Arnold Stang, Sherlock Holmes

Arnold Stang died last week at age 91. He played one of the gas station owners in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, was the voice of Top Cat, and played a heroin addict called Sparrow in the 1955 film, The Man With The Golden Arm.

It's interesting to see comic actors in grimly serious roles. But I don't know if it always works.

Margaret Mitchell wanted Groucho Marx to play Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind (I assume she was serious) and Benito Mussolini tried to his two favories American stars, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, to star in a production of Rigoletto.

Sherlock Holmes

And speaking of odd casting choices, Sherlock Holmes fans are upset over the choice of Robert Downey, Jr, in the title role. And the boxing. I don't think he should have been boxing---it turns out he claimed to be an amateur boxer in at least one book. But they were showing a bunch of the old Sherlock Holmes movies on TV yesterday, and they were pretty bad. All filmed in a studio. They should have gotten out onto the street once in a while.

I haven't read any of the books. I don't know what the "real" Sherlock Holmes was like, which probably doesn't matter. Johnny Weissmuller was nothing like the Tarzan of the books, and Ian Flemming wanted David Niven to play James Bond. I heard that, in the book, Forrest Gump was morbidly obese.

The Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were set in what was then the present day, with Sherlock Holmes fighting Nazis and so forth. Every scene was shot in a studio, so I don't know what stopped them from setting it in Victorian England.

James Cameron, Avatar, and the toll in human life

I keep feeling guilty about what I write.

A while back I sat here and attacked poor James Cameron, just because of the fawning profile of him on 60 Minutes. For years, I've felt hostile to any subject of a fawning profile on 60 Minutes, ever since Mike Wallace's fawning profile of that monster, Leona Helmsley. Leona was able to get Wallace on her side by bringing up her dead son. Wallace's son had died years earlier, so he was symathetic to anyone with a dead son. Good thing he didn't interview Saddam Hussein blubbing over Uday and Qusay.

No one had the bad taste to mention that Leona Helmsley's dead son was a crook. He stayed out of prison by having enough sense to steal only from his stepfather. And as it happens, Mike Wallace's surviving son is scumbag Chris Wallace on Fox News. Chris Wallace made a name for himself on some network news magazine with an attack on federal funds for special education. Wallace targeted Black parents in the South, ambushed them with cameras and claimed the fact that they couldn't or wouldn't instantly explain why their children needed special education was proof that they were defrauding Uncle Sam. Republicans in Congress used the report to cut funding. I don't know what Mike Wallace's dead son was like, but if he was anything like his brother, good riddance to him.

But poor James Cameron---all he wants to do is entertain! Some people didn't like that he said that he was "king of the world" when he got his Oscar, but he didn't mean that he was literally king of the world. He just meant he was terribly pleased. He did get poor Sigourney Weaver an Oscar for Aliens. And he deserves some credit for being Canadian, although he should do more for his people.

I've never seen Titanic, but apparently it had a scene of Leonardo di Caprio standing at the front of a ship flapping his arms shouting that he is king of the world. This scene had tragic consequences. Cruise ship operators have had to stop passengers from trying to do the same thing. I don't know off hand if there are proven cases of people falling overboard and disappearing while trying this, but there are reports of it. James Cameron's success has come at a cost in human life.

There was the 1993 movie, The Program, which showed football player proving their courage by lying on the double yellow line on a busy street. This stunt didn't work in real life. Two people were killed when they tried to do the same thing, and more were injured.

People murder each other all the time, so it's hard to tell to what degree violent movies cause violent crime. But with The Program and Titanic, the cause and effect relationship is very clear. Nobody anywhere ever tested their courage by lying in the street before The Program, and nobody climbed out on the bow of a cruise ship yelling that they were king of the world before Titanic.

And, yes, I know, the people who did this behaved rather unwisely. But if you make a movie costing over a hundred million dollars like Titanic did, you obviously expect a vast number of people to see it. If a tiny fraction of one percent of your audience was dumb enough to try it, that would still be thousands of people.

And, if you're going to say that the people in real life who climb out on the prow of a ship are idiots whose deaths are their own fault, weren't the characters in the movie idiots, too? Should James Cameron be admired for making a movie about a couple of abject morons?

By the way, does anyone know what the death toll was from Natural Born Killers? How about The Matrix?

Many years ago, The Weekly World News reported that the movie The Deerhunter had killed more people that the Hindenburg disaster. The number of Russian Roulette fatalities has no doubt risen since then.

You do need to be careful about these things.

In Oregon, two morons wanted to be like the main characters in a movie they saw. So they murdered a couple of a beach and fled to Mexico.

The "characters" they wanted to be like were Dick Hickock and Perry Smith in In Cold Blood.

Dial M For Murder in 3D?

I remember years ago. The Weekly World News' columnist, Ed Anger, was thrilled with movie colorization. But he not only wanted all the old black & white movies colorized---he wanted them in 3D!

I don't think you could make old, 2D movies into 3D back when that column was written. But you can now. Some company wants to use its software to make Star Wars and other sci fi movies into 3D.

It doesn't interest me a bit.

But one thing I wouldn't mind seeing---and they could do this and get the serious high-brows on their side and avoid the unpleasantness that occurred years ago over colorization---is Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder in 3D as originally intended.

The movie's not terribly impressive in 2D, a minor work by Hitchcock, but people have been saying for years that it was one of his greater works in 3D. There's no telling if that's true. I don't think it's been shown in 3D since it was released in 1954. But now there's hope that we can find out.

