Cinema Sunday: Design For Living

 

If your point of reference of what life is like for other people comes from the movies, one might think sex wasn't invented until the 1970s. 

Such a perspective derived from American cinema owes to the heavy handed puritanical code that governed Hollywood known as the Hays Code. 

Which is why it's always a surprise for me to encounter a black and white film from the 1930s with a rather casual, adult view of sex.  

Made in 1933, Design For Living is what is known as a pre-Code picture, a movie made before the ham fisted moralists of the Hays office got hold of it. 

I happened to stumble upon Design For Living late one night and was pleasantly surprised by the principal characters discussing sex while actually using the word sex. 

Both artist George Curtis and playwright Thomas Chambers, fellow Americans who share an apartment in Paris, are in love with commercial artist Gilda Farrell. Which is fine with Gilda because she's in love with both of them and is having way too much fun with both of them to choose.  George and Tom are uptight Americans and aren't as sanguine about the situation as Gilda. 

Unable to choose between the two men, Gilda proposes she live with them as a friend, muse, and critic but with the understanding they will not have sex.

The arrangement works until, with some help from Gilda, a producer takes an interest in Tom's play and Tom has to head off to London where it will be produced. 

George and Gilda are left alone. George is prepared, in deference to his friendship with Tom, to honor the gentleman's agreement not to have sex with Gilda. 

Gilda, just oozing her luxurious frame over a sofa, purrs, "I am, unfortunately, no gentleman." 

And we're off to the races! 

Tom returns to Paris for a visit while George is away and rekindles his romance with Gilda. 

George is not happy about that and once more, Gilda is forced to choose between Tom and George. She solves this problem by choosing neither of them but instead marries Max, an older stuffed shirt with a stick up his ass. Max is all wrong for Gilda. 

George and Tom team up to rescue Gilda from her bad decision marriage.   

The movie is based on the 1932 play Design for Living by Noël Coward but all that remains from the play is the title and the premise.  Screenwriter Ben Hecht seemed to take some twisted delight that not one line of Coward's play made it into Hecht's screenplay.  

The free wheeling sexually adventurous trio at the core of the film certainly evokes the spirit of a Noel Coward creation. But if Ben Hecht was only doing his impression of a Noel Coward script, I can't help but wonder just how much funnier and off the rails the original play can be.  

Design For Living may have been made in 1933 but Miriam Hopkins as Gilda Farrell is immediately recognizable as a thoroughly modern woman, bold, direct, playful and passionate. Gilda's scene where she says   "I am, unfortunately, no gentleman" is one of the sexiest line readings I've seen in any movie made in any century.  

However it may fail the source material, Design for Living has a surprisingly fresh, contemporary feel with moral attitudes ahead of it's time played out against very crisp and sleek film work.  

Songs For Saturday: U2

 

Since this past Wednesday was St. Patrick's Day, let's cast the spotlight for today's Songs For Saturday onto Ireland's biggest musical export, U2. 

Kicking off our playlist is U2's first single, "I Will Follow" 

A very raw, very primal composition. And it's hard to imagine that the guys from U2 were ever so young.

U2's style would evolve to include some more complex melodies with lush production values.  One of my favorite songs from this point in U2's development is a our next song on the playlist, "The Unforgettable Fire"

Wrapping up our U2 focused post today is this start of the century entry from U2, a song with melodic verses and a driving, kinetically charged chorus,. Here is U2 with  "Beautiful Day".

And that is that for today's Songs For Saturday. 

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and to always keep the music alive.   

COVID Countdown

 My daughter Randie recently got her first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. As a front line worker in a cafe, she qualified for the vaccine. The next phase of vaccine distribution is coming 'round and it looks like Andrea and I will soon be getting our turn.

I am feeling a little bit of trepidation.

Don't get me wrong, I'm going to get the shot and I no reason to doubt it's effectiveness. I'm sure as hell not going to buy in to any of the absurd conspiracy theories surrounding the vaccine.

