Tag Archives: entertainment

Futureworld [1976)

My first foray into science fiction.

And is this a hell of a film!

A sort of forgotten masterpiece.

Part schlock, part genius.

Stellar entertainment.

This is really a quality picture…reminiscent of another 70s gem:  Phantom of the Paradise.

There’s just something really mysterious and compelling about Futureworld.

Sex with robots!

Jim Antonio is the Clark Griswold equivalent of Clifton James in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun.

And so this is essential viewing for fans of the recent Ex Machina.

Sadly, director Richard T. Heffron is no longer with us.

And, yes, this is a sequel to the Michael Crichton film Westworld, but Futureworld stands alone.

Peter Fonda is the Ur- Jarvis Cocker.  And really some fine acting from Peter.

Blythe Danner is outstanding.

Stuart Margolin is very strong.

We get journalism, robots, cloning…the works.

Think Hillary Clinton has a robot/clone double?

This film appeared on Hulu at a particularly suspicious time as regards that canard.

But see the film and you might not think it’s so crazy after all.

Doubles of world leaders.

That’s the master plan.

It’s not giving much away to tell you that.

That is, after all, the elevator pitch for the film itself.

And it is compelling.

Retina scanners, biometrics, psychic driving, Antonin Artaud…

This was both advanced and historical for 1976.

Ahead and behind.

Which is to say, completely plausible.

The only hilariously bad moments (ok, there’s quite a few) are the guns which seemingly came from the set of the first Star Wars film.  Said guns completely destroy suspended disbelief (more than any actual target).

The Westworld tragedy supposedly claimed the lives of about 50 guests.

Pretty close to the fake Pulse nightclub shooting (49).

That being the exact number of the Maidan snipers’ massacre in Kiev (49).

And with Pulse we are there in theme park central.

Disney.

Alligator.

Same week.

Orlando.

Robots are all around us today.

The drones that kill innocent people in Pakistan.

And the driverless cars rolled out by Uber this past week in Pittsburgh.

[I better watch what I say or Emil Michael will sic his opposition research wet dreams on me.]

So yes…we probably have Northrop Grumman to thank for 9/11 (Global Hawk).

All around us.  Automation.  Lovely.

Watch Futureworld and you will see the technocratic extension of Operation Mockingbird.

Mimic.  Opinion leaders.  Memetics.

The gene and the meme.  Dawkins was right on it.

In the same year.  1976.

Sure, this film is not very precise in some regards.

Are they all robots?

Clones?

Hybrids?

It’s not very clear.

I highly recommend this film for connoisseurs of Baudrillard.

This whole film is an orgy of simulation.

[Though, with a PG rating, not a simulation of an orgy.]

Interesting note…a significant portion of this film was shot “at NASA” in Houston.

 

-PD

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Spring Breakers [2012)

Every American film is a cautionary tale.

David Lynch was the new path forward.

But then something happened.

Jarmusch is good.

But no one on our landscape is important as Harmony Korine.

No one could have made this film but him.

I was mistaken.

I had them wrong all along.

Ashley Benson seemed like the mom.

But she’s just 26.

[Don’t trust entertainment ages.]

I had her for Harmony’s wife the whole time.

Making Faith feel comfortable.

December 18.  Close.

Vanessa Hudgens.

Bingo.  Shares my birthday.

Doesn’t act 27.  But this was four years ago.

Rachel Korine is a real actress.

I can’t find the artist for the shower scene.

Ingres?

It is also Casino Royale.  Eva Green.

But Daniel Craig is behind the camera.

Maybe Rachel is the only one with an honest age.

But I have to give mad props to Selena Gomez for doing this film.

[Did I just say that?]

It’s true.  You have to excuse my thuggee language.

Selena Gomez is brilliant in this film.

Why?  Because she ostensibly survived it.

Is she a great actress?

I don’t know.

Is she even acting at all?

Hard to say.

Hanging with the Korine posse would seemingly drive anyone to tears.

But let’s define.

This milieu…these trappings.  Were/are genius.  Needed to happen.

It’s like Mercury Rev’s second album Boces.

Not something most people will want to revisit often.  [including the band]

Unless you’re bent.

