ax2grind

I don’t think what Robert Downey Jr. said on Letterman was at all problematic for the film. I mean just because he said out loud the screaming innuendo seems silly. And why is homosexual innuendo taboo, while heterosexual innuendo is acceptable. Sexual innuendo is sexual innuendo. People need to grow up. Seriously.

Here is a very [...]

SJP has removed her mole. I gotta say, I’m a little bummed. One of the things I love about Sarah Jessica is that she’s goofy looking. I think she’s beautiful, but she’s not pretty. She has a big nose, skinny long face and kind of average looking. But, she has a thing and she is [...]

American Madness -Directed by Frank CapraI wonder if this is how Lehman Brothers went down. One scene illustrates just how quickly rumors get out of control and leads to a bank run. It just takes a pin to pop a balloon.The underlying issue is that no one seems to trust the bank and who operates it. The flurry of phone calls and panicked voices. A complete void of trust in the financial system.The topic of hoarded cash, sitting idle is a theme I've heard recently on the news. There is a scene where they discuss bringing the country back to prosperity by getting money in circulation. The scene where they are constructing a bailout is chilling.We have been here before. In the film a character argues, "Help Jones, and you help the whole circle". He goes on to say, "Jones is no risk, neither are the thousands of other Jone's in this country."Oh my, hang on tight folks this film is going to hit home. I highly recommend American Madness after you go and see Michael Moore's film, Capitalism: A Love Story.

I'm always trying to find ways to link the Weimar Republic with our current social and economic environment. The report in Time Magazine about Detroit and other news articles about Detroit's deteriorated social and economic situation are mind boggling. CNN reports how bodies are piling up in morgues because families can't afford the $695 to bury them and the city has no money to bury them either. "Oh the shark bites..."Then a week later there was a huge article in the Detroit Free Press on how when housing and utility assistance was offered the Cobo Center was mobbed. "with his teeth dear..."Then a few days later I happened to see a jaw dropping documentary on HBO called Outrage.(I say jaw dropping because you just can't believe what self-loathing produces, I'm so naive!)This film is about how many of the polices in Washington against same sex couples are championed by closeted, self loathing homosexuals. Really interesting film. "...and he keeps them pearly white..."Today I came across a film I have hear of but have NEVER seen. Anders als die Andern this film is a stunner. It is so sad that it was destroyed by the Nazi's. The scene that really made the connection for me with the film Outrage, was the scene where the blackmailer of Paul is in an all male bar conspiring to blackmail Paul further which eventually leads to Paul being sent to jail.So what does this have to do with Detroit? Not sure, but for some reason I can't get Three Penny Opera out of my head. "They call him Mac the Knife".Anders als die Andern (1919, Germ.) (aka Different From the Others)This is what Sex in Cinema has listed about the film:This silent film (only half of it survives) by director Richard Oswald was reportedly the first representation of male homosexuality ("the third sex") in a feature-length film, and the first screen depiction of a gay bar (with gay males and butch females); it was also notable for sympathetically portraying homosexuality; the two ill-fated lovers were pro

Here's a great article I found which will help you if are new to the site.Pre-Code Hollywood (Green Cine)-What is great about this article is it's clear time definiton of the five year period and the local aspect of film censorship

" The "pre-Code era" refers to a roughly five-year period in film history, beginning with the widespread adoption of sound in 1929 and ending on July 1, 1934, with the inauguration of the Production Code Administration and a policy of rigid censorship. Before July 1, 1934, restrictions on movie content varied widely, depending on local laws, mores and public taste. As a result, "pre-Code films" tend to be racier, sexier, more adult, more cynical, more socially critical, more honest and more politically strident than the films produced by Hollywood on up through the early 1960s."

1. (The Devil's Cabaret) This one in color, I have no idea what the title is but it's all about Sin and I think it may be called "The Devil's Cabaret". I love the dancing devils in tutus outside of a fondue pot. I also love the dancing lingere girls. Some cute outfits!


