On The Media did its program from China last week. A story on pitching brand China to the world took a fascinating tour of that nation’s emerging business, fashion and cultural media. Almost in passing, there came this important truth:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Publisher and blogger Hong Huang says that the deepest generational divide separates those born before 1980 and those born after, because of what they saw happening around them, and what they saw on TV.

HONG HUANG: If you want to know [LAUGHS] what contributed most to a peaceful evolution in China, it would be pirated DVD. From cartoons, from Disney to movies, it’s the only thing that broke the censorship barrier. I’m sorry Hollywood lost a lot of money about this, but just consider it a donation to democracy around the world.

We got some emails about our post yesterday featuring a You Tubed tribute to Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, one of the stars of Hal Roach’s “The Little Rascals” — an incredibly gifted child comic actor whose life came to a tragic end.

A reader emailed me THIS LINK to a colorized 1937 Little Rascals Short “Night ‘N’ Gales” — one of my favorites. Note that I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with colorization. If it’s done tastefully — as this one is — it makes film comedy that should live forever more accessible to younger people, who have a hard time watching anything in black and white.

Here’s the You Tube embed. If it does not go to the end, click on the link and watch it there. I also found info on the colorized collection, which you can buy on Amazon, and the icon is below (I will order it for my collection of classic comedy to take with me on my 8 weeks on the road this summer). All of these kids were incredible and Switzer was a fine comedian. Watch it and see:

It’s now deeply embedded in our culture. “Flintstones, meet the Flintstones…” But that wasn’t the original opening that appeared in the program’s first two high-rated seasons on ABC. In fact, the 1960s-popular-culture-laced cartoon (un-admittedly based on Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners — Fred was drawn to look like Gleason and Wilma looked like Gleason’s wife on the classic show, Alice, as played by Audrey Meadows) had a different theme.

It was a bouncy show-biz style tune called “Rise and Shine.” It vanished by 1963, although it would occasionally appear as background music. Here’s the original opening (link to first season DVDs is below):

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went to Brown University to give a speech on Earth Day and he was greeted by a big student crowd — and pies in his face thrown by environmental activists.

Note when you watch the video how this form of pie-in-the-face is not funny at all but is done in a way so that it resembles an assault. And it is dealt with (correctly) that way by the legal system:

The legalities and proprieties of pie-throwing aside, what’s notable in the video above is that these students were the gang that couldn’t throw pies straight.

They should have studied the undisputed mastersof pie throwing:

Jack Benny was one of the 20th century’s most beloved comedians: a star of vaudeville, the golden age of radio, movies and television. He actually invented the situation comedy on radio. And he could milk a laugh by scanning (slowly turning and looking at) the audience — extending a laugh seconds longer than any other comedian. He helped pioneer 20th century comedy that was more attitude than just setup/joke setup/joke.

Mel Blanc was a comedian who became a legend in cartoons. He did the voices for most Warner Brothers cartoons (Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, Tweety, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Porky Pig and more) and later on for Barney Rubble and Dino on The Flintstones.
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Aislin, The Montreal Gazette

When people ask me, as a professional entertainer, who my favorite comedian or entertainer of all time is, they’re surprised by my reply: it’s Lou Costello, the chubby half of the classic Abbott & Costello comedy team.

They’re also surprised to hear me say I’m not talking about Costello as he appeared in the team’s films — but the Costello I watch (and study) on DVDs of the team’s filmed Abbott & Costello Show, a nutty situation comedy that inspired Jerry Seinfeld to create his show. And, especially, the Lou Costello as seen on DVDs in the old Colgate Comedy Hour shows where he and his parter performed live, a zillion things went wrong, and you wondered how Costello could keep the pace up without having a heart attack.

In fact, he died at age 52 of heart disease in 1959. But for students of comedy and aspiring comedians, he left a body of work that can still be studied and enjoyed.

Here’s one of the classic routines the team performed in burlesque, filmed and adapted for their TV show (so they could copyright and own it) — and one where Costello shines.

If you’re a young reader who is studying comedy and never really seen him, note here:
(1) His timing on his key lines.
(2) How he reacts to everything going on around him.
(3) His glances and comments to the audience and his enormous likability.
(4) The appearance of his partner Abbott (with the mustache) and, at the end, the appearance of the most unloved of the Three Stooges’ “Curley replacements,” Joe Besser as “Stinky,” an obnoxious brat (played by a grown man in ridiculous early 20th century kids clothing). Besser’s creation of the bratty kid is a classic.

This show comes from the collection noted below of remastered half hour Abbott & Costello Shows from the first of its two seasons.

Here’s another Guest film Review by Dan Schneider, who has this heavily-visited website and whose reviews for TMV have been highly popular.

DVD Review Of An Inconvenient Truth

Review Copyright 2008 © by Dan Schneider

Let me state, up front, I have never been a fan of former Vice President Al Gore. He was a right of center Democrat who worked in an administration whose environmental record was considered, by most ecological groups, worse than the two Republican administrations that preceded his, and held that office at a time when the earliest stages of global warming, which he now decries, were first becoming known.

As the second most visible politician in the country, did he sound the alarums then? Well, no. He wrote a book or two, but did nothing of any real consequence with the power he had. However, his Johnny Come lately status as an environmentalist, which led to his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as an Oscar for the 94 minute 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, has nothing to do why it’s a bad film. That’s due solely to the film’s director Davis Guggenheim, most noted as a network television director.

Of course, if one Googles the film at such sites like Amazon or IMDB, there will be plenty of negative reviews of the film. Almost all of them will be unveiled ad hominem against Gore or simply blatant pro-global warming propaganda.

