#David Coon

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The Miracle of 18 Years

This tribute to the life of David P. Coon was delivered live by the author on February 4, 2024 in St. Alban’s Chapel at ‘Iolani School in Honolulu. I’m standing in his spot. I remember sitting in any number of locations in those pews starting at about age 12. When he stood here, my eyes were transfixed. This was his spot. The chaplains stood here. Many of our teachers stood here. Years later I…

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Today in the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, Leonard Nimoy guest stars in "The Tiburcio Mendez Story," episode 26 of the fourth season of Wagon Train (original air date March 22, 1961). If you're playing along at home, you probably remember that Gene Roddenberry originally pitched Star Trek to the studio as “Wagon Train to the stars.”

Nimoy plays Joachin Delgado, the protégé and future son-in-law of the titular character. Mendez is the leader of a ragtag group of Californios who were displaced fifteen years earlier when the United States annexed California at the end of the Mexican-American War, and the Gold Rush brought a wave of prospectors and settlers west into the new territory. They've been living rough in the hills at the edge of the desert and robbing the occasional wagon train, partly to survive and partly to try to stem the tide of Anglo settlers.

A magistrate traveling with the wagon train believes he can get the group's original land grants restored to them if the individual members who actively committed the robberies agree to turn themselves in and stand trial. Seeing how his people, especially the children born in exile, are suffering from the harsh life in hiding, Mendez agrees to the plan. But the younger men, led by the hot-headed Delgado, resolve to stay and keep fighting.

Armed conflict breaks out between the two sides, and Mendez is fatally wounded. In tears at the deathbed of his surrogate father, Delgado promises to take Mendez's place as leader of the reunited group and see them back to California to reclaim their land.

Other Trek Connections:

This episode was written by Gene L. Coon, one of the Founding Fathers of Star Trek. He wrote or co-wrote 13 episodes of The Original Series and produced 33. Working closely with Roddenberry and Justman, he introduced such elements as as the Klingons, the United Federation of Planets, and the Prime Directive into the Trek lore.

Tiburcio Mendez is played by Nehemiah Persoff, who also played the delightfully bitchy Palor Toff in the Next Generation episode “The Most Toys.”

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Fury (2014)

“Best job I ever had” ~ “War never ends quietly”

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GONE GIRL (2014)

Director: David Fincher Cinematographer: Jeff Cronenweth

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Smash cake icons revealed 🫣

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Fargo (2014-2024) tv series

-(finished) watchin' Season 3- 8/22/2024- 3 [1/2] stars- on Hulu (FX)

93% Rotten Tomatoes

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#161

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Gone Girl - 2014 - Dir. David Fincher

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Blaine Higgs lost his own seat let’s fucking gooooooooooooo

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The Best Jewelry From the 2024 Academy Museum Gala

The Academy Museum Gala may be relatively new on the scene, but it has already cemented itself as a must-see for those who love a good jewelry moment. Last night’s event did not disappoint, with an array of show-stopping diamonds and vibrant gems gracing the red carpet. Saoirse Ronan dazzled with her Anita Ko diamond Ruth earrings, while Amy Adams added a splash of color with her bold David Webb…

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Gone Girl (2014) ------------------ dir. David Fincher cin. Jeff Cronenweth cs. USA

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David Coon: An Appreciation

The end of each year is a time for reflection. We often look back on the past year and try to summarize our milestones. Sometimes we set New Year’s resolutions with the best of intentions. At the moment I’m thinking about someone who won’t be part of the new year. That is the way of things, perhaps the hardest part of being human, knowing almost as soon as cognition forms that there are bookends…

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Boston Strangler (2023) Matt Ruskin

May 4th 2024

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Fury (2014)

“Best job I ever had” ~ “War never ends quietly”

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Boston Strangler

directed by Matt Ruskin, 2023

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GHOSTS AND DEMONS AND EVEN WILDER YET

Opening this weekend:

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire--This fifth feature in the franchise begins with a nice macabre episode set in 1904, like something from a creepier version of Disney's Haunted Mansion. This is followed by an extended chase through the streets of Manhattan, as the current Ghostbusters pursue, in the "Ectomobile," an eel-like flying dragon spirit up from the sewers.

It's a reasonably diverting start, and the movie goes on to deploy, in addition to Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon and the kids from 2021's Ghostbusters: Afterlife, most of the available stars from the 1984 original. Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Williams Atherton and Bill Murray show up--no Sigourney Weaver or Rick Moranis, alas--and not just in cameos but with fairly substantive screen time. I was disappointed that the all-woman crew from the much-maligned and underrated 2016 version wasn't invited to this party, but apparently fans are still traumatized.

