Day: March 25, 2016

Images from a recently popped French Bluray of Rowland Lee‘s Son of Frankenstein (’39) have revived an old complaint — the fact that there’s not a great deal of similarity between Boris Karloff‘s monster as he appeared in James Whale’s 1931 original, the 1935 sequel Bride of Frankenstein and Lee’s 1939 installment (which was Karloff’s swan song). In the 1931 film Karloff was gaunt-featured with dark bangs and dark, blotchy eye bags, and was fairly thin of frame. In Bride of Frankenstein the bangs were gone (burned off by the windmill fire) along with the blotchy eye bags, and Karloff, having gained 15 or 20 pounds since the success of Frankenstein, was a lot beefier. In 1939 he still had that well-fed look and a semblance of bangs had returned, but the under-eye makeup was gone forever. The bottom line is that the ’39 monster didn’t look like the ones in the ’35 or ’31 film — it was like Karloff was playing a brother or a cousin.

Boris Karloff’s monster in 1931’s Frankenstein.

In 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein.

In 1939’s Son of Frankenstein.

I was never completely smitten with Mark and Jay Duplass‘s Togetherness, but I was intrigued with all but one of the characters (the exception being Melanie Lynskey‘s Michelle Pierson, the downhead wife of Mark Duplass‘s Brett Pierson) and I always found it engagingly written and “real”. Honestly? I never watched it religiously because it was never, in my head, a priority. But I was glad it was happening and I’m sorry that HBO has killed it. The 4.10 Season 2 finale will wrap it up. HBO felt that the Season 2 numbers were too weak to continue (330,000 viewers per episode) but it would have been nice all the same if HBO had approved a third and final season. You could tell from Season 2 episodes that the Duplass brothers were still building and planting seeds and cruising within a middle-movement mentality, and that the real fireworks were being saved for Season 3.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice made $27 million last night (i.e., Thursday), and may be on the way to nailing $180 million by Sunday night. (Warner Bros. is projecting a more modest $110 million.) Shitty reviews never seem to matter on opening weekends, but the second weekend always tells the tale. Presumably some in the HE community caught it last night, or have just returned from a Friday evening show back east. (It’s currently 8:45 pm in Manhattan.) Please opine when you have a moment. Have the critics been too rough or generally on target?

From Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review: Ben Affleck portraying Batman is “a curious choice, especially in the light of Hollywoodland (2006), where he excelled in the role of George Reeves, who starred as Superman on TV in the early 1950s, loathed the experience, and died of a gunshot to the head. It was hardly a movie to brighten one’s faith in comic books.

“Since then, Affleck has become a director of steady and satisfying thrillers, including The Town and Argo, so why risk this backward step into the realm of beefcake? Maybe he relished the gleam of the supporting cast—Holly Hunter, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, and Kevin Costner, with Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jesse Eisenberg as a jittery Lex Luthor, and Jeremy Irons taking over from Michael Caine as Alfred, the venerable butler-cum-weapons designer to Bruce Wayne.

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I never thought I’d feel compassion for Ted Cruz but today (i.e., early Saturday morning in Vietnam) I do. I’m a strong believer in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitudes that prevailed during the JFK administration, which was that personal foibles and failings in the sexual arena were never mentioned by reporters or political enemies. Catting around was simply off the table. Do I suspect that persons aligned with Donald Trump planted or helped to fan the thinly sourced, possibly inaccurate National Enquirer story that everyone’s on about? Almost certainly. Do I suspect Cruz is a hound dog? None of my business. But even if everyone agreed, the sense of tawdry cultural degradation would still be out there. Could the Gods have made things any easier for Hillary Clinton?

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For a good 90 minutes I searched high and low for one decent color…hell, any color snap taken during the filming of Howard Hawks‘ Red River…zip. But these black-and-white candids are half-interesting.

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What with the Vietnam time-outs and distractions, I’ve only just gotten up to speed on the latest Trump-Cruz fight, this time about their wives. “This is the dirtiest, ugliest, weirdest…”

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Who the hell drinks salt water? Who the hell sells salt water in plastic bottles with attractive packaging that suggests it’s lemon-flavored eau du mineral? More to the point, what kind of visitor would be dumb enough to buy a six-pack of this stuff without carefully reading the label?

This afternoon Trip Advisor steered us to a great little gourmet restaurant called Nu Eatery, which for my money delivered the best eats we’ve had thus far. The menu is native Vietnamese cuisine, of course. Everything we ordered was alive with subtle, melt-down flavors that weren’t quite like anything I’ve had before, and served in modest portions so we didn’t feel the least bit loaded down when we left. The place itself is small — three downstairs rooms including the kitchen but with an upstairs dining area with a balcony. And no overweight tourists in shorts and sandals! Anyone planning to hit Hoi An is strongly advised to follow our lead.

Nu Eatery is located down a small alley (10A Nguyen Thị Minh Khai) between two well-travelled streets. The chefs do their stuff in a small kitchen next to an open window.

Ladies who took care of us at Nu Eatery. The LONELY sweatshirt girl was our waitress.

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