…to read my musings on the joys of disreputable cinema and why a downtown arthouse is actually not an inappropriate venue for such fare, in a piece on “William Lustig Presents,” an exciting series at Anthology Film Archives this week, over at The Daily Notebook. And you wouldn’t want to disappoint Broderick Crawford as J. Edgar Hoover, would you?
“You’ve probably heard Martin Scorsese call a film entitled Dark of the Sun, a brutal Congo-set actioner directed by legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff…”
Oh, man. So, how often to these anthologies lead to DVD releases? I remember Dennis Cozzalio writing up THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN following a New Beverly (I think) festival, and since then I’ve gone from optimism, to impatience, to resignation. I hope the same doesn’t happen with the Cardiff film.
LUSTIG POWER YEP YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
MANIAC POWER. SPINELL POWER. VIGILANTE POWER.
Also JAN-MICHAEL VINCENT YEP YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
On that playbill and MOST recommended: 99 AND 44/100% DEAD.
“… Dennis Cozzalio…” SPICOLI VOICE: I KNOW THAT DUDE!!!!
@ Lex G: Hear, hear. As David Huddleston says in “Blazing Saddles,” “Now who can argue with that?”
They didn’t screen “99 and 44/100ths % Dead” for the press, and it’s been way too long since I’ve seen it so I didn’t bring it up. Yes, it’s a must…Frankenheimer at his seamiest/sleaziest, a dry run of sorts for his unmissable “52 Pickup.” Yep yep indeed.
What did I just see Spinell in? It was just the other day, but I’m blanking. Anyway, his appearance on screen carries with all sorts of new stuff since watching MANIAC, and the documentary on him that accompanies that DVD. Quite a fellow, was Joe Spinell.
Oh, it was CRUISING, and I didn’t even see the whole thing. Well, mystery solved.
Speaking of seamy Frankenheimer, LexG, I offer I WALK THE LINE’s Tuesday Weld as an actress from a decades-old film that should “do it for you.” I didn’t realize it finally came out on DVD four years ago. Underrated fun.
Broderick Crawford in a dress as J Edgar would really be something special. The outtakes perhaps?
Broderick Crawford in a dress as J Edgar would really be something special.
vjm rolls eyes … a charge for which there is no reliable evidence, and no evidence at all except for a claim by a convicted perjurer that involves people who have publicly stated HIMSELF that Hoover wasn’t that type.
I know it’s nice to impute bad shit to people one doesn’t like. But facts is facts, and this charge is simply a smear that no person who cares about the truth should repeat.
Never thought I’d see the words ‘cares about the truth’ and ‘Hoover’ (“There is no Mafia”) in the same sentence.
“Never thought I’d see the words ‘cares about the truth’ and ‘Hoover’ (‘There is no Mafia’) in the same sentence.”
Which has exactly “what” to do with any point in that sentence?
But thank you for proving my point that the word “Hoover” is a mere Pavlovian bell that starts certain people drooling as they’ve been well-conditioned, regardless of what else may be in the picture.
Pavlovian Bell? I believe the phrase du jour is “dog whistle”.
Hey, I heard Hitler liked to dress up as Minnie Mouse and have Goebbels dress up like Goofy.
What, that’s not true either? What a fool I’ve been for imputing falsehoods to people I don’t like. I offer sincere apologies to the Hitler and Goebbels families.
Agreed, Glenn, as to the excellence of Lustig’s program both this year and last. And if there is one revival house in the city that can still approximate the conditions of a grindhouse theater, it’s Anthology – even with the new, non-backbreaking chairs.
Therein lies the problem, though – past experience reminds me that Anthology’s HVAC issues make the theater rather, shall we say, swampy during the summer. So much so that enjoyment of the films can be impaired; I (sort of) recall a screening of DUELLE five or six years ago during which I may or may not have passed out for a while. (Remind me, what happens after the aquarium scene, exactly?)
If conditions have improved since, somebody fill me in, please!
“Pavlovian Bell? I believe the phrase du jour is “dog whistle”.”
