Some Came Running

Who, me?

Another week, another Foreign Region Blu-Ray Disc Report. NO, the strain's not getting to me, and why would you even ask that, anyway? Geez, get off my back, why doncha. At The Daily Notebook. Where the hell else?

Not "there will be." Rather, "there IS."

Blood, that is. As in the above striking image from Claire Denis' 2001 Trouble Every Day. My friends at MSN Movies, impressed by the prodigious sticky-ick factor of Neil Marshall's new and fabulous Centurion, asked me to come up with a bunch of pictures with as high if not higher a stock of spilled hemoglobin. The gory results of my research are here. Enjoy?

Christopher Campbell Meets Theodor Adorno

"Aja hits us with a crescendo of mayhem that just keeps on going and going and going. What separates this sequence, in which the film’s prehistoric fish go to town on hundreds of partying co-eds attending a wet t-shirt contest, from the rest of the obviously silly movie is how real and traumatic it appears. I’m not alone in noticing the change in tone.

Rock

About 30 years ago, as an obligatory part of a New-Jersey-based misspent youth, I fronted an "alternative" or "New Wave" band called Artificial Intelligence. We played out a fair amount near the campus of the college I attended perfunctorily, William Paterson. Having convinced the manager of a bar called The Peanut Gallery that it might be a good idea to host bands, and having thus cleared the ground that would set the stage for The Trypes, The Willies, and eventually a reunited-for-the-first-time Feelies, I suppose it could be said that A.I. was an important part of the Haledon Scene, which of course ought to be considered an obscure adjunct of the Hoboken Scene. Our music was an attempted hybrid of Pere Ubu and Gang of Four with various art-rock elements thrown in—our keyboard player, My Close Personal Friend Ron G., was a very big prog head who was also quite conversant in film music (I recall he "composed" one number that was a blatant and proud lift from one of Steiner's jungle motifs in the King Kong score). I will leave it to history, such as it is, to render its verdict on our work. One of our major distinctions was in attracting the very great Stanley Demeski, later of the aforementioned Feelies, and then Luna, and now, I'm really happy to note, The Feelies again, to pound the skins for us for a spell, said spell being one of our most fecund and best-sounding periods. 

The band had many problems—its first and foremost being that I didn't know how to sing, at least over our deliberately knotty and loud and dissonant music, and also that I was a complete diva asshole a lot of the time, mostly just because I thought that was what lead singers did—but we also had a hell of a lot of laughs, some of them a result of interband banter, others deriving from the endearing boneheadedness of others of our kind. Once, our Clifton basement rehearsals having worked the last nerve of the woman who lived on the top floor of the house shared by a few of us, we went out to Cedar Grove to work at a more or less "professional" rehearsal space in the back of a laundromat in a strip mall. Frustrated by my general ineffectuality in the group, musically speaking, I had taken up noise-making with my ex-girlfriend's Fender Jazzmaster (I know: huh?) when not doing vocal impersonations of an agonized beached sea creature. The joint we were rehearsing had this great sort-of apse at stage left with an organ and some synths stacked up; a "keyboard nook," I later called it. So Ron took his place there; rising to the setting, he would do variations of Garth Hudson's intro to "Chest Fever" in between our own songs, which was pretty funny. Our guitarist Tom, a really inspired player in both heavy and noise modes, was doing his thing, as was bassist Doug. I plugged into one of the Marshall stacks and tried to make coherent screeches. I don't think we had a drummer at the time.

Anyway, we're there "jamming," which in our lexicon meant making a horrible racket to see if anything could emerge from its resultant Stygian depths, and in walks this dead-eyed dude with a greasy shag and a chip on his shoulder. One of the joint's owner/managers, or something. He stands there, with his arms folded, looking more than vaguely disapproving, as our jam goes on, and on, to less and less purpose. Finally we don't so much finish as just stop playing, and begin discussing whether or not maybe we'd like to try to play a song or something. Whereupon the dead-eyed dude steps up closer to the stage, and asks no one in particular, "Which one of you guys is the guitar player?" And the three guys holding guitars immediately point to Ron in the keyboard nook and say, in unison, "He is."

Whereupon the dude goes straight up to Ron and says to him, "Hey, man, don't mess with any of the controls on the Marshall stack there. It's modified." And Ron, perhaps in disbelief, just says, "Okay." And then the dude leaves.

