Blog
These stories have been around a long time. Some of them I have updated. Many of them I haven’t. This started out when blogs were like, new!
My Mean Treatment Of “Mean Streets”, The Scorsese Movie
In Martin Scorsese's 1973 film, the mean streets of Little Italy remain mean because they are far removed from such spiritual values as repentance and stillness---and, in the case of Robert De Niro's Johnny Boy, from honor. Charlie (Harvey Keitel), the levelheaded...
Flamin’ Action: The Film, “Flaming Star”
I disesteem Elvis Presley's charmless and shallow acting in Flaming Star (1960), but the movie manages to be one of the better Westerns of the Sixties. With the help of Nunnally Johnson, Clair Huffaker scripted her own, probably not boring novel, and it was shot...
Ditties Again
Not long ago I dissed the song "Better Now" by Post Malone. I listened to it again, and it's better now. That is, the song is a bit better than I thought. I still don't think it's melodically meritorious but that doesn't mean it has a bad sound. This despite the...
Religion And Art And Crime In “Ned Rifle”
I did not like the Hal Hartley films Henry Fool and Fay Grim, but the third one in the director's trilogy---Ned Rifle (2014)---is something else again. It's a characteristically oddball intellectual comedy about a young Christian, Ned Rifle (Liam Aiken), who is...
Heroism And Varmints In “Rawhide”
Having little character exploration, Rawhide (1951)---the movie---is nevertheless a good one about criminal men. It wasn't meant to be The Wild Bunch, though, and so it offers a hero in Tyrone Powers's Tom and, in fact, a heroine in Susan Hayward's saucy Vinnie. For...
Bettie Has Quite A Story: “The Notorious Bettie Page”
What Bettie Page, famous for pin-up posing, experienced in childhood and adolescence is far worse than what she herself did for the porn business in the Fifties. As a child she was sexually abused by her father, which is almost ignored by Mary Harron's film The...
Gotta Hear And See “Small Town Girl”
Ann Miller and Busby Berkeley---what a combination! Doubtless this would be true even if Berkeley's choreography in Small Town Girl (1953) was mediocre but, unable to judge this particular art form, I don't know whether it is or not. To my mind it's pleasurable, as...
Good-Natured But “Movie Crazy” (Another Lloyd Talkie)
A Harold Lloyd picture, the 1932 Movie Crazy had many contributors to its screenplay and it paid off. Funny, commendable antics bolster an engaging story about a clumsy aspirant (he wants to be an actor) who's not a good fit for Hollywood but gains a contract there...
Focus On Aziz Ansari In 2019
Likable but foul-mouthed, comedian Aziz Ansari has turned up on Netflix with a new standup special (Right Now), and it's political, provocative and silent about Trump. For a long time he demolishes identity politics and white p.c. Departing from this, he has a point...
