What’s up next for Boss Radio 66 DJ Tom Hanks? Asteroid City, also with Steve Carell and another personal fav, Hope Davis. Check the trailer for the complete list of actors. I expect this will be my next reason to enter a movie theater.
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The Hometown Brew
Getting in the mood for tonight’s Big Planet Noise, where I call myself Beantown Doug.
On Stage and On Film
Barter Theatre in Virginia was featured on last night’s PBS NewsHour.
As explained in the video, Barter Theatre includes actors from New York. My mother was one of them, after completing the program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
In addition to the plays produced at home base, Barter’s actors traveled, performing plays throughout the region. The troupe of actors my mother was with included Ernest Borgnine, who she called Ernie. Borgnine did double duty as an actor and as the bus driver. Ernie enjoyed it so much, driving his own buses became a lifelong avocation.
CBS Sunday Morning covered the very important work of film restoration and preservation. The amazing results seen today wouldn’t be possible without digital technology.
Running With Scissors Swords
My marathon running days are over, but having run about a dozen of them, the premise for Samurai Marathon intrigued me.
If not a truly great movie experience, Samurai Marathon is only a couple steps away from being one, due to the weak scenes portraying Commodore Perry. It’s available for free on YouTube Movies & TV, with commercials.
Note: The subtitles are out of sync and get progressively worse later in the video.
Controlled Burn
The MAGA crowd may prefer to imagine that books are being burned in this video, but it’s my semi-annual burning of bills that have been paid and receipts that aren’t needed. I shred some things, but this makes it more of a primal ritual, besides being easier on the ears.
Hitch’s Guilt Complex
Something I featured recently deserves to be mentioned more on Turner Classic Movies — Old Time Radio shows that were adapted from movies of the time.
In 1950, Alfred Hitchcock introduced a radio play of his 1944 film Spellbound. The Theramin sound gets to be a bit much, but it’s an interesting adaptation. Five years later, the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents began its long run.
For now, there is a complete copy of Spellbound available on YouTube. The movie includes the famous dream sequence that was created in collaboration with Salvador Dali. In the finished film it was directed not by Hitch, however, but by William Cameron Menzies, who has been the subject of some recent posts.
https://youtu.be/lNThFiBh7Ck
https://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-space-between-literature-and-culture-1914-1945/vol14_2018_king
On a related note, Donald Spoto died a couple of weeks ago. I read Spoto’s Hitchcock biography, The Dark Side of Genius, as soon as it came out in paperback, 39 years ago. I remember reading it on airplanes and in hotels while traveling on business. I was halfway through the book when I accidentally left it in the seatback pocket of a plane while in a rush to catch a connecting flight. Realizing my mistake, I had just enough time to buy another copy at an airport bookstore to continue my reading on the next flight. That copy I didn’t lose.
To me, Spoto’s take on Hitch smacked of him having a thesis that was more like an agenda, and force-fitting some facts to back it up. I had a similar reaction to David Michaelis’ biography of Charles Schulz.