Precious: Worse than Birth of a Nation?

Here's a pretty good article by Ishmael Reed about the Lee Daniel's Precious, on the Counterpunch website:

http://www.counterpunch.com/reed12042009.html

The Color Purple, Siskel & Ebert, Mo' Better Blues, Spike Lee, Do The Right Thing

I remember years ago when The Color Purple came out. Siskel & Ebert reviewed it without mentioning the controversy about it. Then they came back a few weeks later to discuss it. And they both agreed, the movie was not racist. There may have been a time, they said, when there should have been a balanced view of Black characters in movies, but this was no longer needed. Even though The Color Purple was the only "Black movie" Hollywood had put out in years.

A few years later, this happened again. Siskel & Ebert reviewed Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues without mentioning the attacks on it by Nat Hentoff and others who claimed it was "anti-Semitic" because it had a couple of Jewish guys in it who were on screen for only about two minutes and were jerks.

And, again, a few weeks later, Siskel & Ebert came back to the movie to discuss the controversy. Again, they both agreed. But this time, they agreed that the movie was anti-Semitic for not providing a balanced picture of Jewish persons.

So. Jews are so underrepresented in Hollywood that they need to be carefully protected, but, according to them, anti-Black racism just isn't a problem anymore.

My guess is that Siskel & Ebert also had some idea that Black audiences watching a Spike Lee movie would be more impressionable, more easily influenced by a movie than Whites watching The Color Purple.

It was Nat Hentoff who started the anti-Semitism smear against Spike Lee. Hentoff claims to oppose censorship in any form. He defended racist college students who he claimed were being persecuted by universities. He defended an Israeli who screamed at a group of Black women, "Shut up, you black water buffalo. Go to the zoo." The Zionist explained that he was probably thinking of a Hebrew-language slur commonly directed against Palestinians. I doubt pro-Zionist Hentoff saw any problem with that.

There had been attacks on Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing---accusations that he had libeled Italian-Americans. These attacks came to an abrupt end when a mob of Italians murdered a Black 16-year-old who walked into their neighborhood to look at a used car.

Prop weapons

Gun nuts are everywhere. Even in countries where guns are illegal. Consequently, there's a large international market for adult-sized toy guns. Cheap plastic "airsoft" guns are a boon to the extreme low budget filmmaker. That and software to add muzzle flashes and shell casings popping out to your movie. And blood spatter.

Blanks are loud and dangerous. People have been killed by them.

One director told the story. He loaded a blank cartridge into a high powered rifle and handed it to the actor who immediately aimed it at him. The director dived for cover.

"Aw, I wanted to shoot you!" the actor said.

The poor actor had only worked with very low powered blanks on stage. The blank loaded into that rifle would have been deadly at that range. And if the director hadn't dived for cover, the actor would have pulled the trigger.

Today, the only danger we face is that of being humiliated by people spotting us acting out scenes with toy guns.

We live in a golden age! Almost.

I did watch A Fool There Was a while back, the 1915 silent movie, a story of lust and seduction. Theda Bara plays a "vamp" who takes revenge on a snooty bourgeois woman's sleight by taking her husband away from her. He gets weaker and weaker as Theda sucks the life out of him. The wife tries to get him back, but he's unable to pry himself away.

It looked so easy! Anybody could make a movie back then! If only film hadn't cost so much! And average income wasn't so low!

There's a career Roger Corman should have smothered in its cradle

James Cameron on 60 Minutes

I wish Morley Safer would learn to contain himself. I'm sitting here with the TV on. Safer is gushing like a schoolgirl over James Cameron. But 60 Minutes has been going downhill for years. There was that senile moron Mike Wallace who thought he was really sticking up for the little guy by defending Israel against Palestinian refugees and their anti-Semitic pleas for Israelis to stop killing their children.

Cameron has made a new movie costing $400,000,000.00. I don't know if this formula works for movies with absurdly large budgets, but they used to say a movie had to gross two and half times its cost just to break even. This thing could gross a billion dollars and still lose money.

Obnoxious insurance geezer

No offense to elderly persons who work in the insurance industry. Unless you're obnoxious.

A couple of years ago, an obnoxious ill-tempered geezer appeared on Community Access TV. I missed the beginning of it. It looked like he was speaking to a class locally.

He was an insurance company guy and he was gloating over his role in the movie industry, threatening to shut down productions that were falling behind schedule. He talked at length about Ben Stiller and the making of Zoolander. It fell behind schedule and this obnoxious geezer started hanging around threatening to shut it down. So Ben caught up and the obnoxious geezer went away. Then he fell behind production again and the geezer came back.

He mimicked Ben Stiller saying, "I can't work this way!" Accused him of "crying".

Maybe it was necessary for the guy to be a jerk when dealing with directors who were falling behind schedule, going over budget and threatening to cost the insurance company vast sums of money. But this geezer was also a jerk while publicly discussing it.

He seemed to take satisfaction with the fact that Stiller hadn't directed another movie since. In fact Stiller has directed several things since then including Tropic Thunder.

I wonder who the old guy was. Maybe he's dead now.

Ride the High Country

Okay, westerns weren't so bad

Well, now I feel bad for what I said about westerns. I watched Ride The High Country the other day and it was excellent of course. Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea. With Eugene, Oregon's, own Edgar Buchanan. But there was no talk about someday living on a ranch, and didn't one guy have a semi-automatic rifle? Someone pointed out that the toilet pictured in one scene was a little too modern, so it did have that anachronism.