I did not find a single negative review based solely on the film’s art. On the other hand, many of the film’s staunchest defenders praise the film solely because they are pro-green. Even the Chicago Sun-Times’ venerable film critic, Roger Ebert, seems to feel that bending down on two knees is not enough praise for the Buddha Gore, writing:

I want to write this review so every reader will begin it and finish it. I am a liberal, but I do not intend this as a review reflecting any kind of politics. It reflects the truth as I understand it, and it represents, I believe, agreement among the world’s experts….He provides statistics: The 10 warmest years in history were in the last 14 years. Last year South America experienced its first hurricane. Japan and the Pacific are setting records for typhoons. Hurricane Katrina passed over Florida, doubled back over the Gulf, picked up strength from unusually warm Gulf waters, and went from Category 3 to Category 5. There are changes in the Gulf Stream and the jet stream. Cores of polar ice show that carbon dioxide is much, much higher than ever before in a quarter of a million years. It was once thought that such things went in cycles. Gore stands in front of a graph showing the ups and downs of carbon dioxide over the centuries. Yes, there is a cyclical pattern. Then, in recent years, the graph turns up and keeps going up, higher and higher, off the chart….In England, Sir James Lovelock, the scientist who proposed the Gaia hypothesis (that the planet functions like a living organism), has published a new book saying that in 100 years mankind will be reduced to “a few breeding couples at the Poles.” Gore thinks “that’s too pessimistic….In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to….Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be “impartial” and “balanced” on global warming means one must take a position like Gore’s. There is no other view that can be defended….What is the look? It’s the look of no fear….

To say that there is not a critical (in any sense of the term) thing in the whole review, is manifest. But, even though I did not want to quote as much of the review as I did, this needs to be known.

As bad and uncritical as Ebert’s review is, the film is manifold worse in hagiographizing St. Al.

And that is its chief flaw, artistically.

Whereas Michael Moore sticks his ugly mug into his agitprop films every three minutes or so, I don’t think that there’s a single three minute span in this agitprop film that we do not see Gore, up close, and too close, so that his every pore is seen, that his nostrils are not heaving with passion.
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GRAM PARSONS WAS ON LOAN TO US FOR A LITTLE WHILE, BUT WE DIDN’T LOOK UP FAST ENOUGH — MARK LEVITON

I’m a fast reader and usually race right through books. But there’s been a lot going on in my young life lately, and during the couple of weeks that it took me to read a book on Gram Parsons and then watch a documentary on him, I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of the music that influenced the legendary signer-songwriter. This included folk, country, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, jazz and soul. Oh yeah, and rock, too.

That made my respect for Gram Parsons the musical innovator all the greater and my contempt for Gram Parsons the friendship-abusing junkie all the deeper.

The book is Twenty Thousand Roads by David N. Meyer, a fascinating biography of Parsons, who had such a remarkably outsized influence on the course of American music in his mere 26 years on the planet. The greatest strength of the book is Meyer’s ability to explain and make sense of the many threads that played into that influence.

The documentary is Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, which despite some wonderful live footage of Parsons performing, is pallid compared to the bio because of director Gandulf Hennig’s inability to or disinterest in fleshing out that influence.
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The Federal Communications Commission wants to fine ABC $1.4 million for airing an episode of “NYPD Blue” in 2003 showing a woman’s nude buttocks. The network owner, Walt Disney Company, will appeal.

In the sexual Dark Ages of my adolescence, teenagers would mark the hot passages of novels for the delectation of their peers. Now the enterprise has come full circle–with disastrous results.

A Utah retailer of family-friendly tapes and DVDs–movies with the “dirty parts” cut out of them–has been arrested for trading sex with two 14-year-old girls.

Daniel Dean Thompson’s Clean Flix was a video outlet trading in purified versions, catering to clientele who wanted to watch hit movies without nudity, sex, foul language or graphic violence.

But Thompson may have spent too much time watching the excised portions of his products…

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Here’s another Guest film Review by Dan Schneider, who has this heavily-visited website and whose reviews for TMV have been highly popular.

Thoughts On the Planet Of The Apes

Copyright ©2008 by Dan Schneider

Whilst searching Amazon a while back, I happened to come across a copy of Planet Of The Apes: The Ultimate DVD Collection which was significantly cheaper than the other editions sellers had listed, yet was listed in excellent condition. I could not resist the urge, so splurged for this massive thirteen disk collection that includes the five original films, the 2001 remake by filmmaker Tim Burton, the 1974 CBS television series, and the 1975 NBC Saturday morning television cartoon. For a fan of all of the named, as well the great original dystopian novel, La Planète Des Singes, by Pierre Boulle (who also penned The Bridge On The River Kwai), it was a no brainer.

Of course, there are variances in quality between all the works, but even the worst of them is a bit more intelligent than the average Hollywood tripe today. Plus, all the disks come encased in a life-sized head of one the apes played by Roddy McDowell (the rebel ape leader Caesar) through most of the series. By necessity, this review will not be an in depth review of all of the elements of all of the constituent parts, merely an overview and assessment of same. So, let’s start at the beginning.

The first disk is of the original 1968 sci fi classic, Planet Of The Apes, starring Charlton Heston. It is a simply stunning transfer, and looks as if it were filmed this year. It was directed by Franklin Schaffner, who went on to success with the Oscar-winning biopic Patton.

It is the tale of a misanthropic astronaut, and his three comrades, sent on the first interstellar flight, somewhere towards Alpha Centauri. The tale follows Heston’s character, Colonel George Taylor, and his two surviving male underlings, Dodge and Landon, after they crash land on a seemingly deserted Earth-like world. The female member of the crew, Stewart, has died due to an air leak in her hibernation capsule.

While they think they are in a different solar system, and have traveled over two thousand years into the future, it not too slowly becomes apparent that they are back on Earth. The willful suspension of disbelief is needed, of course, because the chances that astronauts could not tell that they were under our sun, moon, and constellations- even a few millennia hence, is unlikely. Then there is the terrestrial flora, then the encounter with mute humans (how unlikely is that?), and then being captured by English speaking gorillas on a hunt.
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Here’s another Guest film Review by Dan Schneider, who has this heavily-visited website and whose reviews for TMV have been highly popular.

