Do The Right Thing -- Stand Up For Excellence
September 25, 2024
I Would Have Preferred A More Challenging...Okay, A More Insulting Tone
September 25, 2024
Opposite Peas in Polish Travel Pod
September 25, 2024
Whenever someone asks if I'm happy, I always say "yeah, pretty much...within the bounds of the usual day-to-day hassles and hurdles and that HE burden that I carry around all day like a mule...moderatelyhappy, sure."
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Remember that scene in Se7en when Brad Pitt‘s character pronounces “Marquis de Sade” as “Markee duh shah-DAY” — an allusion to the pronunciation of Sade, the pop singer who peaked in the ’80s and ’90s? Morgan Freeman tells him the correct pronunciation and Pitt goes “whatever.”
The same thing happens in this amateurish fan video about ’50s teen idol Bobby Rydell, who passed today at age 79.
Toward the end (around the 6:24 mark) the under-educated narrator talks about Rydell “for over 30 years” having performed “over 700 shows” of The Golden Boys with costars Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Except the narrator pronounces Fabian like Fabio — “FAH-bee-AHN.” The name is correctly pronounced “FAY-bee-uhn.”
Every so often I’ll do a film-review search on the N.Y. Times archive, which links to The Times Machine, which offers digital replicas of the all the Times issues from 1851 to 2002. Every damn time I get distracted by the movie ads placed alongside the review, and before you know it I’m lost in this or that time tunnel.
I’ve noted several stellar years for film releases (1939, 1962, 1971, 1999, 2007) in the past, but which year in the 1950s would qualify along similar lines? I’m not saying that 1954 is on the same level, but it might represent the best of that decade.
Alas, Darren Aronofsky’s TheWhale isn’t ready to be screened at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. That aside, here’s the latestCannesrundown from WorldofReel’s Jordan Ruimy. Disappointment Blvd. may be on the squishy side, but otherwise we’re looking at a likelihood factor between 90% and 95%.
The French trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (Warner Bros., 6.24), now officiallyconfirmed as a Cannes Film Festival attraction, offers nary a sliver of a glimpse of Austin Butler in a fat suit. I am therefore presuming that we can all relax in this regard. No decline years (‘75 to August ‘77), no keeling over on the toilet. Or so it seems.
I'm posting this out of respect for the creator, Mojahed Fudailat, who assembled this 1:40 animated reel less than 24 hours after the actual slap. Plus he immediately nailed Jada Smith as the co-culprit, which took two or three days to be voiced by others.
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My old Wilson baseball glove means almost as much to me as my two Mac laptops (15″ Macbook Pro, 13″ Macbook Air). There’s something eternal and devotional about slightly worn baseball mitts. I’ll be driving the VW Passat back east before leaving for Cannes, and I’ll be bringing the Wilson along with a TPS first baseman’s mitt that Jett used in the old days.
There's something strangely synchronous in a classic American nightmare sort of way about the 4K Godfather playing (or having recently played) at the famous Texas theatre (231 W. Jefferson Blvd., Dallas, TX 75208), which is otherwise known as the Lee H. Oswald Memorial Cinema.
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When I speak of the Great Francis Betrayal, I refer to the fact that in almost every Francis film the mule’s ability to speak (and in English yet!) is revealed to an outsider or two, and in Francis Goes To The Races (’51) to an entire courtroom of witnesses. Which in real life would eventually mean worldwide celebrity for Francis and great wealth for Donald O’Connor‘s “Peter Stirling” character.
This never happens, of course — no one ever says boo about Francis’s talking ability. The legend never grows. Once the next film comes out it is completely forgotten and the basic situation reverts to a private rapport between Francis and Peter.
If the Francis screenwriters had been a little more daring, they could have had a much bigger franchise. Francis could have become a TV star, an adviser to the U.S. President, the leader of a Pacific Island nation, a game-show contestant, a mule-poet looking for his own mule-soul…the sky was the limit.
Whenever someone asks if I'm happy, I always say "yeah, pretty much...within the bounds of the usual day-to-day hassles and hurdles and that HE burden that I carry around all day like a mule...moderatelyhappy, sure."
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