The Current (well, in my place) Cinema

I spend my nights in faraway places. Over the past week I've favored DVDs that take me out of myself..

Friday night was Howard the Duck, the George Lucas, Willard Hyuck and Gloria Katz interpretation of Steve Gerber's classic Marvel Comics series. Gerber is dead now, but for my money he was the progenitor of the truly adult comic book: adult not because of sex, gore, swearing and violence but because of their intelligence, themes and cynicism.

Howard the Duck should have made for a great movie. Instead, it is merely passable -- although not the complete bomb that the criticism of the time would suggest. It actually tries to be a fair adaptation of the comic, and the acting standard is pretty high.

But oh, that duck! What were they thinking? It appears to have been a conscious decision to change Howard's appearance from that of a cartoonish duck into something halfway between a human and a real duck. Not only was it misguided, it was poorly executed. The character is so ugly to look at, with that rim of bare skin around his beady little realistic eyes. Very sadly, it ruins the whole movie. The duck should be appealing in a gravelly, grouchy, cartoonish way, and he's not.

Still, I look at this once in a while and try to appreciate the good parts. This was the first time I'd seen it in widescreen since the original release.

Sunday was Goldfinger. I dunno, revisiting Bond seems like the end-of-summer thing to do. Easily the most sexist and least dramatically sound of the whole series, Goldfinger is my least favorite of the Bonds second only to Dr. No. The whole resolution of the plot depends on Bond's ability not just to bed Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) but, in doing so, to be so revelatory a lover in, literally, just one roll in the hay to turn Pussy from a very lesbian criminal into an upstanding hetero who has seen the Error of Her Ways. It's deeply offensive. The whole third act is a waste really, but what I learned this go around is that I'd forgotten how much there was to like in the first two thirds. A lot of the value in re-viewing these things in widescreen comes from their travelogue quality: they choose these absolutely stunning locales, shoot them beautifully, let you get a good eyeful of it, and then use it as the backdrop for mayhem. Goldfinger is no exception.

Last night was Harper. Another mid-sixties panavision movie made by people who really know how to frame a shot and take you places. For 95 percent of its runtime it's a near-perfect adaptation of Ross MacDonald's novel, The Moving Target. But the ending is terrible, basically chucking out the whole last chapter of the book and replacing it with a freeze-frame that resolves exactly nothing. The villain's multi-layered motivations are mostly lost, and one important plot point involving the Pamela Tiffin character is jettisoned completely. Lauren Bacall has some fun laying on the bitchy stuff with a trowel, Robert Wagner is, well, Robert Wagner, the great Strother Martin shows up in a role that's subversively funny -- but there's a little too much of Hud in Paul Newman's portrayal of Lew Harper / Archer. Still, the main body of MacDonald's hugely complicated plot is intact, it holds your interest, and two hours go by pretty quickly.

Of course there are short features on Friday nights: currently enjoying a disk of Popeye cartoons, and the new serial is Columbia's 1941 Batman. Oy! The costumes! The "acting!" There isn't even a Batmobile -- the Caped Crusaders drive around in a convertible coupe and giggle at each other like little kids. These Columbia serials make the Republic serials look like Lawrence of Arabia by comparison!

Onward! I haven't decided what to have for dinner yet, but I know the entertainment is going to be Farscape.

-- Freder

A landscape of tears

For the last few days the weather has been bleak, gray, dismal and steamy. The air so full of moisture that the whole house is clammy to the touch. Yesterday I left the upstairs windows open just a crack, no more than an inch, so that the rain could not get in. When I arrived home at the end of the day I found that the walls and ceilings all the way out into the main hall were drenched, literally dripping with moisture. It looked as if the house was weeping.

I wiped it down with paper towels and closed all the windows and doors, which made the cats unhappy.

It's dark in there, too, and I can't seem to turn on enough lights to brighten the place. Damn these newfangled CFL lightbulbs anyway. In the commercials they claim to give off the same light as incandescent bulbs, but that is a bloody lie. When you switch on an incandescent bulb, you get instant clean white light. When you turn on a CFL bulb, you get swampland. A pale wan yellowish glimmer that takes forever to reach its full strength, and retains a yellowish cast even then.