DVD Review of Network

Copyright 2007 © by Dan Schneider

Film director Sidney Lumet is, with the possible exception of Robert Wise, the most underrated director in Hollywood history. When one looks at the list of great films in Lumet’s career: 12 Angry Men, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Fail-Safe, Serpico, Murder On The Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, and a handful of others, one marvels, not only at what he accomplished, but that he’s spent a quarter-century having churned out nothing but mediocrity since 1982’s The Verdict.

Yet, of all the films in his canon, perhaps the best, and certainly the most complex, was 1976’s Network- the greatest black comedy this side of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb. It was to corporate America what Strangelove was to the military industrial complex.

Written by the nonpareil Paddy Chayefsky, Network is not only a prescient film, but still a cogent one, as remarkable as that claim seems. Whereas many films from the years in between its release and now have dated badly, the same cannot be said of Network.

Like other visionary films, from Metropolis to The Trial, Network not only crafted a world unto itself, but a world that, in large part, has seen its day realize.

Yes, there are no PC’s on the desks of the network stooges, but other than that, the depiction of corporate America’s deadly vapidity, its whoring of life and death and war and suffering into mere commodities, has all come true.

Reality tv has shown that the only thing that Chayefsky’s and Lumet’s film has not yet seen come true is the assassination on live television that closes the film. This oddly vatic quality raises the question of whether the film can even rightly be called a satire. Perhaps a prophecy is closer to the mark, especially in how the fictive fourth network, UBS (Union Broadcasting Systems), so closely resembles the real current fourth network, then a decade from its creation, FOX.

The tale is one that seems not so outlandish any longer- Howard Beale (Peter Finch), widowed, depressed, and alcoholic network news anchorman for the UBS Evening News, has learnt that he will be fired due to low ratings. Beale’s producer and friend, Max Schumacher (William Holden) informs him of this, and this seems to be the final straw for Beale, who glibly announces his impending retirement, and that he will also suicide on next week’s show.

Few techs in the studio are even paying attention until one of them who was freaks out. Network bigwigs freak out, yet there is never a sense of real overacting- save, perhaps for Finch’s role. This is why the film is so devastating, for Chayefsky and Lumet were intimately involved with network politics from the earliest days of television, and drew from their decades of experience to couch craziness in acceptability.

At first, the network, led by Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall)- a hatchet man for CCA, the conglomerate that owns UBS, wants to crucify Beale, but then, when Beale’s allowed a final mea culpa, and rants again on the bullshit nature of life, and becomes a ratings hit, the network decides to make the newscast a game show sort of variety hour called simply The Howard Beale Show, with Beale as the ‘mad prophet’ of network television, destined to ‘denounce the hypocrisies of our time.’ Chief among Beale’s supporters is a soulless shrew who heads programming, Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway- who won the Best Actress Oscar).

Schumacher, who soon begins an affair with Dunaway, believes that his old friend’s mental breakdown is being exploited, but once Beale’s catchphrase- ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’- takes off, Schumacher finds himself out of a job, but in Christensen’s bed, having left his long suffering wife, Louise (Beatrice Straight), who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for less than ten minutes of screen time. What really works about the few scenes that Holden shares with Straight, is how straight and mature they play the breakup scene.

Yet, while Straight, Dunaway, and Finch all won Oscars for their roles, the best acting job in the film is turned in by Holden, who is the only actor that really bridges the comic and dramatic elements of the film. He is simply brilliant- conveying decades of corporate bullshit in his eyes and facial wrinkles, and Chayefsky highlights his understated but rock solid acting with the character’s own ability to surmise his fate, and comment upon it as a network sportscaster might. Interestingly, the three actors who did win the Oscars, never share any screen time together, although all share major time with Holden.

There are several brilliant realized subplots, the best being Christensen’s desire to exploit a Patty Hearst like terrorist situation into an ongoing reality tv show, The Mao Tse-Tung Hour, to follow Beale’s show. That, too, becomes a hit, and has a wickedly dead on scene wherein the Angela Davis-like female terrorist tries to protect her legal rights to the programming from others- including the Communist Party, from getting a share.

All seems to be going well for the network, as it rises from the ratings cellar, until Beale turns from inveighing against evildoers in the world at large to those who attempt to buy out his own network’s conglomerate, Saudi Arabians.
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Here’s another Guest film Review by Dan Schneider, who has this heavily-visited website and whose reviews for TMV have been highly popular.

DVD Review Of Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
Copyright © by Dan Schneider

When is sweetness that thing that rescues the tart from bitterness, and when is it the thing that makes the already sweet sweeten to vomitus? I pondered this whilst rewatching the 1964 color film ‘classic’ Santa Claus Conquers The Martians.

This little film routinely shows up on many folks’ Worst Films Ever Made lists, along with such abominations as Plan 9 From Outer Space, Robot Monster and The Beast From Yucca Flats. Yet, while there truly is no ‘more’ to this film vs. the others, in terms of depth, acting, writing, cinematography, etc., there is one big difference between this film and the others: this is the only one of those films, and a half dozen more notorious ’so bad they’re good’ films, which was made and targeted specifically for children.

The others were failures of a mature vision (so to speak), whereas this film is the failure of an immature vision; a sort of failed Elf- the Will Ferrell hit of a few years back. For that reason, it is far more difficult to pin down what exactly is the result of mere ineptitude and incredible stolidity (not to mention cheapness, for the film was not made in Hollywood, but at the ‘Michael Myerberg Studios’ on Long Island, New York; which was, in reality, an abandoned Air Force hangar- if legend is to be believed) and what is the result of cynical adults simply not ‘getting’ bygone children’s entertainment fare. Think of Santa Claus Conquers The Martians as the 1960s answer to that current piece of PC PBS swill, Barney The Dinosaur.

Of course, this is an instance where I am openly pondering intent (although, with such a title, what sort of serious intent could this film have?), but because that’s perhaps the lone thing that might take a rational being more than an instant to decide their opinion on.

