#janet maslin

[back-and-totheleft]

Stone's embrace of a despised president

In his lonely Xanadu on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Citizen Nixon of Oliver Stone's sprawling new biography is left to contemplate what history has in store. And not in his wildest dreams can he be imagining anything like this. Like a prisoner identifying with his captor in a rare form of Stockholm syndrome, Mr. Stone aligns himself with the Presidential pariah who has captured his imagination. Out of this comes one of Mr. Stone's biggest gambles, a bold feat of revisionism that veers unpredictably between turgidness and inspiration

What it finally adds up to is a huge mixed bag of waxworks and daring, a film that is furiously ambitious even when it goes flat, and startling even when it settles for eerie, movie-of-the-week mimicry. Reckless, bullying and naggingly unreliable, this mercurial "Nixon" is also finally as gutsy and overpowering as it means to be. And it achieves the effect Mr. Stone is always after: Attention must be paid.

The visual style of "Nixon" is positively sedate by Stone standards, a welcome relief from the shrillness of "Natural Born Killers" and the historical quicksand of "J. F. K." But this film's conception is more tacitly risky, since Mr. Stone envisions a punishingly long (nearly three and a quarter hours) re-examination of what much of his audience already knows. And Mr. Stone, America's most strenuously subversive film maker, has the headstrong intelligence to make it work.

In his capacity as rogue educator, he offers an exhaustive barrage of snippets and re-enactments, with glimpses of everyone from Mao Zedong to Alger Hiss to Helen Gahagan Douglas to well-known Nixon pets. Nixon's famous speech about Checkers is lovingly recreated by Anthony Hopkins, who captures his character's embattled outlook and stiff, hunched body language with amazing skill. As for another family dog, even the unfriendliness of King Timahoe toward his master telegraphs the film's view of Nixon as a lonely man.

Or as Henry A. Kissinger (uncannily impersonated by Paul Sorvino) puts it, "Can you imagine what this man might have been had he ever been loved?" The screenplay often indulges its taste for such soapy oversimplifications, especially when it feels free to imagine how Richard and Pat Nixon talked to each other behind closed doors. (Mrs. Nixon, played gracefully and touchingly by Joan Allen: "I just wish you knew how much I love you.") That dramatic license, reducing the characters to puppets, is as damaging as the film's free-floating insinuation that Nixon's involvement in a plot to kill Fidel Castro during the Eisenhower years led indirectly to President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Mr. Stone has so much else at work here that he doesn't need this whiff of intrigue. Besides, in the conspiracy department, Watergate is a hard act to follow.

"That's not true either!" a stranger behind me kept remarking at one "Nixon" screening. It doesn't matter whether he was right to complain. What does matter is that the film is so loaded with composites and minor fictions that it inevitably excites a certain alarm, though it hardly rivals "J. F. K." in that regard. And Mr. Stone intensifies the accuracy issue with a newly published companion volume (edited by Eric Hamburg) of Watergate tape transcripts, random commentary (the essay by Alexander Butterfield, a crucial Watergate witness, notes that he was asked to write about "anything at all" regarding Nixon). The book includes a screenplay so ostentatiously annotated that it says more about the film maker than about his subject matter. Look closely and learn that while the film's Nixon refers to G. Gordon Liddy as "that fruitcake," the word Nixon actually used on June 23, 1972, was "nuts."

But this portrait doesn't stand or fall on its research credentials. Which is why it's fortunate that something changes midway through "Nixon": Mr. Stone's compassion for his subject overwhelms his film's false moves. And the barrage of undramatized, undigested data gives way to a much tighter and more artful vision. Having ricocheted through Nixon's boyhood, college years, defeats in 1960 and 1962, his visit to China and bombing of Cambodia and his immersion in the Vietnam War, the film starts snowballing its way to real dramatic power.

It achieves its full impact in its last hour as the noose of Watergate tightens, creating a claustrophobic intensity and making Mr. Stone's embellishments look insightful instead of arbitrary. By the time he stages a wrenching finale in a White House that looks haunted, where every element of the beleaguered President's world seems to conspire against him, Mr. Stone has brought this enormous film into sharp focus. And "Nixon" finally achieves its hard-won tragic dimension, even if the S-word (for Bard of Avon) has no real relevance here. "Nixon" has ghosts and hubris, a lost kingdom and a fall from grace, but its probing never penetrates the surface of this elusive man.

