Every now that then you see something that makes you angry, not because it offends you, but because you wish you came up with it. Back in February I saw Diablo Cody speak at Cinequest in San Jose and she said that The Wrestler had made her angry for that very reason.
Well, here's the item for this week that I wish I had come up with: A beautifully designed and smashingly edited rendition of the classic Stooges song. Why couldn't I have come up with this? It's not like I've been busy updating my blog or anything.
Oh well. I'm sure I'll be feeling the same thing tonight; I'm going to see the long-awaited (500) Days of Summer.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Good Ideas: WPA Murals, Hawaii
There are a few things bothering me lately, but only slightly since I haven't been keeping up on politics a whole lot in the past few weeks. From what I can tell, crazy white people are still having affairs and snubbing government money that would help their states' schools, and then spreading rumors that Barack Obama might not have been born in the US, and about how brown women are racist. Oh yeah, and they're still practically going out of their way to mispronouce non-WASP surnames. I guess I haven't been missing very much.
President Obama is a native of Hawaii, that beautiful state where white people can go and get treated like massa's. Hawaii was inducted into the union in March 1959, a year and five months before his was born, so the question of birth on American soil isn't an issue. However I was talking with a friend the other day and the hypothetical "What if he had been born before 1959" came up. It's a reasonable scenario. Fortunately, Albert is smart and knew right away that, since 1900, Hawaii had been a US territory, which qualities it as American soil, and therefore Obama wouldn't have had any trouble. Can you imagine what Mrs Ann Coulter would have done with that, though? I'm going to write Albert in on the ballot for 2012.
The only things that are really bugging me about Obama are already things we knew before we voted for him: He's a little more moderate than I would like, and he doesn't support marriage equality. I've said that before, not on here, and I'll say it again, on here. And, yes, it's the perfect time to take down Don't Ask, Don't Tell. These Human Rights Campaign spam emails really to stop. People are also totally freaked out about the free communist healthcare, big surprise. I just want to know if American can expect free WPA Murals with their healthcare. That's a change I could believe in.
By the way, this is the WPA mural from the late, great Essex Mountain Sanatorium in Verona, New Jersey. Check out the link below to see more fabulous pictures.
http://www.mountainsanatorium.net/
President Obama is a native of Hawaii, that beautiful state where white people can go and get treated like massa's. Hawaii was inducted into the union in March 1959, a year and five months before his was born, so the question of birth on American soil isn't an issue. However I was talking with a friend the other day and the hypothetical "What if he had been born before 1959" came up. It's a reasonable scenario. Fortunately, Albert is smart and knew right away that, since 1900, Hawaii had been a US territory, which qualities it as American soil, and therefore Obama wouldn't have had any trouble. Can you imagine what Mrs Ann Coulter would have done with that, though? I'm going to write Albert in on the ballot for 2012.
The only things that are really bugging me about Obama are already things we knew before we voted for him: He's a little more moderate than I would like, and he doesn't support marriage equality. I've said that before, not on here, and I'll say it again, on here. And, yes, it's the perfect time to take down Don't Ask, Don't Tell. These Human Rights Campaign spam emails really to stop. People are also totally freaked out about the free communist healthcare, big surprise. I just want to know if American can expect free WPA Murals with their healthcare. That's a change I could believe in.
By the way, this is the WPA mural from the late, great Essex Mountain Sanatorium in Verona, New Jersey. Check out the link below to see more fabulous pictures.
http://www.mountainsanatorium.net/
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Thanks for Birth Control, Auntie Em!
For a research paper I am crunching today, I was looking up the 1957 interview Mike Wallace did with Margaret Sanger, the famous and controversial birth control advocate. Once you get past Wallace's lengthy, prattling plug for the Phillip Morris cigarettes (he might as well be smudging a lit smoke in your ear, it's that obvious) the actual interview is extremely interesting and Sanger comes off as very sincere and articulate, as much an advocate for personal responsibility as for . (She also had recanted her past views on eugenics at this point, and that doesn't excuse them, but it shows she wasn't above changing her mind when broader life experience proved her wrong.)
The entire time I was watching the interview, I was struck by how much Sanger resembled that actress everyone doesn't know they know, Clara Blandick. A classic character actress, Blandick is better known as Auntie Em to Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). I kept picturing that scene where Elmira Gulch (Margaret Hamilton) gets told off by Auntie Em, but with different dialogue.
Ms Gulch: What do you say to opponents that birth control violates, not only a Catholic law, but a 'higher law.' What would you say to that?
Auntie Em: Well, you'd have to ask a Catholic. I can't speak for them.
Watch the interview here:
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/sanger_margaret.html
The entire time I was watching the interview, I was struck by how much Sanger resembled that actress everyone doesn't know they know, Clara Blandick. A classic character actress, Blandick is better known as Auntie Em to Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). I kept picturing that scene where Elmira Gulch (Margaret Hamilton) gets told off by Auntie Em, but with different dialogue.
Ms Gulch: What do you say to opponents that birth control violates, not only a Catholic law, but a 'higher law.' What would you say to that?
Auntie Em: Well, you'd have to ask a Catholic. I can't speak for them.