The film was directed by one Nicholas Webster, who went on to a mildly successful Hollywood career as a television director, and was written by two- Paul L. Jacobon and Glenville Mareth, who did not. The film’s only other claim to fame- aside from its artistic ignominy, is that it featured the film debut of Pia Zadora- the legendarily bad future softcore porno star who won a 1982 Golden Globe Award for Butterfly, purchased by her decades older billionaire husband. Zadora stars as a Martian girl called Girmar (Get it?: Girl Martian- Girmar).

Here is an in depth (ok, a cursory) look at the film’s narrative, such as it is: The kids of Mars are dull, lazy, and trained from birth by electronic devices to have a full store of knowledge by the time they are able to toddle (sort of like children now, who at three or four, are Internet savvy….and increasingly autistic). Worse, they are zoned out by watching mindless Earth television shows (the revenge of Newt Minnow!).

The King of Mars, Kimar (Leonard Hicks), is perplexed, and asks his wife, Momar (Leila Martin, aka Mom Martian) about what’s ailing their two kids, Girmar (see above) and Bomar (Christopher Month: ok, let’s see….Boy Martian?). They divine that the kids are not having fun, so Kimar rallies the top leaders of Mars to visit an 800 year old sage, Chochem (Carl Don), in a Martian forest (which lacks trees), and he tells them the legend of Santa Claus, and how Mars needs a Santa Claus. I swear, Yoda from Star Wars was patterned after Don’s seminal performance here.

The rest of Kimar’s posse of Martian leaders thus agree to go to Earth and bring Santa (John Call) to Mars to make toys for their children instead. All except Voldar (Vincent Beck), Mars’ answer to The Grinch, who opposes Kimar every step of the way. He is a villain straight out of a silent film or bad cartoon, and the costumes the Martians wear are ill fitting tights with helmets and antennae- sort of like The Great Gazoo, from The Flintstones tv cartoon.

Anyway, the Martians kidnap Santa Claus, but only after getting directions from a brother and sister, Billy (Victor Stiles) and Betty Foster (Donna Conforti), from America, who point them to the North Pole. Once there, the kids, assisted by Kimar’s manservant- a goofy Martian named Dropo (Bill McCutcheon), derided as ‘the laziest man on Mars,’ escape the Martian spacecraft, encounter a polar bear and the Martians’ robot, Torg (an obvious play off of the robot Gort, from The Day The Earth Stood Still)- two pathetically bad looking creatures, before they are recovered. Santa turns the robot into a harmless toy, but after the Martians freeze some elves and Mrs. Claus, Santa gives in.

He then kyboshes Voldar’s plans to kill him and the kids, but does not seem to realize that the Martians intend to keep him on Mars forever. He is a bit ’slow,’ and some of the worst/best moments of the film occur when Santa laughs at inappropriate times, and looks at the children just a bit too long- think of a young priest with younger altar boys.

Even worse is when he first meets Bomar and Girmar, and they turn from morose to jovial, guffawing like buck-toothed idiots, almost instantly. Voldar, meanwhile, has been jailed for treason (the attempt on Santa’s life and other petty crimes), but escapes to a cave with two idiotic co-conspirators who, likewise, want to rid the planet of joy and Santa, and return Mars to its glory as the ‘Planet Of War.’

Voldar tries to kidnap Santa, but apparently cannot recognize it is Dropo in a Santa suit, trying to fatten up by eating Martian pills labeled ‘chocolate ice cream’ and ‘cake.’ Eventually, Voldar is caught, Santa saves the day, Dropo is installed as Mars’ own Santa, and the old elf and the Earth kids return to Earth, all because Kimar and company learns the lesson that kidnapping, even for a good cause, is a bad thing, for it can cause manic depression in children. Well, nor manic depression, but excessive politeness as a form of Stockholm Syndrome. Read the rest of this entry »

NOTE: This is a Guest Voice Post by skippy the bush kangaroo (who writes in lower case and who originated the word “blogtopia”).

Hollywood Writers Strike: All Hollywood Writers Are NOT Millionaires

by skippy the bush kangaroo

hi everyone, skippy the bush kangaroo here, and i’m very honored to be writing for the moderate voice today, about something very close to my heart — the wga writers strike.

now, if you listen to the spin that the american motion picture and television producers association puts out, you’re probably saying to yourself, “why should i care about millionaire writers wanting more money?”

but the truth is that the majority of writers guild members make less than $20,000 a year…a far cry from millionaires!

i’m not in the writers guild, but i am in the screen actors guild, and our contract is up for re-negotiation next year. most actors i’ve talked with agree, that the advances or rollbacks that the writers obtain during this current labor action will set the precedent for what happens to us in june.

i have many close friends in the writers guild, and believe me, they all wish they didn’t have to go out on strike. but there are two points that they would like to achieve.

these two points are explained in this video by tim kazurinsky (you may remember his as sweetchuck in the police academy films, or as a member of saturday nite live in the 80’s).

that’s right, the writers have only been making 4 cents per dvd sold. and they were only asking for a mere 4 cents more per dvd sale, for a total of 8 cents. considering that a dvd sells for about $29.95, it doesn’t seem like much.

and, i have to report that at this point, the writers have taken the demand for another 4 cents off the table (right before they went out on strike). mediachannel.org:

the wga’s repeatedly referred to four cents as the usual residual writers receive per dvd sale. on the last day of contract talks, guild negotiators took the dvd proposal — seeking to double that rate — off the table but were infuriated by what they saw as a lack of movement by the companies and have hinted since then that it might be back on the table. the wga had no comment wednesday about the status of its dvd proposal.

the second point is that currently the writers get absolutely nothing when their work is shown on the internet, even though the networks are getting advertisting dollars for showing episodes of their programs on the web. just try to watch “grey’s anatomy” on your computer without having to sit through that herbal essence commercial…and unlike with tivo, can’t fast-forward it!

however, the networks have cleverly decided to call such internet showings of programs “promotion,” and thusly refuse to pay residuals. this might not seem like such a big problem, but anybody who dealt with the net neutrality issue would surmise that the telecommunication industry has big plans for using the internet as a distribution system in the upcoming years.