Instead, as it rounds up the usual suspects to reinvent the drama of Watergate, the film enlarges Mr. Hopkins's haunted, overwhelmingly vivid Nixon by framing him with secondary characters who seem like stray parts of his own tortured psyche. Never have Mr. Kissinger, H. R. Haldeman (James Woods), John Ehrlichman (J. T. Walsh), John N. Mitchell (E. G. Marshall), Alexander M. Haig Jr. (Powers Boothe), John Dean (David Hyde Pierce) or even J. Edgar Hoover (Bob Hoskins), however well and differently acted, seemed like such clear extensions of the same personality. And each of them has occasion to think piquantly about how Nixon's fortunes affect his own fate, not to mention the fate of the nation.

"This is about Richard Nixon," Mr. Ehrlichman says about dirty tricks, Watergate and his boss, whom the film sees as plagued by lifelong, childhood-rooted insecurities. "You got people dying because he didn't make the varsity football team. You got the Constitution hanging by a thread because the old man went to Whittier and not to Yale." Mr. Hopkins's Nixon has such bravado that he gets away with talking to likenesses of Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln and echoing these same thoughts.

The supporting cast of "Nixon," in which Ms. Allen, Mr. Woods and Mr. Sorvino are shown off to best advantage, is immense and often wittily chosen, even if many of the roles are barely walk-ons. (Or worse: the script features an important role for Sam Waterston as Richard Helms, but he's not here.) From Brian Bedford as Clyde Tolson, Mr. Hoover's companion (seen slyly reading "Couples"), to Edward Herrmann as Nelson A. Rockefeller and Madeline Kahn as Martha Mitchell, the film's cameos are steadily entertaining.

Blink and you'll miss Spiro T. Agnew. Elsewhere, Larry Hagman is cast to his television type as a diabolical rich Texan, one of the film's composite characters. Ed Harris makes a steely E. Howard Hunt. And Mary Steenburgen plays Hannah Nixon as a demure Quaker mother with an inspiring and debilitating influence over her son. This film's Nixon could be Norman Bates by the time he recoils at his own obscenities on the Watergate tapes, exclaiming: "Do you think I want all the world to see my mother like this? Raising a dirty mouth?"

"Nixon" has long since transcended the realm of ordinary biography by then.

-Janet Maslin, "Stone's Embrace of a Despised President," The New York Times, Dec 20, 1995

[mrmousetolliver]

Parting Glances (1986) directed by Bill Sherwood. Parting Glances is one of the first films to deal frankly and realistically with the subject of AIDS and is considered by many critics to be an important film in the history of Gay cinema.

The film was directed by first time director Bill Sherwood, who also edited and wrote the screenplay. It is also the first major roles for Steve Buscemi. Janet Maslin of the New York Times said "It is to both his and the film's credit that the anguish of AIDS is presented as part of a larger social fabric, understood in context, and never in a maudlin light." Bill Sherwood died in 1990 of complications from AIDS. In 2006, Outfest and the UCLA Film and Television Archive announced that the film would be the first to be restored as a part of the Outfest Legacy Project. The film is available for streaming on Tubi.

[ilikethisacompletelynormalamount]

📷 (1), (2 stories)

Andrew Scott, Jamie Bell, and Andrew Haigh at a Q&A and screening of All of Us Strangers, Jacob Burns Film Center, New York, moderated by Janet Maslin.

[cinefilma]

Beetlejuice (1988) – Tim Burton

Tim Burton, conocido por su estilo visual único y su capacidad para mezclar lo macabro con lo absurdo, creó una película inigualable con Beetlejuice. La película destaca por su mezcla de humor negro, fantasía y lo grotesco, un cóctel que, según críticos como Roger Ebert, es entretenido pero algo irregular en su ejecución. La trama, que sigue a una pareja de fantasmas intentando desalojar a los nuevos inquilinos de su hogar, sirve como telón de fondo para las travesuras del personaje titular, interpretado magistralmente por Michael Keaton.

Muchos críticos aplauden la interpretación de Keaton, que roba cada escena en la que aparece, dotando a Beetlejuice de una energía desenfrenada y caótica. Su actuación es a la vez hilarante y perturbadora, lo que encaja perfectamente con la estética excéntrica de Burton. Janet Maslin del New York Times elogió la creatividad visual de Burton, describiendo la película como un “desfile de imágenes alucinantes”, destacando el uso innovador de efectos prácticos y la dirección de arte surrealista.

El diseño de producción es uno de los mayores triunfos de la película. Desde la representación de un más allá burocrático hasta los grotescos y maravillosos diseños de los muertos, la película es un festín visual que ha envejecido sorprendentemente bien. La música de Danny Elfman también se destaca, subrayando el tono irreverente y fantástico de la película con su inconfundible estilo.

