Summer In The City

While Southern California burns, we fiddle:

Happy Birthday Jack “King” Kirby

 

Jack Kirby was the Einstein of comic books. The creator of almost all of Marvel’s iconic characters, from SPIDER-MAN to X-MEN, Kirby’s epic, dynamic, visual storytelling transformed comic history, with able writing assist from Stan Lee, making them an unbeatable team in the 1960′s.

To celebrate The King’s birthday, here’s my favorite comic book scene of all time for myriad reasons, from THOR #154, 1968, during the multi-issue “Ragnarok” saga, when a monstrous God (Mangog) is on a warpath to destroy both Deity and Man. This section occurs in a melancholy moment when Thor wanders the streets of New York, contemplating mankind’s unknowing fate. He comes across a group of hippies and you can view his Norse God-like response below…

I interviewed Stan Lee once for “Written By” magazine and told him this was my favorite comic book scene ever and he excitedly said it was one of his favorites and nobody had ever mentioned it to him. He sounded truly pleased and Lee was my home-boy. We had a nice discussion about the cultural subtext, as Lee and Kirby were clearly empathetic to the counter-culture since they were the ones buying the comics. Kirby particularly had a legion of admirers from all cultural arenas, including one Paul McCartney, who dedicated his song “Magneto & Titanium Man” to a special guest in the audience at his 1976 Los Angeles concert. In the 21st century, Jack Kirby’s influence is felt more than ever as his art and ideas continue to inspire.

Linda, Paul and Jack

Friday Song: Dire Straits

My favorite Dire Straits song (after “Skateaway”) is this melodic satirical look at Margaret Thatcher’s England in the wake of her and Reagan’s awful socio-political reign. The main single from their intricate 1982 hit album, “Love Over Gold,” this song seems even more relevant now or perhaps its take on the effects of technological Darwinism is timeless. Featuring the second catchiest keyboard riff of the 80′s (after “Take On Me” natch), the bubbly music is in direct counterpoint to the bleak, scathing words sung with ironic glee by Mark Knopfler. Here’s your live prescription for “Industrial Disease”:

Men On A Mission Film Theater: The Green Berets (1968)

John Wayne was pissed. Those pinko Hollywood commies weren’t supporting the Great Amuuurican Police Action In ‘Nam by aping the good ol’ days and releasing a flood of patriotic war films. Every Gawd Damn film was about Vietnam in one way or another, and Wayne passed on THE DIRTY DOZEN — after all, our boys weren’t psychotic killers! He would show those Reds that audiences were hungry for a stirrin’, rip-roarin’ lesson in Cong ass-kickin’…And he would star and co-direct it as well..Fill your hands, you Mao sonofabitches!

Using the number one hit song by SSgt Barry Sadler to provide emotional ballast, The Duke had a long road trying to get this film made. Ostensibly based on the best-selling non-fiction account by Robin Moore, the Pentagon wasn’t happy with the book since they plausibly denied the Berets did what the author — and former Beret — claimed they did. Shocking that. Wayne personally wrote to Lyndon Johnson seeking the full co-operation of the US military and despite even his unassailable patriotic credentials, the top brass rejected script after script until it was diluted to the most simplistic plot imaginable, not that it ever would have been clouded by subtlety.

In a nutshell, the A-B-C plot deals with your typical left-wing MSM journalist (David Janssen) following the travails of The Green Berets, led by Colonel Mike Kirby (Wayne) into the heart of Cong territory where only a few brave hearts and minds dare to journey. We’re introduced to your stock 1940′s World War II cast of characters, slightly updated for the 60′s. The actors must rely on whatever personal charms they have since the script isn’t there to service character. Aldo Ray plays Master Sergeant Muldoon, the gravelly voiced tough guy determined to stop “worldwide Communist domination” and sadly, this would be the tragic Ray’s last big studio film role before alcoholism doomed his career. Ex-heartthrob Jim Hutton supplies “comedy” relief as a clumsy but dedicated soldier determined to prove himself in battle while becoming reluctant surrogate father to one “Hamchunk” (thas right), the movie’s archetypal Vietnamese grating little boy-symbol.

