Weird Halloween, this year.
It was raining quite a bit before the evening and, truthfully, because of COVID, I truly wasn’t up to seeing strangers at my door.
Either way it didn’t matter as not a single person came by during the evening.
Here’s hoping next Halloween we’re back to normal!
Yesterday, on Halloween, came the very sad news that Sean Connery passed away at the age of 90.
While Barry Nelson was the first actor play James Bond -as an American secret agent with Felix Leiter being a British secret agent!- in the TV series Climax’s 1954 adaptation of Casino Royale with Peter Lorre starring as villain Le Chiffre…
… the fact is that most people feel Sean Connery was the “first” -and to many the very best- James Bond. Mr. Connery would play James Bond in a total of seven films, Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds are Forever (1971), and the “unofficial” (for a while anyway!) James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983).
Of course, Mr. Connery’s career, though given a HUGE boost by the role of James Bond, was not limited to this character.
Early in his career and before James Bond he would appear in the delightful Walt Disney musical Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)…
…and go up against Tarzan as one of the villains in 1959’s Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (the trailer pretty much gives away Connery’s fate!)…
In 1964 Mr. Connery would appear in an Alfred Hitchcock directed film, Marnie…
Sadly, in my humble opinion Marnie would mark the start of Alfred Hitchcock’s decline as a director after he reached a peak with both Psycho and The Birds, which came just before this film.
While the role of James Bond certainly propelled Sean Connery into the stratosphere of actors, by the time he embarked on You Only Live Twice, his fifth Bond film, the actor had grown very tired of the role and yearned to move on. He did just that, leaving the role afterwards but subsequently returning for one more film, Diamonds Are Forever -supposedly for quite a good sum of money, which he donated to charity- after the George Lazenby starring On Her Majesty’s Secret Service didn’t do as well as hoped and the producers lost their patience with Lazenby.
The 1970’s presented an interesting time for Mr. Connery, who would appear in an assortment of interesting and at times even odd films. None of which was odder than the John Boorman directed 1974 film Zardoz…
In 1975 Sean Connery, good friend Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer would star in The Man Who Would Be King, a film that director John Huston had been trying for many years to make, originally with Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart (!!!) in the titular roles…
That’s not to say all the films he made during this time were good. There were a few clunkers here and there, none more so than the 1979 late era disaster film Meteor…
The 1980’s proved good for Mr. Connery, who would again star in many interesting films. For me, one of his best acting showcases was in the 1981 science fiction film Outland. While I feel the film itself isn’t much more than a decent “B” film which took the “look” of Alien (one could even view Outland as an unofficial film set in the Alien universe before humanity ventured past the Solar System!) and the plot of High Noon, nonetheless Mr. Connery acted his (pardon my French) ass off in the film, giving his Marshall character incredible depth…
Settling into more “elderly” roles, In 1986 Mr. Connery would co-star with Christopher Lambert in the cult classic Highlander…
His role in 1987’s The Untouchables would earn Mr. Connery a well deserved Oscar…
Toward the tail end of the 1980’s Sean Connery would appear as Indiana Jones’ father Henry Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…
Another decade gone, Mr. Connery’s first film of the 1990’s was the terrific Hunt For Red October…
Mr. Connery would appear in several other films during that decade, some good and some not so good. Perhaps one of the more interesting roles he had during that decade was in 1996’s action/adventure film The Rock opposite Nicholas Cage…
Sean Connery’s character, John Patrick Mason, was in reality a thinly disguised James Bond!
Once the 1990’s were done and we entered the new century, Mr. Connery would appear in only a couple of more films, ending his starring role career with the 2003 film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…
Based on an Alan Moore (The Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta) comic book series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was not well received by either critics or audiences, though I felt it was a decent little adventure film that harkened back to the pulp era of action films.
Mr. Connery would lend his voice to a few other projects but he would not return to the screen.
Following his passing, his wife, Micheline Roquebrune, opened up about Mr. Connery’s final days. Sadly, it appears he was suffering from dementia…
Ms. Roquebrune, who is 91 years old, married Mr. Connery in 1975.