When incandescent bulbs finally become illegal, I predict that we will have people jumping out of buildings like snowflakes.

In case you couldn't tell: On Sunday a mood descended on me that I have not been able to shake since, and weather like this is no help. Is it possible to build up an immunity to Prozac? Or can the drug just not cope with the added load of winter depression?

As they will not be used in evidence, I put the stolen items that I recovered back out into the house. I thought this would cheer me up. It didn't. It will all be gone, soon, anyway.

I started to do some writing for this blog, but words failed me. In trying to find something to say I want back through the emails I'd written in the weeks following my mother's death. This was a huge mistake.

I am not, in the vernacular, "dealing effectively with my feelings." Or anything else, really. It's tough to care when you know that a pack of strangers are going to come into your house and take your whole life apart.

Last of the Simian Blather (Aren't you happy?)

Severn Darden is an actor I find impossible to take seriously. Most likely this is because he has a strong background in comedy. Maybe it's the Leslie Nielsen factor: once Mr. Nielsen started doing comedy, he rendered all of his early, serious roles completely laughable. Have you ever tried to watch Leslie Nielsen in Forbidden Planet? It's impossible not to laugh!

And so it is with Darden, who plays a homicidal mutant governor in Battle for the Planet of the Apes and is supposed to be a menace. He's certainly a menace to the movie itself. As with Beneath the Planet of the Apes before it, the mutant humans come off like are silly throwbacks to the Buck Rogers serials, and in this movie Mr. Darden makes matters much worse. Every shot that he appears in provokes unintended chortling. A part of me suspects that he was consciously playing it as comedy, because as written the thing is already hard to take seriously.

There is some compelling Ape Interest as Roddy McDowell does his damnedest to hold the thing together. The conflict between his Caesar and Claude Akins's General Aldo is well handled. And I had forgotten that the battle of the film's title is not the misguided attack on ape city by the mutant humans, but Caesar's struggle to change the course of future history and prevent the violent world of the first two Apes movies from ever coming about -- which he apparently succeeds in doing!

That part of it is interesting enough to justify the movie. But just when we're feeling mildly friendly towards it, along comes Servern Darden in his Halloween costume trying to "boo" us.

This was followed by a short-lived TV series that I remember quite liking. Still, I've had enough monkey bidness for the time being and think I will pass on that one. . . for now, anyway.

-- Freder.

Possibilities for future lives

Soon I will be free as a bird. I will be able to move anywhere, do anything I want to do.

I have to start thinking along those lines.

Staying in the house is not sustainable unless the situation evolves in one of two or three directions.

One solution would be for me to follow in my mother's footsteps and enter the antiques trade myself, gradually dissolving the estate in a way that was not too painful while still allowing me the time to search for other employment on the side.

I thought about that for maybe five minutes. The antiques trade is not for me. Of course nothing is certain, but this game is more uncertain than most. You can work your tail off in dire conditions and still lose money.

Another solution is to start one (or more) of the businesses that I've been noodling on and run them from the house. My mother and I discussed turning the field beside the Barn into a real old-fashioned German style outdoors craft and antiques market with a Christmas theme. It would be harder to do without the field across the street to use as a parking lot, but it could still be done. At the same time, I had a notion about using the back field and the field beside the house for a Halloween-themed Spook Attraction. The tour would end out in front of the house, where there would be a kiosk selling comics and other gifty items tied to the attraction (I called it "The Shadow Lands" and had a full layout in my head, along with ambitious plans for expansion over time), and there would be a food service out in front of the barn. Over time, both barns would be restored and remade into additional attractions.

Then there’s the publishing business that I wanted to start up with the ex-Thorndike Press gang, using the successful Thorndike Press model. When they all moved away from it (investment money not growing on trees, and no one wishing, understandably, to stake their future) I transformed the concept into something called "Black Street Books," which would have specialized in genre fiction with an emphasis on series titles produced on the Stratemeyer Syndicate model. I have a business plan partially written.

