Daily Links: January 1, 2023

A man of myth: How Bob Dylan created Bob Dylan: Far Out Magazine

Half-scale recreation of Grateful Dead’s Wall Of Sound up for sale to fund full-size model: Guitar.com

Billy’s Busy 2022: Guitarist Billy Strings Had Another Breakout Year:

Bob Dylan’s former Harlem townhouse on the market for $3.6 million: Nola.com

LP Giobbi Remixes Jerry Garcia: “I Wanted to Show This Beautiful World to My Community”: Relix.com

Rodney Crowell Is Still Trying to Unlock the Mystery of a Great Song: Rolling Stone

55 Years Later: Revisiting Bob Dylan’s Americana Leaning ‘John Wesley Harding’: Glide Magazine

The Christmas Haul

presents

Things have been a bit tight in the Brewster household this year. I own a construction business with my brother and father and with everything else going on in the world business has not been as robust as it has been in the past. We’re getting buy, but we’ve had to tighten our belts quite a bit. This meant a much smaller Christmas for everyone, especially me. The wife and I decided to forgo most of our gifts so that we could make Christmas a bit merrier for our daughter.

My mother-in-law did purchase me a fantastic Doctor Who set. They have slowly been putting out entire seasons of the Classic series on Blu-ray, loaded with extras, and as you can see I got the first season in which Colin Baker played The Doctor. He is not my favorite Doctor by a long shot, but I’m excited to add him to my collection.

She also bought me a really fabulous Omnibus collection of the Loan Wolf and Cub manga, but as it turns out, I already own a copy of that. Which is my own fault because I asked her to buy it for me. I keep a pretty large Amazon wish list and the manga was on it. What I had forgotten to do is remove it from that list when I purchased the manga for myself a while back. In fact, I had completely forgotten I owned it until I was randomly looking through the photos on my phone and happened to see a picture I had taken of it. Oh well.

While in Nashville we decided to visit McKays which is this amazing store that sells used books, music, movies and all sorts of other things. The wife and I decided to give ourselves a modest budget of $50 a piece to buy what we wanted.

I landed on a nice Georges Simenon short story collection of Maigret tales and two nice boxed sets of DVDs. I love me some Greta Garbo, and I’m a sucker for those old gangster movies. I’m looking forward to watching them all.

The Long Road Home

We had a very nice visit with my wife’s family, and then a not-so-pleasant journey home. We stayed in a really beautiful old log cabin on the east side of Nashville, Tennessee. The plan was to come home on Friday. The journey should have taken us just under 10 hours. I told everybody that I was setting my alarm for 8 in the AM, and that I wanted to leave no later than 10, but that I’d really like to leave earlier than that.

I looked my brother-in-law, who lives in Nashville and thus was staying at his home rather than the cabin, dead in the eye and reiterated my morning plans. He said that was no problem, they lived but five minutes away and would be there by 9 in the morning.

The alarm went off at 8. We got up, showered, dressed, and had breakfast. I loaded the car. We were ready by nine. Paul and his family were not there. We waited. We talked to my wife’s parents. We waited some more. We did one last walk-through to find anything left behind. We waited even more.

Finally, at 9:40 Paul showed up. And his son. But not his other son or his wife. She was in the shower, he said. I knew that meant at least another twenty minutes. We waited some more. At 10 I said we should go outside and wait. I figured we’d eventually get tired of standing by the car and then get in and go. At 10:20 this finally happened. As we were driving down the long driveway we saw the others pulling in. We said our goodbyes through the windows and we were off. I did the mental calculations, readjusting my time frame for being half an hour late. I figured we could make up the time during meals.

Not five minutes into the drive and my daughter says she doesn’t feel good. She needs to stop. I try to assess if it is an emergency – if I need to pull over or if she can wait until an exit, but get an evasive response. I pull off at the next exit. As I’m waiting for the green light to turn left into the gas station the first eruption occurs. The girl is throwing up in the back seat. Just as I’m turning she does it again.

