Cinema Sunday: Double Bogie Special: Dead Reckoning and All Through the Night

Welcome to Cinema Sunday. Last week I posted about a double feature of comedies starring Cary Grant.

This week it's another double bill, a couple of film noir pictures starring Humphrey Bogart.

What exactly is film noir? Eddie Mueller of Turner Classic Movies describes film noir as "suffering with style".  Which is a pretty good way to summarize it. Yes, film noir involves people caught up in a complex web of deceit and treachery in a quest for power, wealth or revenge or a little bit of all three, all after the sun goes down. And these people look good doing all this, gunsels in their tailored suits and their jaunty fedoras and dangerous dames dripping with satin, silk, fur and diamonds.  

From 1947, Dead Reckoning stars Humphrey Bogart as Captain "Rip" Murdock, a WWII army paragtrooper on a quest to locate his AWOL friend and paratrooper, Sergeant Johnny Drake.  Murdock tracks Drake Gulf City in the southern United States but it's too little too late.  Drake is dead, killed in a car crash and burned extra crispy.  

But questions remain. Why did Drake go AWOL, right on the cusp of receiving an award for meritorious service in the war? Why did Drake hide under an assumed name? What was his relationship with nightclub singer Coral? Who killed her husband? Was it Drake? Coral? Night club owner and crime boss Martinelli?   

Dead Reckoning checks off all the boxes for a classic film noir.  Perhaps a little too perfectly which is the problem.  

• Erudite crime boss who sees himself as a worldly civilized paragon? Check! 
• Psycho quick tempered henchman? Check! 
• A world weary man stuck in the middle of a mystery he didn't ask for but is stuck trying to solve it because damn, his pal is dead and somebody needs to answer for it? Check! 
• A gorgeous dame with perfectly smooth features and perfectly coiffed hair dressed in satin and silk? Check! 

In short, Dead Reckoning borders on self-parody of film noir except it takes itself too seriously and isn't remotely funny. 

The biggest void at the hear of Dead Reckoning is Lisabeth Scott (not a typo, that's how she spells it) as Coral. The real power of a good femme fatale in film noir is never being quite sure at any given moment if she truly loves our hero or is prepared to kill him.  Lisabeth Scott may have been aiming for mysteriously inscrutable but she's mostly just flat.  

And her musical number in the night club is just weird. Her singing voice is so creepily low, if it wasn't made in the 1940's under the Hays Code, I would've expected the big twist is that Coral is a man, baby.  

And don't get me started on this bit. At the start of the film, Murdock stumbles into a church, finds a priest who just happens to have also served as a paratrooper in WWII and begins to tell him the story of Drake, Coral, etc. About 3/4 of the way through the movie, Murdock realizes there's still some plot to get through and leaves the priest who is not heard from again. It is a ham-handed plot device to justify having Humphrey Bogart do some hard boiled narrating. 

If Dead Reckoning tries too hard with it's rote recitation of film noir tropes, our next film plays around with the conventions of the genre a bit. 

Released in 1942, All Through the Night checks all the boxes for film noir but does so with a sense of humor.   

Humphrey Bogart is Alfred "Gloves" Donahue, a big-shot Broadway gambler who stumbles across a mystery when the baker who makes his favorite cheesecake gets murdered.

You don't mess with "Gloves" favorite cheesecake.

There's a beautiful dame involved of course. Whose side is she on anyway?

And of course we have an erudite gentleman up to no good. 

The "no good" in question is a Nazi plot to blow up a Navy vessel in New York harbor.  

"Gloves" strings together a team of fellow gamblers, over all tough guys and gangsters to take down the Nazis.

Gangsters vs. Nazis?  Yeah, I'm on board for that.  

"Gloves" growing knowledge of the world beyond the sports page is funny to watch. He really had no idea Nazis were in New York up to sketchy shit.   

"Gloves" and a friend infiltrate a secret Nazi meeting and engage in complete and total gibberish to cover that they have no idea what they're talking about. 

In a donny brook between the gangsters and the Nazis where they are are dressed the same, the gangsters make the Nazis stand out by shouting "Hiel Hitler!" and the Nazis reflexively respond with the Nazi salute and they get punched in the face. 

It's our 2nd Bogart film where the leading lady spells her name weird. In the role of Leda, our requisite film noir dame, is Kaaren Verne.  Nope, she spells it with two A's.  

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department 

Peter Lorre as Pepi does his custom Peter Lorre shtick like we saw in The Maltese Falcon.   