Soviet westerns available on You Tube

At Home Among Strangers and The White Sun of the Desert

I never liked westerns. They were all about illiterates dressed in ugly clothes, in ugly buildings on an ugly landscape. Their only recreational activity was hanging around in bars and their greatest aspiration was to own a ranch. They had a lot of violence, which should have been appealing, but the fights generally consist of nothing but two men punching each other in the face. The gun fights weren't much better. Everyone had the same gun. Either a Colt revolver or a Winchester rifle. There was no variation. They could at least throw in a Derringer.

But I did kind of like the Osterns I've seen so far----Soviet movies inspired by American westerns, set in Soviet Asia in the 1920s.

In the Soviet film At Home Among Strangers, it was refreshing to see members of the Cheka as heroes. Made in 1974, in color with a few scenes in black & white.

There is a famine in the USSR. The government needs gold to import food. Cheka men transport the gold by train. When the train is robbed by bandits on horseback, a Cheka agent goes undercover to get the gold back.

They wear much more attractive clothes, they have a variety of weapons, although they go heavy on Nagant revolvers, and the architecture is more appealing.

And the whole thing is available on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiAlFkw1EOU

And here is The White Sun of the Desert on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDEpRLPbSGM

Lisa Lampanelli, Lewis Black and Carrot Top, And Rick Schmidt.

How did she know?

Okay...I heard comedienne Lisa Lampanelli interviewed on the radio this morning. She's going to perform here in Eugene. She talked to the DJs on a local radio station.

They mentioned other comedians who've performed here. She noted that people in Eugene sat quietly for Carrot Top, but yelled "You suck!" at Lewis Black.

Now, I wrote about that shameful event in the first entry on this blog. The moron yelling at Lewis Black. But how did Lisa Lampanelli know? As I said at the time, I thought the idiot who did it would be bragging about it to the world, but I couldn't find anything about it on the internet.

At least we were polite to Carrot Top.

Rick Schmidt on Netflix

Would-be and, I suppose, actual filmmakers have been reading Rick Schmidt's book, Feature Film-Making at Used Car Prices for years. The original version talked about making a 16mm feature for $6,000. It went up to $10,000 a few years later. Now the book has been revised and calls for digital video rather than 16mm.

The book mentions Jon Jost and Wayne Wang, whose movies I've seen. But I've never seen a Rick Schmidt movie. He's now produced about 20 of them. Schmidt conducts feature film workshops now. Ten people to get together and collectively write and direct a movie. So it appears from his website that he's making a movie a year or more.

I haven't seen Schmidt's movies in video stores. There's nothing on You Tube. He's selling them for $29.95 on his website.

But now it looks like Netflix is making his 1983 movie, Emerald Cities, available. You can save it but you can't rebt it yet.

Maybe Richard Heene wasn't so bad

In defense of Balloon Boy's father

And why shouldn't a man pretend that his son was carried away in a balloon? Think of the boon it would have been to his family if it had worked. He's a freelance construction worker who can't be doing well these days. He was out to get a TV reality series. This was his chance.

It's a case of "moral luck", where our judgment of a person's actions is based on things beyond his control.

Think of what our judgment of Heene would be if two of the helicopters chasing the balloon had collided. Then crashed into a hospital.

On the other hand, if he had succeeded, gotten his TV show, become a beloved celebrity, provided his family with a lifetime of financial stability, and only then, years later, revealed that it all started with his Balloon Boy hoax....

Look at William Friedkin. He filmed the chase scene in The French Connection by speeding through a busy street with a small light on the roof of the car.

As the New York Times reported in an article about the releasing of a new DVD of the movie:

“We took off, with Billy telling Bill Hickman, ‘Give it to me, come on, you can do it, show me!’ ” Mr. Jurgensen said in an interview. “We had a police siren on top that people could hear, so that those who were able to get out of the way, could.”

There were no permits and no planning — just sheer nerve. “After 26 blocks, from Bay 50th to Bay 24th Street, I ran out of film, but I knew I had enough,” Mr. Friedkin said. “The fact that we never hurt anybody in the chase run, the way it was poised for disaster, this was a gift from the Movie God. Everything happened on the fly. We would never do this again. Nor should it ever be attempted in that way again.”

At that point in his career, Friedkin had directed a couple of documentaries and an episode of Sonny and Cher. How would we judge this scumbag if he had killed somebody?

Friedkin went on to direct The Exorcist which left a 12-year-old girl with a broken back and lifelong medical problems. Ellen Burstyn was also injured. There's a very brief shot in the movie where we see her falling on a hard wood floor. That shot cost her back problems ever since.

Thomas Nagel's 1979 article on "Moral Luck"

In 1979, Thomas Nagel wrote an article entitled "Moral Luck". It written as a response to Bernard William's paper on the same subject. They are a response to the Kantian view that morality is immune from luck.

But Nagel argued there are four kinds of luck that affect moral judgment:

Resultant luck, which I just talked about.

Circumstantial luck, which, I think, Frank Rich seemed to be talking about in his recent column defending Balloon Boy's dad. Heene just happened to live in a time when there are news helicopters and news networks that want to cover this type of thing, an age of reality TV shows, an age when, other than winning the lottery, a reality TV show is a construction worker with a high school diploma's only hope of escape.

Constitutive luck, where genetic or personality traits you have no control over affect your conduct. Balloon Boy's father was a narcissist with an intense interest in what he called "science".

