EVEN MORE RONDO NOMINEES

THE NORTHMAN…Since I had already seen Robert Eggers’s THE WITCH and THE LIGHTHOUSE, I knew what to do: turn on the subtitles right from the get-go. Eggers casts wonderful actors and gets terrific performances, but I think he must direct all of them in the same way as regards their dialogue: “be unintelligible.”

This movie, a semi-HAMLET, looks sensational, has nice performances, and tells a fascinating story. It is (probably) a nice recreation of those Viking days and it’s intense and suspenseful. Pretty good stuff. I liked it.

I did find it odd that Nicole Kidman, a very modern actress, seemed totally right in this ancient period while Anya Taylor-Joy, who seems to be from some other time, if not some other planet, is the one actor here who seems too modern and out-of-place.

BLACK PHONE … A pretty good, tight, creepy horror film, a nice mix of serial killer with the supernatural. The villain’s masks are pretty darn great. Mostly I appreciate that it’s kind of its own thing, both in plot and style.

Well…it’s its own thing yes…but we still must note that somebody took several strong cues from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

SMILE … The whole evil smile idea is good and creepy and wonderfully simple. This does not rip-off THE RING exactly, but that movie’s influence at least must be admitted.

The leading lady is very good but my God what a role! Pretty much off-the-charts emotion for 90% of the movie. What on earth must that audition process have been like…

I know the character is horrifically upset, but it’s maddening (to the viewer) that she can never calm down enough to present her bizarre story as rationally as possible. When she starts the conversation by screeching that she’s “cursed”, well…ain’t nobody gonna believe a thing she has to say. Admittedly, they probably wouldn’t believe her even if she’d been calm, but they might have thought she just needed some professional help and not an immediate straitjacket. 

The movie has quite a few nice scares, but it’s another film without an ending. Or with too many endings. I’m not sure.

 ME AND MY TRAVIS McGEE

When I first saw the Travis McGee paperbacks on the rack back in the sixties (yes, I am that old), I figured they weren’t for me. The cover art featuring hot guns and hotter gals in retina-scalding colors screamed ARGOSY or TRUE or MEN’S ADVENTURES to me. Simple-minded shoot-em-up, bed-em-quick throwaways which were not really in my comfort zone. So no go.

Then, about twenty years ago, having read some good stuff about John D. MacDonald’s work (from Stephen King, I think) I got curious, so when I spotted one of the McGee novels on the shelf at a used-book store, I picked it up. I read it, I loved it. So I gathered up all the others, 21 in all, and plowed through the entire series. With one odd exception, I thought they were all great.

Then, just a few months ago, I decided to do some re-reading in 2023. Most of the repeat fiction would be in the classic line--THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, MOBY DICK, DRACULA-- but I decided to mix some Travis McGee in there too. I started at the beginning with THE DEEP BLUE GOODBYE which was all I remembered and most of what I feared.

Of course, you can’t really expect a paperback action novel from 1964 to be exactly PC in the 21st Century, but, even so, the treatment of women is pretty icky. The ladies come in few varieties: cute and available; cute but awfully young; available but too easy; available but too old/ugly/hard; and pure bitches and/or airheads. 

Also, the occasional romantic dialogue is surprisingly soupy. Some of it would be more comfortable in a lady’s steamy bodice-ripper. Way too much of "oh, my darling!" for an action thriller.

But the plotting and the action are solid and they’re really what this customer came for. 

The second in the series, NIGHTMARE IN PINK, which I didn’t remember at all, is rather confounding. In the first place it’s set in New York City and its surrounds. We get an occasional mention of The Busted Flush and a single passing reference to the Alabama Tiger, but we don’t actually set foot in the familiar, comfy Florida locations till there are only four pages left in the book. I figure MacDonald hadn’t yet glommed onto the elements of the formula which would make McGee and his world so attractive to readers and which would make them so anxious to return to it over and over. 

It also felt odd--and rather disappointing--the way the book ended. After pages and pages of putting Trav through all sorts of hell--physical, mental, emotional--the (very) bad guys, though brought to justice, receive kind of mild comeuppances. All the time I was reading of the torture McGee endured, I assumed, expected, and, frankly hoped for, some suitable payback. Some massive revenge to be honest. And it seemed strange that MacDonald didn’t give us that.

