A blurb about The Night Of The Iguana

    For some reason, I imagine that Tennessee Williams pictured himself in the role of Ava Gardner as Maxine Faulk. I mean, who wouldn't want to be in a cabana boy sandwich, with those gyrating pelvises that sound like rattle snakes?  We all fight off the Blue Devil in our own way, and this is how Maxine chose to fight off hers, and can you blame her?  Richard Burton's Shannon is like, 'What?!' Ava Gardner's Maxine is like, 'You're an idiot Shannon if you think I wouldn't do that in a heartbeat.'
     Who is the Blue Devil you ask? Why it's depression and anxiety, of course. Before Paxil, before Prozac, there was alcohol, and barbituates, and sex, and marijuana, and the occasional cabana boy.  If there's one thing you can't do, it's play dumb with Tennessee Williams. There is something painful about watching another person have a nervous breakdown. It makes me want to lie down on the couch and drawl,'I have a nervous condition,' as I sip mint juleps. 

 

     I never thought I'd see Richard Burton's junk in wet tighty whities. Ever. But here you go. Proud as a peacock. Maybe this is where the expression Liz and Dick came from. I don't know.  Sue Lyon is like, "Help me, save me from this creepy middle age guy."

    I remember one time when I was in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  I was walking across the bridge to Old San Juan to catch the ferry to the Bacardi factory. A boy on a bicycle was riding toward me with an iguana in his arms. He held it up towards me an shouted, "Meester, Meester". After he passed me, he stopped and tossed the iguana over the railing and it swam away. True story.  This must be some kind of game boys in the Caribbean play.  It was just like the scene in Houston's movie where the boys hold an iguana up to the passing bus of tourists.

 Preston Sinclair

The Film Experience 

A Blurb about 127 Hours

One of those 'Oh crap' moments

    

    I liked this movie. I think it appealed to the single male outdoorsy gear head loner in me. It makes me stop and think, 'there but for the grace of God go I'.  There have been numerous times I've gotten in the car and gone for a day trip hiking at the beach, or in the mountains by myself without actually telling someone where I was going. However, the difference between myself and Aron Ralston, played by James Franco, is that I usually shoot off a quick e-mail, or a cryptic text to a friend to give someone a clue as to my whereabouts. 
     I remember one time I broke the cardinal rule while hiking a local nature trail, and I stepped off the path to get closer to Eel Bay in The Thousand Islands.  It was early spring and the ground was water logged and a rock I used as a stepping stone went out from under me. In a heart beat I was at the bottom of a small ravine, flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me. It was sobering to think that I could have hit the back of my head on one of those rocks on the way down, and stayed there a lot longer than I did. As it was I went home with a tear in the bottom of my jeans to remind me of my foolhardiness.
     In 127 Hours, director Danny Boyle takes a Man vs Nature story and turns it into a Man vs Himself story. At first I was a little skeptical because I had recently seen James Franco in The Great and Powerful Oz. I was afraid he was going to be too charming and charismatic. Thankfully, Franco showed us his goofy awkward side, especially in the scenes when he meets up with the two female hikers. You could really see that they didn't know how to take him at first. 
     Franco is at his best as he slowly he realizes that he really could die out there, a fact that he remains in denial about even for a while after he becomes trapped by the boulder. We can see the fatigue and fear creeping in from the shadows and crevices of the rocks. His complexion becomes pale, and then more ashen as his time with the boulder clicks by.  Boyle does a great job of showing us the mental toll the ordeal is taking on Ralston, and the lengths to which Ralston was willing to go in order to save his own life. 
     Lesson learned. Below is a video clip I recently took when I went mountain climbing in the Catskills.

 
Preston Sinclair

Marilyn Monroe: during The Misfits

 (c) Eve Arnold

One of my favorite pictures of Marilyn Monroe. It looks like it could have been taken yesterday.

Cat's do the darndest things.

This made me laugh today.

