Recent Reviews
The Cagneys
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Something to Sing About (1937)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
A Lion Is In the Streets (1953)
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Shake Hands With the Devil (1959)
Saturday December 31, 2022
Cullum's Column's Conjecture
In my research for the HBO Willie Mays doc—particularly the stuff the doc missed, the Minneapolis reaction to losing Willie when he was called up to the New York Giants after two months with the Millers—I came across sports columnist Dick Cullum writing about Mays' departure. Researching anything like this, you brace yourself for all kinds of bad. It's a white man writing about a black man more than 70 years ago, at a time when Major League Baseball had been integrated for all of four seasons. Martin Luther King was still getting his Bachleor of Divinity degree from Crozer and Emmett Till was still alive.
But what I got was a pretty good description of what playing center field in the Polo Grounds was like, and how great players either rose or fell with the challenge, and how would Mays do?
Sure, Cullum couches what he writes: either/or; worst or best. But he seems to be leaning toward the positive: “...it will make him a hero faster than any other area could do the job...”
He wasn't wrong.
Friday December 30, 2022
What Becomes an Artist Most
“An artist has got to be careful never to really arrive at a place where he thinks he's at somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming, and as long as you can stay in that realm, you'd sort of be all right.”
-- Bob Dylan, “No Direction Home.” Did any artist do a better job of this—of sticking with not-sticking—than Dylan? He pissed off his entire fan base for not remaining what they wanted him to be. There's supposed to be an entire movie about it, “Going Electric,” directed by James Mangold, starring Timothée Chalamet. If it's made, I hope this is the kind of thing they tap into.
Thursday December 29, 2022
What is Cecil B. DeMille 'Known For'?
No directing credits is the idiocy. Adding that he's known for playing Cecil B. DeMille in “Sunset Blvd.” is the chef's kiss.
Monday December 26, 2022
What is Gene Wilder 'Known For'?
For once, IMDb's “Known For” algorithm gets it right. Mostly...
Yes, yes, yes ... huh?
Of all the movies Wilder made with Richard Pryor, that one? I actually saw “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” in a theater, possibly the Skyway in downtown Minneapolis, on a sad day in 1989. It was a sad day because I saw “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” and experienced the fall of a great comic duo. Other critics felt the same. It's got a 27% on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert dismissed it sadly: “The possibilities for visual comedy with this idea are seemingly endless, but the movie chooses instead to plug the characters into a dumb plot about industrial espionage.”
So why is it fourth on the IMDb Wilder list rather than better Wilder-Pryor teamups like “Stir Crazy” or “Silver Streak”? Maybe because IMDb's users rate it about the same:
Now that's depressing. They've also voted on it twice as much. Because it streamed somewhere and the others didn't? And masses of doofuses descended on IMDb to show their approval? But that wouldn't explain why the others are rated so low. I'd think both “Silver Streak” and “Stir Crazy” would be low to mid 7s. Are they really not that good? Were we wrong back then?
Oddly, on Richard Pryor's IMDb page, he's “known for” “Silver Streak” more than “See No Evil,” which are Nos. 3 and 4 on his list. Nos. 1 and 2? “Superman III” and “Bustin' Loose.” Another sigh.
And, as my brother reminded me, where the hell is “Blazing Saddles” for Wilder?
Friday December 23, 2022
M*A*S*H Note, Klinger Rules
Klinger and Frank pass each other in the entrance to the Swamp. Frank gives a disgusted look.
Klinger [grandly]: I wore this with just you in mind.
Frank: You make me want to throw up!
Klinger [happily, to everyone else]: See, it pays to dress.
Season 5, Episode 4, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” the one where Hawkeye is temporarily blinded. Halfway through season 4 it began to feel a lot less funny to me, but Jamie Farr still makes me laugh.
Thursday December 22, 2022
Movie Review: Say Hey, Willie Mays! (2022)
WARNING: SPOILERS
I wanted to like it more. I wanted to love it like I love Willie Mays. But “Say Hey, Willie Mays!” isn’t exactly the Willie Mays of sports documentaries.
What does it mean to be the Willie Mays of something? It means you’re the best:
Early on in this doc, one of the talking heads says it’s “hard to quantify” how big a star Mays was, but Peanuts might not have been a bad place to start. Peanuts was huge. And Mays kept getting mentioned in it.
But the doc doesn’t reference Mays’ appearances in Peanuts. Not once. That kind of stunned me. When I was growing up in the 1970s, there was a thing called “The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie,” an hour-long cartoon on Saturday mornings featuring different storylines usually associated with ABC shows: cartoon versions of the Brady kids, Nanny and Professor, and the Banana Splits. But there was one movie based on a real person. It was called “Willie Mays and the Say-Hey Kid.” I remember it was supposed to air in January 1973 but was preempted by coverage of the U.S.-Vietnam peace accords—and I got mad. Then my father got mad at me for getting mad. He lectured me on the importance of the end of the Vietnam War. And all the while I’m thinking, “But it’s Willie Mays.”
The point is, “Willie Mays and the Say-Hey Kid” isn’t mentioned in “Say Hey, Willie Mays!” either. Neither is Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Free” (“Hey Mr. football man, what do you do about ... Willie Mays?”), or Joe Henry’s “Our Song” (“I saw Willie Mays/At a Scottsdale Home Depot…”). They do show us clips of Willie in various ’60s sitcoms—“The Donna Reed Show” and “Bewitched”—and on Ed Sullivan. I liked that. At the same time, if you do a little research, you see Don Drysdale showed up four times on “The Donna Reed Show” and played himself on episodes of “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Brady Bunch.” Duke Snider played himself on “Father Knows Best,” while Sandy Koufax turned up on “Dennis the Menace.” And which 1960s sitcom character didn’t get a tryout with Leo Durocher? That was a plot point for Herman Munster, Jethro Clampett and Mr. Ed.
The point is, even here, Mays got short shrift.
Endless dreams
Alright, I’m going to get a little petty. Well, pettier.
The first sentence of the doc is spoken by Dr. Todd Boyd, a talking head in the film. It’s an overview of the subject for anyone who might need it:
Willie Mays is arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, player in the history of Major League Baseball.
I was immediately deflated. It’s the word “arguably.” I’ve long not liked it. I’ve long stated not liking it. It’s college-speak for “I think.” It’s such a nothing word. What isn’t arguable these days? And in the above it’s almost an insult. If you remove the qualification about the greatest, then Dr. Body is saying Willie Mays is arguably one of the greatest players in the history of Major League Baseball, which, I’m sorry, that’s not arguable. That’s a fact.
The doc has lots of little cuts like this. Another talking head, Dr. Harry Edwards, lists Mays’ accomplishments, including “12 Golden Gloves.” Then he adds, “But unless you know and follow the game, you don’t really get a full appreciation of how great he was.” Right. And unless you know and follow the game, you might say “Golden Gloves,” which is boxing, rather than “Gold Gloves,” which is baseball.
I wondered why they didn’t talk more about Henry Aaron. I wondered where James S. Hirsch was. We also got nothing on Mays and Mantle being banished by MLB for getting jobs as greeters in Atlantic City in the late 1970s.
I loved Barry Bonds in this. That was startling. Bonds lights up like a kid when talking about his godfather. If he’d lit up like that on the ballfield he might’ve been as beloved as his godfather. He might be in the Hall right now.