at least, barry diller, former head of abc programming and hollywood wunderkind, seems to think so:

internet-distributed television, talk of which dominated the consumer electronics show earlier this month, has large factions of both naysayers and disciples. and allaire has shown a knack for making believers out of key people. armed with $16 million in funding from aol, barry diller’s interactivecorp., hearst and venture-capital group allen & co., brightcove recently added diller to its board of directors. former aol chief executive steve case, whose cable/broadband network lime is powered by brightcove, is an investor as well.

most of my writer and actor friends think so, too. and if the common distribution system for television in the next decade is broadband internet, you can bet the writers (and the actors) don’t want a contract without residuals for usage on the web.

i’m one of the lucky ones in hollywood, i’m making a good living. but that has only been in the last few years. i spent most of my hollywood years just barely getting by, and often i had to have other, non-acting jobs to supplement my income. that’s how i know just how important residuals are to the creative industry worker.

i was a strike captain back in the commercial actors strike in 2000. though the other side was comprised of a different set of suits (that is, we were negotiating with advertising agencies, and not studios and networks), they had the same mindset. and they made no attempt to hide their agenda: the total elimination of all residuals. i am afraid that this labor action is very much about the same thing.

luckily for everyone invovled, the two sides have agreed to get back to the negotiating table, starting next monday. wish us all luck. if you’d like to follow the progress of this strike, united hollywood is a very good “unofficial” blog with daily updates. other blogs that is staying on top of this story include nikki finke’s deadline hollwyood daily and speechless without writers. also the blogs of james gunn and ken levine, who are two very successful writers that are keeping tabs on this labor action.

and of course, over on my blog i’ll be reporting as much inside dope and outside poop as i can find, which to date includes my experiences walking the picket lines at nbc (where i saw the back of john edwards head), at 20th century fox, and in the big hollywood blvd. rally earlier this week.

Read TMV’s previous posts on the strike HERE and HERE.

Here’s another Guest film Review by Dan Schneider, who has this heavily-visited website and whose reviews for TMV have been highly popular.

DVD Review of Robot Monster

Copyright ©2007 by Dan Schneider

Ok, a DVD review is not exactly what this is. Yes, I watched the 1953 legendary schlock B sci fi film Robot Monster on a DVD, but since it was on one of those cheapo 50 movie DVD packs, there were no extras whatsoever- ok, there was a chapter selection. Yippee! But, given the level of the ‘art’ the film attains, is there anything wrong with going virtually featureless?

And, given that the 66 minute black and white film was originally shot in 3-D, who cares that it has nothing else to offer, save giving the English language such terms as psychotronic and calcinator death ray (which somehow turns the reality of the film into its own filmic negative)?

Robot Monster, which I’ve watched fifteen or more times in my life, is generally considered, along with Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, to be one of the twin titans of the ’so bad it’s actually good, in a weird way’ genre of B sci fi film from the 1950s. While not as manifestly spoofable as Wood’s classic film, Robot Monster- directed by first-timer Phil Tucker in less than a week, and for under $20,000 (reputedly), does have the goofy title character- called a Ro-Man, portrayed as a thing either in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet and tv antenna attached to it, or a gorilla in a diving helmet.

The confusion is because, despite the gorilla costume, the few times we look dead on into the diving helmet we see only a misty visage, which almost seems skeletal.

That said, there are only two essential ways to take this film, in any semi-serious vein: 1) as a child’s dream (which it is, ala William Cameron Menzies’ film Invaders From Mars, released the same year), or 2) as a character study of a non-human coming to terms with the very humanity he aims to destroy. The first option is the exterior option of the film, and the second is the interior.

But, let me give a brief synopsis of the film, shot entirely in the famed Bronson Canyon, in California- home for hundreds of good and bad film and television shoots over the decades (Bonanza, anyone?). Its shooting location and the film score by Elmer Bernstein, who would later score The Ten Commandments and The Magnificent Seven (among many classics) are the most effective things in the film, aside from some horrifically funny pseudo-philosophy. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another Guest DVD Review by Dan Schneider, who has this popular website and whose reviews for TMV are highly popular.

DVD Review Of Japan’s War In Colour
Copyright © 2007 by Dan Schneider

Recently, the PBS network ran Ken Burns’ 15 hour magnum opus, The War, about America’s involvement in World War Two, and while it was a passable effort, detailing the war from our point of view, both militarily and on the home front, there was a great deal of room for improvement, stylistically, and in the effective use of music on the soundtrack. That said, a few days back, my wife and I were in a Best Buy, looking for cell phone plans, when I passed by a DVD rack, looked down, and glanced a DVD called Japan’s War In Colour- an hour and a half long documentary produced by Channel 4 in the U.K., and narrated by the great character actor Brian Cox. Given its very affordable price, I decided to go with my gut and let fortuity rule.

In short, I was correct- for Japan’s War In Colour is an outstanding documentary, everything The War, in all its well-intentioned bloat, is not.

It culls color film from Japan, taken as early as 1937- a time that nation was believed by the West not to have developed the process, as American legendry claimed the Japanese did not have color film stock until the Occupation. This film, however, debunks that myth, and uses it- color film from Japanese military, American military, and Japanese civilian and government sources, to step by step take the viewer through the eight years of Japan’s Holy War against China, and then later America and Great Britain.

Whereas The War relied on Burns’ all too familiar talking heads approach to thread its narrative, Japan’s War In Colour actually takes artistic risks. While Cox threads together some loose ends, the film is propelled by the amazing images of daily Japanese life contrasted against read excerpts from the diaries and letters of Japanese civilians, soldiers, and leaders, as well as translations from speeches given by General Tojo, Emperor Hirohito, and others in power. These selections are far more moving, artistic yet real, and well wrought, than anything the comparatively contrived The War offered to its viewers.

