Movie Pass: All the Movies You Can Watch for $50 a Month

Would you pay $50 a month to a subscription service that allows you to see as many movies as you want in theatres for that full calendar month?

Like a health club membership, this sounds better in theory than in practice, methinks.

Bond 23 Details?

Will the title be ‘Carte Blanche,’ involve a train derailment (and spoiler), and open with badass cello music?

Anything would be an improvement over ‘Quantum of Bourne,’ including a remake of ‘A View to a Kill’ with the original cast. At least that would be a ‘James Bond’ movie.

Listen, just put the camera on a goddamn tripod, give that license to kill a workout, and get out of the way. Oh, and a hollowed-out volcano wouldn’t hurt, either. If you want to make another Jason Bourne movie, make another Jason Bourne movie. We want a James Bond movie. And while you’re at it, bring on some Q.

About Wal-Mart’s Vudu Streaming Service…

Because Vudu appears to be catching on, I checked it out last night and failed to see what all the fuss is about. Granted, one benefit is that everything out on DVD appears to be available there (unlike Redbox and Netflix Streaming), but you’re looking at right around $5 to stream a rental.

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Here's a perfect illustration of the iconography of freedom. Marilyn Monroe displays a picture of Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator, in a sleek convertible with the open road beckoning.

Automobiles represent freedom.

Try and remember when you were a teenager yearning for your driver’s license so you could hop into daddy’s car and go, go, go. It didn’t matter where, you just wanted to burn rubber and escape into the far horizon.

The brilliant, exhilirating and touching American Grafitti, 1973, is the ultimate expression of American car culture. Almost every single scene takes place in a car.

Los Angeles was the first America city built to accomodate the automobile. And the movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, most born dirt-poor, expressed delight in their sudden prosperity and fame by purchasing and posing with their dream machines.

Contrast cars with trains.

Trains and subways are an expression of the collective. Individual identity is erased. You are at the mercy of a state run system that turns  the citizen into a small cog manipulated by unmotivated, inefficient government bureaucrats.

That’s why Progressives-Liberals-Leftists are obsessed with high-speeed rail. The freedom of the road is repellent to statists who want to regulate/control diet, education, light bulbs, health care, your very geography.

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It is perhaps a radical view of the Sphinx and its mystery, but if the impenetrable reality is a human being, two Hollywood legends that qualify as our unanswered questions are Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich.

Beginning with Ms. Monroe, there really are no classic, “dumb blondes” in Europe.

“Dumb blonde” is an exclusively American label.

However, no “dumb blonde” has ever or will ever receive so much attention from world renowned intellectuals, male and female, as Marilyn Monroe.

Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee and Paula Strasberg and, of course, the Kennedy’s.

I’m not sure just how erotic were the powers of the ancient Sphinx but I doubt such magic could equal the sometimes inspiring fantasies provoked in headier corners of American culture by Marilyn Monroe. (more…)

This month TCM is running a fascinating series, Shadows of Russia, a history of Russia and the Soviet Union as seen through Hollywood’s lens. If you care about movies and politics, you should check out these movies.

The idea for this series originated with the fine film blogger Self-Styled Siren and the New York Post’s Lou Lumenick. Self-Styled Siren explains how it came about here.

Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlett Empress, 1934.

First up, Josef von Sternberg’s—real name Jonas Sternberg—The Scarlett Empress, 1934, starring Marlene Dietrich as Catherine The Great. Catherine was born to an obscure noblemen of the tiny and dirt poor realm of Anhalt-Zerbst. She was brilliant, precocious and, ah, not too attractive.

Hollywood being Hollywood—thank heavens—rewrites and recasts history in a big way. Marlene Dietrich first appears as an innocent young girl, all blond ringlets—very Shirley Temple. It’s great seeing Dietrich do a virgin: she pouts and poses, melding innocence and nymphomania. (more…)

Even though I am of a certain age, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m an aficionada of true cinematic erotica. Unfortunately it does not exist in today’s offerings which can only be described as soft porn and even beyond that. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

The word erotica typically applies to works in which the sexual element is regarded as part of the larger aesthetic aspect. It is usually distinguished from pornography, which can also have literary merit but which is usually understood to have sexual arousal as its main purpose.

Erotica should be what arouses sensuality and sexual desire in the imagination. Pornography is a cheap substitute to genuine sensuality by replacing it with naked thrusts and bursts of faux gasps of passion. How trite compared to visions created in our minds stimulated by a simple touch, look or gesture. Last night I watched the TCM channel which ran a surprising example of true erotica-Tarzan-the Ape Man. 

Laugh if you will but Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan generate more heat in this 1932 action adventure film then any of the actors and actresses starring buck naked and writhing in today’s features.  (more…)

Hedy Lamarr’s perfectly arched eyebrows emphasize her symmetrical features. Considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, Lamarr was also incredibly bright, co-inventing, in 1941, a “frequency-hopping device that now serves as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology.” That quote is grabbed from Wikipedia. I have absolutely no idea what it means, but darn, I’m impressed. Anyhoo. Married six times, Lamarr gained and lost several fortunes. After her career was over she was arrested on shoplifting charges.

Screening movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, I’ve noticed an interesting trend—in eyebrows.

During the early days of silent films, female stars appeared pretty normal. Which is to say, eyebrows were lightly plucked, but retained a recognizably human configuration. (more…)

During this Memorial Day Weekend Big Hollywood pays tribute those who have fallen, and those who sacrifice so much in the cause of freedom.

Remember when Hollywood celebrities flocked across the globe to entertain and support American troops? Remember when Hollywood—as a community—denounced tyrants, Jew-haters, and mass murderers?

Joan Crawford as Miss Liberty

My father was a Rabbi, a Chaplain in the 42nd Division during World War II and the Korean War. He often told me just how much the troops loved and respected their Hollywood supporters.

Here’s just a brief sampler of what Hollywood patriotism once looked like.

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Unless there’s a story beyond: “The repairman was surprised to discover Ms. Pershwipple’s telephone worked just fine…” I vote we keep porn out of it. Other than that, this could be an interesting and revealing exercise… Very simple, what are the last five movies you watched, and sorry big guy, no exemptions for that secret viewing of Garbo’s “Anna Karenina“ with just you and your box of tissues.

My single caveat is that this list will be the last five I’ve watched but haven’t written about. No point in mentioning them again. So starting with the most recent…

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1. Witness For the Prosecution (1957) –  **SPOILER** This may be the only film where a make-up job attempting to transform a star, in this case Marlene Dietrich, into a different person completely fooled me. That’s her, though, and Dietrich’s acting has more to do with pulling the stunt off than the actual make-up. Sadly, this was Tyrone Power’s last completed film. He was only 42 during filming, but looks 15 years older. Obviously he was a very sick man, even if he didn’t know it. But it’s Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester who shine brightest in what is a true actor’s piece beautifully adapted for the screen and directed by Billy Wilder. (more…)