When Guy met Bruno…

With his autobiography recently published, Farley Granger is making a few personal appearances — such as introducing Strangers on a Train at George Eastman House on July 13. Bring your lighter…

How you get there depends on where you’re at

The original soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, via Rato Records.


Original trailer

Thinking out loud

Flickhead, a Thinking Blogger

Journey to the center of the mind

I was touched to find that Kimberly at Cinebeats named Flickhead among her five selections for the Thinking Bloggers Award. While I’m not crazy about the so-called ‘meme’ — aren’t these things terribly cruel to those sensitive souls who aren’t among the chosen few? (now there’s something to think about) — Kimberly stoked my ego and offered proof that at least someone’s out there reading and enjoying my work.

That’s the bait, here’s the hook: in the spirit of the ‘meme’ (gag me with a spoon, daddy), I’m supposed to jot down five blogs which tweak what’s left of my mind and deem them fit for this coveted medal. The first quandary is, of course, Kimberly. As I do visit Cinebeats regularly and it does provide food for thought, logic would dictate that turnabout would be fair play and she’d be among my sacred five. But if that were the case, if all recipients were so gracious, wouldn’t this whole ‘meme’ have swallowed itself by the tail long ago? Gee whiz, dudes, that’s just too much to think about!

As anyone who’s been around the block a few times will tell you, thinking is vastly overrated. And taxing. But I suppose I should play fair. According to the headmaster of this mishegas, I’m supposed to list and abide by the rules. I hate rules. I hate authority figures. But, in this case, I’ll humor the alleged brain trust:

Thinking Blogger’s Award Rules
1. If, and only if your blog is one that is tagged on my list below, you must write a post with links to five other blogs you like that consistently make you think (hence, the Thinking Blogger’s Award).
2. Link to this post so people will know whose good idea all this was. (see above)
3. Proudly display the “Thinking Blogger Award” logo with a link to the post you wrote.

With that aside, let’s see how far I can cram my foot into my mouth. My five choices, in no particular order:

Trouble in Paradise
Ah, the dilemmas of blogging: does one want to ‘think’ about the metaphysical ramifications of Godard films…or ponder the face of Carole Lombard? That’s right, I’m shallow, give me pictures. Trouble in Paradise is an ongoing album of Hollywood stars, most of them gorgeous women from another dimension.

Potrzebie
Arcane tidbits of esoteric info, Wally Wood, jazz, Wig City.

Self-Styled Siren
Our tastes generally gravitate toward the same kinds of films, and Siren and I share an appreciation for the beauty to be mined from material that others scoff at. She gives me hope that I’m not the only one who gets dizzy on the final frames of The Fountainhead or Duel in the Sun. Recently she’s been giving Chabrol a try, and I’m looking forward to whatever she may have to say about his quirky oeuvre.

Esotika Erotica Psychotica
Here’s an interesting situation: I’m constitutionally incapable of sitting all the way through eighty percent of the films covered at this blog (predominantly Euro horror), yet the folks there make them fascinating to read about. There must be a kind of genius in that.

A Girl and a Gun
George Fasel was one of the first professional writers to welcome me to blogging. He enjoyed my work, as much as I enjoyed his. He passed away in 2005, but there’s a considerable amount of his work still on view at the above link.

Speaking in tongues

Judith Roberts as Mary Shaw

Dead Silence
Produced by Gregg Hoffman, Oren Koules and Mark Burg. Directed by James Wan. Screenplay by Leigh Whannell, from a story by Mr. Whannell and Mr. Wan. Music by Charlie Clouser. Edited by Michael N. Knue. Production designed by Julie Berghoff. Cinematography by John R. Leonetti. With Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Whalberg and Bob Gunton. 91 minutes. Released in 2007 by Universal Pictures.

Chockablock with clichés straight out of an old William Castle movie—possessed ventriloquists dummies, a skeletal ghost lady, and the clever ‘if you scream you die’ gimmick—Dead Silence follows a young widower in pursuit of his wife’s killer. She was found shocked to death and her tongue removed. The investigation takes him back to a childhood hometown fallen to ruin, the stalled relationship he weathers with his dad (a dead ringer for Criswell), and a curse hanging over the locals. “Beware the stare of Mary Shaw,” they say. She’s out to take revenge on the descendants of those who lynched her decades ago, and it starts with extracting the tongue.