The pacing of the film clips is superbly relentless, as the crescendos toward war and doom come and go. This is ably aided by the superb soundtrack concocted by Chris Elliott, whose music perfectly coheres with the images. At times of great crisis, such as scenes of kamikaze attacks or the Marianas Turkey Shoot, the music is as enthralling as any Arnold Schwarzenegger film. But, when the film clips show a wedding, or you hear a soldier reading a letter to a relative, the music works in undertones to subliminally heighten the scene. From the invasion of Manchuria, to private scenes of Japanese officials meeting with Hitler and Mussolini, to the scenes of mass death in Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and even to scenes of Hirohito on a General MacArthur ordered propaganda tour after the war, the film reveals a side of a people unknown to those whose ideas on Japan are derived solely from Godzilla or samurai films.

Another thing that raises this film above The War is its ability to contrast images with spoken word.

As an example, The War often used voiceovers to describe the manifest things that the scene it spoke over captured, therefore rendering the voiceover redundant, and the image weakened. Japan’s War In Colour, by contrast, marries the two by having the two forces work at angles, tangentially, to each other. As example, after several scenes showing the island by island American push toward Japan slowly sinking into the consciousness of the Japanese public, we hear Cox talk about food rationing, and the zookeepers of the Tokyo Zoo being ordered to poison all their animals, because the government could no longer afford to feed them. Then, in an utterly brilliant stroke, we go straight into a small girl’s voiceover speak of how horrible the war is, knowing that the animals she loves have to die for her country.

In its own right, the contrast is great enough, but couple that with earlier filmed scenes and voiceovers of Japanese children being indoctrinated into groupthink, and rejoicing in the ‘Victory’ at Pearl Harbor, over the Americans, and the little girl’s shattered illusions about life, brought to her by the death of innocent animals, is all the more poignant. Producer and director David Batty and film editor Stephen Moore show that they are major forces in the world and art of documentary filmmaking, for they have shown that even the oldest genres and formats can be made new.

Another bonus, especially for war buffs, is the fact that many of the actual reels of footage are not technically ‘new,’ although many are claimed never to have been shown for decades.
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NOTE: The Moderate Voice runs guest voice posts from time to time. One of the most popular guest voices is Dan Schneider, who does guest reviews for us. TMV coblogger Shaun Mullen loved Ken Burns’ The War…but as you’ll see below, Dan Schneider had a different reaction and he tells you exactly why.

DVD Review Of Ken Burns’ The War

Copyright © by Dan Schneider

In regards to art, greatness is not merely a difference of scale, but a difference of kind, in that the elements that constitute greatness force an almost alchemical change in the nature of the beast. The brushstroke, wordly coinage, motion of the camera, or whatever it is that constitutes the given art, becomes more than the brushstroke, wordly coinage, or motion of the camera.

There seems to be an almost ineffable rise in the ability to invoke reaction from the art’s percipients, and while certainly not supernatural, the great art and the great artist is a cut above, even if the mechanism of the ascendancy is not immediately evident, even to the most astute critic.

This ideal was brought home to me while watching filmmaker Ken Burns’ most recent PBS documentary, The War, co-directed by Lynn Novick, for Burns, despite his ability to often stumble into a great moment, seems not to fundamentally understand the mechanics nor elements that constitute greatness. This 15 plus hour film follows in the wake of three other monumental documentaries he has crafted in the last decade and a half: the magnificent The Civil War- whose only dramatic flaw was the melodramatic schmaltz historian Shelby Foote displayed for the Confederacy, the too long Baseball, and the somnolent Jazz. In between he has crafted some interesting shorter documentaries on subjects as diverse as Mark Twain and Jack Johnson, but his bread and butter has been the marquee ‘big doc.’

Burns has been plagued by years of controversies, both artistically and historically. His best film, The Civil War, which pioneered the Burnsian template of talking heads, melodramatic readings of personal letters, and slow scans of still photographs, accompanied by sometimes highly poetic words (and often purple prose), and swelling crescendos of music, was a triumph of art in a journalistic form.

Yet, even that artistically great film was dogged by numerous historical flaws- documented in Robert Brent Toplin’s book Ken Burn’s The Civil War: Historians Respond. Baseball was far too long, and too obsessed with the cult of personality, rather than the thing that made the game America’s pastime: its history, season by season, and its pennant races. Jazz was a snooze that hagiographized often obscure musicians, and the whole project was a bit too weighted down with Political Correctness.

Now, with the release of his fourth epic, more cracks in the Burnsian aura have shown through. Yes, it is a significant uptick from the downward trajectory of the last two epics, but The War still falls short of The Civil War, and by a longshot. This is because Burns does not seem to understand that content must impact form. Given that the talking heads of this film are the percipients of that event, and not historians, one would think that he might have edited out some of the more banal segments, where the oldsters tend to babble on about minutia- important in their minds, but utterly irrelevant to the neutral observer.

Also, by using actor and celebrity World War Two enthusiast Tom Hanks to read the written observations of a small town journalist, Burns commits another great error of judgment- namely that most of what the editor, and the other quoted letters and commentaries say, are simply not as well wrought nor as emotionally engaging as those culled from the Civil War archives. Moral: not all small town newspaper types are budding Ambrose Bierces.
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As a performer in my other incarnation, I study classic and contemporary comedians…and seem to keep coming back to one comic/tragic figure. It’s Lou Costello, the rolly-polly part of the famous Abbott and Costello comedy team that dominated radio and movies in the 40s, appeared on early TV, broke up in the mid-fifties and ended definitely in 1959. It’s because in March 1959 Costello died of heart disease at age 52.

But he’s still such a joy to watch and study — moreso in his filmed TV show…a show that Jerry Seinfeld says inspired his show “Seinfeld.” Or, you can study him and Bud Abbott performing “live” before early live TV audiences.

