I’M SCARED OF THE MAN FROM MANHATTAN

In anticipation of the new Woody Allen movie Whatever Works, I thought I’d look back at some of Captain Neurosis’ classic movies. Recently, a friend mentioned that he had seen thirty-nine of Allen’s forty-some pictures. Thirty-nine? I was stunned, in part because I didn’t realize Allen had made so many. Looking at the Allen entry at the supposedly unreliable IMDb.com, I counted the movies of his I’d seen–thirty. Was I a film geek, an Allenophile, what?

I think the answer is that I like Allen, regard him as significant, but most importantly, I have lived in his time.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on July 1, 2009
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THIS WEEK’S BIRTHDAY: BERNARD HERRMANN

Who was Bernard Herrmann? Well, he was one of the top men in Hollywood for a very long time, a man whose work you’re probably familiar with. See, Herrmann was a composer. He did the scores for so many classic films that it simply boggles the mind. Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Taxi Driver. That theme for “The Twilight Zone” you whistle when things get strange? Bernard Herrmann.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on June 28, 2009
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WHERE IS YOUR BALTIMORE?

The Wire, 2002-2008. Created by David Simon. Starring Gbenga Akinnagbe, Chris Bauer, Keenon Brice, Al Brown, Robert F. Chew, Chad Coleman, Jermaine Crawford, John Doman, Steve Earle, Idris Elba, Frankie Faison, Aidan Gillen, Seth Gilliam, Larry Gilliard Jr., Anwan Glover, Wood Harris, Jamie Hector, Clark Johnson, Hassan Johnson, Domenick Lombardozzi, Deirdre Lovejoy, Thomas McCarthy, Julito McCullum, Felicia Pearson, Clarke Peters, Wendell Pierce, James Ransone, Lance Reddick, Andre Royo, Amy Ryan, Pablo Schreiber, Sonja Sohn, Jim True-Frost, Glynn Turman, Dominic West, Tristan Wilds, Delaney Williams, J.D. Williams, Michael K. Williams, Robert Wisdom, and a cast of many dozens more.

You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps the holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided. –Franz Kafka

In season five of The Wire, Bubbles (Andre Royo), a recovering heroin addict, is handed a worn slip of paper by his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor Walon (Steve Earle). Written on the scrap, no doubt in a barely legible hand, is the above quote. Neither Bub nor Walon know shit about Franz Kafka, but it doesn’t matter. They understand what he was saying, are moved by the words, and we know that that paper, worn soft over years of reading and rereading, will change hands yet again. For Bubs will not hold back, he will lend himself to the suffering. And if we’re lucky, we watch The Wire, and will not hold back from the suffering ourselves.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on June 24, 2009
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THIS WEEK’S BIRTHDAY: PETER LORRE

“He hardly seems dead, just as it is difficult to believe he was ever clinically alive.” –David Thomson

I don’t know about this Peter Lorre. Look at him there in The Maltese Falcon. A pretty man, supposedly drenched in some lilac cologne (though it wouldn’t surprise me if he sprinkled on perfume, either), gloved, and pointing a gun at Humphrey Bogart. A great scene that first meeting between the two icons. Bogie laughing, knocking the gun out of Lorre’s effeminate hand. But don’t you feel that little twinge? That feeling of “watch it, Spade, watch it.” Because if there’s one thing that Peter Lorre traded in, it was unpredictablility. That silly fellow with the curls and the white bow tie could kill you without a second thought.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on June 22, 2009
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CONVERSATIONS REAL & IMAGINED: TRUE TALES OF THE CIVIL WAR

The Miracle Worker, 1962. Directed by Arthur Penn, written by William Gibson (not the Cyberpunk guy.) Starring Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, Inga Swenson, Victor Jory, Andrew Prine, and Kathleen Comegys.

I remember when my parents sat us down one night to watch The Miracle Worker. You’ve seen it, right? Helen Keller, champion of the handicapped, in her early years. Brought out of her darkness by the ‘miracle worker’, Annie Sullivan, herself almost totally blind. The fights, the old South of the Reconstruction, where father and son sit at a table and talk about the Civil War while Annie and Helen wrestle for control. You’ve seen it, and you say, “yeah, OK.”

