The Black Cat

"This is a tricky house," says the honeymooning husband, Peter, no apostle, but a mystery writer (or should I say "writer of mysteries"?) hunkered down in Hungary in the house redesigned, rebuilt, upon the remains of a fortress lost in great battle and the thousands of bodies given up their lives in the loss -- a stage manufactured in all senses by the Bauhausian engineer Hjalmar Poelzig. Peter comes to his tricky conclusion without having yet experienced the lower levels of the tower. Before the aforementioned battle the tower served as gun turret, now it holds the strange scene you see at the top of this posting.

What for the huge piece of graph paper attached to the wall – used in guiding the missiles? How floats the woman? Why does Bela (call him here “Dr. Vitus Wedergast” though you could never pronounce it in just the same perfect way the former count can when first we meet him in this film) Lugosi recoil in horror? Is it the woman? The shadow of the cat? Or, is the reaction no acting but a real revulsion toward Karloff, who plays Poelzig, who gets top billing though he’s only the heavy. (“Here comes the heavy,” he reportedly would say during the filming before he made each entrance.)


The scene always lingers somewhere in my mind, in the place reserved for favorites: My favorite Bela Lugosi vs. Boris Karloff film, possibly because it was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer -- who had a scary story of his own, which I will relate some time soon. To view the entire film above in a larger frame, go to the Internet Archive where this admittedly-murky print is housed.

Nothing really here to see of Edgar Allen Poe's original story, except perhaps for the spirit of perverseness... or in honor of Poe and this particular story I should most definitely type PERVERSENESS.

"Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart -- one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself -- to offer violence to its own nature -- to do wrong for the wrong's sake only -- that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree -- hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart -- hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence -- hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin -- a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it -- if such a thing were possible -- even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God."

Click this here underlined phrase to hear "The Raven" album by Lou Reed -- a peculiar and sometimes-difficult piece of work, Reed putting to music his interpretations and sometimes rewritings of Poe. Much of the blocked quote above is used in "I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum)" and the spirit of PERVERSENESS made more convincing with backing vocals by the Blind Boys of Alabama. Listen to it at the link above and come back when you can.

While you are gone: What you've seen so far in this posting remains rough and I will keep coming back in your absence with additions, with new thoughts to smooth out the inconsistencies. A new way of doing things here, but perhaps just another example of what we call PERVERSENESS.

Harmony out of Memory Land

Woke up to the refrain of Ted Lewis singing his hit from the 1920s, "Walking Around In A Dream", and though I can't yet find a legally-shareable clip of the song itself, I ran across a 1929 clip of Lewis and his band which you may view below.

Yes, that's Noah Beery as the Big Pirate in the scene. It was part of Warner Brothers 1929 revue "The Show of Shows" reportedly largely lost, except for clips like this. I'll have to see what else I can find of it on the YouTube.

If we were to call for help...

A few years ago someone got in trouble over a fight at school. He was only five years old or so. The school asked him to write a short essay on what he did, why he did what he did and why he was sorry for what he did. So he did. And he signed the essay: Mothra.

Happy birthday to you, young Mothra! May you continue to fearlessly flap your wings towards the future...

Although it's not the birthday of the -original- Divine Moth, still in his egg in the picture above, now's as good a time as any to celebrate.

The music for this celebration comes from the same source as this posting's title: the Mothra song, originally performed by the Peanuts in 1961. Not many know the lyrics were in Malayan rather than Japanese.

Hear the songs here.

Stills from Mothra's first battle with Godzilla (along with the original Japanese trailer) reside here. Of course, there's the 90s version of the song from the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, put together with some of the big moth's greatest hits below...

Ten years later they redid the song again...check it out below. Still trying to find the first 1961 version, but you can enjoy it yourself if you will only give -in- to the song and see the movies.

Mothra is something you’re not really supposed to think about. It's something you just believe in -- a giant Tinkerbell who, in this case, can shoot rays from her antennae.

Let yourself go and fly away to a place where large graceful things can bring beauty and Armageddon-time destruction at once.

Yes, I believe a giant moth can fly, that it can fight off fierce fiery attacks from giant radioactive creatures of the deep, as well, and that somehow it finds time to save the planet and its children. If you’re lucky you can get a ride when the day is done. If you don’t believe, well, you might be too old. Too bad...

The Spirit is Willing, but...

The recent film of “The Spirit” is not really a story, to paraphrase the character's creator Will Eisner, “for little boys.” In other words, it is not for comic book fans who expect to see a faithful rendering of the Eisner classic strip. They really ought to know better. How many films based on comic book properties made it to the screen without revision and revamping? When will they learn?

Nevertheless, this type of revamping is sacrilege in some quarters. Those aware of comic book history revere Eisner, not just as an artist and writer who created his own characters – most notably, The Spirit – but who put a lot of thought into the form of the stories he put to paper. The limitless possibilities he saw of how to put together a story in comic book pages makes his work one of the few inarguable cornerstones of the industry.

