–CHARTER SOLVES THE PROBLEM! –

A extremely nice and patient tech professional from Charter spent the day with me and my Internets yesterday and refused to leave until the problems were solved. It took some doing, a few routers, phone calls and a little head-scratching — but he got it and now he’s my hero.

My Streaming streams my Internet internets. That’s all I wanted — you know, what I paid for and what I was promised. Only took five weeks, 922 phone calls and four service visits, but maybe my expectations were too high.

I was so thrilled after it was all working correctly that I forgot I wasn’t in California and tried to kiss the Charter guy on the mouth before he left.

In all seriousness, if every cable and Internet company in America cloned this man, the world would be a much better place.

OH NOES!: FOX KICKS OFF “THE GREAT FREE TV WEB PULLBACK OF 2010″

In an effort to keep the cable companies happy that pay the networks tons of cash, Fox will now wait eight whole days before making its shows available online. ABC will soon follow.

Well, whoop-de-freakin’-doo.  

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We lost a another irreplaceable legend yesterday and one of our own, an outspoken Republican — an independent-thinking feminist in the best sense of the word.  Here are some of my favorite Jane Russell quotes:

–”I have always been a Republican, and when I was in Hollywood long ago, most of the people there were Republican. The studio heads were all Republican, my boss Howard Hughes was a raving Republican, and we had a motion picture code in those days so they couldn`t do all this naughty stuff. We had John Wayne, we had Charlton Heston, we had man named Ronald Reagan, we had Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Clark Gable.”

–”These days I am a teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot, but not a racist.”

–Asked what she thinks of Hollywood liberals George Clooney, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn: “I think they`re not well.”

–”I had a botched abortion and it was terrible. Afterwards my own doctor said, `What butcher did this to you?` I had to be taken to hospital. I was so ill I nearly died. I`ve never known pain like it.”

–”People should never, ever have an abortion. Don`t talk to me about it being a woman`s right to choose what she does with her own body. The choice is between life and death.”

–Asked why modern Hollywood is so liberal: “I think the Sixties have happened between when I was there and now. A lot of the actors and actresses, their parents were Sixties people and they just have a Democratic left wing – they flipped.”

–Asked about the apparent conflict between her faith and her image, Russell replied, “Christians have bosoms, too, you know.”

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When I was a little kid, I was nutso for war movies.  Guadalcanal Diaries.  None But the Brave. The Longest Day.  Combat.  The Battle of the Bulge.  I would sit and watch them with my web belt and canteen, Army surplus WWII helmet and clutching my plastic Mattel Thompson .45 sub gun close, ready to step through the TV and into the battle should they need me.  My imagination took me too far off shores and continents to the meat-grinder war theaters of our nation’s past.  

I’d organize the neighborhood kids into a platoon, and at night, guided by our coded flashlight signals, we’d sneak out our windows for ‘midnight maneuvers’.   Many an enemy mailbox was destroyed by cherry bomb.  By day, we’d bravely assault enemy strongholds of hapless neighbors’ rose bushes, doghouses or Volkswagen’s.  I always lead the charge, throwing dirt clod grenades and, leaping up, charging, blasting roll caps from my Thompson in a mad suicide sprint, firing wildly, taking hits from heavy imaginary enemy fire and always, gravely wounded, staggering forward to claim victory for the Allied troops.  Trampled roses, filthy cars and busted mailboxes were a small price to pay for freedom and the American way of life. (Yeah, I got in trouble.   A lot.) 

John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Robert Mitchum…these guys taught me about valor and grace under fire.  But they weren’t my heroes – the men they were playing were my heroes.   Our little after-school war games were just a young boy’s way of paying them honor.  (more…)

Back in the summer of 1951, Jackson, Wyoming was a sleepy town nestled amidst a vast untamed wilderness, and George Stevens was there in the valley shooting a film called Shane. To maintain as much creative control as possible, he acted as both Producer and Director.

“I personally like to see films that are the work of as singular a consciousness as possible,” Stevens explained about his decision to do two exhausting and difficult jobs at once. But as with everything, there was a price to be paid. “It’s like trying to be a traffic cop and write a poem at the same time. You need an executive head to handle all the vast paraphernalia of moviemaking. You need another, more sensitive head to get the delicate human emotional values you are trying to put on film.”

The making of Shane, then — indeed, the making of most great films — is largely a tale of an artist using all of his powers and guile and energy to bend the technology and the paraphernalia to the arduous task of making those delicate emotional values come to life on an empty screen.

*****

The opening of Shane. A little boy, played by young Brandon De Wilde, stalks a large-horned buck with an unloaded rifle. The buck is startled by something in the distance, looks up — and there, poised right between its antlers, is a distant horseman lazily riding toward us. (more…)

When in 1918 D. W. Griffith asked Lillian Gish to star in a tragic story of love, opium, dreams and death, all set against a Dickensian backdrop of poverty and despair, she was intrigued. But when he told the twenty-six-year-old actress that she would be playing a twelve-year-old girl, she was incredulous. Gish was a grown adult now, and fairly tall –  what possible trick of camera or posture could create the pixyish physique and innocent features that such a part would demand?

