Let There Be Music

I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up very well. I've been taking a long vacation, at home, watching lots of movies. But there won't be a lot of blogging. A lot of my viewing has been rewatches. But I've also been watching some musical performances. For example, I watched Glass: The Perfect American (2013), the Philip Glass opera about Walt and Roy Disney.

I watched this on YouTube, but I was actually trying to watch another Glass opera, Satyagraha. When I couldn't get it, I gave this a try. It was inventively staged, with projected animations and sometimes ranks of animators in the background. There was an animator who complained about never being recognized by the brothers. The timeline was flexible, and in many scenes, Walt is delirious, dreaming or dead. This was all great. The music, however, did not really strike me. It was not deeply minimalist, more classical modern with a touch of minimalism and a few blues/jazz passages. Fun to watch, less to listen to.

A friend recommended Becoming Led Zeppelin (2025), a documentary made with input from the surviving members and some past interviews with Bonham. It was interesting to hear about the old days before they formed up, since they all had musical careers already. I was interested in Page's desire for Zep to never have a hit single - he made too many of those as a studio guy. He wanted Zep to be an album band! But because the doc was based on their interviews, I felt like it presented a cleaned up version, without as much personality as I could have hoped for. Maybe I'm spoiled by listening to THe History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs, which tends to go pretty deep. Still fun.

I also watched a lot of YouTube world music type concerts. I loved  Ben Aylon, who plays the Senegalese xalam, a lute with a skin soundboard. I also like Constantinople, a trio of kora, setar and percussion. YouTube's algorithm is very good about feeding these to me.  

And I hope to continue this, even as my vacation draws to a close. 

Naked with a Bullet

Ms. Spenser was pretty skeptical about The Naked Gun (2025), but I'd heard good things, so I threw it on while she was working. She ended up liking it more than me. 

It starts with a bank robbery. A little schoolgirl trapped among the hostages turns out to be... Frank Drebbin Jr., Liam Neeson. So he defeats the robbers wearing a plaid skirt. But he doesn't notice the head robber, Danny Huston, getting away with the contents of one safe deposit box, which turns out to be the P.L.O.T Device.

Because Neeson was a little bit over-zealous in the bank case, he is busted down to traffic. He arrives at the scene of a seeming suicide - someone drove their electric car right into the water. But back at the office, Neeson meets the man's sister, Pamela Anderson, who doesn't believe it was suicide. But she's a crime novelist, so she would. 

But you didn't come for the plot. You came for the jokes. And there are a lot of them. A cute runner is Neeson and the other cops getting handed a coffee every few minutes. Less cute is the long scene with Neeson suffering diarrhea from his disordered eating, then berating himself, then pigging out again. This wasn't so cute. I think percentage of tasteless jokes has risen a bit from the original trilogy. But this one has very little O.J. Simpson, so I guess it's a wash.

Also, a lot of the gags are straight up stolen from other movies - sometimes as homage, sometimes just a lift. That doesn't bother me, especially if the jokes are any good. But I did feel like there were fewer than there should be. The jokes in the background were still there, but I felt that the density wasn't. Maybe I'm idealizing the originals. though. I should rewatch, maybe (hard to sit through the O.J., though).

Neeson did a very respectable Drebbin - he has no trouble playing it straight and stone-faced. Pam Anderson was great as the dame, looking and acting the part. Of course, she's competing with Priscilla Presley and Anna Nicole Smith, so she doesn't have to stretch much. But it is nice to see her getting a middle-age return, looking lovely and a little more natural. 

So I laughed but felt a little let down. Ms. Spenser laughed (when she looked up from her work), and was pleasantly surprised. Maybe it's a question of expectations. 

The Count and the Vampire

Ms. Spenser was ready for some horror, and we thought The Vourdalak (2023) might fit the bill. Did it, or was it more horror-comedy?

In the 18th-century, the Count d'Urfe. a French delegate to a conference on the Russo-Turkish conflict, is robbed and separated from his party. The delegate, played by Kacey Mottet Klein, is left stumbling through an Eastern European forest in his court clothes and white makeup. The first habitation he finds turns him away, telling him to leave this forest - it isn't safe in the day and worse at night. But he does get directed to the Gorcha family that may help him out.

 He meets the family a few at a time. The middle son is a pretty young man who wears flowers and make up. The daughter is a rough beauty. The older son, who is out fighting the Turks, is married and has a young son. When he returns, having failed to kill the Turkish leader, he promises to the count that he can have a horse the next day. The patriarch, old Gorcha, has left to fight the Turks as well. He has left a note saying he will be back in six days. If he returns after six days, it won't be him, but a vourdalak, a kind of local vampire.

