'LAYOVER'.......STRANGERS ON A PLANE........STRAINED.......

Layover by David Bell (2019)    Can't help it.......like most avid thriller readers, BQ's a sucker for books and films that start out with two strangers meeting on a.....(pick your own conveyance here.....plane, train, bus, boat, hot air balloon.....)

               I'm always willing to strap in and take the ride.........even at the risk of the book letting me down.......(for example, see my recent post on "The Dead Girl In 2A".....)


                 I'm aware that David Bell regularly pumps out thrillers at a good clip, but this was the first one of his I finally got around to.....

                  But in no way will I write that creaky ancient line so beloved by readers and bloggers who weigh in on Goodreads......as in....."This is the first David Bell book I've ever read and it won't be my last!"

                   Not a chance. Cause if "Layover"s a prime example of Bell's output, this will be the last of his I'll crack open.....

                    Credit due........yes indeed, it's a fast-moving page turner. A depressed real estate exec falls for a beautiful mystery woman at an airport........a woman who may or may not be fleeing from danger......or may or may not have something to do with the disappearance of a tech CEO

                 So our lovesick, infatuated hero throws caution (and his job) to the wind and impulsively chases his Mystery Babe from city to city........much to the chagrin and confusion of police and the volcanic-tempered brother of the missing CEO.

                   The problem here?  When you arrive at the end of this book, you realize what a run-of-mill, ordinary crime plot put all of this in motion. It's 'Meh' with a capital M.......like something you've already watched on a thousand times on TV detective shows........

                  It turns out that Bell suckered you into thinking the thriller aspect would be the main attraction here.

                   Nope. The thriller-diller stuff becomes nothing more than a plot device to set our unhappy, wayward hero on the life- changing journey he so craves.

                    Well, whoop-ity doo for him.........for the book 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)........

                  And once again, another book in which BQ strongly warns you.....STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO AUTHOR BLURBS ON THE BACK COVER!!!!  YOU'LL GET MORE ACCURATE OPINIONS FROM EITHER A FORTUNE COOKIE, A OUIJA BOARD OR THE MAGIC 8 BALL!

MIDWEEK MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "NUKE THE HURRICANE!" EDITION........

               Baby Orange contemplates nuking hurricanes......."It's been so long since we've seen one of those beautiful sprouting mushroom clouds....so spectacular! Better than fireworks.....and we shouldn't kill more than 2 to 3 million with radiation poisoning.......tops. A Win-Win for everybody!"

               Baby Orange slams Puerto Rico while they prepared for a hurricane........"Will it never end?" he tweets.......warning Puerto Ricans they'll be heavily fined for any further outbursts of weather......("we're looking a lot of things as deterrents....including deporting all copies of 'West Side Story'....:"

               Baby Orange claims "I'm the best thing that's ever happened to Puerto Rico" ,,,,,immediately causing the whole island to shift several miles....from the sheer wind force generated when  the entire populace laughed simultaneously.........

                Baby Orange promises to pardon aides if they have to break the law to get his wall built....and also strongly recommends that aides plan and carry out armed robberies of Mexican banks......to fulfill his promise to Trumpanzees that Mexico will pay for wall........

                 Baby Orange blames Obama for almost everything in a rambling speech........ "And let me tell you.......he never went once to Puerto Rico to throw paper towels at people like I did..."

'THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR'........DUMB EX MACHINA..........

The Sun Is Also A Star (2019)    Once again, BD (Beloved Daughter), who never met a Young Adult romance she didn't fall in love with, picked out the movie-of-the-night........

                Pardon us......(sound of heavy sighing......)

                No, I cannot bring myself to lob verbal grenades at such a harmless little trifle......it would be like kicking a sweet little puppy who just wants to roll on the carpet and lick your face.......

                One thing in its favor......in its central plot about a Jamaican teen girl and her family swept up by ICE and scheduled for deportation, the film takes a firm swipe at Trump's America.....something you wouldn't expect to see in a star-crossed YA romance........

                 Yet there you have it..... studious New Yorker Natasha (Yara Shahidi) has 24 hours before Trump fulfills his fondest dream of sending her back where she came from.

                 But wait!  Saved from a hit-and-run by equally studious Korean teen Daniel (Charles Melton), Natasha initially resists his determined efforts to make her fall in love with him......before the day's over.......

                 Can these two super-cute kids connect as they romp around New York all day?  Is that even possible??

