So I heard “Stayin’ Alive” on the radio this afternoon. Which got me to thinking, as I’m wont to do, about the film it’s from, “Saturday Night Fever.” It’s a great flick.
It is variously flawed but a marvelously compelling bit of cinema. From the very opening scene under the credits, which I’ve provided for your viewing pleasure.
Watch Tony’s rhythm as he walks down the street carrying a can of paint on the way back to the paint store where he works. He’s checking out the women and a new shirt for the weekend. Earnest. Vain, just short of cocky. Thinking he’s in charge of his future. With some understanding of his flaws.
John Travolta’s Tony Manero is one of the great characters from the halcyon days of American movies, which were the 70’s. He was jobbed when it came Oscar time. Travolta was nominated but Richard Dreyfuss stole the statuette for “The Goodbye Girl.” Read the rest of this entry »
As much as I agree with Keith Olbermann’s politics, I hate that he stoops to rant and rave in the same manner as the Hannitys and O’Reillys and Limbaughs. But he made statement the other night that is so right, so important, so elegant, so deserving of the most extended of audiences that I feel compelled to pass it on. Olbermann’s essay:
This review starts. Stops. Starts, stops. Starts that start and stops and start and stop the starts that stop the stops that start the starts that stop the stops.
I’m not sure exactly when I first heard, or even became aware of “Astral Weeks.” It certainly wasn’t in ’68 when it was recorded. Most likely a decade or so later when the album nabbed a high perch on the Best Albums of All Time lists.
So I ventured in the slipstream, never turning back. My vinyl copy is worn. The CD is on regular rotation. The album is soulful, elegiac. It is sad, triumphant. This Irishman we’d only known as a rocker used top shelf jazz players to back him. Brilliant. Who knew he had genius in him?
In this stunning, never-ending presidential campaign, it was a moment that resonated as both its most endearing and its most dispiriting.
If you haven’t seen the snippets of John McCain’s appearance on SNL last Saturday, just three days before the election, do yourself a favor. Check ‘em out at nbc.com.
The opening segment where McCain and Tina Fey as Sarah Palin are pitching at QVC is genius satire. Cindy McCain, bless her stoic, shrewish heart, even shows up and mugs for the camera in her own very measured way.
That McCain, who by all accounts will lose the election, would come on this stage and make fun of himself and the whole process says a lot about the man. It shows that he is decent and self effacing. It shows how much he chose or was forced or convinced to sublimate those instincts of decency in order to try to get elected. (To his credit, when running mate Sarah Palin’s incendiary attacks against Obama started to get vicious, McCain reigned in her diatribe and vitriol as well as his own.) Read the rest of this entry »
It is that season when Kentuckiana and Derbytown change their names. From now until April, we reside in Hoopsylvania. It is Tip Off Time. Hoops is upon us. So, I couldn’t help myself. Allow me to share my “Basketball Jones”:
