2021年12月14日 星期二

"Psycho" by Robert Bloch (1959)


"The foulness was sucking against his throat, it was kissing his lips and if he opened his mouth he knew he'd swallow it, but he had to open it to scream, and he was screaming.  'Mother, Mother - save me!'"

Robert Bloch began his writing career as one of H.P. Lovecraft's proteges.  Over the course of his career he'd movie from Lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror to stories more grounded in the world around him.  Many of his stories have been adapted into movies and TV shows.

I'm going to go ahead and assume we've all seen Alfred Hitchcock's version of this story, and that no spoilers are possible.  The Bates Motel, Norman Bates and his mother, the murder in the shower and the revelation that Norman isn't one personality but two - all of these elements are present in both the book and the movie.  The only real difference is that in the book Norman's an obese man, whereas the actor who played him in the movie (Anthony Perkins) was quite slim.

If you've seen the movie there's not much reason to read this book, aside from the fact that's it's a very professionally written piece of fiction that works as well today as when it was first published.  It seems simple, but as anyone who's tried to write a short story knows, it's never easy to write something this straightforward, and this concise.  Psycho tells neither more nor less than it has to, it's impeccably paced, and the inevitable conclusion, when it inevitably arrives, is no less gripping for having been introduced beforehand.

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2021年12月13日 星期一

Some Other Movies From 1974 (2)


For further background on the year in film (and popular culture of the day), please refer to the Some Other Movies From 1974 entry.

The following things happened in 1974:
  • The F-16 Fighting Falcon was flown for the first time.
  • Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
  • People magazine was published for the first time.
  • Charles de Gaulle Airport was opened in France.
  • The final episode of The Brady Bunch aired.
  • OPEC ended its oil embargo against the United States.
  • The UPC (Universal Product Code) was introduced in the United States.
  • U.S. President Richard Nixon announced his resignation.
  • The skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis ("Lucy") was discovered.
  • The Rubik's Cube and the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game were invented.
Linked entries were viewed in their entirety on YouTube.


Excellent

1. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw and Jerry Stiller (!) star in this thriller centered around a group of armed men hijacking a subway train.  Whoever wrote the script did a masterful job, and the direction is also very concise.  My favorite thing about this movie is the way it ends.  Most movies would have progressed onward to "consequences," but this movie, aware of such tropes, doesn't do that.

Fun Fact 1: This movie has been remade twice, in 1998 as a TV movie and in 2009 as a feature film.

Fun Fact 2: "Borough Commander Harry" look familiar?  That's Kenneth McMillan, who'd go on to play Baron Harkonnen in David Lynch's Dune.

2. Hearts and Minds

Brilliant documentary on the Vietnam War.  There's plenty of footage from Vietnam, alongside interviews with people on both sides of the conflict.  I found the ending hard to watch, but yeah, it's a great movie.  In 1974 it was high time to reassess U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and this film does a thorough job of that.  It went on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1975.


Weird Enough To Be Worth It

1. Phantom of the Paradise

Phantom of the Opera meets Faust in the deepest, most rockin' part of the 70s.  As far as 70s rock operas go I don't think this movie holds a candle to Tommy, but it's still delightfully weird and has aged extremely well.  Director Brian De Palma's skill with a camera is evident throughout.

Fun Fact: Jessica Harper, who appears in this movie as the Phantom's muse, would go on to star in Dario Argento's Suspiria.


Some Good Ones

1. The Front Page

Walter Matthau (again) and Jack Lemmon star as two newspapermen chasing a story, with Susan Sarandon (!) as Lemmon's fiance.  It kind of creeps along, and resembles too closely the play that inspired it, but I can't fault the performances.  Director Billy Wilder clearly knew what he was doing, but I think this movie's humor will be lost on most modern viewers.

2. Mr. Majestyk

Charles Bronson stares down a hitman while fighting for - or at least marginally supporting - the rights of migrant workers.  It takes a while to get going, but the ending makes it all worth it.  Elmore Leonard wrote the script.

Fun Fact 1: Gary Oldman's character in True Romance either references this movie or the character of the same name in Elmore Leonord's novel The Big Bounce.  Quentin Tarantino, who wrote the script for True Romance, is a big fan of Elmore Leonard.