The doc unintentionally raises an interesting question: Can someone be great and not have a great story to tell?
What is Willie Mays’ story? Being raised in the Deep South during the worst days of Jim Crow. Then early, blistering success on the diamond. He became beloved in a country still in deep denial about its racism, then wound up behind the times. The doc keeps justifying his silence when Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Tommie Smith and John Carlos were putting it out on the line. They allude to Mays’ private work rather than his public noise. He made sure other Black and Latino ballplayers were looked after and knew the score. I guess I would’ve liked this underlined more.
Why was he so beloved? That’s a good question. What was that magic? It couldn’t just be that he was great. It feels more than that. He was so beloved after just two months with the the Minneapolis Millers that when he was called up to the New York Giants it made the local paper. I mean, it made the front page of the local paper. The Minneapolis Tribune placed it above the story on Pres. Truman mulling a run for reelection. Several days later, Giants owner Horace Stoneham actually took out an ad in the paper apologizing to the baseball fans of Minneapolis. Yes, Mays was hitting .479 in Minneapolis. But was it just that? Or was it his energy and ebullience, his talent and grace? And do you need that kind of inroad into the hearts of people before you get to an Ali?
Forgive me if I get this wrong, but I believe Roy Wilkins, the head of the NAACP in the early 1960s, once chided Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his pre-Birmingham accomplishments. “What have you actually integrated, Martin?” he asked, and Dr. King responded, “Well, I may have integrated a few hearts.”
Imagine the number of hearts Willie Mays integrated.
His and yours and mine
Maybe I’m putting too much on him. But that’s what we’ve always done. Back to Joe Henry:
But that was him
I'm almost sure
The greatest centerfielder of all time
Stooped by the burden of endless dreams
His and yours and mine
The doc begins and ends with a question, “Are you Willie Mays, the greatest baseball player of all time?” without telling you its context. Famous white ballplayers (not to mention Muhammad Ali) were all about being the greatest. Ted Williams had a determination to be known as the greatest hitter of all time; in retirement, Joe DiMaggio insisted on being called the greatest living ballplayer. Mays insisted on nothing, and dismisses the question. He ain’t about that.
But he was the greatest baseball player of all time. Inarguably.
Wednesday December 21, 2022
Franco Harris (1950-2022)
The Raiders, the announcers, everybody thought it was over.
It must've been the spring of 1973—in my memory there are mounds of crusty, dirty snow along the periphery of everything—but maybe it was the next fall or the next winter. I guess fall makes more sense because isn't that when they begin selling football cards? The point is, my friend Dave Budge and I were kids hanging around the 54th and Lyndale area in South Minneapolis. There were two main stopoffs in this little enclave, Rexall Drugs, which we called Salk's, and Little General, and each had their appeal. Salk's was a little more adult and sedate, while Little General had a parking lot and felt more dangerous. The bad kids hung out there. Little General was the B movie, basically, and Dave and I were in the Little General parking lot thumbing through the football packs we'd just bought, probably concentrating, a stick of gum hanging out of our mouths, when Dave began to shout.
He got Franco Harris!
And we began to cheer and exalt. We jumped into each other's arms. I remember we were being watched by an amused adult woman, but I didn't care. It was Franco Harris. I don't remember ever being so excited about one of us getting a trading card—baseball, football, Wacky Packages, any of it.
This was after the Immaculate Reception, of course, but Franco was a big story even before then. He was a rookie in 1972 and rushed for over 1,000 yards, back when that was the touchstone, and he had the best RB yards-per-attempt in the NFL: 5.6. I'm looking at the '72 NFL leaders and I guess it was an odd time. The names among the quarterbacks, for example, feel like they have at least one foot set firmly in the past: Billy Kilmer, Earl Morrall, John Hadl. They're doughy white guys. I think '72 was my first year of watching football, and my team, the Vikings, went 7-7, and in the other league the Miami Dolphins couldn't lose, they went 14-0. But there was this upstart team, the Steelers, that was fun, with its rookie running back, and his legion of fans who called themselves “Franco's Army.” I also remember I heard his name wrong at first. I thought he was Frank O'Harris. You know, nice Irish kid. These were the days when, even if you saw a game, you didn't necessarily see it clearly on your little black and white TV. We also had a color TV in the living room, and I believe that's where I was watching the game, the Steelers vs. the Raiders in the divisional round, Dec. 23, 1972, the battle to see who would get to lose to the Dolphins. And I was so, so rooting for the Steelers. I hated the Raiders. I have no idea why. Something about their vibe.
I'd forgotten it was such a low-scoring game: 0-0 at half, 3-0 until the 4th quarter. You can see the stats of the game at Football Reference but the Football Reference site isn't like the Baseball Reference site. Baseball has practically every pitch. Football, you don't even get times of scores.
“60 yard pass from Terry Bradshaw.” I love that. Great job, Bradshaw!
The Stabler run? Apparently that happened with less than two minutes in the game, and the George Blanda extra point seemed to seal the deal. (Talk about players with a foot set firmly in the past: Blanda was 45 at the time.) You can see the catch on YouTube, original broadcast, not-bad quality. That's my memory of it. That camera angle. I'd forgotten the specifics—4th and 10 at their own 40, 20 or so seconds remaining—I just remember how it went from hopelessness to miraculous, from depression to absolute elation, how the camera didn't even pick up the moment, it happened out of camera range, because it was over, so over. And then it wasn't. And then it was the Player of the Moment being in the exact right spot and paying absolute attention. I like how much the Raiders players are caught off guard. They're flat-footed. That's how he scores. They're done and he's still playing.
I also remember it wasn't immediate, that it took a while for the refs to agree that he'd caught the ball, that it was in fact a touchdown. Afterwards, apparently, like a forerunner to Trump, Raiders owner Al Davis stormed around the press box “screaming at league officials that the play was illegal.” (Maybe Davis was why I didn't like the Raiders.) I think one of the things the announcers were mulling over was “Did any Steeler touch the ball before Franco Harris?” If they had, apparently, it was a dead ball. Instead, it was what it was: miraculous. Has any athlete, who was our new player of the moment, ever made a bigger play? There's Willie Mays in '54, and others I'm sure, but Franco in '72 has to be near the top. It was the guy we were all talking about making the postseason play we're still talking about.
He became a Pro Bowler nine times, a Super Bowl champ four times. When he retired in 1984, he was third all-time in rushing yards, behind only Walter Payton and Jim Brown, with 12,120. Here's his Times obit. He was 72.
Tuesday December 20, 2022
Our Screwed-Up Times in a Paragraph
From “How Trump jettisoned restraints at Mar-a-Lago and prompted legal peril” in The Washington Post:
In the two years since he left office, Trump has re-created the conditions of his own freewheeling White House—with all of its chaos, norm flouting and catering to his ego—with little regard for the law. With this behavior, Trump prompted a criminal investigation into his post-presidential handling of classified documents to compound the ongoing one into his and his allies' efforts to overturn the 2020 election results—which presents potential legal peril and risks hobbling his nascent bid to be elected president again in 2024.
It's the word risks that does it for me. We get his aberrant behavior, his disregard for the rule of law, and the two huge, ongoing criminal investigations against him, and, oh yeah, he's still running for president and we guess all that risks such a run.
