GODZILLA MEETS THE NEIGHBORS! Huge Monsters vs. Crass Frat Boys!!

Fraternity Raises Monsters in Basement

I saw two movies last week, GODZILLA and NEIGHBORS!  Both films were based on ludicrous premises.  Godzilla is a wonderful but ludicrous monster, and the suggestion that any suburban neighborhood would have zoning that would allow an out-of- control fraternity to buy a house as happens in NEIGHBORS is almost as ludicrous.  I tepidly enjoyed them both, but I was a little disappointed.

     I was psyched for GODZIRRA based on the trailers, but I found it to be a little slow.  Great special effects, of course.  The Big G eventually saves not only San Francisco but the world as we know it.  But. . . The only performance I found to be believable, (except, of course, the ones by the monsters) was the wife/nurse played by Elizabeth Olsen, who it turns out is the little sister of Mary Kate and Ashley.  Elizabeth can really act, but her face is so sweetly round that it occasionally looked like a balloon in 3-D.  (This was my first experience with current 3-D films.)

     As to NEIGHBORS, someone should do a time study to see whether there were more minutes of crass foolishness or more of humanly acceptable verbal exchange in the movie.  I definitely think crass foolishness would win.  Some good laughs, but this frat house film pales in comparison to the father of all crass fraternity pictures, ANIMAL HOUSE.  Best performance? Hands down the two babies who played baby Stella.  Sweet, hilarious, lovable.  This infant was so good and so sweet, I thought at times she might have been CG!  (That means computer generated.  I hate it when people write something in a blog or article as if it were common knowledge, when it might not be common knowledge   It's like the writers who put philosophical quotes in French in articles in THE ATLANTIC and THE NEW YORKER.)  But I digress. . .

     On my own scale of effectiveness I give these films both ISWUOD, "I shoulda waited until On Demand."  If I had to chose a favorite, I think I would be more apt to watch NEIGHBORS a second time than GODZIRRA.  Although, Elizabeth Olsen does have a very cute and very round face.  If you enjoy watching faces that are both cute and round, you might opt for a second viewing of GODZILLA in its current incarnation.

Patty LuPone and Mandy Patinkin in the 'Cuse!

We went to the Civic Center on Tuesday night to see two Broadway legends perform.  Both Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone won Tony's for Andrew Lloyd Webber's EVITA way back in 1980, and their performances in that musical could be said to have birthed their long and successful careers.  I remember watching the TONY Awards back in 1980 and seeing Patti LuPone as Evita and Mandy Patinkin as Che Guevera.  When I watched them 34 years ago, I remember thinking how absolutely wonderful these two powerful young talents were.  Patti was 30 at the time, and Mandy was 27.  I knew they were both going to be around and amazing for a long time.

I have to admit to a little trepidation when we arrived at the theater on Tuesday.  These two shining stars were, after all, my true contemporaries; we are in our 60's together.  Would their voices suffer from the inevitability of growing older?  Well, I wish I could say that they sang as beautifully as they did in 1980, but I can't.  Their voices have aged.  They creak a bit like my knees.  Mandy Patinkin, for me, was always at his best in the higher register.  His voice soared and was almost impossibly pure.  Patti LuPone's soprano was pure and monstrously powerful and awesome to hear.  Now Mandy's high notes are not quite what they were, and he growls in the lower register.  Patti is not the wall- shaking crystal-smasher she used to be.  But it's all right.  They still are a joy to watch and listen to, even if it's a bit like watching shadows and listening to echoes.

Here begin a few specific thoughts about the our evening with Mandy and Patti.  I loved the SOUTH PACIFIC duet at the beginning of the show, but I'm not sure why it was sung so rapidly.  Was it a comment on the fact that Emile DeBecque said that he needed to grab onto things quickly lest they get away?  I don't know, but I know theatergoers were troubled by it.  The same can be said about the rapid Sondheim lyrics.  They were very hard to understand for me, and I know most of the words.