2. Dancing the Devil Away (those are some serious mylar merkins!)

I had this album when I was a kid. Just loved it. Loved Cyndi! I remember this one track on there that I adored and I could never figure out where it came from. Well here it is!



And watch in this video interview with Cyndi how perfectly she nails it!!! She is just riffing off the cuff. She's got it exactly. I always loved her, but now that I found this I love her even more. Do more stuff Cyndi! I miss you!



I love it!

Dorothy Davenport, let's chat about Dot for a moment shall we?  (AKA Mrs. Wallace Reid) She was a movie producer/writer and director. She had an extremely interesting and prolific film career.

One of her films was Road to Ruin, which I have got to get my hands on.

So what has once powerful, forgotten female director, a film about the dangers of sex, drugs and abortions and today's news have to do with each other?

Well, this Times Article. Titled-"Women in Hollywood 2009-At the Box Office but Not Directing. Ok, by now you may have figured out that I am a director and not a man. I found this article insanely depressing.

Not to mention it made little of the fact that women were once quite powerful forces in the silent film era and pre-code era.

The article was so depressing...you know what,

F-it. I'm officially now a male director. I am done. The odds are so stacked against me, I mean I could be a role model, inspiration and all that nonsense but in the mean time some jerk off twit guy is making money that I should be making. I'm done being a sucker. That's it!

I'm a guy.  As I guy, I think it's cool that Tiger banged so many chicks and doesn't give a rats ass about his family. Hell, I'm a &^%$ Italian Guy Director.

I wanna get paid to be a douche bag. I want to inspire women to do sexy things on poles and compete for my attention. Because, if you are a woman, that is all you want right? My attention?


Also as a guy, I now don't care if you think what I write is smart or honest or relevant to your life. I want to make movies about over sentimentalized family situations, women who are shrews or sluts and make every actress over 30 play a MILF.  Because that is the range of my personal, immature guy experience and that is how my audience sees the  world.

What have I been thinking!!! Being a guy director is going to be SO much easier! Because women suck and men are funny. Bitches!

So it's raining and cold and I have to do a bunch of stuff...then I got distracted and started watching
China's Stolen Children on HBO. A documentary about all these kids getting kidnapped and people selling their kids due to extreme poverty and the one child law. It is really sad.

So if you see this kid, give him back.
Anyway, I'm thinking this is crazy this could never happen in the U.S. The way this current global economy is "lost boys" could be come a U.S. problem very quickly. I remember actually seeing this movie at one point, but I need to revisit it.



Wild Boys of the Road

Here's the Trailer

Here's a good quick description of the film:
Directed by William Wellman.
With Frankie Darro, Edwin Phillips
US 1933, 35mm, b/w, 68 min.






"Impoverished by the Depression, teenage buddies Tom and Ed take
off to fend for themselves and lighten their unemployed parents' load. Far from home, the boys' romantic dreams of new found freedom and idyllic odyssey are shattered by the brutal lessons of the dog-eat-dog nature of life on the ragged fringes of
society. Director Wellman (Public Enemy) brings a vivid ferocity to this hard-edged road movie. Such clear-eyed and unflinching depictions of poverty, lawlessness and the victimization of youth would soon become rare in Hollywood."





Many films we see now, Harry Potter, what is that vampire movie...Twilight, etc. don't really show what harsh reality some families may be experiencing. I think that might be why Precious was so successful at the box office. People unfortunately, can relate. I could be wrong.

Maybe we need more of these films that talk about what children in the U.S. are experiencing so we don't end up with a generation of teens being forced into horrific situations. We have protections in place now that the kids in the 30's didn't have, I believe this movie was used as a promotion for the ideals of the New Deal. Maybe they can make a film that promotes something about kids and health care.

Anyway,

This is hysterical. This is made after the Hays Code had cracked down. Here we see the beginning of the wierd fetish creepiness that follows. I love the creepy guy in the balcony licking his lips and squinting his eyes after seeing an extended few of the booty.

