"Nothing Sacred"- run, don't walk, to see it.

I watched the movie “Nothing Sacred” in my continuing quest to understand what it must have been like in an earlier America. This movie, starring Carole Lombard and Frederic March was made in 1937. Here is a plot synopsis from Wikipedia:


“New York newspaper reporter Wally Cook (Fredric March) tries to pass off an ordinary African-American (Troy Brown) as an African nobleman hosting a charity event. Wally Cook is demoted to writing obituaries. He begs his boss Oliver Stone (Walter Connolly) for another chance. Wally is sent to Warsaw, a fictional town in Vermont, to interview Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard), a woman supposedly dying of radium poisoning. When Cook finally locates Hazel, she is crying because her doctor has told her that she is not dying. Unaware of this, he invites her to New York as the guest of the Morning Star newspaper. The newspaper uses her story to increase its circulation. She receives a ticker tape parade and the key to the city, and becomes an inspiration to many. In addition, she and Wally fall in love. When it is finally discovered that Hazel is not really dying, city officials decide that it would be better to avoid embarrassment by having it seem that she committed suicide. Hazel and Wally get married and quietly set sail for the tropics.”

It doesn’t seem like a great plot but then many movies do not have a great plot (think “Transformers,” anything with Ryan Reynolds or Jennifer Anniston). Nevertheless, this movie was thoroughly enjoyable and maybe verged on greatness, mostly because of Lombard.

Again from Wikipedia:

“Carole Lombard (October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942) was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in several classic films of the 1930s, most notably in the 1936 film My Man Godfrey. She is listed as one of the American Film Institute's greatest stars of all time and was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s, earning around $500,000 per year (more than five times the salary of the US President). Lombard's career was cut short when she died at the age of 33 in the crash of TWA Flight 3.”

This is the first time I saw Lombard in a movie. She was an incredible comedic actress. She was delicately beautiful with a beautiful pale complexion. She was great in the role of Hazel because she did not have to act funny. She simply was. She read funny lines with an earnestness that she probably would also have used for Shakespeare. I think she was a comedic genius. She was such a contrast to the strident, mugging, and dim-witted Lucille Ball. She also was a great contrast to Rosalind Russell who morphed from a fashion model, to “tough broad”, to someone who calls everyone “dahling” to Auntie Mame , a model for every drag queen. Lombard was light, not prone to pratfalls or overacting. She always kept control of her character so that it did not stoop to become a cartoon or a parody. This makes her early death all the sadder. Her personal life was interesting. Her first marriage, which ended in divorce, was to William Powell. Gun She then has a relationship with Russ Columbo, who died in a gun accident. She later said that Columbo was the love of her life. Her last husband was Clark Gable, who called her the love of his life. My fantasy is that she would be a person with whom I would enjoy spending time. Her easy going style must have captivated those around her.

Frederic March was a very competent actor and played a good straight man to Lombard’s Hazel.

There are several other things about the movie that were noteworthy:

1. This was the only Technicolor film that Lombard made. In the print that I saw, the colors were muted and not highly saturated. I liked the effect.

2. Shots of New York were all rear projections, which were not always successful. There is an interesting flyover of Manhattan when Hazel and Wally fly to New York. The city view out of the airplane window was obviously a special effect but lower Manhattan, with its mostly pre-modernism buildings, was impressive. The city had many neo-classic skyscrapers that today probably look dated but in 1937 they looked grand.

3. Most of the interiors were in the Art Moderne or Streamline Moderne style that was a late branch of the Art Deco design style. Its architectural style emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements (such as railings and porthole windows). It reached its height in 1937. Art Moderne seemed to be lost in comparison to the more widely known Deco and Bauhaus styles. There is a night club in “Nothing Sacred”, called Club Moderne, which is a perfect example of this style. There were round lights, sitting on round columns with Deco-inspired lighting. Banisters along the various levels of the club were long metal railings that gently curved toward the ground when they ended. These movie night clubs were always large and elegant. People sat at tables and the dance floor, at least in Club Moderne, was on a stage. People dressed formally and no one seemed to break a sweat. The movie nightclubs of this period were always elegant. My guess is that the clubs of Hollywood legend, e.g., Ciro’s and Mocambo (both opened shortly after the making of “Nothing Sacred”), may have been something like Club Moderne, although in a different architectural style.