I'm not critiquing the writers, by the way. The paragraph perfectly encapsulates our screwed-up times.
The article is long but good. It's Trump in winter. How he's surrounded himself with only the most sycophantic. How they spend much of their time trying to buoy him up. How he has no one to tell him, “You know, that might not be a good idea.” One former aide describes the situation as “sad”—which, remember, with exclamation point, used to be one of Trump's many Twittery catchphrases back in the day. What goes around.
More sad for him, good for us: Yesterday, the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attacks formally recommended criminal prosecution for Trump on four counts: inciting insurrection, obstructing an act of Congress, conspiring to defraud the U.S., and conspiring to make a false statement. It's the first time Congress has recommended criminal prosecution for a U.S. president ever. We'll see what DOJ does now.
Monday December 19, 2022
Movie Review: Empire of Light (2022)
WARNING: SPOILERS
I liked it well enough for never believing—and actually feeling squeamish about—the central relationship.
The aptly named Hilary Small (Olivia Colman) is the assistant manager of the Empire Theater in the town of Lido, on the British coast in the early 1980s. We get snapshots of her life. Selling tickets. Picking up popcorn. Reluctantly jacking off her boss (Colin Firth) in his office. Eating dinner by herself at her small kitchen table.
Which image is sadder—the jackoff or the kitchen table? You can make arguments for both but the last one feels like a staple shot of the lonely in movies. They’re not watching TV or reading a book or listening to music. It’s just them at the table with the food: cutting the meat, chewing, staring into space. I guess I just don’t know anyone who does this—or maybe it’s simply that I don’t do it—so it doesn’t feel like life to me. Anyway, at this point, I was wary of where writer-director Sam Mendes was going. He wanted us to feel sad for Hilary. He wanted us to care about Hilary before we knew about Hilary.
Then there’s a new hire at the Empire, Stephen (Michael Ward), a young, handsome Black kid, and Hilary’s life changes.
The bird with the broken wing
Though the punk girl has a thing for Stephen, and the projectionist (Toby Jones) eventually takes him under his wing, Stephen, for some reason, gloms onto Hilary, the dowdy, quiet, assistant manager. He asks where another set of stairs lead, and she says there used to be two more theaters, along with a café, and shows him the semi-dilapidated remains. (Even that felt a bit off to me. In the U.S., at the time, the movement was toward multiplexes.) The café is now the habitat of various birds, including one that Stephen finds in a cupboard with a broken wing. He knows how to nurse that broken wing: He cuts a hole in a sock and puts the sock on the bird so its wings are trapped; so it won’t try to fly away and it’ll give the wing a chance to heal.
Ah, I thought. Hilary’s the bird with the broken wing.
Well, it turns out there are a lot of broken wings.
There’s a moment, too, when he reaches for the bird, and his dress shirt lifts, exposing some waist-level flesh. We see Hilary eyeing it. Then for New Years Eve, rather than hang with the other kids, he rings in 1981 with Hilary on the rooftop. And they kiss. And later, in the dilapidated café, they fuck. And she begins to blossom. She takes charge of things. When the boss asks to see her in his office for his weekly jackoff, she says no. And that medication she’s been taking? Which makes her feel numb? She stops taking it. She doesn’t need it anymore. She’s free.
Except the medication is lithium and she does need it. She’s bipolar or schizophrenic, and she changes, slowly at first, and then very very quicky, from a mousy woman into a terrifying figure. (Olivia Colman is amazing in this.)
We’d gotten flashes. The way she snapped at Stephen after he mocked the elderly customer—though her anger made sense. He’s youth making fun of the old, she’s old, is this what he thinks of her? Plus she’s right. You don’t do that. (It’s the one time in the movie where Stephen does what you shouldn’t do.) No, it’s at the beach, when she suddenly destroys the sandcastle that you see glimmers of what she’s becoming. And it all comes undone when the Empire Theater hosts the premiere of “Chariots of Fire,” the boss’ big night. He welcomes everyone, gives a speech, and as he exits the stage she improbably enters, in sparkly blue gown and racoon eye makeup, to give a speech of her own. It’s about racial tolerance. She reads a poem. And it’s not horrible, just odd, and in the lobby she and the boss argue, and she #MeToos him in front of his wife. She destroys them both. Then she holes herself up in her place, drinking and playing too-loud music and glowering down from the window when Stephen stops by. Eventually the cops batter down the door to take her away.
Again, Colman is amazing. I bought her character completely. I just never saw what Stephen saw in her. She’s either boring or terrifying. And there’s a difference not only in age but looks. Watching, I was doing the math. What is she—35 years older? Turns out the actors are 25 years apart. I still had trouble watching them together. I don’t know if it was because of the age difference, or the looks difference, or because she reminded me of my mother. Maybe the problem was me more than Mendes. Actors like Colman don’t get sex scenes in movies much, so maybe it was the shallow, sexist part of me that was rebelling. But all of that is mixed up with matters of age, and race, that mostly remain unstated. So much of the movie goes unspoken until it shouts.
The chips guy
Is Stephen too good? Too blank? Too soft? Who is he? The longer the film goes, the more of his homelife we get. We meet his mom, who’s an immigrant nurse, and she keeps him on the right path. But a path is not a character.
Beyond all that, “Empire of Light” is a gentle, nostalgic look at filmgoing that lets you know how much times have changed: the threading of the film, the professionalism of the projectionist, the team of ushers. It’s also a less-than-nostalgic look at racism and xenophobia that lets you know how little times have changed. I liked both of these threads.
But there are several moments when Mendes seems to create drama by having his characters act ... not smart. A rude customer shows up with chips, which he can’t take into the theater. Stephen politely tells him the theater policy, and he gets angry at Stephen—as if Stephen created the policy—and sure, that’s the way people are, they’re assholes, and this dude is probably a little racist, too. All that’s believable. It’s everything else. The asshole winds up eating all the chips while standing in the lobby and staring down Stephen. And everyone stares at the two of them staring at each other. There are customers behind this guy, just waiting, but no one moves. Maybe it’s the old Boulevard usher in me, but I wanted to wave those customers around this guy. Keep things moving. Or is that too American? Instead, everyone lets him be the center of attention. It’s silly.
The bigger forehead slap for me is later in the movie. By this time, Colin Firth is gone, Hilary is back from hospital, and the dweeby, funny head usher, Neil (Tom Brooke), is now the manager. They’re all in the breakroom, having a laugh, when they hear a humming, thrumming noise. In the lobby, on the avenue out front, they see all these motorcycles and vespas going by. And while initially charmed by the sight, like it’s a parade, they suddenly realize, no, it’s skinheads and xenophobes, and Neil, serious now, tells the others to lock the doors. What he doesn’t say, what no one says, but what I immediately thought was, “Get Stephen out of sight.” Instead, like an idiot, Stephen walks right up to the long row of glass doors to help lock them—and right into view of the skinheads. And of course they notice, and shout, and bang at the doors. And they break through. And both Stephen and Neil are beaten. And none of that would’ve happened if someone had been just a little smart for just a second.