                 (Cue BQ's snarky snickering..........heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh......)

                 I won't bother detailing the COINCIDENCES that fuel the storyline here........I used all caps for COINCIDENCES since the film enjoys springing them as if they were outrageous twists in a suspense thriller.....

                 'Mildly pleasant' would serve as the best description of this film.....and I'd have liked it way more if it stuck to what at first looks like a logical bittersweet ending........

                 ........until shoots itself in the foot with a ridiculous 'uh-oh' 'Five Years Later' epilogue.

                Obviously mandated by the studio that produced it, the film wraps up with this painful, poorly thought out closing, idiotic on multiple levels......it almost begs an audience to snort in derision and almost borders on parody.

                The kids are heartwarming though......and for potential tourists, the running time's padded out with loads of photogenic New York locations.  But sorry, that what-the-hell-were-they-thinking epilogue, knocked it down to 2 stars (**).  'Deus Ex Machina' factors too, too much here.....(both in the script and the back of Natasha's jacket....)

'LITTLE'.......HONEY, I SHRUNK THE BITCH

Little (2019)     As you might have guessed, BQ got roped into viewing this by BD (Beloved Daughter).......(normally, the trailer alone would suffice to send us screaming from the room.....)

                  BD, of course, didn't have to suffer through the initial plague of Grown-Up Becomes Child or Kid Becomes Grownup movies.......("Vice Versa", "Like Father Like Son", "Freaky Friday", etc, etc.....)........so she didn't go through the same horrifying bouts of Deja Vu that we did.......

                  This film owed a lot of its instant fame from being conceived and produced by 13 year old Marsai Martin ('Black-ish').......

                    And we'll say this much, "Little" is by far the best movie ever produced by a 13 year old.......as opposed to most Hollywood films, which are produced by people with the minds of 13 year olds.......

                   Even better, Martin's savvy enough to give herself the film's premier starring role, a rampaging, obnoxious sotfware CEO who finds herself magically transformed to a........wanna guess?......Der Bingo!......a rampaging, obnoxious 13 year old......(vividly played as an adult by Regina Hall, who makes the most of the her limited screen time, reduced to structural bookends...)

                    Once the adult-to-kid transformation's made, the script dutifully marches through all the tropes you'd expect.....(Martin's forced by Child Services to re-live her nightmarish 8th Grade in the same exact Middle School......enduring the same unchecked bullying that converted her from a gentle adolescent to the Boss-From-Hell........

                   The rest of the movie can be summed up in that standard homily that actors so love to use whenever called to the podium to tearfully accept an award......."don't let anyone tell you that you can't be what you want to be..." ....(you can fill in the rest....)

                   No question, Marsai Martin's a comedic powerhouse and a force to be reckoned with.....her unflagging energy keeps the laughs flowing through at least the first two thirds of the movie.......before the script runs out of gas, falls apart and the whole movie seems to sigh from exhaustion.....

                     BD loved it......and BQ'd be fibbing if we didn't admit to laughing more than few times......so we'll grade on a curve with 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)......as long as everyone in Hollywood solemnly swears to never make another GrownUp-Turns-Into-A-Kid movies.  Ever.. Promise?

'THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR'..........MORE HERE THAN MEETS THE FBI.......

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973)    I normally break into an automatic eye-roll when it comes to conspiracy theories.......

              But I'm more than willing to believe that the CIA and FBI really did go all in on suppressing this film and getting it yanked out of theaters within a few weeks.......

              One viewing of this movie and all you want to ask is, How the hell did this movie even get financed, produced and actually booked in theaters?   In a country gripped between the jaws of Richard Nixon and Vietnam?

                Incendiary much?    How 'bout a story about an organized, fully armed Black Nationalist uprising across America, created by a black, ex-CIA agent...........

                 Unbeknownst to the clueless, idiotic, racist politicos and CIA suits who parked their token black (Lawrence Cook) at the reception desk (hence the film's title), he planned to used his training to recruit, and command  a revolutionary guerrilla army.......

                Nobody, but nobody, including audiences and theaters, knew what they were getting into with this film.  No quite the usual run-of-the-mill Blaxploitation.......

                Ah, but evidently the CIA got wind of it.......and the movie disappeared from view.

                Decades later, after resurfacing on DVD, it still has influenced. new generations of black filmmakers........

                But to be brutally honest.......even with its white-hot subject matter, (more current than ever in Trump's Make America White Again crusade)......the film fails badly in its execution......