Heros for Sale

So I was reading the Times this morning and this caught my attention. Yesterday I wrote about The Wild Boys of the Road and thanks so much for the thoughtful comments on that posting. Leaving kids on their own to fend for themselves is terribly sad. Good lord, I'm a full grown adult and I suck at it.
I couldn't think of many films yesterday dealing with the plight of children, I don't know why I didn't think of Slumdog Millionaire but that's a good one reflecting street life of children in Mumbai.
This film obviously was very popular. I think that this film could possibly be made in every country. Isn't that horrible. I mean think about it, they could do an 8 Mile Millionaire and a Katrina Millionaire. I don't think it would be that difficult to find true stories of children living on the streets across America due to financial distress and broken families.

Anyway, the article in the NY Times about the problems with youth prisons in New York is barbaric. Just so terribly sad. What's worse, is that this is an old problem.

I wrote a bit about The Godless Girl, but I think it deserves revisiting for a different reason other than religion. The Godless Girl is famous for exposing the reform school system in the United States. Just like the New York Times article, the Los Angeles Times did a report in 1927 about Queen Silver, who was a child prodigy orator that ran an Atheistic Society for whom the film was based.

The two lead character's in the film both end up in reformatories due to an accident from a death resulting from a conflict between the Christian and Atheistic Societies. The Aetheistic Girl and the Christian Boy are both sent to a Juvenile Reformatory. The conditions depicted in the Juvenile Reformatory were based on six months of extensive research done by Cecil B. DeMille. What is particularly cool about this is that he hired a girl to go undercover and do time in the Juvenile Reform system and the conditions were reflected in the film.


"According to

I noticed the other night before on TCM The Women was on. I almost watched it, but I had gotten my finace to watch Grey Gardens the weekend before (he loved it, which really surprised me, but it was quite good). But, I DVR'd it to watch later. But I was thinking as I was watching Sex and the City


with my fiance (he surprisingly enjoyed that as well) how similar they are. (I've seen The Women several times, but love to watch it over and over). I can't even talk about the newer version of The Women with Meg Ryan, which I didn't see but seemed like a rip off of Sex and the City since they were released in theaters around the same time. Anyway, the idea of women that they are supportive of each other and flawed and that they have sex and affairs and ruin and save each others lives is not a social network that is seen today in film.If you love Sex and the City, see the original gangstas. Joan Crawford is a bad ass in that bathtub and the final line in that movie is great to use at a party or with that girlfriend who has stood you up one too many times.The thing I think that is most vivid to me is the phone in the bathtub with Joan Crawford. It is fantastic. Oh, and just like Sex and the City the men have a peripheral existence. There are no men in The Women. They exist entirely off screen. Just like Mr. Big's real life and all the men's lives in Sex and the City exist entirely off screen.Just like most women in most films only exist on the other end of a phone at home or are the accepting hug at the end of a terrible adventure.

I just saw a story on the news this morning about a woman named Ms. Primoff. She kicked her daughter out of the car and drove home to her million dollar house in Scarsdale, NY. This caught my attention because I live in the area. She was arrested when she went to go pick up her daughter at the police station later that day and spent a night in jail. She is currently out on $1500 bail. I'm assuming she has been under some stress lately since she is a bankruptcy lawyer.In order to heal the bond between mother and daughter I'm trying to think of movies they can watch together. A film with Barbara Stanwyck perhaps. No, wait! I know this is about 10 years outside of the realm of Pre-code, but I think a little evening on the couch with popcorn and Mildred Pierce my start a dialogue going.



Sounds like this 10 year old daughter is not that innocent. A sense a little Veda in the works.If this mom is simply just overworked and under appreciated, maybe the sweet, post code film Stella Dallas could bring them together just in time for Mother's day. This film is why the Lifetime channel exists.If it was simply a "You don't understand me" arguement, the a little Our Dancing Daughters will be interesting. It shows that young women have been rebelling and mother's have been frustrated for years.


If the mother is just nuts, well then Night Nurse has a great abusive mother in it.


This girl should be grateful her mother is not trying to make money off of her dying.Ah...the recession. We will be experiencing more and more unstable parental behavior.Try to look to the Pre-code films for a commiseration with it all.

