Let My Cat and Mouse Go!

I saw something unexpected channel surfing last Sunday. Cartoon Network was having a marathon of Tom & Jerry cartoons. This was surprising because Cartoon Network stopped showing classic cartoons years ago but a commercial for an upcoming Tom & Jerry Nutcracker Suite cartoon soon made the reasoning clear. Unlike Popeye or the Warner Brothers gang, Tom & Jerry are still considered viable properties for a kid audience which makes sense. The cartoons are all action and the main characters never speak. Plus their motivations are so primal they can still make sense to a young audience.

Sadly this means their classic work doesn't get the loving treatment Bugs, Daffy, Popeye and Droopy have gotten. Those DVD sets are aimed at adult collectors so they contain uncut cartoons with all the excessive violence, unrestrained steroetyping and other "bad things" that an adult viewer can take in context. Tom & Jerry have to be bowlderized for the kiddies. So their three DVD sets take the shorts out of chronological order, repeat some , edit others and at the last minute Warner even decided that two of them were so henious they couldn't ever be released on home video, lest the little tykes be corrupted. All nonsense of course but that's what happens when the powers that be think they can still squeeze some bucks out of the kiddie market for a particular property.

Watching the cartoons now I got more of an appreciation of what they were about, the over the top slapstick that bordered on sadism, the way the relationship between Tom and Jerry became more of a grudging friendship as time went on, something that Chuck Jones never understood since he jsut replicated the Coyote - Roadrunner dynamic when he did his version. I also enjoyed a couple of the few T&Js where dialogue was a factor, "Solid Serenade" where Tom wooed a female cat by playing a standup bass and singing "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby", and "Pecos Pest" which guest starred Doodles Weaver as the voice of Jerry's Cousin Pecos who stopped off on his way to a TV appearance to rehearse his whacked out version of "Froggy Went A-Courtin'" or maybe he called it "C-C-C-Cranbo!"

Visiting The Past

I've finally gotten around to the reason I bought the "Jazz Singer" DVD, the bonus disc of old Vitaphone Talkie musical shorts. It's an interesting trip. The performances aren't too campy. Most are quite good remembering the styles of the time. It is fascinating though that most of the shorts include at least one risque song with lyrics like "She may step out but she won't give in." It's not that big a shock when you think about it. At that point Warners was just experimenting and getting the shorts out there. Nobody thought about playing to small towns with more conservative mores. It's another thing that gives a lie to how straight-laced things supposedly were way back when.
The biggest musical surprise so far has been The Ingenues, an all-woman orchestra where violins, cello, harp, banjos, accordions, and a bassoon were used in addition to the usual big band equipment with every woman playing two or three instruments.

Then there is this other, very strange film I saw. Every now and then I'll run into something like "Project A-Ko" or "Super Milk Chan" that reminds how flat out weird Japanese pop culture can get. I saw a lulu last night, "The Glamourous Life Of Sachiko Hanai". This was a simple little story about a Tokyo call girl who gets shot in the head, becomes a genius as a result and gets involved in a spy plot involving a clone of President Bush's finger when she isn't tearing off her clothes and having sex at every opportunity. This American edition had a self imposed rating of "Seriously F***ed Up" and it was well-deserved. The movie was completely insane and I'm kind of surprised it doesn't have more of a reputation. There is one scene where they show panic aboard a nuclear aircraft carrier by waving G.I. Joe dolls in front of a still picture of a military command center. By the time that shows up it seems perfectly normal.

24 Big Uns

I could talk about a lot of things like the anti-smoking ad I saw which was based on the false premise that in the 1970's the Muppets were largely aimed at a kid audience or the court ruling that finally overturned the age restriction record keeping for adult videos but I don't feel like it right now. My main focus for the next few weeks will be the 24 CDs I was just sent for reviewing by Cadence. I'm disappointed when I only get a few, but sheesh! I should be careful what I wish for. There seems to be an incredible mix of stuff, some big bands, some vocalists, some free improv. Right now I'm listening to a solo piano CD by Bobby Few and there are a few other big names in this batch (at least, big to me) like Karin Krog, Lee Konitz, Veryan Weston and Sakoto Fuji.

