From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V2 #57 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Tuesday, February 5 2002 Volume 02 : Number 057 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] on the silver platter ["West Moran" ] Re: [loud-fans] take the lombardi trophy to the stop-n-shop ["Aaron Milen] RE: [loud-fans] Pop terducken (was: Why Everyone Hates West Virginia) ["J] [loud-fans] My, she's changed.... ["O Geier" ] Re: [loud-fans] My, she's changed.... [Jon Gabriel ] Re: [loud-fans] Why Everyone Hates West Virginia [zkk46@ttacs.ttu.edu] Re: [loud-fans] West Goes At The Movies Some More [Dan Stillwell Subject: Re: [loud-fans] on the silver platter > A review of West Anthony's swap CD, entitled _Multiplex_. > > First, I probably wouldn't have actually solicited an 8-page, > single-spaced essay on someone's favorite movies (in the guise of notes to > this CD, whose concept is songs whose titles are borrowed from those of > movies...or just happen to be the same) - but I'm very glad to have > received one, or at least this one, since it's passionate, intense, well > written, and at times screamingly funny. (I really wish I could do a good > Jimmy Stewart, so as to do justice to West's hilarious and obscene rant > that George Bailey *should* have delivered, he says, in _It's a Wonderful > Life_. Not to mention that now we all know why Sensurround movies have > that disclaimer about "physical effects" on the viewer... I'm glad you liked it. Really. I was terribly afraid of being called a pompous, overblown windbag. Of course, I am a pompous, overblown windbag -- I just don't want it getting around. > The CD begins, as it must, with that swoopy synthesizer thing you'll hear > in theaters (apparently, it's called 'The Audience Is Listening"), > followed by the "Fox Fanfare, with Cinemascope Extension" by Alfred Newman > - Randy's dad, right? Alfred Newman is Randy Newman's uncle, and he has never said "What! Me worry?" > The Jam "That's Entertainment" (Jack Haley Jr., 1974): This is the > acoustic demo (I think it's a demo) from their _Snap!_ compilation, as > opposed to the 'lectrified version on _Sound Affects_. You are correct, sir! > XTC "Jason and the Argonauts" (Don Chaffey - but as West says, "Don who?": > Ray Harryhausen is the reason to see this one, from 1963): Andy, Dave, and > Colin run up and down the scale for six minutes. This is why they're > freakin' geniuses: they made an incredible song out of doing so. And it > doesn't sound anything like Philip Glass. (As many of you know, for a > while in the sixties, Phil Glass and Steve Reich worked at a furniture > moving company together. (That part is true.) But it seems they didn't do > so well at the business: customers complained they'd keep moving the same > item back and forth, back and forth, putting it down in a slightly > different place each time...) I hadn't heard this joke before. According to my mom, all of Philip Glass' music is a joke. (I used to torture her with Act III of "The Photographer". This was my version of the rebellious teenager playing loud music your parents couldn't stand. What in the wide world of sports is wrong with me?) She actually refused to watch Errol Morris' brilliant documentary "The Thin Blue Line" because the music was by Glass. Sheesh. > R.E.M. "Superman" (Richard Donner, 1978): Of course - although I'm partial > to Robyn Hitchcock's "Superman" as well, crunchy little superman. I like > the Godzilla robot at the beginning, and the weird, insistent little > organ. Many of you probably have experience with a weird, insistent little > organ. I was going to say that I wouldn't touch that remark with a ten-foot pole, and then I realized that I'd just be falling right into your trap. Well played, Jeffrey....well played. > John Zorn "Batman" (Tim Burton, 1989): Okay, I confess I just don't get > the whole John Zorn thing. Uh, is this supposed to be a cover of the TV > show theme? No, I suspect it's just a mess o' noise they decided to call "Batman". If it had been the TV show theme (which both The Who and The Jam have covered), I probably wouldn't have used it, not being a fan of the show. > Anyway, a very enjoyable CD and entertaining set of notes from cinephile > West Anthony. Thank you! West ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 00:20:29 -0800 From: "West Moran" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] on the silver platter > >First, I probably wouldn't have actually solicited an 8-page, > >single-spaced essay on someone's favorite movies (in the guise of notes to > >this CD, whose concept is songs whose titles are borrowed from those of > >movies...or just happen to be the same) - but I'm very glad to have > >received one, or at least this one, since it's passionate, intense, well > >written, and at times screamingly funny. (I really wish I could do a good > >Jimmy Stewart, so as to do justice to West's hilarious and obscene rant > >that George Bailey *should* have delivered, he says, in _It's a Wonderful > >Life_. Not to mention that now we all know why Sensurround movies have > >that disclaimer about "physical effects" on the viewer... > > Any chance these notes might be posted to the list, or made otherwise > accessible? Please...? Umm.... Okay. However, in the interest of avoiding an enormous, unwieldy e-mail, I'll break it up into nuggets, such as those that, science has recently determined, are not found on a chicken. Also, in the interest of the disinterested, these will be titled "West Goes At The Movies" for easy deletion. For everyone else, Share And Enjoy! Cinematically, West. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 00:38:05 -0800 From: "West Moran" Subject: [loud-fans] West Goes At The Movies Part 1 Following is the first part of the complete notes for the swap CD that was sent to J2F. I love movies. I also love music. With this CD, I'm attempting to combine the two in a somewhat lame fashion: each song title is also the title of a movie. It sorta goes like this. YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938) Directed by Frank Capra A fun kind of goofball comedy about a nutty wacky family that actually won the Oscar for Best Picture. Jean Arthur, James Stewart and Lionel Barrymore head the cast of goofballs. Based on a play by Kaufman and Hart, it was sandwiched between two far superior Capra pictures, "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town" in 1936, and "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" in 1939. If I hadn't been so strict about the song title/movie title rule (mostly), I would have included a song by Rush called "Cinderella Man", which was directly inspired by "Mr. Deeds". THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT (1974) Directed by Jack Haley, Jr. This movie was the first time I had seen these big musical numbers from the golden age of MGM on the big screen; it's sad to think that my generation grew up without a lot of musicals to look at in a theater or drive-in near you. "Grease" is about the only one I can think of. Some people think "Saturday Night Fever" was a musical, but they're wrong - dance all you want, but if you aren't singing, you aren't in a musical. PANIC (2000) Written and Directed by Henry Bromell Here is a movie that suffered an unfortunate fate: after making the rounds in the festival circuit and being very well received, Bromell still couldn't find anyone to actually buy and distribute his debut feature. Eventually picked up by Artisan, it was premiered on Showtime and got a brief, desultory theatrical release in a couple of major cities. You'd think that with a cast like William H. Macy, Donald Sutherland and Neve Campbell, somebody would have shown some interest, but I suppose the subject matter scared away the studios. Macy plays a hired killer who tries to get some therapy because he doesn't like his job and wants to retire. The catch is that it's a family business; his dad (Sutherland) taught him everything he knows. Rather than throwing a lot of gunfights and action sequences at the audience, Bromell instead concentrates on the relationships in the killer's life, particularly the monstrous hold his father has on him, and the tender devotion the killer feels toward his own son, and the unpleasantness that is visited upon them all. Macy delivers yet another in a long line of brilliant performances; he is so sad, defeated and restrained, you want to scream for him. If you haven't seen Panic, run to your local video store and rent it. Right now. I'll wait here. COMING HOME (1978) Directed by Hal Ashby Jon Voight, Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern deliver outstanding performances in this Vietnam War-era drama. I consider this film to be vastly superior to the other big Vietnam movie released in 1978, Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter". I'm still genuinely surprised that, after the fiasco of "Heaven's Gate" and the subsequent nosedive of Cimino's entire career, critics didn't go back and reassess "The Deer Hunter" and notice how badly they overrated it. I think I just answered my own question - I can't recall a critic ever admitting he or she was wrong. STARMAN (1984) Directed by John Carpenter I thought it was going to be a science fiction movie about an alien from outer space, but instead it was a science fiction movie about a relationship, and only half of that was from outer space. Jeff Bridges literally creates a character out of nothing and does it magnificently, and Karen Allen has the most beautiful eyes ever. It was kind of surprising to see such a gentle character-driven story from Carpenter, especially after seeing his remake of "The Thing", which was more of a gentle blood-spurting exploding-innards story. DESTINATION MOON (1950) Directed by Irving Pichel The first film produced by George Pal ("War Of The Worlds", "The Time Machine"), this sci-fi classic worked hard to generate a feeling of near documentary authenticity - for the 50's, anyway - with a bizarre detour in which the fundamental scientific principles of space travel are explained to the audience by Woody Woodpecker. You heard me. Featuring a cast you've never heard of before and would never hear from again. JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963) Directed by Don Chaffey Don who? The cinematic mastermind behind this fantasy classic is a fellow named Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animation genius who could make a bunch of guys in skirts fight a MESS