Bless her ever-loving heart, when she’s done she apologizes to me. I tell her everything is ok, that daddy will take care of it. Luckily she had a blanket covering her lap so most of her clothes are still clean. She got a little on her sweater and I get her mother to take her inside to clean her up and get some water. I’m on car clean-up duty. It was gross. There was vomit in the carpet, vomit on the back of the seat, and vomit on the door. There was vomit pooled up on the door handle, seeping down into the window control. It was everywhere. It smelled very bad. I had to hold my breath to keep from vomiting myself.

But I didn’t. I cleaned it all up. The girl got cleaned up too. With all of that out of her system, she was feeling better. I could tell because she was back to laying down the sarcasm.

Back on the road, the travel went smoothly. There was a little rain and a bit of traffic. Both of which caused me to drive slower than I wanted to but that was ok.

Then we stopped for lunch. The wife wanted Chik-Fil-A which I thought was a bad idea. That restaurant is always crowded at lunch. I knew it would be in Jackson because we used to live near there and that particular store was a nightmare at lunch. Still, we stopped. Of course, it was crazy crowded. We opted for the drive-through. They screwed up our order, but we got it fixed. Then we drove to a Home Depot parking lot to eat. At least the food was good. Getting back on the Interstate took twenty minutes because of traffic.

The road was once again fairly easy. The rain had let up, but the traffic had not. But we made it to Russelville, Arkansas without incident. We stopped at a Wendy’s inside a gas station for supper. They were out of grilled chicken for the salads my wife and daughter wanted. The daughter won’t eat anything else at Wendy’s. We waited fifteen minutes for that to cook. I had to interrupt some storytelling by Wendy’s employees to remind them that we had ordered food and still wanted to eat it.

Back on the road, we made it to Oklahoma. The daughter needed a bathroom break and we opted for Braums (a local burger and ice cream joint) instead of a gas station, figuring the restrooms would be cleaner. And while we were there milkshakes seemed to be in order. Especially after that long, lousy ride.

Friends, they were understaffed and busy at the drive-through. The lady said it would be “a while” for our milkshakes so we left without anything sweet to eat.

A sad end to a sad drive. But an hour later we were home. It took us 12 hours and change.

Christmas Eve Gift

I grew up in a small town. Most of my mother’s family lived in that same small town. On Christmas Eve we would gather with the aunts, uncles, and cousins and Grandma and Papa’s house. We had this tradition where if you were the first person to say “Christmas Eve Gift” to someone else then that person had to buy you a special present. Except we never did abide by the gift-giving aspect of that tradition. It was really about bragging rights about “beating” that person that year.

I have very fond memories of arriving at Grandma’s house early and then hiding behind the door or behind the couch and then jumping out at my aunts and uncles when they arrive shouting gleefully “Christmas Eve Gift.” We got so into this game that my mother would answer the phone (and this was before cell phones and caller ID) with the aforementioned phrase just in case it was someone in the family. No doubt surprising many salesmen in the process.

To this day I still play the game with my mother. It is much more difficult now that she knows who is calling. One year I saw that she had sent me a text (this was before I had a smartphone that showed me what the text said on my home screen) but instead of reading it, I sent her one saying that I didn’t know what she had just texted me but that I wished her a very merry Christmas Eve Gift.

This morning I printed out a large note that read:

I have my phone on silent so I cannot hear your voice, so Christmas Eve Gift!

Then I Facetimed her with video on and put the camera up to the note.

And to you my dear friends and readers I wish to you a very merry Christmas Eve Gift and a very Happy Christmas and a super joyful whatever you celebrate.

I will not be posting anything for the next few days as I’m taking some time off to spend with my family. Be well everybody and listen to some good music.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Ring (2002)

the ring

In the early 2000s, horror nerds like myself began to discover what was then called J-Horror. This was a cycle of horror movies made in Japan that started in the early 1990s. Unlike the films made in the United States at the time, J-Horror relied more on atmosphere and mood to create their scares. They often involved haunted houses and evil spirits, the supernatural rather than knife-wielding psychopaths that were so popular in America at the time.

