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[barton]

The Trial of The Chicago 7 (Netflix) Friday, Oct.16

Aaron Sorkin's stuff tends to be really good (The West Wing) or really annoying (The Newsroom). His latest is a film about the trial of the "Chicago Seven" after the 1968 Democratic National Convention. With a fascinating cast (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and ... Sacha Baron Cohen?), it's a project Sorkin has apparently been working on for years, and because of the pandemic, it's landing on Netflix instead of in theaters.

[oilcan]

Got round to seeing Isle of Dogs.  (say the title aloud without imaging the words as written - there you go)  Absurdly talented voice actor cast which includes Bryan Cranston,  Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, F. Murray Abraham, Fisher Stevens, Yoko Ono, Harvey Keitel, and Frank Wood.  I confess I was so busy recognizing famous voices that it may have clouded my ability to judge the film as a whole.  Which is okay, because this is really just a bit of fun, some funny lines, much doggy drollery, with a sprinkling of lite political satire.  I'm not sure if there was any subtextual reference to the actual Isle of Dogs, which Londoners will know is the location of their financial center, aka Canary Wharf.  This one's basically a garbage dump off the coast of Japan, full of dogs exiled due to some sort of canine virus that can spread to humans.  As is typical of Wes Anderson, it just starts there and gets more ridiculous.  The artwork is beautiful, btw.

[Hamilton Samuels]

So, going back to that Cameron Crowe album list.

Here's a different take on it.

I'm going to limit the ten records to just the year 1973. And I think that a list from that year alone competes with just about any other list that fit the span of 1965-1973.

Here's the list, again taking albums only from 1973. (But not in any ranked order.)

And the best song on that album, IMO.

Stevie Wonder: InnerVision "Living For the City" https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ghLWjyOOLno&list=RDAMVMghLWjyOOLno

David Bowie: Aladdin Sane "Panic in Detroit" https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=CM3fCUmSheY&list=OLAK5uy_n6SqLC8xrc7tS5Cw9pDr7ECauksk3hgtQ

Led Zeppelin: Houses of the Holy "The Ocean"  https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=H8bVaTW6UCU&list=RDAMVMH8bVaTW6UCU

Springsteen: The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle "Kitty's Back" https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=bLulUBjiIIc&list=RDAMVMbLulUBjiIIc

James Brown: The Payback "Shoot Your Shot" https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=r16GK_zm7sc&list=OLAK5uy_kHqKBd_z4X-Q9hLeX-Xzd1Juhqf2WqyVM

Stones: Goats Head Soup

"Doo Doo Doo Doo Heartbreaker"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bs7kUlITjE&list=PLJNbijG2M7OzDI8QuzOBu4Tiv1nlwTfkF&index=7 Could be written today, and consider that the Stones just rereleased this album a few weeks ago.


Little Feat: Dixie Chicken "On Your Way Down" (later covered beautifully by Elvis Costello and the late, great Allen Toussaint, individually and then together) https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=dwk79zJFIGQ&list=OLAK5uy_l-TYojPQyprPCj3HspxS7F2DFLInFoMQQ

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon "Breathe" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vddl9TK5RqU&list=PL3PhWT10BW3Urh8ZXXpuU9h526ChwgWKy&index=2

Queen: Queen "Keep Yourself Alive" https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=JofwEB9g1zg&list=OLAK5uy_lnE0PrQW4MK0wKfi0Yex2OSsC82M68Sqw

The Wailers: Burnin' "Get Up, Stand Up". https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=KP0V15PgFaQ&list=RDAMVMKP0V15PgFaQ


Special mention, because they certainly influenced a lot of artists after this album came out. New York Dolls: New York Dolls

[barton]

Good broad sample of 73.  High school me might have picked Over the Hills,  on Zepp V,  over The Ocean.   That Wailers track is fresh as ever!   Queen may not have been much on the radar yet in 1973 out in the plains states.  Not sure I ever heard their debut album.   