Sin embargo, Beetlejuice no es una película sin defectos. Críticos como Pauline Kael notaron que, si bien la película es visualmente impresionante, su trama es bastante ligera y a veces carece de cohesión. El personaje de Beetlejuice aparece relativamente tarde en la película, lo que deja a algunos espectadores deseando más de su presencia. Además, el humor de la película puede no resonar con todos, con algunos críticos señalando que ciertas partes pueden parecer demasiado extravagantes o desordenadas.

Beetlejuice es un claro ejemplo del estilo distintivo de Tim Burton: una mezcla única de humor macabro, surrealismo visual y personajes excéntricos. Aunque la película puede ser inconsistente en términos narrativos, la actuación de Michael Keaton y la dirección visual de Burton la elevan como una obra memorable dentro del cine de los 80. Como espectáculo visual y entretenimiento ligero, tiene un encanto especial que sigue cautivando al público.

Calificación final: 4/5

[justforbooks]

“I always felt like the kid that sat at the foot of the gods,” said Treat Williams, who has died aged 71 following a road accident. And it is true that the first decade of his movie career was dominated by one high-calibre director after another.

John Sturges put the doughy-faced, darkly handsome actor toe-to-toe with Michael Caine in The Eagle Has Landed (1976), adapted from Jack Higgins’s novel about a plot to kidnap Winston Churchill. Miloš Forman gave Williams his first lead, as the hippie Berger in the screen version (1979) of the 1967 musical Hair. He was an ill-tempered army corporal in Steven Spielberg’s wartime comedy 1941 (also 1979). Sidney Lumet drew on his cocksure swagger and his air of moral ambiguity in Prince of the City (1981), a thriller about police corruption. And Sergio Leone cast him as a union boss in the gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

It was Lumet’s film that announced Williams as a formidable talent, with a special aptitude for ensemble playing. He starred as Danny Ciello, a corrupt drugs squad detective who becomes increasingly isolated as he informs on his colleagues in the elite Special Investigations Unit. The character was based on the detective Robert Leuci. Williams lived with Leuci while preparing for the part. He also attended drug busts and hung out with police officers. “By the time we started rehearsals, I was thinking like a cop,” he said.

Janet Maslin in the New York Times commended the “playful, arrogant, effectively brazen quality” of his portrayal. Equally integral is the seam of self-disgust that runs through Ciello, first when he is exploiting his power over drug addicts and dealers, then when he turns on his own kind.

Williams went on to display a menacing eroticism in Smooth Talk (1985), directed by Joyce Chopra and based on Joyce Carol Oates’s 1966 short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? When he turns up in the second half of the film as Arnold Friend, a vision of adult masculine prowess that the teenage protagonist (Laura Dern) seems to have been yearning for, he is simultaneously ridiculous, alluring and intimidating.

Williams was born in Stamford, Connecticut, and raised in nearby Rowayton, the son of Richard, a pharmaceuticals executive, and Marian (nee Andrews), an antiques dealer who also ran a sailing school. He was educated at Kent school, Connecticut, where he first began acting, and at Franklin & Marshall College, Pennsylvania. He studied in New York at the Actors Studio, where his classmates included Mickey Rourke, and was hired as understudy to four parts (including Doody, played on stage by John Travolta) in the Broadway production of Grease. Eventually he took over the lead role of Danny Zuko, which he played for three years.

Having already appeared on stage in the London production of The Ritz, Terrence McNally’s comedy about a hounded businessman hiding out in a gay bath-house, he was then cast in Richard Lester’s 1976 movie version.

Auditioning for the film of Hair was a lengthy and arduous process. During his 12th audition, he recalled: “I started removing all of my clothing. At the end of the monologue, I was standing stark naked in front of them … They applauded, and I told them: ‘This is all that I’ve got, I don’t know what else I can give you.’” It was enough.

Discouraged when Hair, 1941 and the comedy Why Would I Lie? (1980) continued a run of box-office flops, he began an alternative career flying planes in Los Angeles. A call from Lumet, who was looking for an un-starry and largely unknown cast for Prince of the City, put him back on track.

He continued to alternate between film and theatre, following Lumet’s picture by appearing in Ohio in Carlo Goldoni’s farce The Servant of Two Masters and on Broadway taking over from Kevin Kline as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance. On television, he played the boxer Jack Dempsey in the TV movie Dempsey (1983), Stanley Kowalski – opposite Ann-Margret as Stella – in A Streetcar Named Desire (1984), the title role in J. Edgar Hoover (1987) and the super-agent Michael Ovitz, co-founder of CAA, in The Late Shift (1996), for which he was Emmy-nominated.

In Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995), he played a thug working as an undertaker and using corpses as punch-bags. He was also in the noir-ish Mulholland Falls, the superhero adventure The Phantom (both 1996) and the thriller The Devil’s Own (1997), starring Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt.

Better than these were two projects that displayed his versatility: the monster movie Deep Rising (1998), in which he does battle with sharp-fanged sea-serpents, and The Deep End of the Ocean (1999), starring Williams and Michelle Pfeiffer as a couple reunited with their son many years after he was kidnapped.

He starred in Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending (2002), played James Franco’s father in Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, and the writer Mark Schorer in Howl (both 2010), which also starred Franco as Allen Ginsberg. He had a recurring role on the series Everwood (2002-06), as a widowed neurosurgeon settling in Colorado with his children, and on the cop drama Blue Bloods (2016-23). He also appeared in many Hallmark channel productions, including the series Chesapeake Shores (2016-22), as well as the Netflix musical Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square (2020).

He is survived by his wife, Pam Van Sant, whom he married in 1988, and their children, Gill and Ellie.

🔔 Richard Treat Williams, actor, born 1 December 1951; died 12 June 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[cleoenfaserum]

RUNAWAY (1984) 

99 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi IMdB 5.9

See the movie first and take the critics with a grain of salt. I am not saying not to heed the critics, in this gargantuan world wide production of films, we need guidance to avoid wasting our time in watching a shitty film which may not be rewarding to you. Tom Selleck is an actor I follow because he is one of the few stars that exudes charisma. We all at one time or another may have a bad day. After all, we are humans.

In the near future, a police officer specializes in malfunctioning robots. When a robot turns out to have been programmed to kill, he begins to uncover a homicidal plot to create killer robots... and his son becomes a target.

Director: Michael Crichton | Stars: Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes, Gene Simmons, Kirstie Alley Writer & Director

Runaway is a 1984 American science fiction action film written and directed by Michael Crichton. The story is about a police officer assigned to track down dangerous robots, while a scientist who hopes to profit from his manipulation of robots. Runaway (1984 American film) - Wikipedia

1012 link: https://ok.ru/video/2887813434093

The film received mixed reviews. Janet Maslin of The New York Times said, "Mr. Crichton has a much better feel for the gadgets than its human players." Kevin Thomas of The Los Angeles Times called it "assured, thoroughly cinematic filmmaking, its flourish of ingenious gadgetry not overwhelming its human dimension." Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune thought the movie began "excitingly" but "descended into a routine chase thriller" in which Selleck was a poor lead ("he's too nice, too familiar to be a big star in the movies"). At the Movies gave Runaway two thumbs down. Roger Ebert thought that Selleck and Simmons gave "good performances" but the film quickly became mired in cliches, while Gene Siskel thought the core premise was intriguing but the film was poorly executed.

Neil Gaiman reviewed Runaway for Imagine magazine, and stated that "The race to outwit the cybernetic psycho is gripping stuff, mostly, with a terrifying showdown atop an unfinished skyscraper; and as the hero cop with no head for heights, Selleck is fine. In between, he spends too much time just being a heart-throb."

On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 48% based on reviews from 23 critics.

Kirstie Alley earned a 1984 Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. Runaway (1984 American film) - Wikipedia

REF 1012

[juliopison]

CINE Saliendo de Las Vegas (1995) Título original: Leaving Las Vegas EEUU Dirección: Mike Figgis Idioma: Doblada al Español

Atención: Sólo para ver en PC o Notebook Para ver el Film pulsa el Link: https://artecafejcp.wixsite.com/escenario-cafejcp/post/leaving-las-vegas-1995

Reparto: Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue, Julian Sands, Richard Lewis, Valeria Golino, Steven Weber, Kim Adams, Emily Procter, Stuart Regen

Género: Drama romántico. Alcoholismo. Prostitución

Sinopsis: Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage), un guionista alcohólico, acaba de perder su trabajo en Hollywood debido a que sus problemas con la bebida afectan a su rendimiento. Sin amigos y sin familia, decide ir a Las Vegas con el propósito de beber hasta morir. Nada más llegar a la ciudad, conoce a Sera (Elisabeth Shue), una atractiva prostituta que trabaja en la calle de la que se queda prendado.