So the bird with the broken wing eventually flies, and Stephen eventually finds direction. He dates a girl his own age, and he applies to university, and gets in. The end of the movie is him leaving. At the park, Hilary races after him to hug him one more time. She wraps him in her arms like he’s a bird with a broken wing, when he’s not, when he can fly just fine. But there’s such need in her. It’s awful to say, but I didn’t really like her, and I didn’t really believe him, and they’re most of the movie. But I liked hanging with Toby Jones in the projection room. I could’ve spent the entire movie there.
Sunday December 18, 2022
Shore Leave, 1969
In my internet wanderings I came across this film on Amazon Prime. And then I noticed something off. Can you spot it?
Doesn't the poster look like it's from the silent era rather than—as stated—1969? And isn't Richard Barthelmess an actor from the '20s and '30s? Of course he is. Of course it's a silent film. It's from 1925, not 1969.
Here's the fun part. I've spent the last week trying to get Amazon to correct this error. There's a “feedback” link on each page, so every day for the past week I sent them a note. Some version of: “The year for the movie 'Shore Leave' is incorrectly listed as 1969. It's a silent movie from 1925. Both the director and its director were dead by 1969.” Sometimes I included the link to the page in case they couldn't figure out what I was talking about. They've corrected nothing. Like all of the other mistakes they won't correct. Poor Jeff Bezos must be rolling over in his grave.
UPDATE, JAN. 5, 2023: Still not fixed. And yes, adding the year is indicative of my confidence in Amazon's QA.
UPDATE, JUNE 15, 2023: Fixed!! How about that?
Saturday December 17, 2022
Eastwood on Cagney
Eastwood, looking starstruck, as James Cagney enters the room at AFI's Salute to James Cagney in 1974.
“He isn't at all like me. When I first started out as an actor, all the secretaries used to call me 'Coop' because they thought I resembled Gary Cooper—kind of a backward kid—quite a few years ago. But Cagney ... I always liked Cagney's style and energy. He was fearless. Most of those guys were, though: they were fearless. Going back to the most famous thing, sticking grapefruits in people's faces, they weren't afraid to do things that were outrageous. A lot of good actors get wrapped up in images.”
-- from “Clint Eastwood Only Considers Himself A 'Fan' Of One Specific Actor”
Thursday December 15, 2022
Movie Review: Brother Orchid (1940)
WARNING: SPOILERS
There’s novelty in the premise of “Brother Orchid”—a gangster in a monastery—it just takes a while to get there. In the meantime, it’s same old same old. And then it’s not much.
Little John Sarto (Edward G. Robinson) decides to get out of the rackets and become a gentleman, only to find himself among bigger crooks than he ever was. If that sounds familiar, it’s the premise of the Robinson flick “The Little Giant” from 1933. There, he tried to join California high society. Here, he takes a trip to Europe, where he gets rooked in country after country. In London, he buys the world’s biggest diamond … that turns out to be a door knob. In Rome he buys “The Bed of the Borgias” … made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Etc.
Sarto is a sucker here because he’s trying to be what he isn’t: someone with class. He loses the rest gambling in Monte Carlo. We’re not 10 minutes in.
The other Jack Buck
So he returns to what he is—being a gangster—which is when we get a less brutal version of what happened to Robinson in “The Last Gangster” from 1937. The remnants of his gang, led by Humphrey Bogart’s Jack Buck (yes, same as the great St. Louis Cardinals announcer), don’t want him back. They hot-wire a chair, berate him, toss him out on his ear. Two remain loyal: his dame, Flo (Ann Sothern, great), and Willie the Knife (Allen Jenkins), who checked himself into a New Jersey sanitarium to avoid Bogie. Flo, meanwhile, has gotten rich, thanks in part to a tall good-natured Texan, Clarence Fletcher (Ralph Bellamy), who follows her everywhere. Clarence is good with his fists, too. When Buck’s men try to make trouble outside the sanitarium, Clarence takes them out himself.
You kind of expect Clarence to be the muscle going forward, but nah, we get bland Warners guys; then it’s tit-for-tat stuff. Bogie makes a move here, Sarto counters there. It’s Flo who breaks the impasse. She brokers a meeting 20 miles outside the city. For a second she seems smart, but she isn’t, and Sarto is set up. In the woods he gets away, wounded, and winds up being revived at a monastery.
By this point, we’re halfway through the movie.
Some of it isn’t bad. When he first wakes up and see the brothers surrounding his bed, he says, “I made it ... I’m in heaven.” When he tries on sandals: “Say, this is the first time I’ve seen shoes that are air-conditioned.”
But overall it’s not that clever. Just as he was cheated in Europe, so he cheats in the monastery. The brothers are amazed at how much more milk he can get out of the cows, but he’s watering down his output. (To what end?) He also gets a local kid to do his planting while he reads under a hammock. Inside his book about plants there’s pulp fiction: “He Slew For Her Honor” by “Two-Trigger” Sears. It feels like there’s a better gag somewhere.
Eventually he’s found out, confesses, makes good. Eventually, too, he reads a newspaper report about the upcoming wedding of Flo and Clarence. Thinking she betrayed him, he goes back for revenge. When he learns she didn’t betray him, he goes after Bogie’s gang, and all the Texas good ol’ boys in town for the wedding come along for the fun. Cue prolonged fistfight. I was reminded of movie serials: How they drag out the knock-down-drag-outs. Sarto and Buck go after each other, too, with fisticuffs. From IMDb’s trivia section:
Of the five films that Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart made together, this is the only one in which neither is killed.
Bogie gets arrested, and Sarto is poised to fleece Flo again … but it’s the end of the movie and we need our lesson. So he gives her up to Clarence. And the $300 he finagles from Clarence he gives to a poor cleaning woman. Rejoining the monastery, he makes this announcement:
“All my life, I’m a guy that was looking for class. I once went halfway around the world trying to find it because I thought class came in dough, and nice clothes, and society. Well, I was wrong. I sure traveled a long way to find out one thing. This. This is the real class.”
Music wells and we’re out.
Bacon and yeggs
In his autobiography, after Robinson writes that he cherished Ralph Bellamy, he adds, “I could not say the same about Brother Orchid.” Sadly, yes.
Is the problem Lloyd Bacon? He directed 99 features, mostly at Warners, often with Cagney and Robinson, and they’re all just kinda OK. The most memorable ones, such as “Footlight Parade” and “42nd Street,” were co-directed by Busby Berkeley.
Sothern is great in this one; she’s got real comedy chops. And Robinson brings his usual flair. Allen Jenkins disappears halfway through.
Of those five Robinson-Bogart movies, this is the fourth. It was released in June 1940. It would be another eight years before they would act together again in “Key Largo.” By that point, Bogie was a star, Robinson wasn’t, and the world had changed.
Tuesday December 13, 2022
M*A*S*H Note: Avengers #60
What, you think people are going to notice what comic book this is? On their little black-and-white TVs? And even if they have a big color job, it just goes by in a flash. Plus it's *a comic book*. Who cares? Nobody. I'm not wasting any sleep over it.
The screenshot is from “Der Tag,” M*A*S*H, S4, Ep17, aired January 1976. It's the one where Hot Lips is away, Frank bothers everybody, so Col. Potter asks Hawkeye and B.J. to be nice to him. Frank winds up: cleaning up in poker, getting drunk, professing a romantic interest in Nurse Kellye. He also stumbles into an ambulance (with a jokey toe tag on his foot) and winds up at the front. Joe Morton guest stars.
