A movie in review deux

Went to see Hollywoodland today, and as promised, I’m going to attempt to do a review. Whenever I review a movie, I always want to make sure I keep my articles as spoiler-free as possible. It won’t be a problem in this case, as there is really nothing to give away.

Hollywoodland, as you may remember from my previous entries, concerns itself with the mysterious suicide/murder in 1959 of George Reeves, best known for his portrayal of the title role in the TV series, The Adventures of Superman®.

Adrien Brody stars as Louis Simo, a private detective who lives and works out of a cheap motel while trying to make ends meet and help his ex-wife raise their son. Simo ends up doing an investigation of Reeves’ mysterious death, but only because the case is thrown in his general direction by other private detectives who have no interest in the case. He is initially hired by Reeves’ mother, who seems unwilling to accept the suicide verdict that was given the case before its’ closing.

Reeves’ own story is told in flashbacks throughout the movie. Ben Affleck plays Reeves, and while he did manage to look convincingly like Reeves in a couple of scenes, he just didn’t quite pull it off, in my opinion. Affleck was obviously trying to give Reeves a sophisticated voice and manner, but came off at times sounding as though he were doing a half-hearted British accent. I haven’t really read or seen anything to indicate what George Reeves was like in his offscreen life, but if Affleck’s portrayal is to be believed, Reeves wasn’t really a sympathetic person. He is portrayed here as a heavy drinker who seemed to wallow in self-pity over his perception of a lackluster career.

Bob Hoskins and Diane Lane appear as Eddie and Toni Mannix, the former a studio mogul, and the latter as his wife. Toni meets Reeves at a party, and immediately begins an affair with him. This leads to both becoming suspects in Reeves’ murder.

Robin Tunney plays Leonore Lemmon, a girl Reeves meets in New York and brings back to California, promising to marry her. When he ultimately changes his mind about the marriage, this provides enough motive for her to become a suspect in Simo’s eyes as well.

All in all, the entire cast gives good, solid performances in their respective roles. The cinematography is excellent as well. However, much like The Black Dahlia, nobody really comes across as a sympathetic character. There’s nobody to root for, and nobody with whom to identify. Also, there are some scenes that seem to take too long, and not really add anything to the plot. There is a brief scene with a drunk Simo confronting his son at school, which ends up being resolved at the end of the movie. Neither scene did anything for me, to be honest.

The movie never resolves anything about the death of Reeves. Simo develops three plausible theories about how it happened, but none of them are proven in any way. This is also a movie that doesn’t really have a clear ending; it just comes to a grudging stop right before the credits roll.

I gave Dahlia 3 ½ stars out of 5. Hollywoodland I can only give 3. It’s a good enough movie, but I can’t quite recommend seeing it in the theater.

How the mind is affected by random sleep patterns

It’s currently three twenty one A.M. I sat down to supper around 7-7:30 last night, and I seem to remember nodding off while watching TV around 8. The next thing I know, I’m waking up and it’s 1:50 A.M. Can’t get to sleep again, even though I should be in bed. So, I’ve been cruising the Internet for the past couple of hours. Not only that, I haven’t found one interesting thing on it.

Hollywoodland, the movie that I’ve been griping about wanting to see, actually did finally make it to town. I’m going to see it on Friday, so hopefully after that I’ll be able to post a review.

I’m starting to get tired enough to go to bed and actually sleep, but I’m nervous that if I do, I’ll end up sleeping way later than I should. So, herein lies my inner debate: Go to bed, and hope I don’t sleep too late? Go to bed, but set the alarm? Stay up the rest of the night and all day, and go to bed early tomorrow night? Actually, that last option is the one I most want to do, since my sleeping patterns have been completely shot for months. That might be what I need to do to get them back on track.

Fall is here. The leaves are turning. The temps are cooling. People are already bitching about the cold. I ask myself, what are they going to do when the weather actually gets cold? I love fall. I get so sick of the heat and humidity in the summer. Don’t get me wrong, I do like summer, but fall has always been my favorite season of the four. Fall, followed by spring. Summer and winter I could do without, as long as I could have a year of just fall and spring.

Something I just realized. I started this blog on MySpace back on December 31. I had done 17 entries by the time I brought it here to Blogger back in June. This is now my 17th entry on Blogger. There is no real significance to this little realization; I’m really just using it to pad my word count on this entry. I don’t think that Blogger is going to be the final resting place, though. At some point, if I ever gain a substantial (in terms of quantity, not quality) readership, I’d like to move it again to a different page, where I could have a little more freedom in the design and have it more reachable.

The words are just not flowing like they usually do. I’m going to hang this up, and get it posted. I’ll talk to you again sometime after I’ve seen Hollywoodland.

A movie in review

I really wanted to see Hollywoodland. But, for some reason, the powers that be decided that this movie would not be shown here at the local Brainerd/Baxter Cinema 10, so I've had to file that one under "wait until home video." They did however consent to showing The Black Dahlia, so I went with a friend to see that earlier this evening.