It’s also interesting to track MacDonald’s political/societal commentary. On one page we read a diatribe which convinces us that MacDonald (and McGee) must line up to the right of Attila the Hun. Then a few pages later the rant reads as if it came from a bearded revolutionary ready to bomb Wall Street and take to the barricades. I came away thinking that author and character were just mad at the whole damn world.

MacDonald also struggles a bit with his first person narrative. Of course, that’s the way we want him to do it. We want to hear Trav’s own thoughts. But too often McGee has to describe himself. No matter how sidelong the approach, it curdles a bit to read McGee referring to his own steely grey eyes, his own damaged but still knightly armor, his own notable physique.

I’ll get to the third in the series,  A PURPLE PLACE FOR DYING, before too much time passes and I look forward to it. I expect to see MacDonald find his footing and develop an ease in his style in the next couple of entries.  And, of course, even with their faults, they’re such fun.

MORE RONDO AWARD NOMINEES

HALLOWEEN ENDS… Every time I’ve seen one of this series with Jamie Lee in it—since H2O, that is— I’ve come away with a strong urge to watch the original. Back when they got it right. Think I’ll do that now.

This is an okay horror movie, no more than that. Jamie Lee is good, it’s nice that Laurie and Michael get a final showdown…again. 

If this truly is the way HALLOWEEN “ends”…well, certainly could be worse. Definitely could be better.

The scriptwriting formula here seems to be two-fold. 1. Supply a whole lot of lousy characters to make bad things happen, and, 2. lean heavy on the motif of innocent people blamed for bad things.

This one might be a little better than HALLOWEEN KILLS, but it’s definitely less exciting. Neither should win any prizes, including Rondos.

NOPE … Jordan Peele is the real deal. I thought that US, while terrifically interesting and well-made, didn’t quite crest the hill. Still good though. But GET OUT was truly terrific and this one just might be even better than that. Again, terrific performances (I adore Keke Palmer), along with great effects and great pictorial images. Nice characters, strong story… I’m not totally sold on the big finish, but there’s no denying that it looks good. 

This is just a wonderful movie. Full marks right down the line.

ORPHAN FIRST KILL … I didn’t like the first movie, mostly because it fell into a category of story which I never enjoy, that being a story in which one person knows the truth but no one else believes.  The best things about the original were the performance of Vera Farmiga and the passing of Isabelle Fuhrman as a child. I bought it utterly.

This one doesn’t have Farmiga, her lesser substitute is Julia Stiles — and when did she become old enough to play the mother of a 20-year-old guy? Time, I hate ye. Stiles is not a bad actress, but she’s not an especially good one either. And here she’s really floundering. Bad role, bad performance. 

Even worse, this movie, made 13 years after the original, fails utterly in passing the returning Fuhrman as a kid. Matter of fact, she couldn’t even pass as a teenager. She looks like a woman in her mid-twenties at best. And the substitution of a real child in full body shots is painfully, painfully obvious. Worse yet, this is actually supposed to be a prequel to the original. Not a chance.

As for other elements… well, it’s professional enough but there’s nothing scary, nothing believable, nothing really interesting. Fail.

“He began to think poignantly of Isabel: he had seldom been able to ‘see’ her more clearly than as he sat looking out of his compartment window, after reading the account of this accident. She might have been just on the other side of the glass, looking in at him--and then he thought of her as the pale figure of a woman, seen yet unseen, flying through the air beside the train, over the fields of springtime green and through the woods that were just sprouting out their little leaves. He closed his eyes and saw her as she had been long ago. He saw the brown-eyed, brown-haired, proud, gentle, laughing girl he had known when he first came to town, a boy just out of the State College. He remembered--as he had remembered ten thousand times before--the look she gave him when her brother George introduced him to her at a picnic; it was ‘like hazel starlight’ he had written her, in a poem, afterward.”                                          

Booth Tarkington  THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

THE RONDO AWARDS for 2022

It’s Rondo season again! For those not in the know…

https://rondoaward.com/rondoaward.com/blog/

… check it out.

I’ve decided to try to catch up with all the nominees for Best Movie. I’d try to catch up with everything in every category, but the ballot is immense and time is finite. So, just the films, ma’m. 

There are 21 nominated films, I’ve already seen 4 of them, so I need to get onto these other 17. 

—- AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

—- BARBARIAN

—- THE BATMAN

—- THE BLACK PHONE

—- BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

—- BONES AND ALL

—- CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

—- EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

—- HALLOWEEN ENDS

—- MEN

—- THE MENU

—- THE MUNSTERS

—- NOPE

—- THE NORTHMAN

—- ORPHAN: FIRST KILL

—- PINOCCHIO (Del Toro)

—- PREY

—- SCREAM

—- SMILE

—- TERRIFIER 2

—- VIOLENT NIGHT

—- Or write in another choice:

No, I won’t write in another choice. There’s more than enough there already.