Though it is a sad thing to see someone whose work you admire so much pass away, it must be said Sean Connery had one hell of a run and he leaves behind many works that can still be enjoyed today.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Connery. The joy you’ve given me -and countless others!- over the years has been nothing short of wonderful.
Released in 1955, This Island Earth may not be considered a top tier science fiction film from that decade but it was a decent, I thought, work with quite good effects for its time. It also, I have to admit, had its share of cheese, which was fully exploited by the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000, using this film as their “subject” for their theatrical film, released in 1996.
Again… Happy Halloween!
Released in 1928, the tragic love story The Man Who Laughs, starring Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Casablanca), was based on a Victor Hugo novel and appears, at least nowadays, to be a somewhat forgotten film… except for one very important element: The character of Gwynplaine, the titular and tragic “man who laughs”, was the visual inspiration for Batman’s arch enemy The Joker!
Happy Halloween!
Yep, politics.
Beware…!
So yesterday the Republican Senate, in an obvious attempt to strong arm the judicial system -which, by the way, they’ve been doing for the past few years- replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg with Amy Coney Barrett.
The speed by which they did this was incredible, as was the rank display of hypocrisy.
Having said that…
It’s looking more and more likely -though we certainly won’t know until November the 3rd in the evening- that Biden will win the presidency and quite possibly the Democratic Party will win the Senate.
This is not a certainty, though if you are to go by the polls -a dangerous proposition, of course!- it sure looks likely.
There are those who will say this was the case in 2016 and you’d not be completely wrong. However, there were differences between the election back then and now.
For one, back then Trump had no record to run against. Secondly, the Republicans very successfully demonized Hillary Clinton for years leading up the election, and voters on that side weren’t quite as motivated to go out and vote versus those who voted Republican.
Further to all that, there were many who decided to give Trump a shot, that maybe he would do something good, which leads us back to his record.
Biden is not Clinton.
He has a record, certainly, but its a lot harder to go against him than it was for Clinton. With one week left to go, I’d say that the Trump campaign hasn’t really laid much of a glove on Biden at all.
Early on there were the “Sleepy Joe” lines, but given the fact that Biden is only three years older than Trump and given the way the debates went, if anything it proved that Biden, despite his advanced age, is very sharp and, dare I say it, appeared a lot sharper than Trump.
They tried to go after Hunter Biden and supposed dealings he had, but these have proven complicated and -let’s be clear- bogus. When peddled by someone like Rudy Guliani, they also invite considerable scrutiny.
They’ve tried to go after VP candidate Kamala Harris, saying she’s some kind of socialist/leftist, but I get the feeling that’s not really done them much good, either.
Maybe its me, but that whole socialist/leftist bit seems to have played itself out at this point and people -not all, of course- maybe realize nowadays that its not such a scary concept, especially since so many European countries have a socialist type system and they seem to be doing more than fine with it.
We’ve got one week to go and, happily, our family has early voted. I double checked and my vote was indeed counted (if you’re worried about this, you can check your votes. Google it!)
I’m hoping for good news next week even though I’m of course worried about the worst.
IF the elections go the way I think they will, I suspect the Republican victories in the judiciary are going to be very short lived.
We’ll see.
Released through Netflix a couple of years ago, The Haunting of Hill House is a 10 part mini-series based on the famous haunted house novel by Shirley Jackson which was made twice before into movies, the most famous of which was the Robert Wise directed version, called The Haunting, and released in 1963.
Here’s the thing, though: While the mini-series bears the same name as the novel and has a few of the artifacts which are present in it, including the look of Hill House (which is almost the very same) and several characters who have the same names, this mini-series is very much a reimagining of the story, to the point where it is hard to call it more than “inspired by” the original novel and -to a degree visually- the original movie.
Which is not to say this is a bad thing!
The fact of the matter is that The Haunting of Hill House is an incredibly ambitious and at times spectacular mini-series which sadly, IMHO, falls in its concluding moments.
