Saturday, August 6, 2016

Overlooked A/V: Films, Television, Radio and More: the links to reviews, interviews and more (final form for this week)

Wild Strawberries
The (usually) weekly round up of reviews, interviews, and more about A/V materials, usually those that have been undeservedly overlooked (some deservedly, some not overlooked at all in some cases, but those write-ups need  to have some larger interest to make this not exactly exclusive list...usually!)

 Thanks to all contributors, and sorry for the delay of this particular list.

Allan Fish: The Prestige

 Anne Billson: Cloud Atlas

Anuk Bakvist: On the Silver Globe; Letters from a Dead Man 

 Bhob Stewart: The Spine and Chris Landreth; Department of the Interior and Apple Computer ad campaigns; comics 

 The Big Broadcast 31 July 2016
  • 7 p.m.  Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
    “The Molly K. Matter” Parts 3 and 4 (CBS, Original airdates October 12 and 13, 1955)
  • 7:30 p.m. Philco Radio Time starring Bing Crosby, with special guest Jack Benny
    (ABC, Original airdate March 3, 1948)
  • 8 p.m. Gunsmoke
    “Ugly”, episode 279 (CBS, Original airdate December 15, 1957)
  • 8:20 p.m. The Adventures of Superman
    “Airplane Disasters at Bridger Field” Part #3 (MBS, Original airdate May 3, 1940)
  • 8:30 p.m. Dragnet
    "Auto Burglaries - Myra the Redhead" (NBC, Original airdate September 1, 1949)
  • 9 p.m. The Six Shooter
    “The Coward” (NBC, Original airdate September 27, 1953)
  • 9:30 p.m. Exploring Tomorrow (hosted by John W. Campbell, Jr.)
    "Telepaths" (Mutual/MBS, Original airdate May 7, 1958)
  • 10 p.m. Counterspy
    “The Case of the Hijacked Country” (ABC, Original airdate April 20, 1950)
  • 10:30 p.m. Screen Guild Theater
    “Strawberry Blonde” (CBS, Original airdate October 5, 1941)









Iba Dawson: Iba's Mom's Favorite Films

 Ira Brooker: Underrated films of 1976

 Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Lieutenant (1963-64 tv); Star Trek series on the H&I network

 Jack Seabrook: The Hitchcock Project so far; Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Touché"

 Jackie Kashian: Robin Ryan on roller derby; Joe DeRosa on horror films and Paul Giamatti; Rory Scovel on golf

 Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin: The Jackie and Laurie Show

 Jacqueline T. Lynch: The Mortal Storm; Address Unknown; Storm Warning; Planet of the Apes (1968 film) revival and the perfect theater

 Jaimie Grijalba: Southland Tales

 Jake Hinkson: Robert Ryan

 James Clark: Knight of Cups; Blow Out 

 James Reasoner: The Talk of the Town; Saddle the Wind; The 5th Wave

 Janet Varney: The JV Club

 J. D. Lafrance: Repo Man

 Jerry House: The Roy Rogers Show: "The Case of the Mysterious Puppet" (Mutual/MBS Radio); The Stranger (1946 film); Denninger the Mentalist: Dorothy Killgalen; She-Demons; Bob Newhart: "The Driving Instructor"; The CBS Radio Mystery Theater: "The Old Ones are Hard to Kill"; Jail Bait (1953 film); Suspense: "Post Mortem" (CBS Radio)

 John Grant: "La moglie"; Le dos au mur; The Dark Tower (1943 film); Before Dawn (1933); Anna Lucasta; Wild Ones on Wheels 

 John Greco: The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)

 John Scoleri: Dark Shadows Before I Die: the episodes reviewed

 Jonathan Lewis: Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum; Forty Guns; Night Unto Night; She Gods of the Shark Reef

 Karen Hannsberry: Red Headed Woman; Dance, Fool, Dance

 Kate Laity: The Viktor Wynd Museum; My Little Pony; "Punk 1976-78" at the British Museum; Georgiana Houghton at Courtald; "Conceptual Art" at the Tate Britain; Radio Girls; Tate Modern and the Switch House

