James Earl Jones, legendary actor of stage, film, and television, died today at the age of 93.
Jones, a native of Mississippi, began acting on stage in the 1950s, becoming one of the best-known Shakespearean actors of the time. He made his film debut as a bombardier in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Notably, in 1977, he appeared in the blockbuster miniseries Roots as author Alex Haley, and in Star Wars as the voice of Darth Vader.
I'm not a huge fan of Christmas movies. I have nothing against them, apart from the occasional overweening sentimentality. I enjoy Christmas for various reasons, but I'm not overly crazy about it, and the same goes for seasonal movies.
On the other hand, for some reason, I do enjoy trying to compile random lists of things from memory: books I read in high school, plays I've seen, things like that.
So, apropos of nothing (except that it's Christmas Eve), I thought I would try to list every Christmas movie I've seen, along with some brief comments.
Sir Roger Moore has died at the age of 89.
Moore is best known for playing James Bond in seven films (more than anyone else) from 1973 to 1985. He is the oldest actor to have played the character, and of the six actors to have portrayed Bond, the first to pass away.
Compared to the more serious portrayal by his predecessor Sean Connery--and certainly in contrast with Ian Fleming's brooding, nihilistic secret agent--Moore's James Bond was suave and lighthearted, almost cartoonish. It wasn't the best period for Bond movies. But when Moore played Bond straight, as he did in Live and Let Die or For Your Eyes Only, he was very good indeed, and we can forgive him for Moonraker and Octopussy. Besides, if not for seeing Moonraker on TV as an eighth grader, I would never have sought out the novel, and James Bond may never have become one of my favourite literary characters. I recently finished reading straight through Fleming's Bond books for the third time.
Moore was also well known for his six-season run on television as the Saint, based on another literary favourite of mine, Leslie Charteris' Master criminal.
Goodbye, Mr. Bond.
In the spring of 1988, while in grade 12, I traveled to Calgary for a high-school band competition. To pass the time en route, in addition to the homework assignments for the days I was away, I had a reading list for the grade 13 English literature course. I would be taking the course the following year, but my then-girlfriend was enrolled in it, and she gave me the list of books (and my teachers were happy to loan me copies).
The required reading included Brave New World, The Stone Angel, and Cannery Row; optional books included Nineteen Eighty-Four, likely one or two titles that I have since forgotten, and, notably, two novels by Margaret Atwood: The Edible Woman and The Handmaid's Tale. The curriculum had a distinctly dystopian edge for some reason. Over the course of the trip, I devoured them all. I distinctly recall reading The Handmaid's Tale in one or two sittings on the return trip somewhere between Calgary and Winnipeg; in my mind, the novel still evokes memories of sunny prairies, grain elevators, and wheat fields seen from a train window, in stark contrast to the novel's actual, bleaker subject matter.
Another day, another attempt to tamper with established characters to make them more PC:
Peter Parker is Caucasian and heterosexual. That isn’t a description: it’s a contractual obligation, one glittering clause in the solid-gold expanse of a licensing agreement between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios. . . . Certain facets of the man’s character are inflexible. He must not be black. And he must not be gay.
The author does raise the obvious retort: if you want a black or gay superhero, why not just create a new one from scratch? But he never really answers it. There is a perfectly clear answer, though: the Left creates affirmative-action, token characters like this as vehicles for dropping a Message on audiences' heads like a cartoon anvil. Heavy-handed ideology does not make for good art, and audiences know it. Since they know they can't succeed on their own merits, the Left needs to hijack someone else's already profitable property and repurpose it.
Imagine the howls of outrage if Fat Albert or Charlie Chan were remade as Caucasians.
"I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode." —Teal'c, Stargate SG-1, "200"
Brian Williams, the NBC anchor and professional fabulist who was suspended after claiming falsely to have come under fire in a helicopter while covering the Iraq War in 2003, has been moved to MSNBC.
In his new role, Mr. Williams will anchor breaking news stories and special reports for MSNBC and primarily appear in the daytime. MSNBC’s evening schedule is mostly political talk shows.
Put another way: NBC isn't credible enough with him, and MSNBC isn't credible enough without him.
Here's an instant classic from the chronicles of the Society of the Perpetually Outraged, whose feelings are so tender that even a tongue-in-cheek slutshaming of a fictional superhero suffices to send the social-justice warriors running for their keyboards.
