THE SKY'S THE LIMIT 041 (CD Version)

 

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It's never too late to have a happy childhood. (Anonymous) 

IT'S ONLY MAKE BELIEVE 016 (CD Version)

 

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Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness. (George Orwell)

ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME 043 (CD Version)

 

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The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything - or nothing. (Nancy Astor) 

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES 048: A MIGHTY WIND (2003)

 

From the comic masterminds behind the noted mockumentaries "This Is Spinal Tap", "Waiting For Guffman" and "Best In Show" comes a similarly hilarious effort. "A Mighty Wind" is tuned just right for a droll satire of the folk music scene. It playfully mocks the pretensions of these dated political message-carriers and the world they epitomize. It chronicles three famous groups from the past as they prepare for a show at New York City’s famed Town Hall to memorialize Irving Steinbloom, a recently deceased concert promoter. His control-freak son Jonathan Steinbloom has inherited the empire of the founder of the Folktown label, and wishes to honor his father with a concert featuring his favorites. The wormy personality of Jonathan might have been shaped from childhood, when his overbearing Jewish mother made him wear a polo helmet while playing chess.

The first group featured is the passionate 1960s folk trio called “The Folksmen” (Guest, McKean, Shearer), a group that is making their comeback after losing favor with the public while still clinging to their almost popular song "Old Joe's Place." Guest is the loopy banjo player. McKean is the aging matinee idol pretty boy and guitar player, whose voice blends into the middle range of the other two. Shearer is Amish-bearded and bald and plays the bass, and will learn before the film ends that he really feels more comfortable as a woman. 

Another act is the upbeat commercial “New Main Street Singers,” a spunky group of nine-members wearing uniforms of sweater vests and unabashedly promoting their spotless family value image. Behind the scenes there’s a fling at pornography, street life, and quack cultish beliefs. The group’s leaders are a zany couple, John Michael Higgins and Jane Lynch. Jane is the mother figure who made it from pornos to the Florida-based feel-good group and Higgins is an energetic believer in some weird cultish color theory about the power of its vibrations, which he attributes to helping him find success. The group is despised by the Folksmen for lacking the folk spirit of the serious musicians.

The funniest and most touching group is "Mickey and Mitch," a popular former coffeehouse folk duo. They were lovers who split up and are out of showbiz, and fight back their emotional pain to talk about their past relationship and as professionals rehearse for the show without giving in to their pain. The grey-haired Eugene Levy plays the burned out folk singer with a tender intensity. He has just been released from a mental institution and seems disoriented and speaks with obvious difficulty in a halting way and perpetuates a blank stare. His sanity is still questionable. 

The once hip Catherine O’Hara is now a square married to a salesman of medical equipment specializing in catheters for “bladder-control,” whose hobby is model trains. Mitch is invited over to his former partner’s suburban house, to see if they can manage to get together for one more performance after 28 years of not speaking. The men reluctantly bond and take leave to the hobby room. They peer down intently on the model-train setup, as Mitch’s succinct comment is that he would have liked to see the display in autumn instead of winter. On stage the duo will sing their historic signature song “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,” which calls for a heartfelt kiss that originally sent shivers through the folk scene community. Though it all might seem ridiculous, the romance between the two is credible and even moving despite all the comedy emanating from the has-been singing star.

Director Christopher Guest’s writing collaborator is the gifted Eugene Levy. They selectively chose the folk scene they wanted, as their spoof left out all the protest and political music of that era and a wide variety of other folk singers from bluegrass to Nashville. The only hint of politics is when the Folksmen are asked to stall during the concert and talk about the Spanish civil war.

What made the film bitingly funny was that the ensemble cast took their roles seriously and played into the absurd dialogue and situations in a matter-of-fact tone. The comedy is subtle and many jokes might fly past an audience not prepared for such a mannered parody, who are more used to the in-your-face mall comedies. Fred Willard is delightfully obnoxious as the promoter with crass ideas, in particular a TV show featuring the "New Main Street Singers" as daytime supreme court judges who at night all live together and create folk music. Jennifer Coolidge and Larry Miller are a scream as tacky publicists, a couple who think as one brain. If there’s a fault to all this controlled madness, it is that Guest fails to flesh out too many of the characters. But he does a good job in getting to the Bob Balaban and Eugene Levy characters. Also, the comedy was tamer than in his other parodies. But those films have set such a high bar, that even when the comedy comes in on a slightly lower level the overall effect is still first-class. 

But before we get to the main feature, let's enjoy...

The Pre-Show:

 

 

In our "Film Extras" section we will enjoy our now, not so rare, "double feature" prediction, as we've had the opportunity of enjoying in other occasions. This time, a magnificent documentary which explores the music scene in Greenwich Village, New York in the 60s and early 70s. The film highlights some of the finest singer/songwriters of the day. Interviews with Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie and others show how the music coming out of New York's Greenwich Village challenged the status quo and promoted social change during the 1960s and 70s.