I was really impressed with Mandy Patinkin's staging of this two person piece.  He gave me a lot of ideas for directing people of later middle age.  The most important point being be sure there are chairs, because they'll want to sit down a lot.  The show included a dance performed on rolling desk chairs.  Choreographed by Anne Reinking, it was a highlight of the evening.

I really loved the anecdotes of life in the theater, especially the one about the early performance of EVITA in California.  I wish there had been more.

Why was the show lit so. . .darkly?  I mean, it was occasionally hard to make out the players from up in the mezzanine.  All those beautiful lights in the Civic Center!  Use them. . .or does too much light reveal too much. . .?

When the inevitable standing ovation came at show's end, it was, I think for most of the people watching, myself included, part standing "O" for lifetimes of achievement and part for the abilities that Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone still have to continue to perform at a high level after doing it for a good long time.

Some people may wonder why such established stars, certainly with plenty of things to do, still go on the road to perform for live audiences.  After all, Patti LuPone wrote a best-selling memoir and Mandy Patinkin has his Showtime gig as Saul on HOMELAND.  Of course, on HOMELAND he could get assassinated at any moment just as an interesting plot twist.  I can only guess at the why of there need to stand behind the footlights still.  I think it's because that's what they do.  That's what they love to do.   The classic "Don't Cry For Me Argentina," begins with Eva/Patti singing, "It won't be easy/You'll think it's strange/When I try to explain how I feel/That I still need your love after all that I've done. . ." It may be something like that, too.  The love from the audience is a necessity, like food and water and music.




I found the TONY performance that I mentioned earlier in this post.  You might enjoy it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QtZxxbStjs

Obesity in Literature

This essay is not about the Beadle in OLIVER TWIST or Piggy in LORD OF THE FLIES or Ignatius J. Reilly in A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES.  This is not a treatise on fat characters but rather a treatise on obese books.  Like the American public, American popular literature is going to fat.  The bestseller lists are filled with novels that have man boobs and love handles and several chins.

Cases in point:  the novels of Stephen King.  I believe many of King's novels are really obese.  Stephen King remains one of my favorite writers.  I think his book ON WRITING is both a terrific memoir and great how-to text.  And it's short!  That's why I can't understand why he feels the need to write books that are so frickin' chunky.  Looking at my bookshelf, where I have several King novels, I see some fat tubs of prose.  DUMA KEY needs "verbo-suction" at nearly 800 pages.  And both IT and THE "Complete and Uncut" STAND both go well over 1100 pounds. . .I mean pages.  These are fat books!

I'm sure people will say that they love King's lack of brevity.  They feel that his lengthy narration with his intricate descriptions of place, his many insertions of elements of our pop culture, and his monstrous number of characters are what make him special.  I won't argue with your taste.  It just isn't for me.  I have had a hard time finishing the last few King reads I began, including UNDER THE DOME, the source of the TV mini-series and over 1300 pages on my Nook.  I couldn't finish BAG OF BONES.  It is the first King novel that I started that I just couldn't stand to finish because it was too damn fat.  Give me the days of SALEM'S LOT and THE SHINING once again.

Now to my next prosy overeater.  I just finished my third or fourth Jack Reacher novel, PERSUADER.   I discovered the Lee Child series of books shortly before Tom Cruise starred in the eponymous Jack Reacher movie.  Reacher is a vagabond, a traveling man, who graduated from West Point and had a 12 or 13 year career as an officer in the MP's.  His exploits there trained him well for what he does which is travel identity-less around the country doing good on his own terms, while doing in lots of bad guys.  The Reacher novels are good books.  Fun to read.  But obese.  PERSUADER is 480 pages long and would be great at 280.  The hero Jack Reacher is lean and tough.  This novel has a big roll hanging over its belt.  There is one scene where Jack Reacher sneaks out the upstairs window of a seaside mansion and makes his way across the yard on a rainy, windy night.  The reader is forced to step on every frickin' brick as Jack descends the wall.  You get soaked from the description of the rain.  Is this effective writing?  Of course, and I would love it in a suspenseful short story.  Not a fat novel.  The pages of description slow the book down and. . .horror of horrors. . .make me want to skip ahead to see just where this story is going.

