Iguanas and Mustangs

"When you're in love with a beautiful woman / it's hard." - Dr. HookTHE MISFITS (1961) was just on TCM and for a big chunk of it I was floored by its poetic train wreck qualities and wondered why Marilyn Monroe's performance is maligned in film criticism. It's like a bi-polar character written for a bi-polar actress by her bi-polar husband as a divorce present can't get a break in this town. Especially now, when we can diagnose problems of this sort...

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Idiot Wind of the Locusts: SOYLENT GREEN

"People were always rotten."Edward G. Robinson says this line in 1973's sci fi eco-dystopia cautionary tale SOYLENT GREEN, while lamenting the good old days of air conditioning and top soil, never once realizing the irony that in fact everything else is rotten, but thanks to state of the art of preservative-enhanced freeze-drying people are the only things left that ain't rotten: They stay fresh and delicious almost forever...That famous quote,...

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CinemArchetype 13: The Skeevy Boyfriend

They turn up less in actual fairy tales and myths, perhaps because they don't translate well to narrative, wherein their skeevy qualities are harder to pin down, contingent as they are on the bridge between mental vision and actuality. Tim Robbins in High Fidelity is one who might look good on paper, around the fire, on the cave wall, or in his own mind, but through our and John Cusak's eyes he's a walking douche chill. As a viewer we want to see...

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Tennessee Williams at the Mill of Rubes

If a bunch of method-trained actors crashed their bus in the middle of nowhere Louisiana and tried to pass as locals so as to not get lynched, the resulting brood-athon might look a lot like The Fugitive Kind (1959). Marlon Brando, radiant, and way too good for it all plays a god-like guitar-slinging drifter who winds up in a romance with older Italian shop owner Ann Magnani and together they face a hard mob of drunken good-old-boys managed by Anna's...

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MAD MEN, in the bad way

And about MAD MEN this season (only on AMC) - how come it's so squirmy and preoccupied with being vile and no one likes each other anymore? Now that the fifth season brain frieze has begun we've had to wonder if we'll ever get our awesome show back -- the one where we thrilled to see high powered drunks in action: getting high and telling off hippies; pissing their pants before big client pitches; inventing the term 'carousel' for Kodak in a non-dry...

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