I figure to report in here as I watch ‘em, ‘cause why not?

Here, in brief, are some comments on those I’ve already seen…

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER…I liked the original well enough. Didn't think it was anything great. It was pretty simple-minded, but certainly nice to look at. But I wondered at the time, thinking of JOHN CARTER as well as AVATAR, when does a live-action film become an animated film? Where’s the line between those forms. Well, this sequel is well over the line. This is a cartoon, folks. And it’s animation supporting a pretty weak script. Soap opera dialogue, elementary school plotting. I saw it on my 55” flatscreen and it looked sharp. Probably looked a lot better in IMAX and 3D and Todd-Ao and Emergo and whatever else they offered. But no matter how good it looked, it still would be a childish cartoon.

THE BATMAN … for the first half or so, I thought I was watching a truly great comic book movie. But then…there was a 10-15 minute stretch which slogged and crawled along, followed by good but standard action. At any rate, no longer anything great.

       I liked that the fate of the world didn’t depend on the final confrontation. Every Marvel movie does that already. This ending is not going to be good for Gotham City, but the world is safe. I appreciated that.

Robert Pattinson is fine. Better than Affleck, maybe even better than Bale (not a huge fan of the Nolan series), but not great. What was wonderful about this Batman was the way we could see his eyes so clearly behind the mask, even in dark scenes. I don’t know if it was lighting or makeup or costuming or computer thumbjiggery or acting or all of the above, but it was a great effect. 

      Also, even considering the dauntingly beautiful string of Catwomen over the years, from Lee Meriwether to Halle Berry, Zoe Kravitz has to go near the top of the list. She’s stunning. And delivers a nice performance as well.

All in all, pretty good as superhero movies go, but not really that much above the norm.

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER… Not as good as the first one, which was itself probably a little overrated. This one is too busy for my taste. It’s also more emotional than most any other comic book movie, which is understandable considering the tragic, early death of the first movie’s star.

I love Angela Bassett, always have, and thought she was good here, but I was surprised at her Oscar nomination. I mean, she’s not THAT good, and it hardly seems the sort of role which inspires or requires that level of acting. 

Okay, but not much better.

THE MUNSTERS …       I was not a MUNSTERS fan. I watched it weekly in its initial broadcast because it was, you know, Monsters. But I never found it funny and always much preferred THE ADDAMS FAMILY. But I watched it, oh yeah.       

      So here I am, watching this movie, made by Rob Zombie whose previous movies--with one mild exception--I really didn’t like. Because…they’re monsters, dude.

      I loved that the movie started with the old Universal globe. Nice touch.

      The movie looks just great. The sets, the costumes, the cinematography, all gorgeous.

      I did very much like Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman. Apart from his laugh, I didn’t see or hear much Fred Gwynne. Phillips, for the most part, made it his own and underplayed quite wonderfully. Thumbs up for him.

      And thumbs up also for Dan Roebuck. It’s much easier to find a lot of Al Lewis in the performance, but I thought the impression was just enough to remind and honor, not so much as to offend or overdo.

      Sheri Moon Zombie is an extremely attractive Lily and I know she can act (she was quite good in Rob’s best movie, LORDS OF SALEM), but the lady seems to have no feel for comedy. Frankly neither does her husband. Maybe she was just following flawed direction. Or maybe she thought she was channeling Yvonne DeCarlo. She wasn’t. And whatever she was doing just was not funny.

       But then again, that’s the problem with the movie overall. It is just not funny, not at all.  I was going to try to split the blame between Rob Zombie and the scriptwriter, but then the end credits told me that Rob was the scriptwriter, so… sorry, Rob. Ya ain’t funny. And when the things in your “comedy” which come closest to being humorous are the supposedly bad jokes told by Herman, well, ya might have a problem.

       Of course, not being a MUNSTERS fan at any point in my life, and never having found them funny, I thought maybe I wasn’t a fair audience. So I texted my son, who is a huge MUNSTERS fan and a huge Rob Zombie fan. I asked him if he’d seen it (he had) and what he thought. He said that it was nice to see the characters again and revisit the family but that it wasn’t funny. I told him I hadn’t laughed once and he agreed, “no,” he said, “it’s totally unfunny.”  My son is very smart.