The Oscars 2013

     Lately I've been cocooning. It's a thing. Like when caterpillars wrap themselves in a silk chrysalis and emerge as a magnificent butterfly or an addled moth. I wrap myself in a plush acrylic throw of Labrador puppies and emerge as a fatter pasty faced version of myself. The one thing that draws me out of my cocoon is The Oscars. Like a moth to a flame, I am drawn to the red carpet.
     The net is still a-buzz about it. What the hell happened to Renee Zellweger? I don't know. Was she drunk? Did she have too much Botox? Now I see what the whole Kenny Chesney thing was about. The poor guy probably realized that he'd gotten himself involved with a nut case and bolted, and now he's been branded as gay for life. I'm beginning to suspect Renee's PR people had something to do with that. Zellweger couldn't smile to save her life. She could purse her lips however. That may come in handy in a future movie role where she has to eat lemons. I'm sure her agent is waiting for the phone to ring as we speak.

     Next up, Jennifer Lawrence. Okay, she had me at The Hunger Games. I haven't even seen Silver Linings Playbook (By the way Bradley Cooper brought his mother to The Oscars and does anyone else think that's gay?). When she tripped on her dress on the way up to accept her award I think a collective gasp went out all over the world. We all reached out to her and wished we were there to save her. It only added to the drama.

     And the whole Seth Macfarlane thing irks me. The audience seemed to groan on cue. Don't get me wrong. I get the whole demographic thing. The Oscars got a bump in the ratings because of him. And I even thought the "Really...It's been 150 years and it's still too soon?" line in reference to Lincoln was morbidly funny. I couldn't help missing Hugh Jackman though. I know he had to sing in the Les Miserables set. But still, The Oscars needs a well rounded Entertainer with a capitol E. He's a cutie but we saw Macfarlane's  face too little too late and that hurt the show somewhat.

   I would be remiss if I did not mention the whole Quvenzhane Wallis thing. I found out about this after the fact and was appalled by the whole sordid affair. I refuse to even mention the name of the website involved because I do not want to direct even one hit to them. Some pundits are beginning to say the website  handled the situation well, which is in and of itself the media's disgusting and perverted spin of the truth. I find this disturbing on so many levels. She is a child. I had watched Beasts Of The Southern Wild the night before on DVD with my father, and while I had mixed feelings about the movie, I secretly rooted for Quvenzhane for best actress.Update your spell check, and practice your pronunciation people because I think your going to be hearing her name a lot more often.

     No, the best part of The Oscars is the Oscar Party: the Chicken Marsalis, the white wine, the lemon cake, the dish, the upset, the betrayal.  It's like the Super Bowl only classier and more cut throat. The Oscars are very competitive, everyone wants their favorite actor/actress/director/producer to win. Lives are changed, money changes hands. And now as the snow comes down it's time to wrap myself in my favorite cocoon with one of my favorite movies of all time and wait for spring when I will emerge again a new me.

