March 2005

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Sean Hannity adds three Supreme Court justices

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"Whenever I'm near a microphone, we both emit a radioactive glow!"

As regular visitors know, I'm a diehard Harry Shearer fan, and last week's Le Show, Harry's weekly radio program, was even better than usual. (You can listen to it online at his website.) Not to slight Mr. Shearer, however, the best bit of the hour was some "found audio," as he calls stuff he gets from his satellite dish, a clip showing what a sensitive, learned guy Sean Hannity really is.

Doing a live standup during the Schiavo hysteria last week, Hannity referred to the "twelve men and women" who have her "life in their hands." Off camera, and informed that there aren't twelve justices, he asked, "What was I thinkin' of? What's twelve? Somethin's twelve." He then calls a Congressman walking by an asshole. You can listen to it here.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 31, 2005 4:50 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #52

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Since most people seem to be checking in on Tuesdays anyway, I won't mention the tech glitch resulting in this entry being late and will just get to the quiz.

The clues this time are the following pictures:

"There are spirits-- everywhere. They are all around us."

(Hint: Despite the gloves, he is not related to Mickey Mouse.)

This actor later went on to work with fellow German Peter Lorre in two films starring Humphrey Bogart.

If you know the name of this all-time classic, send me an email by late Sunday night and, if you're correct, your name will be prominently displayed in next week's somnabulistic winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 29, 2005 12:39 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

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Last week's video clue was for people who believed, in one correspondent's words, that "[Robert] Blake should have been hanged for killing his annoying girlfriend." The clip came from the end of the great 1967 film In Cold Blood, directed and written (from Truman Capote's novel) by Richard Brooks, and starring Blake and Scott Wilson as real-life killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Wilson was excellent, but Blake was the standout, and now, perhaps, we know why.

Since the verdict, there's been very little news anywhere about Blake, which isn't surprising considering that no one under the age of 40 knows who he is. Still, there are a couple of stories that are as silly as you'd imagine them to be, including Blake's first post-trial interview where he thanked Baba Wawa for saving his life. My favorite, though, is the story about the juror who's written half-a-dozen songs about Blake and the trial and is now looking for a record deal, even though he's restricted by law from earning more than $50 from his jury experience. (My prediction: No problem.) Blake's own prospects for money aren't good, according to this story, which quotes a showbiz lawyer opining, "If you kill somebody or knife somebody, it's probably not as easy to get work in this town."

And for those who remember Blake's whacked-out appearences on Tom Snyder's shows and have wondered what his old interviewing friend thinks, Tom says Bob did it.

Congratulations to the following quiz winners who identfied the movie from the clip: Wayne A. Palmer, Mark Gisleson, Chris Hesler, Joe Rosenberg, Corey Anderson, Hank Parmer, and Kevin Musolino.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 29, 2005 12:38 AM

 

GREIL MONACO�S NO-LIFE TOP 10 (okay, Top 6)-- The All-TV Edition

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1) Conservative night on Real Time with Bill Maher. To his credit, Maher is the only former Nader supporter who�s acknowledged that his sell-out (his words) for Kerry was a mistake, and since he�s been on HBO, he�s been funnier and sharper than he ever was on ABC. So far, though, the new season has been boring at best and infuriating at worst, and the recent show where the audience was deliberately constructed to be 50% conservatives was both. (How and why they did it was never explained.) The panel featured two Republican nerd-women, including Christie Todd Whitman, and even though Maher�s topics were politically safe and his language was almost G-rated (tailored to his audience and a hypocritical move for a comic who prides himself on being politically incorrect), you could tell that he still went too far for these stiffs in every way. Then again, maybe Bill was just practicing for when the FCC neuters cable TV, too.

2) Monk�The First Season. I�ve been watching the DVDs, with one disc lasting me sometimes two months, and I�ve finally figured out why I like it: other than the innovative idea of a phobia-ridden detective with OCD, the episodes are like B-movies from the �40s. They go by easily, the same way certain formula crime fiction from the past does (87th Precinct, Travis McGee), and there�s always something original and funny about the main character that makes them worth the watch. And Tony Shaloub�s performance will someday earn him a TVLand Lifetime Achievement Award.

3) During the commercial, I invent a new sandwich. Salami, ham, bacon, pastrami and melted cheese. I named it after my favorite Charles Bronson movie: The Death-wich.