But there’s one problem: my guess is, you saw the tame 1970s version, the Hallmark Hall of Fame version, so novel because Patty Duke, who played young Helen in the original, now took her turn as Annie. Little House’s Melissa Gilbert was the little blind girl. So what? Well, until you’ve seen the original, you don’t know what kind of a war it was to get Helen Keller to see again. In fact, it tore my own family apart.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on June 1, 2009
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SO COOL, HE’S GOT TWO FILM SERIES (AND COULD USE A THIRD)

Of all the actors and actresses in Hollywood’s firmament, Paul Newman is the only one beloved by everybody. I mean really, there’s people who dislike Gene Kelly’s wide smile, Bette Davis’ fabulous bitchiness, Robert Redford’s blond hair and sly smile (which hides his acting liability), DeNiro’s intensity (and Jack Nicholson’s, too), Marilyn Monroe’s sexy ditziness, and Bogart’s… oh, all right, everyone loves Bogart, too. So let me amend that: everyone loves Bogart and Newman. But we also really, really like Paul Newman.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on May 31, 2009
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…AND AWAY!

Up, 2009. Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson. Written by Bob Peterson. With the voices of Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer, and Bob Peterson.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. —Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Carl and Ellie Fredericksen have been married a very long time. At the opening of Pixar’s wonderful Up, we see the young Carl gazing in rapt attention at a newsreel of his favorite hero, Charles Muntz. Muntz, dressed like Charles Lindbergh but looking like Adolphe Menjou, is an explorer who jumps into his fabulous dirigible The Spirit of Adventure to search for the bones of the great and mysterious animals of the jungle, past and present. The explorer is in trouble: his latest discovery is called a fraud, he is disgraced, and vanishes into the misty Venezuelan jungle to prove his innocence. After the show, little Carl pretends to be the great Muntz, leaping over tree stumps and cracks in the sidewalk, when he also runs headlong into Ellie, a girl his age who is equally enamored of exploring, and the redoubtable Muntz. A friendship ensues. The friendship grows into love. The love quickens into marriage. The adventure begins.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on May 29, 2009
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The Man Who Stopped Time, or, The Eternal At-Bat of Theodore “Tarpaper” Turkleson

At a garage sale in Topinabee, Michigan, on a hot, mayfly-infested summer day in 2005, I came across a copy of Professor C. B. See’s The Crime Against Tarpaper. This was a tattered, moldy, self-published little book and the proprietor of said garage sale had no idea as to where he had acquired it, what it was about, or if it was worth more than a buck.  Upon purchasing and reading it that lazy afternoon by the Indian River, I found that, according to the author, a miracle of sorts played itself out in Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis during the war-plagued (and pennant-winning) summer of 1944. Specifically, that a baseball player by the name of Theodore “Tarpaper” Turkleson had an at-bat that lasted well over four hundred pitches, exhausted six pitchers with the Detroit Tigers and which, in a sense, stopped time.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on May 16, 2009
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COLOR ME GONE

Two-Lane Blacktop, 1971. Directed by Monte Hellman, written by the great Rudy Wurlitzer, Will Corry, and an uncredited Floyd Mutrux. Starring James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, and Harry Dean Stanton.

G.T.O.: Well, here we are on the road.
The Driver: Yup, that’s where we are all right.

I don’t even know where to begin. By the time you’re done reading this, you’ll probably say to yourself, he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, and you’d be right, except that I’m writing, not talking, but then you knew that. I’m assuming you haven’t seen Two-Lane Blacktop, so if I’m a bit… obtuse, forgive me. If you have seen Two-Lane Blacktop, then you might just nod a bit, thin your eyes and wonder why you haven’t been on the road lately, really on the road, in a good long time. Come to think about it, you haven’t seen Blacktop in forever. But, man, you remember. And you’ll give that sly smile and say: I dig you, man. I don’t quite get it, either.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on May 13, 2009
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STAR TREK

<em>Anvil! The Story of Anvil</em> and <em>Star Trek</em>

Anvil! The Story of Anvil, 2008. Directed by Sacha Gervasi. Featuring Anvil: Steve “Lips” Kudlow (lead guitar with dildo, singer), Robb Reiner (drums), Glenn Five (bass, backing vocals), manager Tiziana Arrigoni, and a host of other friends, producers, well-wishers, and head bangers.

When they were all of fourteen years old, suburban Torontoites Steve Kudlow and Robb Reiner made themselves a pact: that they would boldly go where many young teens have gone before, namely, into the bizarre and often cruel universe that is rock and roll. They formed the heavy metal band Anvil, and began to rock hard, often times in parent’s basements or garages.

Anvil, however, rocked really hard. They worked their asses off, had some talent and ended up making the iconic (or at least iconic-sounding) album “Metal on Metal”. On the basis of that success, they blasted off, touring around the United States, Europe, and ended up in one of the biggest blowouts of all-time, a 1984 concert in Tokyo with such luminaries as the Scorpions and Whitesnake (and, yes, I’m aware that ‘luminary’ is a relative term). Considered the “godfathers” of thrash metal, there was no question Anvil would become stars.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on May 8, 2009
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