Anyway, the old vets here are good company--Murray with his peerless sardonoic line readings, Akyroyd with his gee-whiz delivery of expository gibberish. A couple of new adds, like Patton Oswalt as an authority on the occult and Kumail Nanjiani as a clod who sells Aykroyd the spherical ancient artifact that serves as the McGuffin, also get into the proper, uhm, spirit of things.

On the whole the movie, directed by Gil Kenan from a script by Kenan and Jason Reitman, is an enjoyable lavish no-brainer. The closest it gets to any emotional weight is an intriguing plot strand in which the teenage heroine (Mckenna Grace) bonds, seemingly romantically, with a teen ghost (Emily Alyn Lind) after she's forbidden to go 'busting until she turns 18; the actors manage a touching rapport even through the special effects prism.

But if Frozen Empire--which concerns a horned demon with freezing superpowers imprisoned inside the McGuffin--doesn't feel like a home run, it may be the result of too much wholesomeness. The teen romance and bickering family dynamic didn't quite feel like Ghostbusters to me, somehow. What made the '84 film seem new was its mix of extravagant, big-budget special effects spectacle with the snarky, irreverent slacker sketch-comedy of Murray and the other stars. Only when Frozen Empire taps into this sensibility does it truly thaw out.

The movie is dedicated to Ivan Reitman, director of the original, and this film, like several of the others, includes a nod to Cannibal Girls, Rietman's 1973 shocker starring the impossibly young and adorable Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy. I hope it makes fans seek out that amusing low-budget creepshow; there's a movie that doesn't suffer from too much wholesomeness.

Late Night With the Devil--Here's another wry paranormal chiller set in New York, although it was conceived by the Australian brothers Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes and filmed in Melbourne. The premise is that we're watching the 1976 Halloween episode of a syndicated talk show, a perennial also-ran in the ratings to Johnny Carson. Desperate for a sweeps win, the recently widowed host (David Dastmalchian) stacks the guest list with a hokey stage psychic (Fayssal Bazzi), an Amazing Randi-type skeptic (Ian Bliss), and a psychiatrist (Laura Gordon) and her patient, an angelically smiling teenage girl (Ingrid Torelli). This girl was rescued from a cult and just might be possessed.

From the set to the music to the "More to Come" break cards, the Cairnes Brothers truly capture the look and feel of anything-goes '70s talk shows to a degree that will be nostalgic to those of us who remember them. The movie also evokes sources of the period from The Exorcist to Network (Michael Ironside provides stentorian narration in the manner of Network's Lee Richardson), and the soundtrack includes the likes of Flo & Eddie's "Keep It Warm."

The "found footage" conceit is quickly strained; the supposed "behind the scenes" sequences are pretty cinematic and helpfully narrative. But after a while you accept it, largely because the acting, especially the haunted yet game showmanship of the excellent Dastmalchian, keeps us involved.

It's a little scary, but mostly Late Night With the Devil is, like Network, a tongue-in-cheek satire of TV business culture, with ripe lines like "Ladies and gentlemen, a live television first, as we attempt to communicate with...the Devil. But not before a word from our sponsors." I also loved the implication that no amount of supernatural power could overtake Carson in the ratings in those days. Apparently even the Devil couldn't do that.

At Harkins Shea...

Remembering Gene Wilder--This documentary, directed by Ron Frank, does indeed fondly remember the late comedy great. Frank makes Wilder himself the narrator, using audiobook excerpts from his noirishly-titled 2005 memoir Kiss Me Like a Stranger.

Born Jerry Silberman in Milwaukee, he grew up trying to make his mother laugh, and later drew inspiration from the mental patients he worked with while serving in the U.S. Army. He wanted, he says, something a bit "wilder" for his stage name when he started acting in New York. Cast in Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children at the Martin Beck Theatre in the early '60s, he met leading lady Anne Bancroft's future husband Mel Brooks, who later cast him in The Producers.

From there, we get a chronicle of some of the highlights of Wilder's movie career--not all of them; Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx and Start the Revolution Without Me, for instance, are passed over. But there's terrific material on Bonnie and Clyde, The Producers, Willy Wonka, Young Frankenstein, his relationship with Richard Pryor, his scenes with the sheep in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (he says that Allen told him that he wanted to do a version of Sister Carrie with a sheep instead of Jennifer Jones), and more. My own favorite of Wilder's characters, Jim aka The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles, is very well represented here.

Talking heads include Brooks, Carol Kane, Mike Medavoy, Alan Alda, Ben Mankiewicz, Rain Pryor, Harry Connick, Jr., Eric McCormack, and Willy Wonka's Charlie Bucket himself, Peter Ostrum, as well as Wilder's widow Karen Wilder, all speaking with unmistakable love. They tell good stories, but the real joy is simply the big dose of Wilder's utterly sui generis blend of innocent sweetness and strangled volatility. If the clips in this movie don't make you smile, you may need to see a doctor.