Ken Levine: Starting on The Simpsons; Ratings in radio; Radio storytellers; braindead plotting on Brain Dead; writing dialog

 Kliph Nesteroff: Paul Krassner; The Bill Dana Show (NBC TV 1964)

 Kristina Dijan: The Mind Reader (1933 film); Queen Bee; Charley Varrick; Bicycle Thieves; July Film Diary

 Laura G: Count the Hours; Crashing Hollywood; The Saint in Palm Springs; Arizona Legion; The Fighting Gringo (not a Trump campaign film)





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Friday, August 5, 2016

FFB: COLLECTED FANTASIES by Avram Davidson (edited and with an introduction by John Silbersack) Berkley Books 1982

This is a funny book, in at least two senses. Following as it did a small spate of Davidson collections and reprints of collections in the late '70s and early '80s, including the improbably brief The Best of Avram Davidson (as selected by Michael Kurland, foreworded by Peter Beagle), this Silbersack collection seeks to gather what the editor refers to as some of Davidson's trickiest stories, rather than a selection of what we usually mean by "fantasies"...and even as such, it's not a complete success, but as an introduction to Davidson's work, or supplement to the casual reader of Davidson, it's clever and eccentric enough to be both a good start and a useful survey of some of his range. Nowadays, the only reason one might hand this book to the new or casual reader rather than The Avram Davidson Treasury, or the more specialized collections Grania Davis and company have released since, is the utter compactness of this eclectic display of the (typical for Davidson) intelligence and wit applied in all the stories within, some of which mark high points for his work in various modes.

 It's not a (titling) success in that not all these stories are fantasies, though all are arguably fantasia; perhaps the book is an example of early deceptive marketing in this wise, in hoping to rope in post-Tolkien boom fantasy readers into a wide-ranging selection of Davidson's work (after a number of years where publishers would willfully misidentify some fantasy as science fiction). Also, as a selection in a commercial sense for the confirmed Davidson reader, it offered a slightly odd duplication of three stories from the 1981 collection Strange Seas and Shores, released less than a year beforehand (including the major story "The Sources of the Nile"). Nonetheless, "The Lord of Central Park" (from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine) is almost absurdist enough to qualify for the book's stated remit, but still remains brilliantly within the boundaries of something which might've happened, could have been happening at the time of composition; "Dragon Skin Drum" (first in The Kenyon Review) is a means to allow for a late 1940s discussion of the state of China between two Chinese men, one a eunuch retainer of the last Imperial Court and the other an enthusiastic if somewhat bet-hedging supporter of the essentially fascist Kuomintang, at the time of the story losing ground to the Communist revolutionaries, and two US Marines, one a Christian fundamentalist and earnest seeker of the soul of China, the other a rather more pragmatic, if also rude and bibulous, slightly dissipated not quite old  China hand, more interested in how the end of his tour will result. 

 The book's also not a success as a representative sample of Davidson's work in that some of the most rococo fantasies are left out (no Dr. Eszterhazy story, for example, nor "Hark! Was That the Squeal of an Angry Thoat?"), as are most of the other more realistic while baroque examples of his fiction, though "Dragon Skin Drum" has much of the density of his best work in this mode, and the more distantly historical non-fantasy "The Man Who Saw the Elephant" (from Yankee magazine), an example of the graceful, lighter touch he could employ (and also indicative of his interest in accurately representing life in various subcultures, in this case the "Quaker" Friends of New England in the mid 1800s). The grim, straightforward science fiction of "The Certificate" (while at least as much Kafkaesque as Orwellian) is in the mode of "Now Let Us Sleep" but far less well-remembered. While such all but inarguable classics of science fantasy as "The Golem" and "Or All the Seas with Oysters" are definitely among his most antic stories, the first a very high grade of sitcom dealing in part with a variety of homunculus creation stories, the latter a brilliant extrapolation as to how aliens might be disguising themselves as living versions of quotidian, easily-lost tools such as coat-hangers; "Help! I am Dr. Morris Goldpepper!" is another of his best and most straightforward farcical sf stories, one which tends to stick with readers, even those who find Davidson's more complex work less to their taste. 