Críticas: "Bello y granítico directo a las buenas costumbres" -Luis Martínez: Diario El País

"Una pequeña y abrasadora película (…) un estudio de personajes implacablemente bien retratado e muy familiarizado con el terreno que pisa. (…) 'Leaving Las Vegas' es menos dolorosa de lo que cabría esperar. Es apasionada y furiosamente viva" -Janet Maslin: The New York Times

Premios: 1995: Oscar: Mejor actor (Nicolas Cage). 4 nominaciones 1995: Globo de Oro: Mejor actor (Nicolas Cage). 4 nominaciones 1995: 3 nominaciones BAFTA: Mejor actor (Cage), actriz (Shue) y guión adaptado 1995: Círculo de Críticos de Nueva York: Mejor película y mejor actor (Cage). 4 nominaciones 1995: Asociación de Críticos de Los Angeles: Mejor película, dirección, actor y actriz. 5 nom. 1995: Festival de San Sebastián: 2 premios: Mejor director, mejor actor (Nicolas Cage)

Café Mientras Tanto jcp

[world-cinema-research]

Week Six Primary Historical Research Comparison: Blue Velvet (1986)

By Cris Nyne

The New York Times review of Blue Velvet by Janet Maslin, September 1986

On November 13th, 1986, Ronald Reagan addresses the nation regarding arms sales to Iran.

To quote Janet Maslin from The New York Times, "Figuratively speaking, the film means to remain at bug's-eye level for nearly two hours, until it is ready to return to the surface for an ironically sunny coda." This is a reference to how the film's perspective is from the underground, where insects churn within the biomass and makes the world go round but is hidden, almost in secrecy. This is also how governments operate. There are shady, unfathomable occurrences where nations are scratching each other's backs outside of public observation. President Reagan realized he would have to use his acting skills to diffuse a powder keg of corruption in regard to the Iran-Contra scandal.

[cinema-tv-etc]

The Truman Show 1998

He's the star of the show - but he doesn't know it! Jim Carey plays unwitting Truman Burbank, an ordinary man in a not-so-ordinary life. From the time he was born to the present, Truman's entire life has been broadcast live on national TV. Truman doesn't realize that his quaint hometown is actually a giant studio set - big enough to be seen from space - and that the folks living and working there are Hollywood actors. Even Truman's incessantly bubbly wife is a contract player. Gradually, Truman gets wise. And what he does about his discovery will have you laughing, crying and cheering as he finds his way to the truth.

Awards

1998: 3 Nominations for Oscar: Best Director (Peter Weir), Supporting Actor, Screenplay

1998: 3 Golden Globes: Actor Drama (Carrey), Supporting Actor and OST. 6 Nominations

1998: 3 BAFTA Awards: Best Director, Production Design and Original Screenplay. 7 Nom.

1998: National Board of Review: Supporting Actor (Ed Harris)

1998: Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Nominated for Best Production Design

1998: Critics' Choice Awards: Nominated for Best Film

Critics' reviews

"The underlying ideas made the movie more than just entertainment (…) It brings into focus the new values that technology is forcing on humanity (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)" Roger Ebert: rogerebert.com

"It's a satire/comedy/fantasy about the future of television and the people caught in its omnipresent electronic net (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)" Michael Wilmington: Chicago Tribune

"This is a film that can stay with one for a very long time, and even slightly change the way one looks at life and the world." Tom Keogh: Seattle Times

"Pretends to be daring while parroting what much of the TV industry already thinks about itself and its audience. But it's still pretty much fun to watch." Jonathan Rosenbaum: Chicago Reader

"A beautifully sinister and transfixing entertainment (…) Carrey turns Truman into a postmodern Capra hero." Owen Gleiberman: Entertainment Weekly

"One of the smartest, most inventive movies in memory, it manages to be as endearing as it is provocative." Rita Kempley: The Washington Post

"Jim Carrey's instantly iconic performance as the sweet, unsuspecting Truman will give his career deserved new impetus, but the real star of 'The Truman Show' is its premise." Janet Maslin: The New York Times

[pixnflixnwrites]

Walter Murch, a protean force in advancing the art of film. He’s best known for inventing sound design (watch the opening sequence of “Apocalypse Now”). Another credit: he worked on the first NY radio broadcast to showcase 20-year-old Bob Dylan--Janet Maslin

[flotsam-gazette]

For Everyman

MUSIC Review BY JANET MASLIN // NOVEMBER 22, 1973

For inwardly panoramic songwriting of an apocalyptic bent, Jackson Browne’s second album is rivaled only by his first (the second one wins), and Jackson himself is rivaled by nobody. His work is a unique fusion of West Coast casualness and East Coast paranoia, easygoing slang and painstaking precision, child’s-eye romanticizing and adult’s-eye acceptance. He can expand explicit experience until it takes on the added dimension of an overview, or he can philosophize with such intimacy that every generality becomes a private truth.