HOW TO START A BLOG -- NOT!

First, let me tell you a story…

Back in the early ‘90s, we (we meaning me and my then-wife) decided to buy our first home computer. Everybody got their first computer in those days. And like most of those people, probably more than most, we were wholly ignorant on the subject.

The only exposure to computers which either of us had had to that point was a few minutes goggling over the wonders of what could only be called a laptop. A proto-laptop. This magical device belonged to my wife’s cousin. He worked deep in the Pentagon and the computer was part of his work. Probably it actually belonged to the army, not to him, but he had it with him and he showed it off. 

I can’t remember just what he showed us, but it seemed magical and impossible. Probably, compared to current computers, it would now look like PONG compared to GRAND THEFT AUTO XXXIII, but in 1990 or so, it seemed like the furthest possibility of science-fiction.

But that’s all we knew as we entered the world of computer ownership. Wanting to spend our money wisely, I read lots of magazine and newspaper articles and gradually began to accumulate just a weeeeee bit of knowledge. But there was one question which I couldn’t find an answer to.

This is going to seem incredibly ignorant on my part, but it was a long time ago, computers had not yet taken over the world, and vas you dere, Cholly?

In my reading I came upon “floppy disks” and “hard disks”.  It was clear that floppies were interchangeable, that you could buy them by the box. But nothing I read really defined the hard disk. My question was simple, if ignorant:  Are the hard disks also interchangeable?  I wanted to know if a computer owner had a stack of hard disks between which he could alternate.

So I asked people. I asked computer people. We browsed through the computer areas of a few stores and, of course, avid salespeople fell upon us, eager for a commission. And I asked my question about the mysterious hard disk. I’m sure these folks thought they were answering my question. I’m sure they understood that I was an empty-headed non-techie and I’m sure they thought they were making it plain and simple. They weren’t. 

At least three times, maybe more, I asked my question of folks who were supposed to know. Hell, they did know, they just didn’t know how to tell me. They were unable to make their answer simple enough for me. They’d tell me about floppy disks, but I already had a fair handle on that. But ‘is the hard disk removable or interchangeable?’... they couldn’t reduce their vocabulary to simply yes or no. They’d say something like “The hard disk is where the computer…” or “the hard disk tells you how much the computer can…” Or like that. I just wanted ‘yes’ or ‘no’. They couldn’t tell me.

So we just dove in, half-blind, and it worked out okay. We consulted with my brother-in-law beforehand. He was the nearest thing in the family to a computer guy, and he wasn’t that near. We told him that we were thinking of buying a Mac of some sort and that it  had 80 Mb of memory and that we didn’t know what that really meant. He said, “Oh, that’s good. 80 Mb is all you’ll ever need.”  Well, it was the early ‘90s, so…

I don't remember what computer we bought, but it wasn't this one. It did look pretty much like this, however.

I was reminded of all that when I started researching “How to Start a Blog.” In this day and age I figured that YouTube was the place to go. All kinds of instructional videos there, all kinds of “how to” videos. That’s the ticket.

And, indeed, there were buckets full of blog videos. Most of them had titles like “How to Start a Blog and Make $2000 a Month!” Or maybe “How to Start a Blog and Make $6000 a Month.” Or, in a real change-up, “How to Start a Blog and Make $10,000 Every WEEK.”

The second most popular type of title was “How to Write Better Blog Posts.”

I wasn’t interested in that either. I’ll write my own, thank you, and better or worse I’ll just let ‘em ride.

Okay.  Except I wasn’t looking to make money. And I didn’t want advice on what to write about on my blog or how to write better. I simply wanted to have a place to post my simple, silly, unimproved essays. I simply wanted to know how to start a blog. After that…GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!

There were a few videos which came closer to what I wanted and I watched several of them. But they all, to one degree or another, had the same problem those computer salesfolk had 30 years ago.  It might be something like this, “If you want to start a blog, the first thing you have to do is…” whatever. But this would immediately be followed with something like “But before you do that, you have to…”  Oh. So the “first thing” isn’t really the “first thing.”

One which was particularly unhelpful started by promising how simple and helpful it would be. Here we were told what we needed to do but without telling us just how to go about that. But, assuming I could figure that out, it just got worse. The host, before telling us anything useful, wanted to go behind the scenes and show us some of the more advanced stuff. So she’s clicking this box and re-ordering a list of something else without, again, telling us, in simple dumb American, just what the hell she was doing. 

