Thursday, June 9, 2016

Tuesday's Overlooked A/V: Films, Television, Radio and More: the links to the reviews, citations, etc.: more added links

A King and Four Queens
The weekly roundup of reviews, interviews, and other citations of (often, though not always) underappreciated examples of the dramatic and related arts; this week featuring two braces of Bulldog Drummond and of Love and Friendship--because who are the two writers one thinks of when one thinks of British literature, if not Jane Austen and "Sapper"? As always, please let me know if I've missed your or anyone else's contribution this week in comments... thanks. 

Allison Meier (courtesy A. J. Jacobs and Art Lortie:) "Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction 1780 to 1910"

 Anne Billson: considering six actors: Cage, Depp, Aniston, Johansson, Keanu Reeves, Branaugh

 Anonymous: One, Two, Three; Copenhagen; In Bruges

 Bhob Stewart: "The Lottery" (and why it wasn't originally distributed to public tv stations in the US)

The Big Broadcast: 5 July 2016
  • 7:00 Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
    The Rat Pack Matter (04/23/61)(22:44)
  • 7:30 Dragnet
    The Great Bible (09/28/54)(26:33)
  • 8:00 Gunsmoke
    The Rooks (10/06/57)(19:08)
  • 8:30 Burns and Allen
    Kansas City’s Favorite Singer (06/06/44)(21:06)
  • 9:00 The Halls of Ivy
    The Goya Bequest (01/24/51)(27:29)
  • 9:30 Richard Diamond
    Mr. Victor’s Daughter (01/15/50)(29:00)
  • 10:00 Lux Radio Theater
    Dodsworth (10/04/37)(56:38)
    [interview with Sidney Howard from 04/12/37]







Elgin Bleecker: Broadchurch

 Elizabeth Foxwell: Gangster Story

 George Kelley: Doctor Thorne; Love and Friendship
Janet Leigh. psycho: The Spy in the Green Hat

 "Gilligan Newton-John": [The Man from U.N.C.L.E.:] The Spy in the Green Hat; Spy Today, Die Tomorrow (an image of a whole lot of Janet Leigh's leg and similar might get some sensitive office attention)




Love and Friendship
K. A. Laity: Love and Friendship; Frances Walker at the McManus

 Karen Hannsberry: Dinner at Eight

 Ken Levine: Baggage

 Kliph Nesteroff: As Caesar Sees It; Late Night with David Letterman with Mel Blanc and Hunter S. Thompson
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

 Kristina Dijan: Whiplash; The System; May Film Diary; Emma (1932 film); Breaking Away 

 Laura G.: Gambling on the High Seas; A Night of Adventure; China Sky; Seven Miles from Alcatraz; Rosalind Russell; Madame Tussaud's Hollywood Wax Museum; Bulldog Drummond; Calling Bulldog Drummond; A House Divided

 Lindsey: We Were Strangers; A Cold Wind in August; M (1931 film)

 Lucy Brown: Carnival Boat

 Martin Edwards: Eden Lake

 Marty McKee: Trespass (2011 film); The Expert; The Final Girls

 Mildred Perkins: The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera


 Mitchell Hadley: TV Guide 2 June 1956; Dallas/Ft. Worth listings

 Noel Vera: Goodnight Mommy

 Patricia Abbott: Like Crazy; A Hologram for the King

Patricia Nolan-Hall: The Cameraman (starring Buster Keaton; TCM 15 June); Rawhide (1938 film)

 Pop My Culture: Maurice LaMarche and Rob Paulson at Wondercon

 Raquel Stecher: Charlie Chan at the Olympics

 Rick: Inherit the Wind (1960 film)

 Rod Lott: Winners Tape All; Dangerous Men; Don't Go in the Woods; Revenge of the Virgins

 Ruth Kerr: Rocky and boxing and 1970s film

 Salome Wilde: Night and the City


 Scott A. Cupp: Gamera the Invincible

 Sergio Angelini: Blind Terror (aka See No Evil)