Fun Fact 2: Villain Al Lettieri look familiar?  He played Solozzo (the guy that Al Pacino kills in the Italian restaurant) in The Godfather, which came out the same year as Mr. Majestyk.  He'd die of a heart attack in 1975.

3. Animals Are Beautiful People

Documentary in which we see the cute side of African animals.  The director, a South African, would go on to direct The Gods Must Be Crazy in 1980.  Some criticized this movie for its "staged" scenes, but they're so obviously staged that I can't figure out why anyone would complain about that.

4. Black Christmas

A killer invades a sorority house.  In this kind of movie there are always two critically important things: 1) how the camera moves (or doesn't move), and 2) the sound design.  Black Christmas gets both of these things very, very right, and the result is a suspenseful movie highlighted by a great performance from Margot Kidder.  She really could have been a much bigger star than she was.  The camera loved her.

Fun Fact 1: Star Olivia Hussey signed on to this movie after being told by a psychic that she'd make "a film in Canada that would earn a great deal of money."

Fun Fact 2: Andrea Martin's character was almost played by Gilda Radner.  Radner ended up passing on this movie in favor of Saturday Night Live.

Fun Fact 3: This movie was a huge influence on John Carpenter's Halloween.

5. Death Wish

Two fun cameos in this movie: Jeff Goldblum as a thug and Christopher "Spinal Tap" Guest as a patrolman.  One is the reminded of the long, hard road between some people and "being somebody" in Hollywood.

That said, Death Wish is a more nuanced film than its reputation would have you believe.  It has room to question the right to bear arms.  It has room to question the racial aspect of crime.  It has room to question the nature of justice, and how politicians might find it more expedient to look the other way when someone is walking around New York with both a grudge and a loaded pistol.

Charles Bronson (a.k.a. Charles Dennis Buchinsky) stars as an architect whose wife and daughter are assaulted, and even though this movie does nothing to dispell rumors that he was a limited actor, he was well cast in the role.  Death Wish is a very entertaining movie, and moreover a film very much in touch with social concerns of its time.

Fun Fact: They finally did a remake in 2018 with Bruce Willis in the lead.  Just about everybody hated it.  It's still a great idea for a movie though.  In the right hands it could be brilliant.


Bearded dude and his pet bear roam around the mountains befriending other animals.  (Except rabbits.  Rabbits = food.)  This movie would pair well with Animals Are Beautiful People above.  It would also pair well with a generous helping of marijuana.  Like both The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and The Trial of Billy Jack (below), this movie was a big hit, and its popularity would give rise to a TV series.


French film in which a young boy is confronted with a choice: either enter the world of adulthood or remain a child.  It's a very understated movie, and in a weird way it reminded me of certain 80s movies wherein boys ride bikes around and embark upon adventures.  The director, Jean Eustache, had a short but memorable career.


Long before Christine, long before The Car, an irradiated bulldozer was terrorizing a construction crew on a remote island in Africa.  I think it's fair to say that both Christine and The Car are much better than Killdozer, in part because the authors of those stories did away with Killdozer's more science-y explanation for the homicidal machine's rampage.  Even so, Killdozer isn't bad.  It manages to generate a fair amount of tension, and I liked the music.  My biggest complaint is that parts of it are very dark.  It's hard to see what's going on.

Fun Fact 1: Theodore Sturgeon wrote the novella that inspired this movie way back in 1944.  The backstory in the novella involves and ancient empire at war with beings of pure energy.  These beings of pure energy were able to take over mankind's machines and turn them against their builders.

Fun Fact 2: There was also a Marvel Comics adaptation, and the rock band Killdozer took its name from this movie.

9. Thieves Like Us

Three bank robbers roam around the South.  This is one of director Robert Altman's less famous movies, featuring actors (namely Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall) that he'd work with in better-known movies.  I can't say it's as good as McCabe & Mrs. Miller or Nashville but it's still good.