We all know that Scarface is one of the best gangster films of all time. (The original with Paul Muni, although the Al Pacino version has it's moments). This film had a record 28 killings in the film. The theme of the X always let you know that violence was about to take place and also there is the Lucia Sextet which whistled before a killing.

Oh wait! Here's a clip, the famous 4 min. continuous shot. It's Monday, have to have a little Gangster fun. Enjoy!

Thanks Barbara. Wish I would have seen this before I started dating and making an ass of myself.

Happy Monday! Here's a little something to pick you up or at least to transport you. This little clip just took me somewhere else. I just found it beautiful. The crane shot at the end..(I mean that had to be a crane) made you feel like you were a fly's soul escaping. Very hypnotic.

And here's a little Hedy Kiesler (Lamarr) nudity for the evening.

I can't quite find the orgasm scene. When I dig it up I will definitely post it. This was done before she had fled her husband Friedrich Mandl, an arms manufacturer who was conspiring with the Nazi's. (This is wacky, because he was apparently half Jewish). She changed her name to Lamarr later.

So get this. This is the coolest thing I have ever heard about a Hollywood actress. So turns out Hedy Lamar, the woman who was famous for the first depiction of a female orgasm on film. (Which again, when I find I promise I will post) was also a co-inventor of a device that we base our current secure military transmissions on.

Or something like that (It is called Spread Spectrum Technology). Basically, we could not have had wireless technology without her. Cool, huh?

So what goes with Health Care debates and the Tiger Woods scandal? This Tiger thing is so silly.


How much do you think one can make by saying you slept with Tiger? You know what...come to think of it...
I slept with Tiger!

Did you sleep with Tiger? I think we should have a national "I admit I slept with Tiger Woods Day". That way at least this thing will just stop and we can get an actual news story reported. So tomorrow when you get up, get a white t-shirt out of your closet and take a magic marker and write on it, "I Banged Tiger" maybe you'll get a stimulus check in the mail?

So here's a little mixing of a star who falls and important health care issues.Clarke Gable plays an up and coming surgeon who's gets caught up in infidelity. Men in White(1934)



The film is best know for how it handles the topic of abortion and more interestingly the man (Clarke Gable) suffering consequences of the botched procedure. (Dead girlfriend, public humiliation, fiance leaves him).The League of Decency was none to thrilled about this film and cut the daylights out of it as well as determining it was unfit for public viewing. Here's a great description of the melodrama which has that fall from grace Tiger feel to it.

Heros for Sale

So I was reading the Times this morning and this caught my attention. Yesterday I wrote about The Wild Boys of the Road and thanks so much for the thoughtful comments on that posting. Leaving kids on their own to fend for themselves is terribly sad. Good lord, I'm a full grown adult and I suck at it.
I couldn't think of many films yesterday dealing with the plight of children, I don't know why I didn't think of Slumdog Millionaire but that's a good one reflecting street life of children in Mumbai.
This film obviously was very popular. I think that this film could possibly be made in every country. Isn't that horrible. I mean think about it, they could do an 8 Mile Millionaire and a Katrina Millionaire. I don't think it would be that difficult to find true stories of children living on the streets across America due to financial distress and broken families.

Anyway, the article in the NY Times about the problems with youth prisons in New York is barbaric. Just so terribly sad. What's worse, is that this is an old problem.

I wrote a bit about The Godless Girl, but I think it deserves revisiting for a different reason other than religion. The Godless Girl is famous for exposing the reform school system in the United States. Just like the New York Times article, the Los Angeles Times did a report in 1927 about Queen Silver, who was a child prodigy orator that ran an Atheistic Society for whom the film was based.

The two lead character's in the film both end up in reformatories due to an accident from a death resulting from a conflict between the Christian and Atheistic Societies. The Aetheistic Girl and the Christian Boy are both sent to a Juvenile Reformatory. The conditions depicted in the Juvenile Reformatory were based on six months of extensive research done by Cecil B. DeMille. What is particularly cool about this is that he hired a girl to go undercover and do time in the Juvenile Reform system and the conditions were reflected in the film.


"According to