Look, if the government wants to put a microscopic transmitter in my vaccine shot to keep tabs on me, well, they're going to be bored out of their minds. 

The source of my trepidation is a bit weird.

I've gotten used to life in a time of pandemic. 

I've gotten used to not eating in restaurants.

I've gotten used to not seeing movies in a theater. 

I've gotten used to wearing a mask everywhere.

That's not to say I like living life like this in a time of pandemic. 

But I've gotten used to it, this little corner of isolated hell.  

To be blunt, life in a time of pandemic is little different for me from life in the before times. Yes, I would go out to eat and see a movie but my first tendency was always to hunker down, away from crowds and the stress they can bring. 

Social distancing gave me suitable cover to indulge in that tendency.  

A vaccine means I will soon have little excuse to hide behind the necessities of living life in a time of pandemic.  

A vaccine will unlock the prison cell door. 

It will be up to me to walk through it. 

One would expect I should be happy to do that. 

But I've become quite accustomed to this cell. 

It may be harder to leave that one might think.  

___________________

Andrea and I have appointments to get our COVID vaccine this Sunday. 

Yet Another Small Minded White Man

 "Stick and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." 

This was the admonition of my childhood against reacting to insults, to hateful rhetoric. 

"Words may never hurt you but I have bullets that can."

This is the response of a small minded person burnished by fear and hate. 

Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Georgia, was arrested for opening fire at three massage spas in northern Georgia hours earlier, killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent.  

It may be too early to attribute these attacks as racially motivated but there is no denying that Asian Americans have endured a rising tide of threats and assaults of the last year or so.

In the wake of his bungled management of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, Donald Trump took every opportunity to disparage China. He called COVID-19 the "China virus", "the Wuhan virus" and "kung flu".  These racist sentiments were echoed and amplified by his sycophantic political supporters and right wing media, riling up the Trump faithful something fierce.  

With the repeated hate mongering proliferating in the Trump World echo chamber, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino recorded  a 150% increase in hate crimes against Asian-Americans in the U.S.’s largest cities in 2020.  

There were reports of 3,795 reports of harassment against Asian Americans, including assaults that resulted in deaths.  

For all the hate and fear directed at China, I have to note that the Asian Americans targeted by violent small mind bigots are not always of Chinese descent. Some of the women killed in the assault in Georgia were Korean. 

It's a small detail, I know, but it goes to underscore the petty hate fueled mentality we're dealing with here. 

Who knows what exactly was going on in the rage fueled head of Robert Aaron Long. Maybe it might turn out he's more a fucking misogynist than racist. 

Whatever his reasons, misogyny or racism or his shoes were too tight, it looks we have yet another small minded white man who thought to sort out his frustrations with a gun. 

Below is an image from Lea Thompson's Twitter feed.  

Cancelled Comic Cavalcade

Monday I wrote a post called "Cancel Culture Calvacade"

Today, I am going to write about what that title references. 

It is an homage to two of the rarest comic books ever published,  Cancelled Comic Cavalcade. 

1978 saw DC Comics looking to bolster it's fortunes with a publishing initiative called "The DC Explosion" with titles getting expanded page counts and new titles being added to the line up. 

But bad sales figures impacted by bad weather in the United States led DC's corporate owners to put a hatchet to DC's plans and the "The DC Explosion" became the "The DC Implosion".

For more about the "The DC Implosion",  click here for my post from August 17, 2020.   

To establish a copyright on the otherwise unpublished material left by the wayside of "The DC Implosion", DC published a two issue series called Cancelled Comic Cavalcade which was inspired by a 1940s DC series called Comic  Cavalcade. The two black and white issues were printed by DC staffers on the office photocopier.  

The prices on the covers were a joke. The issues were distributed for free to the creators of the material, the U.S. copyright office and the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide as proof of their existence. Only 35 copies of each issue were produced.  