And Balloon Boy's mother was Japanese. I don't know how much that means, but Balloon Boy's father thought it was why she went along with all his nonsense. That and the fact that she had a domineering father.

Causal luck, which I guess is just the sequence of events. The Wife Swap appearance, plus the negotiations for the reality show. I don't know.

In conclusion

I think we can all agree that Richard Heene was a completely innocent victim.

Well, maybe not. But, for God's sake, would-be filmmakers ought to show some of his spunk!

When Victor Mature came to Hollywood, he slept in a pup tent and lived on candy bars. He didn't have to---he could have stayed with friends. But he stayed in the pup tent and got publicity and a movie career out of it.

Here's an exercise:

Think of five harebrained schemes that could be your ticket to quick success!

Dragnet

All you had to do was read your cue cards as fast as you can.

When you watch old episodes of Dragnet and see those actors standing there reading their teleprompters as fast as they can, you feel like maybe YOU could be an actor, too!

The show went from radio to television in the 1950s. Unlike most shows that made this switch, it kept the same cast.

On the radio, actors don't memorize lines. They stand in front of the microphone reading their script. Webb preferred this, so when the show went to television, pretty much all the dialog was on cue cards and teleprompters. Actors rarely had to remember lines.

If you watch the show, at least the color episodes, you can see that all the dialog scenes are shot in a studio. There is an establishing shot with a voice over narration, then the dialog is done in a studio in front of a rear screen projection. It worked pretty well most of the time. Could be done fairly easily now in front of a green screen.

It seems like it would be a good approach. You could get better performances both from stage actors who tend to over do it, and non-actors who usually talk very, very slow.

"Some people call me 'One Shot'..."

McMillan & Wife director Alex March speaks through a character

I watched an episode of McMillan & Wife last night. Not a bad show.

I heard that Rock Hudson thought a TV show was beneath his dignity as a movie star. He was rather stodgy. Thought Susan Saint James was a hippie.

In one scene, McMillan and the sergeant talk to a crime lab technician played by John Fielder. The technician had a large print of a picture taken with a hidden camera.

They asked why he only made one print from all the pictures they took.

"I chose the best shot. It saves time. It saves money. Some people call me 'One Shot Simpson'."

Why aspiring film makers should look to television

Watching TV shows, you not only get to see the work of directors dealing with low budgets and tight schedules. You also get to see how easy it is to have something not come out nearly as well as you expected. Every episode of Barnaby Jones built to a big dramatic conclusion which never, ever worked. Ever.

When you watch a show that just seems bad, where you can't identify anything they did that was terribly wrong, where you can't see what you would have done better, you realize that your project could easily end up the exact same way.

Turn on any soap opera! Are you sure you could do better?

B movies vs. television

I watched a couple of Edgar Ulmer movies. One was one of his better works, The Man From Planet X, the other was his directoral debut, Damaged Lives made in 1933, an exploitation film about venereal disease in the days before antibiotics.

Neither was very good. I'm a little disappointed after hearing the French gushing over Ulmer.

I still say TV shows are the new B movies. It made sense for the French New Wave to look to B movies of the '30s and '40s, but for independent filmmakers today, it's TV of the '60s and '70s.

I was watching an episode of Charlies Angels. One of the Angels goes undercover in a women's prison. The scene where she's brought into prison for the first time seemed to have been filmed in the waiting room of a dentist's office. A scene in the prison yard was filmed at a public swimming pool----swimming pools have fences with barbed wire, so it looks sort of like a prison. Except for the swimming pool.

The show stunk. But such economy!

Coming Home, Afghanistan

Okay, Coming Home was a pretty good anti-Vietnam War movie.

But what if it had been made ten years earlier, in 1968 instead of 1978?

I've heard it both ways. Some have said that it could only have been made once the war was over; others say that it would have been a truly great movie if it had been made while the war was going on, when it might have influenced events.

It's unlikely they could have gotten the money to make it in '68. If they made it then, they would have to have done it very cheaply.

Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas wanted to go to Vietnam and film Apocalypse Now in 16mm while the war was going on. I can't remember---I think they alarmed Roger Corman with that idea.

So----should you hurry and make a movie about the war in Afghanistan now, or wait until it's been over a few years? If you oppose the war, you'll be smeared either way.

Edgar Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen

The French consider him a genius

I was watching the documentary, Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen, about the B movie director. Some in the French New Wave--Luc Moullet for one--considered him an auteur.

The story was that Ulmer directed an excellent B list movie for Universal studios, a movie called The Black Cat. It should have been his ticket to keep working for the major studios, but he was sleeping with the wife of the nephew of the president of the studio and he was blackballed.

Ulmer went to work for PRC, Producers Releasing Corporation, the most impoverished of the Poverty Row studios. Ulmer claimed that they shot all their movies there in 6 days and that he was given just enough filmstock to shoot on a 2:1 ratio. He was best known for directing the noir film Detour.

The documentary seemed to see Ulmer as a sad case because he didn't get to direct big budget movies and was stuck on Poverty Row. But it's patronizing to feel sorry for someone in his position. Directing 60 low budget movies wasn't good enough? The world isn't full of would-be filmmakers who wouldn't love to live his life?

They interviewed Ulmer's daughter, Arianne, plus Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Wim Wenders, and Joe Dante.

Dante shared some advice Roger Corman gave him. When making your shooting schedule, figure out how much time you need to make the movie really great. Then figure out how long to make it okay. Then how long just to get it on film. And go with the third one.