Wayne shows his democratic side by including Raymond St. Jacques as the black medic plus Jack Soo and George Takei as bad-ass South Vietnamese fighters. The great Bruce Cabot is in there as well, still in supporting actor career mode long after KING KONG (1933) and there’s Luke Askew, one year before hippie immortality as the Nameless Hitchhiker in EASY RIDER. The screenplay makes sure that each character is nothing but the finest cardboard stock, with no conflict as to the war or the mission. Only the cynical journalist is allowed a change of heart, not to mention joining in the combat, and just you try to guess what change that is, pilgrim.

Renata Adler of the New York Times launched the most critical offensive on THE GREEN BERETS when it was released, and her opine reflected the majority of the scathing reviews:

“…a film so unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false in every detail that it passes through being fun, through being funny, through being camp, through everything and becomes an invitation to grieve, not for our soldiers or for Vietnam (the film could not be more false or do a greater disservice to either of them), but for what has happened to the fantasy-making apparatus in this country. Simplicities of the right, simplicities of the left, but this one is beyond the possible. It is vile and insane. On top of that, it is dull.”

And she’s right. As directors, Wayne and Ray Kellog have the taste and depth of Spam. Filmed in Georgia due to the availability of free military helicopters, the production looks like it was shot on a Hollywood backlot in 1957, just switch wars and add some of that New Cinema brutality — the Vietnamese spike traps are used to particularly gruesome effect as is some nifty burning of Cong bodies along with general bloodletting. Apparently, Bruce Lee was the film’s Action Director (utilizing Chuck Norris), and though I’ve read scant info on this awesome factoid, the fight staging is quite good though limply shot. Still, the jingoistic propaganda is so upfront it’s startling at first, then laughable, exactly as Adler suggested. I do get choked up when Hutton rescues Hamchunk and never underestimate John Wayne as THE GREEN BERETS took in 11 million dollars, one of the top hits of the year. Good panoramic action packed poster too.

I try to watch the film from the viewpoint of my dad, who served in Vietnam. I don’t think he even liked this one if our movie watching youth had any relevance (he prefered DR. STRANGELOVE and THE GREAT ESCAPE). I can appreciate Wayne wanting to honor the troops, who always seem praised most but served least by our government, but when I watch these cinematic aw-shucks leaders then think of Agent Orange and other toxins that infected our soldiers, then flash on Major Calley’s My Lai slaughter of men, women and children and I call “Bullshit.” THE GREEN BERETS ends with one of the most derided shots in film history, with Sergeant Kirby and Hamchunk walking hand-in-hand against the Vietnamese sun wrongly setting in the East as he tells him, “You’re what this is all about…” It’s the only visual poetry in the film and so politically ludicrous you can’t but admire Wayne’s uber-American fervor: kind, naive, arrogant — and destructive.

The Movie Gods Smile

From the Los Angeles Times:

Responding to public outcry over the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s decision to end its 40-year-old weekend film program, two outside organizations have stepped forward to pledge a total of $150,000 in the fight to save the screening series.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which organizes the annual Golden Globe Awards, and Time Warner Cable, in association with Ovation TV, have each agreed to put up $75,000 toward the LACMA film program, which had been scheduled to close in October.

Ted Kennedy RIP

God’s Lonely Critic

Amusing jack-ass blogger Jeffrey Wells, on a cine-jihad against INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS after praising the script and giving it a fair-so-so reaction at Cannes, now unveils The Word:

“I’ve always felt on some level that my reactions to films are partly & obviously my very own and partly a channelling of some…I don’t know what to call it but let’s call it a kind of Movie God wisdom. I am a person with a particular background and likes/dislikes, but I am also, I feel, a kind of conduit of something bigger. You can’t really write, I feel, if you don’t open yourself up to that “something greater and grander” out there (or “up there” or “in there”). You have to let that force tell you what’s right & true. It’s partly what you know and partly what is. So in a certain sense I am an instrument of some sort of energy that’s not entirely fed by what kind of breakfast I’ve had in the morning. Go ahead & laugh, but that’s how it kinda feels. Glenn Gould said something like this once. He’s playing the piano, of course, but it’s not just him. Something is also speaking or playing through him. And that force knows (and has courteously let me know) the true cosmic & celestial worth of Inglourious Basterds.”