 Stacia Jones: The King and Four Queens; The Private Affairs of Bel Ami; Bulldog Drummond; Calling Bulldog Drummond

 Stephen Gallagher: Chimera

 Steve Lewis: The Hypnotic Eye

 Todd Mason: Abbey Lincoln and Annie Ross: Nothing but a Man; Playboy's Penthouse: Sunday Night/Night Music

from For Love of Ivy, starring Abbey Lincoln, Sidney Poitier, Beau Bridges: 

 TV Obscurities: Eye Witness (1947 tv series)

 Tyler Harris: Ingmar Bergman's 11 favorite films (1994) (courtesy Jeff Segal)

 Victoria Loomes: Boccaccio '70

 Vienna: Vivien Leigh exhibition
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Monday, June 6, 2016

Abbey (Lincoln) and Annie (Ross): singers, composers, and sometimes actors: Saturday Music Club on Monday

Born within a fortnight of each other in 1930, Ross as Annabelle Allan Short on 25 July, Lincoln as Anna Marie Wooldridge on 6 August (34 years to the day before I was}, they both came softly but impressively into the jazz scene in the early 1950s, and did great solo work and were also important components of major bands/choruses of their era: Ross in Lambert, Hendricks and Ross and Lincoln in the Max Roach Quintet. They also had interesting side careers in drama, not solely playing musicians, but also that. Ross's first career was as a child actor; Lincoln also moved to California at not quite so young an age, and got a bit of a boost from recording for the film The Girl Can't Help It...
Annie Ross: "The Way You Look Tonight"

Milt Jackson (vibes) Blossom Dearie (piano) Percy Heath (bass) Kenny Clarke (drums) Annie Ross (vocals) NYC, April 1, 1952

Annie Ross: "Cry Me a River"
Les Condon, Jimmy Deuchar (trumpet) Ken Wray (trombone) Derek Humble (alto sax) Al Cornish, Don Rendell (tenor sax) Ronnie Ross (baritone sax) Damian Robinson (piano) Lennie Bush (bass) Tony Crombie (drums) Annie Ross (vocals) London 1955

Annie Ross (with Lambert and Hendricks): "Twisted" and L, H & R with Joe William: "Every Day I Have the Blues"  with Count Basie (piano), Freddie Green (guitar), Ed Jones (bass), and Sonny Payne (drums) (with a scrap of Judy Garland appended) 

Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, with the Les McCann Trio: "Four"

Annie Ross: "Annie's Lament"
George Wallington (piano) Roger Ram Ramirez (organ) Percy Heath (bass) Art Blakey (drums) Annie Ross (vocals) NYC, October 9, 1952

 Annie Ross: "Skylark"

Annie Ross: "Prisoner of Life" from Short Cuts

Nothing but a Man with Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln: "Do Nothing 'Til You Hear from Me"

Abbey Lincoln: "Lonely House"

Abbey Lincoln: "Left Alone"

Abbey Lincoln with the Max Roach Chorus and Orchestra: "Lonesome Lover"

Abbey Lincoln: "Blue Monk"

Abbey Lincoln:  "First Song"

Abbey Lincoln:  "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise"

Annie Ross: "All the Things You Are"
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Friday, June 3, 2016

FFB: STRANGE HIGHWAYS: READING SCIENCE FANTASY 1950-1967 by John Boston and Damien Broderick (Borgo Press 2012)

