I figured that after doing a video from jazz fusion artist Herbie Hancock, I would follow that up with an acid jazz band. The Brand New Heavies get classified in other categories, but acid jazz is one of them. The video kind of reminds me of a cross between something I would expect from Deee-Lite and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. The band is still around today, and released a new music video at least as recent as 2013.
Enjoy!
by Robert Maguire
The 1965 film A Thousand Clowns is one of the most annoying films to ever be nominated for best picture.
I know what you’re thinking.
Really, Lisa — even more annoying than Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?
Well, no. No movie is as annoying as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In fact, even if it didn’t particularly work for me, I can kind of understand why A Thousand Clowns was apparently a box office success in 1965. To be honest, part of my annoyance with the film comes from the fact that not only can I understand why other people would love it but I probably would have loved it if I had been alive to see it when it was first released. A Thousand Clowns isn’t an awful film but to say that it has not aged well is a bit of an understatement.
It tells the story of Murray Burns (Jason Robards). Murray lives in a cluttered New York apartment with his 12 year-old nephew, Nick (Barry Gordon). Seven years ago, Nick’s mother abandoned him with Murray. Murray views Nick as being his own son. Nick worships his Uncle Murray. Murray randomly sings Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby. Nick picks up on the habit and is soon wandering around and humming Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby. By the end of A Thousand Clowns you will be so freaking sick of hearing that song. (Fortunately, Murray never sings Send In The Clowns. The film dodged a bullet on that one.)
Murray’s a nonconformist, the type who starts his day by standing outside and mocking everyone who is getting ready to go to work. Murray used to have a job. He was a TV writer. He wrote jokes for a detestable entertainer known as Chuckles The Chipmunk (played by noted Broadway director Gene Saks). Five months ago, Murray quit his job. He’s now unemployed and proud of it. He swears that he will never again sacrifice his freedom for a paycheck. He raises Nick to take the same attitude towards life.
Two social workers, Albert (Williams Daniels) and Sandra (Barbara Harris), show up at Murray’s apartment. They say that unless Murray gets a job and proves that he’s a good guardian, Nick will be taken away from him. Murray explains that he’s a nonconformist and that he’s raising Nick to reject anything conventional. Albert is offended. Sandra is charmed. Soon, Sandra and Murray are going for bike rides through New York City. Murray sings Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby some more…
And it all sounds good but the film just didn’t work for me. First off, I’ve actually experienced what it’s like to grow up with a frequently unemployed father and, sorry, it’s not all studio apartments and cheerful trips to Central Park. Secondly, A Thousand Clown‘s message of carpe diem might have seemed groundbreaking in 1965 but today, it just seems like a cliché. I mean, everyone claims to be a nonconformist today.
Watching the film, it’s hard not to feel that it doesn’t really play fair. It’s easy for the film to always portray Murray as being enlightened when the only people who ever disagree with him are humorless strawmen. Albert is a self-righteous prig while Chuckles The Chipmunk is a heavy-handed caricature, the type of TV star who could only be created by a writer who is resentful that more people are watching TV than reading his latest masterpiece. Martin Balsam appears as Murray’s brother, Arnold, and gets a chance to defend his decision to lead a normal, conventional life. When it comes to the brothers, the film obviously want us to side with Murray but instead, you feel more sympathy for Arnold, largely because Martin Balsam was such an authoritative actor that your natural tendency is to assume that he must know what he’s talking about. It’s interesting to note that it was Balsam, as the voice of mainstream conformity, that won the film’s only Oscar.
Jason Robards was not even nominated, though his performance is often better than the material. He and Barbara Harris have a sweet chemistry, even though Harris is stuck playing a rather demeaning role. (When we first meet Sandra, she is dating Albert and assuming that he’s correct about anything. Then she falls for Murray and assumes that he is the one who is correct about everything. What the film never bothers to really explore is what Sandra herself thinks about anything.) But then you’ve got Barry Gordon, who, in the role of Nick, comes across as being a bratty know-it-all weirdo. Nick is so obnoxious that it undercuts the movie’s claim that Murray deserves to be his guardian.