O' FREAKIN' SKELETONS!! (Harryhausen got Sinbad fighting a single skeleton in "The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad" in 1958, but he topped it ten times over with this one.) Don't tell me you haven't seen it - - it's only one of the all-time coolest action sequences in the history of the movies. Of all the animation techniques, stop-motion is the one that amazes me the most. The painstaking effort just to get a few seconds of usable film requires more patience than I have just to get the shrink-wrapping off a CD. Bear in mind that with traditional hand-drawn cel animation, you can test the flow of the drawings and make any necessary corrections before filming; with stop-motion, you just have to move the characters millimeter by millimeter and hope. If you screw up, you won't know it until you actually see the film projected - and then you have to start all over again. Yee! The third film in the Evil Dead trilogy, "Army Of Darkness", did a great job of recreating those dude vs. skeleton thrills, but it just couldn't touch the spine-tingling wonder I got from seeing the Harryhausen original for the first time. One other thing: a lot of film scholars have talked about the filmmaker/composer relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and the legendary Bernard Herrmann. What not so many film scholars have talked about is the similar relationship between Herrmann and Harryhausen. Bernard Herrmann wrote the scores for five Harryhausen pictures, which is only two less than he wrote for Hitchcock. The Harryhausen scores are rich, vivid, epic fun, and provide a fascinating contrast with Herrmann's Hitchcock scores, which are (with the possible exception of "North By Northwest") not that much fun at all. Am I rambling? Sorry. Stay tuned for more... West ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 00:46:01 -0800 From: "West Moran" Subject: [loud-fans] West Goes At The Movies Some More SUPERMAN (1978) Directed by Richard Donner If you were 11 years old in 1978, you saw "Superman". If you were 11 years old in 1978, you wanted to run screaming from the theater when Margot Kidder talked her way through that sickening song ("Can You Read My Mind"). If you're like me, you still do today. Hooray for the fast forward button! Except for the song part, this movie was a royal gas. You know, Marlon Brando got $3 million smackeroonies for not appearing in the last two hours of "Superman", which is even more than he got for not appearing in the first two hours of "Apocalypse Now"; remember when $3 million was an astronomical sum to throw at an actor? Jim Carrey's hairdresser pulls in 3 mil per picture these days. Wacky trivia: casting the role of Superman took about as long as it took to cast Scarlett O'Hara. My nominee for freakiest candidate? Nick Nolte. Just think - the Man Of Steel could have sounded like a guy who went through three lighters a day. ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938) Directed by Michael Curtiz James Cagney and Pat O'Brien play lifelong friends who grow up into very different people: Rocky (Cagney) is a hardened gangster and underworld legend, while Jerry (O'Brien) becomes a man of the cloth. Rocky is a hero to some tough kids in the neighborhood (the Dead End Kids, actually, before they grew up into the Bowery Boys and became pathetic), which is very troubling to Jerry, who hopes to deter the kids from a life of crime and make honest, decent men out of them. The fate of these boys is at the heart of this picture, which is my favorite of all the Warner Bros. Gangster pictures - and there are more than a few of them. The issue of whether the Dead End Kids can be saved, along with the seemingly odd friendship between criminal and priest, and the standard gangster shenanigans - all this is tied together effortlessly in the legendary final sequence, in which Jerry visits Rocky on death row and implores his friend to play "yellow" on Rocky's final walk to the chair. Rocky will have none of it; he swears he'll go to the chair sneering at John Law all the way, even though by doing so he'll become a martyr to the Dead End Kids, who will surely never be swayed from following their hero's path. Then comes one of the most powerful scenes in all of cinema: just as Rocky is about to be strapped in, he breaks down and begins begging, pleading for his life - he turns yellow. Some people have suggested that Rocky really did turn yellow in the chair, but they're full of crap and they have no souls. Rocky wasn't afraid at all; he did what he did as a gesture of love for his friend Jerry, and for the Kids. If you aren't in tears at the end of this movie, you're a robot from outer space sent to Earth to observe the behavior of humans, in which case you should start crying at the end of this movie so as not to arouse suspicion. Just trying to help. BROKEN ARROW (1950) Directed by Delmer Daves Jeff Chandler, who looks every bit the way you'd think a guy named Jeff Chandler would look, plays Cochise, chief of the Apache Indian tribe in the second most intriguing casting decision of 1950's Hollywood. (The most intriguing was Charlton Heston playing a Mexican lawman in "Touch Of Evil". As a Mexican myself, I'm not nearly as offended by this as I'm told I should be.) James Stewart plays an ex-Army officer who tries to make peace between Indians and settlers. This picture has some good drama in it, and some good Western action stuff. I am reminded of TV Guide's single-sentence description of another film, "I Was A Teenage Werewolf": "Better than you'd think." THE BIG COUNTRY (1958) Directed by William Wyler The title of this Western epic says it all. Wyler fills his vast Technirama canvas with the blazing panoramas of the American West, often intentionally dwarfing the characters to emphasize the futility of their conflicts against the overwhelming majesty of nature that surrounds them. Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston square off in their affections for a pretty but ultimately shallow girl (Carroll Baker), but Burl Ives walks off with the whole damn picture - and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (more actors have won Oscars under William Wyler's direction than just about any other director) - as Rufus Hannassey, the father of the seemingly no-good Hannassey clan. Ives was even better in this film than he was as Big Daddy in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof". If you only remember him as a cute animated character singing "Have A Holly Jolly Christmas", you'll be blown away by his performance here. My favorite scene in the picture is the one in which Peck and Heston finally duke it out on a vast, empty plain; Wyler shot the fight from a hill well over a hundred yards away. The two men look so puny in their surroundings, it's almost as though the director was saying "It's not even worth talking about those people down there." SPELLBOUND (1945) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Gregory Peck stars again, this time as a disturbed man who can't remember much and may be a Murderer! Ingrid Bergman is the analyst who tries to help him, which is only fitting - I'd be nutty for her too. This film has bizarre, wacky dream sequences designed by Salvador Dali, and although Bernard Herrmann made the Theremin famous in "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (1951), composer Miklos Rozsa used it in "Spellbound" first (he also used it in Billy Wilder's film adaptation of "The Lost Weekend" in the same year). If you watch this black-and-white film, keep your eyes open for a brief, vivid and unsettling use of color in a climactic scene. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) Directed by Frank Capra And now for the part where everyone hates me. I do not like this movie. The message at its core, as I see it, is "Settle For Less". Every time George Bailey tries to escape from Bedford Falls, every time he tries to make a break for greener pastures, every times he goes for the brass ring, he is undone by his innate goodness and the stupidity and greed of every fucking idiot in town. When the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan was on the verge of collapse, what did all the kindhearted citizens of Bedford Falls do? They swarmed the building like fanged maggots and demanded to withdraw all of their money. After all that Bailey & Co. had done for those miserable mouth-breathing ingrates. Why didn't George just say "Fine, fuck all you heartless quislings! I'll just pack me bags and take off for a life of excitement and adventure and really wild things, and leave you jizz-gargling scum to take it up the ass from Old Man Potter! How dare you even show your faces to me, you evil cunts?! You'd murder your own babies with a fucking fork to make yourselves a little more comfortable!! I BUILT YOUR HOUSES, YOU COCKSUCKERS!!! AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME!!??! My father may have thrown his life away to help out a town full of aborted vampire fetuses, but I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna take your shit for one second longer!!!" (You can see I'm a tad unforgiving on this point.) When Clarence lights on the bright idea of robbing George of his life to show what the world would be like had George never been born, it's a stacked deck and anyone with half a brain could see it. Look - even when all a man has is shit, you take that shit away from him and he'll fight like a motherfucker to get it back, because that's HIS SHIT!!! Jesus Christ, I am foaming at the mouth. I'm moving on. You can start hating me now. THE BOXER (1997) Directed by Jim Sheridan The director (Sheridan) and star (Daniel Day Lewis) of "My Left Foot" reteamed for this film about a boxer, newly released from prison, and the girl he left behind (Emily Watson, one of the most beautiful women in film today). Their relationship is somewhat complicated by the fact that they live in Belfast and things keep getting blowed up. Although I have never actually been to Ireland, this film seems to be a very realistic depiction of ordinary people trying to lead ordinary lives in the midst of extraordinary conflict. Sometimes, no matter how much or how little you care about religion and/or politics, they both have a way of forcing themselves into your life in unexpected and frankly nasty ways. I suppose we are all painfully aware of this now. MARATHON MAN (1976) Directed by John Schlesinger Or, How I Learned To Start Worrying And Hate The Dentist. Laurence Olivier, who at the time