy (Russell) and Jeff (Gerrit Graham) and mechanic Jim (Frank McRae) to Luke is really all that separates them from Luke's rapacious brother and across-the-street rival Roy L. Fuchs (Warden again) and his slick sales force. That and the fun they have ripping off the rubes who wander on to their lot.
The premise of film - two used car outfits at war with one another - was hatched by John Milius, who was one of the executive producers (along with Steven Spielberg), but the script is pure Zemeckis and Gale. The rivals are twin brothers, the Cain and Abel of used car dealers. When impending freeway construction threatens to destroy bad brother Roy's dealership and make the good brother Luke rich, Roy finds a way to speed the demise of Luke's bad heart and Rudy makes good on his promise to keep Roy from taking over the lot. Rudy has his own, more immediate motivation, of course--he's trying to buy his way into the local political machine and he's still a little short on the down payment--but it's also personal. Luke is something of a father figure to the crew, which makes them the mischievous sons who break the rules whenever dad's back is turned. After Luke dies, their antics more outrageous, from secretly burying Luke on the lot (his beloved convertible fittingly serves as his casket) to jamming satellite signals with wild pirate commercials replete with gratuitous nudity and senseless destruction of private property. The plot seems to careen from one comic collision to another but there's a nicely-constructed plan under it all, simple but ingenious enough that you don't actually see how the pieces are laid in place until it all comes together in the ragged spectacle of final act.
It's not really a satire of American business so much as a wicked lampoon: lie, cheat and steal as the American way, as long as you do it with a sense of fun. Kurt Russell was just breaking out of his clean-cut post-Disney persona when he took on the role and he sinks his teeth into Rudy, turning the brash characters into the epitome of the smiling mercenary selling lemons to suckers with dirty tricks and phony promises. Gerrit Graham is his partner in commercial piracy, unfazed by anything but harbingers of bad luck, notably red. Deborah Harmon is both romantic interest and plot complication as Luke's long lost daughter, who shows up just after dad's death. Jack Warden has a field day playing twin brothers and Frank McRae is hilarious as the giant adrenaline-pumped mechanic. The crotch-grabbing Mexican junk car wholesaler is ubiquitous character actor and future director Alfonso Arau in his first great comic role in an American film (Romancing the Stone and Three Amigos soon followed). But the entire cast is in danger of being upstaged by the adorable dog Toby, who has his own role to play in the sale stunts. This pooch's hilarious performance makes him one of the greatest movie dogs.
Zemeckis matured into a polished filmmaker and an ambitious storyteller and went on to make more sophisticated, more provocative, and certainly more subtle films, but he never made anything as savagely funny as Used Cars. Its banged-up ingenuity and rough-and-tumble energy and warped mirror reflection of the American Dream as a snatch and grab free-for-all is wickedly funny. Everyone is a crook here and the epilogue even enshrines mendacity as a virtue, at least when it comes to stepping into the used car game.
Used Cars has a remarkably tidy visual aesthetic for a film about a seedy, shabby culture, with a screen that is uncluttered and flooded with desert sunlight in day scenes and blasted with floodlights as bold as a football stadium night game for the after-dark stunts. The new HD transfer shows a well-preserved print and is sharp and clear. Simply put, it looks superb.
The commentary track with Zemeckis, Gale, and Russell, carried over from the 2002 DVD reelease, is almost as fun as the movie. "We wanted Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, except he's totally corrupt," is how Zemeckis explains the genesis of Rudy. Kurt Russell laughs back: "So you cast me!" These guys are having a blast laughing their way through their remembrances, but they manage to stay on track and keep the production stories coming. Few commentaries manage to balance the information and entertainment so well.
There's a four-minute reel of outtakes (apparently taken from surviving video dub; it's all quite hazy), a radio interview with Russell, a car commercial featuring Russell, galleries of art and stills, and not one but two isolated score tracks: along with Patrick Williams' musical score heard in the film is an alternate, unused score by Ernest Gold. We don't quite get it in the context of the film (at least not with dialogue and sound effects) but it's a more conventional, less satirical approach. The accompanying 8-page booklet features another fine essay by Julie Kirgo.
By Sean Axmaker
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Press Release
John Wayne Cancer Foundation kicks off SHOW YOUR GRIT campaign on May 26
Join TCM on May 26 as we honor one of Hollywood's greatest stars, John Wayne, on his birthday with a full day of his films beginning at 6am. An icon of American individualism and courage, Wayne is perhaps best known for his work in the Western and war genres--where his image as the direct (sometimes gruff) yet always just and strong hero has become the stuff of screen legend for generations of film fans. Our tribute begins with an early Wayne film, Ride Him, Cowboy (1932) and continues through McLintock! (1963) at 5:45pm ET.