What many forget is that the form itself in Eisner’s work more often than not overshadowed substance. Moreover, when Eisner went for the substance later on in life, trying to tell the Big Story with capitals B and S, he became to me a boring preacher instead of a stimulating artist. (Think Sullivan trying to make "O Brother Where Art Thou" instead of "Ants in Their Pants 1939"...)

For the star of this story: Eisner himself never really fleshed out the Spirit as a full-blown character, but rather used him as a tailor’s dummy on which to design his latest fashion. Mysteries, comedies, westerns, science fiction, combat, and romance: all fictional genres eventually made their way into the Spirit’s life “story.” The only constants: he got beat up a lot, he generally met incredibly motivated and beautiful women, and he always wore a blue mask and a red tie.

So here comes writer/director Frank Miller with his film revisioning of Eisner’s character. Miller is a successful comic book writer/artist, who not only knew Eisner well (a book of their conversations on the art of comics was published a while back) but who also creates stories of style over substance. His Sin City stories probably claim the largest fame -- best known by those not comic book fans -- as Robert Rodriguez made them into a largely successful film a couple of years ago.

To Miller’s credit, this is not Sin City II, and “The Spirit” is not a shot-by-shot recreation of Eisner’s stories. He has created a stimulating amalgamation of his work and Eisner’s and for frustratingly long moments in this film, it successfully wows us with a campy piece of visually entertaining work. Where it bogs down is in the all-too-frequent scenes where tedious dialogue goes on and on and on and on without much in the way of something visually interesting to sustain us.

That is the crime here and the root of my frustration. The entertaining parts are extremely entertaining, but because of the bad parts and the extremely bad reviews, not many will know that Miller, like Eisner’s Gerhard Shnobble, knew how to fly in this film. He just did not fly often enough.

p.s. If you would like to learn more about Will Eisner’s The Spirit, to see what all the fuss is about, pick-up “The Best of The Spirit”. It’s a decent sampler of his work with the character. If you would like to see a more successful comic book re-imagining of Eisner’s character, check out both Darwyn Cooke’s excellent modernization and Alan Moore’s “The New Adventures of The Spirit”.

p.p.s. Of course, any book links above should be ignored if you live in the St. Louis area. You don't need any links because you can more-easily visit the friendly folks at Starclipper (see link to the right) who, if they do not already have the books in stock, will be glad to place your order.

And now, we fly off with an Eisner-drawn Shnobble...


BONUS REVIEW: Writer/artist (and Will Eisner fan) Kyle Baker weighs in on the movie.

Shelter from the Storm

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932)
Starring Karloff, Melvyn Douglass, Charles Laughton and Lilian Bond
Directed by James Whale
(72 minutes) B&W

“No beds!” shrieks the overly-religious Rebecca Femm to her brow-beaten brother and the storm-tossed visitors to their old dark house – meaning in her mind that the sinful will find no comfort within the home, but to her brother it is a literal truth as the house is old and dark but not large enough to contain housing for visitors. In a larger sense, though, it means “no rest for the wicked and innocent alike.” It is, after all, a dark and stormy night, and this is a James Whale film from 1932.

Our anxiety awaits no cue from background music here – though not a silent picture the soundtrack lacks the usual stereotypical swell of crescendos or ebb of diminuendo. Our anxiety about the characters’ fates comes from out of our own apprehension and experience. We hear behind the dialogue nothing but sounds of the world at its tempestuous worst: banging doors, breaking glass, sudden cock crows, unexpected thunder, scattershot blasts of rain against wood and glass and stone.

There are also occasional screams, and dialogue like what opens my bit of fluff here. On the other hand, if you do not care for the negatives of sister Femm, perhaps you would rather hear something positive from her hospitable brother Horace. “Have a potato,” he offers – and you need to see the film to know the magic of that line.

You need to see the film, period. You should see it twice: once to get rid of your probable-preconceptions to a very old black-and-white terror tale containing no blood and little physical violence; the second time to appreciate the subtle bits you missed while waiting for the business-as-usual during your first viewing. After that, you will want to see it again. You'll have plenty of time to see it again, because after the second time you will find yourself strangely unable to rest. Almost as if there were no beds for you, too...

The Order of Things in the World

Some day I will write some more-specific words about the classic films Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and Abel Gance’s “La Roue”. Both are available in fine DVD editions and everyone who loves movies should watch them, enjoy them.

I hope that my thoughts about them then will be greater than the piece of fluff that just popped into my head:

Though they appear in the “L” section of my personal movie library, in Italy, “La Dolce Vita” would appear in the D section. “La Roue”, in France, would appear with the other R titles.

For that matter, why does Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” come to us from Criterion as “Beauty and the Beast” instead of its original French title “La Belle et la Bete”? Why didn’t the company then release “La Dolce Vita” with its translated title “The Sweet Life”? (Yes, I realize commercial reasons lurk as answers here…)

Additions to this posting will come when I can figure why these facts feel important enough for me to post them in the first place…

Absence Makes the Mind Grow Fonder, Too

Woke up late on Saturday to find that not only was Fred MacMurray having a birthday, but also Turner Classic Movies scheduled in celebration a whole day of his films.