of filming was riddled with cancer, gout, and Lord knows what else, a man who was declared uninsurable because nobody thought he would live long enough to get through rehearsals, created one of the most quietly malevolent and frightening movie villains of all time. Szell, the Nazi dentist, must venture outside his secret hideout to risk a journey to the United States to collect a fortune in diamonds he's had stashed away for years. Dustin Hoffman (looking too old for his role here as he did nine years earlier in "The Graduate"; nevertheless, both brilliant performances) is the college student with a chip on his shoulder who inexplicably becomes the fiendish Szell's arch-nemesis. Will Szell be stopped? Can Dustin Hoffman settle down and just try acting? And why are elderly men drag racing on the streets of New York City? These and other questions will be just that. Still with me? One more to go, and it's a lulu! West ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 09:16:11 -0000 From: "Ian Runeckles & Angela Bennett" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Alias The artist formerly known as Photo Robert says: > i don't think i've seen mention of WB's Gilmour Girls > yet_ an excellent show, often leaving me near tears_ > yes, it's often silly and a little full of itself, > still it's the *only* show i watch (no tv at home), > and everyone else should watch it, too February's MOJO carries a piece on the GGs by some character by the name of Stewart Mason - any relation, Stewart? :-) The article starts off with a reference to the UK soap Brookside and crap "Madchester" band The Farm - so I'm guessing a little editorial input there! GGs is not currently screened in the UK so it's interesting that they went with this piece. I had one of my occasional visits to Minus Zero Records on Saturday and as usual ended up spending more money than strictly necessary, but hey you can't take it with you, right? Mind you, as Bill in the shop said, you'd be pretty pissed off if you gave all your money away on your death bed and then found out that you *can*! I digress. Amongst my pile of things were The Green Pajamas "This Is Where We Disappear" which if you liked (and I love) "Strung Behind The Sun" you'll go for this as well - maybe a little less baroque and varied than "Strung" and I'm thinking probably a grower. Velvet Crush's "A Single Odessey" is a no-brainer for a jangle pop nut like me, collecting rare singles B sides etc - including covers of Byrds and Gene Clark songs. The Czar's "The Ugly People vs The Beautiful People" is a Bill recommendation which I heard a little of over MZ's falling apart hi-fi system and it sounded just beautiful - wonderful voice, piano driven, with occasional touches of brass and John Barry-esque-isms to my ears anyway. The Shins "Oh Inverted World" seems to crop up on many people's best ofs so I went for that and I'm pretty impressed - 60s but not 60s, I dunno, a bit like GT/LF in that the influences are there but you just can't say "Beatles" "Beach Boys" etc. So far I've not had a chance to listen to the new Ken Stringfellow but I'm reliably informed it's back to Posies business - which can't be bad. All this a free Cracker live boot too - what more can a man want? Oh yes, films, - we loved Gosford Park too. Has Iris been released in the US yet? Ian ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 01:12:40 -0800 From: "West Moran" Subject: [loud-fans] Return Of The Son Of West Goes At The Movies Last part, and let me state for the record that while it was embarrassing enough sharing this next bit with one person, it is positively mortifying to be lobbing this one into your midst. Be gentle with me... EARTHQUAKE (1974) Directed by Mark Robson I always knew that someday I'd have to share this story with a complete stranger, and invite buckets of ridicule to rain down upon me like unwashed socks from the sky. Often, you will hear filmmakers and actors wax rhapsodic about the movie that made them fall in love with film, that made them want to do what they do for a living. Many of them have said it was "Citizen Kane"; others have mentioned "Lawrence Of Arabia", "Seven Samurai", "The 400 Blows", and "Casablanca". These are all wonderful pictures, of course, and I love them dearly, but none of these was the film that triggered my lifelong love of cinema. No, True Believers, for me that particular spot on the mantel goes to the cheesy disaster epic "Earthquake". I am not kidding. First of all, in case you don't know, "Earthquake" takes an all-"star" cast - Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Lorne Greene, Genevieve Bujold, Richard Roundtree, Marjoe Gortner (!) and an unbilled Walter Matthau - and kills most of them in a forest fire. Kidding. Director Mark Robson's previous claim to fame was the film adaptation of "Valley Of The Dolls", which features Patty Duke reciting one of my all-time favorite lines: "Boobies, boobies, boobies, nothin' but boobies!" (You kind of had to be there.) But what, you may well be wondering, does all of this have to do with me? Funny you should ask. In late 1974, my mother took me to the Reseda to see "Earthquake", the first film released by Universal Studios in their exciting new cinematic process, Sensurround. This