The day of programming is also in support of the John Wayne Cancer Foundation's Show Your Grit campaign, which kicks off on May 26. The John Wayne Cancer Foundation (JWCF) was created by his family in honor of Wayne's memory with a mission to bring courage, strength and grit to the fight against cancer. For 25 days, beginning on John Wayne's birthday and ending on Father's Day, June 19th, the John Wayne Cancer Foundation challenges you to #ShowYourGrit on social media to raise awareness and honor those who have shown courage, strength, and grit in the face of cancer.
To learn more about the John Wayne Cancer Foundation and to join the John Wayne movement please visit http://johnwayne.org/.
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Dick Dinman & Glenn Erickson Salute Noir Chiller TRY AND GET ME!
DICK DINMAN & GLENN ERICKSON SALUTE NOIR CHILLER "TRY & GET ME": Olive Films has just released a stunning Blu-ray restoration of TRY AND GET ME which just may be the most savagely powerful film noir classic ever thrust on the silver screen in which Frank Lovejoy (in an incomparably tense and terrific performance) plays an out of work veteran desperate to find work to support his family and who is sucked into a kidnapping plot by a repellently slimy Lloyd Bridges that turns murderously tragic. Producer/host Dick Dinman and his returning guest Glenn Erickson (of Dvdsavant.com) marvel at the blunt force power of this little known but justifiably revered film noir masterwork.
The award-winning DICK DINMAN'S DVD CLASSICS CORNER ON THE AIR is the only weekly half hour show devoted to Golden Age Movie Classics as they become available on DVD. Your producer/host Dick Dinman includes a generous selection of classic scenes, classic film music and one-on-one interviews with stars, producers, and directors. To hear these as well as other DVD CLASSICS CORNER ON THE AIR shows please go to www.dvdclassicscorner.com or www.dvdclassicscorner.net.
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Library of America's The Moviegoer on THE MALTESE FALCON
Library of America's new regular web feature called The Moviegoer is devoted to great films inspired by classic American writing. This biweekly column features columns by Megan Abbott, David Denby, Wendy Lesser, Charles McGrath, Farran Smith Nehme, Carrie Rickey,Terrence Rafferty, Harold Schechter, Michael Sragow, & others and launched on January 27, 2016.
American literature has proven an endlessly renewable resource for filmmakers, its originality and vitality inspiring whole catalogues of memorable movies. Now Library of America, the acclaimed nonprofit publisher of the nation's greatest writing, presents The Moviegoer, a biweekly column in which curator Michael Sragow (Film Comment) and other leading writers and critics offer fresh, penetrating examinations of the best of these films, gems that readers will want to revisit or watch for the first time. Standing at the intersection of classic American writing and classic filmmaking, The Moviegoer, offers not reviews but full scale reevaluations that explore the creative alchemy involved in translating a masterwork from page (or stage) to screen. It takes its inspiration, and its catholic compass, from the hero of Walker Percy's famous novel, and, in the words of curator Sragow, "aims to generate new enthusiasm for cinema as well as for literature."
To read the entry in the series on The Maltese Falcon by Michael Sragow and to sign up for an alert when a new Moviegoer is published, click here.
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Dick Dinman & Eddie Muller Salute THE BIG SLEEP & KEY LARGO
DICK DINMAN AND EDDIE MULLER SALUTE "THE BIG SLEEP" & "KEY LARGO": Bogart fans rejoice! The Warner Archive has just released stunning new Blu-ray incarnations of THE BIG SLEEP in which Humphrey Bogart takes on all comers (including comely Lauren Bacall) in Howard Hawks' stylishly wild, wacky and wigged out gumshoe saga and John Huston's KEY LARGO in which Bogie matches wits with deadly killer Edward G. Robinson and his motley and murderous crew as costars Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, and (Oscar winner) Claire Trevor watch helplessly while a relentlessly ravaging hurricane engulfs them. The "Czar of Noir" himself Eddie Muller joins producer/host Dick Dinman as they revel in the intense pleasures these two certifiable Bogart classics consistently display.
PLUS: Eddie Muller and Dick Dinman pay tribute to Kino's KL Classics policy of releasing rare and largely forgotten classics on Blu-ray such as A BULLET FOR JOEY in which tough guys and on screen (and off screen!) enemies Edward G. Robinson and George Raft duke it out and Eddie previews his upcoming Flicker Alley Blu-ray restoration double feature of TOO LATE FOR TEARS and WOMAN ON THE RUN.
The award-winning DICK DINMAN'S DVD CLASSICS CORNER ON THE AIR is the only weekly half hour show devoted to Golden Age Movie Classics as they become available on DVD. Your producer/host Dick Dinman includes a generous selection of classic scenes, classic film music and one-on-one interviews with stars, producers, and directors. To hear these as well as other DVD CLASSICS CORNER ON THE AIR shows please go to www.dvdclassicscorner.com or www.dvdclassicscorner.net.
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TCM Podcast An in-depth look at this month's films by the employees of TCM DOWNLOAD TODAY >
- Added:...
buy it now > ...
Wednesday, March 20, 2011
Removed: 10:00pm Springfield Rifle 12:00pm Casablanca Added: 1:00pm Virginia City 12:15pm Casablanca
Wednesday, March 20, 2011
Removed: 10:00pm Springfield Rifle 12:00pm Casablanca Added: 1:00pm Virginia City 12:15pm Casablanca
Wednesday, March 20, 2011
Removed: 10:00pm Springfield Rifle 12:00pm Casablanca Added: 1:00pm Virginia City 12:15pm Casablanca


