People ask why Bob hit on Pete instead of another, hotter guy at SCDP(CGC). Leaving aside this frankly jejune assessment of Mad Men character hotness, let’s look seriously at the alternatives:
Don Draper: also a hustler. Not an option.
Roger Sterling: the only way anyone could use their sexuality to get something out of Roger is if it was something he already wanted to give away. Not lucrative.
Bert Cooper: very old, not engaged with the organization, possibly not horny due to the operation.
Jim Cutler: ewwww!
Ted Chaough: this could work but he’s not hotter than Pete.
Harry Crane: why.
Ken Cosgrove: too happy with his wife and too frazzled by the Chevy goons.
Joan Holloway Harris: he tried but her gaydar is too good.
Anyone on the creative team: that is not the act of an upwardly mobile man.
Frank Gleason: he died.
Also, a lot of really attractive women slept with Pete, so if it’s unrealistic, at least it’s equal-opportunity.
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So, I watched Night Stalker, the 2005 reboot of the 1974 Kolchak: The Night Stalker series, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. There's no danger of it supplanting the original series in my affections, but I was expecting a steaming mess and was pleasantly surpised.
Some things were a bit disconcerting, and I found myself wondering what the motivation was for some of the choices. Carl Kolchak is now a friendly, personable guy who has an entire support team he plays well with, while they, in turn, care about him? Where is my weird, abrasive loner who only gets along with old ladies and has a strange, hostile, but codependent relationship with his boss? Why is everybody so young and attractive? ("Hot Tony Vincenzo" was not on my 2023 Bingo card, folks, but there you go.) Kolchak lives in a showplace out of the pages of a glossy magazine and drives a car that doesn't look like it's about to fall apart? What's up with that?
Of course there were going to be similarities with The X-Files, due to the influence of Frank Spotnitz and the fact that The X-Files was inspired by the original Kolchak series. I thought they did a good job with the balancing act between Monster of the Week stories and the continuing story arc. I'm not sure you could get away with purely episodic storytelling here in the 21st century; the audience wouldn't stand for it. So, you need to maintain a light touch to keep from going too far in one direction or another, and I think they pulled it off. And there were some really great performances from guest stars.
Candyman himself, Mr. Tony Todd!
Angelo from The Pretender!
In perhaps the best episode of the series, Ted Chaough from Mad Men channeling Norman Bates, and his mother, Delenn from Babylon 5!
I'm not disappointed that it wasn't continued, but I found it worth the watch.
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Movies I watched and books I read this Week #141 (Year 3/Week 37):
Continuing through Aki Kaurismäki’s early work:
🍿 While waiting for his new film "Fallen Leaves", I found a copy of his second feature, the absurdist Calamari Union (1985). 15 desperate guys (all named Frank), and another called Pekka (who speaks in a fake Finnish-English accent) undergo a random series of senseless misadventures, as they try to flee from one seedy suburb of downtown Helsinki to the mystical seaside of Eira. Weirdly surrealist.
🍿 Rocky VI, an early (1986) black & white short, a parody of Stallone franchise. A puny little guy fights the much bigger “Igor” (A giant with Brezhnev eyebrows) and loses.
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Letter from an Unknown Woman, my first romantic tear-jerker by Max Ophüls. 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes’, and co-produced by venerable John Housman. The allure of turn of the century Vienna. Beautiful Joan Fountain looking very much like young July Greer.
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My first 3 Croatian films by new female director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović [2 with Danish-Serbian actress Danica Curcic, and 2 with the beautiful Gracija Filipovic]:
🍿 Stane, a brand new 20-min. elusive story about a strong-willed woman, who was just elevated to lead her immigrant father’s thriving construction empire, while at the same time discovering her husband’s infidelity. Unspoken emotions and toxic dynamics explored. This is part of ‘Women’s Tales’, an anthology of 26 shorts commissioned by fashion brand Miu Miu, which I’m going to start devouring. 9/10.
🍿 “Dreams die in paradise”…
Her debut feature film, Murina ("Moray eel"), was exec-produced by Martin Scorsese, and won the Caméra d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Festival. Powerful, feminist story of a strong-willed 17 year old fisherman daughter, who rebels against the primitive patriarchy on the beautiful Adriatic island where she live. Her father especially is an abusive, controlling prick, trying to keep his growing mermaid daughter in her place. It evokes other sensual Mediterranean dramas full of salt water and sun, like ’The lost daughter' and 'A bigger Splash'. Mature and sensitive. 9/10.
🍿 Into the blue (2017) is her previous draft for 'Murina', a similar story about a 13 year old diver, also named Julija, played by the same actress, in the same locations, and with the same sensibilities and mature 'feel'. A story about friendship and jealousy between two girls.