MacMurray’s career contained two genuine classics -- “The Apartment” and “Double Indemnity” – along with a long list of pretty-good-but-not-great work including “Murder He Says” and “The Caine Mutiny.” Reviewing a list of his jobs it surprised me how many films he made with director Mitchell Leisen, though I was always especially fond of the screwball comedy work he and Leisen put together with Carole Lombard like “Hands Across the Table” and “The Princess Comes Across.”

The part of his career usually ignored by critics is the Disney stuff from the late 50s - early 60s. Had not seen any of that in years – for some reason I have never seen “The Shaggy Dog” or “The Absent-Minded Professor.” Of course, the only one I had seen at the theaters appeared when I turned on the television: the “Absent-Minded” sequel “Son of Flubber”.

It is probably best to judge a person when they are at their lowest. What choices do they make then? How do they behave to others? If “Son of Flubber” was MacMurray’s nadir, then using those basics of judgment he must have been one heck of a human being.

My one memory of the film: MacMurray’s absent-minded Professor Brainard -- wearing a Twenties-style college prep gear complete with coonskin coat and school pennant -- follows in flying flivver the ratty rival for his wife’s affections. His faithful dog sits by his side through the trip.

What I had almost forgotten: He aims his Flubber Gas gun at the rival’s car, causing a rain cloud to form and a thunderstorm to commence inside the car causing a wreck. (Quite a fine line between comedy and drama…)

What I had completely forgotten: The crazed joyful look on MacMurray’s face while he stalks his prey.

That’s entertainment!

Most importantly I had also forgotten this: Near the end of the film, after being hauled to court when one of his creations breaks all the glass in a particular area of town, the district attorney asks him if he is found innocent and set free will he continue to teach. Professor Brainard answers the question:

Well, it seems to me a lot of people are going around these days selling fear – all kinds of fear. Fear of bombs, bugs, smog, surpluses, fall-out, falling hair…we find ourselves apologizing, hiding our heads, jumping at shadows. I remember when Groundhog Day only came once a year in this country.

I see a lot of students from my science class (here) in the courtroom. They may not be the most studious group of young people in college today, but I’ll say this for them: so far they are unafraid.

They have good will, enthusiasm and an infinite capacity for making mistakes. I have high hopes for them. The road to genius is paved with fumble footing and bumbling and anyone who falls flat on his face is at least moving in the right direction – forward. And the fellow who makes the most mistakes may be the one who’ll save the neck of the whole wide world some day.

Finding no transcripts of this on the Internet I later unexpectedly found a cheap copy of the film at a local shop (5.99!) and made a transcription of my own – apologies if I have misheard some of the above. Screenplay writers Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi – longtime Disney drones – despite the tremendous bit quoted above missed the mark here for the most part, along with another long-time Disneyite, director Robert Stevenson. This is not a great classic film, though the crazy stuff I mentioned above keeps happening enough that I am surprisingly looking forward to watching it again.

Even without the craziness, the courtroom finale and its words showed a worthwhile theme that if explored more by the rest of the film might well have moved it closer to the upper-levels of MacMurray’s credits. Regardless of the fine quality of the words, it is difficult to imagine them spoken more convincingly than how Fred MacMurray speaks them.

Since Fred spoke them, they become just another reason to celebrate his birthday. Thanks, Fred!

UPDATE: Apparently this was TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” celebration of MacMurray – his birthday, not until August 30. So… happy –early- birthday, Fred!

Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puana

“Almost 30 years since Dr. Hunter S. Thompson spoke to a crowd at the U of I in Champaign-Urbana, an unruly crowd of stoners and drunks and miscellaneously adjective-deprived states far removed from what society back then deemed normal. They followed the bouncing beach ball to whatever beat bellowed from the PA, but what they followed to find themselves there I never knew -- which was too bad because at the time I was a reporter. I carried a pad.”

I wrote that on the Blackberry while waiting for the documentary “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” to begin. A memory of the last time I saw Thompson -- renowned "new journalist" -- writing the words brought back some truths maintained in my mind all these years and by the time the end credits rolled on the movie I saw the lack of those truths became the problem with the film itself.

The details in my mind of that evening too many decades ago:

-Thompson had no speech; he answered questions from the audience.

-Arriving late, he showed up shortly after the bottle of Wild Turkey and a glass with some ice appeared.

-Most important: After the audience ran out of questions about drugs and wild life, he began to get questions about writing and journalism. The more of these types of questions, which brought out more emotional and detailed answers instead of one-liners, the more of the unruly crowd slipped out of the auditorium into the night.

So to what did my wondering eyes appear when I dug up the old article, my first-hand account at the time of these memories above? Only the first two details appeared. I left-out the good stuff in the third detail, the stuff that really mattered.