The comic book Radar is holding is Avengers #60 from December 1968. Avengers #1 was published in Sept. 1963, or about 10 years after the end of the Korean War. But yeah, I'm sure they thought, “Close enough. Who's going to notice? And who's going to know?” Turns out, nerds. Lots and lots of nerds.
Monday December 12, 2022
Trump Done/Not Done
“The official campaign for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination is barely three weeks old, but there is one clear takeaway so far: Donald Trump is running against himself—and losing.
”From his low-energy announcement speech at Mar-a-Lago to his dinner with the Hitler-praising Kanye West and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, Trump has courted more controversy than votes since launching his bid in November. He has held no campaign rallies and hired no campaign manager. He has hosted a QAnon conspiracy theorist and helped raise money for the indicted insurrectionists of January 6th. More classified items have been found in his possession, and his Trump Organization was convicted in New York of a major tax-fraud scheme. He has scared away neither prospective opponents nor prosecutors, and, while openly courting extremists, he seems to be running on a campaign platform that is somehow even more nakedly driven by self-interest than his previous two bids. Just last week, he suggested jettisoning the Constitution so he could be reinstated to the office he was thrown out of by the voters in 2020. ... Has there ever been a more awful start to a campaign?
“For all of that, it's not clear just what kind of Trump car crash we're watching. Is this the end-end of Trump, the long-anticipated Republican jailbreak? Or merely another moment when the false hope of Trump's imminent demise is indulged for a few days or weeks before being once again disproved? ... For all the breathless coverage, Trump retains the support of more than 40% of the G.O.P. electorate in recent surveys—more than enough to win the Republican nomination in a crowded field.”
-- Susan B. Glasser, “Trump's 2024 Campaign So Far Is an Epic Act of Self-Sabotage; But is this really the end of an error?” on The New Yorker site
Monday December 12, 2022
Cagney PSA
Hard boiled? Sure. Detective? Not so fast.
From a Screen Rant article on all the Spideys in the Spider-Verse:
Miles and the other Spider-people are joined by Spider-Man Noir, a version of Spidey from a black-and-white crime movie universe. He's a hard-boiled detective in the mold of Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney, and Nicolas Cage's vocal performance captures this noir antihero energy perfectly.
Bogart, sure, but Cagney never played a detective—hard-boiled or otherwise. He played a gangster about a dozen times, a reporter four times, a pilot four times even though he hated to fly. He played grifters throughout the pre-code era. He was a bandleader, a dentist, an insurance salesman, a railroad man, and the Coca-Cola rep in West Germany. In the Navy he started out as a riveter (“Here Comes the Navy”) and rose all the way to Fleet Admiral (“The Gallant Hours”). As a Fed he worked for the FBI (“G-Men”), the OSS (“13 Rue Madeleine”), and the Bureau of Weights & Measures (“Great Guy”). He played George M. Cohan twice and James Cagney once. But he was never a detective.
This has been a public service message.
Sunday December 11, 2022
What is Domenick Lombardozzi 'Known For'?
IMDb has a new website design but not a new “Known For” algorithm. They fixed what wasn't broken and kind of broke it. The broken thing they didn't bother with.
Do you know Domenick Lombardozzi? I'll always think of him as Herc in “The Wire” because that's where I saw him most often and most memorably. I was about to say it's where I first saw him but based on his CV that's not true. But it's where I began to go, “Hey, that guy.” It's where I began to know his name.
Not everybody has the trajectory I do, of course. I remember an old girlfriend viewed Ed Hermann differently. I was eight years older, so I saw him and went “Hey, FDR!” (“Eleanor and Frankllin,” 1976-77). She saw him and went “Hey, Head Vampire!” (“The Lost Boys,” 1987). What someone is known for to us often depends on when and in what manner we jumped on board.
That said, I can't imagine many people see Domenick Lombardozzi and go, “Hey, it's the tow-truck driver from 'For Love of the Game'!”
No “Wire,” no “Boardwalk Empire, no ”Rosewood." I know IMDb's algorithm underplays TV series but maybe it should count the number of episodes someone was on? Feels like it might be relevant.
Anyway, thanks for the new shitty website design, guys.
Saturday December 10, 2022
Brooks Was (A Dick) Here. Again.
There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about the poor box office of Oscar films, and since that used to be one of my bailiwicks (box office, Oscars, the twain), and since I totally lost the thread during the pandemic, I checked it out. Then I saw the byline.
Oh right, Brooks Barnes. He still doing this?
Yes, he, is.
The article is about how serious films, released this November, are doing horribly at the box office. It's sad. No one is going to see “Tar” or “Armeggedon Time” or even Steven Spielberg's “The Fabelmans.” And I'm one of them. Of course, I was sick with COVID for most of the month.
Barnes, though, implies that the poor box office can no longer be blamed on the pandemic. Or he claims that Hollywood insiders feel that:
But studios held out hope, deciding that November 2022 would give a more accurate reading of the marketplace. By then, the coronavirus would not be such a complicating factor. This fall would be a “last stand,” as some put it, a chance to show that more than superheroes and sequels could succeed.
Except ... When did they think this? A year ago? Do they still think it? I mean, isn't COVID still complicating things? Particularly with the demographic (older, smarter) that tends to see prestige pictures in theaters?
So my antannae were already up. Something felt wrong. And then Barnes lays this graf on us:
This is about more than money: Hollywood sees the shift as an affront to its identity. Film power players have long clung to the fantasy that the cultural world revolves around them, as if it were 1940. But that delusion is hard to sustain when their lone measuring stick — bodies in seats — reveals that the masses can't be bothered to come watch the films that they prize most.
How do you even unpack a paragraph like that? First, he's ascribing a monolithic personality to a hugely mulitfaceted entity—Hollywood—and then he's critiquing that monolithic personality. I don't think anyone in Hollywood is saying, “Yeah, we're clinging to the fantasy that the cultural world revolves around us like it's still 1940.” That's Barnes' reading. Basically, he's slamming people who are just trying to make a few good, serious movies during turbulent times.
What. A. Dick.
Barnes has a long history of disparaging movies he thinks are hifalutin (“Up”) and cheering on movies he think are not (“The Emoji Movie”), and I guess this is that writ large. But the Times should be better.
The sad part is I like most of the article. Later in the piece, we hear from film scholar Jeanine Basinger, who says, “When films are too introspective, as many of these Oscar ones now are, the audience gets forgotten about. ... When I think about going out to see misery and degradation and racism and all the other things that are wrong with our lives, I'm too depressed to put on my coat.” I couldn't agree more. This is something I've long argued about serious Hollywood films. Serious used to be more fun. Make it more fun again.
The bigger question is whether the demographic who tend to see serious films in theaters would rather just stream them now. I wouldn't be surprised if we've lost a percentage of those folks. Me, I miss going to theaters.
Friday December 09, 2022
M*A*S*H Note: Radar Does Cagney
“You sent my brother Nicky to the big house.”
Radar delivers the mail, including a package from Frederick's of Hollywood, to Hot Lips.
Radar: You know, I went through Hollywood on the way here. I think I saw James Cagney. [Imitation] Mmm, you sent my brother Nicky to the big house. Mmm. Cagney.
Hot Lips holds up lingerie, Radar whistles, she hides it.
Hot Lips (impatient): Is there anything else?
