The Actor from the Black Lagoon, method actor that is. Be careful down on the waterfront lest you be dragged under. ***** "You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a green-gilled fish-man, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley Tuna."
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Kim Octovak takes a break on the set of Bell, Book and Tentacle. Reportedly, she became annoyed with Jack "Lamprey" Lemmon who kept sneaking up behind her and shouting "Boo!" just so he could see her ink herself.
42 comments:
That looks like Kim Novak at the end of a remake of Freaks.
I thought of that too after I made it. The angle is right for it. Of course if this were Freaks Kim would just reach out one of her arms, latch onto Frieda, squeeze her to death and then seduce Hans again. And it would work too. Imagine all the hickeys she could give him - at once!
Kim Novak can murder me with her tentacles any time!
If Kim had only had those arms when she made Vertigo, she might have survived her fall from the belfry.
Bill - Tentacles, Novak, suction cups, eight arms. There's too much to work with here, I fear my head may explode. But rest assured she'd never kill you. She once told me you were her little "cuttlefish." I said, "Don't you eat cuttlefish?" to which she replied, "What's your point?"
DJ Ferdy - True but it wouldn't have mattered. Jimmy Stewart was a squid man all the way. Except for that one time he hooked up with Tallulah Barracuda. Now Manta Ray Harryhausen, he was an Octopus man!
Is this what we're doing again? Water-based puns?
Water you think? But we don't have to. We could talk about movies. Bit of a stretch for a film blog but I suppose we could give it a try.
I saw Ernie Kovaks show in reruns on Showtime in the early eighties and I can tell that Bell, Book and Candle does not give a full picture of how inventive and incisive he was. Unfortunately that movie is the only thing most people know him from.
I hear that Ernie Kovacs TV biopic starring Jeff Goldblum was pretty good. Anybody ever sea it? Is it available on DVD?
I watched it when it aired but I can't remember much about it now to tell you the truth. In fact, I can't remember anything about it so maybe that's not a good thing. I remember it was about Ernie Kovacs and it starred Jeff Goldblum. And it was a movie. On television. And I watched it. I remember all those things but nothing else.
I'm sure I liked Goldblum. Back in the seventies and early eighties before he buffed up and got all full of himself I really liked his gawky, affectedly naturalistic persona. Then sometime after Jurassic Park he started to bug me. Maybe it's because I like that persona in a gawky guy but find it annoying in a bigger guy. But if so I don't know why body type would affect it.
I'd rather watch the old Ernie Kovacs shows, which are all over YouTube, especially The Nairobi Trio.
Speaking of funny, I saw a very funny animated film yesterday called Sita Sings the Blues. I wasn't familiar with Annette Hanshaw, but boy, listening to her sing torch songs for lonely-heart Sita from the Ramayana reminded me so much of the 1930s musicals. I guessed the recordings were from 1930 and I was darn close--1929.
Is he full of himself? I've never gotten that impression. Have you watched the making-of documentary of the special edition DVD of The Fly (the movie for which he first got buff)? He comes off as a bit of an oddball, but a likable one. I've always been a fan, and wish he hadn't been pigeonholed so thoroughly.
DJ Ferdy - I haven't had a chance to read your review yet but will soon on lunch. The pictures from it look fantastic though and I checked out the YouTube trailer you put up. It's like a cross between the little flash videos you see all over the net and Monty Python animation.
Bill - No, he probably isn't, I was just being loose with my words, making a lazy connection between buffing up and being narcissistic.
But his career has been pretty good so I wouldn't say he was pigeonholed into the dust bin or anything. He's done fairly well for himself.
I meant pigeonholed in the sense that he seems to be only offered one kind of part: the nervous, flighty intellectual. He's played many variations on that, of course, but that's always the core. Now, judging by that Fly documentary, he is kind of a nervous, flighty intellectualy, who unusual line readings, like Christopher Walken, are based on his own speech patterns, so I'm guessing that has a lot to do with it. I guess what I mean is, if he's going to keep playing variations on one kind of character, I wish he'd do it in better movies.
I remember when Goldblum began to command star roles some critic claimed he wasn't leading man material, that he should stick to character parts. Although I poo-pooed the charge at the time I came to agree with the critic, at least in part. Post-The Fly, Goldblum began to get annoying eccentric, going from the slightly amped-up, motor-mouthed intellectual of The Big Chill and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai to a soft-talking will o'the wisp type, his eyes perpetually focused down and to the right. Weirder still is that Geena Davis, when she hooked up with Goldblum, actually began to act this way, too, and in short order the pair began to dress and look alike. (When Davis moved on to Renny Harlin, she began to parrot his styling as well, going blonde and getting a tattoo.) But Goldblum has, while not necessarily dimming his star wattage, come back around to what made him fun in the early days of his career and now I really enjoy him in stuff like The Life Aquatic and really enjoyed his short-lived TV show Raines. I thought he was great in the Jurassic Park movies.
