Bloody Winters!

Wow. Wanna be really, really uncomfortable? Have some friends over for Awesome Club Movie Night and watch Bloody Mama, Roger Corman's 1970 exploitation movie starring two-time Academy Award Winner Miss Shelley Winters as Ma Barker. It's like Myra Breckinridge, only much much worse.
The horrors start in the first five minutes. We see a young Shelley being brutalized by her brothers and fathers (in X-Files meets Mackenzie Phillips fashion). In voiceover she swears she'll grow up and raise all boys, and have them do everything for her, her own army.
Flash foward and we're in the middle of the Great Depression, and she and her sons - including young Robert DeNiro - do exactly that. They drive across country robbing banks and killing people. In one scene, they rob a bank, take hostages, and have the hostages - old ladies - stand on the running board of the car as human shields. Inexplicably, the cops chase after them, shooting. Also inexplicably, they drive past a modern shopping mall, but no matter.

The best part of that scene is when they bust into the bank and the two-time Academy Award winner fires her machine gun and yells "everybody reach for the nightgown of the Lord!" I'm going to use that line as much as possible.

One of her sons gets caught and thrown in prison. In there, he gets R'd by his cell mate. Later, they break out together and become boyfriends. Later still, after Shelley has slept with all of her sons, she sleeps with this son's boyfriend. Oh, and that's Bruce Dern.

Eventually, there's a big bloody shoot-out. Sometime before that, smack-addicted Robert DeNiro picks up a girl that Shelley eventually drowns in a tub. Here's one of the more light hearted scenes, where she consoles him and all her sons by leading a rousing rendition of the World War 1 peace song, "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier." I'm not kidding.



God Bless you, Shelley Winters. And God Help Us All.

Amazing. GRACE.

So I've seen some pretty great concerts in my thirty plus years. The highlights are all the times I saw Blossom Dearie, when Sarah and I saw Dolly Parton at Irving Plaza in Summer 2002, the Blind Boys of Alabama that same year, and the half-dozen times I've seen my chum Carolyn Mark.

Lemme tell you, last night's Grace Jones show at Hammerstein Ballroom is up there, and worth all nine thousand pennies or whatever I paid. I've seen all those lazy-a$$ new kids out there who have their dirty hair and just slouch over their guitars and play their records without even looking up. Not our gal.

Not all the pictures I took were so exciting, but I did a web-trawl this morning over coffee and found some goodies. I think we now have all seven or eight costume changes documented.

For starters, she did the opening song completely under a silk cloak.

Then she popped out wearing what was a cross between her Andy Warhol graffiti outfit of yore, a skeleton suit, and My Little Pony...


A few songs later she put on this glitter outfit for a few numbers - which threw off some pretty fun sparkles when the strobes hit it.

Then what else would you wear for La Vie En Rose, but this fun one? Eat your coeur out, Edith Piaf.

And really, what else would you wear for "My Jamaican Guy," but a Jamaican Flag Costume? I think this was right after she called out her friend "Miss M," aka Bette Midler, who was in the audience. I looked around but she wasn't up at stage right in front of the speaker with me.

"Corporate Cannibals?" This of course:

I was excited to see Grace show her pun side when she danced with a mannequin of herself for "I've Seen That Face Before."

My personal favorite was this costume for "Hurricane" - she sang it while walking into a wind machine with this satin parachute trailing behind.

There were a few more songs and costume changes, then it was time for the encore.

You know when Grace busts out the symbols and the confetti you're dancing to "Pull Up to the Bumper" and "Slave To The Rhythm."

My ears are still ringing, but they do that anyway. And it was worth it.

Also? Wow

Shot from space of erupting volcano - here's the article.

Thunder! Cats!

Yesterday was my only work-day this week, and I sure was a grump. I think the end of the year brings out everyone's Crazies, and the end of a bad year even more so.

Well here's one funny thing the end of the year has brought us.

For the most part I don't like going to the movies in NYC - most of the big theatres are filled with dummies who text during the movie, or talk, or otherwise disrupt the tableau vivant in front of me. And then the arty cinemas, which feature a lot of the movies I like, often have screens smaller than the one in front of my couch, or sound issues, or old men who grump about imaginary offenses, or all of these things.

But really, the best thing about seeing something on the big screen? The previews.

Here's a preview that some buddies cooked up for an imaginary big screen adaptation of The ThunderCats, the 1985 animated series. TC were a band of Kitty-Men and Women who would fight crime and injustice.

This here trailer takes bits and pieces of recent Over The Top Blockbusters and kitty-izes them. I think it's genius.



Thanks, Strange Copyright Infringers!

Solace, Quantum Of

So this morning on my way to work I passed my first billboard for The f(x) = Solitude, the new James Bond flick. This is terribly exciting because I sure am a big fan of Bond, James Bond.
The first Bond movie I saw on the big screen was A View To A Kill, with that avuncular comic Roger Moore & that force of nature Grace Jones. It had everything an 11 year old boy wanted - action, humor, hot air balloons, and the Golden Gate Bridge. I then watched all the older ones on VHS - often missing out on double entendres and the plot complexities, but always appreciating the gadgets guns, and in three cases, the Shirley Bassey theme songs.

I thought poor George Lazenby was wrong for the part but was in one of the best movies, Diamonds are Forever was one of the worst movies but had the best theme song, I was over the moon when Bono wrote a theme song for Tina Turner to sing, and the word "Octopussy" still makes me giggle.

Casino Royale was the first one I missed on the big screen since AVtaK, and I'm sure looking forward to gathering my chums together to see this new one come November 14th.

Here's the Goldeneye video. I still remember driving back and forth from Vassar to the city with this cassingle (four remixes!) flipping itself over and over.




God Bless, Bond.

Dang Laptop!

I love everything about this picture. This man had a laptop? And he kept it in the front seat of his pick-up truck? And it exploded?