Tuesday's Overlooked A/V: The Third Man

Phone pics off the screen

Hold on there, cookie! The Third Man, that classic Orson Welles film -- overlooked?! Well, yeah, I dare to say it. I say it on the basis of so many people who are not film geeks who've either never heard of it though they might recognise the title or those who maybe know Welles from advertisements only or are geeks and have been meaning to see it for years (o_O) hmmm?

This time around I saw it differently, too, because it marked the first time I consciously watched it as noir (and for the cats). So many things I have in the back of my head about noir, it's good to make a conscious effort to consider the building of scenes and the building of the story in Greene's script (I have to read the novella!). Cotton's stumbling 'pulp' writer [in scare quotes because Todd will tell me he's not pulp at all but I don't know exactly what is textbook pulp and what is not because it seems a handy designation for a vast range of writers who wrote for cheap paperbacks in the early 20C and if it only turns out to be people who wrote for specific publishers who printed on PULP™brand paper during the odd months of the year 1935, I'll never remember that, so -- scare quotes] gradually uncovers a mystery when he thought he was just coming to a funeral and then things get weird as he finds out his good friend is nothing like the man he thought him to be.

(Somehow this relates today's thoughts on Dunning-Kruger, too -- not sure how).

This film has such amazing and utterly gorgeous shots, not as distinct frames like so many current films that scream "Look at this shot!" but as an organic whole that tells a story. A compelling story: how to deal with competing views of a man you've trusted? How to deal with a woman you love who's still in love with your best friend? And a very Greenean quandary about making moral choices when the options are not the black and white ones you were taught to distinguish between.

I ended up paying much more attention to the look of the film but the narrative kept pulling me back in. It remains a classic not just because it is a superbly directed film, but also because it tells a compelling story. And while it makes you despise the smug Harry Lime (whether or not he was right about cuckoo clocks and Borgias), you can see how he represents a very common type -- the ones who looted their way through half the economies of the world with every belief in their right to do so.

Could you walk away from such temptation?

See the round-up of overlooked A/V over at Sweet Freedom.

Tuesday's Overlooked A/V: Algol

Pressed for time, so I'm pointing you to a sublime blog called Strange Flowers, who has a write up of an absolutely amazing film, Algol: Tragödie der Macht (or is it Nacht? That's what the title cards say) which is Algol: Tragedy of Power (or Night). UPDATE: James confirms that other references to the film use Macht, so the title card is likely wrong. More fitting for the theme anyway.

Wow, just wow: an SF German silent that pre-dates Metropolis by seven years and features the amazing decadent Sebastian Droste. Do yourself a favour and read the whole write-up, then watch the film. I'm still making my way through; I cheated and watched the last reel so I could see Droste dance. I think you can make your way through it fairly well even if your German isn't that good; that's the beauty of silent films. Watch out for the eye of the devil!

As always, check the round-up of overlooked gems over at Sweet Freedom. And if you want a preview of what I was up to yesterday, take a gander here (you may need to be logged into Facebook but it's a public album).

Tuesday's Overlooked A/V: The Royle Family

I know some of you will immediately say, "Overlooked, my arse!" since it's on UK Gold regularly. But as the majority of my readers here are Americans, I feel justified in the choice -- besides, when do I pass by a chance to share this terrific show? The Royle Family was created by writer/director Caroline Aherne and her writing partner Craig Cash, who also starred in it as Denise Royle and her husband Dave Best. Jim, the patriarch of the Royles was played by Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston starred as Barbara, his long-suffering wife. Her mother was played by the legendary Liz Smith and their very put-upon dogsbody/son Antony was Ralf Little. Regular cast members included Jessica (Spaced) Stevenson as the ever-dieting Cheryl and Geoffrey (Keeping Up Appearances) Hughes as the extremely dodgy Twiggy.

Nothing much ever happened at the Royles. Most episodes they sat talking to each other while watching television, hardly glancing at one other, the narratives mostly unfolding in real time with no laugh track. It may take a whole episode to get used to the family dynamics, but like all character-driven comedy, knowing those characters gives you incredible elasticity. While I always think of this as one of the consistently laugh-out-loud funny programmes ever, it also has some of the most touching moments ever televised as well: Denise's wedding day, when her waters break and of course, "The Queen of Sheba" Nana's passing.

It's my goal to be as phenomenally lazy as Denise. I've got a ways to go.

I got to introduce the QoE and Marko to a little bit of the Royles while they were visiting. The Xmas episode is a rare step outside Jim and Barbara's house to Denise and Dave's. Guest star Tom Courtenay (yes, really!) steals the show as Dave's bizarre dad. I love how he says, "Bar-berra" and of course the tropical punch and the whole turkey emergency. Some clips to give you a taste and as always, check out the rest of the recommended A/V over at Todd's blog.

Know-vember: Todd Mason

Todd, of course, shows up here frequently whether as a fellow participant and sometime host of Friday's Forgotten Books and the host of Tuesday's Overlooked A/V or just as one of the regular kibitzers. He's on the left in this picture from a family wedding.