4) Joey Greco, host of Cheaters, my new favorite show. Described by one disgruntled cheater as �a metrosexual with glasses,� I can�t think of anyone else currently doing television who puts himself out there for insult and, occasionally, injury like Joey. Finally, a reality show that not only deals with the heartache of a romantic breakup but actually causes it. During the confrontation scenes, where the cheater under investigation is busted on-camera, Joey has narrowly avoided several beatings and still kept his sepulchral cool. In perhaps the best episode of them all, where he takes a woman to see her boyfriend getting flogged in a motel room, the dominatrix tells Joey, �You have a really annoying face.� TV is going to have to do some serious sit-ups to be able to bend much lower than this�Joey, hats off.

5) James on the new Survivor. Head the size of a marble, brain the size of a pea, nose almost as big as his ego. He was born to star in the movie version of Roy Tompkins� comic, Harvey the Hillbilly Bastard. I hope he wins.

6) Daniel Baldwin, reality-TV joke. On one of the celebrity card-game shows (a craze that can die right now), Baldwin was sniffing his head off, acting crazy and actually got up on-camera to �use the bathroom.� Next, he�s on VH1�s Celebrity Fit Club, an exercise in humilation for obese show-biz types whose career is at the level of doing a reality weight-loss show. He winds up so strung out that he doesn�t show for the final weigh-in, and admits on-camera to getting Percocet �scrips from multiple doctors. I predict Baldwin�s next appearance will be on the new reality show�no joke�Intervention.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 23, 2005 5:16 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #51

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It's a video clue this week, with no hints.

If you know the title of the movie this scene is from, send me an email by late Sunday night, and if you're right, next week you'll see your name in our winners circle. And dat's da name o' dat tune! (Okay, one hint.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 21, 2005 10:59 PM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

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Casey Siemaszko, Burt Reynolds and Bill Forsyth

If you don't count Deliverance and Boogie Nights, the best Burt Reynolds movie just might be Breaking In, the 1989 film written by John Sayles and directed by Bill Forsyth that was intended to be Burt's debut as a character actor, with emphasis on the actor part. After (too) many years as America's favorite movie star, stinking up theaters with all kinds of wretched shit like Paternity and Stroker Ace, his performance in this picture was a genuine revelation, and even Reynolds haters like me had to admit that the guy was good.

He couldn't have been quite so good, though, if he hadn't chosen the writer and director he did. John Sayles' script about an old crook who takes a young one under his tutelage is filled with good scenes, like the opening where they find each other burgling the same house. (Reynolds' character, Ernie the pro, is there for the wall-safe, while the kid, charmingly played by Casey Siemaszko, broke in just to see what was in the fridge.) Its offbeat tone had a perfect interpreter in director Bill Forsyth, whose best known film was Local Hero and whose subsequent and complete withdrawl from moviemaking has been a mystery.

Congratulations to the handful of astute movie fans who got it this week: Wayne A. Palmer, Corey Anderson, Hank Parmer and Kevin Musolino. Everybody else, try to catch this the next time it shows up on TNT or wherever-- you won't be sorry.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 21, 2005 10:58 PM

 

From the archives: Ron and Nancy-- Just say "Oh, wow"

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Return with us now to those chilling days of yesteryear, when a not very good movie star was playing president on TV. Maybe you recall the unprecedented national scolding that the First Actor and his leading lady gave the nation in the mid-eighties about drug abuse-- it was, ironically, known as Ron and Nancy's "joint address," and it was broadcast in prime time on all three networks.

Perhaps, though, you haven't heard it in awhile, and I'll bet you've never heard it sounding like this. Enjoy.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 15, 2005 6:59 PM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #50

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Put this picture

 and this picture

together with this sound clip, and see if you know the film they all come from. If you do, send me an email by late Sunday night, and if you're right, come back next week and see your name in our larcenous winners circle. Good luck.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 14, 2005 10:48 PM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

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Mexican movie poster for The Intruder

Last week�s quiz movie was, I believe, the first to have three titles to pick from (or four, if you count its British nom de plume), but while Shame and (especially) I Hate Your Guts are both fitting choices, its original title, The Intruder, is still the best. Released in 1961, directed by Roger Corman and written by Charles Beaumont (from his novel), it stars a young William Shatner as a racist agitator who travels to a southern town to keep its high school from being desegregated. (The town is never named, and while it�s likely that it�s meant to be Selma, Alabama, most of the movie was actually shot in Illinois.)