But we’ll get to that in a moment.
The series expertly moves in time, from the past when a young Hugh Crain (in the past played by Henry Thomas and in the present by Timothy Hutton) and his wife Olivia (Carla Gugino) and their large family consisting of Steven, Shirley, Theodora, and young twins Luke and Nell arrive at Hill House to “flip” it. Through flashbacks and scenes set in the present, we learn that a great tragedy occurred at Hill House and, soon enough, realize Olivia died there and that all kinds of eerie, ghostly events occurred as well.
The events of the night of Olivia’s death are slowly hinted, and their repercussions in the present are shown in a shattered family, now consisting of grown ups, with all kinds of hang ups. The very youngest of the Crains, Nell (who we find was born only 90 some seconds after her twin brother Luke), tries to call her siblings but is unable to for various reasons.
Worse, her father -who the now grown kids all view as flaky, to say the least- are put off when he calls to say he spoke with Nell and is worried she’s about to do something bad.
As it turns out, she returns to Hill House and once there, appears to commit suicide.
This proves to the be the singular action that brings the remaining members of the Crain family together, and in the course of the show’s episodes, we come to learn what happened to each individual member of the family when they were young kids… and come to learn what they’ve become as adults and how they eventually deal with the horror they faced in Hill House.
At times, the mini-series is flat out brilliant. There is one episode in particular that features a very long “one take” (I’m sure they cheated a little here and there, but still!) at the funeral home where Nell’s body is on display. As a fan of movies, that sequence took my breath away.
Further, the movie gives you some genuinely creepy moments and well earned scares. We feel for these people, each and every one of them, and by the end I even let out a couple of tears…
…but…
It really pains me to say it but the movie’s final episode, actually the final half hour or so of the series, while very emotional and caused me to wipe a few tears away also subverts what came before it to such a degree that, when all was said and done, I felt more and more bothered by it.
It’s a tough thing to say, after some 8 and 1/2 hours of pretty damn brilliant work to feel let down by the last 1/2 hour or so, but I have to be honest: It bugged me.
I don’t want to get into SPOILERS so I’ll do so after presenting the mini-series’ trailer. Even then, I’m going to try to tread lightly because, frankly, even with the disappointment I felt after the fact, I still loved so much about this mini-series that I recommend it strongly regardless.
Perhaps others won’t be quite as bothered by the ending and I sincerely wish I could say the same.
Still, strongly recommended!
Just for the heck of it -and before we get into SPOILERS- here’s the trailer for the original version of the book, 1963’s The Haunting…
SPOILERS FOLLOW…!
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!!
Still there?
If you have any interest in seeing this mini-series, I strongly urge you NOT to proceed. As I said above, I will try not to spoil everything but nonetheless I’m going to be talking about what bothered me about the series’ ending and, by doing so, I will inevitably spoil quite a bit.
So, please, if you intend to see the series, do so before proceeding.
You’ll be happier.
Otherwise…
OK, so here goes:
The Haunting of Hill House essentially has the various members of the Crain family come together -reluctantly in many of their cases- because of the death of the youngest member of the family, Nell, who returned to the dreaded Hill House, where their mother died, and apparently committed suicide there.
By being brought together, however, we revisit what they experienced in Hill House originally, and through the course of the mini-series we come to find that they saw many ghostly creatures and, understandably, came out of this not all that well.
Again, I don’t want to spoil everything, but the series’ climax has them returning to the house to try to save one of them, who has returned to the house to destroy it, not realizing that by doing so they may well be feeding its evil.
They arrive, mostly separately, and there they are placed in the “heart” of the house, the place where it wants them, to feed of them, to have their souls.
Here’s the thing, though: after spending some 8 and 1/2 hours or so being told how evil the house is, how it killed both their mother and youngest sister/daughter, the finale of the series shows them confronting the house and their fear and, despite the fact that the house still wants them dead, makes this very, very sharp turn where the spirit of their dead sister/daughter makes them realize they need each other and, I don’t know, where their love for each other makes them come together. All but one of them leave this place all happy and with their terrors resolved. Also, we’re given one more plot addition, another last minute victim of Hill House whose parents -preposterously- allow their child’s death to pass and agree to hide it. Years later these parents return to the house to, I don’t know, join the spirt of their daughter more fully as they pass away.