    Directed by James Wan from a screenplay by Leigh Whannell (based on a story by Wan), the film runs contrary to much of what now constitutes the horror genre. Given the current vogue for self-conscious ‘dark’ shock dramas and loony Asian hack-‘em-ups, Dead Silence will undoubtedly be castigated by the target demographic for being too quaint, hopelessly linear and retro, down to the vintage black and white Universal logo used in the opening. Seen with a lot of popcorn and no lofty expectations, however, Dead Silence can also be a welcome throwback to ‘50s- and ‘60s-style Saturday matinees, fortified with contemporary makeup, editing and audio technology.

    Wan and Whannell previously collaborated on Saw (2004), something I’ve yet to catch up with. Ever since the 1970s the genre has become increasingly violent and oppressively mean-spirited, alienating old farts like myself who still get jazzed over Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931) and Vincent Price sending people off the deep end in House on Haunted Hill (1959). After Tobe Hooper’s skillful and scary Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), the horror film in general has felt, more often than not, redundant and unnecessary.

    (This is not to say that I’d given up entirely. After ghosts and monsters were supplanted with raw physical pain—the legacy of Hiroshima and Vietnam—there have been notable exceptions: Peter Medak’s The Changeling [1980], Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s The Blair Witch Project [1999] and Chris Kentish’s Open Water [2003] retreated to the safer but more engaging harbors of unseen forces and less bloodshed; Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 (1987) combined camp with wit; Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs [1991] was somber and playful; and such comical would-be dreck as Jason X [2001] and Alien vs. Predator [2004] gave momentary hope for an old school Saturday matinee renaissance.)

    Dead Silence returns to basic character-driven narrative. By not targeting any particular plot hooks in a script laced with many, Wan avoids a minefield of potential boredom. The creepy doll introduced at the beginning is used sparingly (eliminating any unfair comparisons with the psycho dummies of Dead of Night [1945], Devil Doll [1964], Magic [1978] and the Chucky movies), while the killer ghost is imbued with enough secrecy and dread to intrigue anyone with a sense of humor. In its bid for simplicity, the characters are stock and the situations rigged, making the success of Dead Silence dependent upon how much disbelief you’re willing to suspend. And though one shouldn’t admit these things in public, it had me spooked and amused from beginning to end.

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Nudge reality

Performed by Big Audio Dynamite, E=MC² is Mick Jones’s dedication to the art and imagery of Nicolas Roeg. See if you can match the lyrics with Roeg’s films:


Somebody I never met
But in a way I know
Didn’t think that you could get
So much from a picture show
Man dies first reel
People ask what’s the deal?
This ain’t how it’s supposed to be
Don’t like no aborigine

Took a trip in Powis Square
Pop star dyed his hair
No fans to scream and shout
When mobsters came to flush him out
Gangland slaying underground
New identity must be found
On the left bank for a while
Insanity Bohemian style

Ritual ideas relativity
Only buildings no people prophecy
Time-slide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Met a dwarf that was no good
Dressed like little Red Riding Hood
Bad habit taking life
Calling card a six inch knife
Ran off really fast
Mumbled something `bout the past
Best sex I’ve ever seen
As if each moment was the last
Drops of blood color slide
Funeral for his bride
But it’s him who’s really dead
Gets to take the funeral ride

Ritual ideas relativity
Only buildings no people prophecy
Time-slide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Space guy fell from the sky
Scratched my head and wondered why
Time slide into time
Across international dateline
Scientist eats bubblegum
Hall of fame baseball
Senators a Hoodlum
Big chiefs in the hall

Ritual ideas relativity
Only buildings no people prophecy
Time-slide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Stray thoughts fear to tread
Placed upon the screen instead
She’s my flame too hot to hold
Had to settle for her gold

Bloodlust - Greek God - Gold discovery
Gone bust - Tight wad - Slow recovery
Axe job - Flame thrower - Iron bar and gun
Betting shop - New owner - A walk in the sun

Ritual ideas relativity
Only buildings no people prophecy
Time-slide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Spread the news the Maestros back
With a beat-box soundtrack
The King of brains - Queen of the sack
Executives have heart attack
Its assault course celluloid
The money makers would avoid
Sometimes notions get reversed
Center of the universe

Ritual ideas relativity
Only buildings no people prophecy
Time-slide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery...