Some of the material in Cancelled Comic Cavalcade was later repurposed for use in other books. For example the lead story originally scheduled for Black Lightning #12 was later printed in World's Finest Comics #260.  The OMAC back ups by Jim Starlin slated for Kamandi #60-61 would appear two years later The Warlord #37–39. 

I don't have the latest numbers but a set of both issues of Cancelled Comic Cavalcade was going for around $4,000 about 8 years ago. 

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Snowpiercer, Superman & Lois and More!

 

Snowpiercer

The world of Snowpiercer evolves in a dangerous direction as Mr. Wilford continues his manipulations from the engine room of Big Alice. Snowpiercer's Breachmen, devotedly loyal to Wilford, are sacrificed to Wilford's scheme as they are slaughtered by other mysterious followers of Wilford. The Breachmen were suspected of assauting and mutilating a former Tailie and the murder of the Breachmen looks retaliation from the Tail. 

Wilford has his finger on the political pulse of Snowpiercer and knows he has Andre Layton in a vice.  

Third Class, which reluctantly agreed to help the Tail in their revolution, thinks Andre has betrayed his promises of democratic reform. 

First Class never wanted any of this shit in the first place.

Support for Andre Layton is slim to none. Except from unexpectedly from Ruth, a Wilford loyalist if there ever was one, who comes to Andre's defense. 

But Ruth is the exception.  

Miss Audrey, grand lady of the Night Car who was supposed to be Layton's spy on the inside on Big Alice, seems to have pledged her devotion to Wilford instead. 

Up and down the length of the train, there is an overwhelming amount of support for Wilford's return to Snowpiercer.  

Just how bad would that be? 

As if the sociopathic actions of Mr. Wilford on full display in season 2 have not provide evidence enough of his unfitness of leading the remnants of humanity, we see more evidence of Wilford's selfish and ruthless pursuit of power and control in the episode of "Many Miles from Snowpiercer". 

Melanie Cavill has reached the research station to gather to climate date needed to determine if the Earth is starting to warm up. But an avalanche has destroyed most of Melanie's provisions. She will likely starve to death before Snowpiercer returns.  But then Melanie discovers rats have survived at the research center thanks to a geothermal vent.  Roast rat sustains Melanie has she continues her lonely work. 

Lonely except for her memories to when Snowpiercer began its journey and we see Wilford at his megalomaniacal worst, filling the limited space with on board the train with fewer scientists at the expense of more security and his wholesale slaughter of people trying to desperately get on the train before the deep freeze hits. 

We see Melanie's crucial moment of decision, when she can put Snowpiercer in motion and leave Wilford behind even as Melanie has not secured the whereabouts or safety of her own daughter.  

A fallen antenna nearly causes Melanie to lose her data; she engineers a rope and pulley system to restore the antenna and recover her data.  

Bu the train is overdue. Something has gone wrong.  

Melanie makes it back to the tracks but is unable to board the train.  Snowpiercer and Big Alice rush by with fire coming out of the underside of Big Alice. We see Alex's face in a window, yelling for help as alarms sound.  

Something has gone very wrong indeed.  

Superman and Lois  

Kudos to a Superman project doing something different with the mythos.  

In the comics, Clark and Lois with their one son Jon move from their idyllic farm life back to Metropolis.  

Clark and Lois move back to Smallville after the death of Martha Kent to take over the Kent family farm and perhaps provide a better life for their twin 14 year old sons, Jonathan and Jordan.  

Jonathan has the easy going manner of  a would be jock while Jordan is riddled with anxiety and doubt. So naturally it's Jordan who develops super powers first. 

After 14 years, the twins are finally let in on the secret that their father is Superman. Being kept in the dark on something like that does not set well with either of the sons but Jordan is particularly angsty about it. 

I'm going to admit that I could do with a lot less Jordan angst on this show. I feel that everyone has to walk on egg shells around him lest the slightest word will set him off. 