 There isn't a story here that doesn't reward reading or rereading, from the leisurely build of "Manatee Gal...", the second-published Jack Limekiller story, set in the British Hidalgo that stands in for the actual Belize, formerly British Honduras (as Denny Lien notes in comments with perhaps excessive asperity), where Davidson, Davis and their son Ethan once lived, to the brief and deftly frantic "Sacheverell" with its poignant last line. One could pick up an inexpensive copy of this for the feel of these stories so grouped, and Silbersack's introduction, and use it as a loaner or a gift for those who still need to know Davidson's work; or simply as a means to dip back in at odd moments. And "The Certificate" hasn't been recollected in a Davidson volume since, though it's alone in this.
    Collected Fantasies Avram Davidson (Berkley, Jun ’82, pb)
    Edited by John W. Silbersack.
    • Introduction · John W. Silbersack · in
    • Sacheverell · ss F&SF Mar 1964
    • Help! I Am Dr. Morris Goldpepper [Dr. Morris Goldpepper] · nv Galaxy Jul 1957
    • Dragon Skin Drum · ss The Kenyon Review Jan 1961
    • The Lord of Central Park · nv Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Oct 1970, as “Manhattan Nights’ Entertainment”
    • Or All the Seas with Oysters · ss Galaxy May 1958
    • The Man Who Saw the Elephant · ss Yankee Oct 1971, as “What More Is There to See?”
    • Manatee Gal Won’t You Come Out Tonight [Jack Limekiller] · nv F&SF Apr 1977, as “Manatee Gal Ain’t You Coming Out Tonight”
    • The Sources of the Nile · nv F&SF Jan 1961
    • The Certificate · ss F&SF Mar 1959
    • The Golem · ss F&SF Mar 1955
    • The Cobblestones of Saratoga Street · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Apr 1964
    • Faed-out · ss F&SF Oct 1963

 For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Underappreciated Music: July 2016; the links to the reviews, samples and more (new material)

The monthly assembly of undervalued and often nearly "lost" music, or simply music the blogger in question wants to remind you reader/listeners of...

 Patricia Abbott: Bob Seger (and the Silver Bullet Band)

 Sergio Angelini: The Count Basie Orchestra with Jackie Wilson: "Even When You Cry"
Love this protest song by Quincy Jones and Alan & Marilyn Bergman written I think for the tv series Ironside. It was used twice, including a very moving rendition by James Farentino in the episode "Something for Nothing" Can't find that, so here is Count Basie and Jackie Wilson instead (not a bad trade):


 Jayme Lynn Blaschke: Friday Night Videos

 Paul Brazill: A Song for Saturday

Jim Cameron: The Rein de Graaff Trio: Blue Lights: The Music of Gigi Gryce;  Clarence Wheeler and the Enforcers: The New Chicago Blues

 Sean Coleman: Ringo; Bonzo

 Bill Crider: Song of the Day; Forgotten Hits

Jeff Gemmill: Top 5

 John Grant: The BBC Proms 2016

 Jerry House: Connie Francis; Hymn Time; Music from the Past

Kate Laity: Songs for a Saturday

B. V. Lawson: Your Sunday Music Treat

Steve Lewis: Music I'm Listening To

 Andrew Orley: Nobody's Listening 

Lawrence Person: Shoegazer Sunday

 James Reasoner: Middle of the Night Music

Charlie Ricci: Quinn Sullivan

 Vienna: Marni Nixon

 A. J. Wright: the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

 Memories:

 Randy Johnson: members of the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Lieder, Amics de l'Òpera and Coral Belles Arts choirs: "Ode to Joy" flashmob

 Ron Scheer: Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (the film)

 Bhob Stewart: Abe Lyman

 Early memories: 
I posed the question on FaceBook: What was the first song you remember engaging with...the one you found yourself singing as a child? (Or later, if your interest in music came later in life?) I suspect mine might've been "Happy Together" by the Turtles, though as an infant I was apparently a Monkees fan, as I would watch the series with my sitter. (I was born in 1964, and the Pre-Fab Four appeared on the scene in 1966.)