Like me.

So Selena’s an artist.

She’s done one thing in life which will never disappear.

This film.

Chocolate syrup in the squirt gun.

Try it out.  Try it out.

Lots of Pussy Riot.

If you can’t handle the chicken shack, then you’re doomed.

Kinda like me years ago when Uma got stabbed in the heart.

St. Petersburg.

The one in Florida.

Far from Pussy Riot.

A lesser filmmaker (Oliver Stone) would have made Natural Born Killers.

Spring Breakers obliterates that poseur film.

[And Oli’s made a couple great ones.  But that’s not one.]

Let me just add this.

James Franco is all-world in this movie.

It must be seen to be believed.

Come in with no preconceptions.

Because Hollywood makes all actors into crap.

Only a Harmony Korine can save their acting souls.

And there’s only one of him.

So we have Godard.  Korine.  Lynch slumbering.  And the Romanians.

Gotta give some more props to Gucci Mane.

[What?]

That’s some damn good acting.

You wanna know black lives matter?

Even white kids get desperate.

From shitty small towns.

And so the uniquely American version of EXCESS.

It’s cinematic.

All the detritus from the MTV vaults.

So many disposable summers.

Finally put into perspective by a true humanist.  Harmony Korine.

You gotta get real deep to see the layers of meaning from the inside out.

Remember four girls in a pool.

Finally free.

Breathing their own air.

It’s an extreme version.

Of the American dream.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “Arbitrary Law” [1990)

That gum you like’s gonna come back in style.

Miguel Ferrer defers.

A mere 130 IQ.

Spatial.

âme.  âne.

Perplexed and amused us for years.

Âne-soeur.

But we are required to go deeper.

To a deeper poetry.

Greatness demands all of us.

Lenny Von Dohlen we knew in every blank gaze.

Every sheepish word.

A foreigner at home within us.

Criminalistics not complete with stylometry of Fort Meade.

Necessitating poetry.

A poetry of.

It is beyond MFA.

It is compulsion of unfettered existence.

Tied to entertainment.

I was a bastard brat.

For a moment beneath me.

My higher calling.

Thought a pentagram was imminent.

But the magic is white as MIKE.

Unity of opposites.

We will have much more to say in dissertation form.

A true X file.

With no rational explanation.

Thwarted by every dimension of reality.

And Ray Wise is brilliant.

To ask so much of an actor.

Lord let it rain on me.

What do you think?

I’m asking you.

Fire walk with me.

Wordsworth.

Perhaps Keats?

Only Baudelaire with that kind of darkness.

Maybe even necessitating Lautreamont.

But we will go deeper as we outstrip the functionalities.

Wyndham Lewis.

And then host for Ezra Pound.

In possession which destroyed Lasker’s first edition.

Belmondo once proved his love.

Similarly.

To use our powers for good.

Une femme.

Hokey fumbling with mysticism.

Deadly accuracy of possession.

We want to know more of Moloch.

And the cremation of care.

 

-PD

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Rosemary’s Baby [1968)

There are a handful of great horror movies.

Movies which came late enough to set the bar.

Although the early days of cinema were horrific.

A different style developed.

Rosemary’s Baby has a Hitchcockean subtlety to it.

And so Psycho would be the first true horror movie.

1960.

It was a new style of filmmaking.

But Roman Polanski advanced that style.

Here.

Perhaps we wouldn’t get another in this line till The Shining.

1980.

When great directors dabble in horror.

1960.  1968.  1980.

But horror is an everyman genre.

And so Tobe Hooper made a great one.

1974.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

1960.  1968.  1974.  1980.

A progression from subtlety to overt gore.

But all these films are artful.

Silence of the Lambs resurrected that tradition.

Art.

Fear.  Terror.  Poetry.  The flowers of evil.

1960.  1968.  1974.  1980.  1991.

We feel it in Twin Peaks.

Possession.

But perhaps no film captured the essence of the occult so artfully as Rosemary’s Baby.

It is a truly terrifying film.

Spooky.

But classic.

Austere.

Every element is well-placed.

It is an art film.  But equally a spectacle.  An entertainment.