The best way to experience the life of Thompson is to read his works, most especially “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972” and “Fear and Loathing in Last Vegas” and I will admit the film could potentially steer people towards Thompson’s writings but it also steers away from the truth of the matter at hand. The same truth I left out of my own long-ago report…

Thompson at his best would write about what we needed to hear, not what we wanted to hear. “Gonzo” fails in that it concentrates on celebrating the crowd-pleasing upside of his madness, the fun of feeding a fantastic appetite for booze and pills, but barely touches the inevitable downside and cost of such a lifestyle. Sure is cool to see somebody get fucked-up and shooting off guns, yessirreebob! But what happened to the last twenty years of his life? How did his thoughts and writing deteriorate until the most radical reaction he could muster was blowing his head off with a gun?

Roger Ebert’s review contains a much clearer description of what I'm trying to get here:

In all the memories gathered together in "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," there was one subject I found conspicuously missing: The fact of the man's misery. Did he never have a hangover? The film finds extraordinary access to the people in his life, but not even from his two wives do we get a description I would dearly love to read, on what he was like in the first hour or two after he woke up. He was clearly, deeply, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and after a stupor-induced sleep he would have awakened in a state of withdrawal. He must have administered therapeutic dozes of booze or pills or something to quiet the tremors and the dread. What did he say at those times? How did he behave? Are the words "fear and loathing" autobiographical?

Most importantly to me, vividly and emotionally, is the scene narrated by his wife who tries to describe what he was like while he was writing. We see him typing away in his personally peculiar fashion, not attacking the keyboard as you would imagine by the tenor of his words, but instead his fingers dance across the keyboard as if they’re doing the old soft-shoe to Whispering Jack Smith singing his 1927 hit tune “Me and My Shadow”. Thompson has a smile on his face, in heaven as the thoughts of his mind and actions of his body synch together in perfect rhythm.

Now I have a hankering to hear Warren Zevon sing “The Hula Hula Boys” and you need to read Thompson’s “The Curse of Lono” to find out why.

The Measure of Love

LOVE ME TONIGHT (1932)
Starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian
(94 minutes) B&W

“Isn’t it romantic?” the tailor (Maurice Chevalier) queries his customer, and continues in song:

My face is glowing, I'm energetic.
The art of sewing I found poetic.
My needle punctuates the rhythm of romance.
I don't give a stitch if I don't get rich.
A custom tailor who has no custom
is like a sailor, no one will trust 'em.
But there is magic in the music of my shears.
I shed no tears, lend me your ears.
Isn't it romantic? Soon I will have found some girl that I adore.

The customer picks up the catchy refrain, takes it with him past the taxi stand. There the song passes to a writer who takes the tune in a taxi to the train station, where it plays into the minds of some lovelorn troopers. They then march in step across the countryside to the tune now locked to the beat of their hearts. Their joyous noise gets picked up by a gypsy boy who takes it to camp in the strings of his violin, which plays its way to the uppermost tower window of a nearby castle, where the princess throws open her window and completes the song into the night, wondering when her prince will come. So the simple tailor is connected to the world and then to the true love of the princess (Jeanette MacDonald) by a song.

Isn’t it romantic?

Yes, it is, and much more modern than a 1930s musical has a right to be, but Mamoulian’s then-revolutionary camera work and the fact that he worked out the songs in pre-production with Rodgers and Hart to move along with the camera and the story keeps things flowing along at a surprisingly still-fresh pace.

I cannot take much of MacDonald’s high-blown but lovely operatic singing, but will admit it works well when paired with Chevalier’s down-to-earth singsong patter. In fact it makes them, to me, a much better and more interesting couple than what we see and hear when she duets in other films with the similarly operatic Nelson Eddy. When she sings with Eddy, her own “kind,” life feels narrow and as expected, but when she "lowers" herself to sing with a more pop like “dittier” like Chevalier the world becomes larger with more possibilities.

The scene described in my opening here better demonstrates this feeling: though the song itself is changed and sometimes mangled on its road from the tailor to the princess its message remains true. Moreover, other songs in “Love Me Tonight” like “Mimi” in similar meme-like fashion move from those resting comfortably in their boudoirs to those getting their hands dirty in the kitchen. Those on high, those below, and everyone in-between have an important commonality – “important” because concentrating on the common binding thread makes the future a day well worth the living. Isn’t that romantic, too?

Jung at Heart

Conversation going on about the new Indiana Jones movie -- questions whether Indy is a Communist sympathizer, a ‘pinko.’

When Indy and Co. entered the alien room, my first thought was "sleeper cell of fellow travelers." Then we hear the dialogue about the collective unconscious. During all the loud sights and sounds, as Cate Blanchett’s Soviet agent met her fate near the end, didn't she scream, "I was wrong!"? I thought perhaps there she was realizing this collective was not the ideal for which she had hoped...or did I not hear her correctly?

Speaking of collectives: what about those prairie dogs, monkeys, and ants? Do they not all exhibit some sort of collective unconscious? The behavior of these creatures has been one of the most-criticized portions of the film. Nevertheless, could not their actions be purposeful, planted clues to the nature of the skull?

