Movies Worth Seeing: Pinball, The Man Who Saved The Game (2022)

Granted, the subject matter of this movie is enough to rope me in immediately since I love old pinball machines, but even if you’re unfamiliar with the history, lore & mystique surrounding pinball machines, this film works wonderfully as a low-key optimistic movie about people making positive choices for themselves.

Yes, filmmaker brothers Austin & Meredith Bragg have taken the historic footnote story of how GQ writer Roger Sharpe helped to end the ban on pinball machines in NYC back in the 1970s and have turned it into a very entertaining tale structured as a documentary, although even that part is fictional.

Similar to American Spendor, we have a current-day Roger Sharpe talking to an off-camera director or directly to us during the narrative following the younger Roger (a wonderful Mike Faist) as he journeys from falling in love with pinball in college to a journalism career in NYC and a romance with young single mom Ellen (Crystal Reed). But unlike American Splendor which intercut the real Harvey Pekar into the Paul Giamatti version, our current day Sharpe is played by Dennis Boutsikaris, made up to appear as a dead ringer for the real Sharpe, if you care.

And it works – Boutskaris’ narration as well as his faux arguments with the director over which direction the film is heading works well comically as well as keeps a sense of the historic context of what wer’re watching. And first time fearure makers the Braggs have a fantastic visual sense – the set designs, color palette, wardrobe and especially Faist’s monster mustache give us the best visual reproducton of the mid-70s since probably Dazed & Confused. Small character roles like his fellow GQ staffers or the pinball company execs are cast perfectly with character actor who look the part – the attention to detail is mpeccable, as well as the choices made both in structuring the script and in the dialogue.

Faist & Reed also have wonderful onscreen chemistry. Faist can pull off the poignant moments as well as the comic ones, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s a lauded stage actor when you see how well he uses his gangly body to melt into his character. This guy ought to be going onto a great acting career. His romance with Reed is cute but not saccharine, and plays into part of Sharpe’s defense of pinball to the NYC council as a game of skill and not a game of chance, which is why LaGuardia had outlawed pinball decades earlier as a gambling device.

You choose what to aim at and shoot for during a pinball game – what targets? What bonus? How will you get to the free game, or extra ball, or can you turn the machine over? With flipper skill, you can carom the ball, cradle it to perfect a shot… and like Sharpe did in his demonstration for the city council, nail a plunger shot just so in order to complete a set of targets. Sharpe applies it to life choices – the ball is always going to drain, so pick your best shot.

Sharpe went from GQ writer to pinball designer and consultant, as well as marriage with Ellen and more kids. The film depicts how the publishers gutted a lot of the history & interviews with pinball company magnates out of his 1977 coffee table book. Not sure if it ever got into a later editon, but since I own a copy of Harry McKeown’s Pinball Portfolio book from 1976, there are a lot of other books on the subject out there.

And like I said, I love old pinball machines, several of which are shown in the movie, either played or just in the background. Nerdy Jim recognized a lot of ’em, like Williams “Big Ben,” a favorite of mine back at the old Midland Mall arcade “Aladdin’s Castle” in the Rhode Island of 1976. I got a Gottlieb “Ice Revue” (1965) as a bar-mitzvah present, at a price of $150 from a vending machine seller up on Federal Hill. (Clearly no mob involvement at all. None!). It got sold when my parents sold the house and I moved across the country. Alas, I no longer have it. Recently I saw “Ice Revue” beautifully restored at a game/pool table store and the dude wanted $4500 for it. For Sharpe, the Holy Grail machine was Gottlieb’s “Cow Poke” from the same era, a machine featuring wonderful animated backglass props of a mule kicking someone. The older machines with the mechanical score reels, with the analog circuits and relays, with actual bells for sounds – are preferable to the 1980s and on electronic games with the LED scoreboards. But the playfield design and backglass art remains a wonderful time capsule of pop culture. For some guys, it’s the love of changing car designs. I prefer pinball games, I guess.