4. No one smoked in “Nothing Sacred.”

5. There were fresh flowers in every scene, which added even more glamour to the Moderne style.

6. The movie was a critique of newspapers that made-up news to increase circulation. Sound familiar? (Look up Fox news, CNN, or CNBC if you aren’t familiar with this concept.) You may remember newspapers-they were awkwardly sized pieces of paper with news stories printed on them. In the past nearly every major city had at least two. Today, the internet-based “Huffington Post” fulfills that function for some cities, such as Denver. Many papers are dying today because their leadership did not learn the lesson of the music industry’s demise in the digital age. Too bad- so sad.

If you ever have the chance, spend the 90 minutes it takes to watch “Nothing Sacred.” It is a classy and funny movie, with a magical leading lady, that provides a friendly glimpse into the late 1930s.

"High Anxiety"- better remembered

I watched the Mel Brooks’ movie “High Anxiety” the other day. I remember enjoying Brooks’ films over the year and thought it would be a good laugh to watch this Hitchcock parody again. I learned that parody is best enjoyed the closer it is to the event being parodied. When too much time has elapsed the target of the parody becomes something of a dim memory. What was cutting edge becomes dull and blunted. Of course Hitchcock was a great director and many of his movies were inspired. His directorial bag of tricks was large and his stories seemed so fresh when they were, well, fresh. The best parts of “High Anxiety” are those that poke fun at that bag of tricks. There is a scene with the wonderful Cloris Leachman as Nurse Diesel and Harvey Korman as her B&D psychiatrist playmate. They are sitting at a glass topped table and Brooks, taking a page from Hitchcock, has the camera photographing the actors through the glass top. It is wonderful to watch the camera contend with coffee cups and plates being moved around by Leachman and Korman without regard to where the camera is. Leachman has a hilarious thin mustache and she talks with her mouth continually clenched. She embodies all the bad psychiatric nurses found in so many movies.  Korman acts with just a bit of the effete, making the two a great comedic couple. Madelaine Kahn is also a treat to watch. She has a way of using her mouth and hair to demonstrate movie-fake sensuality. A Kahn scene that works very well is when Brooks calls her from a phone booth while he is being strangled. She interprets it as a heavy breathing pervert call. She initially feigns disgust but gradually begins to ask questions, “ How did you, ummmm... get my room number? I am not going to listen to any more of this, I mean, I've had just about enough! What are you wearing? Jeans? you're wearing jeans? I bet they're tight.” She does this while throwing back her long blonde hair like some glamorous Hollywood leading lady of days past. There is also one funny scene where Brooks parodies the famous “Psycho” shower scene. However, Brooks does not have the comedic timing and rubber face that Gene Wilder had in the much funnier “Young Frankenstein.” Brooks’ Jewish schtick also seems tired today. But most of the movie is like silly filler that was probably quite funny in 1977 but not so much now.


“High Anxiety” makes reference also to Hitchcocks’s“The Birds,” “Vertigo,”, “Marnie”, “Suspicion” and others. It also sends up films of other directors including “Blow Up, “the Pink Panther,” and “The Wizard of Oz.”

I suppose that when I watch the “Scary Movie” films 30-years from now, I will probably forget the movies they were parodying and wonder why I liked “Scary Movie 3” so much. So too is the fate of “High Anxiety” 30 years later.

The sense of "I"

The other night on Irish TV I saw a fascinating show about how the sense of “I” or “me” arises out of the brain. In other words, what happens at the neuronal level that causes us to organize the world as “me” and “not me.” The narrator was a mathematician atheist. He began the discussion with a review of Descartes’ notions of mind-body dualism which attempted, but ultimately failed to answer the question of how a nonmaterial mind could influence a material body, without invoking supernatural explanations. This program was attempting to summarize our current understanding of the mind-body issue by reviewing some current research.


The assumption of most of the research reviewed arises out of the assumption that the sense of “I” arises from the brain. As a result, some of the studies focused on neurological investigations. The first involved cortical stimulation of the brain. MRI scans were done at the same time to describe how electrical impulses flow within the brain. This study showed that, when awake, the area stimulated immediately shows a response, but that other areas of the brain then show electrical activity. This appears to show that in the awake brain, various areas communicate with each other after stimulation and that activity is not limited to just one area. In contrast, when an area is stimulated in the sleeping brain, electrical activity is limited to just the area stimulated. When a person is asleep, and presumably without the sense of “I”, his or her brain functions differently than when awake, when presumably the individual has the sense of “I.”