That night is the sixth. They find old Gorcha collapsed at the edge of the property. Even though the six days has elapsed, the eldest son doesn't believe in vourdalaks, and doesn't care that the old Gorcha looks like a gruesome puppet. And so they take him in.

As you can imagine, things don't go well for anyone, and in ways that are pretty horrific. However, the horror is a bit nonchalant. The tension isn't as tense as it could be. This may be a dramatic choice, showing how insidious horror can be - how easy it can be to accept violence and death. 

More seriously, the count and old Gorcha are both rather ridiculous. The count looks like a clown, in his white makeup with rouged cheeks. Old Gorcha resembles the puppet in Saw more than a Nosferatu. 

But we did like it a lot. The characters were interesting and fully formed, the setting unusual, and the horror horrible. But I think we enjoyed Mario Bava's take with Boris Karloff better. 

Head Fake

Well, I was looking for some stupid action, and Heads of State (2025). certainly filled the bill.

It starts in Spain, during the annual tomato-throwing festival (real thing, look it up). A news crew are actually a joint US/UK security operation, looking for Russian arms dealer Paddy Considine. There are a number of Considine look-alike decoys, so they call on ECHELON for gait recognition. But it's all a trap to get access to ECHELON. The ops are all killed, and Considine gets away.

Now we meet our stars. Idris Elba is the new British prime minister, embattled in the polls. John Cena is the ex-action star, now popular US president. Elba is a serious, slightly depressive type, Cena a gung-ho America-Fuck-Yeah type. They don't get along. A reporter at their joint press conference asks about the disaster in Spain, raising the tension even more. To show US/UK unity, Cena reluctantly offers to give Elba a ride on Air Force One to a conference in Trieste. But on the way, they are attacked and blown out of the sky.

Our two world leaders get out in parachutes, and make their way to a Warsawsafe house, manned by a kooky agent, Jack Quaid. Since the plot against them must have been an inside operation, they can't trust anyone. And so the race is on to get to Trieste, before the whole world order is overthrown.

I want to say this movie is much better than it has to be. The action is very good, almost too good - the downing of Air Force One is a little intense for an action-comedy. Of course, it was made by the director of Nobody, Ilya Naishuler. Coincidentally, Quaid was in another "normal guy meets action plot", Novocaine. The leads are charismatic as hell (of course) and have a nice Odd Couple chemistry.

But there are problems, mainly due to the current state of US politics. Cena plays a populist who mistakes movies for real life, like Reagan. But the US is under a very different kind of populist. Part of the plot of the film is that the bad guys want to disrupt and break up NATO, and Cena and Elba want to prevent that. Whereas the current US president is working hard to dismantle NATO, for the benefit of Russia. And so on. it makes it hard to laugh at some of Cena's antics. The movie also makes Elba, who wants to make careful, seem to be a bit of a killjoy, while a lot of uis would kill for a thoughtful leader. At least it turns out that Elba's prime minister was a real soldier and low-key badass, not just the movie version. 

I'm leaving out a bunch of good supporting actors, like Stephen Root, Carla Gugino, and Sharlto Copley, but now I've mentioned them. That's about all I have to say about the movie. I think it will be a lot more fun to watch in ten or twenty years. At least, I hope so. 

Angels on High

It's a little late for a Christmas movie, but we still wanted to watch We’re No Angels (1955).

Here's the set up: it's late December on Devil's Island. Three escaped prisoners are lounging around by the docks, Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov. As long as they are mistaken for parolees. they don't need to worry. Just just need some money and civilian clothes to get off the island and make a clean break. 

They go to a store run by Leo G. Carroll, and start swiping stuff. They want to rob the register, but it seems everyone buys on credit, and there's nothing there. Carroll is a nice but ineffectual man, and the boys offer to fix his roof (as an excuse to stick around and see what else they can carry off). Peeking down through skylights (like angels on high), they find out that 

• Carroll's cousin in Paris really owns the store, and the place is basically broke.
• His wife, Joan Bennett, loves him and is pretty shapely for a middle-aged mom.
• Their daughter, Gloria Talbott, is in love with the son of the owner, although the owner forbids this romance.

Although they are scoundrels, our escapees begin to feel for these poor people. Then, the store's owner (Basil Rathbone) shows up, along with his son. John Baer. Rathbone is a bully and a jerk, who plans to throw Carroll off the payroll and possibly into prison for not keeping clean books. His son, theoretically in love with Talbott, is engaged to marry the daughter of a rich shipbuilder. 

Now Bogart is a forget and confidence man. He can easily clean up the books given a little time. And if they don't get that time, the other two are murderers, and Aldo Ray is carrying around a little pet viper...