Radar: Uh, we're having a pool on the birth of a baby. Date, weight and sex, one dollar.
Hot Lips: I don't approve of gambling.
Radar: It's Col. Potter's grandchild.
Hot Lips: Six and a half pounds, the 25th, boy. Now scram!
Radar: Right. [By the door, he goes back to the Cagney impression] Mmmm. [She gives him a look, because he seems to be commenting on the lingerie, so he explains] Cagney. [Then he flees]
-- from “M*A*S*H,” S4, Ep14, “Mail Call, Again,” original air date Dec. 9, 1975, writers James Fritzell, Everett Greenbaum. I'm curious where the line comes from. It's not a Cagney line. He didn't have many brothers in the movies, and if he did they were usually straight-arrow ding-dings like Mike in “The Public Enemy.”
Thursday December 08, 2022
What Kinda Stinks about Mastodon
From David Chen's SubStack piece “How Every Twitter Alternative Kinda Stinks (So Far)”:
The number one thing that stinks about Mastodon is that you have to choose a server to sign up for the service and the process of doing so right now is hopelessly broken. When you go to the page to choose a server, many of them force you to apply for an account and barely any of them seem like they align with general interests. (There are 2 servers for “Furries” but 0 servers for “Film” or “TV”). For this reason alone, I don't think Mastodon will ever be adopted by the masses unless/until a large institutional or corporate backer comes in to bring order to this chaos.
The highlighted is exactly what I found confusing and frustrating when I set up my Mastodon account last month. No film, no baseball, no ... whatevs. What server did I wind up with? I forget. (It wasn't “Furries.”) In fact, I thought I begged off at the last moment, but, no, I do have an email from Mastodon so ...
That's right, it's the CIM one. Or C.IM. Creation Innovation Masturbation or something.
Anyway, I'm there, at this name, if anyone's interested.
Thursday December 08, 2022
McGriff in the Hall
Last Sunday the Baseball Hall of Fame had a vote to determine which players from the contemporary era (1980 on), who weren't already in the Hall, might deserve the honor. There were 16 voters, and you needed 12 of them, 75%, to get in. I think each voter got three votes. This is how it went:
- Fred McGriff, 16 votes, 100%
- Don Mattingly, 8 votes, 50%
- Curt Schilling, 7 votes, 44%
- Dale Murphy, 6 votes, 38%
- Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro, fewer than 4 votes.*
* I guess they do this not to embarrass anybody? Because I can't find any news sources with the actual vote totals for these guys
And these were the voters:
PLAYERS
- Chipper Jones**
- Greg Maddux
- Jack Morris
- Ryne Sandberg
- Lee Smith
- Frank Thomas
- Alan Trammell
** He called in sick and was replaced by Darryl Hall, CEO Diamondbacks
EXECS
- Paul Beeston (Blue Jays, MLB)
- Theo Epstein (Red Sox, Cubs, MLB)
- Arte Moreno (Angels—owner)
- Kim Ng (Marlins)
- Dave St. Peter (Twins)
- Ken Williams (White Sox)
MEDIA/HISTORIANS
- Steve Hirdt (Elias Sports Bureau)
- LaVelle Neal (Mpls. Star-Tribune)
- Susan Slusser (SF Chronicle)
As others have stated, this ballot, and this committee, could not have aided Fred McGriff's chances more. Braves and Blue Jays were well-repped, and all the other nominees didn't have the careers McGriff had, or they were PED-suspect. Or they were Curt Schilling.
Could there have been other candidates from this era? Of course. Dwight Evans or Lou Whitaker barely got a chance from the Baseball Writers Association of America (Dewey lasted three years, Lou one), and modern stats, particularly bWAR (67.2, 75.1 respectively), indicate they're worthy. Basically they were good at a lot of little stuff that was difficult to measure; and now we can measure it. Or believe we can measure it. It's right there in that number.
But let's talk about the ballot as constituted.
The bottom four (Belle, Bonds, Clemens and Palmeiro) are all PED suspects, and the committee was full of players who have long denounced players who used PEDs, and apparently they haven't changed their minds. Goom-bye.
Murphy and Mattingly are interesting, similar cases. At different times, both were considered the best player of the '80s (Murphy was NL MVP in '82 and '83, Mattingly AL MVP in '85), but both got injured early in their careers. Neither made the World Series—and heartbreakingly so. Murphy was an Atlanta Brave until August 1990 when he was traded to the Phillies, and then the Braves went on a World Series run, appearing in '91, '92, '95, '96 and '99. His new team, the Phillies let him go in April '93 and then they went to the World Series. Meanwhile, Mattingly was Mr. Yankee during the Yankees longest Series drought since buying Babe Ruth. His first year was '82 and the Yanks went in '81. His last season was '95, and the Yankees went in '96, then '98 through '01. So it goes, as the man said.
Both had better primes than McGriff, but he hung on longer.
Murphy | Mattingly | McGriff | |
Black Ink (27) | 31 | 23 | 9 |
Gray Ink (144) | 147 | 111 | 105 |
HOF Measure (100) | 116 | 134 | 100 |
bWAR | 46.5 | 42.4 | 52.6 |
BBWAA HOF Best | 23.2% | 28.2% | 39.8% |
If you look at these numbers you wonder how Mattingly could be preferred to Murphy, but he's probably getting points for his managerial career, which—now that I look at it—is similarly heartbreaking. He managed the Dodgers to three straight postseason appearances, but after losing the 2015 NLDS to the eventual pennant-winning Mets, he was let go with a year left on his contract. The Dodgers went to the World Series two years later. Mattingly was immediately swooped up by the Marlins, and in 2020, as a wild card, they made the postseason for the first time since 2003. They parted ways after this season, and Mattingly was recently hired as a bench coach for the Blue Jays. One assumes Paul Beeston voted for him.
As for Schilling, he's got an 80.5 bWAR, the best strikeout-to-walk ratio for any pitcher with more than 3,000 Ks (3116/711), postseason performances that mere mortals only dream of, and a big fucking mouth. I still would've voted for him. But Joe Posnanski highlights the irony:
Schilling's seven votes is a rebuke, no question about it. Schilling had been yammering for a couple of years now that he didn't even WANT to get elected by the writers, that he would prefer to be judged by players and executives, you know, people who KNOW THE GAME.
So the irony must sting that he got WAY closer to being elected on the BBWAA ballot than he got on this veterans ballot. In fact, if he would have not spent his spare time joking about journalists getting murdered and asking people not to vote for him, he certainly WOULD have been elected by the writers.
Now, if this ballot is any indication, the players and executives and such seem to think he's a lot more trouble than he's worth.
Anyway, I'm glad McGriff is in. I always liked him. He was cool, had a cool nickname (The Crime Dog), and as a lean, mean, baseball machine he hit 493 career homers. Seven more and he would've made the Hall 10 years ago.
Wednesday December 07, 2022
Movie Review: Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
WARNING: SPOILERS
Did Sylvia Sidney always look at her leading man with such love in her eyes? Was that her schtick? I’m going off a small sample size: “City Streets” (1931) with Gary Cooper, and here with Frederic March.
Coop makes sense. He was the biggest romantic star of his day. Not that Freddy is tough to look at, either, but it’s not the same. Plus their characters don’t exactly meet cute.