Another study showed that in one individual, there are neurons that appear to store information of a certain type. The researchers found that a certain bundle of neurons stored material related to Jennifer Anniston. When the individual was shown a picture of Anniston, the neurons fired. When shown a picture of Anniston and Brad Pitt, the neurons did not fire. However, when the subject was shown the letters “Jennifer Anniston”, the neurons again fired. The researcher concluded that neurons were storing the concept “Jennifer Anniston” rather than just her visual image. This seems to indicate that single or bundled neurons act as file folders for concepts. Thus, the neurons could, by extension, contain a concept of “I”.

The final study focused on how visual cues can support the sense of “I.” The experiment involved having a subject wear a visor that contained a video screen, much like those that are used to view movies with a portable video player. The visor blocks out visual input except that which is on the screen. Attached to the visor are two video cameras mounted behind the subject. As a result of this setup, the subject is viewing himself as seen by another person. The subject reported disorientation as a result of the confusion between his predetermined sense of location and the visual cues of being in a different location based on the feeds from the cameras. To compound the confusion, the experimenter placed the video cameras on his head and then walked around. This was even more confusing for the subject, given that he was seated. From the subject’s point of view, his sense of “I” was being disturbed by the incongruous video feed. This study was certainly interesting, but struck me as a bit gimmicky. It did not demonstrate whether the subject would become habituated to the incongruous video cues and thus recover to some degree the sense of “I.”

Like many TV-based summaries of research, this British-made show did not have time to explore all of the limitations of the studies nor the antecedent and subsequent studies that may have shed more light on the phenomenon investigated. The show did show how science can approach the study of how the sense of “I” is created. From the results presented, the mind-body interaction arises out of neuronal activity and sensory input. This seems obvious, but the obvious is not always correct.

One of the problems with this, and other neurological research, is that the studies must use such large and complicated machinery that the process of measuring the phenomenon being studied introduces a certain artificiality that likely influences the results. As technology continues to evolve, more sophisticated and miniaturized equipment may help reduce the influence of the process of measurement on the findings.

"Fellini: I am a Born Liar"

“Fellini: I am a Born Liar” was recently shown on Irish TV. It was made in 1993 and provides the last interview the Federico Fellini had before his death. Fellini was considered one of the most influential movie directors of the mid-twentieth century. His films include “8 1/2”, “Satyricon”, “Fellini’s Roma”, and “Juliet of the Spirits.” The interview with Fellini was interesting and led me to modify my view of his work. The interview contains clips of his movies, but does not identify which movies they were in. They are used to illustrate his ideas rather than to be a “greatest hits” compendium. I frequently find that interviews with artists are tedious because artists frequently talk in a language that has meaning for them but is so idiosyncratic that it leaves the rest of us behind. This is particularly a problem for someone like me who tends to be a concrete thinker and a reductionist. This interview was no different and it was made worse because it was in Italian with English subtitles. When I have seen English language films with English subtitles, I can see how meaning can be slightly changed through the subtitling process. I can only imagine what was done here.


The interview with Fellini was augmented by interviews with Donald Sutherland and Terrance Stamp, two of the most interesting and talented actors in the last 60 years. Neither actor seemed to like working with Fellini very much. They both found him to be overbearing in some instances and too uninvolved in others. Fellini, in contrast, thought that he was very tuned into actors and that he liked them very much. The one actor with whom he had a long-term professional relationship was not interviewed, i.e., Marcello Mastroianni. From others interviewed it seems that Mastroianni was able to not personalize Fellini’s direction and he often simply walked away. Nevertheless his acting style was probably more to Fellini’s natural rhythm that Sutherland’s and Stamp’s.

After Fellini sought treatment for depression from a psychoanalyst, his movies became more informed by Freudian theory. His movies were never just about storytelling. They were not simply a presentation of his perception of a story. Rather they were about his interpretation of the story through the lens of his understanding of his psychological makeup. In that way, Fellini’s movies were self-indulgent and sometimes full of images that were strange and unapproachable. Fellini used actors who were often grotesquely overweight with big hair and who were scantily clad. He used little people, old people, and disabled people to populate his cities and towns. He used these characters not because he was particularly interested in them, but because they reflected his psyche. They were representative of his fears, conflicts, and neuroses. Through his approach, Fellini invited us into his psychoanalysis but we often did not know what he was showing us.