 Replies:

 Prashant C. Trikannad Probably George Baker's "Una Paloma Blanca" and "Love Me Like I Love You," a non-Alma Cogan version of "Dreamboat," plenty of Cliff Richards, Abba and Boney M, Jim Reeves, and Neil Diamond.

 Geoffrey Hughes My guess would be something by the Beatles. I can't recall but it seems like a safe guess.  I remember really liking Rock 'n' Roll by John Lennon as a young kid. Though these 2 Christmas Albums: A Chipmunk Christmas  and John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together, are still at my Mom's in the record collection.  I'll take 'em out on Christmas Day if I can.

 Kate Laity Probably a tv theme song...Quite possibly 'Branded'; I remember singing that while we played at my grandparents' house. Most of my early songs were my folks' 45s so the Jimmie Rodgers double side 'Honeycomb'/'Kisses Sweeter than Wine' is likely. I have no sense of timing for my childhood (very Zen for much of it) but we always had music on, all day. It was weird to go to other people's houses and wonder why they didn't have music on. We had [a] college FM station which was pretty good.

David Pringle "How Much is That Doggie in the Window?" [Along with Patti Page's international hit record,] There was also a British cover version by Lita Roza (a Liverpudlian-Spanish singer now pretty much forgotten) which reached number one in the UK charts. I probably heard both.

Sergio Angelini Probably the theme from The Banana Splits (sigh).  (Kate Laity responds: The Dickies' version is one of my favourite all time songs.)

David Pringle I was blessedly free of TV theme songs, because we didn't have a TV set in our house until I was seven-and-a-half. However, I first saw some TV at my grandmother's house in the preceding year, 1956. This, then, was the theme song of the day [for the 1950s The Adventures of Robin Hood series] which went through one's little head constantly (it was sung by Dick James).

Scott Cupp "The Purple People Eater"

Natalie Pesin My uncle and aunt made me a tree swing in the front lawn of their house and I would scream [the Beach Boys'] "Help Me Rhonda" at the top of my lungs while I was swinging. It was in the downtown portion of a real small town in Upstate NY and the neighbors would sometimes sing along when they passed by.

Stephen Maurer My sister tells me I sang a mean rendition of [Guns 'n' Roses's] "Paradise City" when I was very small, but the first song I remember loving is [The Who's] "Baba O'Riley."

Reed Andrus I go a long way back, remember my mother singing Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy" to me. Also Patti Page, "The Tennessee Waltz" (I think). [I noted my parents had apparently sung the Gershwins' "Summertime" to me as a lullaby when I was an infant, and I'd always liked the song; Reed stated he did, as well.]  Without checking, I think Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" came out with The Blackboard Jungle. That might have been my first pop music memory. [Assured that it was on the soundtrack, and that the film was released a year later than he recalled, in 1955:] Okay. Means my life started turning to the Dark Side at age 9. I thought it was earlier, but oh, well...

Mark Hand The Sweet's "Little Willy";  I also found myself singing Chuck Berry's "My Ding-A-Ling" and Slade's "Cum on Feel the Noize", not knowing as a six-year-old what the songs were really about.

Jackie Kashian [Glen Campbell's] "Rhinestone Cowboy"

 Keiko Hassler notes via email that for her, it was Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline"...

 Patti Nase Abbott "The Night They Invented Champagne": It's from the soundtrack of Gigi, which was the first album I played on my new record player when I was nine or ten.

...and if you have any suggestions for good music for the under-5yo set, Natalie and her infant son might well enjoy hearing of them...