WTF Did I Just Watch

1. Sweet Movie

Please believe me when I say I've seen some weird movies in my time.  Sweet Movie "out weirds" most of them.  Just don't ask me what it's about, because I'm still not sure.  I suppose that instead of attempting to describe the plot I could list the transgressive acts present in this film, but honestly that seems a bit dismissive, and somewhat lazy.  Those venturing into this kind of movie will either see it through to the end or abandon ship in the first ten minutes.  I'll only say that a certain part of this movie made me want to puke, and whether that desire to vomit came from moral or physical repulsion I'll leave to your imagination.

You could in some ways view this movie as a precursor of A Serbian Film, which also tries to get a point across by shocking its audience.  I'm not a huge fan of either Sweet Movie or A Serbian Film, but I have to say that Sweet Movie is a more studied affair, and perhaps more desrving of further investigation.  The director of Sweet Movie, Dusan Makavejev, was celebrated in the art house circuit during the late 60s and early 70s, and he put a lot of thought into his films.

2. Phase IV

Mankind vs. hyperintelligent ants.  The science-y conversations in this film are hilarious, and it's hard not to find both the animated sequences and overuse of insect footage thoroughly charming.  "Bug movies" were almost a genre unto themselves in the 70s, and Phase IV is one of the best (and worst) examples of this near-movement in film.

Fun Fact: The guy who shot the insect footage for this movie also did so for The Hellstrom Chronicle, another ridiculous film about bugs from the same decade.


Not Exactly Entertaining, but Indicative of the Time Period

1. Emmanuelle

Sylvia Kristel and her bored, rich, French friends fuck each other.  In sexual terms Kristel has never done anything for me, but I did enjoy seeing what Thailand looked like in 1973 and 1974.  The director, Just Jaeckin, would go on to do The Story of O in 1975. 

And I'm probably overanalyzing Emmanuelle, but I think "Mario" misses the point. Does fear create a false morality? Certainly.  But so does wealth.  And beauty.  If you have an extraordinary amount of any valued commodity society will let you transgress within certain bounds. Doing so and getting away with it doesn't make you braver or better than other people, it just means you're lucky - or careless - depending on how far you take it. The other members of Emmanuelle's circle, regardless of how you view their morals or the lack thereof, might have good reasons for their sense of discretion, and these reasons might not be fear and hypocrisy.

Fun Fact 1: Marika Green, who plays "Bee" in this movie, is Eva Green's aunt.

Fun Fact 2: Sylvia Kristel was almost in so many more famous movies.  The Tenant, Once Upon a Time in America, Superman, King Kong, Logan's Run, Caligula, Body Heat, Blade Runner, Scarface, Dune, Body Double and Blue Velvet - the list of movies that could have launched her into another level of superstardom is truly impressive.


Some Bad Ones

1. The Odessa File

Jon Voight stars as a German reporter infiltrating a group of ex-Nazi conspirators bent on destroying Israel.  It starts out well, but grows increasingly implausible as the plot wears on.  Why would Voight's character go into the house if he knows the assassin is waiting for him there?  Why try to sneak in?  Why start a fight?  Why confront Roschmann in the end, if he's so determined to bring him and others like him to justice?

Voight's German accent is also terrible.  At times it's so bad it takes you right out of the movie.

Fun Fact 1: Derek Jacobi is in this.  It was his sixth film.

Fun Fact 2: Voight's character's mother is played by Maria Schell, sister of Maximilian Schell, who plays the villain.

Fun Fact 3: Angelina Jolie Voight, known to most of us as Angelina Jolie, would be born to Jon Voight and actress Marcheline Bertrand during the following year.

2. Dark Star

I liked the ending, but up until that point it's very boring.  I suppose you could watch it if you were curious about what John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon did in film school, but aside from its value as a piece of trivia it has little else to recommend it.


So Bad It's Good


"Go ahead, do one of your fancy kicks!"

I saw the first one, and this sequel is even preachier.  Billy Jack goes to the slam after... whatever happened in the first movie (I can't remember), and the school marm from the first film chatters on about how her school's going to change the world.  You can tell they had more money to make this installment, and it was more professionally done (Elmer Bernstein!), but it spends so much time stroking itself over various social injustices, and the righteousness of its youth-centered causes, that it forgets its purpose is to tell a story.  This story, threadbare in the extreme, could have been told in a much smaller time frame, and with a lot less preaching.

