Signs of the Apocalypse part 7 (spoilers included)

You may notice a trend in movies dealing with themes of the end of the world. Times are bleak and now mainstream movies are lapping at the tree sap of apocalypse. Certainly Knowing, the Nicholas Cage starrer directed by Alex Proyas (Garage Days, Dark City) has its rapture mojo on full tilt.
In Watchman we witness all the world's major cities being attacked nuke style by Ozymandias/Veidt although he makes it look like the handiwork of Dr. Manhattan. In a few months we have the master of annihilation Roland Emmerich. That guy was predicting the end of the world 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC - do the math). In his latest movie coming out this summer 2012, we witness, ah, world destruction.
In Knowing Cage plays a MIT researcher/professor who discovers a numeric coded messages left in a time capsule that accurately predicts disasters. Knowing has a creepy narrative flow what with a young boy (Cage's son in the movie is played by Houstonian Chandler Cantebury) being shown a vision by tall slightly Nordic men in black that portends flaming animals racing out of a forest fire. The CGI effects are especially good during an airliner crash.The bodies burn bright. This is followed by a subway car crash that doesn't so much depict carnage as a loud sound design and the considerable speed of impact. Now the next event has got to outdo that right? And where there have been recorded eyewitnesses to airline and train disasters nobody has really witnessed the apocalypse, not even David Koresh.
If you're going to destroy the world and the rapture occurs you need to wipe out every living organism, which is what Proyas does. In Michael Tolkin's The Rapture what did they really show for the end of the world but a couple of jail cell bars rattling, the camera shaking and the horsemen of the apocalypse riding on motorcycles without helmets?
Turns out that Cage's work involves our Sun's coronal ejections and he now believes a solar flare will engulf the Earth leaving the world uninhabited even creatures who take solace in underground mines and caves. To Knowing's credit it damn well provides a third act finale that obliterates.
Knowing is not one of these Christian funded movies starring Kirk Cameron but with a few changes (no Cage and cheese whiz effects) it could be. Proyas definitely wields a secular hand in the narrative, only at the end weaving in a religious sub-thread.
Chock up another guilty pleasure to computer effects and Cage playing distraught with all the passion and ham he can muster.

Lauren Bacall @ River Oaks Three part II

It was the worst of times and the best of times. No, I'm not referring to the French Revolution, but rather to the Brilliant Lecture Series presentation of Lauren Bacall last week (March 11) at the River Oaks Three theater. Here's the rub.
The evening was smooth, starting with a flawless 35mm print of To Have and Have Not that was to be followed by a Q&A with Lauren Bacall, one of the stars of the film along with her then future husband Humphrey Bogart.
When it came time for the post-screening Q&A is where the uneasiness sets in. The Brilliant Lecture Series is to be commended for bringing such great talent to Space City, what with Bacall and then later this month Caroline Kennedy (at Jones Hall). But at $65 a ticket it was unbelievable how inept the conversation part of the evening was handled. There were well over 400 people in the audience, and one could also attend a reception at Lynn Wyatt's for a $250 ducat.
First of all the mics were feeding back. Bacall was holding the mic at waist level so someone had turned up the gain until there was a piercing ear-splitting shriek. Then there was no moderator, but rather questions (a mere six) were taken from the audience. Instead of having a standing mic set up in one of the aisles for people to queue up at or having had people write their questions out beforehand so they could be screened, a woman with the lecture series went around the audience with a wireless mic to people who had their hands raised.
The head hanging shame came when one woman asked: "My parents named me Lauren after you. My question is can I come up there and get my picture taken with you?"
Six questions were allowed folks; getting pictures taken is what the $250 tickets were for.
Bacall showed her intelligence by taking each stupid question (about half of the six queries) and twisting it and telling a story that illustrated her career. She told how on To Have and Have Not (it was her first film) she was so shy that director Howard Hawks used that emotion and had her tuck her chin down and glance up while she delivered her lines. That become Bacall's look.
Another question was about Casablanca. Bacall handled this question with such grace and integrity by talking about how she started her career as a teen in the theater. Then she segued into a story about a woman who one time asked her to sign a record album of the soundtrack to Casablanca.
"I wasn't in Casablanca"
"Yes you were."
"No, I wasn't in Casablanca."
"Yes you were in Casablanca."
"No, I wasn't in Casablanca unless my name is Ingrid Bergman."
The Brilliant Lecture Series remains a worthwhile non-profit that brings in quality speakers on a semi-monthly basis. And considering how much money I've spent on, say, U2 tickets at the Summit, the amount of $65 a ducat really isn't that much. But the org needs to get its act together regarding the quality of the equipment, and the technical requirements for executing a flawless Q&A with a large audience.

Buddy Holly on Arthur Murray Dance show

Saw this video on Youtube. Great footage of Buddy Holly on a fuddy duddy show. Interesting how the show is a dance show but the people in the background are standing there like mannequins. This is from the author's description.
"Buddy Holly and the Crickets made an appearance on the Arthur Murray Dance Party on December 29, 1957. It was unusual to see a band like the Crickets performing on the show. This video includes the complete introduction by Kathryn Murray. Another interesting note- This footage is used on Dick Clark's American Bandstand compilations. Clark claims that the footage of the only appearance that Holly and the Crickets made on Bandstand in the fall of 1958 was destroyed in the 70s. They performed "Heartbeat." It's a shame that the footage was destroyed because it was Buddy's last appearance on TV before his death."
On a side note, in the farmer's field where the plane Holly (and the Big Bopper and Richie Valens) was in crashed, a month afterwards Holly's gun was found. This led to false rumors that the pilot had been shot. Big Bopper was thrown from the plane and that led to speculation that he lived and managed to walk away before he died. A few years ago his body was exhumed (he was buried in a 16-gauge steel casket in Beaumont, TX). A forensic autopsy determined (all his bones were shattered) that he was indeed thrown from the crash site but had not lived after the crash.