As for movies I just finished muddling through two X-rated films directed by Doris Wishman. They were even more incoherent and random than her usual work which may be because the X-rated material was supposedly added on later without her involvement. I'm suspicious of that claim because these movies broke into a sex scene every five minutes and while, some did have only the thinnest ties to the main storyline and characters, others were obviously germane to the movie. In one of them, "Come To Me My Love", two different characters are killed while naked and immediately after having sex. That doesn't come off like an addition.

Not A Good Day

Yesterday was not a good day. I went out and did something I had been looking forward to for a while but turned out to be less fulfilling than I wanted. That's all I want to say about that now.

Then I come home and try to watch the adult DVDs I had out. The first, "Nina Hartley's Private Fantasies" was on a cracked disc and unwatchable. So I tried the other, Michael Ninn's "Porn Star: The End Od A Supernova". That was unwatchable for other reasons. It was the worst type of glossy, all pretty picture porn. No dialogue, no plot, just hip hop music videos edited between anonymous sex scenes. I watch these movies largely for the personalities of the women involved. When you parade a bunch of interchangeable big-boobed blondes out there and don't even let them say a word I am not in the least bit interested. I've still got "Gonks Go Beat" and "Charley Varrick" to see. I'm expecting them to be big improvements on that mess.

"Mammy!" Yeah, I said "Mammy!.

So I buy the three-disc 80th Anniversary Edition of "The Jazz Singer" when I find out it contains over three hours of early talkie shorts. First I pop in the disc with the actual movie for the hell of it. I'd seen it on TV a bunch of years ago and thought that watching it again it would come off as just another interesting old movie. Right? Uh-uh. Damned if this ancient tearjerker didn't get to me. I know it's because of things I'm aware of now in my own family history but near the end when the dying cantor, played by the future Charlie Chan, Warner Oland, reached up to his son played by Al Jolson, and said "My son...I love you!". I lost it. I just couldn't help sobbing. Again at the end when Jolson is on stage singing "Mammy" and his mother watches him with tears in her eyes, I broke down again.

No wonder this movie was such a hit. Beyond the talking novely it does its job. Maybe a full-talking version with constant dialogue and music would have been over the top but this was brutally effective.

I also went through the wide=spanning extras on the set. There was a short of Jolson in blackface singing three songs and a bunch of trailers from his later movies, also a couple of late 30's shorts revolving around horse racing whose only connection seemed to be cameo shots of Jolson at the track. Strangest of all was a talkie short celebrating Warner Brothers' Silver Jubilee made in 1930. This featured a lot of shots of the current Warners stars of the time but not the crew you'd expect. George Arliss and John Barrymore were mentioned and a very young Walter Pidgeon and Loretta Young appeared but most of the actors even I had a hard time remebering. What about all the wisecracking, hard-boiled types that made the studio's eventual fortune? The only ones there were Joan Blondell, Edward G. Robinson and Frank McHugh. The other future stars, Powell, Cagney, Keeler, Bogart, obviously hadn't arrived yet. Hell, even Guy Kibbee and Ned Sparks were missing. It will be a treat checking out the many other goodies in this set.