Reading PERSUADER brought me to this topic along with reading Walter Mosley's newest Easy Rollins book LITTLE GREEN, a tough, sinewy, and svelte novel.  If you've never read Walter Mosley, ya gotta!  In his Easy Rollins books, Rollins chronicles post-World War II African-American culture in Southern California with amazing sensitivity, objectivity, and awareness.  "Easy" is a character like Jack Reacher in that he does good things, most of the time, for people, and some bad people get done in along they way.  But Easy is also is a philosopher, a social critic, and the soul of his people and his time.  The prose of Mosley's novel is rich and beautiful and TIGHT!  In spinning a tale of Los Angeles of the late sixties on Sunset Strip and in the enclaves of hippies, Mosley's LITTLE GREEN sends Rollins on a fascinating quest for redemption and for the right to be alive.  And he does it in 280 beautiful pages.  Some other books that are wonderful in both their eloquence and brevity are OF MICE AND MEN of by John Steinbeck, the Lew Archer novels of Ross McDonald, the novels of Richard Brautigan, and the aforementioned  LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding.  Of course, there are hundreds more

Certainly, there are wonderful novels that need to be 900 or 1000 pages long.  Books like the complete LES MISERABLES and the LORD OF THE RING trilogy come to my mind, and also WAR AND PEACE, the greatness of which  I can't attest to because I never read it.  (In fact, I'm not sure that I know many people who have.)   But there are reasons why we find these books on the classics shelf at the book store.  The classic status gives those book the right to be measured both in pages and pounds.

Why are there so many obese volumes?  I don't for sure, but I would guess the public demands them. A bunch of enablers, popular fiction readers demand their beach-reads and guilty pleasures be fattened up so they get the most of their favorite writer for their money.  In response to the public demand, I imagine that editors of successful pop authors push their clients to be long rather than short-winded.  I wish that instead they would give each author a 300 page per book limit, except on their 50th birthdays when they get to have 400.  I can't see this prose diet being adopted, I'm afraid.


Last year I railed quietly against Stephen King's largeness in this blog:
http://wwwmotleyplayer.blogspot.com/2013/06/another-day-another-gigundo-stephen.html

NOAH, Prophet With a Buzz Cut!!

To Be Referenced Later

Haven't seen the new Russell Crowe cinematic event called NOAH?  Spoiler coming.  We saw it when we were in South Carolina, and I've been thinking about writing about it ever since.   My problem has been how to explain the way the film affected me.

It didn't offend me.  Not in any way.  I had read that the film would take liberties with the story as told in Genesis.  It was to be a movie not a sermon, and Genesis 6-8, from which the story comes, is short and sparse of detail.  Certainly, NOAH's producers had to be creative and make some stuff up to craft a 2 hour film.    For example, I had seen the trailers featuring the doomed hordes swooping down on the Ark. The swooping down isn't in the Bible.  It seemed very logical that swooping down like that could have occurred, though, and that the gathering of the hordes and the defending of the Ark would be cinematically exciting.  Ergo, the filmmakers added them.

The arrival of the CG birds and snakes and elephants and all was fabulous, and the idea of using a sort of magic incense to put all the animals into hibernation for the length of the Ark voyage was clever, too. (Remember, it wasn't for just 40 days.  It took another 150 for the land to dry up for habitation.)   This hibernation answered 2 questions that always bothered me:  1. Where did they store all the food, so animal wouldn't eat animal?  and 2.  What did they do with all the poop?  One hundred and ninety days of food and poop would be a challenge on any ship!  Just check with the Carnival Cruise Line.