While Sharpe has a basement filled with a bunch of actual old machines, I’ll probably take the cheaper route of a virtual pinball table loaded with classic games at some point when I feel like blowing several thousand dollars on myself. That way I’ll get Ice Revue back – along with Cow Poke, Big Ben, Fireball, Kings & Queens, Eight Ball Deluxe…and anything else I can load into it.

That is, before my ball drains. Thank you and try the veal.

Two TV Shows & A Movie: Reviews

It’s been a while since I felt like there was anything worth writing about to put on here, but here I am again with some recommendations of stuff to watch.

Been spending a lot of time on domestic issues – home improvement, and acclimating my new cat (yay! kitty!) to his new surroundings, although the little bastard has pretty much acted like he owns this place since he arrived. He personifies (or cat-ifies?) the eternal riddle of cat brain: smart enough to figure out how to open every closet door in the house by jumping up and pulling the door handles, but not smart enough to figure out what glass is and how it keeps him from eating the lizards outside. When he wakes me out of bed in the wee hours with his paw banging on the windows, I’ve tried calling him a shit for brains dumbass to shame him into learning, but it’s not working. Wondering if he’s thinking I’m the shit for brains dumbass for getting out of bed whenever he does this, but I guess I’m too big a shit for brains dumbass to figure that out. If he figures out how to reprogram the autofeeder and spells out “Fuck the system” with his dry food along the floor, I’m calling the exorcist.

Ah, but your lovable king of leisure time has some streaming recommenations for ya.

First up is a spankin’ new documentary that came out a couple of weeks ago but somehow is already available free via Hoopla, The Mojo Manifesto (2023), a very entertaining straightforward documentary on the career of Mojo Nixon. I’m sure y’all remember Mojo’s biggest radio hit “Elvis Is Everywhere,” and this doc covers his entire career interspliced with clips from a present day interview showing that the older, grayer and heavier Mojo is still exactly the same loud mouth obscene hilarious guy he’s always been. The film begins in the middle of the story – after Mojo split from his longtime music partner Skid Roper. Their falling out must still sting since Skid refused to take part in this documentary, but it seems like everyone else Mojo has ever worked with eagerly takes part & still works with the guy. He’s had the same manager forever & has been married for over thirty years – and maybe it’s my own prejudice but whenever a music/movie celeb has a track record like that and is as brutally honest-not-give-a-shit the way Mojo is, I gotta think the problem here is with Skid. Anyway – lots of fun clips here and snippets of Mojo’s music – my only beef with this film was that no complete song is ever featured or spotlit, but I guess that’s what digging out the old record collection or youtube is for. Watching this brought back some nice memories of seeing Mojo & Skid live back in the late ’80s, a very funny show and also a revelation that those guys are actually pretty adept musicians. One of my favorite Mojo stories is included only over the end credits, however: after putting out the song “Don Henley Must Die,” Henley turned up at one of Mojo’s concerts. And to his everlasting credit, Henley got up on stage surprising Mojo and singing the song with him. Only Morrissey doing that to Mojo’s rockabilly cover of “Girlfriend in a Coma” might top that, I guess.

Currently running on AMC is Lucky Hank, an 8 episode adaptation of the novel “Straight Man” by Richard Russo staring Bob Oedenkirk as English prof Hank Devereaux Jr, an academic shlub at a small mediocrity (his own words) of a college, dealing with the various struggles in his life – mostly in his long-absent father retiring from the fame and success of Columbia and NYC to move to the same small town. This plays out a lot like Alexander Payne Lite, in that it focuses mostly on people who are mired in failure, but once I got past the first episode, which I thought magnified the cringe factor a bit too much, the show has gotten better. The supporting characters of other professors and students and family members have been developed more, and while the tone has been maintained, a major difference between this show and the kind of material Payne lives in (Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, etc.) is that the show likes the characters and adds a humane touch. In episode 1 I thought this show would go in the Payne-like direction of making the entire show about the moral failing & weakness of the characters, which is always the prevailing theme in his films. He’s one of the only directors who hates people who makes movies I like, by the way. Oedenkirk is good here, especially in his darkly sarcastic one-liner replies to the characters around him when he’s the only one in the room acknowledging reality. The storyline, true to the novel, unfolds slowly – the pressures of both Hank’s job and his wife’s assistant principal job are handled adeptly, and the open and honest nature of their marital discussions is very refreshing TV. Hank’s family story with his parents lies at the center, so no spoilers here. Different academic “types” are satirized a lot, as well as the sorts of petty faculty rivalries and fights over nothing that I know about all too well after my decades in that venue. Maybe that’s why I like this show. Making fun of academia in the small-failure setting is a genre that turns up a lot in novels since they’re all written by English profs who take the teaching jobs since their novels might get critical wows or log rolling but don’t make a lot of money (ahem. Go up to “Buy My Books” and hit those amazon links, ya plebes). Russo has had commercial success with a lot of his work however, but clearly understands the world he’s writing about. While the novel came out in the 1990s and the campus has changed a lot (and for the worse) since, not a whole lot needed to be updated here.

For Jimmy The Foodie™, I got a rec to check out The Bear, an eight episode first series of a dark dramedy due for a second season of ten episodes this coming June. Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmy, a chef from the French Laundry world of snob cuisine who returns to run his families’ old beef sammich shop in Chicago after his brother commits suicide. This was another show that took me a few episodes to get into – the opener felt like people yelling at each other in a chaotic atmosphere for a solid thirty minutes and not much else – but as later episodes go on, the supporting characters of the restaurant staff and the backstory of the family, of him, and of all sorts of stuff with the supporting characters are drawn out very well and it becomes very engrossing. I’m not sure why this show is considered a comedy by all the awards categories in Hollywood – there are funny moments and lines, but the situations themselves are very real and it feels way more like a character drama. It’s very well done – acting, directing and story structuring within episodes and with the overall season arc are solid. There’s a lot of cooking/food stuff in here as well, especially with Carmy’s new sous chef hire Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and his ambitious baker Marcus (Lionel Boyce). Ebon Moss-Bachrach is also wonderful at making his cousin Richie character into an annoying asshole but who you feel sympathy for.

Wait, did I tell you to buy my books? I got a cat to feed, y’know.

Movies Worth Seeing: The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent (2022)

One of the stranger, stupider and very enjoyable movies of late is this odd homage to the persona/brand that is Nicolas Cage. Similar to how William Shatner has parlayed self-parody into iconic form, Cage plays “himself” in this action comedy send-up of the sorts of formula plots found in many of Cage’s earlier films.

The plot involves Cage taking a trip to Spain to meet the mysterious billionaire Javi Gutierrez (a wonderful scene stealing Pedro Pascal), who turns out to be Cage’s ultimate fanboy, wanting to make a film with him. Meanwhile, Cage is recruited by the CIA to take down Gutierrez, who actually fronts an international arms dealing crime family who kidnapped an innocent girl and…. I know, I know… you gotta be kidding me. But the whole thing is played for some good laughs, and the satire of Cage’s creative process as he works with and ultimately bonds with Javi as they meta-discuss developing a character driven movie where two men come together to save those close to them…

Well, while evoking much of one of Cage’s best films “Adaptation” without ever directly mentioning it, “Unbearable Weight…” does a lot of the same circular referencing type of stuff, throwing in material from many of Cage’s popcorn action films like Con-Air, The Rock, Gone In 60 Seconds, etc. The most direct parallel to Adaptation is how Cage occasionally argues with his younger self, a mostly cheerleading Raising Arizona-era version of Cage created via the magic of CGI. Adaptation satirized Hollywood formula more effectively and more explicitly than this, but Unbearable… does a wonderful job of keeping things moving along, is very well directed, and has a supporting cast strong enough to keep everything together in what amounts to a two hour version of how Vincent Price actually becomes the movie heroes his ham-actor character plays at the end of “His Kind of Woman.”

Evidently writer/director Tom Gormican got turned down multiple times by Cage in pitching this film, but a personal letter somehow changed Cage’s mind. And unsurprisingly, Cage co-produced it in the end.

If you’re a fan of the Nic Cage As Everyone idea, this is the movie for you.

A Big Book Roundup Part 3: Movies & Sports Edition

To continue with some quick book reviews/recs, here are a bunch related to various ends of the entertainment world:

Round Up The Usual Suspects by Aljean Harmetz – had this one sitting on my shelf for years and finally got around to reading about all the behind the scenes action in the making of Casablanca, one of the greatest American films ever made. Wonderfully researched & written, with pretty much everything you need to know. Her book on The Wizard Of Oz is next on my shelf and next on my list.

The Searchers: Making of an American Legend by Glen Frankel: A marvelous piece of scholarship not only about the making of the John Ford classic film, but also an exhaustive history of the true story it was based on, that of the Comanche abduction of Cynthia Ann Parker in 1836 Texas. Frankel does a great job with the detailed history of that event, and of her family taking her back against her will after she had married the chief & given birth to the chief who would make peace. The book goes from the history to the story written about it that led to the film, and how the film altered the actual story. This appealed to my interest in history, and also provided enough behind the scenes material about one of my favorite westerns as well.

A pair of gossipy entertainments that go together are Mr. S: My Life With Frank Sinatra by George Jacobs, and Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin. Both books follow the same basic arc – an outsider (Jacobs was Sinatra’s valet, Bushkin was Carson’s business advisor, dubbed “Bombastic Bushkin” in monologue jokes) gets invited into the inner social circle of a huge celebrity and tags along for various adventures with other celebs, drinking, sex, affairs, you name it – often being dragged along and demanded to be part of things by either Sinatra or Carson as they struggle to have friends they can actually trust when they trust very few. And in the end, both men are frozen out for some single event that the celeb can never forgive. Both books have some interesting stories and gossip (Jacobs might win in this regard, some of the throwaway things he says about various celebs are sickly funny an eye opening if true. Who knew Yul Brynner had an affair with Sal Mineo? I’ll never watch The Ten Commandments the same way again), and both are quick reads, to be sure.

More somber and certainly more pious was The Closer by Mariano Rivera, Rivera’s autobio of his life in Panama and his journey to the Yankees, leading to his amazing career as the greatest closer relief pitcher of all time. While a lot of the book gets into the baseball details, the overriding tone is that of Rivera’s enormous religious faith (he originally intended to become a priest) and how his faith interacted with his career. Some of the stories he tells of some of the heartbreaking losses I remember from my own Yankee fandom are discussed in terms of Rivera’s views on God’s overall plans for him in ways that are, quite simply, more sincere, different and beautiful than any other baseball autobio I’ve plowed through. The storyline is very matter of fact, but the big takeaway for me was how the steadiness of the guy on the mound was very much a product of that amazingly strong faith.

No religion to be found in Betting On Myself By Steven Crist, Crist’s autobio of how he journeyed through a journalism career to buying the Daily Racing Form and transforming it into the more modern version it is today. He also discusses his own history of betting the tracks, starting out back in his Harvard Lampoon days going to the Suffolk Downs dog park with fellow Lampooner George Meyer, who’d go on to be one of the big wheels on The Simpsons and clearly the source of Santa’s Little Helper. Crist, the son of film critic Judith Crist, also wrote a book called Exotic Betting, where he delves into all of his methods of pick 6 and pick 4 combos at the track – a wonderfully helpful book to me in figuring out my own betting strategies whenever I handicap the horse races. Crist was one of the best pick 6 players out there (although I’m FAR too cheap to bet all over the board like he did). Betting On Myself focuses more on his myriad journey through the publishing business, and his ups and downs in doing so. Since his theories were so helpful to me improving my own performances at the track, I found his autobio very interesting.

Next Up: Some Art & History

Some Super-Brief Movie Reviews

Since I’m still fried from a cross country trip, I won’t go into great detail on any of these, but here’s a batch of movies worth checking out, some recent, some old:

Old Henry (2021) – a very well made old fashioned straight-forward western, with a nice reveal that I’m ashamed of myself for not spotting earlier, and a terrific shoot-out at the end.

Last Night In Soho (2022) – another Edgar Wright entry that showcases both his strengths and weaknesses (my pet peeve is how he over-drags out his climactic payoffs, and that’s true here) but there’s some wonderfully creepy haunting imagery in this one which features Diana Rigg’s final screen appearance. A decent psychological thriller where a young fashion designer uncovers some rather unsavory secrets left over from the swingin’ ’60s Carnaby Street scene of yesteryear.

I got a bunch of Czech films from a friend of mine and am working my way through them – I started with Kolya (1996), a sweet comedy about a terminal bachelor who gets stuck with a kid after an arranged marriage for immigration purposes goes awry. The impressive thing here is how well this material is handled versus typical Hollywood formula where some dirty old man becomes superdad when getting stuck with a kid, etc. The same actor (Zdenek Sverak) and director (Jan Sverak, they are father and son) also made a wonderful film in 2007, Empties, about a teacher who quits his job and works in a market recycling used bottles while trying to keep his longtime marriage together. Both movies give you a great visual tour of Prague as well. Then I checked out Closely Watched Trains (1966), an excellent (if depressing) film set in World War 2 focusing on a train dispatcher’s apprentice and his experiences growing up during the war and what it did to Czechoslovakia. All 3 are worth checking out.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) – with CUMBERBATCH!!!! as artist Louis Wain, everyone’s favorite crazy cat man. Most of this film focuses on Wain’s mental illness and tries to present some sort of theory of the source of his issues from his family life and the death of his wife. The performances are good, but the film is very repetitive in Cumberbatch’s various breakdown episodes (as much as I like this guy as an actor, he’s getting typecast a LOT as mentally troubled geniuses), and it practically pushes his art into the background, whereas I went into it hoping that his art would be the focus. In case you don’t know about wain, he produced a ton of silly humanized cat characters doing silly human things, but has he got sicker, his art got more abstract and nearly psychedelic, yet still always based on cat designs. The fascinating thing about Wain is how he kept his artistic skills or even got better at them as his mental illness worsened.

Hmm… I wrote the most about the cat one…. that figures.

Movies Worth Seeing: The Sparks Brothers (2021)

Edgar Wright’s fan-boy documentary about Ron & Russell Mael, the brothers who comprise the long-running cult band Sparks, is a worthwhile view for anyone who has been a longtime fan of the band, and worthwhile for someone who has only a vague familiarity with a song or two, or has never heard of them.

The film advertises Sparks as “your favorite band’s favorite band,” and this sums up a lot of it – they have always been admired and held in awe by people within the music world for decades, largely since Sparks serves as a shining example of a music act that never really sold out commercially – they have changed their sound (somewhat) over the years (though they remain largely a synth rock/pop sound driven by Ron’s keyboards and Russell’s falsetto flourishes) – and whenever they had issued a commercial hit, it often led to them continuing to experiment with different line-ups, producers, or a general approach. Add to that an amazing consistency in clever and often humorous lyrics – decades worth, rivaling Zappa in the “prolific” category if not the genre experimentation category – and you can see why every one of your favorite bands holds them in such esteem. These guys have actually had the art-for-art-sakes career that every musician pines for.

Wright’s film traces the lives and careers of the brothers Mael in great detail, mixing tons of archival footage with present day interviews shot in black and white, as well as some animation. The film will certainly tell you the entire chronology of the band and its ups and downs as far as successful releases, change of record labels, and the different phases of their story.

