Vautrin

Just saw on another website that Florian Schneider, co-found of Kraftwerk, has died of cancer at the age of 73. May the Krautrock be with you. Florian Schneider, co-founder of Kraftwerk, dies at 73 https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/06/world/florian-schneider-kraftwerk-music-intl/index.html

I had brain freeze and had forgotten about the Holmes & Watson movie. Now i remember it. Doesn't sound very interesting. Since Moriarty is the most famous opponent of Holmes and Adler is the woman, I can see why Richie used them; it was the easiest way to go. They were the usual suspects. I remember in the stories Holmes could hold his own in fights, but I don't think he did that very often and certainly not to the extent that Downey Jr. did in the two movies. It doesn't matter that much in the movie as a whole, it was just unusual to see Holmes so physically active. Being a cocaine user, he must have been glad to meet Freud, a fellow user.

One can be both a Dickensian and a Doylesian. I suppose if Ferrell wants to try his hand at playing Holmes and some suits are willing to let him do it, there's not much one can do about it, but it is hard to see him as Holmes. While the Downey Jr. films were entertaining he turned Sherlock into a martial arts master, which was kind of weird. And those scenes which were done twice, once in real time and once in slo-mo got kind of silly after a while. In general the Brett series was well done and true to the stories for the most part. The only thing off putting thing to me was the way Brett played Holmes--lots of nervous tics and bizarre behavior as if Sherlock was in need of a good mental health professional or whatever was available at that time.

Never eat at a place called Pop's. Though I must admit that burger that pop cooked up at the start of the flick looked very generous, especially compared to those thin Depression-era burgers one saw in movies of that time. And it must have been very rare as he got it done in about a minute. If I were Andrews I would have snatched that thing away from Darnell and chowed down. Perhaps a foreshadowing of how hard Dana tried to get into Linda's pants without success. I thought Alice Faye was pretty sexy in a prim and proper way which only makes it more exciting. I certainly wouldn't have left her on their marriage night, though they must have wished that the sister was not so near them. Yuck. And it was good to see Bickford, the abusive cop, get caught in the end. A pretty decent noir with a happy ending, though I felt a little bit sorry for Kilbride still mourning Stella at the conclusion. You were old enough to be her grandfather, so you really should have controlled yourself. It was a tad on the creepy side.

If this is supposed to rehabilitate Wayne's views on minorities it failed miserably. And I would take the Stalin put a contract out on Wayne theory with a very tall glass of vodka.

Also, if June 21st isn't the first day of summer, June 20th is. June 21st is rather sparse IMO. Jean-Paul Sartre, Jane Russell, Increase Mather (I always got a kick out of that first name), and Ray Davies.

My birthday is also on the 21st of June. I always liked that day because it's often the first day of summer. I think my mother may have come down the Hudson on a boat.

Look at the 1971 interview Wayne did with Playboy. Yep, he was a racist. Racists rarely come out and say "I'm a racist." Once again, the tale of Frank taking Sammy to different hospitals which would not admit him is an urban legend. Booze Brain wasn't even anywhere near when the accident happened and I don't think Sammy was refused admittance by a hospital. Since both Davis' parents were Christians, I don't see how Sammy was half Jewish. Of course he did convert to Judaism in the early 1960s.

Percy "Playboy" Helton, the unheralded Hollywood chick magnet Though he was somewhat diminutive, character actor Percy Helton was big with some of Tinseltown's most gorgeous ladies. And Helton didn't mess around with B actresses. Among his conquests were Lana, Rita, Marilyn and many other big stars. When asked what attracted them to him Percy modestly remarked, "I treated them like ladies. I put them on a pedestal, though really I wish they had put me on one, literally." The ladies were disappointed and men like Gable and Flynn were relieved that Percy stopped his wolfish ways when he married the love of his life Edna in 1931. Percy, an old-fashioned gent would not betray his marriage vows and stayed at home. Eventually his phone stopped ringing when women realized they would have to do without the "Helton treatment" as it was known. When asked about it, Percy smiled and replied, "You know the old saying, good things come in small packages." Helton gave this reporter a wink and went back to his Pepsi and grilled cheese sandwich.