I don't really care, mind you. Indiana Jones has always been an apolitical cuss, whose passions are for the acquisition and sharing of knowledge. If you want to judge his actions and the film within the framework of a political system, how about calling it instead a parliament – which is a group of owls, which is a hoot…?

Thinking of Anything Else

ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930)
Starring Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo Marx, with Margaret Dumont
Directed by Victor Heerman
(97 minutes) B&W

Searching the middle for a beginning or an end…

Chico Marx noodles around on the piano during the party celebrating not only the return of Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding (three chairs for him) but also the unveiling of Bogarde's famous painting, "After the Hunt." Chico, going here as musician Senor Ravelli (if we don't show up you can't afford us), and his fingers continue drinking in the sounds of the same bars over and over and over.

"I can't think of a finish," he finally says, though that does not stop his fingering the keys. "Funny, I can't think of anything else," says Groucho.

Butlers, ingénues, and other characters tell jokes, but the Marx Brothers live the jokes. Punch lines are not the point for them, in their repertoire they use fishing lines, instead -- casting out for bigger and better fish.

When Groucho cannot think of anything else, it is not a punch line it’s a clue to their humor: (supposedly not comedy attractive to women -- like the Three Stooges, or Abbot & Costello, it's a guy thing). And yes, there we find ourselves off on a different tangent but that is what makes the Marx Brothers to me.

Tangents, atypical roads take us unexpectedly to places for which we usually are not quite prepared; unexpected, yet also usually ingenious as is revealed upon multiple viewings of their work. You do not always know how they will finish, and often there is no satisfactory end, either because “The End” winds up a bust or because you do not want them to leave quite yet.

All of this high-faluting nonsense is to say, I find them very funny people. I hope you do, too.

Special note: Some of the Brothers' best words came from the mind of George S. Kaufman, whose website supplied the picture up top, and of whom you should read more about here.

When a Huddled Mass, no longer tired, nor poor, gets ugly, angry and possibly even

We never get a good long glimpse of the giant something tearing up New York City in Cloverfield but for most of the movie, we clearly feel the terror and madness such a visitation would invoke amongst those experiencing this kind of a first contact.

Producer J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias) and director Matt Reeves appear to understand we do not need exploding eyeballs and full-frontal decapitations to feel fear. We can be afraid and go ‘ooh!’ in our theater seats, held rigid in suspense, through a movie that is only rated PG-13.

For those who do not know what the movie is about… A gigantic vaguely glimpsed monster tears up New York City. Several friends try to escape together and we experience their trek through the videotape they made on their journey.

Our only knowledge going into this is the beginning of the tape, which tells us someone discovered the videotape in what was “formerly known as Central Park.” We do not know who shot it, who survived, or who found it, or even how long ago the taped events took place. Some of our questions receive answers. I will have to see this again to find out if there were more answers than I originally gathered.

And that’s just one way to see the film… Abrams and company infected the Internets with various viral clues, like websites promoting products which may or may not have anything to do with the creature. Slusho.jp is worth visiting as is the manga prequel to the film. Or you could visit the Cloverfield Clues blog.

If this is correct, then while the United States was responsible in large part for the original appearance of Godzilla, Japan may have finally returned the favor.

What Are You Looking At?

When you squeeze and squint your eyes to focus, is it something in your mind trying to make your eyes smaller? Is it because when you had tiny eyes, when you were a child, you could see much more?

Try to see again as a child, walking to work – all the details: grass, hedges, fences, but then try harder, forcing your sight into more of a focused lens closer to blades of grass, leaves and branches of hedges, painted wooden-pickets of fences.

Then tighten more your gaze that you might see:

Black busy bugs travel over, under, and around each towering green and brown-rusted blade bending beneath the weight of their eternal unknown mission. Twisted hedge trunks turn in synch with its community of leaves -- each uniquely shaped from the other but all working together to embrace the changing sunlight. Dimpled white daubed spackling of rough-cut wood smile back at you with what an untroubled mind now recognizes as a sea of happy faces.

Slow down and try to see the details again, become less goal oriented, and try to take in what wonders there may be before you. Do not cloud your mind with what you expect awaits at the end of the trail. Forget about the pending deadlines, the scheduled appointments, and what-might-go-wrong. Let yourself go to the unexpected pleasures of the moment.

Playing the Nintendo WII game “Marvel Ultimate Alliance” in co-op mode, with younger people:

The game allows you to play as a character from the Marvel Comics’ “universe” – you can be Spider-Man, Daredevil, Wolverine, or one of the Fantastic Four, and your mission is to battle an army of monsters and villains through the levels of cityscapes and underworlds and places-that-have-never-been.

Because it’s co-op mode, everyone must move together. If one person lingers on one side of the screen, the other players are unable to move further down whatever path lies ahead. This can be frustrating if you are the adult in the group. Your mind automatically steers toward the future, to the goal needed to continue the game.

