–SILLY HEADLINE: ”AUCTION OF BRUCE LEE ITEMS EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS”–

Of course it “exceeds expectations.” We’re talking about The Mighty Bruce Lee. If I had the money I’d buy everything in the world associated with Bruce Lee and put it all in a giant warehouse and live in it like a happy hoarder and if anyone tried to take it away from me or get me any kind of psychological help I would claw them with my razorblade hand.

–SOUNDTRACK SALES PLUMMET 40% OVER LAST FOUR YEARS–

Soundtracks are all about reliving the movie experience through music. For years, I purchased more soundtracks than any other kind of music. But over the past decade the thought hasn’t even crossed my mind — probably for a few reasons. First off, the music industry doesn’t have much of anything new to offer these days. Very few new artists break out with the kinds of songs that capture the imagination. If there are no new songs worth purchasing, that means that the only good songs on soundtracks are those we already own.  

Another reason to purchase a film’s soundtrack was for the actual score, but when’s the last time a movie score so moved you, you just had to own it? There was a time when scores from films such as “Dances with Wolves,” “Last of the Mohicans,” and “Legends of the Fall” were must-owns. You didn’t even have to fall in love with the film in order to fall in love with the score. You just don’t hear those kinds of scores anymore.

Finally, for the last decade, Hollywood hasn’t been making the kinds of films we want to relive again and again. This is part of the reason DVD sales have collapsed and probably why soundtrack sales have followed suit.

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Much has been made about James Agee’s affectionate judgment of Buster Keaton: “Keaton worked strictly for laughs, but his work came from so far inside a curious and original spirit that he achieved a great deal besides, especially in his feature-length comedies. . . he was the only major comedian who kept sentiment almost entirely out of his work, and he brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights.”

As for me, I agree more with another critic, Roger Ebert, who once wrote that Keaton’s movies, “seen as a group, are like a sustained act of optimism in the face of adversity; surprising how, without asking, he earns our admiration and tenderness.” Marshaling all of the critical gumption he’s earned over the years, Ebert also calls Keaton, “the greatest actor-director in the history of the cinema, and that includes Orson Welles.”

Keaton chalked up a large part of his success to changes undertaken while maturing out of his early, vaudeville-inspired shorts with Fatty Arbuckle (a subject we’ll address in a future FCML series). When first making features, their longer length dictated fundamental adjustments in the way his comedy and cinema interacted. “One of the first decisions I made,” Keaton wrote in his autobiography, “was to cut out custard pie throwing. . . no pie was ever thrown in a Buster Keaton feature. We also discontinued what we called impossible gags or cartoon gags. . . I realized that my feature comedies would succeed best when the audience took the plot seriously enough to root for me as I indomitably worked my way out of mounting perils.”

That quiet indomitable spirit, what Ebert calls his “sustained act of optimism,” separates Buster Keaton’s stone-faced everyman from the other great comedic characters of the age.  Take Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp — at base a hobo, petty thief, and conniving opportunist, his humor derived from his boundless ingenuity in skirting the law, and his pathos came from being an oppressed victim of a cruel society. Late in life, Keaton remembered… (more…)

In 1964, little-known actor Michael Caine was being evicted — again — and needed a place to stay — again. His friend Sean Connery, starting out in similar circumstances, had reached the pinnacle of the acting world as James Bond. But here Caine was, unable to pay the rent.

In desperation, he temporarily moved in with his pal John Barry, the music composer for the Bond series. Barry was a regular patron of London’s tony clubs and discotheques, and so Caine fully expected to have some good times while staying over as a guest. What he got instead was being kept up night after night by a strange tune Barry was tinkering with: two blaring notes in the key of F major, followed by a trailing melody in D flat, repeated over and over like a villainous echo:

YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen

Decades later, music critic Terry Walstrom would marvel at how this famous introduction “arrests the attention and stuns the ear,” with the unorthodox key transition being akin to “opening a carton of fat-free milk and pouring out a glass of vodka. Entirely without precedent.”

Unknowingly just a few months away from his own stardom courtesy of 1964’s Zulu (another film scored by Barry), Michael Caine lay in the dark listening to the haunting melody of “Goldfinger,” little guessing that the song would one day be judged one of the finest of the last fifty years, with its young composer becoming the greatest British purveyor of movie music in the twentieth century.

John Barry Prendergast was the great-grandson of famous bare-knuckled boxing champ Jack Sullivan, but no hint of “the sweet science” filtered down through the family tree to him. Born in 1933, his father owned a chain of cinemas and his mother was a concert pianist. Barry took piano lessons from the age of nine (with one teacher whacking his fingers with a ruler whenever he missed a key), and fell in love with movies while working in the projection booths of his Dad’s theaters. Soon he had every intention of becoming a classically trained film composer. (more…)

“…but when I became a man, I did away with childish things.”

Uhm, no. The whole point of becoming an adult is not to do away with childish things but to get away with childish things. Yeah, sure, in my balding middle-age I’ve given up a few childish things like immunizations and optimism, but other than that most of my free time is dedicated to junk food, sitting too close to the TV and watching “things that are bad for me.”

And Bruce Lee movies. A regular rotation of Bruce Lee movies. Especially “Enter the Dragon.”

In the mid-to-late ‘70s this eleven year old would pack a lunch, grab his allowance, lie to his parents about going to the museum and jump on a downtown bus for a full day of losing himself in whatever schlocky, R-rated grinder was playing that Saturday afternoon. It was a glorious rotation of cheesy horror, kick-ass blacksploitation, urban actioners, and poorly dubbed kung-fu genre flicks, and before my family would move far away from the bus lines, the two best years of bang-for-the-buck movie-going I would ever experience. (more…)

I’m tired of hiding it. Everybody knows anyway. So it’s time to come clean, just like the Klan hoods I’ve got spinning in the dryer as we speak. It’s time for the Neanderthal knuckle-dragging, open mouth-breathing, racist, sexist, Klan and Timothy McVeigh-loving Montana militia member gun nut conservative Republican religious zealot in me to be set free. Repression is a bitch, and so am I.

I go to bed full of hate and wake up the same.  I hate blacks, Hispanics, gays, women, abortion doctors, liberals, Lefties, Democrats, you name ‘em, I hate ‘em if they’re not like me. I especially hate President Obama for being black. Just ask Janeane Garofalo, although being a Stalinist Socialist doesn’t help Obama’s cause any with me. Fact is, Obama could be a GOP Michael Steele Uncle Tom, and I’d still hate him even more than liberals hate Steele. Skin color trumps all. Thank God I was born the right color, or I’d probably kill myself. Wait, the hoods are dry! Be right back. (more…)