Runt, Runt, RUNT. That cracked me up. Bev wasn't bi-polar. She was just a master manipulator who used people for her own advantage. When she needed Percy at the beginning she was nice to him. When he had outlived his usefulness, she told him what she really thought of him. He was obviously delusional for thinking that a gal like Bev would be interested in a guy like him. I liked the fact that, for a change, nobody died. Egan returned to his loveless marriage and Bev gets on the bus out of town, already picking out her next sucker. Some harm, little foul. The only thing more puke-inducing than Percy smothering Bev's hands with kisses was the shot where Egan breaks into her room and Percy is covering her neck with kisses and she seems to just lie there prone as if he's sucked all the energy out of her. Very bizarre. Without Helton it's just another The Postman Always Rings Twice ripoff. His creepiness really adds to the movie. And by unintentionally upsetting Bev and Egan's scheme, he gets his revenge for her treatment of him. Did he ever get the twenty smackers he lent her? I doubt it. It may not be much, but it's short and entertaining. Long tall Bev's built for speed, she's got everything ol' Percy needs. Oh baby.

Good story. My mom would give me a dirty look or say something Okay, that's enough and then I'd tone it way down. Sometimes my dad would join in as he didn't like the f word either. So I packed that word up and kept it for another day.

Maybe he would be fortunate enough to bite a Clorox drinking Trump fan.

I reread books on a fairly frequent basis, but ones that I haven't read in a number of years and am a little vague on the details if not the general plot and themes of the book. I suppose one advantage of an LP is that they were usually about 40 minutes long, whereas a book took a lot more time to get through. My mother cursed very infrequently and I can't recall her using the f word. I made up for that lack.

How about this--Udo turns into a vampire and the flick is titled Kiss of Undeath. He can use that huge hat to block out the sun.

That was posted mostly tongue in cheek so to speak. My mother rarely cursed, so she became upset when I did all the time. I remember when I watched Now, Voyager for the first time. She wasn't interested in seeing it as she had seen it years ago. So much for the timeless classics.

I'm sure you've read a lot about Tracy but why would a 41 year old movie star at the height of his fame try to enlist in the armed forces? Sounds a bit unusual. During WW II Howard went on making films. I don't think he was in the RAF. There is still a lot of controversy about why his plane was shot down. We may never know for certain.

I was one for a little less time, maybe three or four years. If one lived in a small town it was a great place to order foreign or less well-known American films. I probably have some of the old catalogs around somewhere. They were a dream for any film fan. And the people who took your orders were always very friendly and polite.

Yeah, it takes more guts to play football and hit somebody over the head with a chair than to face the Wehrmacht in battle. Right. Wouldn't Tracy have been too old to serve in WW II? Forty one at the time.

I haven't seen a video rental store in years. I remember two types of stores in town. One had a large selection of new movies, with a few classics, the other had mostly classics and foreign films. They both have long been out of business. I remember Home Film Festival, a mail service that specialized in foreign films and more obscure movies. The only hassle was having to mail back the videos when one was done with them, but that was a minor issue. They were located somewhere in PA. I'm sure they are no longer around, but it was fun while it lasted.

I too am disgusted with TCM showing these newer movies, the ones with naked people running around and loads of dirty language. If I want to see such things I'll just stay at home and not watch TV. I want to see the classic movies from the 1930s and 1940s that don't have all that filth in them. C'mon TCM, let's get back to clean, uplifting cinema that both taught good moral lessons and was entertaining at the same time.

Lauren Bacall was also in a two part episode of The Rockford Files. It's a small world after all.

Sorry to hear about Tom Lester. I was just watching Green Acres last night. I don't know if Lester was the second hardest working man in show business, but Eb Dawson was likely the laziest farm hand on TV. R.I.P.

This will be one of those to each their own situations. I like Conte as an actor. He often seemed to play a guy with a chip on his shoulder who was going to spend a large part of the movie feeding it, but he did that very well. I'm enjoying watching Mad Men again. I missed some of the early episodes and an occasional one during the later years. It's also easier to follow the plot watching it every day instead of once a week. When I first saw that episode I thought that Sally just had a crush on McCallum, like many kids do with TV stars. Then I read a detailed synopsis of that episode and found out her feelings went um....deeper. I missed that. Well it was pretty dark in that TV room. No wonder Betty flipped out.

John Hamm and Richard Conte? Shirley you jest. Granted, Conte had a certain rough-hewn appeal, but he lacked the classic good looks of John Hamm. I've been watching reruns of Mad Men on Audience, and not once have I said to myself Wow, Don Draper reminds me of Richard Conte. Even Sally knows better.

Not sure when it will show up again, but FCM or whatever it's now called has been playing Mr. Scoutmaster.