If you’re a student of comedy, watch Costello closely in this 8 minute clip from the first season of team’s TV show.
See how he looks at and connects to the audience. Note his timing. His incredible likeability. His charisma (he was actually the highly assertive member of the team) shines through. I keep watching him again and again because he left a legacy of still-wonderful comedic performances that you can collect on DVD:

The Moderate Voice runs guest voice columns from time to time by readers who don’t have their own sites or by people who want to contribute to the voices and perspectives offered to TMV’s ideologically and demographically diverse readership. This is in another one of the reviews by Dan Schneider, who has his own site HERE and whose reviews have been popular on TMV.

DVD Review Of A Certain Kind Of Death

Copyright 2007 © by Dan Schneider

Where would contemporary documentaries be without the Michael Moore style of self-promotional agitprop, or without PBS’s Burns Brothers’ solemnly historical talking heads and recitations form of docudrama? Well, back to straightforward journalistic techniques, of the sort employed in the outstanding 70 minute long 2003 documentary from directors Grover Babcock and Blue Hadaegh, A Certain Kind Of Death.

And no, this is not the exploitative pseudo-documentary style that was pioneered in camp classics like Faces Of Death nor Mondo Cane. Instead, the directors hew to the early style of Errol Morris, albeit even more starkly. Their technique- of emotional distancing, by having employees of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office simply tell how they do their jobs when dealing with kinless decedents, rather than telling how they feel, gives the audience an unbiased ‘in’ to the rather rote way municipalities deal with the hundreds of annual unclaimed dead- what used to be referred to as ‘going to potter’s field.’

The film follows the deaths of three single white middle-aged men in 2001. One is a 63 year old homosexual, Ronald Eugene Tanner, who seems to have died of complications from AIDS; another an obese drifter, Donald Wright, found in a motel, who either accidentally injured and killed himself, or was killed; and the third, Tommy Albertson, is a man who lived in a small roach-infested apartment and died on his bed.

The inurement and occasional humor displayed by the people who clean up after the dead bodies, sift through their belongings, research their lives, and try to find next of kin, is to be expected in government work (as I was once a civil servant), where the roteness of civil servitude even less interesting than this often holds sway, but especially when one has to deal with about 2000 such cases a year.

And when we see the bodies- naked, emotionless, with welts, bruises, or partly rotted and decomposed portions of their forms (these stiffs are called ‘decomps’ in the parlance), inurement seems a wholly reasonable approach one should take to such tasks, such as slinging the dead by their four limbs, like a shot deer (something I recall watching my own dead dad’s body enduring).

The film follows the three or four month process the county has to go through. We see that the first man, Tanner, ends up having oddly prepared his own death in detail, as well as those of his dead (from AIDS) lover and mother. His lover he even buried in a plot he bought for himself. We find out of his older brother’s suicide nearly forty years earlier, and of his inheriting some money from a relative and business associate, and then watch as a county drayage crew wraps up and notes his belongings, which are then sold at a county auction, with the money used to defray county costs.

The sight of the cleanliness of his apartment walls, where once hung his paintings is very moving, especially when the aging, likely from cigaret smoke, just beyond where the pictures hung is visible. It is a potent symbol of the dead man’s life. It, like the clean portions of the walls, is just an empty space, and soon the dirt of the rest of the wall (or society) will fill it in, as if it always never was anything else.

There’s little wonder that the filmmakers chose to focus the bulk of the film on his death’s tale. He simply recorded far more of his existence as a budding actor, and far more of his plans or death. We get to know more of him, and even come to like him for the care he displayed toward others, as revealed by the legal ramifications of his actions and the letters of kindness he stored, when others reciprocated his good will.

Wright and Albertson, by contrast, are much more enigmatic in their relatively ciphered deaths, and thus need the county strangers to decide their fates more, whereas Tanner’s preparations obviate others’ intercessions.
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When I received the screener of Cities of Light a documentary about Islamic Spain, it was also mentioned to me that if I wanted to ask questions to one of the producers, I could. After watching it - and writing the review published yesterday - I decided that I could not let this opportunity pass, so I send out an e-mail, got in contact with Michael Wolfe - executive producer of Cities of Light - and we did an interview. Meanwhile, do not forget to watch the documentary about Islamic Spain - tomorrow (Wednesday August 22nd), at 9PM on PBS.

MvdG: Where did the idea to make a documentary about Al-Andalus come from?
MW: We’re history buffs at Unity Productions. We’re always reading, constantly searching for great stories in the past that will make exciting films modern people can learn from.

MvdG: Why did the subject appeal to you?
MW: The true story of an Islamic state in Medieval Western Europe where Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together for centuries is both fascinating in itself and pertinent to our times.

MvdG: How did you prepare for it and how did you study the subject?
MW: I read a few dozen books and then started talking at length with an initial handful of brilliant scholars. In particular, James Monroe at the Berkeley to start with. Then I lunched many times with Brian Catlos, of the University of California at Santa Cruz. A prize-winning author and Medieval historian, Brian speaks all the languages and lived for many years in Spain. He gave guided tours as a student there and later wrote guidebooks for travelers. He has both immense erudition and real, hands-on experience on the ground. Talking with him and other scholars like Tom Glick, at Boston University, was enormously inspiring at the outset. It also kept me from making dumb assumptions about this extremely complex period that lasted more than seven centuries.

MvdG: How long did it take to prepare for the documentary and how long did the actual filming take?
MW: We started planning and then researching the film in 2002 and 2003. Raising money took a long time. The filming went more quickly. As I recall, we filmed abroad twice over an 18 month period—once for about a month and once for about two weeks.

MvdG: As mentioned in my review, the tolerance of Al-Andalus was a rare in that day and age. I wonder, was the entire Muslim world as tolerant as, for instance, Abdul Rahman III, or was Al-Andalus also an exception for Muslims? I wonder about this, because of the fact that Istanbul (or Constantinople) also was a multicultural society for several centuries.
MW: Al-Andalus was unique in Europe, though the region of Sicily and southern Italy had a similar experience of sorts, for a shorter period of time under Muslim rule and the so-called Turbaned Kings. The multi-faith aspect was as true in Baghdad under the Abbasid rulers as it was in Cairo under the Ismaili sultans like Mustansir as it was in Cordoba under Hakim II. The great Jewish philosopher and author Maimonides was physician to the Muslim sultan in Egypt. Jews held high office in many Muslim courts, including Cordoba.