Most notably, it is a philosophic reflection upon evil.

As I’ve said…science doesn’t admit such.

The existence.

But we have to wonder.

When such powerful people believe in such mumbo jumbo.

Whether there is power or not.  In their ceremonies.

They believe.  Ostensibly.

It is a frightening prospect.

A very disturbed element of the intelligentsia.

But always…

Always.

Strive.

To understand your enemies.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “Lonely Souls” [1990)

Holy shit.

New shoes.

New shoes.

That this ever made it on TV.

Good lord.

Goddamned genius!

The Pepsi/Coke challenge.

It was indeed David Lynch who directed this episode.

The scariest moment in American TV history.

Eclipsed.

Because the owls are not what they seem.

Truly possession.

It…would be a lot easier not to give a shit.

And so this isn’t a paranoid statement.

THe owls.  Everyman.  Conspiring for truth.

Histoire(s).

That the French gave the world film criticism.

But Hollywood provided Hitchcock with just the right concoction.

An unknown drug.

In my corner, I am meaningless.

So that we must know the giant.

Maybe the evil of the Bilderberg Hotel.

Carel Struycken.

But really the eveil of which we all know we are capable.

How’s that?

It is the family of man.

We learn from every source.

The genius of James Joyce.  Blind prematurely.  Scribbling.

What Beethoven called it.  The “late” quartets.

Not his own program.

Scratching.  Fiddling.  John Carson.

Looks like a “D” this time.

And should we be surprised?

It is the cosmology of drama.

No creators dared.

Till David Lynch and Mark Frost.

But Lynch proves who the real killer is.

Power center.

Category killer.

Television which shames cinema.

Never been scared reading a film review?

Think TV is pap?

I did too.  Never.

It means much more that I don’t give you the words easily.

What would be the healthy thing?

Harmony.  Community.

But we live in perpetual hell.

And so Baudelaire takes his place among urban poets.

Muck of milkshake.

If…we know the secret to illusion.

Then we are not as scared.

But the real thing is positively chilling.

Effect.

Several messes.

Remember Finnegan serialized.

Histoire(s) televised.

I am but a lonesome hobo.

Luke the drifter.

But we want our entertainment to contain everything.

And Hitchcock achieved it first.  And best.

Set limitless parameters.

So that Lynch could step in.

Nature morte.

Exquisite corpse.

The song doesn’t exist.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “The Man Behind Glass” [1990)

I’m guessing this episode might best be chalked up to studio interference.

We’ve seen it before.

Take the James Bond film Spectre.

One can feel the executive sabotage.

But here is a little different.

From a quick glance.

ABC (presumably) wanted Lynch and Co. to move things along.

Enough with this suspense.

Or perhaps that was yet to come.

Perhaps this episode is like recitative in opera.

It has to be there (upon a time), but we kinda want it to be over.

We want the arias.  The choruses.

There’s no Maria Callas disc of “best-loved recitatives”.

[Recitativi?]

Yes. sì.

Here we run into a sort of auteur theory for stories.

Or perhaps we are running into auteur theory in its purest form.

If we assume the brilliance of David Lynch (and Mark Frost), then we will blame Lesli Linka Glatter for daft direction here.

But we have previously praised Ms. Glatter.  She has the chops.

So what was the problem with this episode?

Did the material (Lynch and Frost) save Glatter’s direction?

[Did Glatter’s direction ruin Lynch and Frost’s writing?]

Or did Glatter save a mediocre piece of writing by Lynch and Frost?

That’s the problem of episodes.

Chunks.

TV is inherently cubist.

And stories are not conceived with interpolated commercial breaks.

That’s why the stories suffer.

On TV.

The medium is faulty.

The medium gives very little respect for the creations it airs.

But hey:  at least the message is getting out there!

McLuhan would point out that the orientation of space and time determines to the largest extent how we interpret television shows.

[Which is to say, “…the medium is the message.”]

I would have to agree.

And so we are left hanging.

Perhaps for the first time.

Usually we are looking forward to the next episode.

But this time we’re just annoyed.

Because the episode is not a self-contained satisfying unit of entertainment.

Not this time.