                 Produced on a meager budget, it's slack, poorly paced and not particularly well acted, clumsily put together at every turn.....(even though edited by Michael Kahn, who eventually became Steven Spielberg's master film cutter )

                  If the film had been professionally crafted,, there's no telling how huge its cultural imprint might have been........but it so resembled a bottom-of-the-barrel 42nd Street Grindhouse
Blaxploitationer, it couldn't have made a dent in any political landscape.........it looked too much like an incredibly ambitious home movie.......

                   Still, it set the alarm bells off at the 1970's FBI, always on the hunt for dangerous, rabble rousing subversives........(you know, the ones asking for racial equality and an end to the Vietnam war.....)

                   Whatever anyone might think of their filmmaking, let's not close this post out without crediting director Ivan Dixon and writer Sam Greenlee.......it took an astounding amount of courage to create this film and somehow get it into the public eye, however briefly.

                  These guys should have studied films like "Battle Of Algiers"  and "Battleship Potemkin"......a cinematic call to arms only works......if you know how to use the power of cinema.

                   As a movie itself,  I'd scrape up 1 star for "The Spook Who Sat By The Door".......as a landmark cultural signpost that still exerts power,  4 stars (****)

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.......SPECIAL "CHOSEN ONE" EDITION.......

               So much madness to cover.......it's enough to humble any mortal man....

               But fortunately........I AM THE CHOSEN ONE!!!!!!!!! 

               So......here we go.......

               Baby Orange declares himself The Chosen One and the King of Israel......and also, The Ayotollah of Rock 'N Rolla!

                Baby Orange thinks he can order companies to stop dealing with China..... and also orders all girls....according to the Executive Order....with "squeezable pussies" to report to the White House no later than September 30th........

                Baby Orange rages when thwarted from buying Greenland...... especially when he claims he made a fair offer to Denmark......an even swap for Puerto Rico.......

                Baby Orange calls the woman head of Denmark "nasty"...... English translation of "nasty".....'Any woman uppity enough to defy me". 

                 Baby Orange call Jews who vote Democratic "disloyal".......and warns them that if they keep that up, they're gonna end of as cellmates of all those little wetbacks who've already been separated from their parents.........

                 

YET ANOTHER BOOK CLUB INVASION........ PLUCKING ."ELLIE AND THE HARP MAKER"......

Ellie And The Harp Maker by Hazel Prior (2019)   It's a wonder the library hasn't called security as BQ crashes another book club........though there isn't much we could add to the conversation about this one......

              A simple sweet fable that you could practically plot in your head after reading the first chapter.......(stop me if you've heard this story before...)......Ellie, a lonely, abused housewife finds peace, comfort and love with Dan,  an autistic loner who crafts harps for living.........

               Of course, you know where this is going.......Dan, who takes everything and everybody literally must eventually collide with Ellie's controlling husband Clive, a needy lout with a decided violent streak......(naturally Elllie's fairly oblivious to hubby's overall creepiness....)

               It's a tale gently and deftly told, even if you think it vaguely resembles  five or six other other books or movies with similar tropes and characters.....

                So for anyone who's a sucker for relaxed, pastoral, quirky romance, this Bud's for you.
4 stars (****)  (And God bless one of the Book Club members for bringing that jar of Hazelmut creamer for the coffee.......)

             

"NO TIME TO DIE".......FIRST REVIEW HERE OF THE NEW BOND!!!!!!

No Time To Die (2020)      Oh......wait a sec.......it's not out yet?

                 What the hell.........anything to suck in more blog visitors, right?

                 So BQ can only review the just announced title......to which we can only say.......

                 Really?  That's the best you guys could come up with.......another worn out "Die" variation??

                  Five credited screenwriters (and God only knows how many uncredited)......and "No Time To Die" is the result........it sounds like they fed the word "Die" into that computer program that General Motors and Ford use to come up with names for cars.......

                  If they did use that computer, they might as well have stolen one of the new car names........Electrellica......Zoomira........Flashorelle........

                  BQ's been a rabid Bond Fanboy since childhood, so we're still counting the days till April of next year......(absolute truth, I'd be first line even if they'd decided to call it Shocks 'n Bonds........

                  So, Bond-O-Maniacs, we've all got about 8 months to get use to Bond 25's official title.....and until it opens and we all get to see it........there's....uh....dare we say it.......