Even so, The Trial of Billy Jack is very representative of the time period.  The commune-type school with its focus on yoga, the Native American imagery, and even Billy Jack himself, who represents some weird ideal of manhood that was never going to work on a larger scale.  The Trial of Billy Jack is very much a product of the late 60s and early 70s, and for this reason it may be of historical interest for those born later on.

And let us not overlook the fact that at one point in this movie Billy Jack quite possibly SLAPS JESUS IN THE FACE.  Vision quest or no, cultural appropriation be damned, this film is chock full of truly weird moments.

Unasked-for Advice: Be careful of ridiculing this movie in front of older, hippyish types. They might take it personal.

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2021年12月9日 星期四

"Me" by Elton John (2019)


I can't remember when I started listening to Elton John.  It couldn't have been that long ago.  I believe I arrived at his discography from Billy Joel.  I probably wanted something piano-driven, and decided to give Elton John a listen.

My favorite Elton John album is definitely Madman Across the Water.  That album is great.  My second favorite is Captain FantasticGoodbye Yellow Brick Road would be my #3.  I still don't like his discography as much as Billy Joel's, but that doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed his music a great deal.  He lost me somewhere in the 80s, but then again, looking at collections of his "greatest hits," he lost a lot of people in the 80s.

With the above said I was bound to like the earlier chapters of his autobiography a lot more than the later chapters.  My musical tastes tend to veer toward the late 60s/early 70s anyway, and reading about how a record label passed him over for The Groundhogs (!) brought a smile to my face.  I love The Groundhogs, but Liberty Records made a serious mistake that day.

Elton John, on an early encounter:

"There was a funny little guy we knew who - in keeping with the flower-power mood of the times - had changed his name to Hans Christian Anderson.  The aura of fairy tale otherworldliness conjured by this pseudonym was slightly punctured when he opened his mouth and a thick Lancashire accent came out.  Eventually he changed his first name back to Jon and became the lead singer of Yes."

On hearing something for the first time:

"One morning, at the offices in South Audley Street, he said he wanted to play me something by one of his new clients that was going to be a huge hit all over the world.  We listened to the song and I shook my head, incredulous.

"'You're not actually going to release that, are you?'

"He frowned  'What's wrong with it?'

"'Well, for one thing, it's about three hours long.  For another, it's the campest thing I've ever heard in my life.  And the title's absolutely ridiculous as well.'

"John was completely unfazed.  'I'm telling you now,' he said, lifting the test pressing of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' off the turntable, 'that is going to be one of the biggest records of all time.'"

Regarding a night out:

"...Crisco Disco once refused to let me in.  I was with Divine, too, the legendary drag queen.  I know, I know: Elton John and Divine getting turned away from a gay club.  But he was wearing a kaftan, I had on a brightly coloured jacket and they said we were overdressed.  'Whaddya think this is?  Fuckin' Halloween?'"

On dinner with Michael Jackson:

"It was a sunny day out and we had to sit inside with the curtains drawn because of Michael's vitiligo.  The poor guy looked awful, really frail and ill.  He was wearing make-up that looked like it had been applied by a maniac: it was all over the place.  His nose was covered with a sticking plaster which kept what was left of it attached to his face.  He sat there, not really saying anything, just giving off waves of discomfort the way some people give off an air of self-confidence."

And on Madonna's songwriter:

"It was hilarious, he was the guy who co-wrote 'Like a Prayer' and 'La Isla Bonita', but he was completely obsessed with Jethro Tull.  He'd probably have been happier if Madonna had played a flute while standing on one leg."

The above passages were my favorite parts of this book.  The rest of it?  I think that Elton John has written an entertaining - and surprisingly self-deprecating - account of his life up to the year it was published.  He's honest about himself to the point of embarrassment, and this honest self-appraisal makes his bouts of egomania and occasional jabs at other celebrities easier to digest.

If you are, like me, a fan of Elton John's music you'll enjoy this book a lot.  It doesn't offer much that other rock biographies and autobiographies haven't done before, but the author's unique perspectives on the music business and what it means to be a gay man working in this business give an old formula new life.  That, and Elton John really knew/knows EVERYBODY, from David Bowie right on down to Eminem.  The guy has certainly been around.

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