process was, at that time, the latest in a rather shabby list of ridiculous technical innovations that includes the likes of 3-D, Emergo and Smell-O-Vision. Sensurround involved the use of enormous woofers placed on the floor of the theater that would, at appropriate moments, unleash a fearful rumbling bass that would make the viewer feel as though he or she was in an ACTUAL EARTHQUAKE JUST LIKE IN REAL LIVE LIFE!! Well, nearly an hour into the film, the earthquake started as advertised, and the Sensurround kicked in, also as advertised. The extra bass did a number on my seven-year-old stomach, and I wound up vomiting into an empty popcorn bucket, as later advertised. I got hustled out of that theater pretty quick, more out of embarrassment on the part of my mother than any genuine concern for my well-being. I didn't get to see how "Earthquake" ended that night, nor did I get to see the bottom half of the double feature, "Airport 1975". But in the car on the way to Bob's Big Boy for a hot fudge cake (after throwing up, no less; that's parenting in the '70's for you), I was in awe at what had happened to me. I had seen people laugh, cry, jump and scream at movies before, and I had even read about people fainting at a movie ("The Exorcist"), but this was a first. A movie had provoked a violent physical reaction from me, a feat I had never thought possible, and as ludicrous or bizarre as it may seem to you, this experience forever transformed cinema from something to eat Junior Mints to into something to which close attention must be paid, something capable of exerting an enormous psychological (and occasionally physical) hold over the viewer, something to be studied, felt, absorbed. I immersed myself in film. Back in the days when old movies were a staple of every local TV channel, you couldn't pull me away from the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9. Always a precocious reader, I found the cinema section in the library, and stayed there for some time. I was probably the only ten-year-old who had read anything about Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, and I'll wager that I was the youngest person in America to hate Pauline Kael. Today, my love of film continues unabated, and whether I like it or not, whether I'm willing to admit it or not (and I'm usually not), I owe it to a turgid, overcooked disaster epic with a carnival-sideshow gimmick on the soundtrack. Sensurround was only used three more times - in "Midway" in 1976, "Rollercoaster" in 1977, and "Battlestar Galactica" in 1979. And in advertising that I think I alluded to earlier, the trailer for "Midway" contained these words: ATTENTION This film will be shown in the starting new multi-dimension of SENSURROUND Please be aware that you will feel as well as see and hear realistic effects such as might be experienced in real life. The management assumes no responsibility for the physical or emotional reactions of the individual viewer. Dude, that's me!! I did that!! A major Hollywood studio had to put a disclaimer on their product because I hurled into a popcorn bucket!! I totally fuckin' rule!!! All right, just let a tired old man live in his dream world, okay? One final note on this topic: the Reseda still exists today, although it has been closed down for nearly twenty years now. If you want to see it, it's in the opening shot of "Boogie Nights"; the title of that film is on the marquee of the Reseda. I drive by it on the way to work at least once a week. BATMAN (1989) Directed by Tim Burton There aren't enough superhero movies. For a while there, "Superman" was as good as it got. You may recall that a lot of people went nuts when they heard that Michael Keaton was going to play the Caped Crusader, but as it turned out, he was the best one out of the three guys who did it, although George Clooney might have been better had the material been improved. "Batman" and "Superman" both suffered the curse of being really great the first time out, but then getting exponentially suckier with each sequel. Burton's two Batman pictures were more like the original comic book, while director Joel Schumacher's two ("Batman Forever" and "Batman And Robin" - yee!) were more like the campy, goofball television series. "Batman" benefitted from having only one villain to focus on (The Joker), and from the incredible production design of Anton Furst, who won an Oscar for his efforts. Furst is the man who gave Stanley Kubrick his own private Vietnam in England for "Full Metal Jacket". Despite his successes, Anton Furst committed suicide in 1991. I have read that it had something to do with either his breakup with actress Beverly D'Angelo or his inability to work on the sequel, "Batman Returns", due to contractual obligations. Bo Welch, who had previously worked with Tim Burton on "Edward Scissorhands", handled the production design for the sequel, and the results leaned much more toward Art Deco than Furst's dingy Gothic urban sprawl. Tim Burton gets a lot of credit for the look of his films, but every now and then it's good to remember that filmmaking is a collaborative effort. Anyway, Furst is dead - if I don't speak up for him, who will? HIGH FIDELITY (2000) Directed by Stephen Frears I loved the book, and when I heard that the