Jerry Corbett, a cynical Chicago reporter, is hanging out on the balcony of a swanky party because he’s drunk, a misanthrope, and nursing a broken heart—a blonde named Claire Hempstead (Adrianne Allen). Joan Prentice, heiress to a tin-can fortune, shows up to prevent being pawed at, and for some reason she’s immediately taken with this sot. She turns that heart-shaped face and gee-whiz peepers his way and loves everything that slurs out of his mouth. And she nurses this relationship past her disapproving papa (George Irving) all the way to the altar.
And then she’s shocked, shocked to discover that her husband is a drunken sot.
Open marriage
Addiction movies are rarely captivating. The addict gets better, then not. Maybe he hits bottom. In the final reel, if he survives, it’s almost always implied that he’s better for good now, when we all know there is no “for good.” But final reels are final reels.
Once Jerry and Joan marry, he gives up the reporting game for playwrighting but he’s not exactly disciplined. We see him whining at the kitchen table, wondering if the two pages he’s written that day are enough. Amused, she tells him to keep going. And then his play gets rejected by everybody. For a second I was intrigued. Is he talentless, too? Where are they going with this failure?
To success, sadly. Someone finally agrees to produce his play, everyone loves it, and guess who becomes his leading lady? Ol’ Claire Hempstead. Throughout, Jerry has been off-and-on-again drunk, but Claire is bad news both ways: he falls for both her and drink again. At one point, drunk, he even calls Joan “Claire.” Eventually Joan can’t take it anymore and rather than reform him she reverts to him: She begins to drink and fool around herself.
That’s the modern shocker—and intrigue—of this precode film: It’s about an open marriage! In 1932! At one point she declares: “Gentlemen, I give you the holy state of matrimony, modern style: single lives, twin beds and triple bromides in the morning!” Among her paramours is Charley Baxter, played by a young Cary Grant, which is about as good a fallback position as you can get.
That said, their open marriage is hardly sexy. She only does it because he keeps betraying her, and because she’s tired of waiting for him to say “I love you” instead of his catchphrase: “I think you’re swell.” Plus the open marriage leads to another awful Hollywood trope: The leading man realizing he was with the right woman all along. He dismisses ol’ Claire, gets his old job back, and cleans up his act. But is it too late? Joan won't answer his calls. Then he hears she's giving birth to a baby—his—and rushes to the hospital, only to find the baby died after two hours. Because of her drinking? Because of the stress? None of that is examined. Instead, she’s in her hospital room, asking for Jerry, but her father is outside her hospital room blocking Jerry, telling him, “She doesn’t want to see you.” Jerry sneaks in anyway, discovers she has been asking for him, and she loves him. And he finally declares he loves her, too.
And that’s our happy ending. Except for the stillborn baby, already forgotten.
Ne’er do well
Modern critics also pay attention to “Merrily” because its director is Dorothy Arzner, one of the few women who regularly directed studio features during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
So any of them anything? Here’s plot snippets via IMDb:
- A young American girl falls in love with a handsome nobleman…
- A couple leaves their small-town life to go to New York in an effort to make it on Broadway…
- A woman’s marriage is threatened when she discovers her husband's longstanding affair.
- A ne'er-do-well husband disappears with their son…
- A man left by his wife gets drunk and marries a chorus girl.
- A businessman is in love with his secretary but she deserts him for another man. When she realizes her mistake…
- A domineering woman marries a wealthy man for his money…
Mostly melodrama, none of it memorable. “Merrily” is her third highest-rated, 6.9, and it ain’t much. Good title, though.
Monday December 05, 2022
Sight & Sound, Sturm und Drang
Making meatloaf, a potential metaphor for what Sight & Sound has done.
So the new decennial Sight & Sound list of the 100 greatest films ever made—as chosen by critics and filmmakers from around the world—has been released, and, surprise surprise, it's been causing a bit of controversy. More than usual, actually.
For most of its history, the S&S list was just a Top 10 list (allowing for ties), and for about half a century its No. 1 movie was “Citizen Kane.” Things began to shift last go-round in 2012. That's when S&S went to 100 films; and that's when Orson Welles' “Kane” was overtaken by Hitchcock's “Vertigo.”
Now “Vertigo” itself has been overtaken. The new greatest film of all time is ... drumroll ... “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles”! Ta da!!
If you're going, “Wait, what?” you're not alone. A Belgian film released in 1975, “Jeanne Dielman” first made the list in 2012, placing 35th. So how did it get to No. 1 so fast?
Harvey Weinstein, you could argue.
The director of “Jeanne Dielman” is Chantal Akerman, a woman, and between 2012 and 2022 #MeToo happened, along with the scramble to right historic wrongs. Maybe this is one of those. Critics and filmmakers looked for a great film by a woman director, and this was the highest-ranking one on the previous list. And boom.
The new ranking is rankling (yes) some critics and filmmakers. To them, it stinks of identity politics rather than aesthetics. Welles and Hitchcock may have had the opportunity to do what they did because they were white and male, but nobody voted for either film because of those facts. They voted for them for what the film was, not for what the filmmaker was.
The irony is that without a century of sexism “Jeanne Dielman” almost certainly wouldn't be ranked No. 1. There would be way more competition from other female directors. But there isn't, and so there it is. Claire Denis' “Beau Travail,” 78th in 2012, also made the Top 10.
Here's a comparison of the two most recent Top 10 lists, with newbies highlighted:
2012 | 2022 | |
1 | Vertigo | Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (35) |
2 | Citizen Kane | Vertigo (1) |
3 | Tokyo Story | Citizen Kane (2) |
4 | La Regle du jeu | Tokyo Story (3) |
5 | Sunrise | In the Mood for Love (24) |
6 | 2001: A Space Odyssey | 2001: A Space Odyssey (6) |
7 | The Searchers | Beau Travail (78) |
8 | Man with a Movie Camera | Mulholland Drive (28) |
9 | The Passion of Joan of Arc | Man with a Movie Camera (8) |
10 | 8 1/2 | Singin' in the Rain (20) |
Funny (and fun!) seeing “Singin' in the Rain” among the newbies.
Which top 10ers were displaced? These, and this is where they wound up:
- Sunrise: 11th
- La Regle du jeu: 13th
- The Searchers: 15th
- The Passion of Joan of Arc: 21st
- 8 1/2: 31st
And as for some of my favorites?
- Casablanca: 63rd-T
- The Third Man: 63rd-T
- Seven Samurai: 20th
- The Godfather: 12th
- The Godfather II: Didn't make it (31st in 2012)
- Chinatown: Didn't make it (78th in 2012, but this time no Polanski)
- Jaws: Didn't make it (no Spielberg)
- Annie Hall: Didn't make it (no Allen)
- The Thin Red Line: Didn't make it (no Malick)
- The Insider: Didn't make it (no Mann)
- Un Prophet: Didn't make it (no Audiard)
At least the new list has given me some movies to watch. Maybe.
FURTHER READING:
- The Sight & Sound 2022 list
- The Sight & Sound 2012 list
- A great interactive feature from The New York Times detailing a lot of this history
- How Sight & Sound might've gamed the system
Sunday December 04, 2022
Olive Gardenia Hussey
Here's another example, like the Amazon Echo thing, of companies basically saying, “No need to think, human. Our algorithm knows all.” And of course it doesn't know anything.