After much arguing, Griffith grudgingly agreed to raise the character’s age from twelve to fifteen, while still insisting that she play the part as a child. Lillian wasn’t convinced she could pull it off: “Virgins are the hardest roles to play. Those dear little girls — to make them interesting takes great vitality.” But seven years together had given the director full confidence in her abilities: “I gave her an outline of what I hoped to accomplish, and let her work it out in her own way. When she got it, she had something of her own.”

Sometimes events that look like setbacks prove to be fortuitous. On the way home from being fitted for her costumes, Gish collapsed with Spanish Influenza, a deadly pandemic then spreading throughout the United States which ultimately killed over thirty million worldwide. By the time she rallied and recovered, her already svelte frame had degenerated so dramatically that her costumes had to be refitted. But in hindsight, this pathetic and emaciated look proved perfect for the role. (more…)

I think we were all surprised and disappointed when Michael Mann’s $100 million ode to the midwestern bank robbers of the 1930s, Public Enemies, misfired at the box office, A Nightmare on Elm Street or no Donnie Brasco. After all, Captain Jack Sparrow meets Edith Piaf in Capone-era Chicago directed by the man who put De Niro and Pacino together for the first time at Kate Mantelini’s on Wilshire: what’s not to like?

–

Many theories have been offered as to why the public made b.o. enemies of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd, but the real reason, I think, has yet to be articulated.  And it’s this: Mann, perhaps our greatest living director, taught his cast how to do everything – fight, handle firearms, rob banks, ogle Marion Cotillard… (more…)

At first glance that steamy noirish poster might come off as a pretty deceptive piece of advertising for what looks like just another boy meets girl, post-war, studio Christmas film. But bubbling beneath the surface of  “A Holiday Affair” are some pretty heavy themes that give this under-rated classic an unexpected emotional maturity and complexity.

Though only 22 years-old at the time, the heart-stoppingly gorgeous Janet Leigh is superb and mature beyond her years as Connie Ennis, a war widow and single mother who understands that her young son Timmy needs a father even though she’s unwilling to betray the memory of her dead husband by falling in love with someone else.  This is what makes Carl (the always excellent Wendell Corey) a perfect suitor. Buttoned down, bland and safe, Carl’s a good man who will always love and take care of her and Timmy, but Connie doesn’t and will never fall in love with him. 

Enter Steve Mason (Robert Mitchum) to really complicate things. 

Steve’s a devil-may-care drifter working this job and that and in no hurry to save money for a sailboat when — in a pretty effective meet-cute — Connie gets him fired from his job as a toy department sales clerk just a few days from the holidays. A number of believable plot contrivances keep Steve and Connie in regular contact until a potential romance blooms that makes things stickier for Connie than she would like. (more…)

Scrooged (1988) has the exact opposite problem of our 25th greatest Christmas film, White Christmas. Whereas the Bing Crosby musical ties a couple hours of mediocrity into the kind of perfect holiday-bow finale that leaves you wanting more, Scrooged is cursed with one of the worst third acts in cinema history; a horrible, wretched, awful televised confession that not only leaves a nasty aftertaste but might be guilty of setting a cheap cinematic trend second only to the shaky-cam — especially in romantic comedies – the horrible, wretched, awful, third-act public confession we see utilized time and again to lazily wrap things up.

The rest of Bill Murray’s modern (well, 80’s) spin on Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” is absolutely terrific. Taking the story into the world of entertainment for a Network-esque skewering of television is inspired and so is the perfect casting of Murray as the Scrooge character. Murray’s good in both type of roles, but I much prefer when he’s the straight man reacting to the zaniness around him as opposed to creating it (Caddyshack being the ultimate exception).

You drop an understated comedic genius like Murray into a wild story that allows him to be constantly caught off guard by marvelous characters and character actors like Carol Kane, Buster Poindexter (David Johansen), Jamie Farr, Bobcat Goldthwait, Brian Doyle-Murray, Michael J. Pollard, Buddy Hackett, Robert Goulet and a very funny and memorable Robert Mitchum as Murray’s slightly addled boss, and it’s hard to go wrong. (more…)

The men and women who earn the right to wear eagle, globe and anchor of the United States Marine Corps are a special breed.   To those outside the Corps, they talk funny.  They look funny.  They are extremely impressed with themselves – and they have every right to be. 

My beloved United States Army is a blunt instrument, a magnificent club that has pummels our nation’s enemies into submission.  But the Marines are America’s rapier, a razor sharp weapon of war that has never been bested and never will be.  For over two centuries, the United States Marine Corps has been fighting our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.  They don’t give up.  They don’t quit.  There’s no word for retreat in a Marine’s vocabulary.  And they are making history even today in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

November 10th is the Corps’ 234th birthday.  With the indulgence of my Devil Dog brethren, here is this Army veteran’s countdown of the Top Ten Marine Corp movies: (more…)

9:45pm - Night Of The Hunter, The (1955) – A bogus preacher marries an outlaw’s widow in search of the man’s hidden loot. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Gleason Dir: Charles Laughton BW-93 mins, TV-PG

Absolutely brilliant chiller anchored by Robert Mitchum’s larger-than-life performance as a psychotic preacher chasing two children for a doll stuffed with money. Equally good is former silent screen star Lillian Gish, as the children’s protector. The testament to her abilities as an actress is the dialogue she gets away with, especially near the end. (more…)