6/2317. Time Bomb Y2K (2023)
This documentary has no commentary or interviews, just clips of footage taken from original sources as the world marched toward a potential disaster on January 1, 2000. The clip selection (perhaps out of necessity) tends towards typically overblown media sensationalism, and the end result is like leaving a cup of history out in the sun and reviewing it later after the sane parts had evaporated out. A history reduction! Its fever pitch doesn't quite match my memories of the era, but that would admittedly make for less entertaining television.

7/2318. This Place Rules (2022)
Another documentary of a different sort as journalist Andrew Callaghan records himself traveling around the country attending Trump rallies in the weeks leading to January 6, 2021. Unlike Jordan Klepper's similar pieces for The Daily Show, Callaghan's point of view isn't as obvious, sometimes seeming more empathetic and sometimes entirely apathetic. At times, this feels a bit like an art piece, and as with all things in Trump World, it's hard to ascertain how much is truth and how much is performative. If nothing else, it's an interesting artifact of its era.

8/2319. Thriller 40 (2023)
There are plenty of interviews in this documentary celebrating the 40th anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller album. There's a lot of talk about how Thriller and the artistic genius behind it changed the world of music and entertainment for the better but very little discussion about the controversial legacy of Jackson himself. Maybe that's the way it should be; it just felt a little hollow looking backwards at what I (and all the interviewees) know to be in Jackson's future.

9/2320. The Liquidator (1965)
This spy action/comedy, with a theme performed by my favorite James Bond theme-songstress, Shirley Bassey, features Rod Taylor as a British secret agent with a license to kill... who hires other people to kill for him, which is a smaller part of the plot than you'd expect. In fact, the story is a bit of a meandering hot mess as it struggles to exploit a niche that other James Bond rip-offs hadn't yet. Honestly, I don't know that I would have made it all the way through if it wasn't for the prominent role of given to Jill St. John, my favorite Bond Girl.

Which is not to say that the movie is entirely stupid. It's hard to read in the image above, but "Refreshes you best" was indeed Coke's international slogan in 1959. Here is also cleverly serves here as a visual double entendre for the sexual proclivities of our hero, who works in a diner called the Bird Cage where he stalks attractive (and willing) young women -- a fact that is entirely relevant to the third act twist. Oh, well. They can't all be Diamonds Are Forever.

10/2321. The Tale of Zatoichi (1962)
The Internet tells me that the blind ronin Zatoichi was an incredibly popular action hero in Japan. I don't see why (no pun intended), but the film, the first of many for the character, isn't exactly bad as it is a little slow and dull. But maybe it was better than whatever else Japanese audiences were being offered in 1962. Maybe it took some time for Dr. No to cross the Pacific. (The fifth Bond film, Japanese-set You Only Live Twice, wouldn't arrive in theaters until 1967. By then, there had already been 14 Zatoichi films!)

More to come.

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I've decided I'm in the market for Peter and the Wolf on CD. It's been recorded many, many times, and I'm not sure which one I want to get. (I don't want to buy them all).

Obviously I grew up familiar with the 1946 Disney version narrated by Sterling Holloway, but the Oscar-winning 2006 stop-motion Polish animation is good, too. I have good childhood memories of attending an Atlanta Symphony Orchestra presentation hosted by Monica Kaufman; I'm sure that one wasn't taped. (Did I ever see it at the Center for Puppetry Arts? I vaguely feel that the answer is yes.)

The only version I have in the house is Weird Al's on cassette tape; it's out of print and prohibitively expensive on the secondhand market. Besides, I think I want something different anyway, something more traditional.

Does anyone within eyeshot have any recommendations? What's your favorite Peter and the Wolf?

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I read in the local newspaper that my county currently averages 1 suicide every 14 days. That's on pace for 26 a year. If that seems high, it's because it is.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Americans kill themselves nationally at a rate of about 14 per 100,000, which implies that Coweta County, Georgia, population 155,000, should expect something near 22 suicides per year. For Coweta, that figure is an aspirational number.

What's so bad about living in Coweta? I can only guess.

Of course, thanks in part to our poor healthcare system and our easy access to guns, Georgians kill themselves more often than average Americans. (That's just the price you pay for freedom!) By Georgia standards, Coweta should see 24 suicides per year. So maybe our higher rate is our friendly way of helping prop up those counties that aren't pulling their weight.

Back when I was in a Coweta County high school, the statewide suicide rate was only 13 per 100k (national average 12/100k), yet I knew several people whose parents had killed themselves, and I knew students who attempted it. If people are finding things more bleak and hopeless now than they were then... as a community, maybe as a whole society, we just must be doing something wrong.

