Mood:  flirty

Why do my weekends so rarely go as I plan? Today my intention was to work on the graphics and script tweaks I've been asked to make on the Starship Exeter project, and slip in lunch with John-O Sugden-meister. As it happened, only the latter occurred, because my friend Patrick called me early in the morning and said he'd had a fight with his boyfriend and needed a place to stay for a few nights. Soooo, I had to get ready for a houseguest and then be moral support for him. So much for Exeter!

Patrick arrived, then John arrived, and after a nice brunch at the Clement Street Bar & Grill we decided to see a movie. I was confident it would work, because John -- who's notorious for falling asleep during film -- had just been fortified with coffee. There was hope!

Since John's fiance wants to see "Brokeback Mountain", we couldn't go see that. There was much speculation about the inevitable porn knockoff "Bareback Mountain". Maybe this put us in a bawdy mood, but whilst purusing the film listings we hit on "Mrs. Henderson Presents", a film based on true events about a wealthy British widow who opened a theater before World War II and ultimately put naked girls in the performances. This may not sound promising, but it's actually a quite delightful little film about an eccentric who loves making waves. The titular (no pun intended) Mrs. Henderson is played delightfully by Dame Judy Dench, and the man she hires to run the shows is one Vivian Van Dam, played by Bob Hoskins. The film's R rating is based entirely on seeing naked women posing in ridiculous tableau (the local official deems it can be compared to "art" if the girls don't move), and one funny bit where the girls will only disrobe for the first time if all the men in the theater do likewise. The way it's done is not at all exploitive, as it's part and parcel of the story events. The film is really about Mrs. Henderson and her love-hate relationship with Van Dam. I enjoyed it a lot.

After the flickeroo, John dropped Patrick and I in the Castro, where we went for a few beers and then dinner. In the first place we went -- Harveys -- I saw a handsome guy and smiled at him as I was walking to the bathroom. As I stood in line, suddenly, there he was. We chatted briefly, then he looked me directly in the eye and said, "Can I kiss you?" Well, I thought he was pretty damned cute, so I said, "Sure." Good kisser. And I have a phone number to call tomorrow.

Not bad for a Sunday.

Posted by molyneaux at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:19 PM PDT

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This is the second week I've joined an outing (so to speak) of the East Bay Movie Bears group. This week it was at that jewel of the Lake Merritt area, the Grand Lake Theater, the fabulous 1920s theater which not only sports a top line Dolby Digital sound system in the main auditorium, but which precedes weekend evening perfomances with live organ music instead of commericals or inane slideshows. It's organ music, trailers, and then on with the show! The only downside is the seats, which my behind swears on a stack of bibles are the original 1920's vintage. Oy, my tuckus!

I'd guess 20-25 guys showed up. Some really nice ones. Looking forward to making friends with a few.

The evenement de cinema du jour was the new film Batman Begins.

$poiler$ ahead...don't read if you want to be surprised. As superhero movies go, it was -- pardon the pun -- superior. Realistic isn't a word that accomodates a story wherein a man dresses like a bat to fight crime, but unlike the stylized and/or cartoonish interpretations of previous films, this one treated the subject matter with just the right level of seriousness and resisted the temptation to teeter into nudge nudge wink winking at the audience.

Numerous small flaws, but not nits worth picking. Only big thumbs downs for me were the choppy fight scenes (too many fast cuts) and the over-the top car chase that had the ugly new BatmoHumvee driving on and leaping across rooftops. Hello, anyone think a tenement roof could support the weight of a tank?! Papa Wayne spank!

Afterwards the group wandered a half block up Grand Avenue to a The Alley Club, a neighborhood piano bar who decor is titular. The booths are separated by what appear to be wooden fences, and the bar is under its own shingled roof. It's littered and peppered with busines cards stapled to every conceivable and inconceivable surface. Look close...some of those cards are from at least the 60s if not earlier. Goofy!

We arrive too late for dinner, but that doesn't deter many. The majority stay, have a few drinks, and quite a few sing along badly with the songs played by Ron Dibble at the piano...your's truly included. Most songs are half remembered and many of those there can only remember the choruses. Oddly, a high percentage know all the words to "Cabaret". How stereotypical of us, and me!

Oops, I think I just outed myself again... but then, life is a Cararet, old chum. And I love a Cabaret!

Posted by molyneaux at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:25 PM PDT

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Went to see The Incredibles again on Saturday. Great movie. Definitely a must-have on DVD. I'm always impressed how PIXAR's animation and rendering is two years ahead of everyone else's. I loved director Brad Bird's "The Iron Giant", so I'm thrilled he's two for two in the feature dept now.