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Major Breakthrough!
In case you haven't been paying attention—and I clearly haven't—there have been some major advances in crazy men's lycra underwear technology. Major advances.
For example, what the crap is this??!?
And, what's this guy up to? He looks surprised, yet diving. Why?
This model is clearly intended for a friendly game of volleyball at Aunt May's backyard bar-b-que, but what are these for, and more importantly, why do they cost $45?
I'll leave you to explore the rest on your own.
You've come along way, banana hammock.
(via Boing Boing)

subset: commoncrawl


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Today's Photo Journal - October 11, 2013
Christopher Chevelle Jackson Jr., 22, of Allentown, walks to his preliminary hearing at Lehigh County Courthouse. Jackson is charged with attempted homicide in shooting that left a man paralyzed. Jackson also faces charges for selling guns and drugs to undercover informants. He has a co-defendant in the drug cases, Luis A. Rivera (not pictured), 25, with no current address.EMILY ROBSON / THE MORNING CALL


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Alexandria Researcher E-Book Database
Be at school everyday
Free resources!
7:50 for a free breakfast served in your classroom. Breakfast is cleaned up at 8:05am sharp so our instructionalday can begin!
|Mrs. Klingsporn
Ms. Karen Klingsporn
Welcome to Kate Schenck Elementary School . . . Home of the Owls!
My name is Karen Klingsporn, and I have been an educator since 1993. I am a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR, where I received both my undergraduate and master's degrees. Additionally, I completed my Principal Certification at UTSA. I have taught in Belton ISD (my hometown), Northside ISD, and Boerne ISD before working for SAISD in the Reading/ELA Department. I have been a campus administrator in SAISD for three years prior to joining Schenck Elementary.
This is my second year at Schenck, and I am very happy to be part of the Schenck Elementary Staff. We are a safe, friendly community. Our teachers are student-centered and committed to academic and personal excellence. We strive for consistent communication with parents and to understand each child's unique educational needs. Our mission is to ensure that every child graduates and is educated so that he or she is prepared to be a contributing member of the community.
Karen Klingsporn
Assistant Principal
Schenck Elementary School


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Pygmy Sperm Whale, Calf Die
Published: Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 12:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 at 2:54 a.m.
Authorities say a pygmy sperm whale calf had to be euthanized after its mother died on a Central Florida beach.
The whales stranded Tuesday morning on Jupiter Island.
Charles Manire of the Loggerhead MarineLife Center in Juno Beach told The Palm Beach Post that the mother seemed disoriented in the water and emaciated before it came ashore and died.
The calf came ashore nearby. Authorities say the baby whale had to be euthanized because it would not survive without its mother.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.


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Published on
Published monthly, "The Good News" serves as a way to connect with our congregation and the greater Los Angles community. All are welcome, so please feel free to download a copy of January's "Good News!" Go to nohofumc.com and https://www.facebook.com/nohofumc1 for more inf.o


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Jay Dee "J.D." Smith, 52, of Amarillo died Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007.
Services will be at 2 p.m. Monday in Blackburn-Shaw Funeral Directors Memorial Chapel, 315 E. 5th, with the Rev. Suttle from San Jacinto Assembly of God officiating. Burial will be in Memory Gardens Cemetery.
Mr. Smith was born Aug. 14, 1955, in Amarillo to Charles Edward and Occie Smith. He married Hazel Smith on June 16, 1985. Mr. Smith served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Survivors include his wife, Hazel Smith; a son, Robert Hindbaugh of Amarillo; two daughters, Carmen Smith of Houston and Amanda Hindbaugh Smith of Amarillo; three brothers, Jesse Daniels "JoJo," Jimmy Smith, David Jo Daniels "Doobie," all of Amarillo; four sisters, Sandra Snelson of Amarillo, Lillian Eberting of Stinnett, May Elmore and Fay Patterson, both of Prior, Okla.; and three grandchildren.
Amarillo Globe-News, Aug. 20, 2007
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Hawaiian Chicken Curry Salad
Total Time
Prep 15 mins
Cook 15 mins
This taste like a fruit salad and chicken salad combined. The curry and sesame seeds make this exotic and flavorful. I made this in 15 minutes for lunch today!
Ingredients Nutrition
- 1 (12 1/2 ounce) canchunk chicken breasts
- 1⁄2 cup celery, diced
- 1 medium fuji apple, chopped
- 1 cup pineapple chunk, drained
- 2 tablespoons plump raisins
- 2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
- 5 tablespoons mayonnaise
- 1⁄2 teaspoon curry powder
- 1⁄4 teaspoon salt
- Combine chicken, celery, apple, pineapple, raisins and 1 1/2 teaspoons of the sesame seeds in a large bowl.
- Mix mayonnaise, curry powder and salt.
- Pour mayonnaise over chicken mixture and toss to coat.
- Sprinkle with remaining sesame seeds.
- Serve by itself or over a bed of greens.
Most Helpful
I did not have the canned chicken breast so I cooked 2 skinless and boneless breats and chopped them for the recipe. It was wonderful! Something I will definately do again.
Just made this for lunch. Ate mine straight from a bowl. Gave hubby his on a sandwich cuz everything ends up there anyway. :) It was awesome both ways. I mistakenly put the curry powder right in with the chicken, so I just went ahead and put everything else in there instead of making the mayo mixture separate. It distributed fine and saved a bowl. Next time I will probably do the mayo mixture first in the big bowl then dump everything else on top and mix. Also used Perdue Shortcuts for the chicken. Chopped most everything to a nice chunk size with a couple light pulses in a small food processor. Only made a half portion of the recipe, as it is just the two of us. Also added a few seedless red grapes, chopped. Thanks for a great recipe!