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As you can tell from the following numbering, we've rolled into a new year of movies!

1/2312. Fear of a Black Hat (1993)
I thought I'd seen this mockumentary years ago, but surely I would have remembered something this funny. This hews closely to the template laid down by Spinal Tap, but the song parodies and attacks on hip hop stereotypes make it fresh and unique.

2/2313. Where Danger Lives (1950)
I'm not going to lie, this title brought back no memories, so I had to look it up on imdb to refresh my memory. I know now why I forgot it. (Doctor Robert Mitchum falls for an insane patient!) The irony of my failing memory is that just yesterday I was thinking about Claude Rains' ridiculously small part herein as an accused abusive husband. When you only remember what a movie got wrong... well, that's your capsule review.

3/2314. You Can't Take It with You (1938)
If I'm so irritated by Frank Capra's trademark too-happy-to-be-possible endings, why do I keep watching his films? In this case, it was to see a Jimmy Stewart film I hadn't yet seen. And now I have. Bonus: appearance of Spring Byington, who is for my mother what Agnes Moorehead is for me, e.g. an actress we're always delighted to bump into in an unexpected supporting role.

4/2315. The Youngest Profession (1943)
This family melodrama in the "Andy Hardy" vein is about a girl autograph hound who thinks her father is cheating on her mother because of the evil machinations of... Agnes Moorehead! Seriously, I didn't know Moorehead was in this when I set my DVR to record it. No, that was because the poster promised me William Powell, who has one line at the very, very end of the movie. Still worth the wait. William Powell is the best.

5/2316. Barbie (2023)
Mom bought the DVD for herself for Christmas, and we watched it together. She was lukewarm -- it wasn't really to her taste -- but I had a blast. Greta Gerwig wins again! I've watched it twice more since. Honestly, my favorite part is that Ken was nominated for the Academy Award but not Barbie, which is exactly the very sharp point of the entire film. I hope he wins.

More to come.

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With football season over, one of the things I've been listening to while walking the dogs is the "Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers" podcast in which brothers Seth and Josh Meyers talk to their many, many celebrity friends about (surprise, surprise) trips they've taken with their families.

Yes, I have been very dismissive of podcasts in the past. And yes, I concede that listening to people I don't know talk about their fancy globetrotting is not always quite as endearing as they might think it is. But sometimes I need something in my ears between Louis' rabid barking at passing joggers, and this fits that bill.

Anyway, the point here isn't an endorsement of podcasting (or your judgement of my pastimes), but that I wanted to mention that apparently I have more in common with Seth Meyers than I previously realized.¹

By way of explaining why his family calls him "Soofie," he mentioned that as a bookish youth in the 1980s, he frequently dressed in Ocean Pacific apparel when it was at the zenith of its popularity. Seth is only very slightly older than I am, so he was probably wearing OP t-shirts and board shorts in Connecticut about the same time I was in Georgia. I don't know what excuse Seth had for dressing like a fashion victim, but my attire came from my aunt, whom I believe worked sales for OP at the Atlanta Apparel Mart and had samples to spare.

As a result of Seth's beach bum wardrobe, it seems his Yankee friends called nicknamed him "Surfie" (eventually mangled into "Soofie"). Meanwhile, I was saddled with the Mayberry-eque "Opie." On what I am sure is a completely unrelated note, Seth appears to still talk to his childhood friends whereas I definitely do not.

And now, three-and-a-half decades removed from that childhood trauma, Seth's a famous comedian with his own talk show and podcast. And I have a blog! We're like twins!²

¹ The Venn diagram intersection between us previously contained only "Caucasian American male," which, frankly, isn't all that exclusionary.

² Of the Schwarzenegger / DeVito variety; I believe they're called "infernal" twins.

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Happy Valentine's Day!

Footnote 1: Yes, this will eventually be displayed by the mailbox in the front yard, but it's pretty obvious that Oscar's native habitat is among the junk piles in my messy, messy studio.

Footnote 2: I started this piece back in April 2023 and have only just now finished it. While Oscar's fuzz did take a long time, most of that delay was because I was working too hard in 2023. Blech. I promise not to do that again.

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143/2309. Violent Night (2022)
Santa Claus as reluctant action movie star in a film that is exactly what it promises to be. The script is a little rough around the edges, many of the camera shots are too tight, and most of the "actors" were clearly stunt people. But those were largely features, not bugs. If you want to see Santa Claus killing very bad people with a sledgehammer, then this is certainly that.

