Book review: Schulz

A cartoonist plays out his mid-life crises in his cartoons. Every fight Linus or Charlie Brown had with Lucy turns out to mirror whatever disagreement he was having with his wife.

And then came the girlfriends, and then the new, younger wife, who was married when they met.

The book seems to skip the 80s. We get the marriage turmoil and remarriage of the late 60s, early 70s, and  next thing we know, he's on his death bed.

The writer tells us a lot about the skating rink Schulz built with his millions, but it never mentions if it's still in operation. Is it?

Otherwise, a good read about a man who only on the surface seems uncomplicated.

Film review "The Lonely Wives"

This isn't so much  a review as some random comments.

Edward Everett Horton plays a womanizer. I'll stop right there. This is the actor who invented the gay best friend role, so this was unusual for him. I was struck by how handsome he was as a young man though.

Anyway, it's a pre-code bedroom farce in which EEH uses a double to fill in for him so he can chase skirts and the double can stay home with the mother-in-law. Then, the wife shows up unexpectedly!

Shakespeare used lookalikes all the time and I'm sure the conceit preceded him by a few thousand years. I was just surprised to see it done (so well) in a film from 1931. It's a trick as old as film itself, long before Hayley Mills and Patty Duke were doing it. I wonder though, in this age of digital effects which film was the *last* to do it through film trickery.

It's all very stagey and for good reason, it was based on a play. It opens with a lot of clunky exposition. Most of the action takes place in the main living room where there are several doors, like in any stage farce. I look at films like this and think if I were to direct the remake, I'd take a couple scenes outside.

I also wonder if the script for the 30s play even exists anymore. Film historians have made a lot of noise about films that have been lost forever through disintegration of film stock. But what about Broadway scripts? What happens to them? Is there a big warehouse, or museum with scripts from the 1930s, once big hits, now forgotten?

Bottom line: It didn't age all that well, and a lot of the comedy was forced. Early in the film he's hitting on a secretary in his house, all the while the mother-in-law being in the next room. Everyone else knows she's going to walk in, why doesn't EEH?

The best line, the Margaret DuMontish mother-in-law upon seeing the maid kiss EEH: "I knew she was French, but I made allowances!"

Whom to cast in Westworld remake

Yul Bryner in "Magnificent Seven"

Yul Bryner in "Westworld"

When they made "Westworld" in the mid-70s, for the robot gunslinger they used Yul Bryner, who dressed like his character from "The Magnificent Seven." This would be shorthand casting, casting an iconic cowboy actor to play a cowboy robot. In the '70s, they had a few hundred cowboy actors to choose from. But, if they were to remake "Westworld" today, whom could they get to play the character? How many iconic Western actors do we have left?

Clint Eastwood springs to mind, but he might be getting a little old.
Kevin Coster has been in a couple westerns over the past 20 years.
Robert Duvall?
Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer?

Is that it?

It's amazing how a once-ubiquitous genre has all but disappeared.

There's always Arnold Schwarzenegger but that would be shorthand casting for a killer robot character.

Ghost Story Story

In 1981, they made "Ghost Story," a cool movie about four old men with a terrible secret. It was a horror movie but instead of teenagers getting killed it was old men. Think about it, there's never been a movie like it since. All horror movies are teenage driven.

But let's look at the casting. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas and John Houseman.  All but Houseman were major movie stars from the 30s, some 50 years earlier.

Hollywood ultimately remakes everything. If it were to remake "Ghost Story" today, who would they get? Let's see. Fifty years ago was 1963. Which young movie stars from 1963 would they get?

It's easy to say Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood, but they're still  major movie stars. Astaire at the time was voicing TV holiday specials and Fairbanks was on the "Love Boat." Only Douglas was making major Hollywood motion pictures (see "Being There").

OK, so we want major movie stars from the 60s, who are not movie stars now (i.e. affordable). This rule would exclude Sean Connery.

Michael Caine
Roger Moore
George Hamilton
Christopher Plummer
Frank Langella
Albert Finney
Peter Fonda
Burt Reynolds

Who am I missing?

Comedies with plots: A Fish Called Wanda

I've been bemoaning the lack of plots in modern comedies. This was spurred by "Bridesmaids," whose plot was "woman upset best friend is getting new best friend." And this was then padded with set pieces (Kristen Wiig drunk on an airplane, Kristen Wiig throws tantrum, everyone gets diarrhea.)

I was thinking today of "A Fish Called Wanda." A diamond caper goes hilariously off the rails. Great performances, characters with motivation, twists and turns, subplots! No padding, and, no diarrhea.

If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor.

Flying Down to Rio and mental illness in the '30s

As I've posted before, I'm a sucker for movies from the 30s. TCM was showing "Flying Down to Rio," and I was stunned by the climax in which chorus girls are shown dancing on the wings of biplanes.

This is insane!

The girls would dance, then they'd cut to the ground where people would ooh and ahh.

Of course it was all done with rear-screen projection, but you'd have to be insane to even come up with an idea like that.

Then it gets better: Under the planes are trapezes, and two trapeze artists are tossing a girl back and forth. And they drop one! But it's OK, she lands on then wing of another plane. They gives a thumbs up to the crowd, and everyone claps.

Truly the work of maniacs!

DC Comics Presents #56

And what makes this book so special? The story is OK, (Superman, Power Girl meet, pre-Crisis, without crossing over dimensional border!), art is not spectacular, yet it makes two little moments of history.
a) the cover will parallel the cover for Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (the only difference being Supergirl would stay dead longer.)
b) It's the first/only time Power Girl would be drawn by Curt Swan, making her officially a member of the Superman family. Now, if they could only have gotten Kurt Shaffenberger and Jim Mooney to draw some Power Girl stories, how cool would that have been?