Top Ten, Fall/Winter 2023

1. BBC livestream of The Queue. Snicker all you want that an estimated 250,000 people waited sometimes more than 24 hours to walk past Queen Elizabeth's coffin lying in state; I might join you myself. But the livestream was a classic of durational cinema, four days where Warhol's Empire was a mere eight hours. And unlike Empire, there was plenty to break up the monotony beyond the changing of the guard every twenty minutes [sic!]: celebrity queuers ("Look - it's Joe and Jill!"), fainting guards, the spider on the Queen's coffin, "Oooh, he's hot!," "That's what you wore?," the last person in the queue (Sarah Clarke [at left below], The Lady Usher of the Black Rod in the House of Lords), and a cascade of facts testifying to the enormity of the undertaking. 

2. Bob Stanley, Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop (Faber UK). Where Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop dealt with the popular music of the latter half of the twentieth century, this sequel takes on the first half. Like its predecessor, it conveys no coherent point of view and is most useful as a compendium of songs and artists that you should get to at some point (Earl Bostic! Reginald Foresythe!). But in a chapter on post-war Broadway about three-quarters through, Stanley takes long overdue aim at the oeuvre of Rodgers and Hammerstein although he shields himself by dissing only the lame film adaptations. Trust me, Bob - even in the theatre, Carousel's "storyline drags and the pacing is awful." Elsewhere, the man has wit to spare. On Jack Jones: "He simply existed to fill a gap that was exactly Jack Jones-shaped."

3. Chez Kane, Powerzone (Frontiers Music SRL). The denizens of Expert Witness, the Facebook group dedicated to the glory of Robert Christgau, were going on a bit too long about Taylor Swift's Midnights last October. So to be a brat, I tried to steer the conversation towards this album which I'd never heard. Turns out to be, um, actually kinda good and precisely the kind of trash jolt Midnights could use. A Welsh pop-metaller, Chez (rhymes with Pez) Kane has her Vixen and Benatar steals down pat. Chuck Eddy music if I've ever heard any and Swift could do worse than give her a call. 

4. Jesus Nalgas (@jesus_nalgas on Instagram and @jesusnalgas on TikTok). Nalgas gives the impression that during high school he spent more time observing faculty rather than hanging out with friends. Whatever the case, he's transformed his possible loneliness into a series of hilarious performances as exasperated teachers, office workers, lunch ladies and has since branched out into other professions: TSA workers, DMV meanies, bank tellers, the like. With his airhorn voice and overenunciation of every syllable, he evokes an overworked service provider who prays he won't have to repeat himself yet again but knows damn well he'll have to because people just 👏 won't👏listen.

5. Belle and Sebastian, Late Developers (Matador). Where once Stuart Murdoch, Sarah Martin, and company had alienated childhoods to mine for their absurdly catchy songs, they've now "got kids and dystopia" and it's hell on their sense of specifics. Absurdly catchy the songs remain--any rom-com producer in need of an end-credits sync should look to the title track or "I Don't Know What You See in Me," the gushing first single. But they're either too bored or too blindsided by their late-developing adulthood to call it up with any concreteness. Gone are the proper nouns and local color that made their alienation feel lived-in. Perhaps if their kids prove too uncool to start their own Belle and Sebastian, it will jolt them out of their vagueness long about 2030.

6. Into the Woods, St. James Theatre (October 16). Remember when I said that Broadway musicals don't need second acts? That doesn't apply to Stephen Sondheim. The obsession starts here.

7. Noirvember, Spectacle (November 19). Spectacle is a collectively run microcinema in Brooklyn and Noirvember is their annual all-night film noir festival. Only hints are announced beforehand so "an offbeat and criminally unseen b-film directed by a certain public enemy number one, in his sole directorial effect" turned out to be James Cagney's 1957 Short Cut to Hell while the "special 16mm film noir treat" at midnight (really closer to 1 a.m.) was Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Norman Foster, 1948). We left as the George Raft vehicle Nocturne (Edward L. Marin, 1946) was playing off a digital file. The sheer unlikeliness that the event attracted a good thirty movie lovers trumped any individual title.

8. Eddie Izzard Performs Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Greenwich House Theatre (January 20). When all modes of narration converge on one person in the theatre, the burden becomes too much to bear. With barely existent stage design and two or three brief musical cues, Izzard compressed Great Expectations into two dreary hours by performing every character and providing chunks of narration. The effect was akin to a speed freak breathlessly recounting his new favorite HBO Max series. I know Izzard is attracted to endurance tests; she completed 32 marathons over the 31 days of January 2021. Would that I experienced this one as an item in the Times too.

9. The return of Creel Pone. The great experimental music reissue label went dark for a while. But they're back with a completist-infuriating vengeance. New titles are pouring out (the latest is CP 281.03 Henry Martin: Concerto Per Un Quadro Di Adami). But there are dozens of "reéditions" adding bonus tracks to previous releases. So those of us who've managed to collect everything up until now have plenty of catching up to do. In a word that mirrors the squelchy sounds in which Creel Pone traffics, ARRRRGH!!! On sale at Alpha State NYC.

10. Lil Yachty: Let's Start Here. (Concrete/Motown/Quality Control, 2023). More than the last frontier in consciousness or an accurate evocation of a drug experience, psychedelia in music is a catalog of sounds that repays obsessive listening. Given how Yachty's discography (if not post-sampledelic hip-hop in general) provides a bedrock for trippy sonics, this plunge into Tame Implala-cured acid rock is far from the radical departure most critics claim. The falsetto Yachty adopts to sing through the three a.m. vapor waves does get wearying. But unlike another late-night tripper, John Cale on his new Mercy, he submerges his voice into the muck often enough to provide some variation. Also unlike Cale, he cedes much of the vocal spotlight to female guest stars Diana Gordon and Fousheé as true collaborators rather than decorations. Start with the last song, "Reach the Sunshine" which bears the same relationship to Let's Start Here. as the title track did to Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure - a methodical stroll launching the entire album into space.