It came in at just about exactly two hours, so I didn’t bother with any refreshments. I don’t like getting up during a movie, and I like sitting through a long movie with a full bladder even less, so no beverages.

I don’t wish to give away anything to those who have not yet seen the movie, so this review will be brief. The movie itself was very well done. It is an adaptation of a novel by James Ellroy, which is a fictitious account of the famous (?) unsolved California murder case of 15-year-old actress-wannabe Elizabeth Short, found dead and mutilated in 1947.

Without using spoilers, I will say that while the movie itself was well done, you never really get comfortable with it. There are no sympathetic characters, nobody you feel like rooting for. Josh Hartnett plays the lead character, boxer-turned-policeman Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert, who wants to concentrate on another case, but is unwillingly drawn by his partner into the Dahlia mystery. Hartnett plays his part well, but you feel no connection to him at all; it has the emotional feel of a documentary, albeit in film noir style.

The plot moves along at a fairly steady pace, but takes odd turns here and there so you can never quite get a handle for what is going on at any moment. I went to an early showing, filled with old people who I could hear explaining the movie to each other. I remember wishing that they understood it well enough to explain some parts to me.


If I were to use a star rating, I’d have to give this movie 3 ½ stars out of five. Excellent direction by Brian DePalma, good performances by Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, and Mia Kirshner in the title role, seen only in filmed “screen tests” give it the initial 3 ½ stars, but a tricky plot, and no genuine sympathy keep me from giving it a full 5 out of 5. I do recommend it, though, if for no other reason than perhaps you could explain to me the parts that confused me.

Five years later

I know I promised to shy away from politics on this blog, so I will make it brief.

Here we sit, five years later. I remember that day vividly. I had called in sick to work, because I felt like taking a day to myself. I went to the bank to withdraw a bit of cash, because my cousin was also planning on leaving work early, and we were going to leave town for the day.

I went home, and hopped onto the Internet to do some casual browsing. I noticed a headline about the WTC on my news page, but paid it little mind. I figured it was an article about the bombings that had happened there several years prior. My TV was set to a station that was playing M*A*S*H reruns, and this particular station never does any news coverage.

I happened to flip to another channel, and that was when I found out what was going on. I sat and watched numbly as the news team played and replayed the footage of the plane striking the tower, and the tower collapsing.

I disconnected from the Internet, and called my cousin. We talked about it for a few minutes, and decided that the best immediate thing we could do was leave town as planned, to get away from the whole thing.

We drove to St. Cloud, a city roughly 60 miles to my south, listening to the radio the entire trip, completely unbelieving what we were hearing. We didn’t do much else that day; in fact, we ended up turning around and returning home not long after reaching St. Cloud.

I’m not going to go into a rehash of the actual events of the day, because we all remember them, and the TV networks are devoting a great deal of time to it today. I do need to comment briefly on a lot of the silly shit that went on afterward. There was the $20.00 bill trick, where if you folded the bill a certain way, you supposedly got a picture of the twin towers, and the Pentagon. This was tied in with the fact that 9 + 11 = 20. Thousands of emails were written, and forwarded all over the place with theories, conspiracies, and God knows what else. One particularly ridiculous email forward had to do with the “camera recovered from the wreckage” which showed a person on the roof of one tower with a clearly visible airplane in the background, heading for the collision. There were also supposed quotes from the Koran, which would have warned the terrorists of the consequences of their actions had they paid any attention to it, but this particular quote doesn’t actually exist in the Koran. One that I am particularly sick of, and it still pops up in my email box to this day, is the rumors about (select one) Coca-Cola®, Pepsi-Cola®, Dr. Pepper®, and for all I know, Shasta®, censoring parts of the Pledge of Allegiance on their commemorative cans.

It never ceases to amaze me how a tragedy of mammoth proportions such as this can affect people in different ways. On the one hand, it turns many of us into raving paranoids, as cited above. On a more positive note, however, it did reawaken a surge of patriotism in our citizens that hadn’t been seen for a long, long time.

This went on a bit longer than I had originally envisioned, and I’m sorry to tell you at this point that I don’t really have anything specific to offer other than my ramblings above. I’m not really going to do much today. I will, though, offer a silent prayer to remember those lost in those horrible actions 5 years ago, along with my hope that nothing like it ever happens again.

The Superman® curse Part II

This continues my short article on the bad luck that has plagued people involved with Superman®. I left off last time with George Reeves, famous for playing Clark/Superman® on the 1952-1958 television series The Adventures of Superman®.

In 1963, the staff of then-president John F. Kennedy gave DC Comics™ approval to do a comic book story in which the Man of Steel endorsed JFK’s physical fitness programs, and the story was scheduled for publication in April of 1964. The story was initially going to be scrapped after the assassination of JFK, but Lyndon Johnson encouraged DC to rework it a bit, and publish it.

Comedian Richard Pryor played a villain in Superman III® in 1983. Three years later, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Marlon Brando, who, amongst his many, many movie roles played Jor-El, Superman®’s Kryptonian father in Superman® The Movie, 1978, had several personal tragedies befall him in later years. In 1990,his son Christian shot and killed his sister Cheyenne’s lover, and was sentenced to prison. In 1995, Cheyenne, Brando’s daughter committed suicide over this murder. Brando himself died at age 80 of complications due to lung, heart and liver failure, and diabetes.