I wrote the above with more speed than accuracy or elegance but you get the idea.
So the Antigast and I are in agreement. It was post-Jurassic that I tired of him but I still find him highly entertaining in the first one especially ("must go faster").
But hell, I'm not even aware of Raines. What the hell was that and when was it? I'm too lazy to look it up right now besides I'll get a better, and personal take from you.
I forgot my mantra.
I never saw it, but it I think Raines was a detective series, with Goldblum...maybe seeing ghosts? And being like Sherlock Holmes? I don't mean to be glib, because I heard it was a good show, but after I started writing this comment I realized that I'm not entirely sure what the show was about.
It was about a detective who had lost his partner in the line of duty and didn't actually see ghosts but had a mental process of living with the victims of homicide. The twist is that his first impressions of them would change over time as he assembled more facts and clues. It was a clever idea but maybe too subtle for an audience that wants to watch a CGI bullet destroy a CGI femoral artery while a foxy forensic technician in a leather blazer and fuck me pumps explains the science to colleagues who should already know.
an audience that wants to watch a CGI bullet destroy a CGI femoral artery while a foxy forensic technician in a leather blazer and fuck me pumps explains the science to colleagues who should already know.
See, that's why t.v. lost me. I do catch some shows on DVD though. But "boring" stuff by most people's standards. I'm currently going through Inspector Morse and Jeeves and Wooster. As for the latter, damn Fry and Laurie are good! Just fantastic! However, the show itself works only in fits and starts throwing in far more slapstick and "outrageous shenanigans" than Wodehouse ever wrote.
I hate most American cop shows with a passion. They're all so cookie cutter and pathetic in their desperation to make each crime more grotesque than the last. The worst offender is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit which serves up the decadence by the bucketful so it's protagonists can play the righteousness card in the requisite interrogation scene. I've come to call that show Law & Order: You Sick Freak. I love the quietude of the British shows, although I saw a bit of one recently where they were so obviously going for the American vibe and it put me right off, Bob's your uncle. I'd love to be able to see some of the German cops shows that have been running for years.
I love the feel of Inspector Morse and the town of Oxford. Every time I watch I want to move there. It's fairly average, throwing in the usual vital clue near the end so you can't figure it out half the time, and the other half being painfully obvious from the beginning. Still I love John Thaw and thought he did a great job as Morse and he had a great chemistry with Kevin Whately. If anyone were to start watching them I'd recommend starting with the early nineties episodes. The 1987 to 1990 episodes were a little sketchy at times.
I like to watch L&O and its spinoffs when I get home from work and don't want to think about anything for a while. As far as SVU goes, it is a sick, sick show, but the thing that I find utterly fascinating is the partnership between Olivia and Elliot. Elliot is just this side of psycho, and Olivia and he do the dance without the dip. Unlike any of the other L&Os, these people have real personalities and lives. Olivia and Elliot remind me of another such relationship on a one-season show I still mourn called Under Suspicion, with the great Karen Sillas.
Fry and Laurie were born to play Jeeves and Wooster. It's incredible how perfect they were for those roles. And Jonathan, I think the slapstick element of the show -- which I think is really brilliant -- is just there way of compensating for the fact that they can't really, outside of dialogue, reproduce Wodehouse's wonderful, funny prose on screen.
Law and Order is great to fall asleep to. The characters say everything, so it's like listening to a radio show.
My favorite lousy cop show is Cold Case. It is so awful. They investigate these cases that are fifty years old, and all the of the relevant people are, of course, still alive. Generally speaking, the first person who Jane Coldcase interviews turns out to be the killer. They have great flashbacks to the time of the murder, and indicate the time period through haircuts and "Mr. Sandman" playing on the jukebox. After they solve the case, they all gather around the family to warmly remember the victim, whose spirit is shown looking on while a Sarah McLachlin song play.
It's also filled with nonsensical dialogue. In one episode, they found evidence for a case because a former mailman died, and decades old undelivered letters were found in his home. He didn't deliver mail to black families because he was racist. Upon hearing this, Jane Coldcase said, "Welcome to the U.S. Postal Service."
Fry and Laurie hooked up at Cambridge, where they were part of a comedy theatre company called the Footlights. Laurie and Emma Thompson, who was also in Footlights, dated for a while.
Something tells me that Laurie really dodged a bullet there.
Bill I think you're right about the reason for the slapstick in Jeeves and Wooster and we both seem to agree on Fry and Laurie: If you read those books and don't imagine those two playing the lead roles something is wrong with you. They. Are. Perfect.