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Playa Kin Ha
Playa Kin Ha
Hotel Guest Rating: 7.6/10
Carretera Tulum-Bocapaila Km. 4.5
Tulum, QR 77780
Hotel Freebies Available*
• Free Internet Available show dates
Playa Kin Ha
This small hotel in Tulum, Mexico is located next to the Caribbean Sea. The environmentally friendly hotel offers an on-site restaurant and bar along with tour services.The Playa Kin Ha offers tours to the ruins of Tulum or Chichen Itza. Guests can go snorkeling or scuba diving only steps from the hotel. Hammocks and sun beds are available at the beach.Each room at the Playa Kin Ha is equipped with a balcony and private bathroom. Some rooms offers ocean views.The property's restaurant serves Italian and Mexican cuisine for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You can also have a drink on the hotel's terrace. ...read more
Playa Kin Ha Amenities
- 24-hour front desk
- Airport shuttle (surcharge)
- Bar
- Beach
- Car hire
- Diving
- Fishing
- Free WiFi
- Garden
- Massage
- Private beach area
- Restaurant (à la carte)
- Shuttle service
- Shuttle service (surcharge)
- Snack bar
- Snorkelling
- Terrace
- Tour desk
Hotel Information
Upon check-in photo identification and credit card is required. All special requests are subject to availability upon check-in. Special requests cannot be guaranteed and may incur additional charges.Please note that the first night of the reservation must be paid in advance. Once a booking has been made, the hotel will contact the guest directly to arrange payment by bank transfer or pay pal. If the deposit is not paid within 5 days of making the booking, the hotel may cancel the reservation.
from $71
- Om Tulum Hotel Cabanas And Beach Club - Bed And Breakfast from $120 (0mi)
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Most Popular Guest-Rated Hotels in Riviera Maya
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- Secrets Maroma Beach Riviera Cancun - Adults Only All Inclusive
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Most Popular Family-Friendly Hotels in Riviera Maya
- Dreams Puerto Aventuras Resort & Spa - All Inclusive
- Riu Palace Riviera Maya - All Inclusive
- Mahekal Beach Resort


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After I upgrade from 3.4.4 to 3.4.6 I can't get the logo on the upper left of the site to show.
The site is http://www.pupsdaily.com
The logo is the small one positioned over the header on the upper left (logo.png)
I replaced the image folder but can't for the life of me get that logo to show up after an upgrade.
Theme is currently set to atahualpa 3.4.4 Thanks for any help.


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|The Inside Scoop
Teri Lanza
Prodding and Planning: Time for Your Self-Storage Operation's Annual Checkup and BudgetSelf-storage operators everywhere are entering their 2014 planning and budget season. This process is critical, and it goes hand in hand with the annual business checkup, which allows you to pinpoint areas of problem performance and get your revenue goals back on track. Get your facility ready for its annual prod! Here are some tools to help guide the exam and create a checklist of items to evaluate.
The Health of Your Self-Storage Facility Relies on Economic OccupancyA common mistake some self-storage owners and managers make regarding the health of their facilities is relying too heavily on physical occupancy. Guest blogger Carol Mixon-Krendl, owner of SkilCheck Inc., says unit occupancy rates can be misleading and that a better way to maximize the health of a self-storage property is by understanding its economic occupancy.
Has the Next Self-Storage Building Boom Already Begun?While no one has predicted that the next self-storage building boom will approach the fever pitch of new builds during the 1990s, numerous indicators suggest operators and new investors are currently bullish on development through ground-up construction and facility expansion. The next boom may already have begun.
Expand Your Self-Storage Brand, Work Your Business Expansion PlanWhen people talk about expanding a business brand, they're referring to a company's ability to permeate a marketplace with knowledge of its reputation, products and services. In the case of self-storage, brand extension often includes the addition of physical buildings. Where is your brand popping up on the map? These resources will help you plan and design facilities, create project timelines, identify key tasks and more. You'll even get a sneak peek at expansion plans for some of the industry's top operators.
Can Self-Storage Operators Climate Control Their Business?Self-storage operators regularly market the climate-controlled features of their facilities, but can they apply the same principles to their business operation and its ability to withstand the impact from an extreme-weather event? A new report discusses why small businesses are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather and the collective impact this can have on the economy.
A Shoutout to SEO Newbies: See Beyond the Acronym to the Marketing PotentialIt's no secret that creating and maintaining an online presence is a crucial part of your self-storage marketing strategy. Buzzwords like "search engine optimization" (SEO) and "Google rankings" have become central to the conversation. We are constantly told to build our online presence—create a Twitter page, create a Facebook page, gather reviews from customers—but do we really know the value of each aspect and how to implement it properly? ...
Synchronize Your Self-Storage Business to Beat the CompetitionSimilar to synchronized swimming, the intricacies of self-storage are more complicated than they look, requiring training, a commitment to fundamentals and dedication to continually develop new skill sets. Just as synchronized swim teams develop routines and continue to tinker and perfect them throughout a season to compete at the highest level, self-storage operators must continually hone their operation to consistently beat the competition.


