Author Archives: Dazzling Erin

Music Video of the Day: The Call by Backstreet Boys (2000, dir. by Francis Lawrence)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

In this video, a man cheats on his girlfriend after he meets another girl at the club.  He gives his girlfriend a call where he lies about why he’s going to be late getting home.  Each Backstreet Boy takes a turn playing the cheater.

What the Hell, Backstreet Boys?  You’re all cheating on the same girl?  That’s not cool!

Check out that phone that AJ’s using at the start of the video.  Feel old, yet?  According to AJ, it was during the filming of this video that he tried cocaine for the first time.  Don’t worry, though, AJ’s been sober for a year now.

Enjoy!

 

The Adventures of Steve Harragan and His Eye Patch

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Who was Steve Harragan?  He was a hardboiled private investigator who was the main character of a handful of paperback detective novels that were all published in 1952 and 1953.  Though his adventures were not much different from those of any other P.I. of the pulp era, Steve Harragan has a cult following for two reasons.

First off, the author of Harragan’s adventures was also named Steve Harragan.  Did the author Steve Harragan name the character after himself or was “Steve Harragan” just a pseudonym for another author or perhaps several authors?  No one knows for sure, though all of Harragan’s novel were written in the first person.

Secondly, Steve Harragan the Detective only has one eye.  In almost every cover, he’s featured wearing an eye patch.

Here are a few of the Steve Harragan covers.  As always, the artist has been identified when known:

Author Unknown

Author Unknown

Author Unknown

by Bernard Safran

by Walter Popp

Author unknown. I’m not sure which one of these men is meant to be Harragan but you’ll notice that the eyepatch got left out of this cover.

Music Video of the Day: Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson (2005, dir. by Alex de Rackoff)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Nostalgia is a powerful drug and it’s the main reason why Since U Been Gone is today’s music video of the day.  Whe I hear this song, I’m immediately zapped back to 2005 and I remember how Lisa and I got on everyone’s nerves by singing it at the top of our lungs every day during the holiday break.

I also remember really liking this video when I first saw it but now I realize that it actually doesn’t go with the song’s message.  The song is about how much happier Kelly is after getting out of a toxic relationship but in the video, Kelly’s destroying her ex’s new girlfriend’s apartment and acting like she’s got a fatal attraction going on.  She should have at least trashed her ex’s place and left the new girlfriend out of it.  This is still a good video, though, because we all have someone in our part whose apartment we would like to trash.

Enjoy!

 

Ralph Gibson: Photographer/Book Artist (2002, dir. by Paula Herdia)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Photographer Ralph Gibson is one of the most important photographers of the last century and, in this documentary, he discusses both his life and his work.  An independent iconoclast, Gibson went from serving in the Navy to working as an assistant to Dorothea Lange to eventually publishing his own very influential books of photographs.  Gibson’s work is fascinating, sensuous, and frequently surreal and helped to change the public perception about whether or not photography can also be art.

Here’s just a few examples of Gibson’s work:

In the documentary Ralph Gibson: Photographer/Book Artist, Gibson tells his own story of how he became both a photographer and a publisher.  It’s interesting to listen to him as he explains how he first came to realize that how a picture is placed on a page (especially when compared to the placement of the picture on the facing page) can make as much of an artistic statement as the pictures themselves.  The documentary also features interviews with several of Gibson’s contemporaries and also with critics who attempt to analyze what makes Gibson’s work so effective.

The only problem with this documentary is that it’s too short.  It’s only 30 minutes long so sometimes, like when Gibson is talking about his childhood and his time in the Navy, it feels rushed.  The best thing about the documentary though is that it features many of Gibson’s photographs and also Gibson himself.  Listening to Gibson talk will make you want to pick up a real camera and start capturing the world around you.

This documentary is on Prime and if you’re an artist looking for inspiration, I recommend it.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014, dir. by Chapman Way and Maclain Way)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

If you’re like me and you’re already missing baseball, I recommend watching a documentary called The Battered Bastards of Baseball.