[Hamilton Samuels]

Good broad sample of 73.  High school me might have picked Over the Hills,  on Zepp V,  over The Ocean.   That Wailers track is fresh as ever!   Queen may not have been much on the radar yet in 1973 out in the plains states.  Not sure I ever heard their debut album.

Went to see Queen's first tour in the US, at a small theatre in Philly. Row 4, dead center, with Freddie Mercury as amazing then as he ever was later. But let me day, too, that the rest of the band were quite amazing themselves.

[bodiddley]

Stones: Goats Head Soup

"Doo Doo Doo Doo Heartbreaker"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bs7kUlITjE&list=PLJNbijG2M7OzDI8QuzOBu4Tiv1nlwTfkF&index=7 Could be written today, and consider that the Stones just rereleased this album a few weeks ago.

There's so many of the early 70's protest and social consciousness songs that are perfectly relevant to today:

Marvin Gaye crooning about "trigger-happy policing"
The Stones Fingerprint File -- detailing FBI surveillance.
Steppenwolf's America/Suicide/Monster opus:
"we're fighting a war over there and no matter who is the inner we can't pay the cost"
Gil Scott Heron - Whitey on the Moon
Gene McDaniels entire Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse album -- but Supermarket Blues if I had to single out a single.
Dylan's Hurricane about criminal justice racism and unfairness.
and more ...

It's very notable how relevant these 1970's concerns are to today.  During Trump's farcical reinvention of Nixonia.

[Hamilton Samuels]

Stones: Goats Head Soup

"Doo Doo Doo Doo Heartbreaker"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bs7kUlITjE&list=PLJNbijG2M7OzDI8QuzOBu4Tiv1nlwTfkF&index=7 Could be written today, and consider that the Stones just rereleased this album a few weeks ago.

There's so many of the early 70's protest and social consciousness songs that are perfectly relevant to today:

Marvin Gaye crooning about "trigger-happy policing"
The Stones Fingerprint File -- detailing FBI surveillance.
Steppenwolf's America/Suicide/Monster opus:
"we're fighting a war over there and no matter who is the inner we can't pay the cost"
Gil Scott Heron - Whitey on the Moon
Gene McDaniels entire Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse album -- but Supermarket Blues if I had to single out a single.
Dylan's Hurricane about criminal justice racism and unfairness.
and more ...

It's very notable how relevant these 1970's concerns are to today.  During Trump's farcical reinvention of Nixonia.

And this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBAwv49slC8

"Tax the rich,
Feed the poor,
'til there aren't no rich no more"

[barton]

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/02/rick-moranis-punched-in-the-street-in-random-attack

The suspect list includes Gozer the Destructor and Zuul the Gatekeeper.   

I'm glad he's okay.   

[Hamilton Samuels]

Looks like a classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvPTCvUnNQA

[barton]

If are have only one comedic gear, low gear make best - more traction making!

I am very much look forward to this cinema show! 

The upcoming Cronenberg film (Brandon, David's son) also looks interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possessor_(film)

[FlyingVProd]

Sarah Paulson stars in a recently released Netflix series "Ratched" about the villain Nurse Ratched from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and I just have to wonder why people keep making projects where the villains are the stars, there was "The Joker" and "Maleficent" and now "Ratched."

What is next, making a hero out of the King of England from the movie "Braveheart"? Having Scottish women raped by British men on their wedding night was really evil, and he did lots of really evil stuff, is he worthy of a new movie or series?
 
What about Hitler, killing Jews was pretty evil, are they going to make a movie about Hitler?
 
There is nothing cool about evil people, and evil people should not be the stars of the movies and series.
 
The GOOD people need to be the heroes. We need to see the Good people battle against evil.
 
Salute,
 
Tony V.

[FlyingVProd]

I will never produce a movie where the villain is the hero. The people need to see the GOOD people fighting against evil, the good people need to be the stars.
 
And I will produce love stories.

Salute,

Tony V.