                   ..........no time to die.

'THE DEAD GIRL IN 2A'......AT LEAST SHE WON'T EAT YOUR PEANUTS........

The Dead Girl In 2A by Carter Wilson (2019)    Oh boy......here's another one with a back cover full of authors who bleat "I COULDN'T TURN THE PAGES FAST ENOUGH!  I STAYED UP THE ENTIRE NIGHT TO FINISH IT!!!"

                  You should remember my constant warning about author blurbs..........

                  Put them in the same category as those messages that pop up on your laptop..."CALL THIS NUMBER IMMEDIATELY OR YOUR INTERNET WILL BE CANCELLED, YOUR HOUSE AND CAR REPOSSESSED AND YOUR CHILDREN SOLD INTO SEXUAL SLAVERY!!!!"

                  Or anything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth that ends with the words, "believe me..." or "many people are saying".......

                  So.....no, BQ did NOT stay up all night reading this. I got plenty of sleep in between chapters.  Sometimes during. 

                  I loathe and despise any and all attempts to describe thriller plots in any detail.  90 per cent of the fun comes from discovering the twists and turns for yourselves..........no matter how weird, stupid and unlikely they may be......

                 And this book piles on weird, stupid and unlikely plot twists by the truckload.......

                 The opening chapters, however, will no doubt hook you. Jake, a professional ghost writer, suffers greatly from memory losses and a crumbling marriage....... he's a tortured soul whose careless driving caused the disfigurement of his adorable young daughter......

                 On a plane to Denver to meet a new client, Jake's seated next to Clara....and the seatmates think they've met before but can't remember where, when or how......Not that it makes any difference, since Clara declares she's already picked out a scenic spot in Colorado to kill herself.......

                   Say whaaaaaaaaaaa???

                  Per BQ thriller-review policy, that's as far as I go.

                  Should you choose to dive into this book, you might tear through the first third intrigued, wondering, "where the hell is this going anyway?"

                  But as the revelations start to pop, it may also dawn on you that overall, there isn't a single moment of this story that's even remotely believable. About the only blurb adjective that would properly describe this book......."far-fetched"......and then some.

                   If you're willing to swallow the loopy-doopy storyline, by all means read on. Just don't expect to lose any sleep racing through it.......1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)......or as the BQ blurb reads...
....."WHACK-A-DOODLE THRILLER COULD HELP YOU KILL SOME TIME IF YOUR FLIGHT'S DELAYED.....BUT A MAGAZINE MIGHT BE CHEAPER!!"

BOOK CLUB INVASION GOES ASIAN!.......BQ CRASHES THE "CRAZY RICH ASIANS" BOOK CLUB........

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan (2013)     Once again, BQ barrels into a Book Club meeting only to find out we're.......like, six years overdue.......

               ........there's a book club in there, alright, but they're discussing "Where The Crawdads Sing"........

                        We'll press on anyway.

                         First takeaway......how did ever this attain its reputation as some kind of laugh riot?  True enough, Kevin Kwan sprinkles in some witty lines here and there.........but "uproarious"?  Uh......no. Not even close.

                        (Said this before, it bears repeating......BEWARE AUTHOR BLURBS......keep in mind, for a couple of sentences or a short paragraph, these writers pick up a free plug for themselves and their latest book.....so proceed with extreme caution.....)

                         Second takeaway.......at the end of the day, what you've got here is nothing more than a jumbo soap opera.......plow your way through the prose and you'll find "Days Of Our Lives".....only populated with.....you guessed it.....crazy rich Asians......

                         .......with the accent on rich. Ridiculously rich. Howard Hughes rich. Bill Gates rich, Warren Buffet rich, yada, yada......

                          So 90 per cent of the book is spent entirely on endless descriptions of super expensive stuff.......houses, cars, palatial estates, designer wardrobes.....and an encyclopedic catalog of vile, ignorant prejudices that these Midas-wealthy Asians hold against one another.

                          Bobbing along in this boiling ocean of greed are a few characters you're supposed to root for, I guess....(the young lovers, natch).........since almost the entire array of repulsive supporting characters plot against them.......

                          And what a crowd. My eyes roll upward like a 'Walking Dead' zombie  when encountering any book that starts off with an intricate genealogical chart to explain who's related to whom.  (Memo to all authors who do this:  After a couple of pages, most readers give up glancing back at your goddamn chart. If you can't keep all your characters straight in the body of the book itself.....then the hell with it....nobody's got the patience or the inclination to figure out whose third cousin married whose fourth son or whatever....)