It’s a fun ride – but Wright is so blinded by his love for the band that the film often becomes repetitive and leaves out a deeper examination of their music. Anyone who has followed the Maels’ career knows that they are very secretive about their personal and private lives, and prefer to present themselves to the public as the quirky-artsy music act they’ve been for all these years. Despite all the narrative we get in a music doc running two and a quarter hours – that’s all we’re STILL left with in the end – and that’s fine – but perhaps in those two and a quarter hours, we might find SOME room for deeper reflection and discussion of their music itself?

We get wisps of songs and videos the band has done – Wright picks most of their best work to showcase here – but he goes through all of it so quickly that we get no anchor, no key window into the ways that Ron writes these songs, or which of those songs he and Russell might have something to say about, in terms of why they got written in the first place. Not one song is presented in its entirety. This is a huge mistake.

Other music docs have run into problems with their subject – Taylor Hackford’s Chuck Berry doc Hail, Hail, Rock & Roll showcases a fantastic concert of all stars backing up Chuck, but Berry shut down any attempt during interviews that took the narrative into darker places, even if they were true. End of the Century: The Story of The Ramones went to those dark places – celebrating the music of the band and their enormous influence on other bands – but also presented the frustration and interpersonal problems the band went through. There are a lot of similarities in the Ramones’ story and Sparks – both bands never achieved the huge commercial success they had been touted for early on in their careers, but both bands influenced countless other bands and were viewed with awe by fellow musicians. The Ramones wanted that commercial fame – Sparks could care less.

The XTC documentary, This Is Pop, also dealt greatly with the commercial success versus artistic integrity issues and how they can rip a band apart – but the film makers managed to get Andy Partridge on camera discussing his composition method, and how his synaesthesia figures into it – and watching those few minutes suddenly made nearly every one of his songs make sense.

Wright gives us no such insight into what comprises the songwriting of the Maels. A few seconds of a song will be played, and some interviewee will comment on a lyric line or two – and that’s all. I really don’t care what Fred Armisen things of a Sparks lyric. I’d rather hear Ron Mael talk about where it came from. There is one moment when former band members reveal that the music would be written first with nonsense words, and the actual lyrics would come in at the last minute. Why not interview the Maels about this process? Is it the routine, since they prefer routine in their daily lives?

I’d rather hear it from them than the parade of cool-approved personalities telling us how much they love the band – Wright takes up far too much screen time with famous fans of the band all saying basically the same thing. I don’t care how much Patton Oswalt or Amy Sherman-Palladino or Mike Meyers love this band. I also don’t NEED their stamp of approval for me to like them either – and that’s probably the biggest flaw with this film. Wright’s interviews with their former band mates, producers and music industry people offer far more insight into the Sparks’ story than hearing the same “Oh those guys are so cool!” gushing from people we’re supposed to follow the tastes of.

More of the film should be about the music. Granted, 25 albums and hundreds of songs are a lot of ground to cover, but why not have the Maels pick a few of their favorites for closer examination, or find a way to feature those songs in their entirety in the film? Like I said, we get no song in its entirety at all. We’re told over and over again how brilliant this band is – and often by people totally unrelated to the production of music – but we are not allowed to listen to the evidence in depth. And we never get any sort of deeper reflection from the Maels, either via Wright’s interviews or in archival footage, on any of the songs themselves. It’s biggest hole in the film.

And I’ll admit that while I’m always happy to have a band like this out there, it’s not like I own a ton of their records and listen to them all the time. I like these guys a lot, but I’ve always found them to be more of an art-visual act rather than just music alone. Check out some of their videos on their youtube channel I link in a bit to see the totality of it all. Wright’s doc mentions their love of film and their near-misses in getting more involved with movies (although it looks like they have a soundtrack gig coming up). They’re not the obvious “art school band” that Devo or Talking Heads are, but they’ve gotca similar vibe. The synth-pop sound is okay to me, but not my passion – but this movie’s lack of depth for their music DID have me diving deep into youtube, (Here is a link to Sparks’ official youtube channel) listening to the songs of theirs I did remember pretty well, and then discovering their more recent material. And all of it was pretty good. I kept thinking more of it needed to be in the film.