The video which seemed as if it might finally fill the bill went sour a couple of minutes in. It became painfully clear that the woman in the video was pushing--and pushing hard--a particular web host sort of place. She never said “this is the best” or “this is my choice”, she simply plowed into it as if this was the ONLY way to make a blog. So I clicked off that one.

Not helpful. None of them. Frustrating, actually.

So, the hell with YouTube. I read a bunch of posts about Blogger and WordPress and others. Blogger seemed to be the only one simple enough for simple-minded me. And here I am. Still ignorant, but still here.

 FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, March 17, 1973…An angry pilot of the Khmer Air Force killed 43 people and injured 35 in Cambodia after making a dive bomb attack on the presidential palace in Phnom Penh. Most of the dead were inside the barracks of the palace guards, including families of the guards…Born: Caroline Corr, Irish musician and drummer of The Corrs; in Dundalk, County Louth …

       Caroline Corr, the not unattractive drummer for a not unattractive musical group.

Top song in the country was KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG by Roberta Flack. A goodie.

Myself, I was out of college, out of work, and almost out of my marriage. Just had to hang on a few more months. During this coming week I would have been pretty intensively in rehearsal for THREE MEN ON A HORSE. This would be one of my last shows before I joined Actors Equity and went all perfessional. It would also be the only college show I did after graduating. Hey, my old director needed me! He flashed the Rick-Signal and I answered. The show would open on the coming Friday and close the next night. It was a small-college show in a small town. Not enough audience for more than that. But it was a good show with a really primo role for yours truly.

But there would be no rehearsal this Saturday night, so I could stay home and take in the double feature on Channel 41’s FRIGHT NIGHT. We were treated to two chillers every Saturday night. This went on for a few wonderful years and was hosted by local actor Charles Kissinger as The Fearmonger. Basically we saw a closeup of Kissinger with spooky underlighting. He would introduce the movies and sprinkle in too many ancient groaner jokes. I never laughed at one of them. I would have been embarrassed if I had.

The big attraction on this FRIGHT NIGHT was a Karloff classic from the ‘30s. Had it been a Universal production I probably would have seen it already. But this was from Warner Brothers. That night I watched, for the first time…

THE WALKING DEAD

I had seen photos from this movie in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. As I recall they gave off spooky vibes and, while I’d heard or read very little about the film, what I had picked up in bits and pieces had all sounded positive, so I was very hopeful. 

And this time I was not disappointed. The movie was a crackerjack, no doubt about it. Spooky and weird and kind of oddly religious. I thought it was great, just great. For some reason, I think I’ve seen it only once more in the last half century. Seems like I would have sought it out more than that. But, I think not, so I believe this will be only my third look at it. I remember atmosphere more than anything else, so I expect this viewing will appear pretty fresh to me. Let’s find out…

---------------------------------------------------------------

Movie fans know Michael Curtiz as the director of CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, and THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. Monster Kids know the truth. He’s the guy who made DOCTOR X, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, and THE WALKING DEAD. He also had a reputation as a taskmaster, driving cast and crew through 15 and 20 hour days. I have to wonder about the working relationship between slavedriver Curtiz and Boris Karloff, one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and a zealous advocate of actors’ rights. Might have been a tense set.

Phenomenally terrific supporting cast: Edmund Gwenn, Ricardo Cortez, Barton MacLane, Henry O’Neill, Addison Richards, Paul Harvey, Joe Sawyer. Young romantic leads Warren Hull and Marguerite Churchill don’t come off as well, particularly Hull. They also play a couple of frankly reprehensible, cowardly characters. 

It’s such a WB movie--dark urban streets, gangsters, reporters, “torn from the headline” elements.

The first people John Ellman should have targeted for his revenge were the young couple who waited till the last possible instant to provide the alibi which could have saved his life.

                                                            John Ellman, pre-death.

From my earlier viewings, plus some stuff I’d read, I thought that Karloff had borrowed too much of the Monster for this performance. Now I don’t think so. The movie itself is somewhat guilty of that, but not Boris. I mean, it’s the same actor and he’s playing a reanimated corpse, so there are, of course, similarities. But Karloff’s John Ellman is not the Monster Part II.

                                                          John Ellman, post-resurrection.

I was right before. It’s a great horror movie. First class right down the line. I would say that it’s one of two great horror films Karloff made in the ‘30s for someone other than Universal, the other being Columbia’s THE BLACK ROOM.