1. What's the first thing you do upon waking in the morning?

Pat/skritch the dominant, female cat in the house, Niki, who has probably awakened me so I can pat her and then feed the entire trio of household cats. 

2. What's a song you might be persuaded to dance to?

Some of the music I've actually danced to: THE MAIDEN IN THE TOWER performed by the Brubeck Quartet (a ballet suite that Brubeck didn't complete, but on the album COUNTDOWN the quartet recorded four pieces DB had finished); "She Said Yeah" as recorded by the Rolling Stones; "She's Not There" by the Zombies (introduced a party full of fellow high-schoolers, including eventual pro musician Deb Fox, to them at that time); THE FREEDOM NOW SUITE by Max Roach, et al.; Jawbox’s “Twister” and The Specials’ “Ghost Town.”

3. Where in the world do you live?

A house in Collingswood, NJ, though I also rent an apartment in Media, PA...but entirely too much time is spent in a gray cubicle in Radnor, PA. 

4. What's a great night out for you?

Good conversation, a good meal, perhaps a performance and a good bookstore (a/v materials also good). 

5. What's a great night in?

Conversation, meal, sex, perhaps other performance, and good literature (a/v materials also good). 

6. If you were offered an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Tough call. I so rarely enjoy travel, having had entirely too much of the bad sort in my youth. There are all sorts of places I'd be interested in seeing, but getting there is less than half the fun. If it isn't a round-the-world journey, with many destinations (with rest breaks between), I'd be torn between, say, Italy and Australia, Guyana and Japan... 

7. What book do you wish everyone would read so you could talk about it?

I've spent several years citing those weekly, but among the very best ones are THE EXILE by William Kotzwinkle, LIVING MY LIFE by Emma Goldman, CONJURE WIFE by Fritz Leiber, THE FEMALE MAN by Joanna Russ, THE ENQUIRIES OF DR. ESZTERHAZY by Avram Davidson, THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES, 1933-1969 by Jorge Luis Borges, GOING OUT OF OUR MINDS by Sonia Johnson, TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS by Marcia Muller. Dozens of others. 

8. What movie makes you cry?

In reverse chronological order, among those I recall causing some tears to well: SHAME (the Bergman sf film); PONETTE (who doesn't love a good setpiece of an recently-orphaned child of about six being tormented for her status by schoolmates?); PATHS OF GLORY (with the laughter); THE 400 BLOWS; SNOOPY COME HOME; "The Last of the Curlews" (the first ABC AFTERSCHOOL SPECIAL...they were trying, then). 

9. What makes you laugh?

Unexpected jokes, and well-executed expected ones. Humor that is not about others getting hurt (chided is OK). 

10. Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?

David Campton's "At the Bottom of the Garden" convinced me at a young age to have them ruthlessly extirpated. 

Thank you!

You're welcome.

Weekend Wrap Up

It was a good weekend in Philadelphia -- it was just annoying getting there and even more so, getting back. If you follow me on Twitter you got my irritated suggestions for new New Jersey state mottos ("New Jersey, it leaves a lot to be desired") as I sat in the seemingly endless traffic jams on the turnpike.

So I got there late and had to sneak into roomie Sue Hanniford Crowley's panel to get the room key and jettison my things before rushing off to meet with an agent (more on that depending on whether anything comes of it) before rushing off to my first panel on blogging. We caught up with our other roomie Mason and had a late lunch. I managed to catch pal Nancy Holzner -- she of the kick ass heroine and creator of Deadtown -- to grab a brew at the Perch, a fairly good brew pub across the street from the hotel. It was on the second visit that we finally noticed these fab octopus door handles on the restaurant downstairs from the pub's winding wooden staircase. Fantastic to be able to spend some time with Nancy: as a former medievalist, she knows a lot of things I don't have to explain (hey, she studied with Rick Russom!).

Panels, mayhem, madness -- I got to blather on about this and that. Sometimes there was even an audience >_< but the best part was yakking with friends. In fact I had lunch with Alex on Saturday (Korean BBQ!) and convinced her to come back for dinner with Nancy and Todd. We had planned for Belgian, but Monk's was overbooked and had an hour wait, so noooooo! we went off to the Nodding Head pub but we walked in the wrong door and went to the Oyster House instead which was just as well as it was quiet. I ate octopus: I think it was some kind of subliminal advertising. We went to the pub after, just because, but it was full of college students shouting their heads off singing along with A-ha's "Take On Me" (O_o) and some other 80s crap music. Phil Collins made them run off, however, so we finished our drinks in quiet and headed back to the hotel, where we hung around and ran into more people and what not (which is the brief way of saying it's all too much fun to write up).

But I'm back and there's a million and one things to do yet and so very little time in which to do them. Ay yi yi. Somehow it will all get done -- or at the very least, somehow I will be in Eyre Square on September 5th and all this will be behind me.

Tip o' the captain's hat for the Pirate Pub Propper of the Bar and Pirate Therapist @MrTumshie's playlist and for my introduction to the band I clearly have been needing to meet for years, Half Man Half Biscuit.