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Green Salsa Chicken
Total Time
Prep 30 mins
Cook 30 mins
When I made this my Husband kept saying Dam this is good. This is my own recipe for green salsa chicken. I used Tomatillo Salsa that I make, But, you can use any green salsa.
Ingredients Nutrition
- 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 2 tablespoons oil
- salt and pepper
- 1⁄2 cup chicken broth
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 cup green chili salsa
- 1 -1 1⁄2 cup grated monterey jack cheese
- Pound chicken breast (between 2 pieces plastic).
- Put oil in skillet,Brown chicken on both sides.
- Salt and pepper to taste.
- Place chicken into casserole dish.
- In same skillet put chicken broth and sour cream mix together and heat.
- Pour mixture over chicken.
- Spoon salsa over chicken.
- Top with grated cheese.
- Bake in 350°F oven for 30 to 45 minutes.
Most Helpful
We loved this! I used 5 breast to have 1 leftover for Dh's lunch but he ended up eating 3 servings! My grocery doesn't sale green salsa so I used green enchilada sauce. I didn't flatten the chicken and sprinkled with garlic and onion powder before browning instead of salt. I used sharp cheddar/jack combination. Will definatly become a regular on my menue
What a great find. Made this last night and it was a hit. First, so easy to put together and the results were fantastic. A new favorite in our house. I served it over rice, as suggested. DH wanted to make sure to get the leftovers in his lunch today. Thanks Barb!
Oh yummy, yummy, yummy! I made white rice and served the sauce on top. DS15 was making faces about the "green things", but after he tasted he was licking his lips! The next time I make this, the only change I make will be after I serve it to cut up my chicken and put on more sauce. Thanks so much for sharing!


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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) - Buffalo Bills rookie quarterback EJ Manuel is expected to miss another four to six weeks now that he's begun rehabbing his sprained right knee.
Manuel has an opportunity to return before the Bills have their bye week off on Nov. 24.
Thad Lewis, who was promoted off the practice squad last week, is set to make his second consecutive start Sunday, when Buffalo (2-4) plays at Miami (3-2). Lewis practiced fully on Wednesday after hurting his right foot in a 27-24 overtime loss to Cincinnati last weekend.
AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org
Copyright 2016The Associated PressAll Rights Reserved


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This is a discussion on Do you think additional training should be mandatory to carry concealed? within the Concealed Carry Issues & Discussions forums, part of the Defensive Carry Discussions category; Very contraversial subject and I can see both sides. While we do have the RKBA there is really no mandatory training. Yes you can drive ...
Yes! I want more mandated training!
No! We have enough mandates already!
I am not against more training as long as it is not mandatory.
I am undecided.
Very contraversial subject and I can see both sides. While we do have the RKBA there is really no mandatory training. Yes you can drive a car, but usually after hours of classroom and actual behind the wheel time. There has been a RUSH to get a CHL after hussein was elected. I will bet that over 70% that just recently applied and got their permit had NO previous gun experience. What many are overlooking is that the majority here have grown up with and many rounds under our belts.
Now to the topic of training, why not let the public school system do it. Years ago we had trap shooting in the schools and you could even bring your shotgun on the bus. The libs/anti-gun bunch will throw a fit, but if they can teach about other crap, why not SAFE gun handling. You could do this as a Senior elective and in one semester have a pretty good gun handler. If you want to get your CHL and are out of school, didn't you have to get driver's education prior to getting your license.
I am still up in the air on my vote and don't believe in "undecided", so I will vote after more thought. I am leaning towards mandatory training as I don't think that an almost open book test and a worthless shooting test, that most should be carrying a gun. Now if you want one at home, I have no problem with your lack of training as I probably won't be breaking into your house.
As far as cost to the less affluent, they are buying a several hundred firearm, you should also be able to put out $300-$400 for some good training.
Colt 1911 New Agent, CTLaser
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No, I am talking about doing everying we can as a society to help people become responsible adults. Training and education is part of that process.I guess, though, that what you're talking about is training people to act responsibly. How much will it take to do that? And do you set up the training to correct people who are really irresponsible, or just the regular mainstream ones who just are kinda irresponsible out of ignorance?I completely support proficiency tests and written examination in lieu of training. The underlying concept is identical.If you're already responsible, could you just take a test and get credit for prior responsibility (sorta like college placement exams), or would you still have to take the responsibility course anyway?
I'm a devout supporter of 2A, but......
I believe if a person wants a CCW permit, they should have training that teaches (at a minimum) - safe gunhandling, basic tactical skills, rules of engagement, and pertinent laws.
How is this any different than the required training to get licensed to drive a car? A car is a deadly object when used carelessly, as evidenced by the 35,000 or so average annual deaths that we tolerate. And all these deaths occur even AFTER the required training (classroom and actual road time).
Let's say some, non-shooting-sports nervous gal buys a gun, and then puts it in her purse for "self protection". Do you want your family to be anywhere in the vicinity when this nervous Nellie sees some sort of "threat"? What's to prevent her from panicking and simply spraying bullets all over the place? I'll tell you what will prevent her from panicking and spraying those bullets - training.
JMHO, of course.
'Be careful, even in small matters' - Miyamoto Musashi
In the first case the victim is the target of criminal acivity. In the latter, the dead person is the victim of someone who is unable to understand the law or correctly utilize a deadly weapon.
Again, penalizing the irresponsible, undertrained gun owner will not placate the dead guy in the slightest.
This basic question just went around about a week ago.
If a person wants and can afford additional training I encourage it. As far as it being mandated to be able to carry no, I'm against that. Why should the poor or elderly living on a fixed income be unable to obtain a permit.
It's a double edged knife your handling.
And for those who equate it to getting a drivers license - Driving is a privilege, not a right. Self Defense is a right, not a privilege. At least not yet
"There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you." William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830)
Best Choices for Self Defense Ammunition
What about the poorer people who cannot afford training? Should the training be free?
Training is great but often then not it's sacraficed by a number of outside forces. I'm a career firefighter and i'm held to a higher standered then a majority of volunteer firefighters in my area. And although i'm held to a higher standered I don't believe that any of the volunteer firefighters should have to meet my "required training". It would be too much for them to handle and quite frankly I don't think they have the time with families, personal lives ect..
When it comes to firearms and conceal carry permits I think the same analagy could be used. I'd love to have more training. I would love to go to an LFI 1 and 2 class or attend one of the major Gun academies in the country. But I don't have the time nor the money to put out for a class like that. And once it becomes the standard it becomes harder for honest, hard working people to achieve that requirement to defend themselves. When I started in the fire service we had a 42 hour course that covered the basics of firefighting. That as 12 years ago and now we are over 100. But we'll ask aloud why we have no volunteers. The same will happen if you raise the standard in CCW training.
The ability to transport oneself via automobile is an opportunity based on consumerism and economics. It's available to those who have money. It's of value to those who wish to trade control of their traveling behavior by those in temporary seats of governance.I believe if a person wants a CCW permit, they should have training that teaches (at a minimum) - safe gunhandling, basic tactical skills, rules of engagement, and pertinent laws.
How is this any different than the required training to get licensed to drive a car?
OTH, self-defense and the ownership/carrying of weapons is a protected right in this country, at least theoretically. It's available all citizens (you know, those with two legs who are still breathing), irrespective of money, of affiliation, of one's friends/contacts or perceived "importance."
To many, it is unobtainium. In most places, it's regulated to a fare-thee-well, or in certain places, at certain times, limited to certain people. That is not right. Not here.
Sure, I want people to appreciate the responsibility, the risk. Sure, I'd prefer the person next to me knew his elbow from his backside, if it were to become necessary that he/she use that weapon in self-defense. But I simply cannot find it in me to disallow his/her right to be armed and able to defend against attack simply because of my preferences. That is not right. Not here.
There is a middle ground. Perhaps: a strong push through PSA's (and similiar) toward obtaining suitable introduction, training and skills related to the safe operation and handling of weapons, possibly via tax credits available to those going after ongoing formal training.
That would disallow nobody, promote better training, reduce risks of blind ignorance of proper handling and usage.
Your best weapon is your brain. Don't leave home without it.
Thoughts: Justifiable self defense (A.O.J.).
Explain: How does disarming victims reduce the number of victims?
Reason over Force: Why the Gun is Civilization (Marko Kloos).
People who have a Drivers license have to have some training. It makes since that everyone on the road should know the basic rules of the road. The same is true for a CCW permit. Basic laws and safe firearm handling should be part of the training.
More advanced training, which would be very useful, should be in my oppinion be voluntary.