So this house that for 8 and 1/2 hours is presented as this black, evil thing, is suddenly this place where all these traumas are resolved for everyone and even come back to the house to seek peace!!!!
This makes no sense given all the horrors we see earlier on and the very clear indications that Hill House is evil.
Yeah.
Again, I really, really hate to go after such a magnificent series but the change in tone at the very end of the series proved simply too great for me. It was the equivalent of story telling whiplash.
I’ll say no more because, again, I don’t want to spoil everything. Suffice it to say, perhaps it won’t be as bothersome to others as it was to me.
Still, even with that ending, I still loved the mini-series. Next up is The Haunting of Bly Manor, released this year and featuring many of the same actors in a story of a different haunted house.
When I see it, I’ll give you my impressions!
Those three words above are a quote at the very end of this article by Lauren M. Johnson and presented on CNN.com:
A man flying a jetpack has been spotted again in the skies over L.A.
We got ourselves quite the daredevil out there!
Seems that an individual with a jet pack has been spotted -with this latest stunt!- at least twice, the first time in September 1, by pilots coming into L.A.
The individual’s altitude was first reported at 3000 feet. This time around?
6000 feet!
Whoa.
Don’t know who this person is but I have to give them credit: They do seem to have developed an interesting device, if it is capable of such altitude.
I know it may sound silly, but I wonder: Can they land with the thing or does it simply go up, run out of gas or whatever power it has, then the dude parachutes back to earth?
I suspect we’ll find out soon enough…!
So Florida has Florida Man. I suppose L.A. now has Jet Pack Man or Woman!
POSTSCRIPT:
So I did a little looking around, specifically on Reddit, regarding this story and a couple of people pointed out something which may be true: This could be either a) a drone with a human looking mannequin on it or b) a man/woman on a wingsuit who jumped out of an airplane and is flying around this way. In other words, if it is a person, they might not have “lifted off” from the ground but were already airborne when they started their flight.
Regarding the later theory, a person with a wingsuit who jumped out of an aircraft, that’s something others would notice, even at the airport they departed from, as its tough to enter an aircraft with such equipment and not be seen.
As for the former, some goofball using a drone with a human shaped mannequin on it, that seems like it could also be a legitimate possibility. But to get to 6000 feet, the drone would have to be a pretty sophisticated one, I would think, and not the type you’d find in Best Buy, no?
Regardless, whoever is doing this, whether indeed we have someone with an almost science fictional jet pack or a was dropped from an aircraft with a wingsuit or a drone with a mannequin… its all incredibly dangerous.
I hope whoever is doing this is found and stopped before they smash into an actual aircraft.
One of the hardest hit industries during the COVID-19 crisis has to be the tourism industry.
By that I mean airlines, cruise ships, railway, hotels, etc. etc.
Is anyone out there taking any major vacations?
Over on CNN.com I found this article, by Simret Aklilu, concerning the famous Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, which is about to shut down…
New York’s Roosevelt Hotel to close after nearly 100 years due to the coronavirus pandemic
The Hotel first opened in 1924 and is a famous New York landmark but, because of such low demand for rooms -and if you don’t rent rooms, you don’t make money- it will “permanently close its doors this year,” according to a spokesman for the Hotel.
At the risk of completely spoiling the article, they further state that beyond shutting down, they have no other plans for what to do with the Hotel.
I assume -a dangerous thing to do!- that maybe they just want to cut down on all expenses to keep the property operating at a loss and hope that in the new year and when a vaccine for COVID-19 is developed they will be able to re-open. Then again, I’ve read elsewhere for many years this Hotel has been viewed as low quality with small rooms (makes sense, given the original building was made so long ago).