                          About two thirds into "Crazy Rich Asians", you may actually start to hunger for the big character showdowns the book keeps promising.......as in any good soap opera worth its bubbles......but if you're panting to get right to the good stuff, the book will still make you plow through those voluminous pages of expensive product descriptions.........

                         If you dig that eternal 'Lifestyles Of The Filthy Rich' crap, then the book's seventh heaven...... for those of us who gravitate to the storyline and turns of plot, prepare to do some serious mad skimming.......

                         Very shortly, BQ plans to check out the film version......I freely admit I'm dying to see how they condensed and converted this overwritten Singapore 'Peyton Place' into a 2 hour romantic comedy......stay tuned.....

                       The book itself?  Nowhere near the amount of fun that all the reviews promised......but if you want to go searching for the juicy,soapy romantic entanglements buried deep, deep underneath all the excessive detailing of extravagant wealth....have at it.....2 stars (**)

                 

YOUNG FONDA REMEMBERED..........."TAMMY AND THE DOCTOR"

Tammy And The Doctor (1963)     I didn't know whether I should sub-title this post "Everybody Had To Start Somewhere"......or maybe "Look Who It Is...Hey, Back In The Day".......

               Instead of eulogizing the Peter Fonda of "Easy Rider" and "Ulee's Gold", it seemed only natural for this blog to pick out Peter's first big screen appearance.......(given my undying obsession for 1960's cheeseball movies......)

               And glossy Hollywood 60's baubles don't come any cheesier than this one........with a game, exuberant Sandra Dee yammering away as deep-from-the-backwoods babe Tammy Tyree. a role first created by Debbie Reynolds.......

               From her non-stop hillbilly babble, you'd think Tammy was raised by wolves who managed to teach her English, but little else......(or possibly 16th century pirates, since she refers to doctors as 'leeches'....)

                Sweeping into a Los Angeles hospital to help care for her elderly guardian (Beulah Bondi), Tammy soon catches the eye (and the heart) of soft spoken cardiac intern Dr. Cheswick....(the slim, tall, 23 year old Peter Fonda).........but first, Fonda has to stake his claim before Tammy's overwhelmed by a horny psychiatric intern.....(the sort-of-young Adam West, only a few years away from "Batman")

                In truth, there's not much to say about Fonda here.......he's stuck in the most worthless role you could have in a 60's romance.....the Boyfriend part in a movie that's strictly a vehicle for the female star. (It's John Gavin beefcake territory.....who in fact performed the same utilitarian function in Dee's previous Tammy outing, "Tammy Tell Me True".....)

               Peter spends his limited screen time appearing mildly uncomfortable.....(and who wouldn't be?)......anyone hoping for a glimmer or hint of the guy who would turn Hollywood upside down with "Easy Rider" will come away disappointed....

               But even in pre-packaged Technicolor spam like this film, BQ plucked out some priceless time capsule moments.......

               .........including: the look of pure shock 'n awe among hospital nurses when Tammy shows them her big bag 'o WEED!!  (The nurses breathe a sigh of relief (or maybe disappointment?) when Tammy explains the weed is ginseng.......

                The most striking moment for BQ, by far.........The God-fearin', Bible-lovin' Tammy shames and humiliates those same nurses for bullying and mocking her at every opportunity.......

                 My, how times have changed.......since today's God-fearin' Bible-lovin' folk, the Evangelicals, now adore and embrace Donald Trump, the cruelest bully in America........

                 In 1963, however, bullies get put in their place......and young Peter Fonda, looking almost as virginal as Sandra Dee, hardly knows what to do when Sandra-Tammy puckers up for a kiss like she's givin' 'em out for a buck at the Iowa State Fair......

                 For nostalgic time-travelers like me who love stopping in to a more innocent era.....
2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)......an early easy romp for the future Easy Rider.....

BETWEEN A ROD AND A HARD PLACE........STONE'D THRILLS OF "CRY TERROR.!"

Cry Terror! (1958)   A round of BQ applause, please, for long lost writer-director Andrew L. Stone....

              Together with his wife/film editor Virginia, the Stones carved out their own little distinctive niche in 1950's cinema........

               This pair excelled in swift, improbable thrillers......ripped from the headlines and shot with a verisimilitude that deliberately avoided typical Hollywood artifice.....(fake backdrops, studio sets, blurry rear projection, etc, etc.....)