Friday's Forgotten Books: Between the Angels and the Apes

Not so much "forgotten" as -- what? Aborted? Headed off at the pass? The initial news was wonderful: Alan Moore writing an opera on John Dee with Gorillaz! What's not to love? It sounded like a match made in an alchemical lab somewhere with the potential of turning into gold. There was just one problem: Gorillaz couldn't be bothered to come up with some artwork for Moore's magazine Dodgem Logic despite having the issue held for them several times.

Really? Is it so hard to give a little quid pro quo? Apparently, so that was that.

Well, if you're Alan Moore, you just get on with the billion other projects you have going and publish what you have in Strange Attractor, and if you're Damon Albarn, you make your own opera on Dee anyway.

The lovely thing about Between the Angels and the Apes is how the notes reveal (once again) Moore's structural approach to composition. Consider the opening section of the outline:

If we're to create an approximately ninety-minute piece on the subject of Greatest Dead Englishman John Dee, then a solid and conventional place to start structurally would be a classic three-act construction with sections of a half-hour each. This also seems to fit nicely with the triangular Greek delta symbol (which is how Dee identifies himself in the facsimile notes presented in A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers between Dr John Dee and Some Spirits [Meric Casaubon, 1659] and is also the elemental symbol for fire, which is in turn the element that represents the highest spiritual component of the magician or, indeed, the ordinary human being).

Moore further breaks down each section into subsections with flashbacks and the opening and closing scene of the dying Dee in Mortlake with his daughter. It almost seems as if Moore comes up with the idea of breaking the fourth wall as he writes, suggesting that the magician can sense the audience as "spirits of futurity" watching him from the time to come. His take on Queen Elizabeth is that she's a kind of Faerie Queen and he suspects "that Dee's devotion to Elizabeth was at least partly erotically inspired" so imagines her  as more "otherworldly and erotic" than traditionally envisioned. It's a fascinating look at a show that will doubtless never be. Yes, it includes some of the text as well as the notes for the piece, although it remains unfinished.

You can buy this issue of the journal, which also includes Moore Bumper Book of Magic collaborator Steve Moore, no relation, but subject of his performance piece, Unearthing.

Find this week's round up of Forgotten Books over at Sweet Freedom, next week back at Patti's.

Last week's FFB included Todd's write up of our comic Jane Quiet for which he's given me and Elena the best pull quote ever:

Laity might be the literary child of Angela Carter and Peter Cook and Italo Calvino, and Steier the artistic child of Trina Robbins and Gahan Wilson and Jules Feiffer, and not a little dash of Joan Aiken.

Yes, I plan to employ that one.

Todd Mason: Bandits

My buddy Todd has this fabulous write up on the girl rock band movie Bandits which made me order it from a certain river-named on-line vendor immediately (you can, too!).




If the Go-Go's were the Beach Boys of post/punk all-women rock bands of the early '80s, and the Bangs/Bangles were the Byrds, it took a while for the Monkees correspondent to come along...but they did, with Katja von Garnier's 1997 film Bandits (not to be confused with the later, somewhat less good Bruce Willis vehicle). A German film, ineptly promoted upon its 1999 US release despite a glowing New York Times review by Lawrence Van Gelder and apparently grossing something like $25,000 nationally here, it was a smash in Europe, where the soundtrack album reportedly became the bestselling in European history, ahead of the Beatles' albums, or anyone else's, in that market (the first-year figure is usually given as 750,000 copies).

The film involves a prison band, in a women's facility rife with casual brutality from some of the staff, while some (with some overlap) pride themselves on their progressive attitudes toward reform. The quartet, with a new drummer whose first days at the prison we follow, are trotted out to a Policeman's Ball as show ponies, but they are harassed beyond tolerance by the guards on the way over, and they manage to steal the police van before they are delivered to the ball. Meanwhile, Luna, the somewhat bullying primary songwriter and guitarist of the band (played by Jasmin Tabatabai, who here is almost a dead ringer for Selma Blair, perhaps a bit more muscular), has submitted demos of their songs to various record companies, and while they are on the lam, one of the companies releases their demo recordings as an album, which does very well with the attendant publicity. Von Garnier and Uwe Wilhelm's script resembles both Thelma and Louise and The Monkees' various productions (and, of course, the Beatles' before them) in being comic with both surreal and somewhat seriously desperate edges, and the songs the band performs, or can be heard having performed at various points in the film, reflect this admirably.

Tabatabai, who would go on to collaborate musically with von Garnier on her next project, HBO's English-language feminist historical drama Iron Jawed Angels, and star in such notable productions as Unveiled, was well established as both musician and actor before coming to Bandits, as were two of the other principals, Katja Riemann (who plays the taciturn, sharp-witted Emma) and Nicolette Krebitz (who plays the essentially sweet-natured, rather insecure Angel). All three women sing on the recordings of songs they in various combinations wrote (along with a number of cover versions), but only Tabatabai plays her instrument (rather as with guitarist Roger McGuinn on the earliest Byrds' releases, or the early Monkees releases) for the soundtrack recording. However, Riemann and Krebitz were competent enough on drums and bass respectively to tour in support of the soundtrack album as Bandits.

Read the rest at his fabulously detailed book/film/music review blog, Sweet Freedom.