Appointment with Danger (Lewis Allen, 1950)

I wasn't expecting much from Appointment with Danger since two of Lewis Allen's well-loved vehicles, The Uninvited (1944) and Desert Fury (1947), convinced me that Andrew Sarris was right to ignore the director in The American Cinema. But this solid-plus noir suggests that Allen had a feel for beefing up certain moments, perfect for someone like me whose mind drifts off most narratives. As it is, I can barely recall the specifics of the story, something about postal inspector Al Goddard (Alan Ladd) protecting nun Phyllis Calvert who witnessed a murder committed by Jack Webb and Harry Morgan. Ladd looks luscious. Here he is during a nasty game of hand ball with Webb.

 

He gets to peep in on postal workers. I had no clue there was (is?) so complex an operation.

He drops in on a suspect, Paul (Stacy Harris), at one of the smokiest bars in noirdom. 

 

You could tell cigarettes were a dime a two dozen for how quickly they were discarded. Ladd lights a cigarette as soon as he enters (note the cigarette machine on the left).

 

They're both smoking as Ladd approaches the suspect and pulls him away from the pool table.

The suspect discards his cigarette (on the barroom floor!) as he walks over. 

 

Ladd puts out the cigarette even though he just lit the damn thing!

Then the suspect lights a cigarette even though he just threw one away! 

Jan Sterling of Female on the Beach renown is on board as Dodie, a moll with a love for bop. She runs into Ladd at a drug store where she's come to purchase some records. "Do you like bop?" she asks him. 

Al: "Bop? Is that where everybody plays a different tune at the same time?" 

Dodie: "You just haven't heard enough of it. Have you heard Joe Lily's "Only Mine"? Come up to my place and hear it."  

Al: "As a favor to Joe." 

Dodie: "What he can do with a horn. He belts it, melts it, and rides it all over the ceiling." 

Al: "Can he play it?" 

 

Up at her place, Ladd tries to pump her for information but she'd rather get into the music.

 

I love how the scene reverses the typical polarities of music fandom. Here, the woman performs some close textual analysis while the man sits confused on the sidelines. Although I always itch when people don't hold records on their sides.

Best of all, it does NOT end with the formation of a heterosexual couple. Can't, really, with Calvert as a nun. Here's Ladd with Dan Riss as he, what else, lights a cigarette for him. And we know what cigarettes meant before a fade in classical Hollywood - SEX! Good show. 

Grade: A-minus

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (John Farrow, 1948)

Fans of Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947) or the new Guillermo del Toro remake should check out Night Has a Thousand Eyes. Both films feature a phony mentalist act. But where Tyrone Power's Stan in Alley is a loser swindling vaudeville patrons out of their ducats, Edward G. Robinson's John Triton ("The Mental Wizard") suffers from accurate premonitions and strives to save people from the dangers that await them. The typical noir sense of fate thus works both ways here; the first third is dominated by a flashback but the remainder gets pressed down by a future-oriented inevitability, especially since all of Triton's visions appear to become true.

And it's a genuinely frightening film. Triton predicts that a lion somehow works into the Jean Courtland's (Gail Russell) future peril. And indeed, we learn that a lion has escaped from the zoo! As Jean chats with her intended Elliott Carson (John Lund), Farrow tracks back slowly to reveal an undulating curtain. I won't spoil what's behind it but aaaaaiiiiieeeeee! At least close some of those ginormous damn windows!

William Demarest is on hand as a barky cop injecting humor into the proceedings without throwing off the menacing noir balance. So is hunky Richard Webb. Story not being my strong point, I have no clue what he's doing here. But he would go on to play the dad in one of my very favorite gay films, The Gay Deceivers (Bruce Kessler, 1969). Screenplay co-written by one Barré Lyndon [sic!] based on a 1945 novel by Cornell Woolrich.

Grade: A-minus

Footsteps in the Fog (Arthur Lubin, 1955)

A solid gothic thriller in the tradition of Gaslight, Footsteps in the Fog is included in the Noir Archive Volume 2: 1954-1956 collection released by Kit Parker/Mill Creek Entertainment, the latter being my favorite DVD label ever for their hilariously cynical box sets of public domain films crammed four to a disc. In typical Mill Creek fashion, this is not a noir and, reportedly, neither are any of the others in the set. But an Amazon review says "Femme fatale versus homme fatale. Very noir." So I guess it is one after all.

Directed by Arthur Lubin (whom Sarris left out of The American Cinema, the Kiss of Death for name recognition but catnip for cinephiles searching for the next Hugo Fregonese), Footsteps in the Fog features a string of perverse twists including a move similar to the one pulled by Don Ameche to fake out Claudette Colbert in Sleep, My Love (Douglas Sirk, 1948). In fact, the film was titled I perversi in Italy. Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons both occupy the Sergis Bauer role and their deadly fireworks make for a diverting if forgettable 90 minutes. But KG users have voted it the best Lubin film so give it a shot if you want to see what stands out against the John Wayne and Abbott and Costello and Francis the Talking Mule and Mr. Ed vehicles in Lubin's filmography.
Grade: B+

P. S. According to Wiki, "Lubin was gay and for many years lived with Frank Buford."

P. P. S. Hi, Bill Travers!