Yes, we all still enjoy that story very much, thank you. And we we heartened, a couple of weeks ago, when the members of Artificial Intelligence reconvened for a rehearsal in the rehearsal district of midtown Manhattan, to see that the "don't touch the stack" mentality lives on, as witness the Sharpie-penned urgent instruction we found on one of the bass amps: 

 

"So why was your 'band' that you hadn't played with for almost thirty years rehearsing a couple of weeks ago?" you may be foolish enough to ask. Well, why else would we rehearse except for a reunion, which took place on Saturday at, of course, the Holiday Inn on Rt. 22W in Springfield N.J. Our drummer for the occasion—said occasion being the 40th anniversary of bassist Doug H.'s first guitar lesson, which he commemorated by reassembling a good number of members of every band he ever played in, or something (I didn't quite follow the logic, I just showed up to play, man) was the great Daniel B. Our friend Barré D., whom Ron and I helped steer to a career path that eventually saw him as Patti Smith's crew manager and, of late, musical stage manager of The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien and O'Brien's subsequent live tour, and soon, O'Brien's new television show, came and took a couple of shots with his gizmo, which has an app that makes the things look like Polaroids, which is in fact pretty cool. Problem is these things don't have very wide lenses, so the band in its entirety is difficult to get in one shot. So here's two.  

 

That's the rhythm section and the guitarist and stuff. Here's the keyboard player:  

Oddly enough, in spite of having had almost zero soundcheck, and having to play a severely truncated "set" (two originals: "Diminishing Returns" and the immortal "Monster Island Dance Party;" we had worked up some nifty covers, including one of the Bryan Ferry arrangement of "The In Crowd"), the general consensus was that, by some miracle (the "Rock Godz" smiling upon us?), we actually ended up sounding objectively not bad, myself included. I did my patented stage schtick, which includes a lot of limb-flailing and unexpectedly falling in a dead heap and so on, and it seemed "effective." We all resolved that it would be a fun thing to try again for real despite the fact that most of us now reside in different states. I'll keep you posted. Maybe.

The divine Kim

Some selected images from Jeanne Eagels (George Sidney, 1957):

 

 

 

Yeah, I finally bit the bullet last night and watched the damn thing (the new DVD, that is, from the new Kim Novak collection from Sony) in all its glory on my 13-inch backup TV. Quite a whacked-out picture, surely; certain portions of it had me spinning my wheels, speculating as to whether Sidney was in fact some diabolical hybrid of Douglas Sirk and Ed Wood. A subject for further research to be sure, although I don't know if I have the intestinal fortitude to go back to those late '30s "Our Gang" shorts, in which all the kids have by now reached middle age, or something. Anyway. Eagels is cited by the Surrealist critic and filmmaker Ado Kyrou as one of those "sublime melodramas in which the most unbridled sense of the baroque remains senseless for those unable to read between the images." Also on his lists are a couple of Sirks (Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life), which means maybe I'm on to something; the "admirable" Minnelli film which gives this blog its name; and, um, Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues. Watching this again also reminded me of how, way back in the day, when I'd get into a political argument with my friend and then colleague Ed Hulse (whose book on Lone Pine in the movies you should definitely own), and he would have my back to the wall on some issue or other, the only thing I would have left would be to exclaim, "I don't need you! I don't need anybody! I'm Jeanne Eagels!" Which would crack him up to the extent that he would at least stop attacking me, sob.

Anyhow, as you may have noticed, I'm kind of queer for Novak. No, wait, that came out wrong. How about, I've ever been of the considered opinion that she can do no wrong. (My mom tells me that even as a very small child I "liked" her, but I've never asked for Mater to give me any more specific example of how said like was manifested.) I feel about her pretty much as that MacMahonist nut felt about Charlton Heston, that her mere presence in any film was enough to create beauty. And there, above, she is. How can one disagree, I wonder. Some things are just, you know, cinematically sound. Novak was always one of them.

UPDATE: "This photo needs a proper 'lol' caption," notes commenter Dizzy, but his link doesn't work. No matter, I found it, and decided that in this case simpler is better.

Looking for a good (and civil!) read this weekend?

One that's bloggy, and filmy? Than allow me to direct you to Dennis Cozzalio's ever-wonderful blog Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, which you ought to be going to regularly anyway. Although I myself have been slightly amiss, or else I would have directed you to this sooner: A "Movie Blogger Summit" between Dennis and the wondrous Farran Smith Nehme, known to the millions as The Self-Styled Siren. The two discuss their blogging origins, aesthetic affinities, aesthetic differences (My Lovely Wife had to walk me to the fainting couch after I was reminded again that the Siren, beloved of us both, has no love for Once Upon A Time In The West) and so on. The duo chatted on Skype back in May, and Dennis lovingly transcribed the proceedings. And it's good, good stuff, and a real tonic for me personally at a time when, for reasons you'll forgive me for not once again dredging up, I had started to perceive the internet as some kind of combination lunatic asylum/cesspool.