There were two scenes from his films that were part of this interview that illustrated this. The first involved three children on a beach who were peeking in a cabana to see a woman change into her beach clothes. Because it was his recollection of the beach, he insisted that the real ocean would not reflect the quality of memory. He then had his designers build a faux ocean using large sheets of plastic that made artificial waves when moved. In this scene, the woman in the cabana exited and started to walk toward the ocean. She was dressed in a red bikini. She was voluptuous but her derriere was large. This scene incorporated techniques that were designed to make concrete Fellini’s memory using artifice and grotesquerie. One other point- Fellini never stooped to making the scene gratuitously sexy. There was never a close up on the woman’s posterior to highlight its ampleness. What a contrast to modern movie making.

The other scene that I thought illustrated Fellini’s art. It was a scene in a large hotel lobby. I was not certain if this was a real hotel or a set. The lobby was a baroque concoction in red, white and gold leaf. Mastrioanni walked across the lobby. At first the scene was presented in full color. It was then replayed in Fellini’s black and white. It was amazing for me to see how the latter transformed the scene into an abstract work of art. I interpreted this brief scene differently when the color was stripped out. It became cooler and the actor became less engaged with the surrounding but more engaged with me. It was fascinating.

“Fellini: I am a Born Liar” informed me about Fellini’s art. I am less convinced that his work is as great as I once thought, but hearing (or reading) him discuss his films was interesting and provided insights into Fellini’s filmmaking approach. There are scores of movies by others that are indebted to Fellini’s technique of using the director's psychological constructs to tell a story.

"Echo der Stars"

Kuwaiti cable TV is an international mix of television shows that show the best and worst of many cultures. Last night it showed the best of Germany. “Echo der Stars” is the annual German awards show for classical music. To an American classical music fan, this was a pleasant surprise since classical music is no longer a focus of American culture. I do not understand the German language, except a few words, like danke, schnitzel, Leipzig, and orchester, but I don’t think and any of the award recipients thanked god for their award. In addition, there was no crotch grabbing, swearing, interrupting, or interjecting that someone else should have won the award. I am not passing judgment on those behaviors, just drawing a contrast.


I tuned after the show had begun but the first piece of music I heard was a Monteverde piece played on period instruments and sung by a soprano and a countertenor. It was beautiful. We do not hear many countertenors in the US so it was a treat to hear. Awards were presented to Placido Domingo and David Fray. Domingo is so skilled a vocalist that I marvel at the control he has in his lungs, diaphragm, and vocal chords. Fray is a young French pianist who is quirky. He sits in an arm chair, rather than on a piano bench. He apparently sings along with the music and also conducts the orchestra from time to time, although when he played his solo, he kept his flamboyance under control. His played “La Vida Breve” by deFalla. He obviously is talented and, apropos of nothing, he is tall, thin and handsome. He has nicely styled long hair.


One nominee was Sir Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic for their China trip. There was a clip of Rattle coming out of a building with a crowd of at least 5,000 Chinese cheering for him. What a wonderful reception!


The show was live from the Dresden Concert Hall, which is a beautiful baroque facility with gold leaf everywhere. The ceiling of the stage has a series of moveable squares that are adjustable to improve the acoustics. One side is mirrored and when visible creates fascinating reflections of the orchestra and audience. There was a brief glimpse of the hallway outside of the concert hall. It looked as if it was straight from “Le Belle Epoque.” The Staatskapple Orchestra is the resident orchestra and its conductor, Fabio Luisi, won an award for conductor of the year. There was once quirky transcription of Bizet’s “Carmen” played by a saxophone trio and a clarino trumpet. I appreciated how unmusical saxophones can be, but piece was different and it challenged the ear.


The presenters, award winners, and audience were all formally dressed. There were even twenty-something people in the audience, which is not something we usually see in American concert halls.

I do have some frivolous observations. The first is that one of the masters of ceremony had a pompadour that must have been at least 6 inches tall. His hair swirled around his head until it looked something like a miniature Devils Tower. The second is that the concert master was bald on the top of his head with long red hair at the sides. He looked like Krusty the Clown. Finally, the award given to the winners looked to me like a cross between a meat cleaver and a mitre saw.

