film history #j

This week in class we finally reached that remarkable era of film history, “Hollywood’s Golden Era.” Which, coincidentally enough, began when the major American motion picture studios self instituted the Production Code to provide a “wholesome sheen” to their product, lest the Federal Government began snooping its nose around in their buiness and diluting their porduct. The self insitution of the Prodution Code was a smart move, once you consider how well the government runs the DMV…

One can’t think of Hollywood’s Golden Era and “wholesomeness” without thinking about the work of Frank Capra, who directed tonight’s feature film: “Mr Deeds Goes To Town.” The premise of this film is: what if some small town Howard Moon-ish ( my weekly Mighty Boosh reference) loser inherits 20 million bucks and is inexplicably sent to New York city to handle his new found fortune, where everyone, even the girl he loves, tries to prove the popular adage: “a fool and is money are soon parted” by stating that his small town, homespun personality quirks are the result of some sort of insanity. With this senario in place, hilarity tries to ensue.

While thinking about this film, I do believe that Capra was wise to have chosen Gary Cooper to star as the title character in this film because Cooper’s tall, thin body frame and “aw shucks” demeanor sticks out like a symbolic sore thumb over the short, dark, cynical city folk that he encounters. Which is why I think the semi-recent remake of this film, starring Adam Sandler was such an failure: he looked too much like the greedy, corporate city slickers he was supposed to be diametrically opposed to. (That and the fact that the remake was totally useless didn’t help much either.)

Also, I feel that “Mr Deeds Goes to Town” was clever piece of cleverly crafted pro-New Deal propaganda. The idea that someone (the government) is NOT insane for blowing tons of money ( tax dollars) in a effort to help those who are down and out (new deal programs) is kinda hard to swallow if given to you straight up. Being forced to be liberal with your moolah is always a hard sell. I wonder if there were a recent movie release that was loosely related to the recent $750 billion banking crisis bailout, people wouldn’t have complained about it as much. Hmmm…

next week in the syllabus: the sequence shot and  Jean Renoir’s “Grand Illusion!”

jareddriskill

jareddriskill endorses…

As many Americans already know, this is the part of the election cycle where various newspapers and other opinion swaying media usually announces their endorsement of a political candidate, and seeing how I am a minor member of the blog-o-sphere community, I have decided to throw my hat in the political endorsement ring. So I am proud to announce that jareddriskill endorses, as always, Donald Duck for president!

Being one of the apolitical elite who believes that the American political system is corrupt beyond repair, Donald Duck is the perfect candidate. Who knows, he may be the best mallard for the job!

My endorsement of Donald Duck did not come to me independently, however, I distinctly remember a 1992 episode of MTV’s headbangers ball where host Rikki Rachtman (sp?) was interviewing Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine and in the spirit of “rocking the vote,” Rikki asked Dave Mustaine to make a statement about the upcoming election. I wish I had video of this exchange, but Dave Mustaine responded to something to the effect of the following: “I urge everyone to go out and vote. And if you don’t care about who is running, do as I do and vote for Donald Duck.” I mean, come on, who can refuse the advice of the always brilliant Dave Mustaine?

(On a side note: I believe that this was the episode of headbangers ball where Rikki had made a wager with Dave Mustaine that he would cut his hair off if that lame Megadeth album, the title of which escapes me at the moment, that had “Symphony Of Destruction” on it sold over a million copies, which it did.)

jareddriskill

random item tuesday

1. I visited a friend the other day and they accused me that the only reason ofcoming over to visit was to see their cat because i spent more time playing with their cat than paying attention to their boring ass personal problems.  I admit it, I’m a cat person, but when your friend owns a pretty awesome feline companion, how can any one resist? Especially when the terms of your lease prevents you from owning any pets?

2. My birthday is in a few short weeks, I strongly suggest that you, my faithful reading several, to begin gathering up your tithes and tributes in advance.

3. My old age is now beginning to show, I was driving down the road the other day and I thought to myself  “Am I insane or didn’t there used to be a hip hop/rap group called Smoking Suckas With Logic?” I don’t know why this thought came to me, but I figure it has to be something of great importance. Why else would I bother to think about it at all?

jareddriskill

dreamlog#57

I dreamt that I was asleep in my own bed room and was awoken by my brother informing me that our father was dead.  I prodded my brother for details and the more details he gave, it became more and more apparent that it wasn’t our father that was dead, but the father of some co-worker of my brother’s that he barely knew. I tell my brother that it would be better if called me back in the morning. For the rest of the dream, I was laying in bed and couldn’t fall back asleep because I was angry thatmy brother had called me in the middle of the night like some bone head over some infomation that is useless to me, at least.

jareddriskill

film history #i

Wow, that week long break seemed like it had lasted forever, didn’t it? We quickly got back into the swing of things this week with what I think was the best film shown all semester long, “Footlight Parade” starring James Cagney. The funny thing about this film is that I had spent numerous hours, wasting my teen aged years no less, watching classic movies on TCM and AMC (back when AMC was about classic movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s) and I never once knew, believe it or not, that James Cagney was also an excellent song and dance man, along with being some shitty gangster film heavy. I mean, who fucking knew? (Apparently, everyone else in the world fucking did.)