 Meanwhile, here's something else from me, from FB:
Brian Arnold shares the news of BandCamp now selling downloads of the Dischord Records back catalog...a friend of his had posted a link to Emily Manning's i-D bulletin, more than a little breathless: "Back in 2013, Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art opened an exhibition titled 'Pump Me Up: D.C. Subculture of the 1980s' — an archeological goldmine of relics from the capital city's long-lost outlaw days. The show's most unbelievable treasures were unearthed from what's perhaps D.C.'s most important subculture ever: its vibrant hardcore punk scene, championed by seminal label Dischord Records (founded by Minor Threat members Jeff Nelson and Ian MacKaye)."
But this is a very good way, aside from buying physical copies of the recordings from Dischord itself, still very much an option, to throw a few more richly deserved bucks at the ex-members of such bands as Trusty and Smart Went Crazy. Then there are those folks who were acquaintances and even very close acquaintances of mine...I'd been a prot0-punk fan in the early '70s, and had been exposed to a lot of turn of the '80s punk by my friend  Keiko; my ex Donna Wilson reinforced my casual love of the music by, with me in tow, becoming as much as possible a harDCore supporter and eventually a bit of a mover and shaker in that scene...and, if anything, I might've been even more in tune, so to speak, with what the Dischord bands 
The lower face of bassist Kim Coletta...
were striving for than she was (the tendency to try to make very melodic if still visceral punk, or to interact with such other DC musical expressions as go-go--which has as much if not a little more claim to Most Important Local Musical Subculture, as might bluegrass--was more than cool but she liked straightforward energetic hardcore punk even more). Donna and I first met Dave Allen of Branch Manager when he was something like assistant manager of the Cineplex Odeon theater where we tried to catch the first film version of Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall," until the film, which looks like it was filmed on the last standing sets of The Last Temptation of Christ before they were struck and can boast of a cast uniformly coated in oil, made Donna physically ill, and I could sympathize, though my reaction was more in anger than of nausea; we took passes rather than demanding a refund. Dave and I would later work together for a couple of years; I ended up taking his (managerial/light accounting) job after he moved on to a promotion at another
Branch Manager
Borders. Cynthia Connolly and I practiced our email Japanese on each other. I became one of the loudest and most consistent fans of Jawbox in the local "alternate" press; they were kind enough to have Donna and me over to their house for an interview for the radio show (pre-blog) Sweet Freedom (I also went to Pam Bricker and Gareth Branwyn's house to record an interview, as this was one of Branwyn's less physically robust periods; Douglas Winter and Ted White were better able to come to the radio studio, and Len Bracken brought the visiting Bob Black along). Donna got deeply involved with Positive Force DC; I helped out with a few of their projects, so was adjacent while Riot Grrl DC was flourishing...while Mark Hand, Eric Mason, Nancz Ryan and we put out a zine, or several, but one in collaboration, and Donna, for much of the early years, cohosted radio "Sweet Freedom"...Donna's hardcore (and other punk rock) segments of the show often got the most vociferous fan response. In true Creem magazine fashion (in the Dave Marsh years), I always felt punk had a kinship with free jazz, and twelve-tone and later classical music...and, of course, by extension, my greatest musical love, third stream music. And I'd run many spoken word recordings, including eventually being the local presenter of The Progressive magazine's Second Opinion and RadioNation (from The Nation magazine) in the shifts at Fairfax, VA and Philadelphia stations. I also wrote up Positive Force DC for The Progressive, which apparently inspired a rather longer article from a member of Girls vs. Boys in The Nation.

So that's a memory-trigger.

24 August 1959: Three days after Hawaiian statehood, Hiram L. Fong was sworn in as the first Chinese-American U.S. senator while Daniel K. Inouye was sworn in as the first Japanese-American U.S. representative.
I didn't have the wit, the one time I was around Kenny Inouye, to ask if he knew/ remembered my old friend Laura Nakatsuka from the days when her father had been press secretary to the Other Hawaiian US Senator till 1977 (and only Republican Senator so far), Hiram Fong. (Kenny is the late Sen. Daniel's son.)(His band Marginal Man was breaking up about the time I was being seriously introduced to the DC punk scene...though my first attendance at the old 9:30 Club had been in 1984, to see the Bangles, and the Intentions opened for them.)

Though both Bob and Ted were among the in-studio interviewees on the show, things were rarely so Black and White...secure in the knowledge, and with no dread, also that Winter was coming...

[I haven't thrown too many parties in my life, but those I have have always featured interesting mixes of people...]
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