Part One is here, and Part the Second is forthcoming. Check it out. Smoking jacket and monocle not required (and yes, I promise, I will get off that theme soon enough; it still gives me a little chuckle, is all).

A line that made me laugh out loud...

"Amity Shlaes is a credentialed right-wing scribe, best known for The Forgotten Man, her book about how FDR fucked up the Great Depression, thus earning him four presidential election victories (if you're bored sometime, run this thesis past your grandparents)." From the always-diverting Roy Edroso's entertaining essay on Randroidism In Our Time, the entirety of which is well worth reading if you're that way inclined.

That's the "Ticket"

I know what some of you may be thinking right about now. Some of you may be thinking, "Glenn, what did you do to your editor at MSN Movies to make him dislike you so much?" Because why else would I have been gifted with the assignment to review Lottery Ticket? 

If that is indeed what you are thinking, put that thought out of your mind, and stop being such a monocle-sporting smoking-jacket wearer. It should not be a foregone conclusion that Lottery Ticket be bad. The young lead, Bow Wow, second from left, is an appealing performer. The fellow at left, playing his postmodern Eddie-Haskell-in-the-projects cohort, Brandon T. Jackson, a lot of people found him enjoyable in Tropic Thunder. That Terry Crews, he's in The Expendables. And sure...I dare you to tell Keith David that you don't want to see a movie he's in. Ice Cube's in it, and also produced, and we all enjoyed Friday, didn't we? So there you have it.

But for all that, no, Lottery Ticket is not very good. Alas. My review here.

Literary interlude, with illustrations and commentary

    That thirty days had taught the punk a lesson. It had made him feel badly, costing Violet all that money. Every time she'd had enough saved to divorce the Old Man she'd have to spend it putting in the fix for him. He'd brooded about it the whole thirty days, and made up his mind that the first thing he'd do when he got out would be to steal the divorce money for her.

    He'd picked on Gold's Department Store when a goodly crowd was there.

    Sparrow had been stealing odds and ends off Gold's counters since he was in short pants. He knew the only gun in the store was an ancient cow pistol carried by the old man who runs the freight elevator. The elevator man is even older than old Gold; all he does is lean against the shaft, half asleep all day. It's like a pension.

    Sparrow had felt that if he could get the gun off the old man without getting himself shot straight through the head the rest should be fairly easy. He began drinking on the notion next door to Gold's, and, as the afternoon wore on, the more natural the notion had appeared. He wasn't able to understand why he hadn't thought of it long before. 

    But when he'd shuffled out of the bar and seen how swiftly the long street was darkening, he'd gone cold sober with the recollection of his recent thirty-day stretch and had to return, in a hurry, to the bar.

    He'd gotten drunk all over again on Vi's credit, which was good so long as Stash held down his icehouse job. But by nine o'clock the credit gave out and he'd been brooding on the idea so long he couldn't back out. To falter would have been to reneg on Frankie as well as on Violet, he felt. Both had done so much for him—and what had he ever done for either? Nothing. Not a thing. He never did anything for his friends but use up their credit and get them in trouble. He'd do something big for them all. Right now.

    So shuffled, cap yanked low, straight down the middle aisle—Ladies' Home and Fancy Footwear—to the freight elevator where the ancient house dick lounged in dreams of long-lost daily doubles. Sparrow shoved his combination flashlight pencil into the small of the old man's back, grabbed the gun, shoved him into the lift and snarled just like Edward G. Robinson, "Into the basement wit' the rest of the rats—copper."

    His glasses had clouded up, but he heard the door of the lift crash shut and the cables whining downward and the dozen-odd customers began turning slowly toward him like people in a slow-motion movie. In that moment he saw himself through all their eyes: a cardboard cowboy in horn-rimmed spectacles waving an oversized cow gun. He heard his own shrill voice carried away down endless nylon aisles on the scudding of the overhead fans.

    "Face the waw-awls, everybody!"

    He saw them turning, by ones and twos, old Gold with a steel washboard under his arm and the cashier's face white as a split apple against the parched black line of her brows just as she took a header and he hollered, "Leave her lay! She oney fainted!"