So I recommend the movie on that level – it’s an overly long documentary that somehow manages to make you hungry enough for what it ought to be about.

Movies Worth Seeing: Pig (2021)

It’s been a while since I saw any new films worth recommending. But I’ve seen a couple in the past week worth your while.

First up is “Pig,” featuring Nicolas Cage searching for his stolen truffle pig. The film begins with Cage living a wilderness-man off-the-grid life in some deep woods, digging up truffles with his pig and selling them to someone who starts out looking to us as some yuppie asshole.

Cage is beaten and robbed of the pig later on – and since he has some inkling of who stole her, he treks to the city (Portland) to find her. In this journey, we’re brought into a bizarre underground world of chefs and chi-chi over-fancy Portlandia style overpriced gourmet bullshit as Cage tries to get his pig back.

And what makes the film truly work is that Cage doesn’t care about the truffles. He loves the pig.

The film is a long and slowly revealed character study of Rob (Cage) – little by little, we learn of his backstory and why he was out in those woods in the first place. As he pairs with that truffle buying yuppie asshole Amir (a wonderful Alex Wolff), we learn more about Amir’s backstory as well…. and how it intertwines in significant ways with Rob.

The trailer & some of Cage’s recent films (Mandy, Willy’s Wonderland, etc) would make you think the story would be a violent revenge bloodbath with Cage avenging his stolen pig – but this movie is a quiet and beautifully sad drama, mostly about loss, grief, and the power of memory to trap us into emotions. The ways in which the sensory experience of a wonderful meal can create and trigger such strong emotional memory figures strongly into the plotlines and character exposition. Wonderful interactions between Rob and people of his past, especially a former prep cook now a chef who crumbles under Rob’s brutal honesty, helps us see Rob’s rejection of the entire Portlandia gourmet scene much more clearly. And in those reconnections, we see the devestating toll of loss – not only the loss of a beloved pig pet, but of truth, of hopes and dreams, of plans, and ultimately of all human contact.

Cage plays his role beautifully – with the never ending stream of weird crap the guy makes, it’s always a good thing to be reminded what a great actor he can be. He’s great here – buried under facial wound make-up for the entirety of this film, and slowly building up his verbiage as the film goes on and he adjusts to the city after years alone (well, not really alone… he had his pig) in the woods.

Highly recommended!

No, I Really Don’t Care

No predictions. Won’t be watching. Did not see ANY of the nominees. None. Zero. Zilch.

I may in the future, but a lot of ’em sound pretty yawn-worthy.

It’s an asterisk year.

Okay, one prediction: the awards will be given out largely on the basis on politics more than any other previous year.

Another reason not to bother.

Another GREATEST FILM EVER MADE

Certainly the most ’70s trailer I’ve seen. Just listen to that quasi-porn funk guitar soundtrack. Check out those bleached out colors. How about the car smashups with those old gas guzzling bombers?

Not ’70s enough for you? How about the stiff line readings for whatever dialogue we get, or spotting Richard Jaeckel as most likely cop and Lloyd Bochner clearly as mob boss?

Funny… this morning I was thinking about Bochner’s classic Twilight Zone where the aliens have him on the menu in “To Serve Man.” Then I remembered how be played Pia Zadora’s impotent husband in “The Lonely Lady.”

Ah well. He mostly did TV in the 70s and 80s, like Dynasty and the like. But he’s great in “Point Blank” and on an old Wild Wild West where he plays a demented genius puppeteer with life size puppets.

Jaeckel mostly played sleazebags, due to those wild eyes of his. Not quite Steve Railsback level, but close enough.

But a wheelchair with shotguns in the arms? I’m in! Time to hunt this piece of crap down and put it on my own menu.