20th Century Foxes No.5: Akiko Wakabayashi

Akiko Wakabayashi

IMDb

From Nippon, with Love

You’ll still be in this circus when I’m laughing in my grave

Anita Pallenberg & Donald Cammell
(click to enlarge)

Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance

A film by Kevin Macdonald and Chris Rodley.
Featuring interviews with Mick Jagger, James Fox, David Cammell, Anita Pallenberg, Kenneth Anger, Donald Cammell, Myriam Gibril, Drew Hammond, China Kong, Frank Mazzola, Stanley Meadows, Barbara Steele, Nicolas Roeg, Cathy Moriarty and Johnny Shannon. 75 minutes. Released in 1998.

The complete film in nine parts:


Part One


Part Two


Part Three


Part Four


Part Five


Part Six


Part Seven


Part Eight


Part Nine

When it was released in America in 1970, Performance was generally trashed by the press. John Simon called it “indescribably sleazy,” and for Richard Schickel it was “the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing.” Warner Brothers, who produced the picture, were unable to decipher its story, unresponsive toward its metaphysical airs, and horrified by the homoerotic violence and nudity that earned it an ‘X’ rating. They distributed it two years after it was completed — but not without extensive cuts. (Click to continue reading the article.)

“Suck my dick!” said Demi to the dude

Demi Moore as G.I. Jane

I’m not sure how many participants in Film Experience’s Action Heroine Blog-A-Thon will remember or care, but the great-great grandmother of this limited subgenre is Pearl White. Actress and stuntwoman, she appeared in over two hundred movies between 1910 and 1924. Many were shorts and most of them forgotten (some would say justifiably so), but her fame rests on The Perils of Pauline (1914), an immensely popular serial that was still running on television well into the 1970s.

As the lead character thrust into physically demanding situations, she was nonetheless a victim of the status quo. As a rule, we’ve fostered an image of women as subservient, irrational, unintelligent and duplicitous, stereotypes the movies, despite all their industrial and technological advances, rarely endeavor to correct. And besides, villains are often always more interesting than the heroes chasing after them, and with women it starts with Irma Vep (played by Musidora) in Louis Feuillade’s delicious Les Vampires (1915)—a serial with the kind of smart and sentient approach to cinema and sexuality that left Pearl White and her perils looking anemic, trite and safe by comparison.

The heroines who transcended eye candy to go toe-to-toe with the bad guy barely evolved with the medium. Mary Pickford was a plucky backwater tomboy in the excellent Heart o’ the Hills (1919), battling thieving land developers while preserving the ecosystem. Elinor Field played The Jungle Goddess in 1922. Greta Garbo shed her chilly refinement to control Sweden in Rouben Mamoulian’s remarkable Queen Christina (1933). In 1938 and 1939, Bonita Granville portrayed Nancy Drew in four b-movies. Francis Gifford gave us Jungle Girl (1941), a female spin on Tarzan from a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Its lead character, Nyoka, returned in Republic’s The Perils of Nyoka (1942), a serial with Kay Aldridge out to dethrone the evil Vultura, Queen of the Desert (Lorna Gray). By the 1950s, Irish McCalla was Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, television’s silly G-rated answer to burlesque.

Above: Pearl White.
Below: Musidora in Les Vampires

With the exceptions of the Pickford and Garbo pictures, tits, ass, and the jiggle factor make most of this tosh seem even more ridiculous than it actually is while underlining the male stranglehold on both the art and industry. Indeed, one of Hollywood’s finest screenwriters, Frances Marion, used the pseudonym ‘Frank Clifton’ on The Two-Gun Man (1926) and Jesse James (1927) in a bid to ‘legitimize’ them as westerns. When Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller used female leads in Rancho Notorious (1952), Johnny Guitar (1954) and Forty Guns (1957), it was mostly a scheme to rework an action genre for emotional and intellectual gain.