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Josep, a different type animated feature, more like an animated painting, by the French cartoonist Aurel [How many other directors use only one name, beside Tarsem?]. It's an artistic biography of the little-known Catalan artist Josep Bartoli, detailing his experience at a French concentration camp during the last war. In 1939, the Spanish refugees persecuted by Franco, sought asylum in France, but instead were interned in concentration camps. This was a chapter from history I was not familiar with. 8/10.
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4 more re-watches:
🍿 Another go at Ron Flicke’s non-narrative Baraka ("Blessing", 1992). I introduced it to my mom, who enjoyed the first half, as it embraced the Yin of the world's vast beauty and spirituality, but as soon as it started turning toward the Yang of destruction and decay, she had to bail. But the people who pray for peace, and the people who kiss the holy stones, are the same people who burn the trees, and who slaughter all the chickens.
🍿 “Welcome to the future, bruh…”
Nightcrawler, another tense re-watch of Dan Gilroy’s brilliant debut feature. Villainous thief Jake Gyllenhaal is the ultimate urban amoral creep. This is surely how Musk would have started, if he was born on the other side of the tracks. Gilroy specifically wrote the role of Nina for his wife Rene Russo. Also, with 'Mad Men's Ted Chaough. Now I'm glad that I never got to watch television.
🍿 “…It’s called an anus…”
After reading the excellent 'Los Angeles Review of Books' article about The big chill which had premiered 40 years ago, I took another dip. Still a terrific ensemble piece, with Peak William Hurt and Meg Tilly. 9/10.
🍿 “I think loneliness probably kills more people than cancer…”
The masterful A simple favor once again: This is becoming nearly a bi-weekly event for me, it seems. I simply cannot get enough of this wonderful 'Suburban Noir'. Everything I said last month still stands: The script and dialogue are so crisp, the sound design is fantastic. The story is perfect. Shoutouts this time to the lesbian undertones with Blake Lively, to Rupert Friend's Dennis Nylon, to the Visual Style'... 10/10/10.
Bonuses: The soundtrack [not great by itself] Some bloopers and B-rolls. I'm so not looking forward to ‘Simple Favor 2’!
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Life of crime, another black comedy caper, based on an Elmore Leonard novel. His hapless small-time hoods Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara try another doomed kidnapping scheme in Detroit. The 1978 Detroit ambiance is beautifully recreated. Unfortunately, the two bumbling con men are nowhere close in charisma and presence to Samuel L. Jackson in Jackie Brown or Travolta's Chili Palmer. Tim Robbins is the baddie. 3/10.
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5 more shorts:
🍿 Ten minutes older, a 1978 short by Latvian documentarian Herz Frank, which consists of sublime ten minutes of reaction shots of children watching a puppet show. It must have been inspired by Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous Parisian series from 1963. (Photos Above).
🍿 A documentary about the making of John Frankenheimer 1966 horror / science fiction film Seconds, starring Rock Hudson.
🍿 Fantasmagorie, a 1908 French animated film by Émile Cohl, considered by film historians to be the first animated, using what came to be known as traditional animation methods.
🍿 Reservoir Dogs, 1992: A 12-minute Tarantino short, made with the help of the Sundance Film institute and served as a proof of concept for the feature film.
From a Deadline list of ‘Films that began as shorts’
🍿 Carl’s Date, the latest "Pixar" pre-movie short, riffing on Carl Fredricksen from 'Up'. Disney squeezes the juice out of anything with a heart, and jerks it off into a used sock under the bed. 2/10.
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Unfit, The psychology of Donald Trump, with Malcolm Nance, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and a bunch of heave-duty psychiatrists. A sharp documentary, showing beyond any reasonable doubt that the orange malignant narcissist suffers from the same incurable mental illness, his idols Hitler & Mussolini did. It should have scared the world, when he still was in charge. Sadly, it's from 2020, and so much had transpired since. But hell, fuck this guy once and for all. 8/10.
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The Tel Aviv to Tel Katzir Shuttle (מאסף תל אביב־תל קציר), by Moshe Shargal (2000): A lovely memoir of life at a simpler time, time I nearly remember, Israel of the late 1950's, when young people could still dream about endless horizons, unblemished landscapes and hopeful futures. It opens with a poem by Pinhas Sadeh, הליכה בשדות מרמת רחל לצור בח'ר
האושר הוא ללכת בזוהר השמש השוקעת של סוף הקיץ
כאילו הולך אתה בשדה בעמק יזרעאל, ואתה כבן 16
וכאילו כל החיים, כל החיים, עדיין
האהבות, הכאבים, המתיקות
אי אפשר לתאר את השלווה הזאת
השמיים, הרוח, האדמה החומה
רק אלוהים יודע
ממערב משתפל ויורד חורש ירוק
אורנים וברושים נעים לאט
ואתה הולך לבדך ��עולם בשדה בשמש השוקעת של סוף הקיץ
איש בסתיו חייו
ובוכה
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(My complete movie list is here)
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