Race with the Devil

70's paranoid cinema (yes - everyone IS out to get you) at it's most drive-in friendly, with the bonus distracting casting of Loretta Switt (along with Warren Oates and Peter Fonda).

I'm scrolling through the TCM online schedule, which is nice because they even note the shorts they will be playing, and they go all the way through June.

Related to recent discussion here, Robin and Marian (San Connery & Audrey Hepburn) will be playing in an interesting quadruple bill on May 8th, along with The Lion in Winter, The Adventures of Robin Hood (Flynn), and Becket. If you like circlets, doublets and medieval snark this is your movie night.

I love The Lion in Winter and Flynn's Robin Hood--that's a great night of movies!

Isn't it, Kathy?

There's some cool stuff coming up on their schedule - a night of John Ford's cavalry movies, and several of Garbo's silent movies.

Speaking of shorts, I just Tivoed the coolest thing. It opens with Lionel Barrymore playing a suave, banker-like Satan in his Art Deco hell. He's got a raven on his desk, and a super hot goth swing era babe tending to him. She's got these fantastic victory rolls in her hairstyle that mimic horns on the head and looks fantastic. Anyway, Satan Barrymore gets Adolf Hitler on the phone (this is from '41) and tells Hitler how they'll ruin America, the one evil of evils, which will undo the country: Inflation!

Man, I wish I could do screen caps because Satan's goth swing babe is so cool.

So at the end of that short I also captured one of TCM's Word of Mouth pieces (tributes to a particular actor) and this one was about Bette Davis. Several actors lauded her influence and gifts (Jane Fonda, Gena Rowlands, Robert Wagner) but it was Ellen Burstyn (who looks fantastic in her older age, incidentally) who had the money quote. She actually had lunch with Bette Davis early in her career and relayed this choice advice from Bette:

"My advice to you, dear, at the beginning of an illustrious career is that not everybody can be your friend. So you choose your enemies. And when you see them you walk right up to them and say, 'You are my enemy.' And do you know how you recognize your enemy?"

"How?"

"Anyone who gets in the way of your work."

Badass.

megan, I've got the complete Wire and you're welcome to borrow it.

Wow, I missed a lot of shittalk and sarcasm about Kubrick (and, to some extent, about me) while I was gone.

and, to some extent, about me

Sorry, man! I wasn't trying to run you down. I really was curious about your charge of "facile nihilism."

Talking smack about Kubrick actually turned up a pretty wide set of opinions, though. (Including a previously unsuspected Barry Lyndon fandom contingent.)

This is waiting at home for me. It looks like something you would like, Hec. Also, smonster.

[link]

This is waiting at home for me. It looks like something you would like, Hec. Also, smonster.

Indeed, I'm all over that Southern Gothic death trip.