Here's my advice: Imagine your movie the way it would look if you had unlimited time and money. Then imagine an extended skit on The Carol Burnett Show or Saturday Night Live, or Mad TV, based on your movie. Then make a movie that looks like the skit.

One of Ulmer's movies, The Island of Forgotten Sins

There was also one of Ulmer's B movies on the DVD, something called The Island of Forgotten Sins.

It wasn't very good.

Throughout the documentary, they told us that directors today could learn a thing or two from Ulmer----they should look at his work before complaining about low budgets and tight schedules. But The Island of Forgotten Sins wasn't much of an inspiration.

It's understandable that the French New Wave looked to American B movies for inspiration. They had a morbid fascination with Hollywood. They wanted to direct movies themselves, and they knew if they were ever going to do so, it would be on very small budgets. But does it make sense for independent filmmakers today to look to these terrible movies from the '30s and '40s?

Instead of B movies, look to American TV shows. Not the new ones---they cost too much. Look at old episodes of Bonanza, The Rifleman, Quincy, McMillan and Wife. T.J. Hooker. Charley's Angels.

Many of these shows were made using B movie techniques, and shows in the '50s and '60s were often directed by former B directors. Joseph Lewis directed episodes The Rifleman. William Beaudine directed episodes of Lassie and Spin & Marty on the old Mickey Mouse Club. Ida Lupino directed episodes of Gilligan's Island.

They worked on extremely tight schedules and low budgets. And they were pretty good shows. Think of what you could do using the same form but different content.

Chuck Norris vs. Jacques Tati

Tati wins, obviously

It was the 1980s. Things were different in those days. Some friends and I rented the movie Delta Force, starring Chuck Norris, with Joey Bishop and...some other people. I don't remember. Was Lee Marvin in it? I don't know what possessed us to rent the stinking thing. At least we didn't see it in a theater.

But that was the '80s. In those days, in every commercial movie made, the camera moved constantly and for no reason. Every shot was a tracking shot. Sometimes the camera would slowly drift, other times it would zip about. But it was always moving.

Delta Force's Zionist director Menahem Golan pioneered a money-saving technique I hadn't seen before or since. He would just roll the camera back and forth on a short length of track in each scene. The camera was constantly moving but he only needed to lay half as much track.

Poor Chuck Norris. Seeing him now at age---how old is he? An elderly crackpot professing a belief in intelligent design, campaigning for Mike Huckabee, acting as commencement speaker at Liberty University. (No offense to Huckabee supporters, intelligent design proponents, or Liberty University alumni.)

Makes you wonder where Bruce Lee would be if he had lived.

The '80s were grim years. When you read anything about independent filmmaking, they were always talking about improvised dollies, tracks, cranes. Wheelchairs were the big thing, of course.

It was refreshing to see a Jacques Tati movie, shot entirely in static camera long shot. Look for Mr Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Trafic. And Playtime is interesting, with English dialog by Art Buchwald.

Pirates of the 20th Century

There was a Soviet action movie, Pirates of the 20th Century, a huge hit in its day. Made in the 1970s. The director saw some Chinese kung fu movies that were shown in the USSR and thought he could do better than that. It had some Soviet karate guys in it.

A Soviet ship transporting pharmaceutical opium from Asia is hijacked. The pirates attempt to kill everyone on board and sink the ship, but some of the Soviet sailors survive and reach an island which they discover is the pirates' base.

The movie is available on DVD. There wasn't as much karate as I expected. The violence wasn't terribly graphic, but it seemed worse than in American movies, somehow. For some reason, I found the crew of the ship being murdered much more disturbing than similar scenes in American movies.

The DVD had an interview with the director. Soviet filmmakers had pretty much the same problems as those in Hollywood. The head of the studio, when he saw it, asked the director how much he thought it would gross.

There was a scene in the movie----one of the women was been captured by the pirates. They torture her. She refuses to talk. Then there is an implied threat to rape her. According to the director, they had to tone down the rape threat so they could get the Soviet equivalent of a PG rating.

Good thing, too. The movie made a fortune from teenage boys who went back to see it again and again.

During the filming there had been some debate whether they should show a Soviet man kick a pirate in the groin. They decided to go ahead. The director knew he made the right choice when he sat in a movie theater and heard an old man say, "Finally our men know how to hit!"

Poor Balloon Boy

Well. Dr Drew Pinsky discovered---or confirmed what many assumed---that celebrities are hopeless narcissists. And the most narcissistic of the narcissists, he found, were on reality TV.

Directing doesn't have to be difficult

Young Ron Howard's adventure with Lassie

Maybe directing isn't so hard after all.

When Ron Howard was 15 or 16, he appeared in a three-part episode of Lassie. He talked about it on an episode of David Letterman.

It was 1970. It turns out that they didn't shoot re-takes on Lassie. They would set the camera up, film the scene in one shot; the director would yell "Cut!" and they'd rush to the next scene.

I saw the episode. It was on The Animal Channel in the middle of the night. I slept through most of it. But that's how it was done---like a Jim Jarmusch movie. Like Stranger Than Paradise. One scene, one shot. In this case filmed in one take.

But poor Ronny (as he was then known) Howard. He had a close-up at the end of the episode. He was supposed to cry, but he couldn't work up the tears. He knew he didn't pull it off, but the director yelled "Cut!" and, to Ronny's horror, moved on to the next shot---a close-up of Lassie with Ronny's hand resting on her shoulder.

Ronny thought he could salvage his dignity with some hand acting. He tried to express the depth of his emotion through his hand on Lassie's mane.