None of these ideas are incompatible -- and they go in a direction that I actually could actually get some enjoyment or fulfillment from.

But I’m a lousy business man, and these are large projects that would require the help of others. No one, least of all myself, has any confidence in my ability to make even the smallest of these things happen.

My attempts to launch a simple web-based business were a dismal failure.

The only thing I know for certain is that I have to find a new purpose in life, and that purpose can not be the college bookstore.

It’s time to start a job search that includes the whole country, not just my current neck of the woods.

-- Freder.

It's not HIGH Ott. . .

I have a Poppy Ott that needs a good home.

What’s a Poppy Ott, you say? Here’s a piece I wrote years ago that will explain the whole thing. I¹ll meet you at the other end with my “Special Offer.”

*

As a legacy from my father's childhood, I inherited custodianship of a complete set of "Poppy Ott" books. Like the better-known Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, also published by Grossett & Dunlap, these were light mystery stories for children. Unlike those better known heroes, the Poppy Ott books combined their mystery with a heady mixture of other influences: "Our Gang" clubhouse trappings, Horatio Alger bootstraps capitalism, small-town atmosphere and a hefty helping of unsubtle humor.

The series' unlikely hero is introduced in Poppy Ott and the Stuttering Parrot, when narrator Jerry Todd (just an average small-town boy, son of a brickmaker, star of another mystery series bearing his name) and his gang discover a pair of tramps -- an old man and a boy -- squatting in a tumbledown trailer at the edge of Tutter, Jerry's home town. Instant mystery: who is this shabby New Kid and where did he come from?

Before Jerry can answer these questions, a traveling medicine show arrives in Tutter, bringing with it a deeper mystery of pirate gold and murdered men -- and the possibility that one of Tutter's respectable citizens may have had a more colorful past than was recently supposed. The tramp boy, at first implicated in the goings-on, takes charge, clears his own name and solves the mystery.

By the end of the book, this Poppy Ott has been cleaned up and transformed into a respectable citizen, with more ambition and bigger ideas than most of the rest of the town combined. Later books show him opening all manner of businesses -- toy novelty manufacturing companies, pancake restaurants and interior decorating firms to name but three -- while continuing to solve mysteries as the head of the boys' Juvenile Jupiter Detective Club, engaging in frequent battles with the rival Stricker gang and having the kind of Outdoors Fun that went the way of all flesh with the invention of TV. All, presumably, while still attending grade school.

The books were illustrated by Bert Salg, in an engaging, scratchy style that still brings the characters -- and the period -- to life, and written by one Leo Edwards, who appears to be the only writer of 'thirties juvenile mysteries who didn't work with quotations around his name. Many of the books featured a special "club house" section which included Edwards's home mailing address in Cambridge, Wisconsin; children were encouraged to write letters and form "Freckled Goldfish" clubs of their own. These "Chatter-Box" pages -- the equivalent of fan clubs -- were often as much fun to read as the books themselves:

"Our chapter held a big Hallowe'en Party. First we had ghost stories, dancing, singing and biting money out of apples. Then 'eats.' We had apples, grapes, nuts, fruit punch and cake. Then the real fun began -- ducking for apples and money! I went after a nickel in the tub. When I came up for air I found my shirt and tie were wet. We had regular printed tickets which we sold. The tickets (printed at school) read like this: HALLOWE'EN PARTY, for the benefit of The Freckled Goldfish Ozone Park Branch, 9115-107 Avenue, at 4:30 O'clock, Admission -- 10 cents. We cleared $3.25 and now we have in the treasury $5.50."

There is no question as to whether these Poppy Ott books withstand the test of time -- they don't, which may be the most compelling reason to go back and read or re-read them today. Unencumbered by any kind of literary worth, the books are free to show us other things: more than simple-minded nostalgia (it's hard to feel nostalgia for a world that has been as completely obliterated as the one these books -- albeit in a wildly distorted, idealized form -- represent), Poppy Ott offers us Time Travel in its purest, most honorable form: sending us back, from the comfort of our easy chairs, not to the world of our fathers, but to the world our fathers dreamed about when they were lads. That is no small accomplishment.