Mickey Rooney on Twitter: “Nobody can know everything.”

God Bless Mickey Rooney, still going strong, laying down the wisdom. And still one of the finest, underused actors in American film history. Not just because he was in SKIDOO…

Insurance Companies = Death Panels

I feel our nation’s collective IQ plummet everytime I see a poll or two showing half the country afeared of healthcare reform. The same Americans who lost their jobs or their savings due to corporate corruption forget that the government bailed out the Wall Street Masters Of The Universe, who too often dictate the free-market fantasia indoctrinated into our psyche like a Stalinist re-education camp and yet scream “Socialism!” at every false step. In the end, it’s very simple. If you need to go to the doctor, and say, oh, Kaiser, decides that that oral surgery you had in 1999 is a pre-existing condition, then they can say, “Sorry. Stay sick. And die.” And that’s that. If Americans buy into the outrageous lies of the current GOP leaders and spokesfolk like Beck and Palin — currently the most odious, destructive political force in the past ten years — well, then I guess we’ll get what we deserve. Or don’t. Jesus Weeps.

Waltz To Glory

Christoph Waltz deserves his own post for his towering performance as Colonel Hans Landa in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. He joins the ranks of iconic screen villains, from the Wicked Witch to Anton Chigurh. It will be a treat to see the 52 year-old Lanz receive an Academy Award next year for his breakout role of a lifetime.

Glorious

Best action comedy suspense film of the year.

If you don’t go, turn in your movie lover card.

I said GOOD DAY sir.

Friday Song: Olive

I do listen to new music. Take “You’re Not Alone,” this 1996 one hit wonder track from three-person trip-hop band, Olive, and their disc, “Extra Virgin.” This was the official theme to my own wondrous first trip-hop to Europe, specifically Amsterdam, in 1997. I heard this song pumping from streets, canals, subways, and coffee-shops, reflecting my singular wandering state o’ mind on my month long Holland and France sojourn. I expected Amsterdam to be overflowing with 60′s hippie tunage, but didn’t realize how powerful house-techno had become and that 80 percent of Dutch youth wanted to be DJ’s. Fucking socialists. Still, I can’t hear this song without thinking of blurry neon lights and the stars turned upside down as I wandered lost my first night in Europe…

Men On A Mission Film Theater: Where Eagles Dare (1969)

After the massive success of THE DIRTY DOZEN, Metro Goldwyn Mayer knew a good Men On A Mission thing when they had one. And 1960′s superstar Richard Burton wanted a hit film and to play a “heroic” figure for his children. He approached best-selling author Alistar MacLean, who wrote this novel and screenplay in two months. Somebody came up with the brilliant idea of mixing Richard Burton’s thespic thunder with the stoic irony of Clint Eastwood, bearing one of the great disparate action teams in movie history. WHERE EAGLES DARE is an essential cinematic cousin to THE DIRTY DOZEN minus the moral complexities of the Robert Aldrich film. Directed with cool efficiency by Brian G. Hutton, this is another two and a half-hour 60′s epic but edited at a kinetic, consistent pace with nary a dull or wasted moment. Even the film’s third lead, the luscious Mary Ure, is only there to briefly romance Burton, then help dispatch Nazis with her machine-gun.