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The Sprint Samsung Galaxy S III (S3) features a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display with a stunning 1280 x 720 resolution that gives plenty of room for multitasking. The Sprint Galaxy S III runs on Android 4.0 (ICS) and comes with pre-installed apps such as Google Wallet and Sprint Zone.
Underneath the hood of the Sprint GSIII is a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 2100mAh removable battery. There's an 8-megapixel camera on the back side and a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera. The Sprint Galaxy S III comes in pebble blue or marble white in 16GB or 32GB versions.
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EXCL. PREVIEW: "Hal Jordan & the Green Lantern Corps" #1 Enforces 'Sinestro's Law'
Comic Books
Top Five Month (check here to see an archive of all the top five lists featured so far) continues with a three-part take on "Keeping Up With the Joneses" by looking at the top five comic book artists, comic book writers and comic book characters with the last name of Jones.
Today we look at the top five characters with the last name of Jones!
First off, I am not doing licensed characters named Jones, like Indiana Jones. In addition, I'm only counting characters who are specifically referred to as ____ Jones, not characters like Firestar whose secret identity is Angelica Jones.
Genocide Jones
Genocide Jones was a psycho villain who also one of the few real friends that Holden Carver had during Sleeper. He was not a good guy, but he was a good character.
Reno Jones
Short-lived western hero from Marvel – gotta give them credit for trying a black western hero as a co-star in a comic book!
Casey Jones
Casey Jones is probably best known for his adaption to other media other than comics, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and the film series.
Darwin Jones
The Department of Scientific Investigation is a really great idea, and Darwin Jones was the head of it and a recurring character in Strange Adventures for a number of years. Grant Morrison brought him back recently in Final Crisis and James Robinson has been using him, as well.
Genius Jones
He was shipwrecked on a deserted island with 734 books. He memorized them all, therefore becoming a genius. You have to love Golden Age comics. This genius, who would answer anything or solve any problem for a dime, was recently (and awesomely) brought back to the forefront (of sorts) by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang.
Gabe Jones
An original member of the Howling Commandos AND an early member of SHIELD, Gabe Jones has been a long-time supporting cast member of Nick Fury (and Captain America). SPOILER WARNING!!!
I hope he is still alive somehow after recent events in Secret Warriors. I mean, come on, LMD, people!!! LMD!!!
Desolation Jones
A tough omission from the top five, as Warren Ellis did a great job on this former operative who had been experimented on and then thrown into Los Angeles (which is secretly a sort of living prison for all the various "retired" government operatives from around the world) to eke out a living as a private investigator who caters only to fellow former government agents.
5. Jessica Jones
The star of Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos' Alias, this former superhero eventually began working as a private investigator. She has become a favorite character of Bendis, as he took her from Alias to the follow-up series, The Pulse and then on to New Avengers, where she eventually married (and had a kid with) the Avenger Luke Cage. Her journey from damaged hero to, well, just a plain hero has been great to follow.
4. J'onn J'onzz
J'onn would be higher except, I dunno, J'onzz isn't REALLY Jones, per se. Okay, I admit, I just want an excuse to rank…
3. Halo Jones
higher on the list. Halo Jones is a really great character by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson who starred in a stunningly well-crafted series by the same name (it was a serial in the pages of 2000 AD). Jones is an "everywoman," she just happens to be an everywoman who lives in the 50th Century, and besides the well-told plots of the comics themselves, one of the joys of reading Halo Jones comics is how well-crafted the reality of the 50th Century was by Moore and Gibson. It's a joy to read.
2. Jughead Jones
One of the top comic book characters period.
1. Rick Jones
But Rick Jones slightly beats Jughead just because of the remarkable place Rick holds in the Marvel Universe. He was directly involved in the Hulk's origin, then became his sidekick, of sorts, then became Captain America's sidekick, then began a sort of Billy Batson/Captain Marvel relationship with the Marvel Captain Marvel, then became a partner of sorts to Rom the Spaceknight then became a close friend and partner to the then-intelligent Hulk then became merged with the SON of Captain Marvel and then, most recently, became a new Hulk-like creature himself called A-Bomb.
That is one stunningly involved history, huh? That's enough to get #1 on the list!!
That's the list! Agree? Disagree? Let me know!
Thought for sure Gabe Jones would get an honourable mention, just for being one of the original SHIELD supporting characters and (I think) a Howling Commando, as well as being one of the first prominent black characters in comics.
But it's still a great list, with Rick deservedly walking away with it (although I love J'onn and Desolation as well).
Got to track down that Halo Jones someday…a little vintage Moore is never a bad thing.
Oh, and just to pile on reasons for Rick's significance, isn't he responsible for the Avengers forming as well? Then there's his role in the Kree/Skrull war, not to mention a pretty interesting guest turn in Runaways as a founder of a support group for retired "young" heroes…wotta guy.
Rick as number one just made my day!
Rick Jones is totally my favorite Marvel character. A lot of that is due to Peter David but still.
Brilliant list.
It's been ages since I read Halo Jones but I just moved into a new apartment and set up my comics bookshelves and Complete Ballad of Halo Jones has to go on a special shelf because it's tall so it's just standing there, waiting for me… definitely my favorite of Moore's earliest works. Totally agree with every pick, and with the order too!
Oh, and a couple of months ago I met a woman named Halo at a party – didn't even think about the connection but she gave me her e-mail address, and her full moniker (in certain circles) is "Halo Jones." Cool name for a cool woman.