—Nelson Algren, The Man With The Golden Arm, 1947

A thought that frequently passes through my mind as I'm reading this: why on earth would anybody think to make a film out of it? Really. Because, as compelling as its characters are, it's not as if the text really runs on what you'd call narrative drive/momentum. It would hardly be inapt, based on this novel and on the short stories in The Neon Wilderness, to call Algren the James Joyce of the underbelly of Chicago. And of course by "James Joyce" I mean the James Joyce of Dubliners, not the James Joyce of Finnegans Wake or even the James Joyce of Ulysses. Yes, The Man With The Golden Arm has a story, and a fairly horrific and tragic one, but it's not really in so much of a hurry about telling it; it's more about presenting these desperate characters, showing their various enactments of desperation, trying to pull some meaning out of the whole sad, sorry mess they're all in. And there is something about the way Algren portrays his characters—who, as you see from the above passage, are very explicitly shaped in parts by the popular culture of their time—and tells their various stories, that actively resists the urge to filter the stuff into cinema. Still. The book was a "scandalous" best seller. A good many ambitious actors saw the role of a lifetime, or at the very least an Oscar nomination, in the role of Frankie Machine. A film was inevitable.

As a solid Preminger man, I cannot be accused of having any axe to grind when I state that there isn't a single solitary frame of his 1955 film of The Man With The Golden Arm that in any way captures the atmosphere of the Algren book. Marilyn Ferdinand, a very perceptive and lively film blogger who has a little bit of a truculent streak that can come up when you least expect it, is offended by the film version to the very depths of her Chicago soul; "Why I Will Never Call The Preminger Abomination By Its 'Title,'" she subtitles a 2008 post on the subject. it's not just the poor set design or the fact that Preminger and writers Walter Newman and Lewis Meltzer changed the story from a harrowing tragedy to one of redemption; it has to do with Preminger's feel, or lack thereof, for the material at hand. As Algren noted, a little bitterly (he was long haunted by what he considered the cinematic betrayal of his work): "...[T]he life of the common man has never filtered into Otto's brain and emotions; or into his talent such as he has. The book dealt with life at the bottom. Otto has never, not for so much as a single day, had any experience except that of life at the top."

There's something to that. Especially when you look at the second film Preminger made after Arm, an adaptation of Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse, and note the sheer seeming effortlessness with which that film immediately evokes the world of the privileged European leisure class. For Arm, Preminger had to invent a world of which he had no real knowledge. He was not really up to the task.

And yet. There are certain aspect of the film that are exactly on target with respect to the book. Never, as I said, as far as atmosphere is concerned. But Preminger's casting of Arnold Stang as Frankie Machine's hapless "punk" cohort Sparrow, and the way costume supervisor Mary Ann Nyberg dresses Stang, down to those tortoise-shell spectacles; Stang seems to step straight out of the book.

 

It is possible, reading Arm, not to picture Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, and Kim Novak as you seep up the actions and thoughts of Frankie Machine, Zosh, and Molly. (In the book, the last of these characters has black hair and is for all intents and purposes still a teenager, which helps.) It is not possible to read of Sparrow and not think of Arnold Stang. 

Interesting, too, that the book and the film are now so culturally intertwined that the front cover of a "50th Anniversary Critical Edition"  of Arm has a cover taken from Saul Bass's legendary opening title designs for the film.   Not something that Algren would likely be pleased by. 

Does all this mean that Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm is a bad film? It's not a personal favorite of mine, but Chris Fujiwara mounts a typically complex, cogent positive account of it in his critical biography of Preminger, The World And Its Double; reading some of its passages, you'd be inclined to believe that the film gets closer to the marrow of Algren's vision than it actually does, at least by my own lights: "Throughout the film, the drama is interiorized, psychological, played out seemingly among the mental images of beings and things (the second shot in the film, a close-up from inside Antek's of Frankie peering through the window, already alerts us to the privileged emphasis that Frankie's subjective experience will receive throughout). Drawn to ever smaller spaces, the film seals itself off (as Schwiefka's marathon poker game seals itself from the sunlight) locks itself in (as Frankie has himself locked in Molly's bedroom when he tries to kick his habit). Camera movement in The Man With The Golden Arm tends to define subjective mental states rather than explore the contours and surfaces of an outer world, and it creates a suffocating atmosphere[...]"

I find the sets and the lighting too flat to really get there in terms of suffocation. I also feel that the atmosphere Algren goes for and get is richer; both suffocating and expansive. I understand—indeed, most of the time in my critical practice I insist—that a book and the film upon which it's based be taken and assessed as two entirely discrete objects. But I have to admit that reading Algren has kind of spoiled me for Preminger.

"Clean Plate"