Shatner has never been better than he is in this film, and while many might think that�s slight praise, he won many acting awards for the film at various festivals, and deservedly so. Besides being possibly his least mannered performance, it also took great courage to take such an unsympathetic role, especially so early in his career. And according to conventional Hollywood wisdom, he was also taking a �wrong� direction, careerwise by appearing in such a low-budget movie--Corman estimates that the entire production cost less than $80,000-- but as he tells Corman in the interview feature on the DVD, he would have paid the director to have gotten the part. (The ever-frugal Corman replies, �I wish you�d told me that then!�)

Just the making of the film was an act of courage for all involved. Both men relate stories of police harassment (the climactic scene, where a public spectacle is made of a black high school student, had to be shot in three different towns) as well as death threats by locals. Corman mentions that a scene where Shatner leads a convoy of Klansmen through a black neighborhood was so fraught with danger that after the cameras stopped, all the actors stayed in their cars and drove straight to St. Louis. And it was only after they�d completed the scene where Shatner first rouses the rabble that they learned that the site they used-- the front lawn of a local courthouse-- had been the scene of an actual lynching.

It all made the film better, however, and there is a sweaty tension and realism to it that's missing in later big-budget attempts like Mississippi Burning. While The Intruder was the first movie Corman ever made that lost money (southern drive-ins weren�t keen on showing it), it�s possibly his all-time best, and it�s well worth watching if you�ve never seen it.

Congratulations to our handful of astute film fans who recognized it (the picture of Shatner that served for the photo clue even fooled a couple of our regular experts): Wayne A. Palmer, Joe Rosenberg, Hank Parmer, Kevin Musolino (a new name-- welcome!), and Evan Cook (who also reminded me of the film's fourth, British moniker, The Stranger).

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 14, 2005 10:47 PM

 

Bad commercials of the past

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"I'm strong to da finich, 'cause I eats me . . . Wheatina?"

Today, commercials seem to be the only thing most radio stations play, but in the early days of the medium, advertising-by-sound was considered the worst thing ever invented. People loathed it, and it might have never taken off-- and over-- if someone hadn�t come up with the masterstroke of incorporating the ads into the program, with the show�s cast of characters �enjoying� the product. Suddenly, the country wanted to smoke what Jack Benny smoked. And when he switched to Jello, they smoked that, too.

Here�s a perfect example, from the dramatic climax of the first episode of Popeye, broadcast in 1935. An out-of-control streetcar (!) is about to plunge Wimpy and Olive Oyl to their doom. (The kid with them is a radio-only character named Matey.) Popeye has just been flattened by the trolley, so everyone�s amazed when he reappears to save the day. But instead of his traditional injection of spinach, Popeye chugs down three bowls of his sponsor�s cereal, Wheatina. (Note: Sound quality is on the dull side, so use your EQ.)

P.S. For Popeye and/or Wheatina fans, here�s the show�s intro and first commercial.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 11, 2005 5:20 AM

 

Robert Blake in "Eye, the Jury"

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NY Post: "Blake Jury Eyes Slay Timeline"

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 10, 2005 4:40 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #49

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An older and more obscure movie this week for the quiz, but with a star who�s so well-known that even people who have never heard of this particular film will recognize his face:

and his voice.

Hint: This was the only box-office dud by one of the �60s� most commercially successful directors.

If you know the film (another hint: it has three titles�use any), send me an email by late Sunday night, and next week�s winner circle will have your name in it.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 7, 2005 11:25 PM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

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Ta-da! Last week�s quiz movie was Alien, almost everybody�s nominee for scariest movie ever made, including yours truly. How scary is it? Watching it again for the first time in years, I found myself tensing up in every one of the film�s best-known scenes (Harry Dean Stanton�s search for Jones the cat, John Hurt�s birthing scene), and I knew everything that was going to happen.

The commentary track on the recent remastered DVD-- which looks as good as any disc I�ve yet seen-- interlaces comments by director Ridley Scott, screenwriter Dan O�Bannon, and most of the cast, and it makes plain that everyone involved with the film made it richer. The cast members even claim that by week three they all knew they were working on a classic, and a couple of them say they were genuinely afraid during the filming. (They also point out that the look of fright and revulsion on Veronica Cartwright�s face as John Hurt explodes was real-- none of them knew they were going to be showered with real blood and entrails, and Cartwright got an especially large dose.)

The DVD has both the original 1979 version and the director�s cut, which both adds scenes and shortens the run time by a minute. I prefer the original, mainly because Scott�s version includes extra shots of the monster and telegraphs its presence more. The scene where Stanton looks for the cat, then pauses under a stream of water for what seems like forever, has a shot in the director�s cut where the alien is shown above him. In the original, the camera never leaves Harry Dean�s face, and the tension from not knowing if the thing is coming is fantastic.

As I expected, it was a good turnout of winners this week. Congratulations to Wayne A. Palmer, Joe Rosenberg, Steve Perry, Hank Parmer, Steven Jay Gellert, Kika Warner, Mark Gisleson, Evan Cook, and Bob Ackerman.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 7, 2005 11:24 PM

 

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