Also not nominated, despite the film winning a best picture nomination, was the director, Fred Coe. (Nominated in his place were William Wyler for The Collector and Hiroshi Teshigahara for The Woman In The Dunes.) His omission is less surprising than that of Jason Robards. If you didn’t know that A Thousand Clowns was based on a stage play, you’d guess it after watching the first ten minutes of the film. Despite a few shots of Murray and Sandra in New York City, A Thousand Clowns never breaks free of its stage origins. Taking place on largely one set, it feels rather confining for a film meant to celebrate nonconformity.
As I said, I didn’t care much for A Thousand Clowns but I can understand why it was probably a hit with 1965 audiences. Murray’s a transitional figure, standing between the Beats and the Hippies. With America’s confidence shaken by the Kennedy assassination and growing social unrest, I’m sure a lot of people wanted to drop out of society just like Murray. To be honest, a lot of people feel like that right now. I just hope that, if you do decide to follow Murray’s example, you’ll sing something less annoying than Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby.
A Thousand Clowns was nominated for best picture but it lost to a film that Murray probably would have hated, The Sound of Music.
Scott Bruin (Jeff Lester) is a high fashion photographer who is haunted by nightmares in which he strangles a naked woman in the swimming pool. His nymphomaniac girlfriend, Lena (Shannon Tweed!), is surprisingly understanding when she wakes up to discover Scott strangling her but Scott is worried that he might be losing his mind. His psychiatrist (David Soul) is not much help. When Scott has a violent vision in the middle of photo shoot, he freaks out. “Hey, are you on drugs?” one of the models asks.
Then Scott meets Kimberly (Adrienne Sachs) and she looks exactly like the woman from his dreams. When she invites him to back to her house, the house looks exactly like the house from his nightmares. Is Scott going crazy or is he seeing the future? And how is Kimberly’s ex, a cold businessman named Ken Strom (Marc Singer), involved?
Does anyone remember this movie? In the 90s, this used to be on HBO and Cinemax all of the time. It’s a typical sex-fueled, nudity-filled direct-to-video thriller but Nico Mastorakis, a Greek director who has obviously learned a lot from Brian DePalma, gives the movie an enjoyably slick sheen. Neither Jeff Lester nor Adrienne Sachs gives a good performance and the plot feels like it was made up on the spot but fans of Shannon Tweed in her Skinemax heyday might enjoy it.
In the Cold of the Night also features Tippi Hedren, playing Kimberly’s mother. She only appears in one scene and freaks out when she sees some birds. The scene ends with Adrienne Sachs looking directly at the camera and saying, “Mother simply hates birds!”
There’s a lot to like about THE DESPERADOES. Not that it’s anything groundbreaking; it’s your standard Western outing with all the standard clichés. you’ve got your two pals, one the sheriff (Randolph Scott ), the other an outlaw (Glenn Ford ). You’ve got your gambling hall dame (Claire Trevor ) and sweet young thing (Evelyn Keyes) vying for the good/bad guy’s attention. You’ve got your goofy comical sidekick (Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams). You’ve got your supposedly respectable heavy (Porter Hall ), a mean heavy (Bernard Nedell), and a heavy who has a change of heart (Edgar Buchanan). What makes this one different is the movie seems to know it’s clichéd, giving a nod and a wink to its audience as it merrily makes its way down that familiar dusty trail.
Based on a novel by pulp writer Max Brand (who also created the Dr. Kildare series), this was one of Columbia’s big releases of the year, and…
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I of course knew about Rockit. However, I had no idea that Hancock made any other music videos. I’m so glad he did. What’s even better is that he did this one with Godley & Creme like he did for Rockit. That’s a triple whammy that, at the very least, is guaranteed to make something interesting.
Just enjoy!
By James Meese
Earlier tonight, I watched a 1966 film called The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
It’s a cheerful comedy about what happens when the captain (played by Theodore Bikel) of a Russian submarine decides that he wants to take a look at the United States. Though he was only planning to look at America through a periscope, he accidentally runs the submarine into a sandbar sitting near Gloucester Island, which itself sits off the coast of Massachusetts. The captain sends a nine man landing party, led by Lt. Yuri Rozanov (a youngish Alan Arkin, making his film debut and receiving an Oscar nomination for his efforts), to the island. Their orders are simple. Yuri and his men are too either borrow or steal a boat that can be used to push the submarine off the sandbar. If they run into any locals, they are to claim to be Norwegian fisherman.