The director yelled "Cut!" He stormed over and shouted, "DON'T YOU EVER FUCK WITH LASSIE'S CLOSE-UP!"

You can't accuse the director of not caring about his art.

They did a re-take of Lassie's close-up. The only re-take in the entire three-part episode.

But that seems pretty easy. Set the camera up. Turn it on for three minutes. Turn it off. Go to the next scene.

Heckler: A documentary by Jamie Kennedy. About hecklers.

Comedians are more sensitive that you might imagine

I went to see Lewis Black. He performed at the Hult Center in Eugene, Oregon. A huge crowd was there.

There was an opening act--another comedian. I don't remember his name. Sorry. But his main job seemed to be to draw out the hecklers and smack them down so Lewis Black wouldn't have to do it himself.

These were nice hecklers. They weren't shouting abuse. They were greeting him----they were just so happy to be there. He said it was nice to be in Eugene, and they yelled "GO DUCKS!" Then someone explained why they shouted "Go Ducks".

He did smack them down. Their jokes were bad. Their name wasn't on the marquis. People didn't come to hear them. He climbed down and sat in the audience and yelled something to show that heckling was bad.

Okay.

Lewis Black came out. He was on stage for about a 30 seconds when someone in back yelled as loud as he could, "YOU SUCK, BLACK! YOU'RE A DEGENERATE!"

I didn't make out what else he said. My impression was that it was politically motivated.

Lewis Black waited with a look of disgust on his face. Security hustled the idiot out.

So. Someone paid at least $24 to get in, just to yell briefly at Lewis Black and get thrown out. Maybe he thought they'd let him stay. Like it was a town hall meeting. I assumed the guy was very proud of himself and would rush home to brag about it on the internet. But when I searched Google, I found nothing about it.

But I did stumble upon something else. The movie Heckler, a documentary by someone called Jamie Kennedy. I got it from Netflix. It was interesting.

It started out with hecklers in comedy clubs. Some trying to be funny. Some trying to be mean. How comedians cut them down and shut them up.

"You're bald!" a woman shouted at a bald comedian.

"You have a bull dyke hair cut. I didn't say anything about that."

The documentary quickly moved on to talk about movie critics, especially those on the internet. Lewis Black referred to them as "Mr Fatty Fuck sitting in his basement".

Some critics did, indeed, say terribly unkind things about Jamie Kennedy.

Kennedy interviewed a few of them. He seemed hurt and sullen. Sulked his way through the interviews. The critics seemed to enjoy the attention.

One critic didn't understand what the problem was. His review had called for Kennedy to be "stopped". Another was completely obnoxious.

Now, here's the thing. I never heard of Jamie Kennedy. Watching this movie, I got the idea that he was a struggling comedian. That he was doing okay at stand-up and had managed to get some movie roles, but he was struggling against all odds. I imagined him and his friends setting out with little more than a camcorder to make this documentary.

When Kennedy talked to the critics and hecklers, he would say, "Don't you want me to improve?" Couldn't they give him constructive criticism? It made it sound like he was a beginner who needed advice from hecklers.

Then I look at imdb.com. Kennedy has a long list of producer and acting credits.

The thing about comedians is that they always talk very tough. I guess it comes from dealing with hecklers. They're foul-mouthed and verbally aggressive. But Carrot Top is the only one with the muscle to back it up.

The real shocker from this documentary is that wealthy celebrities actually read blogs.

In defense of hecklers, sort of

Look at Borat. Sacha Baron Cohen. Or Baron Sacha Cohen. Whatever his name is.

Much was made of a scene in Borat where he gets on stage in some place and sings an anti-Semitic song he claims comes from Kazakhstan. Something about throwing Jews down a well. Cohen claimed he had thus exposed the audience's shocking anti-Semitism.

Now, Cohen had gone into this place with a camera crew. In the unlikely event that anyone there was actually fooled into thinking he really was from Kazakhstan, they made everyone sign a release form which spelled out the fact that he wasn't. They knew they were in a movie, they knew it was a joke, and when he started in with the Jewish stuff, it was obvious that Cohen was himself Jewish. So they were polite and played along. And to thank them, Cohen smeared them all as anti-Semites because they didn't shout him down.

And in defense of the critics

Now it turns out that not even Jamie Kennedy could stand Son of the Mask. That's the movie critics attacked him for. He admitted it was no good. It won the Golden Raspberry Award for worst sequel or remake. It cost $84 million and grossed $17 million domestically. By all accounts, it was a terrible movie and, by all accounts, Jamie Kennedy did a lousy job starring in it.

Okay, the movie was on TV, I saw part of it. Jamie Kennedy was horrible! Absolutely terrible! He SHOULD be stopped! He was absolutely the worst actor I've ever seen. Ever. No one could possibly see this movie and conclude that Jamie Kennedy is anything but the worst actor in the world. Bad beyond the bounds of credibility.

Miley Cyrus Not To Star In “Sex And The City” Sequel

Hollywood teen star, Miley Cyrus who shot to fame with “Hannah Montana”, has dismissed the rumours of her starring in the upcoming “Sex and the City” sequel.

The actress has recently wrapped up shooting for her new movie, “The Last Song” and internet gossips were already speculating about her next project.

According to a source, Miley Cyrus has not been approached about the film and telling the stories are "not true”. The shooting of the sequel of “Sex and the City” will start later this year.

Miley Cyrus Granted Restraining Order

We've learned Miley Cyrus was granted a temporary restraining order against the man who was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly attempting to stalk her.