movie would be set in America rather than England, it didn't bother me in the least. After all, if I could completely identify with a trio of record store delinquents in the UK, why couldn't they identify with me? Heck, they could have put the record store on a steamboat in the Amazon River and I wouldn't have had a problem with it, because the story is about two universal truths the world over: 1) Guys are way into music, and 2) Guys don't understand women. (I have heard that there are some guys who are not into music, but they don't count; a man who doesn't spend time with his music collection can never be a real man.) "High Fidelity", along with "Almost Famous", were my two favorite movies of 2000, not least because they combined two things I really love, movies and music. Which brings me back to where I started. I'll throw in just one more vaguely related thing. David Byrne, while he was with Talking Heads, directed a movie in 1986, "True Stories". If you get a chance to see it, please do so, because it is a lot of fun. If you don't, I'll let you in on something about that picture that most people have missed. If you stay all the way through the end credits, when the last credit appears on the screen, if you look at the very bottom, you will see these words: If you can think of it, it exists somewhere. It's the nicest thing a movie ever said to me. THE END Made in Hollywood, U.S.A. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 08:40:11 -0500 (EST) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: [loud-fans] 2001 poll results On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, jenny grover wrote: > Okay, one question- how can REM "Reveal" be both #10 and #163? There was an extra space at the end of the second one; I thought I had caught all of those, but apparently not. REM should actually be tied for 6th, with Sam Phillips, Low and Belle Da Gama all dropping a spot. I don't know if I'll repost, but I will fix the web version soon. a ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 08:43:50 -0500 From: "Aaron Milenski" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] take the lombardi trophy to the stop-n-shop >* doug said of J. Richman: > >I've always thought of Richman as paralleling > >Chilton in a weird way (not in all ways, mind you) -- but they both made > >one raw, direct, uncomfortably *real* record early in their careers, and > >then turned to permanently material that was arguably not w/o some charm, > >but unarguably much lighter. Miles responded: >I was thinking of that parallel when I wrote about Jonathan earlier, but >couldn't put it into words as well as doug just did. Somehow with Chilton, >though, I *understood* more of why he recoiled into whatever you want to >call the last quarter-century of his career -- I mean, would you want to >live in the open wound of THIRD/SISTER LOVERS the rest of your life? But >there's so much joy in THE MODERN LOVERS that even with its tales of >nervous geeky heartbreak, it doesn't sound like such a bad place to be. There's definitely plenty of pain on THE MODERN LOVERS, but what makes it THE favorite for me is that it ultimately is an extremely positive, forward-thinking statement. It ends with "share the modern world with me," certainly a joyous lyric, and no matter how sad and lonely and displaced Jonathan is, the key to his mindset is that he always believes the world can rise up and be what he wants it to be. The two most important songs, in terms of his lyrical themes, aren't even on the original release, just the Rhino reissue. They're "I'm Straight," the anti-drug song, and "Dignified and Old," the ultimate statement against those rockers who want to die young. That album is completely life-affirming! Aaron, noting that my second favorite album, THE KINKS ARE THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY, is also very life-affirming, once you get past the obvious nostalgic sadness. _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 08:47:22 -0600 From: "Jeff Downing" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Pop terducken (was: Why Everyone Hates West Virginia) "Hebert's Specialty Meats, in Maurice, Louisiana...is a leading purveyor of turducken, which it makes by taking the bones out of a chicken and a duck and a turkey, stuffing the chicken with stuffing, stuffing the stuffed chicken into a similarly stuffed duck, and stuffing all that, along with a third kind of stuffing, into the turkey. The result cannot be criticized for lacking complexity, and it presents a challenge to the holiday carver almost precisely as daunting as meat loaf. "The emergence of turducken, eight or ten years ago, did not surprise Cajuns. When it comes to eating, they take improvisation for granted. Some people in New Iberia, for instance, collect the sludge left over from mashing peppers at the McIlhenny Tabasco plant and use it to spice up the huge pots of water they employ to boil crawfish. When Thanksgiving approaches, they fill the same huge pots with five or six gallons of lard instead of water and produce deep-fried turkey--a dish that is related to the traditional roast turkey in the way that soupe au pistou in Provence or ribollita in Tuscany is related to the vegetable soup that was served in your high-school cafeteria." Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker, 1/28/02 Only $9.95 per month! http://my.netzero.net/s/signup?r=platinum&refcd=PT97 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 14:55:47 +0000 From: "O Geier" Subject: [loud-fans] My, she's changed.... http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/mgi/campaign/2001/la/primary/council/dist1/nakahiro/website/communitysupport.htm Support anti-Spam legislation. Join the fight http://www.cauce.org/ - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. Click Here ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 08:42:30 -0800 (PST) From: Jon Gabriel Subject: Re: [loud-fans] My, she's changed.... "My relationship with Robert Nakahiro began with a dance. We would dance. We would dance. We would dance and dance and dance and dance and..." In Mammoth Gardens, Jon ===== 777777777777777777777777777777 JON GABRIEL mesa, arizona usa inkling communication + design 777777777777777777777777777777 Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 11:33:19 -0600 From: zkk46@ttacs.ttu.edu Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Why Everyone Hates West Virginia > > turducken??? > > A turkey stuffed with a duck that's been stuffed with a chicken: > http://www.cajunstuff.com/tduckfaq.htm > > J. Mallon wow, I never thought I'd see this mentioned here, but, then again. anyways, I'm not exactly sure about the origin, but the copyrighted name 'Turducken' is a Texas invention. Cajun Stuff is owned by my friend Jason's wife's family, and based out of Houston. Their family sends us 1 or 3 a year. Cajun Stuff is a combination restaurant & meat market, good enough food, but if you can cook Cajun food yerself, just get the ingredients there. I heartily recommend Turducken, especially if you think turkey is a bit bland by itself. Andrew ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 12:49:56 +0000 From: Dan Stillwell Subject: Re: [loud-fans] West Goes At The Movies Some More West Moran wrote: > > Jesus Christ, I am foaming at the mouth. I'm moving on. You can start hating > me now. Hating you? Those reviews were great - informative yet hilarious. I like it when a writer shows how the music, movie or book affected his life. I'm not exactly LoudFans' biggest cinemaphile, but your reviews make me want to see (or revisit) each of those films. Very well done! Dan Stillwell (Having Ingrid Bergman fantasies in black and white) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:59:56 -0500 (EST) From: dmw Subject: Re: [loud-fans] take the lombardi trophy to the stop-n-shop On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Aaron Milenski wrote: > Miles responded: > > >I was thinking of that parallel when I wrote about Jonathan earlier, but > >couldn't put it into words as well as doug just did. Somehow with Chilton, > >though, I *understood* more of why he recoiled into whatever you want to > >call the last quarter-century of his career -- I mean, would you want to > >live in the open wound of THIRD/SISTER LOVERS the rest of your life? But > >there's so much joy in THE MODERN LOVERS that even with its tales of > >nervous geeky heartbreak, it doesn't sound like such a bad place to be. > > There's definitely plenty of pain on THE MODERN LOVERS, but what makes it > THE favorite for me is that it ultimately is an extremely positive, > forward-thinking statement. It ends with "share the modern world with me," > certainly a joyous lyric, and no matter how sad and lonely and displaced > Jonathan is, the key to his mindset is that he always believes the world can > rise up and be what he wants it to be. Uhm, good points. But despite affirming lyrics, musically as well as lyrically, Richman still stayed away from material of comparable intenisity, thereafter even if "modern lovers" wasn't an angst-fest comparable to "sister lovers" (which had its lighter, more positive moments, too, don't forget). I admit though, that my thinking on this is heavily influenced by Jojo's own statments at a show I saw 7 or 8 years ago. People were requesting "Hospital" and stuff, and he wasn't playing them, and in the middle of some long pseduo-carribean song he stopped to explain why he didn't find the old stuff fun to play any more. He started in with a few bars of "She Cracked," I think it was, and then stopped, explaining that those downstroke eighth-notes were stiff and unyielding (I'm paraphrasing) -- then he played a few bars of the newer song (which admittedly had much more of a groove). I think he even went back and forth a few times -- "stiff!...groooove...stiff!...grooove" before finishing the set in modern (not modern lovers) mode. Acourse, the big irony is that the first time he started in with "She Cracked" he got a *huge* response from the crowd -- probably one of the biggest of the night. He also would often stop playing guitar in the middle of a tune and just clap and sing a capella, and he would wander around the stage singing and strumming, nowhere near the mic. It was kindof a weird show (my only experience with him live, so I don't know how typical it was. It was fun in a flaky way, but I wasn't eager to repeat it.) - -- d. ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V2 #57 ******************************