Science Fantasy was the primary British magazine devoted to fantasy, science fiction and the arguably hybrid form of science-fantasy at mid-century, the companion to the slightly longer-lived and more famous (and/or infamous) New Worlds, as well as to the short-lived Science Fiction Adventures magazine (one of a handful of magazines to have that title over the years, this one originally the UK edition of the second US magazine of that title). Strange Highways is John Boston's issue by issue run through the magazine and its fiction, editorials, critical writing, covers, illustration and design, and even its advertising, in a manner not altogether different if more exhaustive than my own adventures in magazine reviewing on this blog, and similar to those of Paul Fraser (among others) on his, as edited and occasionally expanded or footnoted by Damien Broderick. It's one of the smaller ironies of this labor of love, a casual rather than dryly academic look at the magazine's content, that it has been assembled by an American ("John Boston" is about as Yankee as a name can be without having "Knickerbocker" mixed in somehow) and an expatriate Australian living in Texas, but perhaps this isn't as improbable as it might seem (or no more so than the book itself, or its similar companion
volumes on the years of New Worlds, and SF Adventures, before NW became a cause célèbre and a source of political harrumphing over its content while receiving Arts Council grants from the British government); Science Fantasy, despite no lack of mediocre and some worse fiction, was also the first home of the baroque fantasy fiction of Michael Moorcock (mostly published before he became New Worlds's editor), not a few of the key early stories by J. G. Ballard, Josephine Saxton and Brian Aldiss, and some fine adventure and historical fantasy by John Brunner and Thomas Burnett Swann, among a number of others, from all over the Anglophone world. Its editors included a number of the key figures among the editorial ranks of UK fantastic fiction: founding editor Walter Gillings had been a pioneer in professional sf magazine
publishing in Great Britain, even if none of his projects were particularly financially hearty, and even this title was taken away from him for financial reasons by its publisher, so that New Worlds's E. J. "Ted" Carnell could serve as the sole magazine editor at cash-strapped Nova Publications; Carnell, the primary editor throughout most of its run; novelist and art collector Kyril Bonfiglioli, who took on apparently as few editorial duties as he possibly could after the magazines were sold to publishers Roberts and Vintner, who changed the format from digest-sized magazine to an often attractive paperback-book package; Keith Roberts, who was largely responsible, as art director as well, for that attractiveness; and Harry Harrison, briefly in from the US and back out on his way to live on the Continent again, with Roberts essentially stepping back in after his brief run...Harrison also one of the key American contributors to the magazine.

 I'm surprised to find myself disagreeing strenuously with the assertion in Broderick's introduction that John Campbell's Unknown Fantasy Fiction magazine (1939-43) was the first great expression of science-fantasy fiction, given Campbell's famous predilection for "rationalized" fantasy, where rigorous rules were applied to the fantastic...when such predecessors as H. G. Wells (with his proviso that there be only "one miracle per story") and Thorne Smith had been adhering to similar notions rather prominently, and were models for much of what Campbell published in his magazine...which was, however, launched in part because Campbell wanted to be able to explore "fringe science" and paranoid philosophical points in fiction that might not so easily fit into his Astounding Science-Fiction magazine at that time...but that wasn't the only kind of fantasy Unknown published. Meanwhile, some of the most popular pulp
fiction of the previous decades, such as the Mars and other stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as fantasies of lost civilizations and continents by writers such as Talbot Mundy and A. Conan Doyle, had already helped set some of the parameters of mixtures of sfnal speculation and fantasy coloration and romance; in the same year, 1939, Unknown was founded, such longer-lived magazines devoted in one degree or another to other flavors of science-fantasy, such as space opera and planetary romance stalwart Planet Stories, and frequent late-Burroughs (and imitators) market Fantastic Adventures, also made their debut. Such periodicals as Weird Tales and the various science fiction magazines had also published their share of science-fantasy, as had most of the adventure pulps, and such stories as F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" were in the same vein, often published by more affluent "slick" magazines and other markets (though the Fitzgerald was first published in the modestly-budgeted, influential The Smart Set, stablemate of the first issues of similarly influential crime-fiction pulp Black Mask). John Boston doesn't quite make any such
filmed loosely as Soylent Green
sweeping claim, preferring to get on with the history and critique of the magazine itself, and, at obvious transition stages, listing some of the best fiction among that referred to so far...assessments that have allowed for three anthologies from Boston and Broderick so far, published by Surinam Turtle Press. This volume, while perhaps best not read straight through in one or three sittings unless one is deeply intrigued by the magazine and its time and place, is conveniently broken down into the several-issue essays in which it was originally published, as contributions to the FictionMags discussion list. While the anthologies might make for more engaging reading for general audiences, those who are vitally interested in the literature or even popular culture of the time, at very least, should find this volume (and its companions) valuable and amusing.