You win some, you lose some.

We still love the story.  And the characters.

But we could have done without some of the clumsy fluff.

That was, by the way, my initial concept.

For my website.

A descriptive coup.

Clumsy fluff.

 

-PD

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Reservoir Dogs [1992)

That annoying, whiny little prick is a genius.

That’s the retort.

I’m really batting below the Mendoza line regarding Tarantino.

And I’ll tell you why.

Because that annoying, whiny little prick is a goddamned genius.

As much as I want to judge him as a director based on his shrill, dorky acting, I can’t.

Because he’s made some brilliant films.

As much as I want to judge him because so many filmmakers have followed his example regarding ultraviolence (which he naturally ripped off from Kubrick’s treatment of Burgess), I can’t.

It’s not Tarantino’s fault that his example is attractive.

It isn’t much more than a girl and a gun.

[the famous Godard quote…all you need for a film]

Ah!  But it IS different.

There are no girls here.

There are no female characters in Reservoir Dogs.

Sure…there’s the waitress.

Does she even appear?

We certainly hear about her.

And then there’s a broad who gets shot in the head (bringing her 15, er, 7 seconds of fame to an end).

Yes, Reservoir Dogs is a good ol’ sausage party.

Why review this film now?

Why review anything but new releases?

Because it’s my website and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with it.

[as the inestimable Lawrence Tierney might have said]

I’ll tell you the real reason.

Because the movies of 2016 are such shit as to make Tarantino circa ’92 look like Jean Cocteau in comparison.

And so we watch for entertainment.

We might want a story.

Dialog is nice.

But whatever’s in it (or not in it), we want it to be compelling (damn it!).

Reservoir Dogs is that.

It’s tense.

Like another “dogs” (Straw Dogs).

Why the colors?  Because van Gogh.

Should be capitalized.

Don’t use your Christian names.

I just gotta say, Harvey Keitel is really good here.

No.  He’s fucking great!

Guy has range!

Buscemi is the ball of nerves we’ve come to expect.  Times ten.

More important than specific actors, we learn the nature of acting.

We learn what lends stories credibility:  details.

And as (perhaps) an homage to Andy Warhol, we see the excellent Tim Roth actually rehearse his lines during the film.

Tarantino would employ the shooting (camera) from behind trick (Vivre sa vie) in Pulp Fiction, but here he finagles a brilliance (the Roth rehearsal) that only a truly agile mind could conjure.

And so, once again, I must apologize to Mr. Tarantino for having denigrated his films so much.  I had seen them, I just didn’t appreciate them.

We fall in love.  We fall out of love.  We fall back into love.

 

-PD

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Taxi “Come as You Aren’t” [1978)

We tend to think the small things don’t matter.

A 30 minute TV show.

25 minus commercials.

[22 by the 1990s…a few more ads jabbed in and substance sucked out]

A television show.

But it does matter.

I’ve neglected my journey through the world of Taxi for far too long.

And coming back to it I was greeted by a delightful episode dominated by the ravishing Marilu Henner.

Again we find Judd Hirsch’s character Alex as a sort of amateur psychologist for his friends at the taxi company.

Hirsch is the one everyone comes to for advice.

Not having watched the show for awhile, I could have sworn he had a mustache.

I mean, come on…it was 1978.

The whole vibe of Alex (Hirsch) is “guy with mustache”…not in a 21st-century hipster way, but in a Bread way…soft rock…working man.

[alas, no stache]

But back to Marilu Henner.  She really owns this episode.

Andy Kaufman has a few priceless lines, but Henner is the center of attention.

As with other Taxi episodes, Hirsch is the moral compass (more or less).

It’s a very unpretentious brand of ethics.

It’s from a time when America was younger.

Each episode ends with an “Aww…” moment.

But don’t get me wrong.

The situations are believable.

It’s not realism, but it’s generally plausible.

The point of the show, however, is to make people feel good.

To make people feel better.

Is it entertainment?

Sure.

But it’s also, in its own way, a brand of homespun philosophy.

Every show is a little slice of optimism amidst the cruel world.