Spoke to Terry today. Making plans to get together next weekend and hash over his script. I reworked the scene directions in the fist 16 pages of it, and I need to get on the next chunk. The plan is for me to help him streamline the directions so we can get an accurate page count, and then start hashing over the scenes and characters and dialogue. I'm looking forward to it because I like the story, and it's fun to work on something so utterly different than the kind of thing I would write.

Posted by molyneaux at 4:11 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:37 PM PDT

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Back in the days when I lived in BFE, aka Hawthorne, NV, it wasn't uncommon for me to go see two or three films in a single day when I'd hit what passed for civilization in Nevada. Outside of the occasional Film Festival, it's rare I see more than one film in a 24 hour period. Friday night/Saturday morning was an exception to the rule, as I saw two different films in two different cities only a few hours apart.

First up was a program at the Pacific Film Archive (PFA) at U.C. Berkeley, beginning with a lecture by animation historian John Canemaker on the work on artist Mary Blair, followed by a Disney film that she did conceptual work for: Alice in Wonderland. The presentation on Mrs. Blair was very interesting, and I really liked her work. Her bold, vibrant colors and elegant stylization the Disney artists were sadly never comfortable to truly bring to the screen. He evocative renderings of life in South America were enough for me to forgive her for her work on It's a Small World After All.

The film was less interesting than the lecture. But then I always felt that Alice was one of Disney's worst classic misfires (can you use those two words together?). I found the film teetered between silly and sappily sentimental and I was glad when it was over. The only positive thing I can say is that it was a beautiful 35mm print.

Oh well, at least the lecture was good, and I got John Canemaker to autograph one of his books that I owned.

Not half an hour after returning from that, Marc Finkel and I walked to the Grand Lake Theater to see a special last-minute-added midnight showing of Fahrenheit 9/11"...except it wasn't a midnight show, it was a 12:15 am show...except it wasn't that, either, because the previous show didn't let out until 12:25, and our show didn't start until 12:45. I got home at 3 am on the nose. Hoo boy, was I tired!

Seeing this film in Oakland was a funny experience. As "The Boondocks" points out, African American moviegoers often have little self-consciousness about talking back to the screen. In this instance, when Condoleezza Rice appeared on screen, some black person shouted "Traitor!", and in a shot of Colin Powell being made up for a TV spot, someone else commented, "Make me whiter!"

Some footage of civilian casualties in Iraq, wounded U.S. soldiers, and bodies burned and dragged around by mobs turned my stomach, but watching a Flint, Michigan mother dealing with the loss of her son literally made me ill. It was so terrible, it really got to me.

The film was effective. Sure, director/writer/self-promoter Michael Moore did his usual cheap shots, but they didn't bother me as much as they did in "Bowling for Columbine" because in this case, the people taking those shots so richly deserve them. For a change, Moore got out of the way for most of the film and for the most part let's the words of these public figures themselves condemn them.

Michael Moore's Website


My local theater...

On Sunday, Marc pointed me to the Michael Moore website, where a picture of our local theater made the main page, in part because the owners bucked the MPAA and decided they wouldn't treat the R rated film as an R, but as a PG-13 and let younger people in. Ahhh, activism...

More pictures of my local theater...
LINK: A queue forms...
LINK: Collage of the the scene

U P D A T E ! I forgot to mention that there's a scene in Fahrenheit that was shot right down the street from the theater where I saw it. Very strange to be watching a man on screen and know that the place he was standing is just three blocks to your back! (If you see the film, it's the older gentleman discussing how he got contacted by the FBI after voicing his opinion about Bush at the gym. Most of the shots of him are along the edge of Lake Merritt halfway between my apt. and the theater.)

Posted by molyneaux at 10:43 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:44 PM PDT

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Super Size Me (CLICK HERE for the film's official website) is the story of Morgan Spurlock's experiment in fast food consumption. What will happen to his health if he eats nothing but food from McDonalds three meals a day for a month, and if he does only the amount if exercise a typical American does each day? Well, just over halfway through Spurlock is a physical mess, and his doctors are amazed that all their predictions about the results were not only wrong, but failed to predict the consequences by orders of magnitude. One doctor says he's got so much fat in his liver it's practically pâté.

All this would be big-screen reality TV if all we did was watch Spurlock pig out for 30 days, but he smartly interviews a lot of talking heads from various industries, government agencies, and watchdog groups to get their spin on the fast food industry. And while I can quibble with the featherweightness of some of the evidence, the weight (pun intended) of circumstantial evidence is pretty convincing, as I see the results everywhere. Hell, it's pretty evident for me living in the relatively health conscious Bay Area. When I go an hour in any almost direction away from it, I notice that the percentage of swollen equators increases alarmingly.

I could have done without seeing the footage of an actual gastric bypass surgery, but it sure slams home the consequences of what an unhealthy lifestyle can do to you, so in that way it's defensible.