Which would be misapplied since a dog whistle, both the real thing and the (ridiculous) political metaphor, is something heard by some and not others, which is not at all the same thing as a stimulus that reliably produces an automatic reaction unrelated to the specific point at hand.
But both metaphors involve dogs, so congratulations on being more accurate than your ritual falsehood about Hoover.
And I call “Godwin,” both the law and the corollary.
THE PRIVATE FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER is the sort of film that sounds more interesting than it actually is. So is 99 & 44/100% DEAD, for that matter, and I say that as a huge Frankenheimer defender. Having said this, I’d gladly go to each one of these films if I lived in New York.
Actually, 99 & 44/100 played a midnight show at the New Beverly back in June and it got a decent sized crowd which was pretty cool. You could almost hear every single person scratching their heads when the credits rolled but I was still glad that I’d gotten to see it.
‘Man bites dog’ is news; ‘Rightist denies existence of dog whistles’, sadly not.
@ Jeff -
“Hey, I heard Hitler liked to dress up as Minnie Mouse and have Goebbels dress up like Goofy.
What, that’s not true either? What a fool I’ve been for imputing falsehoods to people I don’t like. I offer sincere apologies to the Hitler and Goebbels families.”
Jesus, is that really the thing you’ve chosen to say? You’re sticking with that?
@ Oliver -
“ ‘Rightist denies existence of dog whistles’, sadly not.”
Victor did nothing of the sort. He simply pointed out the difference between “dog whistle” and “Pavlovian bell”.
Victor’s right, incidentally, about Hoover, and everybody who has responded to him has proven his Pavlov theory correct.
” ‘Man bites dog’ is news; ‘Rightist denies existence of dog whistles’, sadly not.”
I deny the worth of all analyses of political rhetoric that grant epistemological privilege to hostile parties or that privilege the unseen over the seen. My reasons for doing so are entirely unrelated to particular ideological preference (it’s why I also reject conspiracy and hidden-agenda theories, of which there is no shortage among my compadres).
And quite apart from that … what could that matter, other than changing the subject, possibly have to do with the licety of your repeating a falsehood?
“Victor did nothing of the sort.”
Thanks for the support, Bill.
But in the interests of truth … I did have a one-word aside (“ridiculous”) that made it clear I don’t have much use for “dog-whistle” analyses. Not that I think it never happens, mind you (so in that sense, Oliver is still incorrect albeit not culpably so). But because invoking the term is 90% of the time a lazy, intellectually-waterproof form of self-pleasuring. And never ever ever ever to be believed when Party X says it about Party Y.
Knock it off, people.
Daddy’s home from two days of manual labor, he still has sawdust in the creases of his neck, and he’s not in the goddamn mood to moderate, participate in, or even BE AWARE of a debate in these parts over whether or not J. Edgar Hoover was a transvestite or whatever.
Seriously.
Now I’m gonna shower, and I’m gonna go to the adult lap evening swim at the Red Hook pool, and then I’m gonna have some dinner, and when I come home for the night I wanna see everybody getting along. Period.
I agree with Victor: a dog whistle is not a Pavlovian bell, there is no reliable evidence that Mr. Hoover was homosexual or a transvestite (not that there’s anything wrong with either), and we all owe it to ourselves, as human beings (regardless of political stripe) to not blindly repeat that which is untrue– especially in this age of Google searches.
I just want to make the point that there’s a difference between telling someone in a good-natured, helpful way that they’re repeating an urban legend, and being a pedantic drudge.
Pavlovian bells swing both ways, to use a horribly mixed metaphor.
I didn’t ask to be born.
Of course my condemnation of the likes of Hoover and McCarthy is a reflex, ritual action: such demagogues of verifiable unConstitutionality are hardly worth wasting rational thought on.
@ Stephen: For the last five years or so, Anthology has been cool-to-quite-cold in the summer. Between their A/C and those concrete walls, my wife always brings a wrap when we see a movie there.
Thank you, Fuzzy. Now all I have to do is avoid subway-platform heatstroke on the way down there.…