 

-PD

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Taxi “Blind Date” [1978)

Thanks to Hulu and CBS (and probably some overly-precious writer somewhere) I wasn’t able to see episode two of Taxi, so I had to skip to episode three.

This one really is a curveball from the pilot.  The overriding theme here is obesity.

Judd Hirsh is wonderful as always, but this episode really benefits from the acting talents of Suzanne Kent.  Kent plays the role of Alex’s (Hirsch) blind date.

Hirsch and Kent really have a magic in this episode which is touching.

On a lighter note, Andy Kaufman really starts to take off in this episode (as in blast off).

We start by hearing Andy sing a song in his mysterious Eurasian language.

Later, Latka (Kaufman) shows off some of the singularly offensive gestures of his mystery culture in an argument with Danny DeVito.

What is great about Taxi is that the scriptwriting is matched by formidable acting talents (particularly Kaufman and Hirsch).  It’s no wonder that America fell in love with this show.  This is entertainment firing on all cylinders.

 

-PD

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Limelight [1952)

I didn’t know movies could be this good.

Where have they been keeping this all of our lives?

Us.

When I was young I stumbled into The Gold Rush.  25/52.

And I lived at the end of a flower in City Lights.

So I knew.

But I forgot.

That Charlie Chaplin was the most vivid outcast—the great romantic on rollerskates.

And the miracle?

Claire Bloom lives.

No Sylvia Plath ending.

And Charles Chaplin lives.

As much as Baudelaire’s vieux saltimbanque.

It was her first film.  Bloom.

Age 21.

And now she is 84 years young.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////

No one told me films could be miracles.

It’s kinda like Thora Birch.

Buster Keaton.

People thought she stopped working.

But it wasn’t true.

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No greater love have I seen for an art.

Like Pierre-Auguste kissing the canvas…and then painting.

You can’t simply say Renoir in film and let it linger…

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Tell Tchaikovsky the news.

The first chord.  In Moscow perhaps.  And all 122 pages fall onto the keyboard.

A thunderous vibration like Chaliapin.

Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин

Boris Godunov.

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A drinking problem.

Stage fright.

Torn and frayed.

At the edges.

In the wings.

Wings.

Ah yes…I haven’t heard that name in a long time.

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The piano was unprepared.

A cage of equal temperament.

And so we removed the great nest

of cosmic dissonance.

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Don’t get me wrong.

I love a good cluster chord.

An honest, flawed note.

Take your dissonance like a man…someone said…maybe Henry Cowell.

On second thought, ’twas Ives.

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I’ve spent my life in a drum.

Like Keith Moon.

A human projectile.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

88 ways to look at a blackbird.

I’ve never seen one person leave it all on the stage quite like that.

A lifetime’s work.  Painted.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

The film was in black and white?

I didn’t happen to notice.

Because behind my eyes the colours were bursting.

U.

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And so like those little speckles in the concrete which the moon caught.

As I dreamt of being a composer.

And I too dove headfirst into the void like Yves Klein.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

And for us it was no sleight of hand.

There was no airbrushed net.

And I landed hard.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Gandhi is smiling and that’s all that matters.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

between yell and Yale

bell strut feet dill old pod loot.  Look!

88 ways to be a composer and an itch ain’t one (bite me!)

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Film is completely unimportant when writing about film.

Take Hubert’s Flea Circus on 42nd St.

I would never have known were it not for Nick Tosches.

And my favorite book:

Where Dead Voices Gather.

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Yeah, but it’s like Picasso’s musicians.

You think I’ve really cracked up.  Craquelure.

“Any fish bite if you got good bait.”

They tell us in economics there’s only one Mona Lisa.

Because the painter is dead.

Only one…

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Because he’s not alive to paint another.

Another Mona Lisa.

Unlimited supply.  EMI.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

You’re driving at something.

I just know it.

Because the film was too long.  And too good.

Not possible, Likert.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Many aw-kward moments of perfection.

Where Chaplin hit too close to home.

Was it Dave Davies?

“Death of a Clown”

Yes, precisely.

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It can’t be described conventionally.

You can’t just go to the Grand Canyon and say, “Vast.”

Was ist das?

Ja!

That is what I’m trying to say.

-PD

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