John Haymes Newton and Gerard Christopher, who both starred as the title character in the live-action Superboy® television series which ran from 1988-1992, fell into obscurity after their respective tenures as the character. The same case can be made for Stacy Haiduk, who played Lana Lang on the show. Granted, not having a grand showbiz career really isn’t all that tragic, but it still fits into the irony factor.

Lee Quigley, who played the baby Kal-El in the 1978 movie Superman® The Movie, tragically died in March 1991, at the age of fourteen, after inhaling chemical solvents.

Christopher Reeve played the title role in Superman® The Movie and three sequels throughout the 1980s. In May of 1995, Reeve was paralyzed from the neck down after being thrown from his horse, and died in 2004 due to heart failure caused by his paralysis. His widow, Dana Reeve, died of lung cancer in 2006 at the age of 45, despite the fact that she was not a smoker.

Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in the movies, suffered from intense bipolar disorder. In 1996, she went missing for several days and was found by police in a paranoid, delusional state.

Lane Smith, who played Clark Kent and Lois Lane's boss Perry White on the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman® was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease in April 2005 and died of the disease in June of 2005.

While all of certainly makes for an interesting theory, it should also be pointed out that there have been many people connected to Superman® who have not had any tragedies befall them. Actors Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher, who played the title roles in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman® both continue to have successful careers.

Actress Annette O’Toole, who portrayed Lana Lang in Superman III® currently plays Martha Kent on the WB networks Superman®-themed television series Smallville.

In fact, I don’t know of anybody connected with the Smallville television show that has yet experienced any tragedies due to a possible Superman® curse.

None of the above listed incidents prove the existence of a curse. Of course, none of the above listed incidents rule out the possibility of a curse, either. I don’t particularly believe in the notion of a curse, but it does make for a series of interesting coincidences, which can make interesting reading. This is why I presented them to you in this two-part article. I hope it was entertaining.

As in Part I, all of the above material was researched through Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia/dictionary.

The Superman® curse

This week sees the openings of two Golden Age-era Hollywood movies, Hollywoodland, on September 8, and The Black Dahlia, on September 15. Both look to be very intriguing movies, as they are both about unsolved Hollywood mysteries, but for now I want to concentrate on Hollywoodland, and specifically the fabled “Curse of Superman.”

Superman® was created in 1938 by teenagers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Their first use of the name was in a short story titled “The Reign of the Superman” written by Siegel, and illustrated by Shuster, about a man who gained and then mis-used fantastic mental powers. Eventually, the familiar red and blue suited Man of Steel was created in the initial form of a newspaper comic strip, and was first published in Action Comics #1. The character was the very first costumed superhero, and brought a lot of success to DC Comics, who had acquired all rights from Siegel and Shuster.

Superman® has been a staple in almost all media ever since. Primarily in comic books, the character has also had long-running newspaper strips, radio dramas, cartoons, television programs, movies, novels, and so on. What is interesting, and also somewhat eerie, is that many of the people associated with Superman® have had extreme instances of very bad luck in their lives. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail on any of these; I’ll just hit the highlights.

The very beginning of the bad luck starts right with Siegel and Shuster. They sold all of the rights to the character to National Periodic Publications™, later known as DC Comics™ for the sum of $130, and a contract to produce regular stories. After several lawsuits against the company that lasted several decades, they were eventually awarded an annual pension and their names were reinstated as creators on all Superman® stories and productions.

Brothers Max and Dave Fleischer were animators, and the founders of Fleischer Studios, who did a lot of famous cartoons back in the 1940s. They brought Superman® into cartoons, and began quarreling with each other shortly thereafter. Their studio went into a financial slump, and they ended up selling to Paramount™. Paramount™ fired the brothers, and renamed their studio. Dave found a successful career as an animator at another famous studio, but Max died in poverty. Nowadays, most, if not all of the Fleischer Studios Superman® cartoons are considered public domain, and can be found available on DVDs or on various websites around the Internet. I’ve been watching a lot of them lately, and I personally think that the animation in these cartoons far surpasses a lot of the animation done today.

Two low-budget 1940s movie serials brought Kirk Alyn fame for portraying Superman®, but he was unable to find other acting work because studios couldn’t see him as anything but Superman®, so he eventually retired from acting and moved to Arizona.

The soon to be released movie Hollywoodland tells the story of George Reeves, best known for his portrayal of Clark Kent/Superman® in the 1952-1958 television series The Adventures of Superman™. Like Alyn, Reeves was best known for this role despite appearing in numerous movies and other projects. Reeves was found dead of a gunshot wound at his home. The death was ruled a suicide, but too many things about the death were suspicious, so murder was also considered as a factor.

Most of the above information was found on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia/dictionary. In order to save space, I am going to continue this article in another entry to be posted in a couple of days.