Generally when playing with the younger set, however, you often find yourself stuck, unable to move on because one of the children remains on his side of the screen. “Could there be some secret treasure or insight I missed where he lags?” I wonder. Looking to where his character remains on the screen to discover what my group member has found, I see nothing but joy. “Look at me, I’m Spider-Man!” he shouts gleefully, pressing buttons and moving the controls – exhilarated by his ability to skillfully manipulate the hero into shooting webs and bouncing off walls.

He does not care where he's going -- what he's able to do now is what's most important.

Trying to see as a child can help you appreciate more the work of certain artists, as well. Look past the uncomfortable sights and sounds of David Lynch films, for example – forget about goals and fulfilling resolutions before “The End.”

Lynch’s eyes also see as a child. He marvels at not only what his story-telling technology can do with lights, movement, and sounds, but also how they can change the original meaning and mood into something even more marvelous.

His most recent work, “Inland Empire”, is now on DVD, and the extra features reveal no more of the film’s meaning than the film itself – their revelations instead light up the eyes of Lynch, telling us how we should view not only the movie, but perhaps the world itself.

In the extra feature, called “Quinoa” Lynch prepares one of his favorite meals for us: a grain and broccoli delight that cannot possibly taste as good as Lynch’s pleasure in preparing it. Every detail and step is slow and precise.

Patiently observe the director tapping out a small amount of vegetable bouillon cubes. “I’m gonna set this right here – prepare it for later. I’m going to open that drawer, right here, and get a little knife. Then I’m gonna just bust this up, like so, into little pieces. Then I’m gonna let it wait there. It’ll be happy waiting right here.”

He continues: “Then I’m going to go over here and get these paper towels. And I’m going to get a paper towel and fold it for later ‘cause that handle gets so hot you can’t believe it!”

Later as he waits for the dish to complete its cooking, he talks more about the making of the film:

“It was a phenomenal world that appeared in this regular warehouse that became a magical world. So many magical things came out of that, and it grew and grew and no one will ever know how it grew that way ‘cause nothing was planned. It was partly planned but the final thing, you couldn’t have planned it like that. No one could have ever planned that.

“When you do something you don’t know where it will end up and how it will marry to something -- how it could marry to something in the future. So no matter what you do – some things you do and maybe they don’t feel so correct -- when you do it feels finished or kind of finished. Or something’s not quite right, it isn’t finished – for whatever reason you sort of walk away from it and later unbelievable things can come out of that."

"It’s just like the perfect thing you’ve been looking for.”

Here Today in a Still Tomorrow

ALPHAVILLE (1965):
Starring Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina,
Akim Tamiroff and Howard Vernon
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
(100 minutes) B&W
(French w/ subtitles)

The private detective comes to town, seeking some truth. As usual, he's the outsider, but in Alphaville no one appears to pay him much mind when he starts snooping around, making inquiries, taking pictures. In Alphaville no one questions anything.

Its motto -- "Science Logic Security Prudence" -- represents their way of non-life, monitored and controlled by a central computer. The scientist who created the computer reasoned that people have become slaves of probability, so he concluded: for perfection to exist you need to weed out the factors that could cause improbables.

Regularly scheduled executions handle the weeding. Capital crimes include not only reading poetry, but showing emotion -- like shedding tears over your wife's dead body. The dictionary (in Alphaville called "The Bible") arrives in new editions every morning without certain words that were there the day before. ("So no one knows the meaning of the word' conscience' any more. Too bad...") There is no "day before" or "day after." Only the present exists. The past is a memory that can only cause sorrow and pain, while thoughts of the future -- perhaps the most unwanted improbable of all here -- might create a hope for something better than today.

That the hope is always there is the truth they and their computers cannot compute and can never delete.

All Together Now

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950):
Starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter and George Sanders
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
(138 minutes) B&W

An awards ceremony opens the film with the top prize about to be announced and we are told how important the proceedings, how famous the attendees. A cultured snide voice speaks almost-rudely over the presenter's dialogue, letting us know, "It is not important that you hear what he says." The characters in the story had better heed the wisdom in that, and so too should the audience.

For the characters, it is more important to see the actions, not hear the words. For the audience, "All About Eve" is all about words – deriving momentum only by its terrific ability to sustain witticisms in powerful steady streams of dialogue, in what is essentially a backstage drama about a conniving up-and-comer stealing the thunder from the old blood of the theater.

The cast is responsible for the words retaining their power after all these years -- especially George Sanders as the cultured snide critic, and most especially Bette Davis in one of the last great roles of her career.

Thin Disguise

AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936):
Starring William Powell
and Myrna Loy
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke II
(113 minutes) B&W

The second whodunit comedy featuring Dashiell Hammet's Nick and Nora Charles, follows them home to another round of blackmail, infidelity and multiple murders. The mystery is solved with all the unusual suspects gathered, but what no one seems to suspect is how the secrets revealed uncovered not only the solution to the crimes but also the dark side of what Nick and Nora might well have been.