After the show was finished, I turned to the Kuwaiti Showtime cable network. There, in all of its glory, was a showing of one of the pinnacles of American culture, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Irish TV and "Design for Life"

Irish television is rather limited. There are about 15 channels. Two are in Arabic, two are soccer dominated, two are news channels and the rest are made up of period dramas, antique shows, game shows (in great supply), Springer clones, Ellen, Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Judge Judy. They seem to like our old TV westerns and “Murder She Wrote.” The best programming seems to be very late at night. Some of these shows are signed, which is not the norm during the day. Apparently the hearing- impaired only watch TV at 3:30 in the morning.

I saw a very interesting show last night at about 2:00AM. It’s called “Design for Life” and it is similar to our reality shows like “Top Model,” “Project Runway,” and the various cooking shows. I liked it because it involves several students designing a product that, if deemed the winner of the competition, will result in one of the students being placed in the studio of Phillippe Starck, who is a French product designer and probably the best known designer in the New Design style. His designs range from spectacular interior designs to mass produced consumer goods such as toothbrushes, chairs, and even houses.

The students must design a product that will help people. One designed a cane-like stand to assist the elderly to stand up from a chair. Another designed a glove-like device for women to wear that can be used to shine a bright light into the eye of an attacker. The third student designed a wobbly chair for children to improve their coordination. The final student designed a tray with utensils for the blind. They must not only design the project, have a model made of it, but also create a logo and marketing material for it. The students were bright, serious, and articulate. This show would never make it on American television. It is too cerebral and design as a profession has never penetrated the popular culture in the way that clothing- and people-designing has.

I enjoyed watching Starck give feedback to the students. They are from the UK and he is from France, of which there is no doubt because of his thick accent. While they are attempting to design a useful product for persons in special circumstances, Starck’s comments are very conceptual. The challenge for the students is, of course, to makes sense of what the master is saying and apply it concretely. I remember working in a consulting firm where the owner gave such conceptual comments that I was somehow to apply to writing a proposal for government funding. I think he thought he was brilliant. I usually walked away wondering what he, in fact he had said. I was miserable at implementing his lofty feedback. Fortunately, I think he did not know what he was saying or did not remember it because he was fairly bad at following up. In contrast, Starck has two assistants who do follow up and appear to understand his feedback, although they add a lot of their own ideas, much like Tim Gunn on “Runway.”

It was a privilege watching Starck at work. He has a vision for the student’s design projects and it seems to justify his lofty reputation. He also has a sense of humor and seems approachable. There are two finalists and I hope to see who the winner is, but given the lack of predictability in my travel and my sleep, it’s unlikely.

I liked seeing genius at work. Mostly I do not see it at work on American TV. I never get the sense of genius in Heidi Klum, Tom Ford, or Tyra Banks. Not even Bill O’Reilly, in spite of what he thinks of himself.

"Pandorum"- a mediocre movie

“Pandorum” is a sci-fi picture filmed and financed in Germany. Like “District 9” (reviewed elsewhere) this movie is derivative and fairly predictable. The only surprise comes at the end and makes the movie less that a total loss. The movie stars Dennis Quaid (the Quaid brother not arrested recently for failing to pay a hotel bill) and Ben Foster. I liked Foster. He has earnestness about him and he acts with a certain dignity that doesn’t deteriorate into hysteria, even when faced with a bad script. Quaid adds nothing substantial to his role. A synopsis of the movie can be found in Wikipedia. It includes a laundry list of sci-fi staples: a large dark space ship; a forgotten mission; mutants; an action hero (Foster); a villain (Quaid); long dark ship walkways; a nuclear reactor; a female action hero; special effects (not very good). The only mildly frightening scene in the movie for me was when Foster was in a pipe chase hunting for the flight deck. It was claustrophobic and anxiety provoking. “Pandorum” uses extreme close-ups in the human-mutant battles. There is so much action and no perspective for the viewer that it is mostly impossible to tell what is happening. I assume that it is filmed this way so that we do not get a good view of the mutants. Maybe it is also used to cover up poor execution of CGI effects. There is a similar problem in the “Transformers” movies, although they are a disaster on many other levels (think Meghan Fox and her perpetually open mouth). The music attempts to add to the suspense but it just seemed loud to me. The CGI-effects in the last scene of “Pandorum” are very poorly done. For example, the sprays of water are so obviously a digital effect that they are unconvincing. All in all, this is a mediocre movie probably best avoided except on the SyFy channel.