Discovering these films was like a fresh of breath air for folks like me who had long since grown tired of slashers. I believe Ringu (1998) was the first J-Horror film to really make a splash here in the US (I’m sure some horror hound could pop in now to tell me they were watching Japanese Hororr films long before Ringu popularized the genre, but whatever). It was a huge film in Japan and had decent success in America.

Enough so that an American producer decided to remake it as The Ring (2002). That movie was a surprise success and started a succession of American remakes of J-Horror films. Snob that I am I watched pretty much all of them, but always preferred the Japanese originals.

Tonight I decided to rewatch The Ring. I liked it more this time than my previous watches.

It is about a VHS tape that kills you after seven days after your first viewing. Typing that out just now makes me realize how dumb that summary sounds. The film on the tape is like a short film some goth art school kid would make to try and freak everybody out. A couple of teenagers watch the tape and seven days later they die horrible deaths. Naomi Watts plays a journalist who was related to one of the teens. She sniffs a story and investigates.

She finds, then watches the creepy tape and immediately after she receives a phone call telling her she has seven days to live. When her young son accidentally watches the tape and starts drawing creepy drawings she knows she has to solve the mystery.

The original Japanese film is super creepy and atmospheric and really good (you can read my review of it over at Cinema Sentries). The remake is very Americanized in that it provides a few more jump scares, has slicker production values, and juices up the narrative a little bit so that the story is explained to the viewer in clearer turns.

Still, it is effective in its own way. The jump scares work for the most part, and it is still moody enough to give it that J-Horror feels even if it is a little sanitized.

Confess, Fletch (2022)

confess fletch

I’m weird when it comes to comedies. With some exceptions, I don’t really like straight-up comedies. I find movies and TV shows that throw a million jokes at the wall hoping something will stick rather boring. I want a good story with good characters doing interesting things. I want the comedy to come naturally out of those characters and stories. Make me laugh, but do it without sacrificing your story.

I absolutely loved Fletch (1985) when I was in high school. It does technically have a story, but it is often sacrificed to Chevy Chase’s antics. Those antics won me over, as did a whole lot of very funny dialogue. Truth be told some of that love really came from a youth minister from Arkansas. He loved Fletch more than just about anything and he was constantly quoting it. I thought he was one of the coolest guys in the world and so his love of the film translated into me loving it.

I’ve not actually seen Fletch in many years, probably decades. So I have no idea if I would still find it funny. The movie is based on a book by Gregory MacDonald. I’ve read that plus a couple more in the Fletch series, and quite liked them. But it has been quite a few years since I cracked those pages, too.

That is a long build-up to say I absolutely loved Confess, Fletch. It was and is and forever shall be right up my alley.

Jon Hamm is perfect as IM Fletcher a former investigative reporter “of some repute” who now writes fluff pieces for travel magazines. He returns to Boston after spending several years in Europe to find a dead woman in the living room of the house he’s renting. He spends the rest of the film trying to solve the murder much to the chagrin of the two actual police detectives assigned to the case (Ron Wood, Jr. and Ayden Mayeri).

Along the way, he runs into a cavalcade of interesting characters (played by an incredible cast of actors including Kyle MacLachlan, John Slattery, and Marcia Gay Harden).

Though it involves a murder the stakes are quite low, the suspense light. It feels like a hangout movie where Fletch keeps running into people, says funny things, and tries to solve a murder. Hamm is so good. I was a big fan of Mad Men and it is absolutely astonishing to me that the actor who was so deadly serious in that, is so goofy here (and in many other roles since that show ended.)

Everything about this movie worked for me. It is a delight. It is very silly and full of jokes, but they don’t get in the way of the story. They feel natural to the character of Fletch and everything that is happening. It isn’t really realistic, but it works within the story the film is telling.

