Assassination Week Pt. 2: Suddenly

Suddenly (Lewis Allen, 1954)

Before Frank Sinatra was trying to foil an assassination attempt in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), he was intent on knocking off the Commander in Chief in Suddenly. As John Baron, Sinatra brings death to the little down of Suddenly, California. It’s a sleepy little city where things happy so slowly that the city council’s thinking of changing the name to “Gradually.”

Something big finally happens in Suddenly when the Treasury Department shows up to lay the groundwork for an appearance by the President. It’s up to local Sheriff Tod Shaw (Sterling Hayden) to make sure the town’s locked up tight and free from “subversive elements.” Things get so wild in Suddenly that Shaw’s deputy has to ask, “What in Hades is going on in this burg? Did some galoot make a uranium strike?”

All roads lead to the house of Pop Benson (James Gleason), the perfect vantage point for gunning down the President and the residence of Shaw’s gal pal Ellen (Nancy Gates) and her son, Pidge (Kim Charney). A precursor to William Wyler’s The Desperate Hours, Baron and his pair of thugs take Shaw, the Benson clan, and their television repairman hostage as the train carrying the President chugs closer. The rest of the film becomes a taut melodrama with Baron and Shaw verbally sparring about patriotism, soldiering, and the Power of the Gun.

“I’ve got no feelings against the President... He’s just a half a million bucks to me, tax free,” says Baron. Hot off of From Here to Eternity, Sinatra delivers a tour de force performance as the psychopathic Baron. Director Lewis Allen gives Sinatra ample opportunity to display his talent including allowing the actor to address the camera directly as he describes his deluded dreams for the future. The screenplay by Richard Sale provides excellent material for Sinatra and Hayden. Seeing these two titans square off is a treat.

Long in the public domain, Suddenly is readily available on cheap DVDs or for free download on sites like http://www.archive.org.

Mad Tea Party - "Every Way"

New video from Skizz.

Assassination Week Pt. 1: The Tall Target

The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951)

John Kennedy doesn’t take shit from anybody. He’s discovered a plot to kill Abraham Lincoln on a stop in Baltimore on the way to his inauguration. When his boss at the New York police headquarters laughs him off, Kennedy (Dick Powell) quits and hops a train to Baltimore to personally foil the attempt on Lincoln’s life. Even in the North, the president-elect isn’t without detractors. “As far as I’m concerned, the new President is Jefferson Davis,” jeers one Secessionist passenger as Kennedy boards the train.

His one contact dead, Kennedy finds himself up one corpse and down a badge, gun, and train ticket. He even manages to lose the corpse and gain a guy claiming to be “John Kennedy.” Kennedy’s doppelganger tries to bump him off but he’s saved by the sharp shooting of Colonel Jeffers (Adolphe Menjou), a guy so friendly and so helpful that he just has to be in on the deception. It seems the Kennedy doesn’t have many friends on the train other than a slave (Ruby Dee) traveling with her owners back to the Land of Cotton. Otherwise, Kennedy’s being pursued by Southern spies, his former coworkers at the police department, and the conductor who’s determined to get his fare.

Even with the workmanlike direction of Anthony Mann, The Tall Target can’t escape feeling like a stage play with its confined setting and clunky dialogue. That the film lacks any kind of soundtrack (save a few bars of “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” at the end) doesn’t help matters. Luckily, Powell manages to inject his wry gumshoe sensibility into his character enough to make the film worthwhile.

Released in 1951, the irony of “John Kennedy” trying to save Abraham Lincoln from an assassin’s bullet wouldn’t be realized for years to come. It’s often held that there are “eerie connections” between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy including the mistaken belief that JFK had a secretary named Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy. The John Kennedy of The Tall Target and of history was a New York City Police Commissioner. Still, there is the startling fact that a week before Lincoln was shot he was in Monroe, Maryland and a week before John F. Kennedy was shot he was in Marilyn Monroe.

Street Kings

I'm currently updating my article on James Ellroy and just got done watching a bootleg of STREET KINGS. All I can say is, "Wow." That's not about the movie, though it was fairly good and far better than other Ellroy-based dreck like BLACK DAHLIA, DEEP BLUE, and BROWN'S REQUIEM. Rather, I'm agog about the marketing campaign of the film. The preview lead me to believe that Common and The Game were all over the film. This is a masterful bit of bait and switch. Despite Common being shown as one of the leads (check out the section of the preview that shows Common, Forest Whitaker, and Keanu Reeves in quick succession), he's in the film once (maybe twice). All of the close ups (including the horrible process shot of his face over a shot of a Los Angeles street) are culled from a solitary scene near the end of the film.

