1. The official tribute site to the late Barry Brown, dear to me, most especially, for his role in Daisy Miller.
["When I was growing up in San Jose, California and got hooked on horror films, it wasn't the classic ones that got me, but the dime-a-dozen quickies turned out by the smaller companies. To my mind, Creature From The Black Lagoon was a classic horror film, but the ones I remember enjoying the most (excluding my favorite, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers) were The Creature With The Atom Brain, Tarantula, Invasion Of The Saucer Men, The Undead and The Black Sleep. My favorite horror stars were Bela Lugosi and, believe it or not, Tor Johnson."]
2. House contributor Brendon Bouzard on The Sadist (1963), for Not Coming to a Theater Near You.
["The 1958 killing spree perpetrated by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate has served as the basis for numerous films. Most pointedly, Badlands—but later, True Romance, Natural Born Killers, The Frighteners, two great Bruce Springsteen songs, and lesser-known works, including an ABC miniseries featuring Tim Roth and Fairuza Balk and a recent direct-to-video cheapie. The first film devised in response to the killings is The Sadist, a production of the independent Fairway International starring cult icon Arch Hall Jr. The son of Fairway’s owner, Hall is a performer sui generis. He offers a goony, cartoonish brand of line delivery that serves his neanderthalic features well—born two decades earlier, and he would have made a good noir baddie. The conundrum of Hall – the inability to marry his brutish, unlikable features with his father’s stated intention of producing of him a teen idol – finds its culmination in this film’s reading of Starkweather."]
3. "Tempus Fugit": Fernando F. Croce on The X-Files: I Want To Believe, The Wackness, Brideshead Revisited, and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
["Realizing that ten years have already gone by since the first X-Files movie made me feel old; realizing that 1994 now apparently qualifies as "period" made me feel downright Paleolithic. Set in the mid-Nineties, The Wackness is one more summer-I-grew-up recollection from an indie filmmaker (Jonathan Levine), meaning it's clearly sincere, at times sweet, and a tad boring. The director's stand-in is a high-school grad (Josh Beck) who goes about his drug-shilling gig as if it were an unpaid internship, drowning his parents' bickering with hip-hop and confessing his depression to a psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley) who has crises of his own. "Does this have anything to do with Kurt Cobain," the doctor asks the moping kid; other Gen-X standbys include Nintendo, Zima, Beverly Hills 90210, Giuliani's campaign to clean up Times Square, and the insistent use of "mad," as in "I got mad love for you. I wanna listen to Boyz II Men when I'm with you." It's an utterly routine picture (not to mention the most dank-looking thing I've seen since The Machinist), but its low-key mood and acting disarm. Casting Kingsley as a menopausal stoner is a stunt ("Check it out, I have Sir Ben taking bong hits in my movie!"), yet the actor gets so much rumpled joy from his Sundance-geared turn that the screen just about bulges from his pleasure. Peck has the husky gentleness of a young Aldo Ray, while Olivia Thirlby (as The Girl) is quickly becoming a reliably marvelous presence. Think of just how obnoxious these characters could have been, and you'd have... well, Charlie Bartlett."]
4. "The Good Liberal and "the Left"": By Zach Campbell at Elusive Lucidity.
["... I would offer a firm congenial reminder to those who would, could be the allies of "the Left." In forming and maintaining an image of "the Left," of communist revolution, of popular struggle, the Good Liberal must ask himself whose interests he serves by perpetuating this image he criticizes. If this question is not asked, history will ensure that the Good Liberals of today end up as merely the Goncourts of globalization."]
5. "Microsoft study confirms 'Kevin Bacon' theory": Everyone's six degrees...
["Turns out, it is a small world. The "small world theory," embodied in the old saw that there are just "six degrees of separation" between any two strangers on Earth, has been largely corroborated by a massive study of electronic communication. With records of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances."]
Quote of the Day: Cher
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Current Internet sensation "The Montauk Monster." Google away for videos, think pieces, etc. 
Clip of the Day: The Amazing Lyrebird of Australia, featuring David Attenborough and the cast of Seinfeld.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Links for the Day (August 3rd, 2008)
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1 comments:
Despite all of it's low-budget flaws (and there are many), The Sadist still a fairly powerful bit of film making.
I remember the thinly desiguised rape scene (the title character is shown making his female hostage grovel in the dirt instead of performing fellatio, but it's pretty clear what's meant to be happening) as very rough to watch. The emotional trauma is potently portrayed and not meant to titillate like so many rape scenes then and now do.
I realize this is a horribly bad transition, but speaking of titillate, that's a great photo of Cher. One forgets just how hot she was well into her forties. Whenever the video for "If I could Turn Back Time" came played on MTV, my brother and I would literally run into the room.
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