Concerning our "TV On Deck" section, we continue with our 60s-70s comedy sitcoms and our cartoon delight. Plus our "newbie" and his continued adventures in Las Vegas, or is it "Algeria"?

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The Main Feature: 

Title: A Mighty Wind   

Directors:  Christopher Guest 

Cast: Bob Balaban / Christopher Guest / John Michael Higgins / Eugene Levy / Jane Lynch / Michael McKean / Catherine O'Hara / Parker Posey / Harry Shearer / Fred Willard 

Release Date: April 16, 2003  

Country: United States 

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On Your Way Out: 

As our motto goes: "Grab 'em, Use 'em, Enjoy 'em". You all know by now this section is here to hopefully, enhance your experience of viewing today's flick. The pictures, the reading material plus the listening extras, all have one common goal: pleasure through learning! 

Cheers.

Shade. 

OYWO001  OYWO002  OYWO003  OYWO004  

Note: Password for all files: Shade'sVintageRadio

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. (William Hazlitt)

BONUS 003 - APPRECIATION

 

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The two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other. (Mary Wollstonecraft) 

THE SKY'S THE LIMIT 041

 

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An obedient wife commands her husband. (Benjamin Disraeli) 

IT'S ONLY MAKE BELIEVE 016

 

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When one has not had a good father, one must create one. (Friedrich Nietzsche) 

ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME 043

 

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The hardest thing is writing a recommendation for someone we know. (Kin Hubbard) 

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES 047: INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013)

 

The Coen brothers' exquisitely sad and funny comedy is set in a world of music that somehow combines childlike innocence with an aged and exhausted acceptance of the world. It is a beguillingly studied period piece from America's early-60s Greenwich Village folk scene. Every frame looks like a classic album cover, or at the very least a great inner gatefold - these are screen images that look as if they should have lyrics and sleeve notes superimposed. This film was notably passed over for Oscar nominations. Perhaps there's something in its unfashionable melancholy that didn't hook the attention of Academy award voters. But it is as pungent and powerfully distinctive as a cup of hot black coffee. 

Since its triumphant debut at Cannes film festival, one scene has deservedly become famous, and it cuts right to the movie's heart. Moody, haughty, failing folk singer Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac, is so desperate for money that he agrees to be session guitarist at the recording of a jokey novelty single called "Please Mr Kennedy" by a group called the John Glenn Singers. (Coen fans will savour the parallel with the recording scene from O Brother, Where Art Thou?). It's a goofy number about astronauts, and the hook is "I don't wanna go to outer space!" This song, so despised by Davis, is wildly catchy: it reeks of success in his personal world of failure. Davis's own music and his life are destined to remain at ground level while everyone else in America heads skyward. Whether he is afraid of the future is an open question. He certainly resents it. 

Davis's Welsh first name gives him an echo of both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas; he is comparable to the singer Phil Ochs and to the unlucky pre-Dylan folk star Dave Van Ronk. Llewyn's only real friends are another folk-singing act, the clean-cut Jim and Jean, lovers who seem more like siblings, outstandingly played by Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan. Their relationship with him is complicated by unspoken tensions and resentment, and his uneasy membership of the emotional triangle with Jim and Jean could be a satirically fractured vision of the real-life wholesome folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. 

Davis was once part of a double-act whose album was poignantly entitled "If I Had Wings"; he is now a solo act, a career decision that also reveals a good deal about his prickly loneliness; his new album is entitled "Inside Llewyn Davis", another title fraught with irony. Nothing in his gloomy music, or indeed his personality, allows us much access to what he is really like "inside". Davis is reluctant to make any of the commercial compromises that would build anyting like a career, and so finds himself virtually homeless: living on people's couches, a borderline-poverty existence that embitters him and draws him ever closer to the dangerous, consolatory illusion that failure guarantees integrity. His life is like a road movie kept off the road, although he has one grisly trip to Chicago in the company of a smack-addicted jazz musician, uproariously playde by John Goodman. 

The key question is: is Davis any good? In another sort of film, his failure, his Eeyoreish personality, his emotional disgruntlements would all be temporary setbacks. Someone surely would discover him; someone would assent, awestruck, to his talent after listening to the music. But with almost sadistic pessimism, the Coens give him two separate private-audience scenes: one with a Chicago club manager, played by F Murray Abraham, and one with his elderly father, played by Stan Carp. In each case, there is not exactly a Hollywood ending, although hope is not definitively extinguished. 