Now, Ms. Spenser loves her some herps - she has a (nonvenous) snake or two herself. So she was disappointed we didn't actually see the little viper. But she loved the the human snakes. Bogart is his usual cool, competent self, politely selling hairbrushes to a bald man and leaning on a credit customer for some cash. Ray is dumb and strong, with an eye for the ladies (and sometimes a pinch). Ustinov is lovely as a somewhat perverted, creepy criminal with a weird laugh. Of course, they're no angels - or are they. 

This would be pretty lightweight and sentimental if the three "angels" didn't have a nice edge. Ray is strong and could be menacing when women are concerned. Ustinov is creepy - he killed his wife. It was all his own fault. He should have written that he was coming home for Christmas. And of course, Bogie is Bogie. 

I'm not sure how funny this would be without these great characters, but with them, it's a Christmas murder miracle.

Nobody Who?

Well, Ms. Spenser's horror movie didn't work out so well, so we decided to be lazy and watch Nobody 2 (2025). We figured that however bad it was, it would surely satisfy.

Retired assassin and wannabe normal family man Bob Odenkirk is back on the job. The last movie put him badly in debt to the Russian mob, and he is working for Colin Salmon to pay it off. So he is unretired and overworked. His family, who now know his secret, is getting fed up with his constant absence. He needs a vacation.

He manags to convince his family to go to a cheesy waterpark and tourist town in the Wisconsin Dells, where he spent his only childhood vacation with Christopher Lloyd, Odenkirk's shady father. Of course, Lloyd will join the family outing. Odenkirk promises that he will leave the job behind, with absolutely no killing. 

So, when a bully steals a plushie from his young daughter, and his son gets into a fight over it, Odenkirk tries to stay calm. When someone smacks the girl on the head, he walks out and counts to ten. Then walks back in and kicks ass. This is not how to make friends. It turns out that the bully's father was the owner of the park, and by the way, Odenkirk has also also antagonized the sheriff, Colin Hanks. And now they are going to kill him.

Odenkirk phones his brother RZA for some intel, and finds out that the town was part of an old bootlegging route, and now being used for drug smuggling and money laundering. And it's all being run by Lendina, Sharon Stone. Remember what I said about scary old ladies? 

Of course, it all leads to a big set fight in the water park. The director is Timo Tjahjanto, Indonesian horror/action director, so these scenes are good. In fact, there's a lot of good action, but that's not all. You get some nice family interactions, with the wife wanting a quiet life, but supporting her man, and the kids thinking he's a dork for wanting a vacation in the Dells, but making the best of it and having a good time. Of course, Christopher Lloyd, a lousy father and grandfather, knows how to come through in a pinch. 

I don't think this was as much fun as the first - the gimmick works best as a surprise. But it was still a lot of fun, and a tribute to overworked dads who need a vacation everywhere. 

Blunt Weapon

Since I owed Ms. Spenser a movie, we tried a recent horror, Weapons (2025), by Zach Cregger.

It starts with a little girl telling a story in voice-over. It's about how one day, grade school teacher Julia Garner came to class and only found one boy there. It turns out that the previous night, at 2:17 AM, all the other children woke up and left their houses. They ran into the darkness with their arms out and behind them, as creepily shown on some security cameras. These children couldn't be found. The remaining boy, Cary Christopher, wasn't able to give investigators any information.

The townspeople suspected Garner of something. They painted "Witch" on her car. Her principle, Benedict Wong, put her on leave. She started drinking (again), and hooked up with her old boyfriend, patrolman Alden Ehrenreich.  She also started to investigate Christopher, who seemed to just want to be left alone. But there's something funny about his house...

The focus shifts to Josh Brolin, father of one of the missing children (one of the children who used to bully Christopher). He isn't going to rest and let the police bungle this investigation.

Again the focus shifts to Ehrenreich. We learn that he's a recovering alcoholic now married to the police chief's daughter, June Diane Raphael. He stops a meth head from breaking into a warehouse and gets a needle prick, beats up the junkie and lets him go.

And so on. The film shifts perspective, sometimes sliding the timeline back to before the disappearances. The horror starts slowly, with a lot of social and psychological stuff, with Garner being ostracized, threatened and slowly going out of control. There are hints of the supernatural, before you get a to the third act, where you discover what has been going on. 

I won't tell you what that is, but I have to mention Amy Madigan as sweet, creepy Aunt Lilly. There's something about a cheery, controlling old lady that really gets you. 

In the end, Ms. Spenser wasn't satisfied with this. It got a little silly, especially the ending, which was basically comedy-horror. So I still owe her.