Either way, his songs hang suspended in an extraordinary twilight zone between reality and myth.

For Everyman further establishes Jackson as a purebred Seventies intelligence, though it also includes some of his precocious late Sixties material. He is the first major songwriter to have emerged with the knowledge that the battles Bob Dylan depicted a decade ago are either over or too ambiguous to be worth fighting any more. 

But unlike most older writers, he is not yet ready to retreat into merely mining the realm of private problems for subject matter. He has internalized the remains of those larger struggles and still dares to hope for solutions.

Nevertheless, he has progressed beyond the proselytizing stage, as the stunningly eloquent title cut carefully indicates. 

“For Everyman” is a more thoughtful, less impetuous reworking of “Rock Me on the Water”; both songs provide visions of the apocalypse, but this time the image is significantly altered “Rock Me” was a fiery youthful fantasy shot through with contempt (“Oh, people, look around you . . . “), dreams of escape (��While your walls are burnin’, your towers are turnin’/I’m gonna leave you here, and try to get down to the sea somehow”), and nervous premonitions that escape might be just one more illusion (“Everyone must have some thought — That’s gonna pull them through somehow”).

“For Everyman” presents the crisis in gentler terms (“Everybody I talk to is ready to leave. With the light of the morning . . . ” and offers an impassioned disc aner of special wisdom (“I’m not trying to tell you that I’ve seen the plan/Turn and walk away if you think I am”). Most notably, the renegade spirit who once dreamed of being bathed by “the sisters of the sun” while everything around him went up in flames is now ready to be left behind on the eve of the exodus — “holding sand,” weighing “all my fine dreams, well thought-out schemes to gain the Motherland,” and realizing that this time patience may make more sense than flight.

The daydreamer who waits to discover in himself the essence of “Everyman” is curiously suspended in time. He sits just shy of maturity, and will not progress until the object of his search takes clearer shape. Yet his childhood is over, however much he may long for “that place in the sun/Where a sweet child is still dancing.” Jackson himself seems equally divided between teacher and searcher, mock-adult and mock-child, and one of his finest songs toys with the irony of his trying to play both roles at once.

In his best rocker, “Ready Or Not,” he assumes one guise after another; the song sounds like the album’s most sardonic fantasy, though it’s actually the closest he comes to detailing a true story. His girl is pregnant, and he narrates the tale most comfortably by playing naive: “Someone’s gonna have to explain it to me. I don’t know what it means.” He met the mother-to-be in a bar, “doing my very best Bogart,” affecting sophistication. But after an initial show of bravado he’s suddenly helpless again, posing (as in “Jamaica Say You Will”) as passive, irresponsible, a child: “Next thing I remember she was all moved in, and I was buying her a washing machine.”

Even when he asks the song’s key question, the innocence is a sham: “Take a look in my eyes and tell me, brother/If I look like I’m ready . . .?” Why is he asking? The “not” of the title becomes all the more emphatic for remaining unspoken, despite the song’s somewhat forced happy ending. (When Jackson performs it in concert, he turns the “rock & roll bad man” of the last line into a “rock & roll asshole,” seemingly as uncomfortable with his tough-guy role as he is with any of the others.)

“Ready Or Not”‘s final resolution rings a little false because it disrupts the pattern of descent that figures into Jackson’s other songs. Most of his melodies build up their energy at the start of each line, wear down by line’s end, then regroup and try again, once he’s caught his breath. His lyrics often follow a similar scheme, starting off with something reasonably definite and then floating off into troublesome ambiguities.

“The Times You’ve Come,” the album’s sweetly erotic heartbreaker, takes the pattern of descent even further, exploring it on both spiritual and sexual levels. The title verb takes on progressively more sexual meaning, building up to a wonderfully evocative chorus (sung with Bonnie Raitt), then trailing off into post-orgasmic reverie.Meanwhile, the song begins with a relatively matter-of-fact assessment of the risks entailed in a relationship (“we’ve lost as much as we have won”), then falls further and further away from the concrete.

The final verse offers up a sense of sexual security, pauses, and then proceeds to undermine the calm with an ominous note to which the spirit has descended while the body was preoccupied: 

“Now we’re lying here, so safe in the ruins of our pleasure/ Laughter marks the place where we have fallen/ And our lives are near, so it wouldn’t occur to us to wonder/ Is this the past or the future that is calling?”