               In a Stone movie, if an actor's driving a car, he's really driving a car......with you in the backseat.......if it's an airplane cockpit, the pilots are real and they're really flying the plane......

               No fakery for the Stones.....whenever possible, they'd give documentary-like rawness to their footage......(A critic once cracked.....if the Stones had filmed the nuclear war-themed "On The Beach", nobody'd be left alive to review it.....)

                Andrew Stone's love of primal subject matter put his films ahead of the curve......"Julie" with Doris Day dealt with spousal abuse........for his ocean-liner disaster film "The Last Voyage", Stone partially sank a real ship....In Washington State, you can still visit the wreckage of a train crash Stone created for "Ring Of Fire", his forest fire opus......

                 And now we come to "Cry Terror!" which might very well be the first studio film to deal with domestic terrorism targeting airlines.....(keep in mind, we're talkin' 1958 here....)

                  Master psycho Rod Steiger tricks electronics repair guy James Mason into making the bombs Steiger plants on planes to extort $500,000 from the airline.  Steiger, giving the full
Steiger-licious repertoire of barely repressed rage and nervous tics, proceeds to terrorize Mason's  wife (Inger Stevens) and threaten to kill his little girl......all part of Rod's master plan to retrieve his big payoff....
..
                 The one to watch here is that star-crossed starlet Stevens.......a kind of platinum blonde Natalie Wood, who, like Wood, did her best acting with her huge expressive eyes.  You fully feel her stark terror when Steiger leaves her alone with the worst of his gang, a Benzadrine-fueled rapist-murderer scarily played by Neville Brand.

                 At another location, Mason and his child are left at the mercy of two other Steiger minions, a whiny crook (Jack Klugman) and a lethal floozy (Angie Dickinson). Meanwhile, in true Andrew Stone attention to realism, the FBI painstakingly tracks Dickinson's whereabouts through her dental records.......taken from the gum she chewed while planting a bomb on a plane........

                Great, breathless stuff..........with a shocking, abrupt but satisfying fate doled out  to Steiger....

                Stone's career came to the oddest of conclusions.......after all these quick paced, you-are-there thrillers, he pumped out not one, but two lengthy, hefty musical biographies - "Song Of Norway" and "The Great Waltz".......both films bloated, ponderous, antiquated and thoroughly ridiculed.  They looked like movies made by someone who hadn't seen a movie himself since 1930......roadshow reserved seat musicals were already tar-pit dinosaurs by the time these came out......and these two turkeys finished off Stone as well........

                 But we can still revel in the semi-real thrills ' n chills of "Cry Terror"......it deserves a description not often applied to 1950's films.......it's a hell of a ride. 4 stars (****)

               

MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN..........'67 TRUMPWORLD...."IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT".......

In The Heat Of The Night (1967)   How Donald Trump would love the fictional town of Sparta, Mississippi from this film.......

                It's a town populated almost exclusively with drooling future Trumpanzees......the kind of racist yahoos who, 50 years later or so, will slap on their red caps and drive 100 miles or more to attend one of Grand Wizard Trump's 'Keep America White' rallies.......

                  A lot of mixed feeling, revisiting this movie again.........

                  What's ultimately depressing.......that 52 years later, in the horrors of TrumpAmerica, things have hardly changed.......

                    In a random search for a murder suspect, dumb-as-a-rock cop Sam Wood (Warren Oates) wastes no time in profiling Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) a Philadelphia Homicide detective waiting for a train. It's a scene that's still repeated a thousand times today........and in Poitier's precision acting, you wince as you watch a black man go into a necessary survival protocol when encountering a white cop.......

                    And in the film's most vividly remembered scene, there's a preview of coming attractions......when Virgil Tibbs is slapped by the town's condescending patriarch Endicott (Larry Gates), he swiftly returns the slap - a first in American cinema.  You can think of that indelible shocking moment as the first stepping stone for filmmakers........their license to begin showing racial strife in blunt, increasingly brutal terms.......

                    (Only 3 years later, in l970, director William Wyler's  "The Liberation Of L.B.Jones" will conclude with a black man tossing a redneck into a threshing machine......)

                     I suppose if "In The Heat Of The Night" was re-made today, you wouldn't see the rampant racism of the original film, with almost the entire white cast insulting, intimidating and physically threatening Sidney Poitier.......