When asked about fans' unmet hopes that Black Widow would get together with their characters, Captain America and Hawkeye respectively, instead of the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), [Jeremy] Renner said, "She's a slut." [Chris] Evans laughed and agreed: "I was going to say something along that line . . . A complete whore." Renner also joked that "she has a prosthetic leg anyway."
Reports are coming in that the Black Widow has been so humiliated by the incident, that she developed an eating disorder. Moll Flanders and Holly Golightly are said to be staging an intervention.
Seriously, when people get upset about someone calling a fictional character a slut (it's probably true, anyway, by design), then the Big One can't come soon enough.
When news broke a few days ago that actor Leonard Nimoy had been hospitalized, I feared the worst, and it has happened: he has passed away at the age of 83, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which he attributed to his former smoking habit.
Like many people of a particular generation, I knew that Nimoy had had a long and varied career in the performing arts. However, I knew his work exclusively from one character: Star Trek's Spock, the role that defined his career for almost 50 years. (Nimoy wrote two autobiographies: I Am Not Spock [1975], in which he attempted to distance his own personality from the character's, and then I Am Spock [1995], in which he clarified that he was proud to have played Spock, and never meant to reject the role.) Nimoy also played guest roles on numerous television programs of the 1960s, including Bonanza, The Rebel, Get Smart, Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone (as did his Star Trek co-star William Shatner, arguably more famously), and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (in an episode where he and Shatner both appeared as enemies on either side of the Cold War, with Nimoy as the villain). After Star Trek, he had a recurring role on Mission: Impossible. Come to think of it, I may have seen the episode of the Outer Limits revival on which he was the guest, but apart from the various incarnations of Star Trek, that's it.
Three of Trek's seven stars have now passed on; Shatner, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and Walter Koenig remain.
In addition to television and film acting, Nimoy also pursued other arts: directing, poetry, photography, and music—the last infamously including a novelty song titled "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins."
Leonard Nimoy's final tweet before his death was this:
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015Or, in the final words of Spock, in Star Trek II: "Remember."
In my life, I have (so far) had two "you-gotta-see-this" moments. By this I mean, friends or roommates, who knew that I was interested in current events, deliberately came to my room to tell me to get to a TV, because "You gotta see this."
The first of these was on April 19, 1993, when a housemate told me to turn on CNN so I could see the conflagration of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and the demise of their leader David Koresh, bringing an end to a 51-day seige of the compound by federal authorities.
The second was a little over a year later, and 20 years ago today. when the "you gotta see this" turned out to be then-murder suspect O. J. Simpson, holding a gun to his head and driving a white Bronco down a Los Angeles freeway at low speed, pursued by a dozen police cruisers. It was an absurdist moment. If "Yackety Sax" had been playing, it would have made more sense.
This article from Vanity Fair argues that the O. J. Simpson chase was, per their title, the death of popular culture, but also the birth of reality TV. First, it offered a voyeuristic look into the lives of a notable celebrity. Author Lili Anolik writes, "It gave us the dirty little thrill of putting our eye to the keyhole, looking in on a world that we’d normally never have access to." Second, like most reality TV programs, it featured third-rate Hollywood. Just as you'll never see a Hollywood A-lister starring in a series on TLC, Simpson's acting career never rose to any lofty heights. The most notable witness of Simpson's murder trial, slacker Kato Kaelin, became, like many reality TV stars, famous for being famous. And, of course, if not for the trial, the most talked-about news story of 1995, "Kardashian" would never have become a household name.
The article makes interesting reading. If nothing else, it reminds me that it was around the time of the Simpson kerfluffle that I became soured on cable news because its focus began to shift away from legitimate news toward celebrity gossip. O. J. Simpson was at least accused and acquitted of doing something newsworthy. When newscasts spend an inordinate amount of time reporting on the outcome of reality TV competitions such as American Idol, Justin Bieber's arrests, or the hottest new YouTube videos, the line between reality and reality TV has become irreversably blurred.
I can't believe that it's been seven years since I first discovered the fiction of Richard Matheson, via the short story collection Duel (which I reviewed at the time). As I said back then:
Matheson seems to be almost unheard of these days, but in addition to "Duel," many of his novels have been adapted for film: A Stir of Echoes, What Dreams May Come, and The Shrinking Man, to name three. After reading Duel, I'm convinced to try out some of his longer fiction. But if you're looking for a good collection of tight short stories by an author you probably haven't read before, you can't go wrong with this book.
Richard Matheson passed away on Sunday at the age of 97.