According to the docs, filed by a member of her security team in Superior Court of Chatham County, GA, Mark McLeod "shall not harass, threaten, molest, contact or attempt to contact, or in any other manner interfere with Cyrus, any member of her family, her friends, and fellow employees."


During a brief court appearance yesterday, McLeod -- who told cops he was receiving "secret messages" from Miley through her TV show -- had his bond set at $50,000 and was served with the restraining order.

MTV Movie Awards: Miley Cyrus

A vision in pinky beige, Miley Cyrus is straddling the girl/woman divide quite well at the MTV Movie Awards.

While the low-backed dress is very grown up, her hair and makeup are youthful and age appropriate. Miley often goes with a dramatic eye and glossy nude lip, and her glam curls prove that ponytails don't have to be boring. Do you like the look, or is it giving you an achy breaky heart?

Miley Cyrus Wants Another Millions Of Milkshakes Shop Opened

Miley Cyrus is pitching her Miley Shake at Millions of Milkshakes. The ‘Hannah Montana’ star asked Hollywood.tv boss z SheeraHasan when he’d open another Millions of Milkshakes so she could make another milkshake. Watch below.

Miley Cyrus feels insecure in her skin

Los Angeles: 'Hannah Montana' star Miley Cyrus says she often feels insecure about her "terrible skin" especially when she has to struggle with pimples on her face.

"I think even though people always see me with makeup I still break out, even though everyone thinks I don't," the 16-year-old actress said.

"And I hate it! I'm the worst at dealing with zits.

And I get in such a bad mood when I break out and all I can think is that people are only looking at my skin!," the teen sensation revealed.

Cyrus has now started using "all organic products." To avoid having skin problems, ‘Ace Showbiz’ reported.

"I think just getting all those chemicals out of your body is the best thing," the actress said.

Jamie Foxx apologizes to Miley Cyrus

NEW YORK -Jamie Foxx has apologized to teen star Miley Cyrus for a radio routine in which he urged the 16-year-old to "make a sex tape and grow up."

When the incident was brought up on the "Tonight" show Tuesday, Foxx apologized and said: "I didn't mean it maliciously."

Foxx had started talking about Cyrus on his Sirius satellite radio show after someone brought up the singer's recent feud with Radiohead. Foxx said: "Who is Miley Cyrus? The one with all the gums? She needs to get a gum transplant!"

Foxx noted to Jay Leno that he was doing a routine, saying: "Sometimes as comedians, you know, we go a little too far."

'Hannah Montana: The Movie'

While I am not exactly the target audience for Hannah Montana, I have to admit that I'm kind of excited about the new flick, "Hannah Montana: The Movie," coming out April 10.

Miley Cyrus continues to keep her good-girl image intact, despite fallout over the Vanity Fair cover, and her latest movie is sure to do well at the box office. I will likely wait for it to come out on DVD, so I can watch it in the comfort of my home minus screaming kids.

Rumors have been swirling that this big-screen version of the popular TV series means it's over for the Hannah Montana character. Not true, according to Miley. "This movie was never meant to be the end of Hannah Montana," she told Billboard magazine. "The thing is, a lot of people put where the show's future lays in my hands -- and it's not up to me."

Miley Cyrus & Justin Gaston Shop For Books

Miley Cyrus and boyfriend Justin Gaston were spotted shopping for books at Barnes & Noble in Studio City on Saturday, where the ‘Hannah Montana’ star gave Justin a smack after he took a photo with a female fan. Watch Hollywood.tv footage below.

Miley Cyrus: I Have Tachycardia

Miley Cyrus is no stranger to troubles of the heart. Especially those of the medical variety.

According to MTV Online, the star of "Hannah Montana" talked frankly about her history of tachycardia, a condition where there is a rapid acceleration of heart rate.


"The type of tachycardia I have isn't dangerous," She said in an interview with the network. "It won't hurt me, but it does bother me."


Though tachycardia by itself is not fatal, it can be brought on by a variety of factors such as low blood pressure, the use of stimulants, and stress. Cyrus is no stranger to that last factor, especially if Nick Jonas is involved. If left untreated, it could lead to a real life case of heart break known as myocardial infarction.

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"We're just so busy," Cyrus said of her short-lived relationship with the singer-songwriter known for his work with the Jonas Brothers trio. "Unlike most 12 or 13 year olds, we're like 'Oh yeah, I can't hang out with you today because I got to go to work...I got a German concert."

In her memoir "Miles to Go," Cyrus, 16, described Jonas as her "Prince Charming." By all accounts the relationship lasted only a few months. The two have frequently described themselves as best friends and Cyrus herself as noted that though their romance is over, "I still love him with all my heart."

Miley Cyrus Hacker Used Celebrity MySpace Accounts for Spamming -- Update

A Tennessee teenager who was raided last October for hacking the Gmail account of teen star Miley Cyrus cracked multiple celebrity accounts for a spamming scheme that netted him at least $100,000, according to an affidavit filed by an FBI agent who questioned the teen. The affidavit was obtained by WTVF Channel 5 in Tennessee.

Josh Holly, 19, told Threat Level last October that he obtained access to Cyrus's Gmail account and stole personal photos from it, which he posted on the web. He also said he obtained access to MySpace's administrative panel by social engineering an employee, then reset account passwords for a number of MySpace users. He used the accounts for a spamming scheme that netted him about $50,000. Holly didn't provide details at the time.