                    What you might see instead......the entire town calling 911 to report Poitier for walking down the street, stopping to read a street sign, or asking to use the Starbucks bathroom........(all of these callers emboldened to crawl out of the woodwork after the 2016 Presidential election...)

                     As I said.....seems like things have hardly changed, except for the worst, in that the leader of the Free World enjoys telling brown folks to go back where they came from......

                     For "In The Heat Of The Night", still a 4 star (****) movie. 

                     For the ways thing are today......zero. 

                   

BOOK CLUB INVASION.....THE SEQUEL!.........."EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER"

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes (2019)     Normally, BQ avoids any attempts at organized reading.........book clubs, summer reading programs, yada, yada......

         Still have nightmares from the last time I foolishly signed up for a summer reading spree......("Win an IPAD!" the library trumpeted)........

          Followed all the goofy categories......(read a book with blue cover, read a banned book, read a book by a first time author, read a book published the year you were born......)

           I DID ALL THAT!  AND I NEVER WON THE $&^#%#&$#% IPAD!  WHERE'S MY IPAD?  I WANT IT....AND I WANT IT NOW!

           (......resigned sigh.......)

           Usually, I'm the last human on earth who gets around to reading Book Club/New York Times Bestsellers.......(proof positive:  see the "Where'd You Go, Bernadette" post from a couple days ago...)

            But fate took a hand, and I snagged a copy of this one before 30,000 other people got their hands on it.......

             Verdict:  a breath of fresh air......and about as far from the over-hyped, over-praised "Bernadette" as you can get.......

             First thing to love:  sharp humor........sharper than a fresh Fusion blade.......yep, you wild 'n crazy internet kids will LOL like there's no tomorrow.......

             And that's exactly what this book needs, since you can tell where it's going from Page 1......lonely widow, survivor of her late husband's verbal and borderline physical abuse, meets a fellow damaged soul, a Major League pitcher  suffering from the "yips"......(English Translation: he can't pitch for shit anymore.....)

               Will these two sweeties find love and comfort in each other's arms?    Uh......does Donald Trump lie 80 times a week?

                The fun here comes from author Holmes'  spicing up this tale-as-old-as-time with some of the wittiest prose you'll read all year. 

                 Okay, I'm done describing.......otherwise you'll think you've stumbled on to a.....OH MY GOD, A BOOK CLUB???

                  4 stars (****)......and for all you summer reading contestants.....it qualifies as reading a book with a blue or green cover.......if they're offering an IPAD as a prize, lawyer up and make 'em cough it up!!

SHARON TATE, ONCE UPON A TIME........SIFTING THROUGH "THE WRECKING CREW" DEBRIS.......

The Wrecking Crew (1968)    We all know by now that if Quentin Tarantino was running the Universe, Hitler would have gotten the spectacular death he deserved........and Sharon Tate would still be alive.......

              Alas........

               In "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood", QT imagines Tate (Margot Robbie) sitting in a theater, wonderfully entertained as she watches herself as a ditzy babe in "The Wrecking Crew", the last of Dean Martin's four outings as Matt Helm, the exhausted, distracted, lounge-lizard Bond wannabe.......

               Fate, as everyone knows, dealt Sharon Tate an obscene, monstrous death.......and even in the wreckage of "The Wrecking Crew", a rock-bottom piece of Hollywood sausage, you could see the makings of a sparkling talent........a girl who could potentially combine a gift for comedic timing and slapstick with an off-the-charts  Marilyn Monroe-like sexuality.......

                Or to paraphrase Marlon Brando from 'On The Waterfront'......she coulda been a contenda.....

                The movie itself?  Oh Lordy.........if nothing else, Dean Martin and the Matt Helms provided a wellspring of inspiration for Mike Meyers' Austin Powers.......

                 Director Phil Karlson, the veteran warhorse who provided a modicum of pulp-action life to the first of these things, "The Sliencers", was brought back for "The Wrecking Crew".....

                Yes, I know how beloved Karlson was for his brutal, tough-as-nails noirs like "Kansas City Confidential" and "The Phenix City Story"......but when he took whatever was thrown his way, he functioned as just another clock-puncher.........you wonder if Karlson was even awake when directing this......if it was any more deadened and inert, it would qualify as still life......

                You'd never know it, judging from the slo-mo, arthritic karate fights, that Bruce Lee choreographed them.......and you can only wonder Lee's reaction to the film's title song, where the chorus does a sing-song Chinese 'Ah So!' and 'Velly Velly nice'.......