An urban tale to be sure, the preview/commercials portray STREET KINGS to be far more African American-centric than it truly was.

Oh Dear God, Make It Stop!

Why? Why do Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer continue to make these movies? They're simply not funny. Worse, they're not even topical! August 29, 2008 (date tentative) brings us yet another of their Blank Movies. This time it's DISASTER MOVIE (could there be a better description?) -- apparently it's a parody of movies that just aren't even being made anymore. AIRPLANE! skewered AIRPORT but it didn't try to also nail EARTHQUAKE, THE POSEIDEN ADVENTURE, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING, et cetera. Without a doubt, DISASTER MOVIE will include "topical" jokes about Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, and any other celebrity implosions that take place this summer. It'll also try to parody THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, ARMAGEDDON, DEEP IMPACT, THE HAPPENING, and more. Too much more. And all done poorly.

DVD Review

Real quick, here's a review I wrote for the Metro Times for Renny Harlin's Cleaner. Enjoy!

Rough Table of Contents

Figured I'd share this with y'all to give you a better idea of what may be in the works for the book. This is a very rough idea.

Interviews

James Ellroy

Guy Maddin

Monte Hellman

Richard Crawford

Taylor Negron

Svengoolie

Bruce Campbell

Keith Gordon

Dr. Demento

Deafula Producer

Shawna Kenney

Features

John Paizs Appreciation

Midnite Movie Reviews

Parker Films

Willeford

Goodis

Ellroy

CdC Manifesto

The Big Clock

Theater Work Story

Paul Williams

The Prize is Your Life

Handi-Capable Chop Sockey

Shuji Terayama

I, Shatner

Killer Cars

Fish out of Water (Andrea)

Mike & Andrea go to Breakfast

Jean Claude Van Dichotomy

Lone Wolf & Cub

Tarantino

Tale of the Tape

Ironic Press Release

Attention Enemy

Tarantino in a Can

Star Wars

The Lost Cut

Jar Jar Done Gone

Everyone Knows It's Windy

Star Wars Documentaries

Star Wars Rip Off Films

Star Wars Comic Strip

Scripts

8mm

Lonely Silver Screen

Hulk

Cat Woman

Indy Jones

Planet of the Apes

Elementary

Dieter

Superman Saga

Genes

Alien 3

Gremlins

Black Shampoo

Interview: John Daniels

Interview: Greydon Clark

Interview: Tanya Boyd

Interview: Skip E Lowe

Few Notes (Leon)

Appreciation

DVD release

Reviews

Hackers

Highlander Saga

Freebie

Elektra Glide

Die Hard 3

Road House

Le Petomaine

Black Heat

Bad Boys

Scads O'Reviews

Teenage Rampage

Rampage of Cuteness

Reviews

Celebrity Wanted

I need a celebrity.

I've been banging my head against the wall trying to think of who I can/should ask to pen an introduction to the Cashiers du Cinemart book. I have a few rough criteria.

• They can write fairly well
• They actually have read an issue or two and liked what we were doing for all the years CdC was around
• Their name will be recognizable enough to garner the attention of at least one person (other than their mom).

Any suggestions/volunteers? A celebrity intro isn't required, but it sure would be nice!

Oh, and they have to get their stuff to me in the next six to eight weeks (I'm flexible).

Only In New York

Just getting back from NYC where I did my best to play tourist. I took Andrea on a bus tour of the city, we went to a Broadway show (Avenue Q - tried to see it in Vegas before Sin City sent it packing but missed it), and even went to Ellis Island.

The best part of the trip had to be hooking up with Megan Abbott and Jason Starr for drinks followed by dinner and bullshitting with my old buddy Leon Chase. It was great seeing him after so many years.

The best and worst part of the trip had to be the initial leg of our bus tour where we were entertained/flabbergasted by our tour guide, Scotty. He didn't tell us anything that we didn't know already and he did so in an incredibly painful manner. He was a stutterer.

"You guys, you guys, you guys, over here, you guys, over here, this is the Empire, you guys, over here, this is the Empire State Building, right up here, you guys." And so it went from 47th and Broadway all the way to the Flatiron building when we stopped for a Jamba Juice and the safety of another tour guide. We hopped on and off the Greyline for the next couple of days (tickets were valid for 48 hours) and never had the displeasure of Scotty again, thank goodness.