Preston Sinclair

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: Broadway 2013

(c) Annie Leibovitz

I love Tennessee Williams. He exposes denial and deceit where he finds it, sometimes to no avail.   All of the characters in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof lie, and know that they are being lied to.  They wink, they nod and they think that they are so smart and that no one else knows what is going on.  Such mendacity.
     Scarlett Johansson's Maggie is a white trash debutante. She drops all pretense of the southern belle and announces to anyone that will listen that "You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it,"  in her husky southern drawl.  She sounds like she smokes two packs of Camels a day.   There is no sing song southern lilt to her voice. Maggie is calling people on their shit and there is going to be hell to pay if they don't straighten up and fly right. She's pissed off, and can you blame her? Her husband is a closet case alcoholic. Her father-in-law is a pervy, dying horny toad, and she's surrounded by no neck little monsters. Johansson carries the first act, and is the strong rope that connects the second and third acts.
     Benjamin Walker's Brick is a wet mess. He's a whiny jock on a bourbon bender. He limps around in nothing but a towel during the first act. At one point he drops the towel, and bares his butt like he's in a locker room full of men, instead of in the bedroom with his wife, which only fuels the melodrama. Brick's anger flares at the mention of the name Skipper, while his wife and even his father try to be supportive of his relationship with his former team mate. His family pretends not to judge him as they tip toe around the pink elephant in the bedroom. If only Brick could have admitted that he loved Skipper, everyone would be able to move on. Today, we would call this a Bro-mance, back then it was named dirty.
     Perhaps the most disturbing character in this mid century melodrama is Debra Monk's Big Momma. She is the brunt of everyone's joke. Including her own husband, Big Daddy.   She is shrill and deliberate in her denial of the truth. It was a brave portrayal of a desperate, clingy idiot.
     Big Daddy on the other hand had a few layers. Big Daddy is where the tire hits the bone, to mix a metaphor.  The only problem that I had with Cirian Hinds' Big Daddy is that he sometimes dropped his southern accent for a mid-western brogue. C'mon, it's not that difficult. Pick a dialect and stick to it.
     If there is one weakness, I blame it on the director for leaving the actors to their own devices to figure the whole thing out.  It seems his main contribution was Skipper's ghost which was ultimately cut. Go figure. The sound effects were way too loud and the set was a disorienting series of french doors.
     It is easy to make comparisons to the classic 1958 film with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. Taylor's Maggie the cat was soft and purring and beautiful, but she had claws.  One believes that she was at one time a stunning debutante who could have had any young beau she wanted.  Now she's stuck in a passionless, loveless marriage. Paul Newman' Brick smoulders with regret and loneliness. He also had the right haircut. Benjamin Walker's hair was too long and glam for sports announcer of the fifties. It seems like a small thing, and it hits you after you leave the theater, however it leaves one with the impression that Walker didn't deem the role important enough to get a haircut.
     Tennessee Williams wrote a short essay called Person-To-Person which appears as a prologue in the book Cat On a Hot Tin Roof published by Signet (1958).  In it he says, "Meanwhile!-I want to go on talking to you as freely and intimately about what we live and die for as if I knew you better than anyone else whom you know."
     Keep talking Tennessee, keep talking.

Preston Sinclair

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof : Official Broadway site

Bad Donald: A movie review

Bad Donald: The Movie

                                                 
Warning:may contain spoilers.

     In the cult classic made-for-tv movie Bad Donald, the shy three legged orange tabby accidentally kills his Dad. Dad trips over Donald in the dark and hits his head on the sink. Donald, afraid and full of remorse, buries his beloved Dad in the litter box. Donald then decides to avoid the police by hiding behind the storage containers under the bed. His plan works until new tenants move into the apartment.  Donald terrorizes their poor golden retriever puppy named Babs.  Poor Babs tries to warn her master that something is very wrong in this apartment, but no one pays any attention to her.  Chaos ensues when the nosy neighbor, Mrs Shoemaker, looks in the window and sees Donald eating Babs' kibble.  Mrs Shoemaker has a stroke and dies from the shock of seeing Donald alive. Donald panics and has no choice but to bury her under the porch.  The family's suspicions deepen until the stunning climax that will send you screaming when Donald suddenly claws his way through the mattress. 

People who liked this movie also liked Bad Ronald:

"Don't do it...don't look through the whole in the wall"

Bad Ronald at IMDB 

     What constitutes a cult classic? Does one have to be a member of the cult to watch it? Or does watching the movie make you a de facto member of the cult. Is it really a classic movie?  For example, I could get a group of people together and we could shave our heads, wear orange sherbet robes, and chant nam yoho renga kyo, while we watch Gone With The Wind.  But that doesn't make it a cult classic.

     No, its something bigger than that. It's a community of like minded people who think enough about a film to invite their friends over and say 'You need to see this movie'. After the movie, you're like whoa, what the hell just happened. You start talking about it and thinking about it and boom, you're in the cult.

     Screaming is a great way to relieve tension. So if you like to scream and laugh at the same time (Without all the blood of a Quentin Tarantino movie) go out and rent Bad Ronald and watch it with some friends tonight.

Sorry, Bad Donald isn't out on DVD.

Preston Sinclair