Nick frequently jokes, between sups from his ever-filled tumbler of alcoholic beverage, how he only married Nora for her money. Here we meet Nora's wealthy cousin Selma, married to a fortune-hunting drunk. Nick also seems to have enjoyed a past full of loose women, and so too has Selma's husband. Selma herself feels frantic, on the edge, trapped in the family mansion with the horrific Aunt Catherine, surrounded by secrets and putting up appearances. Nora escaped all that by marrying Nick.

Everyone here, except Nick and Nora, keeps secrets. Appearances are more important than truth. Nick and Nora have nothing to hide, and their open-door policy about themselves allows life constant entrance.

Shine On

The first in an irregular series remembering 20th century cultural icons...

Laurel and Hardy were probably not popular entertainment’s first Odd Couple, but due to their large volume of quality comedic work in film, they were among the most influential. One of the better pieces about them on the Internet is Mark Evanier’s article here.

When first encountering their screen antics I preferred the mild-mannered put-upon Stanley – the skinny Bow to the ever-exasperated know-it-all roundness of Ollie the Fiddle – but over the years, as I get older, I see more the perfection of their pairing. They’re like the Baby New Year and the Old Year Past figures seen every December 31: Stanley is the baby with Innocence we wish we still had, while Ollie is the adult of Experience who thinks he’s seen it all. His pride is ours, and we know he will at some point fall – in a “prat”, of course.

Woody Allen’s “Reasons to Live” from “Manhattan” could well have included the following clip. It’s from the marvelous The Flying Deuces, which you should rent or own, and though the two minutes offered here does not display their usual comedy shtick, it makes the case for our keeping the pair forever in mind.

All you need to know: The dead-head duo decides to quit the Foreign Legion, making a leisurely exit from the fort. Unaware they are about to be put away for desertion they take the time to dawdle when a familiar tune wings into their ears.

One of the most charming moments ever put to film and, at the very least, it’s a “Reason to Smile”…

A Line Is Drawn

Clowns have been fooling around reportedly since the days of the Pharaohs. Evolving from the familiar court jesters to the more defined characters of the Commedia Del Arte and the sad-faced fools of the circus, their most consistent reason for being is to make us laugh by looking at ourselves.

Brothers Max and Dave Fleischer were probably not laughing much at themselves in the first decade of the 1900s, nor were they pondering the history of comedy and laughter. Their mental efforts were focused on an idea of rotoscoping for the movies – filming a live-actor then tracing over the figure in the film-cells to give an effect of a literal moving picture. Needing something interesting to trace, as well as something that would not cost a lot of money (given their probable respective income at the time, as noted here) they remembered a clown suit Dave owned and decided to see how that would work with their invention. The result was one of animation’s first real stars: Koko the Clown.

A good number of Koko’s early cartoons, along with some entertaining documentaries on the history of the Fleischer Studios and animation are available in the recently released Popeye the Sailor DVD collection.

Koko’s character is most-like the “First Zany” clown of the Commedia Del Arte School – a clever rascal who often attempts to go against his master’s wishes. The “master” in Koko’s case is Max Fleischer. On film and in real life Max Fleischer is God in his studio, forcing Koko (played on film for later rotoscoping by Brother Dave) into sometimes-cruel and more-times petty situations. And while Max may come up with an initial story, Dave as Koko supplies the beats that make the several minutes of life so energetically entertaining.

In “The Tantalizing Fly” from 1919, possibly their first Koko cartoon, Max "draws" Koko on a large blank page, despite the constant interruption of an annoying fly. The fly is from real-life – it is unknown how they animated the pest’s movements.

Max tries to put this uncontrollable menace under his thumb with a fly swatter, missing the target and hitting instead poor Koko – literally drawing stars and a moon from the clown. Koko yanks away the pen from his "boss" and tries to bop the endless pest himself – but instead rains ink in heavy drops everywhere on the page and into the real world of Max’s face.

“I’ll draw a fly trap,” Koko announces and inks out a bald man snoozing in stillness, cross-legged on a chair. The fly goes for the tempting target of the hairless head, circling the man’s pate. Every time Koko raises the pen for a final blow, the fly flits off until Koko sneaks behind the man, smashes in, and…hits the head instead of the fly. The man jumps up berating the clown for the rude awakening. Koko sticks out the pen and sucks the man of ink back into his nibs.

Koko then tears the page and dives through the hole. Max turns the paper over where Koko’s back is to the audience, captured in mid-dive downward. Max shakes the page over the inkwell and Koko goes back to his original state – a pool of ink sliding back into the inkwell. The fly follows and Max’s hand seals the deal. The End. Four minutes since The Beginning.

Though Max is God and Creator in most Koko stories, his creation’s antics show that the clown too can be a creator – sometimes quite literally, as when Koko takes control of the pen from Max.

An actual plot for the films is not generally part of the creative process in the early efforts. These cartoons usually consist of nothing more than “one damned thing after another”: one action takes you off on another tangent. No thoughts for the future, only the here and now are important. Every action a reaction, breeding another action and so on until the end when every character, except Max goes back to the inkwell to rest until the next cartoon.