It is located in a prime spot, however, and one wonders if the owners will ultimately sell.
It also makes me wonder, though, how things are going for Disney and Universal and their parks.
Disney World and Universal in Florida, I understand, are open but have very minimal crowds, while the parks in California are closed. I believe some of the parks in other countries are open as well, but I suspect they too are facing pretty anemic crowds.
After some seven months since COVID-19 became a big issue here in the United States, we continue to do… not much of anything, it seems.
At first there was a shut down, but because the administration was never clear as to what to do to prevent transmission, it was up to the states to determine their own paths.
That has proven to be insanity.
We are north of 200,000 people dead, with the possibility of another 20,000 dead by the end of this year, and whole industries -and all the employees desperate to keep their jobs- are hurting.
The upcoming closure of the Roosevelt Hotel is but one symptom of the much larger problem.
A problem whose solution doesn’t seem to be coming very soon.
I noted a few days ago (you can read it here) that there were a few upcoming releases I was looking forward to, prominent of which was the Tony Visconti remix of David Bowie’s seminal album The Man Who Sold The World, which would be re-released under its original title, Metrobolist.
The full album is due to be released on November 6th and you can bet I’ll be there to pick it up.
The Man Who Sold The World/Metrobolist is one of my all time favorite David Bowie albums and The Man Who Sold The World, the song, is my all time favorite David Bowie song.
I discovered the song way back in 1984 or so, well before it became big with Nirvana’s famous take on it, which many feel is the best version of the song (sorry, I totally disagree, even if I do feel Nirvana did a pretty terrific version of it).
So blown away am I, to this day, by this song that I feel like it courses through my very blood and somehow always seems to find its way -subtly or not- in my writings.
That’s how much I love the song.
When I heard Tony Visconti, Bowie’s longtime producer, would remix the album, I was very much interested.
Tony Visconti is a terrific talent, a producer who has not only had his hand on many of Bowie’s best works -as producer- but also many other bands.
More recently, he did what I thought was a terrific job re-mixing Bowie’s album Lodger and he did an equally terrific job, IMHO, last year remixing Bowie’s first big hit, Space Oddity…
I was incredibly stunned by how much better, IMHO, this new remix sounded compared to the already pretty damn spectacular original.
So, to say the least, I was damned curious to hear what Mr. Visconti would do with The Man Who Sold The World, both album and especially song.
Welp, today we can hear this new version of the song. Here it is:
I’m… I’m torn, to be honest.
The song starts out quite well but then, when it gets to the chorus, the “Who knows? Not me… We never lost control… You’re face to face with the man who sold the world” part…
That damn reverb just kills me. While I felt some of the reverb Mr. Visconti added on Space Oddity worked quite well with that song, it didn’t do so on this one.
Here’s the original version of the song, a 2015 remix which stuck to the original…
Yeah, much better, IMHO.
Mind you, I don’t think what Mr. Visconti did was terrible, its just that the I prefer the original without those reverb flourishes. Further, I’m becoming somewhat concerned that this is what Visconti likes to do: Add reverb to Bowie songs. He did so, if memory serves, also to a song or two in Lodger as well.
Still, I am curious to hear the rest of the album, especially Bowie’s epic song The Width of a Circle, also from the album…
I just hope what comes out of it isn’t a bunch more reverb…!
Over at CNN.com comes this report by Amanda Jackson:
Don’t want to give away the story but, essentially, most of it is indeed given away with the headline.
A 25 year old man, taking pictures off a cliff in Arizona, fell to his death. Upon recovering the man’s body, officials found other human remains…!
The story is developing. According to the article, what was found near this man’s body were human bones. I don’t know if they are remains of one person or more (I suspect -perhaps hope!- that its only one person’s lost remains) but clearly whoever it was died a while back, considering all that’s left now are bones.
Chilling story, both regarding the gentleman who died and whoever the bones found belong to.
I suppose the only positive about a story like this is that hopefully the bones found will be identified and someone will have closure on the loss of a loved one.
Hopefully.