The worst part of the film is that the studio that funded it did absolutely nothing to support it. The film opened in theaters with basically no advertisements and now it has been unceremoniously dropped onto Showtime’s streaming service. I won’t say that it would have been a huge hit had it gotten a little support but it would have at least been seen by a few people. As it is I suspect most of you reading this have never even heard of it.

Emma. (2020)

emma

I have reluctantly become a Jane Austen fan. Or I should say I’ve reluctantly become a fan of the movies based on Jane Austen novels because I’ve still never actually read one of her books. My wife is a very big fan of her books, so I’ve tried to read them many times, but can never make it very far. It seems to me her stories are all about middle-class girls who spend their days feeling miserable because they can’t find a man to marry. That sort of thing has never appeared to me.

Or so I used to think. Over the last few years, I’ve watched several Austen adaptations with my wife and I find myself enjoying them. It started with the long mini-series adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and moved on from there.

Emma. is a recent adaptation of the Austen novel with the same name (well, I don’t think she included a period after the name, but that’s a little wink the film likes to do at its audience). It is a winking type of film that stars a delightful Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character and it is full of bright, confections that are a joy to watch.

You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

X (2022) & Pearl (2022)

xpearl

When I wrote about House of the Devil (2009) I indicated that I watched it because I’d heard good things about these two films which were also directed by Ti West. Well, I finally got around to watching them, and I’m glad I did.

Much like House of the Devil, X is an homage to gritty 1970s horror. It is more influenced by rural terror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Last House on the Left (1972) than the occult slasher that so influenced Devil.

The plot involves a group of young filmmakers who head off to a secluded Texas farm to produce a pornographic film. It takes place in 1979 when hardcore films had obtained a certain amount of mainstream success. But that success doesn’t lead to acceptance in rural Texas which is why the producer Wayne (Martin Henderson) didn’t bother to tell the elderly couple (Stephen Ure and Mia Goth under a lot of prosthetics and makeup) what they were planning to do. That will come to haunt (and murder) them later in the film.

But much like House of the Devil, X takes its time getting to the overt violence and gore. X is a lot more fun, and funny. Shooting the porn scenes creates a lot of humor. Mia Goth (without the prosthetics) plays Maxine, an exotic dancer who thinks this film will make her a star. Brittany Snow plays Bobby-Lynne, an old pro at pornographic movies. She has no aspirations of being a mainstream star, but would really like to make enough money to buy a house with a pool.

There is one scene in which Bobby-Lynne is performing with Jackson Hole (Kid Cudi) and he says something that makes her genuinely laugh. The film’s director RJ (Owen Campbell) – who thinks of himself as some low-budget, arthouse auteur – zooms in on Bobby-Lynnes’s laughing face. It is perhaps the only authentic bit of acting she’s ever done. The moment Bobby-Lynne realizes the camera is capturing her laugh, she immediately switches to porn-actress mode and makes the requisite “oohs” and “ahhs.”

There’s also the producer of the movie Wayne (Martin Henderson) who is attempting to cash in on the adult film craze of the moment, and the boom mic operator Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) who is also RJ’s girlfriend and had no idea they were making a porno.

I enjoyed the slower moments much more than I did the graphic violence. Once the blood-letting began the film became a lot less interesting to me.

Pearl is a prequel to X which acts as an origin story to the old lady who does most of the murdering in that film. She’s Pearl of the title and is again played by Mia Goth, but without the old age makeup. She grew up on that same farm. Her father has been paralyzed by the Spanish Flu and her domineering mother (Tandi Wright) constantly criticizes her. Pearl loves the movies and dreams of being a star.

Where X was shot like a gritty 1970s horror movie, Pearl is made like a 1940s melodrama with some classic musicals for inspiration, too. It is full of big, bright colors, and there are a couple of wonderful fantasy sequences.

It also feels completely unnecessary. I was reminded of The Conjuring Universe where you have the main movies and then there are all these side stories where relatively unimportant objects in the main movies get their own films. Pearl is a prequel that no one would have asked for.

But it kind of works. It is well-made and entertaining. Mia Goth is magnificent. But I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, whereas I’ll most likely watch X many more times in the future.