MODELING (1921)

Two years and a handful of cartoons later and the brothers Fleischer have already made what appear to be great leaps in their understanding of the new technology they were building as needed. In “Modeling” from 1921 they combine not only live-action and rotoscope, but they have also added animated drawing and stop-motion Claymation to their toolbox.

They've also included a semblance of a plot: While Max draws Koko, a visitor in an adjacent studio sits for a bust modeled after himself. Mayhem ensues.

Koko continues living under the quick-tempered whim of Max but he still takes what is thrown at him (sometimes literally – here, a glob of clay) and makes the most of it, joyously. No thought for tomorrow weighs him down. His life span, each incarnation of his new life, only lasts the length of the new cartoon before returning at the end to the well of ink from which he is born anew each time.

The childishness is natural. Koko retains no thought more than an instinctual instant reaction to whatever appears in his path. Skates drawn on his feet, a new background of frozen lake applied behind him and after a bit of flailing around he soon takes to the ice, as with each new situation, like a pro.

You know how each new life of his begins; you know how it will end. You do not know what he will fill up his life with in the time between.

Here is ‘Modeling’… Again with the sales pitch: You can buy it along with a hefty helping of Popeye here.

The silence of these shorts may be overly-deafening -- we're so accustomed to some sort of music and sound-effects with our cartoons. Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives collection, contemporary to these Kokos, is a good soundtrack though others have tried light jazz (when the cartoons first came to television as in the example above) and techno.

The Fleischer’s later cartoons during the “talkie” phase utilized their good taste in music for their soundtracks – featuring Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and others. A documentary on the Popeye set notes their studio was located near New York’s Tin Pan Alley where the great tunes of the day by Gershwin, Berlin and others was in the air, in the midst of creation. Their silent Kokos however, the fluid story without a real story, demonstrate their tremendous musical spirit.

Koko may dance to a song only the Fleischers can hear but his movements amid the constant creation on-screen will make your mind and heart sing. Moreover, perhaps you might even reflect on how you spend the unknown amount of time allotted yourself.

Blues in the Green

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938):
Starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland
Directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley
(103 min.)
Technicolor

Robin Hood leads Maid Marian through the green of Sherwood, away from the reveling of his Merry Men. The merriment belies their business of taking care of the poor.

He is strange to her, she says, not because of his anger at the tyrannical and bloody discrimination of the Normans against the Saxons, but because he actually does something about it. "You must hate the Normans," she says.

"Norman or Saxon, what does it matter?" replies Robin. "It's injustice I hate."

This scene comes and goes quietly about half-way through what's remembered mainly as a simple swashbuckling adventure story, based on the old English legends of the laughing outlaw who robs from the rich to give to the poor. A swashbuckler, though, is not only an adventurous daredevil, but also a laughing braggart.

Robin Hood, then, stands cocky in a similar light to the characters most frequently found in the music of the blues: a Mannish Boy. He has to laugh to keep from crying.

A Technicolor blues.

Adam's Rib - Another old Connecticut custom

ADAM'S RIB (1949):

Starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn
Directed by George Cukor
(100 minutes)
B&W

Hollywood's most popular depictions of love and romance usually run along the magnetic line of "opposites attract", because a relationship in constant friction seems to rub the audience in the right way. Not that you really want to -think- about the opposites who get together by the end of these films -- in most cases, you can't imagine them really living happily ever after. "Adam's Rib" is a comedy about one such couple of opposites, but rather than tell the probably humorous tale of how they got together, it really does think about the relationship and tells us how and why they stay together. Its sometime-dated handling of feminist politics still holds up for the most part, largely due to the acting of Tracy and Hepburn.

Adam (Tracy) is a lawyer in the district attorney's office called to prosecute a woman who shot her philandering husband after catching him in the arms of another woman. Adam believes in the case – not a fan of philandering, he sighs indignantly at the thought of citizens taking armed action into their own hands; going outside the law when it suits their purposes. The law is the law.

Adam's wife Amanda (Hepburn) -- a practicing civil attorney -- believes the gunplay was an unfortunate end to a bad situation; that it was the husband whose own deeds brought about the shooting. To make matters for their own marriage worse, Amanda takes on the case to defend the wife and turns the trial into a showcase of the inequalities foisted on women by men.

This is not really a comedy, but a drama -- with humor coming from our understanding and belief in the characters. The film-in-the-film (an 8mm amateur production celebrating the end of their mortgage) shows what a comedy would be, all mugging and slapstick and cornball plot. David Wayne’s character is the only -true- comedic character here and he’s a perfectly-obnoxious skunk.

This movie does not take sides -- neither Amanda nor Adam is completely in the right. What's "right" here is their marriage, the elements each brings to the partnership and why these two opposites must stay together to be 'whole'.

After all, the rib is not only literally a bar on a cage -- it also protects the heart and allows it to keep pumping along.