His influence is arguably out of proportion to his name recognition, but if you've watched a lot of science-fiction or horror television or movies, you've probably seen something he wrote, which includes:
Science fiction and horror literature has lost another of its greatest authors. The Golden Age continues to slowly diminish.
Whenever the current season of Doctor Who ends, I always feel a kind of withdrawal. I blame it on the peculiarities of British television scheduling: a long mid-season hiatus coupled with a smaller number of episodes per season.
Fortunately, there's no shortage of Doctor Who to be had in the meantime—the program has, after all, been broadcast (on and off) since 1963. So this year I've been feeding my hunger pangs with the old Fourth Doctor episodes, broadcast 1974–81. It's often said that a Doctor Who fan's favourite Doctor is always the first one they saw, and that's certainly true in my case (though David Tennant and Matt Smith did give Baker a run for his money!). I first discovered Doctor Who on Sunday afternoons on PBS, where the producers edited the episodes of each serial into a single program. Later, the same PBS station moved the Doctor to Saturday late-night. In the spirit of Serial Saturdays, watching Doctor Who was my weekend ritual from the age of about 13 to 20.
Ray Harryhausen, the special-effects pioneer best known for stop-motion movie monsters, died this week at the ripe old age of 92.
Normally, on Saturdays, I would be blogging about old Superman radio shows. But Harryhausen is certainly within the spirit of Serial Saturdays. What weekend afternoon wouldn't be made better by a science-fiction double feature of Harryhausen's brilliant B-movies?
The first feature film with Harryhausen's effects that I saw was the redoubtable 1981 flick Clash of the Titans, his last film. However, my favourite of his is the alien-invasion movie Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, along with Dr. Cyclops, which I first saw in a university lecture hall in my first year in a course on science-fiction literature, of all places. Finally, my favourite scene of Harryhausen's is hands-down the skeleton battle from Jason and the Argonauts.
Ray Harryhausen's jerky stop-motion animation looks downright Stone Age next to today's digital animation. But it has what so much CGI really lacks: heart and charm. I'm not putting down digital effects in fact, after I finish writing this, I'm going to a friend's place to watch Captain America and The Avengers on his 3D TV. Unlike the digital action-fests we see today, though, which throw the resources of multiple effects companies and hundreds of employees at the visuals, Harryhausen's work was a true labour of love. Artists like him are few and far between now.
I first discovered James Bond in grade 8, sometime in 1983–84. My first experience with Ian Fleming's quintessential Britisy superspy was an airing of Moonraker on TV. (Throughout the 1980s, ABC seemed to have a monopoly on broadcasting Bond films in prime-time, and showed one every couple of months.) Not very long afterward, I hit up the public library for Ian Fleming's novel. I was surprised—but not at all disappointed—to discover that Fleming's 1955 novel was quite a different animal from its 1979 filmed counterpart, which resembled it in name only.
The result, however, was that I fell in love with both Fleming's series of novels and the movies made from them. So, as my second instalment of this year's F5 series, and in light of the 50th anniversary movie Skyfall's release on home video this week, I present:
Veteran character actor Ernest Borgnine died today in Los Angeles of renal failure at the ripe old age of 95.
Like most 80s kids, I first saw Borgnine as the co-star of Airwolf. It was only in relatively recent years, when I've had the chance to watch more classic TV and cinema, that I discovered his best work: movies like The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch, The Poseidon Adventure, and selected episodes of McHale's Navy. (He was also in Disney's The Black Hole, for which I have a fondness disproportional to its actual merits.)
95 is a ripe old age for a hard-working actor. Rest in peace, Ernest.
On this day 100 years ago, the RMS Titanic, metaphor for man's arrogance in flaunting their technology in the face of Mother Nature, struck a piece of that aforesaid matron and sank in the North Atlantic, taking 1,500 people to a watery, symbolic end.
At least, according to Our Dumb Century, that's what The Onion's front page read on April 16, 1912. I laughed so hard I decided to appropriate it for myself when the time came.
I don't suffer from Titanimania the way many seem to. Heck, I assume all the teenage girls swooning over Leonardo di Caprio have grown up a little in the 14 years and change since James Cameron's blockbuster. Nonetheless, I decided to commemorate the occasion by watching movies—and no, not that one, in any number of D's.
First, A Night to Remember. It's such an innocuous title for a film about one of the greatest disasters in maritime history. But it's also one of the most historically accurate films about the Titanic. In fact, James Cameron liked it so much, he adapted some parts of it for his own epic. It makes a few minor historical errors: the ship is portrayed as sinking in one piece, rather than splitting apart as the stern rose from the water. However, to the filmmakers' credit, this was not known as the time. It wasn't until Robert Ballard's expedition to the wreck in 1985 that it was known for certain that Titanic lay at the bottom in two pieces.