Because I had read Genesis 6-8 before seeing the film, I was surprised by the fact that in the movie none of Noah's sons had wives.  Besides Mrs. Noah, played fetchingly by Jennifer Connelly, the only female member of the Ark crew was their foundling daughter, played equally fetchingly by Emma Watson.  As a result of that change, the film ends up suggesting that all future generations trace back to Noah's son Shem and Hermoine Granger.  Still, I was not bothered by that nor by the fact that there's a stowaway on the Ark.  And, Noah's homicidal angst at the end of the movie surprised me, but I believe there was a logic to it, too.

So here's the crazy juxtaposition of images that got me!  The additions that spun my head because they seemed just so out of whack!  The critters that seemed so out of place in a film called NOAH were. . . THE STONE MONSTERS.  That's right.  In the movie were monsters made out of stone and mud that were about the size of and moved a lot like a Transformer made from a F250 long bed pickup truck.  The monsters appeared early, and from that moment on,  my head had a tough time getting around this movie.  It was like a Salvador Dali clock had been made to hang out of the Mona Lisa's lips.  (I am not suggesting that Noah is any kind of artwork, but a Salvadore DaVinci combo was the best simile I could come up with.)  The monsters were just so amazingly, jarringly out of place for me.

Russell (Noah) talks with Rocky

Certainly, these monsters were handy.  At first they were Noah's enemies, but pretty soon they joined up with him.  All these huge rock beasts picking up logs and popping them in place really streamlined the building of the ark.  These stone guys were also great at fighting off the swooping hordes.  And they could talk and babysit, too.  Really!

To be fair to the filmmakers, these monsters were supposed to be creatures called Nephilim.  Depending where you read about them, they were either fallen angels or the spawn of fallen angels and human women.  They are mentioned in Genesis 6.  Not as rock monsters, mind you, or as ark builders, but, if I understood it correctly, as some pretty nasty villians who were typical of pre-inundation humanity. Anyhow, in the move, when each Nephilim was swept over and crunched by a horde, his soul was released and sent straight to heaven.

These troublesome, out of place monsters were just too much for me to accept. . .too whacky to allow me to really enjoy the movie.  (Linda liked it a lot.)  The other thing that really spun my head was Russell Crowe's mid-film buzz cut!!  He's playing Noah with long hair and beard, rolling along fine, and suddenly he appears with every hair on his head 1/6 of an inch long.  That really bugged me!  You want me to accept monster, maybe, but who had the clippers?  That's what I want to know! Who?

Morgan Smith Goodwin, Milana Vanytrub, and Stephanie Courtney: Though You Don’t Realize It, You Do Know Who These Ladies Are!

Morgan, Milana, and Stephanie!  If you watch television everyday, there’s a good chance that you see all three of these talented ladies. . . everyday.  Morgan Smith Goodwin is the bright, smiling, red-haired face of WENDY’S, Milana Vanytrub is sweet “Lily” the AT&T “supervisor,” who seems to be constantly on the air, and Stephanie Courtney is the grand dame of continuing commercial characters, the wonderful Flo in the ENTERPRISE ads.  A few weeks ago, I got thinking about these reappearing personalities of ad-land.  We see them on our TV’s more often than the stars of THE GOOD WIFE or CASTLE or GREY’S ANATOMY or any other current show or popular film.  They’re in our living room so often they could be neighbors,  But ACCESS HOLLYWOOD and shows of a similar ilk only care about the series and film stars.  I’d like to briefly tell you about these three comm-celebs, who I think areTV stars in their own right.

"Now That's Better!"

Morgan Smith Goodwin Wendy’s character apparently works in some office where she is constantly introducing her coworkers to new Wendy’s lunch delights. When they have tasted the new fast food sandwich or salad, they all agree that “now that’s better” than what they had been eating before.  My research informed me that Morgan has been the face of WENDY’s “Now That’s Better” campaign since April of 2012, which certainly secures her spot in the gallery of successful continuing commercial characters.  Morgan is 28 and studied musical theater in college.  She spent some time in New York City honing her theatrical skills and appeared in the off-broadway production FRECKLEFACE STRAWBERRY, which sounds like the perfect vehicle for her.

