The abortion doctor that Bill O’Reilly targeted has been targeted by good Christians. Sick irony:
WICHITA – George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death Sunday morning as he walked into church services.
Tiller was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim.
DRAG ME TO HELL is an absolute summer blast, with Sam Raimi cookin’ on all horror cylinders. See it. Or else you know where you’re going…
Made you look, didn’t I? In honor of VH1′s “The Making of RIO” here’s a nasty banned video from 1982 for Duran Duran’s most erotic song, “The Chauffeur.” The last track on their pop masterpiece, RIO, and one that highlights Nick Rhodes mad synth skillz along with some of Simon LeBon’s most impressionistic lyrics, the video is a sensual combination of Helmut Newton and New Romanticism. Put this song on auto-repeat and at some point, you’ll get laid. Sing Blue Silver…
Still the best film ever made about high school? I think so, I think so. AMERICAN GRAFFITI beats it for texture and character, but Richard Linklater’s DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993) is so unsentimental I wasn’t sure what to make of the film on opening day. I’ve since come to see it as exactly that, unsentimental, yet subtly pivotal. And it perfectly captures the latitude of high school abandon on the edge of summer. Mercifully free of excessive 70′s paraphanellia (“Hey, look at my bell bottoms!”), the film is naturalistic to the era, with the community sanctioned hazing being the most disturbing cultural element. I remember the tortures inflicted on the meek and weak in school, so 1976 Texas must have been a teen sadist’s buffet, as the loose narrative evidences.
Linklater is the least show-offy director around, favoring a Bressonian languidity as befits his Austin background. Even the cast reflects actual teens who look real and often fragile. Who hasn’t seen or been involved with Nicky Katt’s party asskicker? And Matthew McConaughey’s affable, laconic Wooderson is the definition of a star making performance. It’s a very cool ensemble of eclectic actors. There’s a lot of good stuff in this great film, including the moment with Wiley Wiggins dropping into bed and headphones at the end of his wild night. The Criterion disc is the one to have, with a yearbook of extras, including an honest commentary by Richard Linklater on his travails dealing with the studio, a must for any filmmaker or those interested in the process. But DAZED AND CONFUSED was worth his struggle.
You have to love the way one of the most idiosyncratic “arthouse” directors of the 1970′s has transcended culture and geography for critical and popular success in America. I don’t know what to make of his attempt to re-adapt Abel Ferrera’s THE BAD LIEUTENANT with Nicholas Cage, but until AVATAR comes out, this is the craziest trailer of the year. Cage is a mad man. Herzog is a mad man. They should call this THE MAD LIEUTENANT. I’m there.
If you have any doubt that Dick Cheney is as evil as those who attacked us, look at your own peril these photos of the sanctioned raped of men and women prisoners who were not charged with any crime but merely rounded up and tossed into our cells during our War Of Liberation. Bush and Cheney won’t be charged with any crimes either, although Obama knows they are guilty as sin. And lawyer turned enabler John Yoo has tenure at UC Berkeley. So it goes.
The Good: Obama picks Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. The GOP starts another limp fight we all know it will lose.
The Bad: The California State Supreme Court upholds ban on gay marriage. Do people forget this state elected Reagan twice along with Arnold?
The Ugly: Everything else.
Apropos of Memorial Day, I was thinking about Bill Murray’s dramatic debut in THE RAZOR’S EDGE, the film that bred GHOSTBUSTERS. Published in 1944, Somerset Maugham’s influential THE RAZOR’S EDGE was perhaps the first “beat” novel in the sense that Larry Darrell stood as the archetypal post world war generation American seeking transcendence outside of prescribed consumer society. After harsh battle experiences, Darrell goes on a global quest to find out the meaning of life as the novel jumps between Maugham’s first person recollections with Darrell and his friends, families and lovers. It’s one of my favorite books that I revisit every few years; Maugham was a witty, perceptive writer and his distance from Darrell’s mystic epiphanies keeps it out of Herman Hesse territory.