This may sound cornball, but I actually like films from Hollywood’s golden era. There’s nothing wrong with getting small doses of optimism, happy endings, well developed comedic foils/sidekicks, musical numbers, poorly executed “snappy” dialogue and the whole “hey gang: let’s go put on a show attitude” every once in awhile. It has always been a belief of mine that everyone needs to dip into the world of the fantastical and light hearted to be a balanced person as a whole. Sadly, there are few outlets for “light hearted” fare in today’s dark, brooding, cynical media. (Which is why I think The Mighty Boosh is such a brilliant tv show, because there’s nothing else like it anywhere.)

But unlike most films from Hollywood’s golden era, “Footlight Parade” was actually made before the restrictive “Production Code” was put into place, so that there are actually elements of cynicism and darkness in this film that may still appeal to today’s audience. Such as Joan Blondell’s character  referring to another character as Miss. B..rich. Or all those swimming pool crotch shots during the Bubsy Berkeley’s hallucination inducing choreographed “By The Waterfall” sequence.

Speaking of, if you really think about it, all of the choreographed musical numbers in this film were about getting laid: The “come get your loving on the backyard fence” lines in the alley cat number. The “Honeymoon Hotel” sequence, which is, of course, self explanatory as well as the aforementioned “By The Waterfall.” But the show stopping final sequence “Shanghai Lil” is about a sailor falling in love with a prostitute. Which, you gotta admit, would be considered  an “edgy” concept if it were released today.

next week in the syllabus: Hollywood’s golden era, the production code and “Mr Deeds Goes To Town!”

jareddriskill

random item tuesday

1. Yes, my faithful reading several, I changed the template on my blog the other day because I got tired of looking at the old one. It won’t be long before I get sick at looking at this new format too. Herein lies the problem of being a half way artistic person with poor computer skills: not being able to design your website the way you want it to look.

I suppose we are going to have to suffer substance over style for just a little bit longer…

2. My internship rejected the Halloween costume that I had submitted for approval. Yes, asking to dress up as a ghost was a bit in bad taste, but at least I didn’t say I wanted to dress as the grim reaper or as a specific member of one the resident’s family who has already “crossed to the other side.”

So I suppose my costume this year will be nurising home intern, then.

3. I had to attend a “loss prevention” meeting for my job today, which I thought it was interesting because the District Manager told everybody several different ways on how to steal from the company and then tried to distill a distrust for our co-workers by mentioning that the corporation that we work for will pay you $1,000 if you happen to snitch on your co-workers for stealing. Which gets me to thinking…

jareddriskill

The Butler Did It!

Patricia Moneyworth The Third! What do you mean that you don’t know who the father of your baby is?!?! He damn well better not be some lower class douchebag like Jenkins over there.

I’m a kitty kat and I wear farrah slacks!

It’s time to blow the slowly gathering pile of dust off the jareddriskill sketchbook once again! This sketch is entitled: “I’m a kitty kat and I wear Farrah slacks!” Like most of my sketchbook ideas, this sketch started off as a totally random phrase, or thought, that just popped into my head while doing some mundane task. In this instance, this phrase came to me while I was shaving this morning. I have no idea how kitty kats and the Farrah brand of slacks have become mentally associated with shaving, but here we are. (You just gotta love these minor psychotic breaks from reality that I end up having once in awhile.)

As always, there are at least fundamental 16 artistic errors to be found in the sketch above, can you find them all?

jareddriskill

dreamlog #56

Due to my “marvlous reviews” on this website I get compted (i.e given free tickets) to see the very first public performance of William “Will” Willis, the supposed son of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. (At first, I thought that his lineage claim was a bit of fake out show biz hype, but considering that he had no talent whatsoever, I began to wonder that it was, indeed, true.)

Despite his showbiz lineage, the best his parents could pull for him was a cruise ship lounge act where he was the opening for an American exhibit of the Magna Carta, signing bad cover songs and telling corny vaudeville era jokes if front of a crowd of annoyed tourists/european history buffs who only came on the cruise ship to see the historical document.

jareddriskill

trying to fill the hole in my heart that soul train used to fill

Winter began the same way as it always had in recent memory. The hot, dry summer weather would spill over well into the autumn months until a much needed rain storm (which, coincidentally, always occurred on a weekend) that would drop the temperature so drastically that it would have to take the titling of the Earth on its axis to make the mercury in the thermometer back up again.

He (the protagonist of this tale) hates cold weather solely for the asthetic reason that everything looks uglier during the winter months. A thin sheen of cold moisture seems to cover everything outdoors when it is cold. And having to bundle up in layers of thick, itchy clothing just to go outside seemed to much of a chore to go through anyways. Never mind the fact that our protagonist also hates hates hot weather too: it just seems downright unnatural to sweat profusely the very moment he walks outdoors.

The predicament of our protagonist is this: our protagonist simply sits at home reaching new personal, pop cultural lows everyday such as wishing that a dancing cartoon train, like the one that used to boogie on down in the animated opening credits of Soul Train, would come and take him away to a new magical place where the weather was at some homeostatic level where everything looked aesthetically pleasing while the summer heat didn’t burn him up in the process year round. Does such a magical, new locale, indeed, exist? If so, what is the cost of living like?

Does anybody even fucking care? If not, should our protagonist just simply just get over himself already?