MURDER, SHE WROTE SEASON FOUR
"WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE"
After a couple of pretty lackluster initial episodes on the first DVD of Angela Lansbury's unsinkable vanity gravy train, I was ready to chalk a most risky of birthday presents up to misplaced nostalgia }}} That is until I hit this cathode catheter of pure fucking Fletcher juice and like a wee babe, remembered why I sucked at the withered teat in the first place! Sippppppp, ahhh. I suck balls at predicting killers in TV or movie-mysteries and I had this one nailed in like 5 minutes. Every flat joke, "Whaaaa..." freeze-frame episode-ender, obvious peripheral character, and transparent twist is here! But all players carry off the cream with not so much as a well-hidden grimace; and panache to spare. Lansbury could probably sell the nu-metal Holocaust to a Socialist bloc made up of music critics from the New Yorker, Nation, and NPR without breaking a sweat or showin her garters. But then, SHE'S A FUCKING LADY!!!!! Which she proves quite handily in this rollicking episode while playing good-hearted nag to Patrick McGoohan's barely recongizable defense attorney blowhard. Needless to say, hijinks ensue. Case closed!
"OLD HABITS DIE HARD"
Also excellent. Recalling, if necessarily faintly, Italian horror by way of Mario Bava (i.e. The Whip and the Body) and the gloved stand-in hands of Dario Argento (to say nothing of 70s nunsploitation), this episode is safer than Sister Act(1), but manages to sneak in a handful of not atrocious shots, a horn of plenty of secondary characters, and a nail-biting scene where our beloved Jessica almost bites the big one (God's waiting room, not Matlock's bar exam, ya pervs!). The plotting here was actually a bit muddled for my sleepy brain so I really don't understand what happened, but all in all a delicious ride. In other words, I would recommend it to your mom. Cool?
MOVING ALONG BRISKLY...
Single(ish)-sentence takes on the best and brightest that befouled my last 2.5 weeks in no particular order. Run-ons allowed:
LAURA OTTO PREMINGER 1944 (Film Forum/NYC)
Witty-as-fuck King Kong Klassic film noir. Probably perfect, right?
INDIAN JEWELRY (Ronny's Bar/Chicago)
Houston schlub-rockers make love to 13+ different local die-hard scenester musical assistants in one of the most explosive and effervescently plastic spectacles of faux-raga I could ever hope to imagine!
FORCED ENTRY SHAUN COSTELLO 1974
Original XXX (remade as an R a scant year after) proto-slasher could be grislier and lags considerably (for me anyway) during its obligatory hardcore fornicatin' segments, but things get spicy during the genuinely grueling degradation of the utterly convincing second rape-kill scene!
VEGAS MARTYRS THE FEMALE MIND
Recent Troubleman Unlimited rerelease of a Dominick Furnow project from a couple years back. Guitar, electronix, and drums sound about like what you should expect, at a respectably loud enough volume, with a few nice surprises besides the nifty translucent green LP!
KILLER OF SHEEP CHARLES BURNETT 1977 (Music Box Theatre/Chicago)
Old-school humanism from Burnett's amazing example of unforced sympathetic American neo-realism in this might-as-well-be-documentary of the Watts 'ghetto' in L.A.!
PERMANENT MIDNIGHT/SKAREKRAU/OVEROVA (Empty Bottle/Chicago)
Anti-pretentious power electronics, costumed cock rock (with nudity!), and 3 masked jazzdweebs sounding like an unrehearsed version of Sightings (who I like!) should sum up this nearly drunk-enough night pretty *********ing well!
THE END; COCKSUCKER?
1. Which I did have to actually watch recently if you, dear reader, can even imagine. Grim 2B sure.
3 comments:
wish i'd seen killer of sheep when it (re)played here. saw "le mepris." the "fully nude" bridget bardot scene i'd heard so much about was a big let-down. sadly i liked the bonus interview stuff better than the film itself. have you seen any fritz lang?
Yeshhh.
M
Metropolis
The Big Heat
The Woman in the Window
The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
I suppose I've enjoyed the Dr. Mabuse series the best. Still haven't caught the original 1922 entry, but The Testamen is pretty rollicking for something made in 1933, or any year really.
For whatever reasons, I've found his noirs to be too mannered for my tastes.
Only saw the first 20 minutes of Mepris. Beautifully shot, but it seemed incredibly restrained for Godard.
yeah, all that "subversive" stuff gets a bit irritating. subversive in the sense of doing a hollywood-esque production just to pull the wool over the audience's eyes.
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