Tyler Hoechlin, after appearing as Superman on Supergirl, continues to deliver a solid take on both the Man of Steel and his erstwhile mild mannered alter ego Clark Kent trying to make sense of being a dad to two radically different teenage boys.  

Elizabeth Tulloch's Lois Lane is a tough cookie but with compassion to spare. 

So far, Superman and Lois has done nothing to remind us they exist in a shared universe. No name drops for Supergirl or the Flash. I think Clark should've mentioned Kara Danvers by name at least once by now.  

While Clark and Lois are mired in their familial melodrama, there are things a doing to keep Superman busy. A super powered armored Luthor from another universe is making life hell for Superman. Since Jon Cryer's buttonholed Lex Luthor over on Supergirl, this gives this show it's own Luthor to play with. Still, I hope Cryer makes an appearance on Superman & Lois as Supe's arch enemy.

And the malevolent Morgan Edge appears to have some super powered lackeys in his employ. In the comics when Morgan Edge was first introduced, he was an agent of the planet Apokolips. Dare we hope for an appearance of Darkseid on Superman & Lois. 

Meanwhile, shenanigans at Smallville High give Superman and Lois more in common with Riverdale than the Arrowverse. Still, as much as I think the teenage angst is way overplayed, I think Superman & Lois is off to a strong start.

Sci-Fi Swing By

My family's project to get through Star Trek: Discovery continues albeit a bit slowly. We are now a 3rd of the way through season 2. The slowness of our pace has more to do with finding time when all three of us (well, four of us as I should include Rosie) have time to watch the same thing at the same time. Over all, we're enjoying the 2nd season of Disco more than we did season 1. 

I've got a couple of episodes to finish season 1 of The Orville. My plan is to finish off season 1 of The Orville before I move back over to Justified to start season 3.  I am enjoying the show more or less even though I still have issues with the shifting tone of the series.   

Game Show Stop By

The first seasons of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune and The Chase have ended. The celebrities on CWoF did not demonstrate any particular talents with puzzle solving and in fact had trouble with some really obvious ones. There was some cool banter and ribbing between contestants that we don't get with the civilians.  But I think CWoF has a short shelf life and shouldn't be repeated too often.  Once a year, maybe, for a 6 episode run? 

The Chase is a strange animal with the Chasers actively working against the hopes, dreams and aspirations of ordinary people.  In the penultimate episode, Ken Jennings actually shut down all three contestants. But pendulum swings both ways and the final episode of the season saw all three contestants survive to the end and beat Brad Rutter. I'm not very comfortable with the all or nothing scenario of the show. 

Jeopardy continues with Katie Couric as guest host; Katie is personable and professional but no surprise there as she brings decades of experience as a TV host and news anchor to the gig. I'm still pulling for Ken Jennings to get the regular gig. 

OK, that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase. Until next time, remember to be good to one another and to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV here!   

Cancel Culture Calvacade

 A week or so back, Dr. Suess Enterprises, the company that manages the legacy and printed works of one Theodore Geisel, AKA Dr. Suess, decided to no longer keep in print 6 Dr. Seuss books due to racist imagery.

The hysteria from Fox News and Republican Congresspersons was immediate.

DR. SEUSS HAS BEEN CANCELLED!!!! THE LIBERALS ARE TAKING AWAY DR. SEUSS!!!!!

Here is the list of books Dr. Suess Enterprises is pulling 

• And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937)
• If I Ran the Zoo (1950)
• McElligot's Pool (1947)
• On Beyond Zebra! (1955)
• Scrambled Eggs Super! (1953) 
• The Cat's Quizzer (1976). 

On that list, I think I've heard of If I Ran the Zoo. These books are not among the heavy hitters in the Dr. Suess bibliography.

Dr. Suess Enterprises said that these books "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong" and are no longer being published due to racist and insensitive imagery. 

Around the same time, Disney+ announced that A certain episode of the Muppets would have a parental advisory.