Bill Murray was also obviously a fan, so him and John Byrum, the director who initiated the project, persuaded Columbia Pictures to finance their screenplay of THE RAZOR’S EDGE (it had been filmed once before in 1946) after Murray agreed to make GHOSTBUSTERS, which was released to the inevitable pile of acclaim and money. Murray was now at the peak of his film success, and he had high, nervous expectations for his thespic aspirations in a 70mm epic. Here’s how Columbia marketed the film:
The trailer oversells the romance but also showcases the vast scope of the story, made manifest by Jack Nitzsche’s grand, beautiful score, the film’s greatest esthetic asset. Regardless, when the film was released in the summer of 1984, the critics were not kind and audiences stayed away in droves, not expecting or wanting to see wacky Bill Murray wax existential spiritualism. This conflict resides in Murray’s performance, and there are times when he plays it too anachronistic (you almost expect him to noogey Catherine Hicks), almost as if he’s afraid to commit to the character. And for all his stoic grace, Maugham’s Larry Darrell was not a funny man prone to zingers. But the adaptation is fairly loose (tho some moments are captured verbatim) even to the extant of creating a whole World War One battle sequence so Murray can mourn his dead captain (Brian Doyle Murray) in a veiled tribute to John Belushi. You have to give Murray props for ambition. And it would take more than a decade before he reinvented himself as an actor in RUSHMORE.
More successful are the supporting cast, particularly Theresa Russell as Darrell’s fallen woman, Sophie. Russell nails the character’s wanton apathy and she deserved a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Denholm Elliot is also good as the bitchy antique dealer and Ultimate Snob, Elliot Templeton. The cinematography by Peter Hannan is lush and widescreen as befits the subject, and director Byrum has a stately eye for the period geography. I think the last shot is perfect. At least the film attempts to say something about the tension between spirit and civilization — a surefire recipe for box-office disaster in the middle of Reagan’s Nike and Cocaine era.
THE RAZOR’S EDGE failure certainly disspirited Bill Murray, who moved to France and left the industry for four years. It’s a shame the film didn’t receive more positive attention, as it’s well worth watching, and there are enough things that work to make it a flawed, fascinating effort. Jack Nitzsche’s magnificent soundtrack for one. The bare bones DVD certainly needs a do-over. And when do we get to see this in 70mm 6-track again?
The title track is classic sweeping a-ha. Drops 6.19. Here’s the official promo:
From 1968, Live At The Hollywood Bowl:
“And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don’t stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for – our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.”
- Dick Cheney, May 21, 2009
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
- Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002
That’s a fantastic poster. And there are some great things about SWE1:TPM which I saw in Austin on May 19, 1999, a long time ago in a city far far away. What are these great things you ask? Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor, who brought depth to their limited roles; John Williams magnificent score, an equal to all his previous trilogy soundtracks; the kinetic light saber duel at the finale, giving us the saberplay we’d been waiting for; and the greatest thing about THE PHANTOM MENACE was sitting in the dark theater as the 20th Century Fox fanfare began for the first STAR WARS film in almost two decades…
So newspapers are dying and the marketing ghouls are prepping us for the next wave of “branded” news brought to you by multi-national sweatshop cultural monopolizers like Nike and Microsoft. Yeah, that sounds just like democracy in action. But it doesn’t stop the feverish wet dreams of the mad men and women from trying to keep us in our consumer cage. Try to read this thing by marketing zombie Heidi Sinclair and see if your gorge becomes boyuant:
With the disaggregation of media, brands can talk directly to their customers and have direct relationships. A lot of experimentation has gone on in this area with sponsored programming, branded content on websites and television and joint media advertiser partnerships. I have been dabbling in this space for over a decade, and believe that now is the time for certain brands to extend into media directly. Nike could be the next ESPN. I’d go to Nike to get sports scores, watch games and get fitness tips.
Proto-Republican turned “progressive” blogger Markos Moulitas again shows his true former conservative colors by banning a long-time diarist because he dares to imply that Team Bush was lax in 9/11 preparedness. Kos considers this a “CT” or Conspiracy Theory — of which we know no conspiracies ever happen. Even a conspiracy by Saudi radicals to attack America. I’ve long known that Kos is a smug little bully, and his site has banned and driven off so many smart people that it’s impossible to keep count. Remember, Markos banned Cindsy Sheehan after she criticized the Democratic party — thus the tone on the site went from “We Love You Cindy” to “Goodybe Attention Whore.” Seriously. Maybe now the orange lemmings at that political sports fantasy site are waking up to realize what a phony opportunist Kos has been all along. Probably not, but this revolt against the site master is a good start. It’s called “Democracy” Kos! Here’s one sample:
You were in the right place at the right time. And kudos to your pithy brief writing style that attracted a following. But what an arrogant ass you have turned out to be over the years… little dictator, little businessman that you are.
Thanks for exercising your owner discretion in such a thoughtful way, you disingenuous little new media whore.
by rhfactor on Sun May 17, 2009 at 11:30:49 PM PDT
Technicolor Dreams 70
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