In the role of Madame was Judith Anderson who would go on to appear in 1984's Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as the Vulcan High Priestess T'Lar.

Jackie Gleason is Starchy, many years out from his turn as Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit.   

There may be some question if  All Through the Night counts as film noir. The entry in Wikipedia calls it a "gangster comedy". But all the elements are there for film noir.

The protagonist caught up in a plot he really doesn't want to be involved with but damn it, someone important to him is dead (seriously, do not mess with his cheesecake) and somebody needs to answer for that.

There's the beautiful dame who is either in trouble or the cause of trouble.  

I think All Through the Night counts as film noir. It just has a few more laughs than you normally expect. 

Next week, Cinema Sunday explores a couple of other film noir movies including a strange classic from Orson Welles.  

Songs For Saturday: As Heard On TV with Cyndi Lauper, Prince and Zooey Deschanel

The theme for today's Songs For Saturday is "As Heard On TV".   

I was watching an episode of Bones which featured a guest appearance by Cyndi Lauper as a psychic.

This song by Lauper was part of the soundtrack of that episode.  Here is Cyndi Lauper with "Fearless".   

In the classic episode of New Girl featuring Prince, here is His Purple Majesty with Zooey Deschanel with "Don't You Wanna Fall In Love 2Nite?"   

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.   

Your Friday Video Link: Jon Stewart Vs. Arkansas

Your Friday Video Link for today is a portion of an interview between Jon Stewart and  Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge.

Rutledge fought for legislation denying anyone under 18 access to gender-affirming treatments. But she was ill prepared to defend it.  

Jon Stewart came prepared to question this legislation, particularly how it overrides guidelines developed by major medical associations. 

The American Medical Association, for example, says that gender-affirming care is key to improving health outcomes for transgender individuals. The care is associated with dramatically reduced rates of suicide, depression, anxiety and  substance use.

Rutledge comes back with an "all the science isn't in" type of defense and Stewart calls out her bullshit.

See the encounter for yourself. 

 By the way, here's some additional reporting on this from Mark Evanier about the experts they relied on are listed in the reports on those hearings:

Alejandra Caraballo — a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic — looked up those reports and she says there were four "experts."

One, according to Caraballo, is a former plastic surgeon who now runs a Botox clinic and who "never worked with trans patients and has no experience treating gender dysphoria." The others, if we believe Caraballo's findings, sound like they have little to no experience with patient with gender dysphoria but lots of experience opposing gender reassignment. In other words, the "expert" witnesses were selected to present one point of view and there weren't even very many of them. 

The Loneliest IHOP

Last Friday, I went to get my flu shot and my latest COVID booster shot at Walgreens.

Both Andrea and I were supposed to go the Friday before that but tropical storm Ian blew threw town and we had to reschedule. 

Andrea got her shots on Saturday after the storm passed but Walgreens only had room on the schedule for one person so I had to return the next Friday for my shots. 

After we left Walgreens, Andrea and I debated where we wanted to have dinner. Among the restaurants in the vicinity of the Walgreens was IHOP.   

Usually when we've ventured forth to eat at the International House of Pancakes, it's usually for a late breakfast or brunch type of thing.  My usual go to is an omelet with a couple of pancakes and Andrea's usual order is chicken and waffles.  

To be honest I wasn't really in the mood for my usual omelet/pancake order, certainly not on a Friday at 7 PM.  But they're supposed to have some pretty good hamburgers made with Black Angus beef and that was what I was in the mood for. 

Andrea who was probably still going to get chicken and waffles suddenly decides she wants to try the IHOP burger too.  She does that all the time.  

So we're off to IHOP. We're hungry and we hope that won't be too busy.  

Well....

They're not.   

It was the loneliest IHOP. 

There was one family there when Andrea and I arrived but they left and we had the whole place to ourselves. 

During the whole time we were there, only 1 person entered and that was to pick up a Door Dash to go order.  

Our waitress Susan with no one else to wait on was very attentive. Although she took some time to get our payment.  

By the way, IHOP does make a pretty damn good burger.  

On Sunday, our dining out experience was quite the opposite.  For Sunday, Andrea and I went out for our anniversary dinner at Olive Garden because Andrea really like Olive Garden for some reason and I don't have a viable alternative. 

We scored our free anniversary dessert. 

A pumpkin cheesecake drizzled in caramel.   

But damn, each time I go to Olive Garden, it's almost like dining in a 3rd world country or something with kids screaming and alleged adults talking loud and it's quite frankly....