"I am the supervisor."

What little biographical information I could find about Milana Vanytrub included the facts that she is 5’3” tall and is from Uzbekistan.  There is nothing Uzbekistan-ish about her accent so she must have arrived in the U.S. when she was a little kid.  She plays the sweet, always-smiling “supervisor” in the AT&T commercials.  She is, I believe, the up- and-comer in the continuing commercial universe. Her character has even grown over the months since the commercials began.  She started as the attentive, attractive supervisor.  Now her character has a name, Lily Evans, and her most recent advertisement, where we find out that Lily was a high school J.V. point guard, pairs her with basketball great Grant Hill.  That’s considerable commercial character growth.  Milana has appeared in such movies as “Life Happens” and “Junk,” and television shows as dissimilar as “Californication” and “Lizzie McGuire.” Talk about range!  Milana is a funny lady.  Some of her web work is on the website “Funny or Die.”  She is one of the leading faces in the delightful “bitchy-resting-face,” which if you haven’t seen, you should watch here and soon.

 http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/d7ab80d4a5/bitchy-resting-face

Every genre needs a king or in this case, a queen, and Stephanie Courtney, as the irrepressible Flo of ENTERPRISE insurance fame is, for me, the greatest continuing commercial character.  The ad campaign began in 2008 and continues strong, which is a pretty good run for any TV vehicle.  I really get a kick out of the ads, my favorite being the one where while luring two young guys to PROGRESSIVE, she, in a noir-ish way, steps back into the shadows.  When the guys tell her that they still can see her, she assures them that they can’t.  Flo is a funny character.  Stephanie Courtney is a funny lady.  A native of Stony Point, NY, she graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse in NYC and started working at stand up comedy.  She came to LA  and now is a main company member of the famous sketch and improv group The Groundlings in Los Angeles.  She has appeared at comedy festivals and has written co-written a show, “Those Courtney Sisters,” with her sister Jennifer.  Humorously self-effacing, Stephanie has said that there is nothing sexy about Flo.  In fact, she has said that the Geiko Gecko is sexier than Flo will ever be.

I tried to research how much these top-tiered commercial actors make and whether they are paid each time a commercial is aired.  Do they drive Beemers or Kias? I couldn’t find much about it, but I hope they make a lot of money, because their characters are certainly making a lot of money for the companies they represent, and continuing characters on network show make tons.

I also tried to come up with a male continuing commercial character.  The only one who I could remember who I thought was really good, was the rough and tough guy who used to do the FORD commercials, but I don’t think he’s on the air now.  I refuse to accept Bill Cowher as an “actor.”  

I imagine many people will think I chose wrong in telling the stories of this trio.  That’s fine.  Choose your own and do some research.  Maybe we can come up with an all-star continuing commercial character lineup starting with Morgan, Milana, and Stephanie.

Riding With the Fab Four

by Greg Ellstrom

I've been thinking about writing a pop culture blog for several months.  I even chose the title a while back, calling it "Coulson's 'Vette" in honor of the sweet ride that goes everywhere with the resurrected Agent Coulson in the television series "Marvel Agents of Shield."  I hope to make this blog a cool "ride" for its readers, and what better metaphor than Coulson's candy apple '62 Corvette, a car he calls "Lola."

Needing to clarify the meaning of "pop culture" or "popular culture" in my mind,  I did some research and discovered that this term dates back to the 19th century when it referred to "the general 'culturedness' of the lower classes."  I think, though I'm not sure, that that definition would have pissed off Andy Warhol.  A more recent definition suggests it is "the culture that is 'left over' when we have decided what high culture is."  That reminds me of the famous comment about pornography:  "I can't tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it."  The definition that most pleased me and which was closest to my vision of what I wanted to write about was, that pop culture is the stuff "mass-produced for mass consumption by mass media."  So, I'll be writing about television shows and movies, comic books and paperbacks, pop music, and maybe some classical.  I'll also be writing about the characters who occupy these creations, and the people who create and consume them.  I imagine this definition will evolve as I devote time and effort to this blog, and I'm sure there will be times when I'll find pop culture bumping into or, heaven forbid, breeding with high culture.