For all the pessimism those lines imply, For Everyman also develops a faith in the writer’s own ability to check his fall. Although the title cut rejects relatively traditional means of uplift (“that strong but gentle Father’s hand”), in “Our Lady of the Well” he creates his own secular sacrament, once again placing faith in the ritual and restorative powers of water, which lent such mystical resonance to his last album. Back of the bus, Bob Heinlein.

Despite themes that bind many of its songs together, For Everyman is essentially a collection rather than an album, most of the songs are so complete that they resist Jackson’s attempts to run them together (although “Sing My Songs to Me” is an exception, a longish fragment that serves to introduce the daydream spirit of the title cut).

So not everything fits smoothly, although even the jarring moments work in a positive way. The early songs, for instance, serve as fascinating keys to why Jackson — who was good to begin with — has gotten so much better. 

“These Days” is an elegantly composed exercise in sulky defensiveness, “Colors of the Sun” an oversimplified, childish indictment. Each is too single-minded to measure up to his current level of complexity, but their presence underscores the strength of his mature synthesis by demonstrating the emotional purity of its components.

“Take It Easy,” the one song here that is not entirely Jackson’s own — it was Glen Frey, of the Eagles, who was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona — is the only cut whose melody actually outshines its lyrics. Jackson can usually turn street talk around to his own advantage, restoring cliches to their original meanings and arriving at an amazingly loose form of expression. (Sometimes he makes up phrases so natural they sound like street cliches the first time you hear them.) But the glibness gets out of hand in parts of “Take It Easy,” and even more so in “Redneck Friend,” which sounds like too deliberate an attempt to create a single by someone whose art, even at its most casual, remains too complex for strictly AM audiences. Still, “Redneck Friend” inadvertently offers up a line that’s a concise, albeit conservative, estimation of the whole album’s merits: “Eleven on a scale of ten.”

Jackson’s musicianship still lags behind his extraordinary abilities as a poet. 

Although his melodies blend beautifully with the mood and cadence of his lyrics, both tunes and arrangements seem shaped around the words. But the best arrangements here are effective on a startlingly deep level. “For Everyman” begins and ends with a low rumble from Russ Kunkel, then bursts out into a high-spirited release that mirrors the spirit of the song’s resolution, simultaneously joyful and cautious. “Colors of the Sun” has an eerie, dirge-like quality that creates just enough tension to offset the song’s more grandiose moments.

Even the more conventional arrangements work wonderfully well, with most of the spark coming from David Lindley, the guitar/fiddle jack-of-all-strings who also functions as Jackson’s house wizard. The album has no official producer (Jackson thinks that’s an unnecessary function, says the whole thing just “trickled out”), but most of it sounds like a brilliant, if understated, composite of the author’s fluid downward progressions and Lindley’s euphoric whimsy.

His singing has greatly improved since the last album, showing off a new expressiveness in his more soulful moments (particularly “These Times You’ve Come”) and hitting the high notes with much more confidence and energy than before. He still doesn’t write for his own voice, though; either that, or he sometimes can’t play (especially piano) in whatever key he would sing best in. He often couples descending verses with choruses that shoot upward, and while the split evokes both a waking-dreaming polarity and an attempt to check downward drifting, it also forces him into the sort of low notes he can only mumble.

But every last note here, singable or otherwise, has a special resonance. Jackson’s concerns, even more than his..

[glitterglxss]

“Suspiria is really quite funny, during those isolated interludes when nobody is bleeding.” 

- a snippet of a review from Janet Maslin 

AKA the most accurate review of Suspiria I’ve ever read

[madefornurses]

Empty Mansions

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age…

[bookquotenet]

“Riveting . . . finely drawn . . . The Whistler centers on an elaborate conspiracy involving an Indian reservation, an organized crime syndicate and a crooked judge skimming a small fortune from the tribal casino’s monthly haul.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A main character who’s a seriously appealing woman . . . a whistle-blower who secretly calls attention to corruption . . . a strong and frightening sense of place . . . Grisham’s on his game.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“A fascinating look at judicial corruption . . . an entirely convincing story and one of Grisham’s best. I can’t think of another major American novelist since Sinclair Lewis who has so effectively targeted social and political ills in our society. In Grisham’s case, it is time at least to recognize that at his best he is not simply the author of entertaining legal thrillers but an important novelistic critic of our society. In more than 30 novels, he has often used his exceptional storytelling skills to take a hard look at injustice and corruption in the legal world and in our society as a whole.”—Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post

“Grisham’s latest involves the rich and powerful and an abuse of the justice system. Grisham novels are crowd-pleasers because he knows how to satisfy readers who want to see injustice crushed, and justice truly prevails for those who cannot buy influence.”—Associated Press