I really love that Justice League of America logo…
Hey, what about Batman Jones? I love that guy.
If I ever make it big in hollywood or write a bunch of crime novels and thus get to work for Marvel comics, I'd totally want to write a Rick Jones book which runs straight through the MU, sort of a tourist's guide to the Marvel Universe and what's going on in the midst of it through Rick's eyes. He's the best Point of View character ever (not named Kitty Pryde).
I was hoping to see Marlo Chandler Jones, Rick's wife. She recently became the new Harpy, was romantically involved with Rick and Moondragon, was generally awesome in Peter David's Captain Marvel series, and evn co-hosted a show with Rick called "Keeping Up With the Joneses."
Jessica Jones is to me a pet character done well. I'm not sure why Rucka's attempts as cramming female pet characters like Sasha Bordeaux and Renee Montoya annoy me so much but Bendis's similar love for Jessica Jones works so well for me. I've loved every issue of every Jessica Jones series that I've read.
Thought for sure Gabe Jones would get an honourable mention, just for being one of the original SHIELD supporting characters and (I think) a Howling Commando, as well as being one of the first prominent black characters in comics.
Silly oversight on my part. Thanks, dhole, I'll throw him in there – he definitely belongs on the list.
I thought for sure Jughead would be Number One. Don't get me wrong, Rick is definitely the other best choice– nobody else even comes close to these top-two Joneses. But still, Jughead is, as you said, one of the top comic characters– period.
Jughead was my first immediate thought when I saw the category, followed by J'onn J'onzz and Firestar (until I saw that you weren't going to count her). I'm ashamed to say I didn't even think of Rick Jones until I got to the Number One spot and there he was. I don't know why he slipped my mind, because I definitely agree with his importance (aside from the fact that Jughead should be ahead of him).
I'm glad you remembered Rick's time with Rom. That usually seems to be forgotten whenever his history is mentioned. I don't like the idea of Rick becoming a new Hulk-type creature, though. He works so much better as a regular person. (And hasn't it been done already?)
No. 5?!?!
My girl deserves a higher ranking than that! Boo on you, Mr. Cronin!
Solid list! I'd probably quibble with the ranking, but when is that ever not true in comic circles? Jessica and Desolation are personal favorites, but I can understand that D. doesn't really have the historical heft of most of the guys that made it.
No love for Angelica? I know Firestar isn't really an A-lister, but she's been in the New Warriors, the Avengers, a part of X-men history, and she co-starred with Spider-man! That's gotta count for at least a mention, right?
If they started a series with Rick Jones as the main character that was written by Peter David it would probably end up being my favorite comic book of all time. While I'm dreaming, I may as well request Stuart Immonen as the artist.
No love for Angelica? I know Firestar isn't really an A-lister, but she's been in the New Warriors, the Avengers, a part of X-men history, and she co-starred with Spider-man! That's gotta count for at least a mention, right?
How about the mention I gave her in the piece?
Heh, fair enough! Follow along long enough and I feel like I know the game and forget the intro text changes. My fault.
"J'onn would be higher except, I dunno, J'onzz isn't REALLY Jones, per se."
I believe for his entire Detective Comics run his feature was titled "John Jones, Manhunter From Mars".
And then there was his brother T'omm who I believe had a hit song with D'lilah. *bah dum bump!*
Good list here. I liked Jessica Jones a lot better before Bendis revealed she went to high school with Peter Parker. It was enough already that she was an unknown member of the Avengers.
Jessica was an Avenger (before recently, I mean)? I assumed she had just been a minor super-hero who hadn't been seen before because she only interacted with the other heroes occasionally. That would've made sense. Can't any of these writers understand that you can't insert something into past history unless it's unimportant or obscure enough that it would make sense for nobody to have mentioned it. You can't insert anything important. This is why everyone hates the Sentry.
@Mary, she wasn't really an Avenger. She encountered them a couple of times and, I think, was offered a position but declined. It fits into the "unimportant or obscure" category just fine.
Bah! Jughead was robbed pure and simple. Rick Jones is a second banana who got pushed from one hero to another thanks to the invention of inter-book continuity. Jughead, though, is one of the greatest creations in fiction. You disappoint me, Mr. Cronin!
1) Actually, Jessica Jones was Peter Parker's schoolmate since ALIAS. As retcons go, it's at least as old as her history with the Avengers.
2) I liked the Sentry in his original mini-series by Paul Jenkins. Before Bendis made him hyper-convoluted.
3) Jughead. Meh. I wonder if Archie is one of those rare American traditions that don't translate well in most other countries? Like American Football.
Top 5 Joneses?
Indiana. What else need be said?
What else need be said?
Perhaps "Read the piece first."
Since no one else mentioned it, I might as well: Thanks for the nod to Genocide. "Sleeper" is one of the best series I've ever read. I was personally hoping for Holden to show up in the New 52 (before I stopped caring about the New 52 altogether).
Also, SPOILER:
Amazing job to Brubaker for making me care about a character even though he was a psychopath. When Genocide was killed, I was somehow really upset.
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SDCC: "Batman: The Killing Joke" Cast & Crew Debuts Film at Comic-Con International
Paolo Rivera's blog is always a joy for process junkies, filled with glimpses behind the curtain at projects in various stages of completion and, a personal favorite, "Wacky Reference Wednesday," in which posts photos (typically of himself) he uses as references for composition or character poses. This morning is no exception: The Daredevil artist dusts off a three-year-old character study of The Punisher, which includes the rare shot of the vigilante laughing. I particularly like the death's head detail on Frank Castle's ammo pouches. Visit Rivera's blog to see a larger version of the image.
Great work! I'm using the laughing picture as my Facebook photo now.