A man I know once declared, “I love women”—though we may have been watching bikinied Raquel Welch in Fathom (1967) or Sharon Tate bouncing on the trampoline in Don’t Make Waves (1967) at the time. A few years later, after he’d seen a movie by Kathryn Bigelow or Mary Harron, he announced, “Women direct movies the same way they drive cars—badly.” His conflict of interest exemplifies the average hetero male’s mixed interpretation of women, and reminds me of the scene between Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable in The Misfits (1961): men tell her she looks happy, but Gable says her appearance and femininity—not her intellect or personal worth—make men feel happy.

In Catwoman (2004), after detective Benjamin Bratt chides murder suspect Sharon Stone, she spells it out for him: “I’m a woman—I’ve had to do plenty of things I don’t want to do.” That scene takes me back to a group therapy session I attended over twenty years ago, when an archaic divorced dad told us about his day: “I did some cooking and cleaning—I was getting in touch with my feminine side.” A lot of Catwoman is about confusion over rules and gender, to where the heroine (Halle Berry) isn’t sure of her own motives and the vain villain (Stone) is the hardened product of male cruelty.

Full tilt: Cameron and Demi in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003)

When Navy SEALS Lt. Demi Moore barks “Suck my dick!” to get the attention of Master Chief Viggo Mortensen in G.I. Jane (1997), it tells us that progress has always been sexually lopsided. As he displayed in Alien (1979) and Thelma & Louise (1991), director Ridley Scott is aware of the female sensibility struggling to declare itself in a man’s world, while his buff and voluptuous star—equal parts mannequin, centerfold, truant officer and kook (she was born in Roswell, UFO territory…is Demi a Martian?)—weathered one of the strangest and profitable movie careers in recent memory: as a blonde and barefoot sprite in The Butcher’s Wife (1991), hokum high on the list of my guilty pleasures; banging Robert Redford for a million in the ludicrous Indecent Proposal (1993); using her mojo to undermine doughy Michael Douglas in Disclosure (1994)—a midnight movie ripe for discovery; self destructing as Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (1995); and the calculated fiasco of Striptease (1996), whose publicity junket had Demi pole dancing on TV for Barbara Walters.

Although her best film, G.I. Jane was Demi’s ticket to smaller roles and connubial bliss with Aston Kutcher, sixteen years her junior. I’m sure the lad is up for feeding her needs, just as I believe Demi is driven and insatiable but grateful for such good fortune. For this alone, I nominate her for Queen of the Action Heroine Blogathon. She’s certainly got the balls for it.

Oh, tell me where your freedom lies

Smokin’ boo in a paisley haze

Psych-Out
Music from the Original Soundtrack

Via Chocoreve

The Storybook: The Pretty Song from Psych-out
Strawberry Alarm Clock: Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow
The Seeds: Two Fingers Pointing on You
Boenzee Cryque: Ashbury Wednesday
Strawberry Alarm Clock: The World's on Fire
The Storybook: Psych-out Sanctorium
The Storybook: Beads of Innocence
The Storybook: The Love Children
The Storybook: Psych-out
Strawberry Alarm Clock: The World's on Fire (Long Version)

Soundtrack Link
(Password: posted_first_at_chocoreve)

Richard Rush’s Psych-Out (1968) was filmed partly on location in San Francisco’s Haight/Ashbury district in the midst of 1967’s Summer of Love, and producer Dick Clark (yes, that Dick Clark) anted up the purple haze by gathering such flower-power ensembles as the Strawberry Alarm Clock and Sky Saxon with the Seeds for the soundtrack. It was one of the handful of pictures churned out after Roger Corman’s The Trip (1967) opened a transitory market for psychedelic exploitation, Nehru jackets, groovy boots, beads, hash pipes and rolling papers.