It's telling that the only appetizing thing I saw in the entire film were the vegan dishes Spurlock's chef girlfriend prepared before and after the experiment, and some freshly cooked food in one those rare school cafeterias that hasn't outsourced its meals to big business.

I guess I've been "Californicated" after all...

Posted by molyneaux at 10:42 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:48 PM PDT

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I'm really getting behind on this Blog. bad me!


Whatever day it was...
FILM: Metropolis but not by way of Fritz Lang
I rented the 2002 release animé film "Metropolis". The visuals are mesmerizing, but the story was derivative and there were a lot of lapses in logic. Cowboy Bebop aside, I guess I'm still not much of an animé fan.

Friday 9 April
FILM: It IS the rabbit!
Becky left work early and we went to Rockridge and played Scrabble in front of the coffee & tea shop at the Makret Hall there. Boy I love living in a city!

Afterwards we met up with John Kitchener and a friend to go to movie night at the Paramount, which is always a treat. For your $6 you get half an hour of Jim Riggs on the house organ before the show, a newsreel, a cartoon, trailers for coming attractions that aren't coming, Dec-O-Win (where they spin a wheel for prizes based on ticket numbers), and the film!

Jim Riggs included Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" (which appears in a zillion Warner Bros. cartoons, whenever machinery is shown) in his organ set. The newsreel was all about Easter in 1955, and was the cartoon was, appropriately enough, "Easter Yeggs" with Bugs Bunny. The coming attractions included Conan the Barbarian, which got huge laughs seeing our now governor gnashing his teeth and chewing the scenergy. At the end of Dec-O-Win Rigg's played the Python-appropriated "Liberty Bell march", and then the film began; "Monty Python & the Holy Grail". I had not seen it in a theater since I first saw it at a 1981 midnight show in Reno, and it was funny as ever. The only problems were that the sound too loud in a lot of places, and the image seemed a little dim and dark. Still, it was great seeing it with a very enthusiastic audience. It was also oddly appropriate at Easter time as it features the Grail and a bunny (a foul vicious one, tho!).

Sunday 11 April
FILM: Hell is for Boys
I drove to Pleasanton and had a homemade pancake brunch courtesy of Becky. Yummy!

Afterwards, we went to see "Hellboy". It's the kind of film I don't normally attend (as I pretty much boycott big action films), but it was okay for the genre. I liked Ron Perlman's performance. The fish-man "abe sapien" was really well done. John Hurt was there too, nearly unrecognizably under his old man makeup. The climax was, in a word, anticlimactic, but the film had its share of fun moments.

I have to make a small aside here and complain about seeing movies in modern multiplexes. You pay your pricy entry, you pay 3x prices at the concession, and then you're forced to sit through continuous pre-film commercials. This is why I boycott such cinemas in favor of local houses that only show trailers before the show! Thank goodness I have the Grand Lake Theater right up the street!

Let's see, what else...
Oh, I've started archiving my laser discs to DVDs. My new Sony Vaio has what's called a "Giga Pocket Video" system that allows me to plug in regular TV video (cable TV and composite), record it (like a Tivo), and then record it to DVDs. I am anxious to get this process done because when these same films are released on commercial DVD they often alter the extras. For instance, one "Nightmare Before Christmas" documentary was cut nearly in half on the DVD release of the film! That documentary was my first "test" disc. I recently did the first complete disc, the documentary "Theremin: An Electronic Oddysey". It came out pretty well, and the recording process is relatively painless. I started recording Star Wars (not the Special Edition).

Posted by molyneaux at 11:06 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:50 PM PDT

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I discussed my affection for the show Cowboy Bepop a few entries back (CLICK HERE for the Bebop Entry). I recently rewatched the theatrical Bebop film, but I have to say I think it lacks something the TV show has. Haven't quite put my finger on what element fell out...

Monday night I rented a DVD of the final 4 episodes of Bebop, because I always miss the two-part series closer. The first of the two parts was good, but it was the second part that had me riveted. So much happened in 23 minutes that I was stunned, especially the resolution given to the characters. This final "session" also had a really sad and beautiful image that I found incredibly striking. It's a super-slow motion shot of a dying person seen falling in profile, behind whom a flock of birds are seen flying. The following shot snaps back to real time as the body hits the ground with a sickening thud. Amazing work!

A funny contrast to this was a strange little documentary I rented called Plaster Caster, about the legendary groupie who has since the late 1960's been making plasters casts of the private parts of some very public figures: musicians. I first became aware of this story back in the 70s upon hearing the KISS song "Plaster Caster", but my youthful naïvete prevented me understanding exactly what the song was about. Anyway, the documentary is only so-so. The camera work wasn't very good and the editing was kind of clumsy. The titular woman is nothing like what you might expect of someone with this kind of extreme hobby. She's nervous and shy and easily flustered, and she treats the entire affair very clinically. In fact, her approach is so deadly un-erotic one wonders that her subjects ever rise to the occasion. Most peculiar.

