War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
As a break, I finally watched a movie all the way through last night. It’d been a while since I stayed til the end. Usually, I either get too bored, or lose interest (Can’t remember the last one). And it was a good mental-health refresher, too, though I’d already seen it a few times, probably…
Sad note this Friday morning: One of my most-favorite entertainers/actors of all time, Alan Arkin, has died at 89. He blew me away in “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” an odd, humane-funny, empathic flip during the height of the frightful, freaky Cold War — saw it on the big screen as a…
Sunshine-breezy this late-afternoon Sunday here in California’s Central Valley — rain expected again mid-week. In an attempt to shy away from the horrific horror of American politics (T-Rump/GOP) and the horrific horror of American weather, this a post on movies, specifically, a movie’s opening sequences, beyond just the credits but also includes a sequence of…
Instead of political bullshit — surfed the InterWebs this afternoon/early evening, but nothing odd or significant to catch the eye — I instead listened to the main title of one of my way-most-favorite movies, “Lawrence of Arabia,” with the music by the great Maurice Jarre. The scene of the film opening and bits of the…
In lieu of real news to shit on, I’ve decided to start a new series commemorating a vital segment of movies — the opening sequence, also sometimes called the title sequence, which in the best films sets the tone for the movie itself. A shitoad of recent movies don’t have opening credits anymore, they go…
Overcast-gray with a bit of patchy ground fog this early Wednesday on California’s north coast — another day in the life along the shoreline. Weather the weather… Beyond the horror of T-Rump this morning, science attempts to understand humanity — in a world of non-stop action, studies beckon on our feelings. Nowadays, an App for…
In the midst of weather-storms, and life-storms, and all kinds of tempest boiling-up everywhere, I’d surfed across the IMDB birthday list for today, and with a heart-pang saw Elizabeth Hartman’s name. She would have been 69 today — Hartman committed suicide in 1987 after battling depression just about all her life. One of the most-talented…
(Illustration found here). Even as a tiny, little shit — vs an old shit now — I’ve always been a full-blown movie nut. In countless darkened theaters as flickering images played across gigantic screens, these episodes in fantasy seemed to remove me from a world I couldn’t understand, or maybe didn’t want to, and created…
Amongst all the bad news pouring out of so many different sources, sometimes it’s hard to be shocked by shit, but yesterday, the announcement of the death of Nora Ephron was like a slap to the face. She was 71. And way-beyond being female, she was just one of the coolest people in media — one…
Books and movies are two completely different countries. In one you read by yourself (unless you’re in a group-grope book club), the other you see and hear — and the two supposedly connect when the book is made into a movie. Rare, though, when the movie comes direct off the page. Movies can also alter…