The narrative is so complex that neither Burton nor Eastwood have any real character arc but then, why should they? Their mission: to infiltrate an Austrian castle fortress and rescue an American general before he reveals important secrets. Of course, there are traitors within the Allied team and this leads to double and even triple crosses that I still haven’t figured out after half a dozen viewings. That’s okay because I love the cold style and Panavision 70mm ambience, beautifully lensed by Arthur Ibbetson. You can almost feel the snow outside your window as Ron Goodwin’s stirring score provides the perfect mood. Burton and Eastwood were apparently eager to work together, and their opposite styles mesh perfect here, with Burton providing the urbane British leadership while Eastwood assays the quiet American warrior — he kills more people in this film than any other. And it shows. This is a surprisingly brutal and bloody epic freed up by the groundbreaking changes of 1960′s cinema with none of the politics. It’s such a thorough machine that looking for subtext here would be an exercise in semiotics (unless you went to Berkeley. Now you have a paper to write.).

Men On A Mission afficianados probably revere this film more than THE DIRTY DOZEN, if only because it’s easier to cheer the winning team on. The only stars here are Burton and Eastwood, but there are good bits by the supporting actors, especially Derren Nesbitt as Major von Hapen, the Gestapo goon sent to interogate the American prisoner. He’s one of those cold villains with ominous warmth. Ferdy Mayne (who also played the head vampire in Polanski’s 1967 THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS) is well-cast as the practical Reichsmarshall. I like his contempt for Major von Hapen when he refers to the Gestapo “cluttering up things with their torture chambers.” It’s also nice to see Hammer Studios femme fatale Ingrid Pitt as the other Allied female secret agent. For a boy’s adventure tale, WHERE EAGLES DARE gives the girls an equal role in the fighting without ado.

The movie takes its time getting to the action, but when it comes, it’s relentless. As stated, the killings are fast and violent especially during the climatic fight atop the cable car. Eastwood was unhappy with stuntmen forced on him, as he prefered to do the action scenes himself (he called the film WHERE DOUBLES DARE) but the stunts are thrilling and the only giveaway is the de rigeur bad process shots so indigenous to the decade. I’m also curious if Eastwood’s wicked double-machine gun moment is the first time in movie history such a combo was shown; if anything, it cemented his bad-azz mofo reputation. Burton is no slouch either as an action hero, and his curt wit serves the movie well. His penultimate scene when he confronts the Nazi leaders in the castle and engages them in a serious mind-fuck as only an actor of his caliber could is a highlight.

WHERE EAGLES DARE was another huge hit for MGM in 1969, and Burton achieved his goals. He would return to the genre with 1978′s cool and brutal THE WILD GEESE and Eastwood would of course move onto American iconography.  Here’s a fansite wholly devoted to the movie and even this month’s amazing CINEMA RETRO magazine has a 48 page “Making Of” issue. Of course, WHERE EAGLES DARE is one of Spielberg’s and Tarantino’s favorite war films. And mine.

The King Is Dead – Long Live The King

I was watching TV with my sister on a hot humid Sacramento school free summer afternoon circa August 16, 1977, when the always suspenseful “We Interrupt This Program To Bring You A Special Report” bulletin popped on to announce that Elvis Presley Was Dead. I had grown up with his voice via my parents and the media, and while I was never an Elvis man, I appreciated his impact on rock and culture. Though he only made two good films, KING CREOLE (1958) and VIVA LAS VEGAS (1963), his other movies were hopeless even as cultural kitsch; I can watch the AIP Beach Party films over and over, but am yet to make it through CLAMBAKE (1967). Obviously, he had great screen presence, and I know he wanted to do a movie with Bruce Lee, which we can only dream about. My favorite Elvis is definitely his 1968 “comeback” period, where he never looked leaner or meaner. The only Presley disc I own is the kick-ass “Memphis Sessions” recorded the same year, the album that brought him back to public consciousness. His famed TV special is uber-cool too, as it contains my favorite Elvis moment, the whole of this astounding gospel melody production number. Watch it in tribute to The King.

The Beaver’s New Trim

Unarguably the funniest two minutes of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER ever. I haven’t seen this classic 1959 episode since I was a twee lad, but I never forgot, “Wally’s Haircomb.”