Not sure why. Maybe there's an episode where Gonzo finally fucks a chicken? 

Oh,  it seems the offending episode contains a Confederate flag.  

(let me get out the ol' cut 'n' paste) 

The hysteria from Fox News and Republican Congresspersons was immediate.

DR. SEUSS HAS THE MUPPETS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED!!!! THE LIBERALS ARE TAKING AWAY DR. SEUSS THE MUPPETS!!!!!

Apparently, Warner Bros. has decided that their classic cartoon skunk Pepe LePew will not be in the new Space Jam movie. 

Cue outrage! 

The hysteria from Fox News and Republican Congresspersons was immediate.

DR. SEUSS HAS THE MUPPETS HAVE BUGS BUNY HAS BEEN CANCELLED!!!! THE LIBERALS ARE TAKING AWAY DR. SEUSS THE MUPPETS BUGS BUNNY!!!!!

Here is the basic plot of a Pepe LePew cartoon. 

• Black cat wanders into Paris. 
• Black cat wanders by a painter. 
• White paint adds a stripe to the back of the black cat.
• Pepe LePew spends the rest of the cartoon trying to fuck that cat.  

Pepe LePew and Gonzo are in a support group.  

For more on Pepe, click here for Mark Evanier's post on the subject.  

This has become a cliché, right wing persons going into apolectic hysterics over the slightest tweak as a full on assault.

One Republican congress-idiot breathlessly warned that Dr. Suess as being "outlawed".  

No, Dr. Seuss has NOT been cancelled and sure as hell has NOT been outlawed. The entire library of Seussian works are still available for print except for just 6 books. 

The 6 books were not pulled from active marketing and production by any outside force. The people actually responsible for Dr. Seuss's legacy made this decision.  

And no one is going around raiding houses to collect and burn those 6 titles.  

The Muppet are not cancelled. All their classic 1970s era series is still there to be watched on Disney+ as well as various movies and other Muppet stuff. 

Bugs Bunny and the gang are still in business and will be appearing with LeBron James in the new Space Jam movie, just without the date raping skunk. 

In each case, a corporate entity made a decision regarding product they own. Given the Republican Party's high regard for big business and their right to do as they please, it does seem counter-intuitive to gripe about big businesses making decisions regarding their own stuff. 

Of course, the right wing fear machine is trying to cast Democrats, liberals, progressives, antifa, Black Lives Matter and more as the enemy taking away your right to enjoy a cat fucking skunk in Space Jam 2.

Meanwhile, while the right wing fear machine kicked in the afterburners to fuel its rage over the "cancellation" of Dr. Suess, the Muppets and Looney Toons, Congress was passing a relief bill to help millions of Americans impacted by COVID-19. And when I say "Congress", I mean the Democrats. Not one Republican in the House or the Senate voted for this package. 

Yes, it costs a lot but there's a lot of hurt out there. People who have been unemployed for nearly a year, people making decisions between food or medicine or shelter.  

But while the relief bill was being debated in the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy posted a video of himself reading Green Eggs and Ham to an empty room. 

Which is an easier thing for McCarthy to do rather than do the work to get help to millions of Americans who need it. 

It's important to understand something about the current Republican Party. It used to be the party of limited government with a preference for things to be left to a free market economy. But over the last 3 or 4 decades, the party has been eating its own tail to the point that it's ideology is geared not towards limited government but NO government. Which means when there is a crisis of such epic proportions that the government is actually needed to intervene and this runs counter to Republican ideology, the party can do nothing more than rage about "cancel culture" and anything else that gets their mostly white, mostly male, mostly uneducated and mostly evangelical base all riled up. 

All this is not to say that the Democrats are perfect or that the relief bill is perfect. But whatever their flaws, they are trying to do something for people. 

But if you have an empty stomach and no place to go, rest assured the Republicans are fighting for your right, damn it, to dive into McElligot's Pool.