This time it's Google's search-bar “autocomplete prediction.” Not the autocomplete suggestion based on your past usage. This appears to be: 1) automatic, or autocompleted, without your say-so; and 2) based on nothing to do with you. It's what it thinks you're about to ask.
Here's an example. The other day I got an email from SIFF, our local festival/theater company, that highlighted movies playing this month, including something called “Black Christmas,” with a photo of a woman making a phone call. “Is that Olivia Hussey?” I wondered. So I googled “Olivia Hussey,” but this is what I saw in the search bar when I was done:
Olive Gardenia Hussey
“Sounds like a drag queen,” a friend said when I told him the story.
Essentially I'd gotten as far as “O-L-I-V” and Google assumed I wanted Olive Garden. Even though I've never googled “Olive Garden” in my life. But between the “v” and the “i” Google just went “Here.”
There's supposedly a way to turn off autocomplete predictions, but the steps I followed led to a dead-end for me.
The bigger point is: I don't get why companies think we want them to think for us. Particularly when they're so bad at it.
Oh, and it was Olivia Hussey. “Black Christmas,” 1974, directed by Bob Clark, and starrring Hussey, Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea, John Saxon, and Andrea Martin(!): “During their Christmas break, a group of sorority girls are stalked by a stranger.”
See, was that so hard, Google?
Saturday December 03, 2022
Babe Ruth's Last Hit
It began with this question from the daily SABR quiz: “Who was the first Major Leaguer to cross the plate more than 150 times in a single season in the Liveball Era?”
My first thought was Lou Gehrig. Then I went, “Wait, Liveball Era? Wouldn't that be 1920 on? So wouldn't it be Babe Ruth or Rogers Hornsby?”
You usually get two or three hints with the daily quiz, and this was the first one: “Carl Hubbell surrendered this slugger's first National League home run.”
So it couldn't be Hornsby. He got his first homer way before Hubbell showed up, right? (Right: Hornsby debuted in 1915, Hubbell in 1928.) And it couldn't be Ruth because .... Oh, right. Braves. So Ruth.
I knew the trajectory—Red Sox to Yankees to Braves—but always thought about it as Ruth's return to Boston, and familiar surroundings, rather than playing in the unfamiliar National League. Afterwards, I looked it up. Hubbell gave up Ruth's first NL homer on Opening Day. I also knew about the three homers he hit in one day. Weren't they his last three? (They were.) What I didn't know, or hadn't realized, was that it was all in a losing effort. Despite Ruth's three homers and 6 RBIs, the Braves lost to the Pirates 11-7. And he didn't even play the whole game. From the bottom of the 7th:
Joe Mowry replaces Babe Ruth playing RF batting 3rd
Was he sick? Hungover? That's what the modern legend suggests. I believe the John Goodman movie has him completely sowsed, while Robert W. Creamer's seminal bio suggests hungover. He was also suffering aches and pains. He'd had a bad cold in April and after Opening Day rarely played a full game. Plus he figured out he'd been rooked. The owner of the Braves had promised him stock options, and a percentage of the profits, but the team was a loser—there were no profits.
How bad of a loser? After Ruth's three-homer game on May 25, the team's record stood at 8-20. Duffy Lewis, who'd been Ruth's teammate on the Red Sox and was now the Braves' traveling secretary, suggested Ruth retire: Go out with a bang. But Ruth had promised ownership one full swing around the Majors, so he stuck around for three games vs. Cincinnati and two against Philadelphia. It wasn't good. He went hitless and the team was lifeless. By the time he announced his retirement in early June, the Braves were 9-27 and would finish the season with the worst record in baseball, 38-115, 61.5 games back of the first-place Cubs and 25 games back of the seventh-place Phillies. They're generally regarded as one of the worst teams in baseball history.
So it made sense for Ruth to get out while the getting was good. One wonders, in fact, if the losing wasn't just as much a reason to retire as the aches and pains. In his long career, he'd only played on two MLB teams with losing records: the 1919 Red Sox, who went 66-71, and the 1925 Yankees, who went 69-85. Maybe he just couldn't take it.
I have to think Ruth removed himself from that May 25 game, too. One, Ruth did what he wanted, and two, the game was tied. Why bench the only guy who's hitting? And who has a shot at a four-homer game?
Instead, Joe Mowry—who would only play three seasons in the Majors, retiring after '35—led off the 9th with a single, but three quick outs followed and the Braves were done.
So Ruth's last hit in the Majors was a home run. And not just any home run. From Creamer's book:
It was unbelievably long, completely over the roof of the double-decked stands in right field and out of th epark. Nobody had ever hit a ball over the roof in Forbes Field before. Gus Miller, the head usher, went to investigate and was told the ball landed on the roof of one house, bounced onto another and then into a lot, where a boy picked it up and ran off with it.* Miller measured the distance and said it was 600 feet. His measurement may have been imprecise, but it was still the longest home run ever hit in Pittsburgh.
*Don DeLillo alert
I'm sure there's some legend in that, but everyone agrees it was socked. Not bad for an old, hungover man.
Thursday December 01, 2022
'…And Similar Songs': The New Effed-Up Amazon Echo Programming
I don't think I've ever used the Amazon Echo correctly or efficiently. My wife wanted it, we got it, it sits in the kitchen. Mostly I just ask it to play music or the local NPR station. And if I'm in the kitchen for a short chore—feeding the cat, for example—I might ask it to play a specific song. That way I can walk away and it'll stop on its own.
I did this at the beginning of November but instead of doing so, per normal, Alexa, the voice of Echo, responded, “Shuffling [whatever song I requested], and similar songs.”
And similar songs?
But I was busy getting ready for a trip to New York so I didn't investigate. And then I got COVID in New York. And now it's a month later.
And Echo is still doing this.
I searched online for a way out but there doesn't appear to be a way out. This product no longer plays the music you ask it to play; it plays the music it wants you to listen to.
And someone at Amazon—enough someones at Amazon—thought this was a good idea.
So what are those similar songs? How good is Amazon's algorithm? I decided to test it out. I went with a fairly obscure song by a not-at-all obscure band: “Why Don't We Do It in the Road?” by the Beatles. And Alexa said: “Shuffling 'Why Don't We Do It in the Road?,' remastered 2009, and similar songs.”
These are those similar songs, in order:
- “Oh, Darling!” by the Beatles (Sure)
- “Don't Stop Believin'” by Journey (Really?)
- “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor (Oh, come on!)
- “Livin' on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi (What's with the '80s playlist?)
- “We Will Rock You” by Queen (Without Freddie's vocals?)
- “Free Fallin'” by Tom Petty (Why all the g-dropping titles?)
- “All By Myself” by Eric Carmen (OMG)
- “Africa” but Toto (OMFG!)
And that's where I ended the experiment. Not because I wasn't curious if it could get worse than Toto, but because I ran into yet another change to Echo's programming. After saying “Alexa, next,” Alexa told me, or admonished me, thus:
“Only six skips are allowed every 60 minutes.”
And then it went back to playing the song I didn't ask it to play.
Just think what Amazon has done here. They've decided that the user should no longer be in charge of deciding what music they listen to; and if you don't like the choices it gives you, well, too bad.
I suppose I should count my blessings. When the Amazon Echo wouldn't let me skip Toto, at least it let me turn off the Amazon Echo.
For now.