The 36th District legislators met in Olympia recently to begin preparations for the 2013 legislative session that begins in January.
Who doesn't thrill to the notion of a righteous lone ranger wandering the backroads and alleys of America, beholden to no man, corporation or government? Such rootless isolatos are as old as Fenimore Cooper's Deerslayer, as urban as Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, as modern as Lee Child's Jack Reacher, former Army cop, now one-man justice league.
Christmastime always brings certain movies back to the home screen, and John Ford's first Technicolor Western is one of them. (Of course, Ford's first Technicolor movie, Drums along the Mohawk, is a Western in spirit, shot in Utah—but the setting is upstate New York in Revolutionary days.) Turner Classic Movies will show 3 Godfathers a few hours from now (1 p.m. PT). Not by coincidence, an earlier version of the same story will be on TCM twelve hours later (1 a.m. Monday, Dec. 24)—William Wyler's early-talkie Hell's Heroes. Both are recommended. Further words on the Ford, originally written for Amazon, follow.
And there it is already, the 2012 Critics Wrap available for viddying online: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3371205Our own Kathleen Murphy is pictured here with Jim Emerson. Robert Horton is also on stage, trust us.
The Golden Globes are presented this coming Sunday. That's pretty much a meaningless event as awards-giving goes, but the people attending have a much better time than at the Oscars. Kathleen Murphy sizes up the nominations.
Police are looking for the man who robbed the U.S. Bank on Magnolia at gunpoint on Wednesday, Jan. 16.
It's the season when the Academy Awards get talked about without end. My chip-in for movies.MSN.com is this gallery of Oscar oversights.
Kathleen Murphy's final review for movies.MSN.com is now online. The subject is unworthy of the occasion: five years on the beat. But watch for future features by KAM at that site.
As a freestanding essay, the following is pretty half-assed. It was written as one among a series of program notes for a quarter's worth of Orson Welles movies at the University of Washington in Autumn 1971. To make matters worse, the print initially supplied for the third week of the series proved to be defective, and a replacement could be had only several weeks later, when The Stranger was finally shown as an unintended second feature (to Othello). I wish I'd got round to a proper rewrite, less hasty and not couched in such a way that only someone who'd been watching along week by week could fully follow it. Still, the film remains a fond memory of the first days—that is, nights—when I embarked on a cinematic education via the late show. And it's on TCM at 6:45 p.m. PT tonight!
Turner Classic Movies will show Cocoon, one of Ron Howard's pretty-good movies, this coming Sunday, Feb. 10, at 2:45 p.m. Pacific Time. The following review appeared in The Weekly during the film's 1985 first run. Also on screens then was another sci-fi film in a very different key, Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce. That won't be on TCM (which is showing Cocoon because of the Oscar it won for Don Ameche), but Lifeforce is available on DVD. However, you really should wait for the Shout! Factory upgrade of it, coming out on Blu-ray and DVD in April. The vampire eyes at left belong to Lifeforce's Mathilda May.
Framing Pictures is busting out all over, or about to. Tomorrow—Friday, Feb. 15, 5 p.m.—brings our monthly conversation at Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave. (between Pike and Pine). So many things to talk about, we may not get to them all. SIFF's tribute to the inspired animation from Studio Ghibli ... Fellini's 8 1/2 at the Grand Illusion ... Miguel Gomes' highly praised Tabu at NWFF ... Steven Soderbergh's last (really?) film, Side Effects ... why people insist on talking of movies in terms of what they're "about" (Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture?) instead of what they are (Zero Dark Thirty provocative, challenging, ambiguous). And perhaps more. And more definitely includes our November 2012 session, belatedly coming to The Seattle Channel tonight, Feb. 14, 8:30 p.m. Comcast/Xfinity has it at 21 on your dial—or 321 if you dare look at us in HD. And that session will also be available online at The Seattle Channel website, any minute now. Whichever and wherever, it's always free. Do join us.
Submitted for your approval: the November edition of Framing Pictures, now in the Twilight Zone … http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3411206
The Academy Awards for 2012 movies will be handed out this coming Sunday evening. I examined the tea leaves, so thoroughly that I fear I am covered with them. Indeed, everywhere I look there's affleck.
Sorry, we're a bit late giving notice (no, not resigning!): Friday, March 15, will bring this month's session of Framing Pictures - 5 p.m., Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave. An hour-and-a-half of free, and freewheeling, talk about movies. Such a deal.