Yes, TOO DAMN LOUD!!!!

Oh give me the relative calm and quiet of the loneliest IHOP anyday.   

Doctor Who: A Little Bit of Power

So this weekend we finally got an official trailer for Doctor Who and it's forth coming "Centenary Special",  The Power of the Doctor.   

Yes, the Doctor cries out Yaz's name while regenerating. 

Make of that what you will. 

My guess is don't make much of that. 

Well this is jam packed with the Master, Daleks and Cybermen (oh my!) and guest stars galore.  It is supposed to be 90 minutes long so there may be some time for the Doctor in there somewhere. 

And we have a date.  The special will be dropping on October 23rd. 

I'm really, really, really REALLY hoping this will be good. 

But hey, has Chris Chibnall let me down before?

<sigh!>

I'm really, really, really REALLY hoping...   

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Young Sheldon

 

Young Sheldon  began it's 6th season a couple of weeks back as the Cooper family begins it's inevitable descent towards self-destruction.  

From Big Bang Theory, we know George Cooper Sr. slides into alcoholism, adultery and eventually death. Which is hard to reconcile with the portrait of the Cooper's paterfamilias presented on Young Sheldon. I wonder how much of adult Sheldon's recollections on BBT were a willful misrepresentation of his father, that somehow it was easier to cope with his dad's death by remembering him as an angry, alcoholic adulterer. 

Mary's estrangement from the church is an interesting development. Her church's judgmental stigmatization of Mary and her family in the wake of Georgie getting Mandy pregnant actually makes Mary a more sympathetic character.  We know by the time of BBT that Mary is all in with the church again but for now, Mary is a lot more tolerable as a person.  

Oddly enough for a show called Young Sheldon is the marginalization of young Sheldon. Iain Armitage has gone through a major growth spurt and his voice has gotten really deep.  I don't know if that is any factor contributing to Sheldon's own plot lines seeming to be almost after thoughts. Sheldon does get a good moment in the season premiere where he tells off the church congregation for their hypocrisy towards his mother and their family.   

I can't help but wonder if Young Sheldon is at it's sell-by date. The problems inherent in a prequel (we already know where things are going to go) and in a show centered around an aging child protagonist (if Iain Armitage's voice gets any lower, I'm gonna think he's being dubbed by James Earl Jones) are pressing down on this series and turning it into something different than what it once was. 

CBS renewed Young Sheldon through season 7. Which I think might be 1 season too long.   

What else are Andrea and I watching on TV? 

Well, we're following the prime time celebrity editions of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. 

Celebrity Wheel of Fortune continues to be in it's 3rd season an inexorable time suck. Mostly the "celebrities" get this response from me: "Who are these people?"  

OK, I did know Kristen Schaal (What We Do In the Shadows) who got my attention by constantly calling Pat Sajak "Patrick" which seemed to vaguely irk him ("Only my mother calls me Patrick.") which inspired Kristen to call him "Patrick" even more.

Snoop Dogg failed to solve a puzzle that was "Baked Brownies" which we all assumed was in Snoop's area of expertise. Instead he guessed "Baked Onions".   

Celebrity Jeopardy debut season has so far been less embarrassing for it's celebrities. No one crapping out with negative scores like we used to see on the SNL skits. 

Simu Liu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) reactions of shock at actually winning the first game and his palatable horror that he would have to come back as a semi-finalist were classic.  

The celebrities are fairly knowledgeable about stuff but seem to struggle a bit with betting strategies for Double Jeopardy clues. 

In order to pad the show out to an hour, Celebrity Jeopardy has a third round (Triple Jeopardy) which of course has stirred up the purists but this is infinitely preferable to Celebrity Wheel of Fortune running 2 half hour games with the same 3 celebrities over the course of their hour which just adds to slow slog that Celebrity Wheel of Fortune feels like.  

OK, that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase. 

Coming up on future posts, we'll look at the complete first season of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, the last season of Kevin Can F**K Himself and we'll poke around with what's up with season 3 of Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Coming up on the blog tomorrow, we've got some Doctor Who stuff. 

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.  

I Told You So

You may think I'm just a cranky old dude with a blog and this is a very important thing to remember: Yes, I am indeed just a cranky old dude with a blog.

I am no one significant or special by any objective measure. I'm just a cranky old dude bouncing a metaphorical rubber ball of frustration against a wall.  