Needless to say, things that don’t quite go as planned. The first Americans that Yuri and his men meet are the family of Walt Whitaker (Carl Reiner), a vacationing playwright. Walt’s youngest son immediately identifies the Norwegian fisherman as being “Russians with submachine guns.” When Walt laughingly asks Yuri if he’s a “Russian with a submachine gun,” Yuri produces a submachine gun and promptly takes Walt, his wife (Eva Marie Saint), and his children hostage.
Yuri may be a Russian. He may officially be an enemy of America. But he’s actually a pretty nice guy. All he wants to do is find a boat, keep his men safe, and leave the island with as little drama as possible. However, the inhabitants of the island have other plans. As rumors spread that the Russians have landed, the eccentric and largely elderly population of Gloucester Island prepares for war. Even as Police Chief Mattocks (Brian Keith) and his bumbling assistant, Norman Jonas (Jonathan Winters), attempt to keep everyone calm, Fendall Hawkins (Paul Ford) is organizing a militia and trying to contact the U.S. Air Force.
Meanwhile, Walt’s babysitter, Allison (Andrea Dromm) finds herself falling in love with one of the Russians, the gentle Alexei Kolchin (John Phillip Law).
As I said at the start of this review, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming is a cheerful comedy, one with a rather gentle political subtext, suggesting that the majority of international conflicts could be avoided if people got to know each other as people as opposed to judging them based on nationality or ideology. There’s a rather old-fashioned liberalism to it that probably seemed quite daring in 1966 but which feels rather quaint today. Sometimes, the comedy gets a bit broad and there were a few times that I found myself surprised that the film didn’t come with a laugh track. But overall, this is a well-acted and likable little movie.
As I watched The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (and, as someone who is contractually obligated to use a certain number of words per review, allow me to say how much I enjoyed the length of that title), I found myself considering that the film would have seemed dated in 2013 but, with all the talk of Russian hacking in the election and everything else, it now feels a little bit more relevant. Not a day goes by when I don’t see someone on twitter announcing that the Russians are coming. Of course, if the film were released today, its optimistic ending would probably be denounced as an unacceptable compromise. Peaceful co-existence is no longer as trendy as it once was.
Another interesting thing to note about The Russians Are Coming, The Russians are Coming: though the film was written by William Rose (who also wrote another example of mild 1960s feelgood liberalism, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner), it was based on a novel by Nathaniel Benchley. Benchley was the father of Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws. It’s easy to see the eccentrics of Gloucester Island as distant cousins of the inhabitants of Amity Island.
As previously stated, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming was nominated for best picture but it lost to the far more weighty A Man For All Seasons.
Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) is a veteran enforcer for the Chicago mob. His latest assignment has taken him out of the city and sent him to the farmlands of Kansas. Nick is the third enforcer to be sent to Kansas, all to collect a $500,000 debt from a local crime boss named Mary Ann (Gene Hackman). The first one ended up floating face down in the Missouri River. The second was chopped up into sausages at the local slaughterhouse. Nick might have better luck because he once had an affair with Mary Ann’s wife, Clarabelle (Angel Tompkins).
When Nick tracks down Mary Ann to demand the money, he discovers that Mary Ann and his brother Weenie (Gregory Walcott, best remembered for his starring role in Plan 9 From Outer Space) are running a white slavery ring. Kidnapping girls from a nearby orphanage, Mary Ann and Weenie keep them naked and doped up in a barn. One of the girls, Poppy (Sissy Spacek, in her film debut), looks up at Nick and says, “Help me.” Nick takes Poppy with him, claiming that he’s holding her for collateral until he gets the money.
The main attraction here is to see two iconic tough guys — Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman — fighting over Sissy Spacek, who is only slightly less spacey here than in her breakthrough role in Badlands. In Prime Cut, the ruthless Chicago mobster turns out to have more of a conscience than the rural good old boys who work for Mary Ann and Weenie. Nothing sums up Prime Cut better than the scene where Lee Marvin, wearing a black suit, and Sissy Spacek are pursued through a wheat field by a thrasher that’s being driven by a roly-poly farmer wearing overalls. Prime Cut is both an exciting crime film and a trenchant satire of both the American heartland and the type of gangster movies that made Lee Marvin famous.
Artist Unknown
Through the Shattered Lens 