Another bonus REVIEWS AND OTHERWISE episode on underseen film noir

 Second bonus episode, this time experimenting with musical underscore.  Eventually, I’ll take the plunge into reading commercials.

Here’s the link: https://anchor.fm/terry-mccarty/episodes/Bonus-Episode-Underseen-Film-Noir-e1219i1

Also available here: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy81ZDE4N2YyNC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==

And here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2o84GxeqDmbeytYC2n7hqX

The new closet for deceased Old Hollywood stars.

Someone who I respect overall has a podcast I follow (and authored a book I’m currently reading).  The podcast is being carried through Slate.com, which advertises a new episode as follows:

Rumors have circulated for decades, but the business of outing long-dead celebrities can be complicated and even harmful.

Apparently, the new rule with biographers is to re-create the kind of closet celebrities stayed in during the era when there were all kinds of professional and personal penalties for daring to come out (an exception is the new Rock Hudson bio ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS by Mark Griffin).  Oft-rumored bi-or-gay actors such as Barbara Stanwyck and Spencer Tracy are now written about as thoroughly heterosexual (with Tracy’s latest biographer, James Curtis, doing a long, loud denunciation of gay rumors in the acknowledgements section of allegedly intimate book SPENCER TRACY).

As a corollary to this form of apparent straight-washing, biographers make a public show of sticking out their literary tongues at authors who, for better or worse, write extensively on the subject of deceased closeted actors (prominent among them are Boze Hadleigh, Darwin Porter and Scotty Bowers).

In closing, the podcaster/author balks at too much discussion of “long-dead celebrities” in the midst of doing a series arc debunking the mostly-untrue salacious myths of Kenneth Anger’s first HOLLYWOOD BABYLON volume.  And this person is, at the same time, promoting a book which keeps the apparently “complicated” sexual life of its subject quite hetero-simple.

It may be one thing if surviving descendants of a celebrity wish to keep certain private incidents eternally hidden from public/media scrutiny.  But it’s quite another for authors to produce inaccurate/accurate within limits (but commercially appealing) history which treats readers as if they’re uniformly infantile bluenoses who want books to be as adoring and stress-free as promotional shorts for TCM.

What I've learned from over a year-and-a-half of being on Facebook.

A simple list in no particular order:
1. Facebook is great for reconnecting with people you've lost touch with over the decades.
Results can be wonderful--or sometimes quite bittersweet.
2. Some people friend others on Facebook for sincere reasons; others do it to rack
up their numbers-of-friends (just like in real life).  Glad that Mark Zuckerberg hasn't thought
of Frequent Friending Benefits quite yet.
3. If you had only a slight acquaintanceship with certain people in the normal world, it won't be
any different after you've friended them on Facebook.  Be prepared to post something to someone's wall/page and receive no response whatsoever (exception: when you're posting something complimentary about them).
4. Facebook is something I highly recommend for finding groups for just about anything one may be interested in.
5. As film critic/writer Karina Longworth said in a highly readable article in the recent issue of L.A. WEEKLY, Facebook is a place where your data is given to corporate advertisers to harvest.  Be aware of that when joining so you can control what you choose to share.
6. One person posting links can be another person's "spam."  I found that out (rather bluntly) earlier this year when I was unfriended by an Orange County poet.  But the other person could have easily skipped over the links he didn't want to read.
7. As with the real world, you won't please all the people all the time on Facebook.  Don't stress out
over it.

Why I haven't rushed out to big-studio summer movies yet.

Perhaps it's age--and perhaps it's also witnessing coming-attractions trailers. But I haven't been persuaded to invest time and admission money in slavish remakes of either THE A-TEAM (from the once-promising Joe NARC Carnahan) or THE KARATE KID (which at least proves that old showbiz legend Jerry Weintraub--who helped birth the original franchise--is someone you should never bet against).

But the cut-cut-cut-costs and play it safe-safe-safe methodology of the studios (one would think that Jeff Robinov would have been 86ed from Time Warner by now) seem to be biting them in the posterior--with Pixar craftsmanship (although with the recent Pixar tendency towards overlength) and Christopher Nolan imagination likely to be the only real offsets to a likely red-ink corporate moviemaking bottom line this summer.

In terms of the big-release summer films I have seen, here's some random opinionating:
The Cronenberg-esque SPLICE (about two-thirds of an engrossing film) would have been better off being distrubuted by IFC or Magnolia on a specialty theater/pay-per-view platform. For WB to throw it out (in the US) on a 2000-screen basis left it to laughed at by mass audience hyenas who wanted copious amounts of blood and dismemberment and less of a thoughtful update of the time-honored morality play about scientists playing God at their peril.
GET HIM TO THE GREEK was a superior Nicholas Stoller-directed Judd Apatow outing to FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL--with the same crack teamwork of Russell Brand and Jonah Hill. Unfortunately, anything emerging from the Apatow banner has to display a pandering, faux-MORK AND MINDY morality (still remembering Robin Williams being stuck with the what-I've-learned "Mork calling Orson" tags to each episode) that is becoming increasingly awkward with every Apatow-based outing. So, if you haven't seen GREEK already, expect a have-it-every-possible-way approach to the subjects of sex and drug use.
Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe's ROBIN HOOD was stupidly dumped on by mainstream critics who apparently expected Errol Flynn heroics and zest. But the 2010 version had enough action and humor--and fortunately didn't espouse the dourness and nihilism of Richard Lester and James Goldstone's 1976 ROBIN AND MARIAN (which ended with the deaths of the two protagonists). But contemporary critics/reviewers (e.g. the usually astute Karina Longworth) shrieked as if the Scott film was an exact clone of Lester's earlier (and semi-forgotten) outing.