But while I may be lacking in significance or any particular special gifts or insights, I see things. And I understand things. 

Back on Friday, January 31, 2020, I put a post called The Impeachment Inevitability where in I said the following:   

We know the fix is in. The Republicans are already lined up to vote to not remove Trump from office. The inevitability of this action is assured.  

On Thursday, February 6, 2020, under a post entitled The State Of His Union, I noted the following regarding the aftermath of that first impeachment:  

Yep, the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump on both articles of impeachment.

Wow.

What a shock.

I am surprised.

I am bowled over by that surprise.

I might just keel over dead from that surprise.

OK, is my sarcasm too subtle? 

As I've said all along....

"Ain't nothin' gonna happen."  

And nothing did. 

And  then on Thursday, February 13, 2020 in the post I called Li'l Donnie Learns A Lesson, I made this observation:   

In her vote to acquit Donald Trump on the articles of impeachment against him, Sen. Susan Collins explained her vote that Donald Trump has learned his lesson about abusing the power of his office.

Yep, Li’l Donnie has learned his lesson about abusing the power of his office.He's learned he can get away with it.  

And we yes, we know what happened next with Donald Trump: the motherfucker abused the power of his office to incite an insurrection on January 6th, 2021 and attempted to overturns the results of a lawful and certified election. 

I'm going over this ground to reaffirm that while I may be no one significant or special by any objective measure, this cranky old dude bouncing his god damn metaphorical rubber ball of god damn frustration against a wall is once more proven to be right. 

In “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” Politico’s Rachael Bade and The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian offer behind-the-scenes insights that prove everything I knew looking in from way on the outside to be true.   

The first impeachment, which began in 2019 and culminated in an early-2020 Senate trial, dealt with Trump’s withholding of aid to Ukraine on the condition that the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. 

The House impeached Trump for abuse of power, but the GOP-controlled Senate acquitted the president with just one Republican dissent: Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah.

During the trial, Trump's defense team insisted there was  no “quid pro quo” even though the fucking moron was was caught on tape telling Zelensky to “do us a favor” by launching a probe of Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election which is the very definition of a damn “quid pro quo”.  

Now a number of Republican Senators were going on TV to assert that the Democrats had NOT made their case that Donald Trump had done anything wrong. One person asserted that since the words “quid pro quo” were not used in Trump's conversation with Zelensky, then there was no “quid pro quo”. 

Away from the cameras, these same Republican Senators had a decidedly different view. 

Get a load of this quote from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas):  “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.”

Which is in total contradiction to what Cruz was spouting off on national television. 

I think it's important at this juncture to remind everyone of the official position of I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You, it's staff and management on the subject of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas):

TED CRUZ IS A LYING FUCK BASTARD!

Thank you.

Upon hearing the impeachment case there was a “quid pro quo” at work in Trump's pressure on Ukraine and Trump's defense team simply saying, "No, there isn't", Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made this cogent observation:   “We are FUCKED. We are FUCKED!” 

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell explained to his fellow Republicans what was at stake in Trump's impeachment:  “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing. It has always been about November 3, 2020. It’s about flipping the Senate.”

McConnell did not give one damn about Donald Trump.

McConnell did not give one damn if what Donald Trump did was actually wrong or not.

What McConnell did give a damn about is what McConnell has always given a damn about, expanding and holding his grip on political power.  

Vindicating Trump (who no one liked) of wrongdoing (which everyone knew he did) was the price to pay for that power.

During an impeachment proceeding, Senators are supposed to be neutral jurors, hearing the facts and making a decision on those facts. 

Per the reporting by Bade and Demirjian, the Senate Republicans were most decidedly not neutral.  

McConnell’s top legal counsel Andrew Ferguson dictated an answer to an overtly leading question posed by Republican senators and urged Trump’s legal team to deliver it before the Senate. The answer essentially conceded that even if Trump had done what Democrats alleged, it wasn’t impeachable.

“Is Trump’s team going to answer this the right way?” Graham asked.

“I will go down there and tell them to answer it the right way,” Ferguson vowed.

In case that wasn't clear, the Republican Senate arranged for Trump's defense team to not only know a question in advance but crafted the exact answer Trump's team was expected to give.  

Let me remind you of what one not significant or special person wrote back on Friday, January 31, 2020:   

We know the fix is in. The Republicans are already lined up to vote to not remove Trump from office. The inevitability of this action is assured.  

Thanks to the investigations of Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian, I can say today, "Well, I told you so."