I have a feeling that the two minute trailer will be more entertaining than the film itself, but let’s hope I’m wrong. Perhaps some heavy doses of slo-mo martial arts fight scenes and gratuitous nudity will truly make this one a classic.

My Past Continues To Die

A flurry of celebrity deaths of people all connected to the entertainment of my childhood and beyond…

First, producer Gene Reynolds died at a ripe old 96. He’d produced the early seasons of M*A*S*H along with Lou Grant and Hogan’s Heroes, Room 222 and a bunch of other stuff. Especially considering that M*A*S*H’s best years were under his & Larry Gelbart’s supervision, countless hours were spent (and often still are) watching Reynolds’ shows.

Then Orson Bean got hit by two cars while walking in Venice Beach. The first knocked the 91 year old to the ground and the second ran him over. I haven’t read any more about it – I hope it wasn’t some moron on their phone. Bean was a mainstay on game shows like To Tell The Truth back in the day, and more recently was wonderful in Being John Malkovich. Long ago, a friend of mine appeared with Bean in a small theater production out here – a very odd musical about John Cleves Symmes’ attempt in the 19th century to find the hole at the north pole leading to the center of the Earth. I’ll always remember hearing how after the playwright got stone-drunk after witnessing the flop of premiere night, supposedly Bean, playing Symmes’ old professor narrating the tale, came backstage and announced something along the lines of “Looks like we got us here a real bomb, folks!” and everyone erupted in laughter.

For the record, the actors were fine, some set design items were clever… but the script? Ye Gods!

Every backstage story I heard about Bean fit his TV persona.

And then, Robert Conrad died yesterday, star of one of my favorite old shows, The Wild Wild West. Conrad was always reliable for fist fights with his stuntmen buddies in numerous scenes (usually the legendary Red West and Whitey Hughes), and for playing tough guys. He played one of the scuzzier Columbo villains as well, a fitness guru who runs a string of crooked health clubs and murders the guy who discovers the Ponzi scheme behind them. His WW2 TV show got made fun of a lot in its day, but looking back on it in reruns, it’s a decent wartime adventure show with its plots loosely based on the memoirs of Conrad’s role, “Pappy” Boyington.

Conrad had a sense of humor about his image, doing those silly battery ads or losing foot races to Gabe Kaplan on Battle of the Network Stars. Many years ago when Howard Stern’s fans made it their business to phone into the Larry King Live show on CNN and annoy King with endless Stern promotion after King and Stern had some feud, Conrad was on King’s show being interviewed about some project he had coming up, and the Stern-themed calls started rolling in. King kept getting angrier and angrier, but Conrad couldn’t stop laughing and playing along with them.

It’s what Jim West woulda done, with Artie Gordon calling in.

Want more treasured elements of the past to blow up before your eyes? Well, why not start with tonight’s Oscar Awards.

I won’t make any Oscar predictions this year. I just don’t care anymore. I haven’t watched the broadcast in the last couple of years, and I’m not missing anything. I still love movies, but this event no longer has any sort of luster or importance to me at all.

And the WORST of all?

Well, I just got back from running some errands which included a stop at the 99 Cents Only store. And as I browsed the aisles, I noticed more and more items that are NOT 99 cents, but are labeled as supposed “bargains” at 2.99, 3.99, 9.99 and so forth.

They ought to change the name of the store to 99 Cents On Some Stuff, Anyway instead of 99 Cents Only. Amirite?

AND they didn’t have a big plastic pasta strainer to replace the one I have that developed a few cracks. NOR did they have the brand of deodorant I like. THOSE BASTARDS.

But karma – the shopping Gods smiled upon me, and I found a very nice wool winter jacket up the street at Goodwill for only twenty bucks. SO SUCK IT, 99 CENTS FOR WHAT WE BAIT AND SWITCH YOU WITH STORE.

Now I’m home, about to check the math on my friggin taxes. Bah.