The tempation here is to comment on how various rock lengends stand up to each other, but I think I'll just leave that well enough alone...

CLICK for the official website of the Plaster Caster movie

Posted by molyneaux at 12:27 AM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:01 AM PDT

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One thing I find irritating about this Blog builder is that it doesn't let you make post-dated entries. If I don't write an entry the day something occurs, I can never actually set it for that date. Grrrr...

Anyway, I'm going to try to fill in a few things that happened on dates over the past week-plus.

I met Becky in Berkeley (there's a song there) to get dinner and a movie. After a lovely meal and good wine at a nice Italian bistro, we went to see a film that was the official Norwegian entry for the 2003 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film: Kitchen Stories.

I had to think about this movie for a while before writing about it. It was a well made picture and I was always interested in where it was going and in seeing how the situation would resolve itself. It was funny in a warm smile rather than a laugh out loud sort of way. But in retrospect the film felt a little...slight. Even as I revisit this entry later, I still don't have a lot to say. I enjoyed it, but I don't think back on it at all.

Posted by molyneaux at 8:13 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:09 AM PDT

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I'm on the biggest roll of films I've done in a long time. Last night was another excursion to the land on cinema, this time to see the best bad movie I've seen in a long time.

I'm one of those people who really enjoys the ineptness of grade-Z exploitation pictures by the likes of William ("One Shot") Beaudine and the legendary Ed Wood. I love them for their very earnestness and ineptness. As such, I've always found homages and parodies of them to be a painful experiences because the knowing winks of the sendup perpetrators undermine the humor that comes from the absolute conviction of the form. Amazon Women on the Moon suffers from this in spades, becoming more tedious than the worst Ed Wood film imaginable.

Knowing this, it was with some trepidation that I joined my friends Christopher & Russ in attending The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (one review and official website), a film which is in parts sendup, homage, and recreation of one of those zero-budget cheapies. Lost Skeleton suffers somewhat from these problems, and at times I winced, but for some reason I found myself laughing out loud, not usually at the obvious funny bits, but often at the end of a scene, where the cumulative absurdity would hit me. The film is written by someone who clearly enjoys these clunkers for the same reason I do, and that affection is obvious throughout. The love is in the lack of detail, from the wood grain of the 2x4 visible in a spaceship hatch, the circular and repetative dialog, cheapo props, to the garage made rubber monster suit and titular skeleton operated by painfully visible wires.

True to the genre, Lost Skeleton sags in the middle, and there were points where the it played "Nudge Nudge Wink Wink" too much. Such smug "we're in on the joke" moments derailed the film momentarily. The cinematography, even for a cheapie, was surprisingly neutral. The skin tones were disturbingly midtone gray. I cried, "My kingdom for a highlight!" but none was forthcoming.

Looking back, I still don't think Lost Skeleton was really that funny. Yet as we left we were quoting the inane lines and laughing our fool heads off. There's nothing inherently funny about "I sleep now!" and "Oh well," and yet, that's what we were reciting. Such is the power of lame dialog...

I'll probably buy the DVD. "Oh Well!"

Posted by molyneaux at 8:40 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:10 AM PDT

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A flashback to a film I saw the weekend before last with my friends Terry and Carol...

The Triplets of Belleville (Flash 6 website) is a charming French animated feature that is almost a silent film. Spare in dialogue almost to the point of absence, the film is a series of sweetly comic and patently absurd set pieces about Madame Souza, a grandmother who just won't give up on her laconic grandson, whose only interest is bicycling. With only her wits, an overweight train hating dog and a trio of aged singers (the titular Triplets) at her side, she braves rain, sea, a New York-esque metropolis of cheeseburger devouring fatties, and the French Wine Mafia in her quest to save her grandson. The opening sequence struck chords with me that will likely not register by most people, being that it's a spot-on homage to a 1932 Max Fleischer cartoon, right down to the animation style and bizarre events. Fun stuff!



Click to see the Triplets!
In the theater the film is preceded by Destino (weblink), a short subject released in 2003, but based on storyboards and designs done by Salvador Dali in a short-lived 1946 collaboration between him and Walt Disney. It's Dali in motion, set to a Spanish song from which the film takes its title. Surreal, naturally, but short enough that even those not taken by such images shouldn't find it boring!

Click here for an NPR review (audio) of Triplets.

NPR page on Destino. Includes radio piece and two video segments (Real Video).

Posted by molyneaux at 4:57 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:15 AM PDT

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