As It Is In Heaven

What is As It Is In Heaven (Så Som I Himmele)? This Swedish film, playing in an open ended engagement at the Angelika, dwells in snowbound landscapes and oddball characters not unlike the recent Lars and the Real Girl. But AIIIH exists miles from Lars.
As It Is In Heaven came out in Sweden in 2004 and was nominated for a best foreign film Oscar in 2005. Usually a film a few years old and of that pedigree pops into the local museum for a weekend night and disappears but audiences in search of sophisticated cinema can take in this wintery concoction at their leisure. Michael Nyqvist, a charismatic actor who instantly looks familiar but in actuality whom I've never seen in another movie, plays Daniel a world class conductor. When we meet him at the movie's beginning he's berating an orchestra in the middle of rehearsal. The camera action is zig-zaggy handheld dizzy. Before the scenes over Daniel's collapsed in exhaustion with a total mental breakdown and heart attack.
To recuperate Daniel travels to his tiny hometown and here's where the fun starts. Part of the appeal of AIIIH is the way character motivation feels real. Not all the characters are fully developed, for instance the wife beater is just a stereotypic cypher but several of the townsfolk are fully defined. Daniel is asked to help with the church choir, a request that he avoids. But when he tries to interfere with the wife beater, also a former schoolmate, he gets the crap beaten out of him. Daniel instantly changes his mind about helping out the pastor as cantor to the singing group.
At this point AIIIH alternates between Daniel's rehabilitation and character studies of the various choir members. Naturally Daniel's technique (which at one point includes a group grope) changes the various members for the better but to the consternation of their spouses.
Eventually the group is invited to perform at a competition in Austria but the director has a few surprises in store. (Actually I was perplexed at the fact that they board a bus and drive from Sweden to Austria in a day but my unfamiliarity with the scope and distance of Europe is now evident.) AIIIH posits that life is not fair but that heavenly rewards come to those who deserve them.

DVD slight return: The Spy Collection

This megaset contains British television programs produced by ITC (Incorporated Television Company) in the late-60s and early 1970s. The 14 disc set should keep you occupied for a couple of months of casual viewing should you accept the mission.
Beware that this, aside from four eps of The Prisoner, is in no way essential viewing but rather the very definition of guilty pleasures. The Prisoner seems like a teaser with just the pilot and three eps, one of which The Chimes of Big Ben is an alternative edit, and one where you have to jack the volume up. Those who know know that The Prisoner contains some of the most outlandish paranoia inducing moments in television and are probably aware that the complete 17 episodes are available as a stand alone package.
The Spy Collection displays a total disavowal to the true state of world politics. But in the era in which these shows were produced the concept of cool attractive secret agents fighting Nazis (a popular 60s villain) and Communism was among the more accepted stereotypes fostered by television.
The camp and mod style displayed by The Persuaders! goes a long way to making it go down easy. Not exactly spies The Persuaders!, from 1971, are a couple of playboys who are recruited by a judge who himself runs a kind of star chamber. He uses the pair to punish bad guys who have otherwise escaped the long arm of justice. Starring Roger Moore, caught between The Saint (another ITC series) and James Bond, and Tony Curtis, who frankly is a hoot and running on all cylinders especially when he channels his Some Like It Hot persona, the duo drive around in slick cars (Aston Martin and Ferrari), court hot babes and resolve international intrigue. Moore sports an ascot and plays a Lord (upper crust you know) while Curtis wears a single glove and finds ways to deliver hilarious non sequiturs. Several of the eps are helmed by British directors like Basil Dearden and Roy Ward Baker, themselves vets of British cinema. The theme song by John Barry, just like his work on countless films (James Bond to Dances With Wolves), sets the mood for adventure with its cool structure and hints of darkness.
Less interesting but nonetheless compelling is The Champions, from 1968 and featuring an American actor in the lead (in an effort to market internationally). This trio of British spies were escaping a mission in China when their plane crashes in Tibet. A secret race of mountain dwelling Tibetans (who of course look like they're from central casting) revive them and give them super psychic powers. Once back in London they continue to work for their secret agency Nemesis but without telling their superior of their newfound abilities. I especially like the sci-fi sound effects and zooms into the characters eyes as they are using their telepathic waves to communicate with each other.
The set also contains the first season of The Protectors, which stars a post-Man From U.N.C.L.E. Robert Vaughn, Tony Anholt, and the totally seductive Nyree Dawn Porter. This series was not broadcast in the US and never achieves the kind of cult appeal of the other shows in this package. Yet with its revolving international locations and super cool theme song it grows on you after a couple of eps. The themes song "Avenue and Alleyways" sung by Tony Christie over the end credits each week (he sounds like Tom Jones) will have you humming its melody in the shower if you're not careful.