The Black Bird - Early Drafts

Last night I finished watching the 1931 and 1936 versions of The Maltese Falcon and it was intriguing to see how they differed from the famous John Huston - Humphrey Bogart version.
They both reflect the period in which they were made. The first came along in the racier pre-Code talkie era and made no bones about portraying Sam Spade, played by Ricardo Cortez, as a sleepsround lounge lizard and contained several suggestions that he was having sex with every woman in the movie including his secretary, Effie. There were also a few cheesecake shots of lead actress Bebe Daniels in her lingerie, the kind of sexy shots I've seen in a bunch of Warner Brothers movies from this period. The storyline of this version generally followed the plot of the novel and the Huston version as I remember them although the minor character of Gutman's daughter was still missing and Wilmer, the gunman, got a lot less screen time. It was also a kick to see so many familiar faces in the periphery of things, Dwight Frye as Wilmer, Thelma Todd as Miles Archer's widow and a very young and cute Una Merkel as Effie.
The 1936 version was very different stuff. The title was changed to "Satan Met A Lady", all the characters had new names and even the location was moved from San Francisco to an anonymous California small town. Dashiell Hammett's "The Thin Man" had been a hit movie a couple of years earlier so this version followed that lead and turned the story into a comedy with Warren William playing the Spade character so giddily it became annoying. The absurdity reached its height in the scene where the history of the treasure, here a jewel-filled ram's horn, is told. Instead of hearing it from the Gutman stand-in William gets the story from the Joel Cairo analog, an Englishman played by Arthur Treacher (!) and they do this while puttering around an apartment tearing up furniture and playing with a lamp!
The most noticeable character change is that Kaspar Gutman is a woman this time while Wilmer, now called "Kenneth", is a big, baby faced fat kid. Oddly enough this version, despite all its changes, restores Wilmer to his larger role and includes some key lines from the 1941 film that the 1931 one leaves out.
Both of these versions also feel the need to tack on additional codas past the point of the police leading Brigid O'Shaugnessy away. In 1931 there was a sentimental ending of Spade visiting Ruth Wanderley (They used that as her real name this time) in jail. In 1936 the character was played by Bette Davis so naturally she got a big histrionic exit speech as the cops took here away.
These two aren't bad in their own way but the Huston version looks even more like a masterpiece in comparison.

I also watched "Three Ages", a lesser know Buster Keaton silent feature. This movie was a spoof of D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance" with Buster and Wallace Beery fighting over the same woman in three different time periods, the Stone Age, Ancient Rome and the modern era. I haven't seen "Intolerance" so there are probably some specific jokes about the film I missed but it was still very funny with plenty of Keaton's precision-tooled slapstick and a brilliant, totally Keaton joke at the end. In each period Keaton and his now-wife leave their home for an afternoon walk. In the Stone Age, a dozen kids accompany them. In the Roman period, it's only five kids. In the Modern story, it's one small dog.

The New 40's

Yesterday I bought my first skin mag in over a year which is amazing considering my situation. It was called 40 Something and was one of half a dozen magazines on the rack that featured women in their 40s, 50s and even 60s. The ladies in these magzines aren't aging porn stars. These are mature wives and mothers who decided to get a little wild in later life and start posing in the nude or making hardcore sex videos.
I haven't seen anybody comment on the significance of this. A lot of women who were born in the 50's and 60's have taken the lessons of Women's Liberation to heart in their own way and reclaimed their right to be sexy. This is something that flies in the face of the ideal of blank faced young sexiness that continues to be pushed by the mainstream and I think it's really exciting. The women in this magazine have lines on their faces and fuller, heavier bodies but they still come off as incredibly desirable and sexy. It's a great thing to see even if it has yet to rub off into my real life.

The trouble with the Internet is...

It's just too damn depressing to read sometimes with people showing their narrow-mindedness left and right or worrying about irrelevancies. For example I've read a few people raling about the Big Bad Music Industry and how it serves them right that artists like Radiohead and Madonna are now finding ways to bypass major labels. I read that and then I look around at the CDs piled around my computer. They are on labels like ECM, Justin Time, Black Saint, Balance Point Acoustics, ESP, Delmark, Canteploupe Music, Decca, Clean Feed, Antone's... There may be a few rigners in there but honestly who bothers with major labels anymore? All the good stuff is coming from small American and European labels.

In DVD watching I have lately treated myself to Kurosawa's "The Bad Sleep Well", an old gangster comedy, "A Slight Case Of Murder" and a fascinating documentary on a Norhwest U.S. band, Dead Moon, led by a married couple who have been doing this since the 80's and are now grandparents. My new swag for the weekend is some old Keaton, some recent Godard and the original 1931 version of "The Maltese Falcon".

I also get adult DVDs through the mail and I'm trying to explore all the various things out there in that realm artistically. My next two there will be a movie by Michael Ninn who is supposed to be one of the best current directors and an fem dom movie from one of my dreamgirls, Nina Hartley. She's one of the women in the history of the adult entertainment business I find sexiest and most admirable for living her life regardless of what the world thinks. Some of the others I dig immensly are Annette Haven, Ginger Lynn, Serenity, Kylie Ireland, Devinn Lane, Janine, Dyanna Lauren and Barbara Dare. I realize most of those women are long gone from the business but I'm slowly investigating the current ladies.