Poor Davis is caught at the wrong historical moment. Will the imminent arrival of Dylan mean his kind of music will finally get what it deserves? Or just consign him even more brutally to second place? His existing dilemma is one that is rarely discussed: when do artists cut their losses and abandon their careers? He has to cart around a boxful of unsold albums, and notes with grim blankness that his folk contemporary Al Cody (played by the excellent Adam Driver) has an exactly similar box. The cultural industry might lead you to assume that these albums are wonderfully precious and unique things, emblems of achievement: but from an unsuccessful insider's view, these unwanted consumer items represent an abyss of failure much deeper than the disappointments of normal life. Davis erupts with rage at his sister's suggestion that he quit music and return to the merchant navy: that, he says, is merely to "exist". She replies tartly: "Exist? Is that what we do outside of show business? It's not so bad." The awful truth is that "existing" is what people inside show business have to do as well. There is an intense sadness to this film, but glorious sweetness and tenderness, too. 

But before we get to the main feature, let's enjoy...

The Pre-Show:

      

 

In our "Film Extras" section we will enjoy our now, not so rare, "double feature" prediction, as we've had the opportunity of enjoying in other occasions. This time, a one-night-only concert, held at New York City's Town Hall to celebrate the music of the Coen brothers film "Inside Llewyn Davis". The concert, documentary and live album were produced by "Inside Llewyn Davis" writer/director/producers Joel and Ethan Coen and soundtrack producer T. Bone Burnett.

Concerning our "TV On Deck" section, we continue with our 60s-70s comedy sitcoms and our cartoon delight. Plus our "newbie" and his continued adventures in Las Vegas, or is it "Vietnam"?

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The Main Feature: 

Title: Inside Llewyn Davis  

Directors:  Joel & Ethan Coen

Cast: Oscar Isaac / Carey Mulligan / John Goodman / Garrett Hedlund / Justin Timberlake 

Release Date: 06th Novermber 2013  

Country: United States 

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On Your Way Out: 

As our motto goes: "Grab 'em, Use 'em, Enjoy 'em". You all know by now this section is here to hopefully, enhance your experience of viewing today's flick. The pictures, the reading material plus the listening extras, all have one common goal: pleasure through learning! 

Cheers.

Shade. 

OYWO001  OYWO002  OYWO003  OYWO004  

Note: Password for all files: Shade'sVintageRadio 

A sweetly vicious old lady. (Tennessee Williams on Truman Capote) 

SHADE'S VINTAGE RADIO SPECIAL 038: ROCKABILLY GROOVIN' V02 (CD Version)

 

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There is a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust. (Sophocles)

THE SKY'S THE LIMIT 040 (CD Version)

 

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Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. (Peter Ustinov) 

IT'S ONLY MAKE BELIEVE 015 (CD Version)

 

IOMB015  (pw: Shade'sVintageRadio) 

That worst class of enemies... - the men who praise. (Tacitus) 

ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME 042 (CD Version)

 

AAA042  (pw: Shade'sVintageRadio) 

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. (Oscar Wilde) 

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES 046: BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION AND THE BEATLES

 

The relationship between The Beatles and the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) has always been a special and fascinating one. This programme looks back at some key moments that saw the BBC document the band's journey as they went from Merseybeat heroes with mop-tops and MBE's to seeing out the sixties as long-haired heroes of the counter-culture, ending this special with the recent screening of the latest Beatle gem. Throughout the film, there's new and exciting footage concerning The Beatles and their time. A documentary not to be missed.  

But before we get to the main feature, let's enjoy... 

The Pre-Show: 

 

   

In our "Film Extras" section we will enjoy our now, not so rare, "double feature" prediction, as we've had the opportunity of enjoying in other occasions. But, why settle for two when we have the chance of having three? As you can well see in the above pictures, Saturday Night At The Movies brings you the opportunity of deciding which will be our main feature for the night, as "The Beatles In Oz" and "The Brian Epstein Story" can perfectly substitute "The Beatles & the BBC". So, blest thou who hath such a dilemma.   

Concerning our "TV On Deck" section, we continue with our 60s-70s comedy sitcoms and our cartoon delight. Plus our "newbie" and his continued adventures in Las Vegas, or is it "The White House"?

TPS001  TPS002  TPS003  TPS004  TPS005  TPS006  TPS007  TPS008  TPS009  

The Main Feature: 

Title: The Beatles At The BBC

Editor: Karn Christensen  

Cast: Documentary 

Release Date: 2023 

Country: United Kingdom  

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On Your Way Out: 

As our motto goes: "Grab 'em, Use 'em, Enjoy 'em". You all know by now this section is here to hopefully, enhance your experience of viewing today's flick. The pictures, the reading material plus the listening extras, all have one common goal: pleasure through learning! 

Cheers.

Shade. 

OYWO001  OYWO002  OYWO003  OYWO004  

Note: Password for all files: Shade'sVintageRadio 

Two important things to teach a child: to do and to do without (Marcelene Cox)