 For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.


“THE WRONG TRACK” - A. BERTRAM CHANDLER
“LET’S BE FRANK” - BRIAN W. ALDISS
“THE DAYMAKERS” - PETER HAWKINS
“CHAOTICS” - EDWARD MACKIN
“ME, MYSELF AND I” - JOHN KIPPAX
“TOO BAD!” - E.C. TUBB
“THE ANALYSTS” - JOHN BRUNNER
“HEINRICH” - WALLACE WEST
“TO RESCUE TANELORN” - MICHAEL MOORCOCK
“SAME TIME, SAME PLACE” - MERVYN PEAKE
“THE MUREX” - THOMAS BURNETT SWANN

Jonathan Burke, “The Adjusters” (Science Fantasy #13, Apr 1955)
Martin Jordan, “Sheamus” (Science Fantasy #14, Jun 1955)
John Brunner, “City of the Tiger” (Science Fantasy #32, Dec 1958)
Kenneth Bulmer, “Castle of Vengeance” (Science Fantasy #37, Nov 1959)
John Kippax (John Charles Hynam 1915-1974), “Destiny Incorporated” (Science Fantasy #30, Aug 1958)
J.G. Ballard, “The Watch-Towers” (Science Fantasy #53, Jun 1962, and The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, 2009)
Thomas Burnett Swann, “The Sudden Wings” (Science Fantasy #55, Oct 1962)
Philip E. High, “Dead End” (Science Fantasy #56, Dec 1962)


John Rackham, Bring Back a Life 

 Thomas Burnett Swann, Vashti

 Josephine Saxton, The Wall 

 Brian Stableford and Craig Mackintosh, Beyond Time’s Aegis 

 Brian Aldiss, The Circulation of the Blood 

 J.G. Ballard, You and Me and the Continuum 

 Christopher Priest, The Run 

 Keith Roberts, Corfe Gate 

 Robert Wells, Stop Seventeen 

 Chris Boyce, Mantis
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Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Tuesday's Overlooked A'V: Films, Television, Radio and more

Maria Bamford and colleagues: Lady Dynamite
The weekly roundup of reviews, interviews, and other citations of (often, though not always) underappreciated examples of the dramatic and related arts. As always, please let me know if I've missed your or anyone else's contribution this week in comments... thanks.

 Anne Billson: Russ Meyer (some NSFW imagery, oddly enough)

 Anonymous: The Earrings of Madame de...; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

 Bhob Stewart: Saul Bass and Alfred Hitchcock; Alfred Hitchcock's kitchen, Castle of Frankenstein and TV Guide

 The Big Broadcast: 29 May 2016
  • 7:00 Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
    The Lone Wolf Matter (05/21/61) (CBS) (22:28)
  • 7:23 Gracie Allen for President (1940)
  • 7:30 Dragnet
    The Big Try (09/21/54) (NBC) (24:55)
  • 8:00 Gunsmoke
    Another Man’s Poison (09/29/57) (AFRS) (19:52)
  • 8:30 Our Miss Brooks
    Boynton’s Barbecue (05/07/50) (CBS) (28:21)
  • 9:00 Halls of Ivy
    Adoption (10/03/51)(NBC)(27:15)
  • 9:30 Presenting Charles Boyer
    Adventure With A Slide Rule Blonde (07/04/50) (NBC) (28:43)
  • 10:00 Lux Radio Theater
    This Land Is Mine (04/24/44) (CBS) (57:39)