Other than that, A Night to Remember looks great for a 1958 movie, in glorious black and white. The cast is made up of notable British actors (as you would expect for a British movie) that may be somewhat obscure for a North American audience, but there are a few familiar faces: for example, Honor Blackman (Goldfinger, The Avengers) and David McCallum (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., NCIS).
From the sublime to the ridiculous: 1980s Raise the Titanic. The US military has developed an impenetrable missile shield, but need a rare mineral, byzanium, to power it. The only known source of byzanium was from a Russian mine, extracted clandestinely in 1912 by American miners and smuggled to England to be shipped back to the States. Unfortunately, the miners had the bad luck to ship the byzanium on the Titanic. The Americans decide that the easiest way to obtain the byzanium they need is to raise the Titanic and float it to New York, hiring former Admiral James Sandecker (Jason Robards) and his special projects director, Dirk Pitt (Richard Jordan).
Raise the Titanic is often cited as one of the most notorious bombs in cinematic history: it made back only a fraction of its $40 million budget (a seemingly small amount in an era when movies routinely cost $200 million or more, but still a small fortune for 1980) and was nominated for Worst Picture in the first round of Razzie awards, in 1981. To be fair, the movie has a fair bit to commend it, including fair performances by stars Robards and Jordan, a beautiful model of the Titanic wreck used for effects shots, and one of John Barry's best musical scores. I like Clive Cussler's novels, but they're not high literature; they're adventure potboilers suitable for killing time on long trips. The movie version of Raise the Titanic is no different.
Uh-oh:
David Tennant, the tenth Doctor Who, is to marry Georgia Moffett, the daughter of the fifth Doctor Who, Peter Davison.
OK, here's the problem. According to the old Fifth Doctor serial Mawdryn Undead, meeting and touching a past or future version of yourself would "short out the time differential" and cause a big explosion. So you can only imagine the results of marrying the daughter of your previous incarnation, and having yourself as your father-in-law. It'll make those family holiday gatherings a bit awkward, to say the least. ("Would you pass the mashed potatoes, please, David?" "Sure, Peter, just let me get these huge lead gloves on.")
Perhaps the Blinovitch Limitation Effect can help?
Then again, maybe it is just a TV show. All the best in the future to the happy couple.
Canadian comedic actor Leslie Nielsen died today after a bout with pneumonia. He was 84.
Today, Nielsen is probably best known for his deadpan comedic roles, especially in Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies. But he spent the first part of his career as a serious dramatic actor on both film and television. It was his second film role that made him famous: starring in 1956's Forbidden Planet as John J. Adams, a James Kirk-type spaceship commander. (Forbidden Planet - one of my favourite science-fiction films - was one of the main inspirations for Star Trek, which just goes to show that Canadians make the best starship captains. Oh, and Firefly too.)
A little-known fact outside of Canada is that Nielson's older brother Erik was a longtime Member of Parliament for Yukon and a Cabinet minister during the Conservative governments of the 1980s. This relationship was named in the (in)famous mockumentary The Canadian Conspiracy as the connection to a Canadian government conspiracy to subvert American media.
Rest in peace, Lt. Drebin.
Child actor Gary Coleman, obviously best known as the legendary Arnold "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis?" Jackson on the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, died today, apparently of a head injury due to a fall in his home. He was 42.
As a child and early teen, I'll admit that Diff'rent Strokes was a guilty pleasure, and Arnold was my favourite character. His scriptwriters knew how to write good lines, and he knew just the right way for the character to deliver the wit. And, of course, that catchphrase was pure gold.
The junior cast of Strokes seems to have been a byword for the stereotypical problems of child actors. All three of the original children - Todd Bridges, Dana Plato, and Coleman - had problems with the law. Coleman himself also had money problems and chronic health problems (a kidney disorder that stunted his growth and kept him on dialysis).
Ironically, 87-year-old Conrad Bain, who played Philip Drummond, Coleman's adoptive father, has now outlived two of his three fictional children. Plato died in 1999, and apparently only Bridges has been able to overcome his past problems and bring some sense of stability to his life.
And of course I'm not that much younger than Coleman was, either. Life is fleeting and can be gone in a second, all for a tap on the head. Rest in peace, Arnold.
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