But the newly released affidavit (.pdf) provides a few more hints about this activity. According to the document, Holly admitted to the FBI agent that since 2005 he had hijacked numerous celebrity internet accounts, which he used to conduct spamming. The affidavit doesn't mention MySpace specifically in connection with this activity. An investigation of Holly's bank records showed that between November 2007 and July 2008, Holly received more than $110,000 from companies for spamming on their behalf.

The affidavit also reveals that Holly spilled the names of associates to the FBI.

Additionally, Holly corresponded with MySpace's director of security over the course of several months and provided the company with information regarding "MySpace system weaknesses and potential intrustions," according to the document. In exchange for this information, Holly asked the security director to reactivate his MySpace account, which had been suspended for "suspicious or inappropriate behavior."

Holly made no attempt to hide his identity from MySpace. He gave the MySpace security director a Gmail address with his real name, and the MySpace account he wanted re-activated was under his real name. MySpace also had a photo of him, which he had used when he opened the account.

UPDATE: Holly called Threat Level and provided some clarification and additional details about the affidavit and the discrepancy regarding the amount of money he told me he earned from spamming and the amount the affidavit said he earned.

He said he received about $110,000 total, but half of that went to an accomplice in Israel who goes by the online nickname elul21 (which stands for the accomplice's birthdate -- Elul is the Hebrew name of a month on the Jewish calendar). The accomplice mostly provided Holly with marketing ideas.

Holly said the celebrity MySpace accounts he accessed to conduct his spamming activity belonged mainly to recording artists and groups -- Chris Brown, Rihanna, Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy. He accessed about 20 accounts but can't remember all of them. Once he had the password to the account -- which he obtained through the MySpace admin panel (the admin panel stored the passwords in cleartext) -- he used the accounts to send bulletins to all of the friends on a MySpace account advertising a ringtone or call service for the recording artist. For example, he'd send out a bulletin from Fall Out Boy's MySpace account telling fans that the band would call their phone and send them a ringtone if they clicked on a link and entered their details.


Holly says the advertising affiliates he worked for paid him between $5 and $12 per person who responded to the ad. The affiliates didn't know he was spamming customers, and when they found out he said they terminated their work with him and refused to pay him outstanding earnings.


Although Holly was raided last October, during which FBI agents seized his phone and computers, authorities only sought a search warrant last month to conduct a forensic examination of his hardware. I asked Holly if he's concerned that the investigation was heating up.


"A little bit," he said. "Once I go to court I can’t say 'not guilty'. There’s no way I can get out of this at all. Not even OJ's lawyers or Michael Jackson's lawyers can get me out of this. To be blunt, I was an idiot and I didn’t delete any of my [hard drives]. I never thought they would raid me. They’re going to get full proof evidence of everything that I’ve said I’ve done."

He said he's left Tennessee and has been lying low, trying to find a legitimate job to earn money.

Preview of Miley Cyrus' New Track 'Butterfly Fly Away'

'Butterfly Fly Away', Miley Cyrus' duet song with her father Billy Ray Cyrus, as well several scenes from 'Hannah Montana: The Movie' have been uncovered by Disney's movie surfers.

Miley Cyrus' brand new song called "Butterfly Fly Away" has been revealed through a video footage from Disney's movie surfers. Featuring her father Billy Ray Cyrus, the song is listed in the soundtrack album of her upcoming film "Hannah Montana: The Movie".


In addition to providing a first look into Miley's duet track with her father, the show presents choreographer Jamal Sims teaching some dance moves from Miley's "Hoedown Throwdown" music video to the show's host. It also features several "Hannah Montana: The Movie" scenes, one of which captures the singer feeling shocked when finding out that she is flown to Crowley Corners, Tennessee instead of to New York .


"Hannah Montana: The Movie" will be released in U.S. theaters on April 10. Directed by Peter Chelsom, the comedy movie stars Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Mitchel Musso, Lucas Till and Emily Osment among others.

Snippet of Miley Cyrus' New Track "Butterfly Fly Away":

Miley Cyrus Sorry for Racism Photo Scandal

Saying she is sorry for the racism photo scandal she has caused, Miley Cyrus says some people take the picture out of context.


Miley Cyrus takes to her MileyWorld blog to address the controversy surrounding her latest pic that shows her and some friends pulling their eyelids back to imitate Asians' slanted eyes, saying she is sorry. "There are some people upset about some pictures taken of me with friends making goofy faces! Well, Im sorry if those people looked at those pics and took them wrong and out of context!" so she writes.


She, moreover, also writes down her opinion about the other picture of her taken earlier that showed her accidentally exposing her side breast while she was enjoying a shopping spree at a fashion store. "As for the shot of me taken outside of a dressing room, I wasnt aware that some creepy paparazzi was able to get a picture of me from where I was in the store. When did it become so out of control, that I cant come out of a dressing room to show my sister a shirt Im trying on?" she complains, adding, "It seems to me there needs to be better laws and more boundaries on these photographers!"


Regardless all the negative publication, Miley does have some other reasons to be feeling motivated as she is still in Nashville, enjoying her holiday with mother Leticia "Tish" Cyrus. "Its good to get away from it ALL every now and then! I couldnt of planned a better week to come back to Nashville!" she claims. Besides, she is also set to rehearse with fellow singer Taylor Swift for their scheduled duet at the 51st annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, February 8. "That is going to be so much fun! Ive had such a good time being home hanging out with my friend Lesley and just chillin' out!" the young celebrity gushes.