“Grisham has become an institution. For more than 25 years now he’s been our guide to the byways and backwaters of our legal system, superb in particular at ferreting out its vulnerabilities and dramatizing their abuse in gripping style. He excels at describing injustice and corruption. Grisham’s legal knowledge is impressive, and his ability to convey it unparalleled in popular fiction.”—USA Today

The Whistler (2 book series) by John Grisham

[greysexcellent]

Love at first bite 1979

#LOVE AT FIRST BITE 1979 HOW TO#

#LOVE AT FIRST BITE 1979 MOVIE#

#LOVE AT FIRST BITE 1979 PROFESSIONAL#

#LOVE AT FIRST BITE 1979 HOW TO#

In the first place, he's funny just to watch." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film zero stars out of four, writing that Hamilton "has no idea how to play comedy" and gave "a smug performance in a film full of tired jokes and some of the most cruel racial stereotyping you'll ever see." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It is not quite the coupling of the decade, and Ms.

#LOVE AT FIRST BITE 1979 MOVIE#

Janet Maslin of The New York Times described Love as "a coarse, delightful little movie with a bang-up cast and no pretensions at all," while Dave Kehr lamented the film's "hodgepodge of flat one-liners and graceless slapstick." Variety noted a "tendency to lurch from joke to joke" and observed that the story may be "silly," but Hamilton "makes it work. However, critical reviews were mixed, and Love at First Bite has a 67% "Fresh" rating on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 21 reviews. In fact, it was one of the highest-grossing independent films for many years. The film was a financial success, earning about $44 million against a $3 million budget and ranking at number 13 on a list of the top grossing films of 1979. Director Stan Dragoti became attached to the project through Peter Sellers, an acquaintance of Kaufman. A script was financed for $100,000 and later acquired by Melvin Simon, a shopping-mall entrepreneur with an interest in films. The inspiration for the film came about while George Hamilton was entertaining screenwriter Robert Kaufman with poolside impressions of Bela Lugosi, and thoughts turned to what would happen if Dracula lived in modern New York City.

George Hamilton as Count Vladimir Dracula.

The last scene shows Dracula and Cindy, transformed into bats, on their way to Jamaica. or whatever." Rosenberg keeps Dracula's cape – the only thing his stake had hit – which Ferguson borrows, hoping (since the cape makes the wearer look stylish) it will help him on his wedding anniversary. A check drops down by which Cindy pays off her (enormous) psychiatry bill to Rosenberg, to which he remarks: "She has become a responsible person. Rosenberg attempts to stake Dracula, but as he moves in for the kill, the two fly off as bats together. On the runway, Cindy finally agrees to become Dracula's vampire bride. The coffin is accidentally sent to Jamaica instead of London and the couple miss their plane. In the end, as a major blackout hits the city, Dracula flees via taxi cab back to the airport with Cindy, pursued by Rosenberg and Ferguson. Rosenberg's increasingly erratic actions eventually cause him to be locked up as a lunatic, but as mysterious cases of blood-bank robberies and vampiric attacks begin to spread, NYPD Lieutenant Ferguson starts to believe the psychiatrist's claims and gets him released. Subsequently he tries to shoot him with three silver bullets, but Dracula remains unscathed, patiently explaining that this works only on werewolves. Rosenberg also tries burning Dracula's coffin with the vampire still inside, but is arrested by hotel security. Rosenberg's numerous methods to combat Dracula – mirrors, garlic, a Star of David (which he uses instead of the cross), and hypnosis – are easily averted by the Count.

#LOVE AT FIRST BITE 1979 PROFESSIONAL#

Jeffrey is the grandson of Dracula's old nemesis Fritz van Helsing but changed his name to Rosenberg "for professional reasons". While Dracula learns that America contains such wonders as blood banks, sex clubs, and discotheques, he also proceeds to suffer the general ego-crushing that comes from life in the Big Apple in the late 1970s as he romantically pursues flaky fashion model Cindy Sondheim, whom he has admired from afar and believes to be the current reincarnation of his true love (an earlier being named Mina Harker).ĭracula is ineptly pursued in turn by Sondheim's psychiatrist and quasi-boyfriend Jeffrey Rosenberg. The world-weary Count travels to New York City with his bug-eating manservant, Renfield, and establishes himself in a hotel, but only after a mix-up at the airport causes his coffin to be accidentally sent to be the centerpiece in a funeral at a black church in Harlem. The infamous vampire Count Vladimir Dracula is expelled from his castle by the Communist government of Romania, which plans to convert the structure into a training facility for gymnasts (including Nadia Comăneci).