[barton]

Tony,  I don't believe having a major character be a villain means that said villain is being presented as a hero or heroine.   No one would confuse Gregory Peck in The Boys from Brazil with a hero.   Many movies have portrayed people like Hitler,  Stalin,  Caligula,  Jack the Ripper,  and all manner of serial killers and other miscreants both real and fictional -- in almost none of them are these malign figures drawn as heroes,  and in such films there are often good people who are,  sometimes heroically,  resisting their evils.   Relax,  I suspect Nurse Ratched will have an antagonist or dramatic foil who brings decency and virtue of some variety to all the darkness.   

That said,  you should avoid "Wuthering Heights" at all costs.   

[josh]

11/19/1975

On this date in 1975, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was released.

Actor Kirk Douglas—who had originated the role of McMurphy in the 1963–64 Broadway stage version of the Ken Kesey novel—had purchased the film rights to the story, and tried for a decade to bring it to the big screen, but was unable to find a studio willing to make it with him. Eventually, he sold the rights to his son Michael Douglas, who succeeded in getting the film produced—but the elder Douglas, by then nearly 60, was considered too old for the McMurphy role, which ultimately went to 38-year-old Jack Nicholson. Douglas brought in Saul Zaentz as co-producer.

The film's first screenwriter, Lawrence Hauben, introduced Douglas to the work of Miloš Forman, whose 1967 Czechoslovak film "The Firemen's Ball" had certain qualities that mirrored the goals of the present script. Forman flew to California and discussed the script page by page, outlining what he would do, in contrast with other directors who had been approached who were less than forthcoming. Forman wrote in 2012: "To me, [the story] was not just literature, but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968. The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not."

Zaentz, a voracious reader, felt an affinity with Kesey, and so after Hauben's first attempt he asked Kesey to write the screenplay, and promised him a piece of the action, but it did not work out and ended in a financial dispute.

Hal Ashby, who had been an early consideration for director, suggested Jack Nicholson for the role of McMurphy. Nicholson had never played this type of role before. Production was delayed for about six months because of Nicholson's schedule. Douglas later stated in an interview that "that turned out to be a great blessing: it gave us the chance to get the ensemble right."

Danny DeVito, Douglas’ oldest friend, was the first to be cast, having played one of the patients, Martini, in the 1971 off-Broadway production. Chief Bromden, played by Will Sampson, was found through the referral of a used car dealer Douglas met on an airplane flight when Douglas told him they wanted a "big guy" to play the part. The dealer's father often sold cars to Native American customers and six months later called Douglas to say: "the biggest sonofab!tch Indian came in the other day!"

Forman had considered Shelley Duvall for the role of Candy; coincidentally, she, Nicholson, and Scatman Crothers (who portrays Turkle) would all later appear as part of the main cast of the 1980 film adaptation of "The Shining". While screening "Thieves Like Us" (1974) to see if she was right for the role, he became interested in Louise Fletcher, who had a supporting role, for the role of Nurse Ratched. A mutual acquaintance, the casting director Fred Roos, had already mentioned Fletcher's name as a possibility. Even so, it took four or five meetings, over a year, (during which the role was offered to other actresses such as Angela Lansbury, Anne Bancroft, and Geraldine Page) for Fletcher to secure the role of Nurse Ratched. Her final audition was late in 1974, with Forman, Zaentz, and Douglas. The day after Christmas, her agent called to say she was expected at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem on January 4 to begin rehearsals.

Speaking of the Orgon State Hospital, the producers decided to shoot the there, an actual mental hospital, as this was also the setting of the novel. The hospital’s director, Dean Brooks, was supportive of the filming and eventually ended up playing the character of Dr. John Spivey in the film. Brooks identified a patient for each of the actors to shadow, and some of the cast even slept on the wards at night. He also wanted to incorporate his patients into the crew, to which the producers agreed. Douglas recalls that it was not until later that he found out that many of them were criminally insane. (Wikipedia)

[bodiddley]

Three and half months later, my mother took me and a half dozen friends to see OFOtC for my 11th birthday.  Pretty bold call from mom.  I'm sure a lot of it went over our heads. 

Great film.  Terrific casting.
It's hard to get a crew of mental patients to play out convincingly.
Certainly glad we got Jack instead of Kirk.