Watch the interview here:
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/sanger_margaret.html
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Vanity Fair
I have to give this month's Vanity Fair major props for its 'Ain't We Got Style?' photo spread by Michael Roberts, Norma Jean Roy and Mark Seliger, especially for the fantastic portrait of Mila Kunis as Letty Lynton, the Joan Crawford role/character that has been hard to find for the past seventy-something years since it was court-ordered back into the MGM archives on copyright violations. My next thought, after taking it in, was 'Of all movies, Letty Lynton? Do people actually know about that movie?'
Apparently people know about the dress. "(T)he Letty Lynton dress, with billowing, diaphanous sleeves, became an overnight sensation" says the small text in the upper right corner. Previously, my only visual reference was a small still in the great book Sin in Soft Focus by Mark A. Vieira, which shows Crawford buried in silver fox, leaning against Nils Ascher. Indeed a google image search did turn up some terrific glamour shots of Miss le Seur in the white dress with big sleeves.
A YouTube search turned up something even more exciting: The entire movie, which I don't think has ever been on VHS (and certainly never been on DVD). Until it gets taken down, do seek it out. It's been divided into about ten increments.
I watched the first three or so last night, and I can't say I'm not completely impressed. The overall image quality is better than nothing, but still very dismal and washed out, particularly disappointing when you consider how gorgeous movies from that era at MGM usually looked. (The cinematographer Oliver Marsh, was also responsible for Dancing Lady, San Francisco, The Women and a few of the Thin Man movies.) The sets, by Cedric Gibbons, are disappointingly plain. As to the acting, let's just say nobody won any Oscars. Joanie is good, not great. Her wardrobe is more interesting. Robert Montgomery is charming, and more interesting to watch than Joan's wardrobe. Nils Ascher is good, but not the complicated General Yen you'd like to see. Character problems aside, the actors don't bring a whole lot.
Granted, I'm saying this after watching the equivalent of the first three reels. Maybe Letty Lynton will redeem itself in its second act. By the time I'm finished with my essays for English class, hopefully this faded apparent bootleg will not have been removed from the webitudes. In the meantime, I'm just glad it's available, glad that it didn't suffer the same fate as Convention City. Then again, Convention City was exciting enough to watch than it actually threatened the status quo. Letty Lynton scandalously (allegedly) plagerized an outside source material, but so far that's about the only aspect of it that's still scandalous today.
Apparently people know about the dress. "(T)he Letty Lynton dress, with billowing, diaphanous sleeves, became an overnight sensation" says the small text in the upper right corner. Previously, my only visual reference was a small still in the great book Sin in Soft Focus by Mark A. Vieira, which shows Crawford buried in silver fox, leaning against Nils Ascher. Indeed a google image search did turn up some terrific glamour shots of Miss le Seur in the white dress with big sleeves.
A YouTube search turned up something even more exciting: The entire movie, which I don't think has ever been on VHS (and certainly never been on DVD). Until it gets taken down, do seek it out. It's been divided into about ten increments.
I watched the first three or so last night, and I can't say I'm not completely impressed. The overall image quality is better than nothing, but still very dismal and washed out, particularly disappointing when you consider how gorgeous movies from that era at MGM usually looked. (The cinematographer Oliver Marsh, was also responsible for Dancing Lady, San Francisco, The Women and a few of the Thin Man movies.) The sets, by Cedric Gibbons, are disappointingly plain. As to the acting, let's just say nobody won any Oscars. Joanie is good, not great. Her wardrobe is more interesting. Robert Montgomery is charming, and more interesting to watch than Joan's wardrobe. Nils Ascher is good, but not the complicated General Yen you'd like to see. Character problems aside, the actors don't bring a whole lot.
Granted, I'm saying this after watching the equivalent of the first three reels. Maybe Letty Lynton will redeem itself in its second act. By the time I'm finished with my essays for English class, hopefully this faded apparent bootleg will not have been removed from the webitudes. In the meantime, I'm just glad it's available, glad that it didn't suffer the same fate as Convention City. Then again, Convention City was exciting enough to watch than it actually threatened the status quo. Letty Lynton scandalously (allegedly) plagerized an outside source material, but so far that's about the only aspect of it that's still scandalous today.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
One more reason to visit Israel
I always joke about how I don't want to go to Israel because I don't want to be killed. I know it's wrong, but my Israeli friends don't take it personally. The truth is that the only thing I'm afraid in Israel of is the excess of sunshine. If I could be guaranteed a moderate, overcast weekend and an umbrella barer to follow me around anytime I went outside, I would be strolling down those Bauhaus boulevards in Tel-Aviv, and floating through the pudding water of youth that is the Dead Sea.
Doing some research on tourism in Israel, for a paper for school, I came across this offering that reminded me of what I've already learned from the films of Eytan Fox, and best spoken by Sal on Mad Men: "These Jews aren't like our Jews. You don't see that down in the diamond district!"
I leave you with that racist comment. Now back to work.
Doing some research on tourism in Israel, for a paper for school, I came across this offering that reminded me of what I've already learned from the films of Eytan Fox, and best spoken by Sal on Mad Men: "These Jews aren't like our Jews. You don't see that down in the diamond district!"
I leave you with that racist comment. Now back to work.
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