I had initially decided to write my first entry about the amazing number of actors from the Former British Empire who currently have featured roles in American TV and film.  Then I saw "The Night That Changed America:  the Grammy Award Tribute to the Beatles" on the 50th anniversary of their appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, and I knew that a guy my age, 66, writing about pop culture, had to start with the Lads from Liverpool, for me the greatest "pop culture" act of all time.

The Beatles were a musical/cultural leviathan, who swept into the United States in late 1963 and early 1964.  They sang "I Want To Hold Your Hold" and youthful America reached out and offered theirs.  The world is aware of the amazing cultural effect they had on music with their personal genius and the advent of the "British invasion," fashion, thought, mind-alterint substances, art and politics.  I can't begin to talk about all those things, so I'm going to talk about the effect the Beatles had on one young American, me.

I remember the first time I heard of the band.  I was a junior in the room of one of my high school English teachers, when Jack Hill, a senior, asked me what I thought of the Beatles.  I told him I didn't know who they were, and so he informed me of this British singing group with mop of hair falling over their foreheads.  The fact that I remember that moment has always amazed me.  I think we tend to remember the end of people and things more clearly, ie. John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and the Berlin Wall.  Yet, I clearly remember my personal beginning of the Beatles.

The Beatles played pretty constantly on the soundtrack to my senior year in high school and my years in college. I'm sure I know more Beatles' lyrics than I do the lyrics of any other pop group.   I have worn my hair combed down and across my forehead for about 50 years because of the Beatles.  Millions of others have done the same.  I even remember the first time I wore it that way.  It was at a party at a friend's house, and the response was positive, so I kept my hair that way.  Forever!  This, of course, required that I grow my hair a lot longer than it had been  Especially when I went off to college. I remember that my dad was kind of shocked with my college hair, although, he grew to accept it and eventually like it.  I think it's amazing how now buzz cuts coexist with dreadlocks and Beatle-like mops.  Thank God for the Fab Four, lest guys might still be using Brylcreem!

I remember going to see "A Hard Day's Night."  That fantastic black and white first Beatle film was a fun romp with the boys themselves.  I like the bright, colorful "Help," too, but the first film still evokes an era for me.  I'll never forget my friend Tom running across an icy pavement, in his black peacoat, his arms held out, shouting he was in "Hard Day's Night," and falling on his butt!

During college, my fraternity brothers and I looked forward to the next Beatles album release.  We listened, too, to their comments, especially those of the genius John Lennon, about war and giving peace a chance.  It was an exciting, sometimes troubling time, and the Beatles were an essential part of the evolution of youth culture.  Hanging on my office wall today is the poster below which was a prize at our Alpha Lambda Chi 40th reunion, with the Beatles wearing our fraternity jackets.

I'm not going to say much more except to mention how amazing it was watching the 50th Anniversary special and seeing that people of every age knew all the words to every song that was played.  There was in the audience the 3 or 4 year old daughter of guitarist David Grohl who performed that night. From the stage, Grohl told Paul and Ringo that the Beatles was his daughter's favorite band. She hadn't been born until 46 years after they appeared on Ed Sullivan.

Were the Beatles "mass-produced for mass consumption by mass media" as my pop culture definition suggests?  I think of two quotes in answering that.  John's infamous statement that the "Beatles were more popular than Jesus" and the lyric from Andrew Lloyd Webber's early 70's rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar," ". . .if he'd come today he would have reached a whole nation/Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication."  The phenomenon called the Beatles couldn't exist without mass media, but I think, on occasion, they transcended the "pop" and became high culture, too.