Bill Crider: Vibes [trailer]

B. V. Lawson:  Media Murder

Comedy Film Nerds: Greg Proops
True Grit

 Cult TV: The Avengers: "Diamond Cut Diamond"

 David Cramner: 21st Century western films

David Vineyard: House of the Arrow

 Elgin Bleecker: Sam Peckinpah directing Zane Grey Theater episodes (and pilots)

 Elizabeth Foxwell: Diagnosis: Unknown: "A Case of Radiant Wine"; Writing for Television: Conversations with Rod Serling

Eric Willis: Lurking Fear

George Kelley: The Meddler

 "Gilligan Newton-John": Inquisition; The Pit and the Pendulum (1992 film) some NSFW imagery

How Did This Get Made?: The Avengers (1998 film based loosely on the tv series); interview with Mel Brooks
Relationship Status...at Tribeca

Iba Dawson: Tribeca 2016

 Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Family Secret; Norris Goff

 Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Fatal Figures"

 Jackie Kashian: Ronnie Karam on Bravo programming
The Jackie and Laurie Show

 Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin: The Jackie and Laurie Show

 Jacqueline T. Lynch: The Automat in Film

 Jake Hinkson: Rural film noir

 James Clark: Black Hawk Down

 James Reasoner: Tumbleweeds

Janet Varney: Maria Bamford

 Jerry House: Judge for Yourself; The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: "The April Fool's Day Adventure"

 John Grant: Posthumous; Palmdale 

Jonathan Lewis: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Disney)

 Karen Hannsberry: Golddiggers of 1933

 Kelly Robinson: The Callahans and the Murphys

 Ken Levine: Gary Burghoff on M*A*S*H; spec scripts

 Kliph Nesteroff: Marshall Brickman

 Kristina Dijan: The Outriders; Saddle Tramp; The Big Parade; films in April; The Battle at Apache Pass; Five Guns West; The Fiend Who Walked the West;  The Outfit; Defiance; Best Seller

 Laura G: Operation Petticoat; Comrade X; The Wife Takes a Flyer;  In Name Only; John Payne; To Be or Not To Be (1942 film); TCM's Tiffany Vasquez

 Lindsey: The Hatchet Man

 Lucy Brown: The Fall
Pretty Poison

 Martin Edwards: Pretty Poison  [John F. Norris's review which sparked this one]

 Marty McKee: Trespass (2011 film); Schizoid; The Mean Season

 Michael Shonk: US television "upfronts" for the coming season

Mitchell Hadley: TV Guide, 31 May 1958; Iowa listings 5 June 1958

 Neil Gaiman and Audrey Niffenegger (and musical guests)
Green Room

 Noel Vera: Peppermint Candy



Peter Rozovsky: The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology

 Pop My Culture: Quincy Jones (the younger comedian, not the elder musician and producer)

 Prashant Trikannad: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Brokeback Mountain

 Raquel Stecher: Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding

 Rick: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976); 5 favorite Clint Eastwood films

 Rod Lott: Bunny the Killer Thing; Holidays; Snakes on a Plane
Rich Kids

 "Rupert Pupkin": Rich Kids; French Postcards

 Ruth Kerr: Francis the Talking Mule and its sequels; Reel Infatuation (film crushes) blogathon call for contributions

 Salome Wilde: Sinister Summer; Touch of Evil

 Scott A. Cupp: Master of the World

 Sean McLachlan: PRC, Producers Releasing Corporation "poverty row" releases (courtesy Bill Crider)
Fear is the Key

 Sergio Angelini: Fear is the Key

 Stacia Jones: Female; God's Country and the Woman

 Stephen Bowie: Frank Wood

 Steve Lewis: Hit Lady; They Met in the Dark 
The Women

Victoria Loomes: Contempt

 Vienna: Myrna Loy; Burt Kwouk; The Women (1939 film)
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