    In a screenplay by the one-shot-wonder team of E. Hunter Willett and Betty Ulius, its tale of a deaf runaway (Susan Strasberg) searching for her spiritually-challenged brother, “The Seeker” (Bruce Dern), is chock-full of perceptive character silhouettes. From the coffee houses and galleries to crash pads and be-ins, we encounter the giggling burn-out (Max Julien, one toke over the line when proclaiming “Owsley is a saint!”), the beads-and-sandals realist (underrated b-movie player Adam Roarke), a capitalist-in-denial with control issues (pony-tailed Jack Nicholson as “Stoney”), a jittery poster artist (Henry Jaglom, taking a circular saw to his wrist during a lysergic meltdown), and the cosmic intellectual (an absolutely mesmerizing Dean Stockwell, one step ahead of “the plastic hassle”). Even the police, er, uh, pigs are represented, headed by a young Garry Marshall who sighs, “I can’t wait until this costume party is over!”

    Although it pokes fun at outmoded racist attitudes (“You sho’ do gots rhythm,” Nicholson winks at the black Julien), Psych-Out is sexually archaic, confusing “free love” with the Playboy philosophy. Its female characters are intrusive, helpless mannequins when not lusted after by Stoney’s trippy troupe. (They’re a rock band called Mumblin’ Jim aiming to get a gig at ‘the Ballroom.’) So aggravated by their games, Strasberg downs an oversized batch of STP and blows her mind while standing alone in the middle of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge—a memorable slice of hippie noir.

    In an interview in American Film magazine during the release of The Stunt Man (1980), Rush reflected on his years with American International Pictures (the distributor of Psych-Out and most of Corman’s work), observing the knack that Roger had for breathing life into genres, but gave himself credit for making better, or perhaps more coherent, pictures. (I haven’t read that interview in years, so please forgive my paraphrasing from memory.) While Psych-Out is competently made, it still lacks the ambition and drive which motivates The Trip, a noble, albeit flawed, attempt to recreate an hallucinatory acid experience. And it’s mostly out of nostalgia do I consider Psych-Out something of a necessity. I’ve fond memories of seeing it in the late ‘70s in San Francisco, at the Strand Theatre on Market Street, just a few miles from where it was shot, and a rare opportunity to experience those effervescent Lazslo Kovacs images in crisp 35mm on a big screen.

    Flash forward to the late ‘90s, and MGM Home Video pairs Psych-Out with The Trip on a double feature DVD, complete with interviews with Corman, Rush, Kovacs, and Dern, trailers, and a Corman commentary (on The Trip). In terms of print quality, Corman’s picture looks alright (the sound is slightly low), but Psych-Out is a shocking disappointment. The source material used for the DVD is not only scratched in the last reel, but it’s cut by nearly seven minutes. Among the missing items: Max Julien’s line about Owsley; Strasberg’s amusing thrift store fashion show movie montage; and at least half of Pandora’s (I.F. Jefferson) bead segment, a Kovacs hand-held tour-de-force. Luckily, I never scrapped my original VHS copy. It may not be widescreen, but it hasn’t been trimmed, either.

Elegant seduction

Faye and Steve and Michel Legrand
Via Bad for the Glass

        

20th Century Foxes No.4: Daliah Lavi

The Silencers

I was about eight years old when I first saw Daliah Lavi, in the Matt Helm movie The Silencers (1966). This Israeli dish had a face and body custom designed for CinemaScope and Panavision, dark and exotic, tall, with rounded eyes and wide mouth…even at that young age I knew she wasn’t the type of girl I’d likely find in my neighborhood. Her film career was brief (she’s smokin’ hot in the 1967 Casino Royale), and she went on to record a few albums.

IMDb

Daliah Lavi Shrine

Wikipedia

Daliah: Love Goddess

Daliah at YouTube

Daliah at Amazon

The Silencers (click to enlarge)


Some Girls Do


A MILF on a recent album cover

A day at the beach

Jacques Gamblin and Sandrine Bonnaire, Au coeur du mensonge


Benoît Magimel and Laura Smet, La Demoiselle d'honneur


Benoît Magimel and Mélanie Doutey, La Fleur du mal

Ever notice how Claude Chabrol uses drab, cheerless off-season beaches—or deserted shore villages, as in Les Biches, Que la bête meure and Les Innocents aux mains sales—to bridge his scenarios from first act character introductions to the second act’s psychological quandary? One of these days I really should look into this—the topsy-turvy metaphor of water for a bridge.