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How or where do I set my timezone?
How or where do I set my timezone?
I'd like to know the same thing. The time zone for the stats doesn't jive with the stats for my blog in general and I can't find anywhere to change it. Thanks in advance.
Same here! Drives me nuts. I've set my sites timezone as well as the timezone on my WordPress.com site and no love.
If i recall correctly (and i hope i do, because i can't re-find where i originally read it), the time zone is set to Greenwich Mean Time and can't really be changed.
Wow...this one was drivin me nuts too. I've been clickin around and searchin for an answer....
I guess at least knowing it can't be changed is better than wondering how to do it...heheheh.
This is so annoying.
if it's true that it can't be changed, that sucks so bad. I have figured out that the day changes at 8 PM, my local time. hate hate hate hate hate it.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this in the next version, it is annoying to be 4 hours off.
Yes, I agree. It's very annoying to have the new day start at 8pm. Why would this be such a difficult problem to fix?
Okay... I found the author and asked the question...
Hopefully if enough want it, perhaps he will configure the timezone change as an option. It appears though that he purposely has it set to UTC time, something to do with speed.
This drives me a bit nuts, too, so I hope it can be customized at some poitn.
I would love to see an option so that my wp-stats is in sync with my blog's timezone. It is frustrating to see my stats roll over at 6 PM at night! I still love this plugin, however. :)
This topic has been closed to new replies.


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Has anyone used or heard of the Tummy Tub?
My OT is recommending it for our son - he'll be a year in two weeks. She believes it will help with his sensory issues... his inability to sit up... and his discomfort with being lost in space with a baby tub and larger tub.


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Sustainability Saturday: Take 20% off 1+ yards of Eco Canvas Fabric Through 11:59 PM EDT July 30th.
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