144/2310. Merry Little Batman (2023)
This Christmas-adjacent movie about Batman's very young son trying to replace his crime-fighting father leans heavily on 1960s animation aesthetics and feels about twice as long as it needs to be. I like the weirdness of the tone and style, but it reached me much too late in life -- and after far too many murderous psychotic Joker stories -- for me to find it endearing.

145/2311. Platinum Blonde (1931)
Frank Capra is the director, but this isn't quite as treacle as the films he would become better known for. It's the old story of opposites attracting and worlds colliding, but it's not very deep and the "happy" ending is an amicable divorce. I didn't care for it.

And that brings us to the last of the 145 movies I watched in 2023. At final count, Glenda Farrell, star of the "Torchy Blane" movie series, was the actor most often on my screen (6 times). The next closest was Jimmy Stewart (4 times in 2024, 23 times since I started tracking in 2012). I'd certainly watch more of both of them.

I'm already 17 new-to-me movies into 2024, which puts me on a pace to exceed my annual goal of 150. Will I get there? Only time will tell.

More to come.

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137/2303. Asteroid City (2023)
It feels almost like all other Wes Anderson films were setting the stage for this, the most Wes Anderson film yet. I probably don't need to tell you that this was my favorite movie of 2023. Like Birdman, the meta-commentary on plays, acting, art, and entertainment is more text than subtext, yet it still manages to be evasive enough for multiple interpretations. "You can't wake up if you don't fall asleep."

138/2304. Altered States (1980)
Because I don't enjoy body horror or drug movies, I have been avoiding this movie since I first became aware of its existence (thanks to a Mad magazine parody), and I was right to. It's a hot mess. Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's words are here, but the director and actors sidestep Chayefsky's cynicism for an irritatingly earnest.... horror romance? Not very not good.

Coca-Cola is the mildest mind-altering drug in this picture.

139/2305. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (2023)
Rob Reiner's documentary interview with Albert Brooks is pretty entertaining because Albert Brooks is very entertaining. It could have been three times as long and been just as good.

140/2306. Best Defense (1984)
Speaking of not very good.... Looking back on Eddie Murphy's lifetime body of work, very few of his movies are really any good. He has admitted he did this one just for the money, and it shows. Dudley Moore isn't any better in this very mediocre spy "comedy."

141/2307. The Cheaters (1945)
This very slim plot involving scammers bilking a girl out of her inheritance at Christmas barely sustains the 90 minute runtime. It did not hold my full attention, but it also didn't drive me away. Make of that what you will.

142/2308. An Actor's Revenge (1963)
This experimental Japanese movie is staged to look shallow, like a stage play, which is directly relevant to the story, but the story itself is something like a dull cross-dressing version of Hamlet. I like my movies a little weird, but the slow pace put me to sleep. I did not want to wake up for more.

More to come.

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Look to the skies!

November 9, 2023

December 22, 2023

January 17, 2024

Earth is a tiny marble drifting through space, and we're just lucky enough to be along for the ride.

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130/2296. Mystic Pizza (1988)
If I had seen this when it came out, I know I would have hated it. And not just because I would have been 12 and I would have hated everything that wasn't Transformers and comic books but because each of the girls are clearly making choices that sabotage their own lives. But with the perspective that Middle Age provides, I really enjoyed it.

This product placement becomes a little more blatant when you discover this wasn't filmed at the actual restaurant.

131/2297. The Bachelor Party (1957)
TCM broadcast a night of Paddy Chayefsky-written films, including this one, which is NOT the sophomoric Tom Hanks comedy but a typically satirical Chayefsky look at the institution of marriage and how we usually fail it. I liked it.

132/2298. Middle of the Night (1959)
Another Chayefsky work, this time a look at the unconventional courtship of a May/December romance hindered by self-deception and social expectations. I did not care for the rom-com ending; they're doomed!

134/2300. I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes (1948)
Run by TCM as an off-the-beaten path Christmas movie (it's set around the holiday), this is a crime drama in which a disagreeable dancer is framed for murder and it's up to his wife and the police detective who loves her to find the clues. It's a fun puzzle, but the ending... oh, boy. I'm glad everybody brought a gun to the housewarming.

135/2301. She Done Him Wrong (1933)
When I wrote my capsule for I'm No Angel a few weeks ago, I was actually thinking of this, the other Mae West/Cary Grant movie. I'm No Angel is the much better of the two, but they both showcase why May West is an enduring star.

136/2302. 42 (2013)
A biopic of Jackie Robinson's first year in baseball, which, as is usually the case in these sorts of movies and the primary reason I don't usually like them, bends history to fit its narrative. However, Robinson was a unique individual deserving of his place in history, and the movie is well-crafted and charming. So I'll just say nice things about it.

More to come.

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