*

Got it? Now get it: I have a first edition of the first book in the series, Poppy Ott and the Stuttering Parrot, that I don’t need. Not in great condition, a reading copy. It’s free to a good home. I also have e-book versions that I created a while back of the first two titles in the series (PDF format) that I’d be happy to email (also free!) to anyone interested. These are complete and unabridged and contain all of the original illustrations by Bert Salg.

Finally! Something in this blog worth reading!

-- Freder

The plunderers are coming. . .

The blows keep coming, fast and furious. On Friday I heard from the state police: as I suspected, they aren’t going to do anything about my sister’s thefts. And on Saturday I received the proposal from the Auction House.

They want to start ASAP, which I interpret as sometime within the next two or three weeks.

They plan on clearing the whole place out over a period of three days.

Although I knew it was going to be like this, seeing it in hard type was upsetting, to say the least.

I'll be left with a few sticks of furniture and some modern stuff that no one wants, yard-sale stuff, and a big empty mausoleum with just me and the cats to face the winter.

I won¹t even have a desk in my study. In fact, I have to clear all my stuff out (and off) of it so that they can take it out.

I know that it needs to be done, but I'm so not ready. A friend asked, would I be ready next year? No. But it would make the winter easier.

I have always hated and dreaded that terrible season. How bad will it be, alone in a big cold empty house? I don’t think there’s enough Prozac in the world to cover that prospect.

I would move somewhere else, but what to do about the outside cats?

A View of some views worth viewing

It's Friday; and I am feeling lazy. Too lazy to write a new post on any of the popular topics I have before me. Instead, I will share with you a few of the mini-reviews that I have posted over at Criticker, where my handle is Freder -- same as here! These are some of my all-time favorite films. I don't include cast lists or years or runtimes or directors. That would be too much work.

OLIVER

Not just a great movie musical (and one of the last of its breed), but the best Dickens film, even though (perhaps because) it strays from the book. One of those wonderfully immersive movies where you feel like you're inside it. Terrific cast all up and down. A real joy. Freder watches this every winter and never gets tired of it. Wanted to be the Artful Dodger as a kid, but sadly was more like young Master Twist.

GODSPELL

David Greene somehow took an unfilmable off-Broadway musical and refashioned it into something wholly cinematic. It's SO not about religion; rather, it's about the ways in which old stories can be made new, about the creation of a family, and much more. A great personality test, too!

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS

One of Freder's favorite movies, for its whole-hearted embrace of all people eccentric and odd, for its charm and unlikely romance, for the lovely performances from a top flight cast, and for its very daring ending, in which we witness nothing less than the triumph of imagination over reality. I'm not saying it's a great, or even a necessarily well-made movie: but I love it unreservedly.

AMALIE

Many viewers seem to dismiss Amalie as being "perky" and "cute," but they are missing the point: Amalie is really BUGS BUNNY! OK, a female, French Bugs Bunny! She even has her Elmer Fudd in the person of the food stand owner, and stops just short of saying "Of course you realize this means war!" There's real grit and edge in a little girl who climbs onto a neighbor's roof and disconnects his TV antenna at strategic moments. . . sure she's cute, but she's also a vewy wascawwy wabbit!

THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU

Utterly charming, beautifully designed romantic comedy about murder and death has intrepid "reporter" Rigg infiltrating a murderous organization just as a power struggle flares up within the company. Coincidence? I don't think so. Young people will find this dated, but it was dated even in its time and that's part of the fun. Oliver Reed playing a romantic lead? It works. Terrific stuff.

MR. HULOT'S HOLIDAY

A return to the styles of silent comedy. Subtle and delightful, as good as a real vacation. Mr. Hulot is both a tribute to the great silent clowns, and a delightful clown in his own right, whose heroism lies not in derring-do but in quiet nobility. Watch this movie and gain some new friends.