Of the side characters, I love the first Barmy the best and even compiled a collection of his clips for my favorite moments to be put up in the future. I also love Tuppy Glossop who isn't shown enough. Gussy Finknottle is shown too much and his weird Harold Lloyd appearance has a seething menace to it that I don't like but hey, small complaints.
Marilyn - I used to watch all the L & O on reruns on A & E but I never bothered with the new shows. How many are there now, 43? I put A Bit of Fry and Laurie in my queue but still haven't seen it. It's bits from their stageshow before they played Jeeves and Wooster. According to their bios, because of their height (6'3" and 6'5") the other parts in the show were cast for talent and height and they succeeded. In the show neither Fry nor Laurie ever appear to be towering over their fellow actors.
Those are really incredible. Did you make those? Fantastic!
The dialogue on the Law & Order and CSI shows is so awful. Case in point, when they did their take on the recent wacko astronaut kidnap case, Catherine Erbe had the line "Houston, we have a problem." The writing is so obvious and desperate. On CSI: New York recently, they investigated a woman who'd been sawed in half and Maria Kankakookakaka (or whatever the hell her name is) said something stupid like "My guess is that she wasn't a willing member of the audience."
Speaking of Karen Sillas (who is great but that show of hers was awful), she was on an episode of CSI: Miami a few years ago, playing a woman who is dying from a slow-acting poison DOA style. Guess what she collects? Hour glasses! Oh, the irony!
Cold Case is awful, too. What is up with that lead actress? Is she supposed to be a vampire or something?
There are, believe it or not, only 3 L&O series. Criminal Intent was by far the weakest, but I was fascinated watching Vincent D'Onofrio get fatter and fatter. I remembered a time when he wouldn't do TV; watching the making of Homicide: Life on the Streets "The Subway" episode, in which D'Onofrio played the victim, a guy pushed off a subway platform and trapped between the platform and the train. He said he was attracted to doing this episode because the director was from film.
How the "mighty" have fallen.
The fact that the character of Munch from Homicide is on SVU (as well as Ice-T, a really great actor, believe it or not) gives it another plus in my book. Homicide was the best cop show on TV ever and one of the best shows period.
Antigast - You've been inhaling too much gas. Under Suspicion was a must-see for me.
Friday night - Under Suspicion followed by Homicide. The best TV night ever!
But yes, the dialogue in the L&O series is awful. Only Jerry Orbach could pull off those corny opening scene punchlines.
As an actor, I really like D'Onofrio, and as a result I enjoyed Criminal Intent more than the others. Kathryn Erbe's character never does anything other than say stupid things that people shouldn't be allowed to say, but D'Onofrio's always fun to watch.
What? No jokes about Marlin Brando?
Marilyn, I think the world of you, but Ice-T is a terrible actor...
I agree with Marilyn that Ice T brings a certain level of gravitas to the show that a lot of actors couldn't. (Too many of these shows suffer from that Julliard Squad feel.) But at the same time, the writers overburden him with street-sounding dialogue that just shames everyone.
What gravitas? Sorry, I don't see it at all. I can't stand him.
elgringo - Yeah, I make the pics going up this month. I'm glad you like them, Thanks!
Nellhaus - Marlin! It was staring me right in the face and I didn't see it.
Marilyn - Jerry Orbach made those L & O's worth watching for me. I really loved what he did, he was a great actor. And Homicide I thought was a terrific show. I remember before Munch went on L & O there was a crossover episode where the L & O crew head to Baltimore and Briscoe had slept with his ex-wife.
Arbo - That dialogue infects most movies and tv these days. Even the best works seem to want to inject bad wisecracks like they're in the comment section of Cinem... uh, like they're in the comment section of some blog where people do puns a lot. But seriously, I've noticed it in the best British tv as well. If the work's good it will contain one or two of those moments and if it's bad, like how you describe CSI then I'm assuming it's pretty much the script.
I saw that L&O crossover with Munch. You wanna talk about bad dialogue. There was one scene where Belzer and Orbach are arguing -- I can't remember what about -- and Belzer tells Orbach to shove it. Orbach gets into a very confrontational stance, and says, "Shove it where?"
Had I written the episode, I would have had Belzer reply, "Um...up your ass? I thought that would have been clear."
Yeah, I distinctly remember noticing the quality difference between the shows with that crossover. Watched separately I guess it wasn't as noticeable but together just made me think the Homicide crew was slumming it.
The lesson I've learned today is that coming into posts late in the day (morning after) sometimes means that all of the good jokes have been taken. (SIGH)...
... but that just leaves me to do what needs to be done, and that's congratulate you on some fine photoshopping! Wait... those ARE photoshopped, right?
Fox, who cares about the jokes, they get old fast anyway. We actually had some good discussion today (yesterday) instead and I would've liked to have your input. Thanks for the kudos, I appreciate it. And look for your banner soon. Probably Tuesday.
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