MvdG: Where did the leaders of Al-Andalus get the idea of tolerance from?
MW: It’s all derived from the Qur’an and the story of Muhammad’s life. What made this possible in Medieval Spain was a strain of religious and legal thought in Islam in those days that treated Christians and Jews as faiths related to and so socially in synch with Islam. Tolerance as we understand it was not an active concept in those times. The process by which this occurred in Spain later acquired the name “Convivencia,” living together. In Spain, the wisest regimes recognized that the most productive route to a thriving country was through utilizing the strengths of the different faith groups, not by pitting them against each other. That came later, as themes like ethnic purity, the Crusades/and Jihad, and religious exclusivism won out over notions of pluralism and inclusion. Spain commenced as an experiment in pluralism. It ended in the Inquisition and expulsion or conversion of two-thirds of its population, the Jews and the Muslims.

MvdG: Is it fair to say that the Muslim Empire - at least the ones in Andalus / the Ottoman Empire were de facto the heirs of ancient Greece and perhaps even Rome and - at that moment - not the European Kingdoms?
MW: I don’t think so. These were very different experiments in organizing territory and living together. They are not really inter-related, though of course the Roman Empire did re-package the Greek ethos in many ways and refashion its culture. I would say that Al-Andalus was an historical period and a place that partook of Western European and Middle East culture and values and forged a unique civilization out of them.

MvdG: As mentioned in the documentary, the Muslims studied the ancients and added to it. Could you explain to the reader what they exactly added to these works?
MW: The best scholars, for example Ibn Rushd (aka. Averroes in the West), didn’t just make word for word translations of Aristotle. They wrote commentaries that viewed the work of Aristotle in terms of then-modern monotheism. There were real philosophers among this group. They did what the great Catholic writers would do later: that is, bring science into line with religion. The difference is that the Catholics did it largely on paper, while Islam as a culture proved actively friendly to scientific dialogue and discovery in a way that was not so often fettered by organized religion. There were periods of book burning among strains of Muslim culture, even in Spain, but they didn’t dominate to the degree that the Roman Office of the Inquisition dominated and fettered scientific practice and knowledge in the Middle ages and Pre-Modern period. That is why the circulatory system was discovered hundreds of years earlier in Islamic science than in the West, and why optics and medical knowledge in general was so advanced that Arabic text books were cornerstones of Western medicine for centuries.

MvdG: Is what’s known as “Mevlana” (or Sufism) - the peaceful almost Buddhist like Muslim philosophy taught by Rumi influenced by the culture of Al-Andalus?
MW: Not directly, that I know of. Religions of all kinds, and particularly the mystical variety, tends to share a lot of common ground. The Peace That Passeth Understanding is as much a part of Judaism as Christianity and Islam, in the form of Sufism. But the person Rumi was a Persian, not a Spanish Muslim, who relocated to the west of his father’s country, and worked in a cultural style that was quite different from the Andalusian. That said, there are many giants of Sufism who happened to hail from Muslim Spain, including Ibn Arabi, whom many consider, intellectually speaking, the Giant of them all.

MvdG: A question about poetry. In the documentary poetry plays quite an important role: every now and then a part of a poem about Al-Andalus is read by the narrator and important poets of Al-Andalus are highlighted in the documentary as well. This led me to conclude the following: if one wants to know whether a given society is progressing (and civilized) one needs to look at the level and importance of poetry. Do you agree with that and if so, what does this tell you about Western and Middle Eastern civilizations / societies today?
MW: Poetry is important in Middle Eastern societies today. Many people can recite their favorite works, by their favorite poets, and there are some poets writing in Arabic and Urdu and many other languages who are both Muslim and gifted poets. I think the same is true of poets in the West, though our “society” appears to give them less weight and importance. I don’t know how the future will judge western or middle eastern cultural production. Good poets speak to eternal themes while speaking of their times.

MvdG: 11) When watching Cities of Light, one gets the impression - as the experts said as well - that society can only flourish if it is open and open-minded. Isolated societies, on the other hand, stagnate. Could you explain that a little bit more?
MW: Societies and civilizations go down for different reasons. Greece disappeared under Alexander, because he literally took off, spreading its culture from Ionia to Egypt to Baghdad to Persia and India but in the process dissolving the borders of a very tiny, integrated geography of inventive city states. Self-Isolating societies, on the other hand, cut themselves off and, as you say, stagnate. Spain in the end committed a kind of act of schizophrenia, divesting itself of two-thirds of its cultural and spiritual psyche at just the moment when it became a unified “nation.” In a sense, this is what Cervantes is writing about and making fun of—a society steeped in old codes of chivalry that no longer apply, with a tradition it no longer understands, and a dilemma it can no longer define because its cultural basis—Judaeo-Islamo-Christian—had been willfully shattered. For the sake of ethnic Purity, Catholic Spain cast two-thirds of being to the winds.

MvdG: Lastly, a reasonably negative question two actually: you do not address in Cities of Light how to behave (tolerance wise) when one of the religious groups falls hostage to fundamentalists and grows, therefore, increasingly intolerant. Furthermore, one can also wonder whether any multicultural society can last. When we look at history, we see examples of multiculturalism, and Al-Andalus is a prime example of it, but if we look at the fate of these societies and especially Al-Andalus, is it not fair to conclude that perhaps – sadly – multicultural societies are doomed to failure because, in the end, man becomes intolerant since intolerance (evil) is in our nature?
MW: Got me! The institutions of our society today are so very different from the institutions of Spain under Abdul Rahman I, or III, or again under Ferdinand and Isabella…

MvdG: Thank you for giving me the chance to ask you some questions.
MW: Thank you for the chance to think about them.