BABES IN TOYLAND (a.k.a. MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS)

Far and away the best of Laurel and Hardy's operetta movies, and one of their best all around. The boys annoy each other to great effect and make great Unlikely Heroes, while the romantic leads are not too obnoxious, and the boogeymen are really scary! A winner all around. Trivia: Henry Brandon (Barnaby) also played the title character in a the 15-part Republic serial Drums of Fu Manchu, and the Indian Chief Scar in The Searchers.

7 FACES OF DR. LAO

One of Freder's top 25 favorites, a real American fantasy that works on about as many levels as the viewer will allow. Some will dismiss this as "twee." but pooey on them. Tony Randall has a lot of fun, and receives great support from the rest of the cast (this was made in the day when we still had supporting actors). The entire film is wonderfully atmospheric and we even get some cool monster animation from Jim Danforth. Wait for me, Dr. Lao. I can do it.

HARVEY

Probably not as fine as the original stage production must have been -- but why quibble? A breezy walk into the land of delight where, finally, the rules of small insipid people and their small insipid views of reality do not apply. Stewart's defining screen role.

THE STUNT MAN

A great, ultimately good-natured mindfuck of a movie, all about life, love, identity, courage, fear and the creative process. I call this Peter O'Toole's second greatest screen role, after Lawrence.

BLACK NARCISSUS

Moody and beautiful and full of passions under-and-unstated (as well as some that are given spectacular rein). Smashingly designed and directed, with expertly calculated performances from all the cast. From the makers of The Red Shoes, an equally beautiful and emotion-stirring film.

Oh, I could go along cutting and pasting like this all day, but I suppose I really should do some work while I'm at work. . . 

--Freder

It's Mandatory. . .

Dr. Shrinker, source of my councilor's nickname.

In the days and weeks following my mother's death, I was not allowed a single day off from work. It was graduation week, followed two weeks later by Reunion week and all the preparation required for that. Meanwhile, I was falling apart in more ways than one.

I kept begging for time off, and my boss kept saying, "No, you need to be in a busy people environment," her code phrase for "No way, it's too busy here."

People were asking me questions about my mother's memorial service and I had no answers to give them. With no help in the planning from the rest of my family and no free time during the week to make the arrangements, nothing was happening. People at work were saying behind my back "Why doesn't Doug take some time off?" Well, I wasn't being allowed to, even though college policy gave me three bereavement days, and I had plenty of vacation time racked up.

We had to lay my mother's ashes to rest on Memorial Day because that was the only day I could get off.

The next day, I was a basket case. Unfit for duty in any sense of the word. I had been drinking, of course, and I simply could not pull myself together. I tried to arrange for the day off. To make a long story short, I was called into work anyway.

Where it became obvious to everyone what I'd known all along: I had no business being there that day and needed some time off.

I was called into my boss's office. The college lawyer was waiting for me there. I was actually in tears. He took one look at me and ordered me into Mandatory Counseling. I was given a list of names and numbers to call. All I wanted was some time off to make the arrangements for my mother's service. Instead, I was having a nervous breakdown aided and abetted by the college and alcohol.

I was not opposed to the concept of counseling, but the word "Mandatory" really got under my skin. The college is not my damn big brother, and anyway I viewed the college's treatment of me as part of the problem.

The next day I came to work as normal, but met a friend in the walkway. I told her my predicament and she insisted that I had the right to time off and they needed to give it to me.

I decided to take it. I emailed my boss (who was out) and told her that I was going to use the day to go to Augusta to make the final arrangements for the service.

This I did. And it was the first day of relief in a month's time. Making the arrangements final was a big step.

I did not follow through on the counseling order. I considered letting them fire me. I was not going to let them meddle in my personal life.

One day I was called back into my boss's office. This was the terrible row that was the catalyst for all that the stress and pressure and grief and despair and the effects of the drinking had wrought on me. I left early and made the call to Dr. Shrinker from home. The next day I was in hospital.

-- Freder.