In 1972, Portland, Oregon lost their minor league baseball team when the Portland Beavers abandoned the city in order to become the Spokane Indians.  At the same time, actor Bing Russell, a former minor leaguer and the father of Kurt Russell, had grown tired of Hollywood and was looking to get back into baseball.  Relocating to Portland, Russell announced that he was going to start his own independent minor league team, the Portland Mavericks.

At first, no one took the Mavericks seriously.  Because they weren’t affiliated with a major league team, the Mavericks roster was largely made up of misfits and rulebreakers, many of whom had been released from other organizations and who had been blacklisted from the major leagues.  On average, most of the Mavericks players were older than the average major leaguer.  Many of them were players who were looking for one last shot at glory and Bing refused to cut any of them because he felt that that they deserved that chance.  When the skeptical media asked Bing what the Mavericks were going to offer that other baseball teams couldn’t, he replied, “Fun.”

And he delivered.  From 1973 to 1977, the Mavericks played exciting baseball, won divisional and league titles, and, most importantly, they put on a good show.  Playing mostly for the love of the game (because Russell never had much money to spend on salaries), the Mavericks reminded people of what baseball was all about.  They pulled off amazing plays on the field while their off-field antics were legendary.  The Mavericks played baseball the way that people wanted to see baseball played, with one manager living every fan’s dream by punching an umpire.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball tells the story of the Mavericks and Bing Russell.  It features archival footage of the Mavericks at play, along with interviews with people like Kurt Russell, who briefly played for the Mavericks and then served as one of their vice presidents.   The documentary pays tribute to the players who never gave up, the fans who eventually welcomed them to a new town, and most of all to the vision and determination of Bing Russell.  Even while Bing was bringing the fun back to baseball, he was also breaking down other barriers by hiring professional baseball’s first female general manager, as well as the first Asian American general manager.

Most importantly, though, The Battered Bastards of Baseball reminds us of why people love baseball in the first place.  It celebrates the game, the players, and most of all the fans.  It’s a documentary that will just leave you in a good mood.  That’s something we all could use!

Kurt Russell as a Maverick

Charlie’s Angels (2019, dir. by Elizabeth Banks)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

In the latest version of Charlie’s Angels, the Angels have become an elite force of international super spies and there are now hundreds of Angels instead of just three.  There’s also more than one Bosley as this movie establishes that Bosley is actually a codename that’s given to Charlie’s lieutenants.  Djimon Hounsou is a Bosley and Patrick Stewart is a Bosely and Elizabeth Banks is a Bosley.

Two Angels, Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska), are assigned to protect a corporate whistleblower named Elena (Naomi Scott) because Elena has discovered that Callisto, a renewable energy device, can also be used to trigger fatal seizures in selected targets.  When an assassin attempts to take out Elena, he kills one of the Bosleys and Elena becomes an Angel.  What I don’t get is why the assassin would try to shoot Elena in public when he could have just used the Callisto device to give her a seizure.

I wanted to like Charlie’s Angels because “Girl power!” but I got bored pretty quickly.  All of the action scenes were done better in the last Mission Impossible and most of the jokes fell flat.  Too much of the humor was built around someone saying something awkward and then everyone else standing around with a confused look on their face.  For a movie that’s supposedly about celebrating girl power, I noticed that the Angels made a lot of stupid mistakes.  It also bothered me that we were expected to laugh when an innocent security guard was killed by the Callisto but it was supposed to be a big emotional moment when one of the Bosleys died.  It’s also supposed to be a big emotional moment when Jane thanks Sabina for teaching her that it’s okay to work with other people but since Jane never seemed like she had a problem working with other people, I wasn’t sure what she was talking about or why I should care.

Elena learns how to stick up for herself, Jane learns how to trust other people, and Sabina doesn’t learn anything but at least Kristen Stewart finally gets to smile.  None of them can hold a candle to Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu in the first Charlie’s Angels movie, which was both fun and empowering.  This new version just can’t compete.