                Speaking of inert and still life.........long before Burt Reynolds discovered the joys of giggling and coasting through "Smokey" and "Cannonball" movies, Dean Martin already perfected the art of wandering through films in which he showed no earthly interest.  You can almost catch him counting the minutes till quittin' time.......

                 But enough space wasted on Dean, let's return to Sharon Tate, who took on the same kind of adorable screwball role that "The Silencers" gave to Stella Stevens.  And like Stevens, Tate knew a golden, steal-the-movie chance when she saw one.......and went for it full throttle.    Funny and sexy as hell, she's up against an A-Team of Va Va Voom 60's sexpots......Elke Sommer and Nancy Kwan.

                  Years ago, BQ flipped through a book filled with brief bios of 1960's starlets.........when they hit their inevitable starlet expiration dates, a few survived into middle-aged film careers, some ended up as trophy wives to millionaires, and a vast amount of them became busy, successful Southern California real estate agents.....go figure.

                 I'm with Quentin Tarantino.....I'd like to believe Sharon Stone would've enjoyed a career similar to Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock , Meg Ryan or Charlize Theron........(we can all dream, can't we?

               For the Sharon Tate that might have been, 4 stars (****), for "The Wrecking Crew".....zero.

             

BOOK CLUB INVASION!........THE LAST PERSON TO READ 'WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE.....

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (2012)

               Ooospie......by the time BQ crashed the library book club for this one, turns out I was seven years late.......

                But since I'm the last avid reader to finally get around to this book, might as well give it a shot, what with the movie finally about to open........

                Is it a laugh riot, like all the reviews promise?    Ehhhh.......sometimes. At the start.

                Okay, there's some LOL's sprinkled through the first half of the book, which functions as a merciless, witty takedown of self-absorbed, Northern California One Percenters......

               So imagine "Big Little Lies" (the book) with a higher laugh count.......(I specifically mean the book version of "Big Little Lies"  since the HBO mini-series drained out the wit as if using a spaghetti strainer....)

                Amid the yocks, "Bernadette"s first half also effectively sketches out its titular character, a brilliant architect whose iconoclastic genius is admired, yet cruelly thwarted......

                 Unfortunately we move on the book's second half, a dreary pseudo-mystery contraption dealing with Bernadette's disappearance.......and plowing through it, you have more than enough time to contemplate how obnoxious all the characters are......

                After an endless sojourn in Antarctica (don't ask, I'm beggin' ya), the book comes to a stunningly abrupt conclusion........(I don't doubt readers who thought somebody tore out pages of their copy......)

               I always got the feeling of a real book and a real story buried somewhere deep inside.......a might-have-been, compelling novel about Bernadette and her mighty struggle against the forces of conventionality arrayed against her.......

                But that's mostly drowned out by the jokes and farcial turns of plot.....this book doesn't want to delve into Bernadette all that much......it just craves adoration for its cleverness.

                And clever it is.......for a while.......2 stars (**) as we turn out the lights.....(being the last to leave the Book Club meeting room....)

HEALED AND CONSOLED!.........BQ'S EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH BABY ORANGE!

                            Once again, BQ snuck through the White House communications grid.......this time claiming I was KKK's Wicked Wizard Of The South,  David Duke.....

                            ......and once again, Baby Orange picked up immediately......

BO:    Davey, Davey......I told you never to call me here. Looks bad, ya know. Right after I told everyone I don't have a racist bone in my body.....

BQ:     No, it's me, Mr. President. Scott from The Beached Quill.

BO:      How do you keep getting through? I swear, I'm gonna have the Acting Chief of Staff fire the Acting Phone Operator  as soon as I get the Acting Waiter to bring me my KFC bucket.

BQ:      So nobody has a permanent position there, huh?

BO:      Ivanka.....maybe. I love havin' everyone else know they're one step away from the trap door, .......that even includes the Acting Wife, whats-her-face.......

BQ:    Melania, you mean. Nice that you took her along on the healing and consoling tour of El Paso.......

BO:    Didn't she do great?   Cuddling that little Taco-gobblin' orphan while I gave out a big ole smiley thumbs up.

BQ:     Most people saw that moment as tasteless, insensitive and utterly repulsive........

BO:      Fake news......lamestream media.......enemy of the people....

BQ:     Not to mention that horrible video of you boasting about the crowd size at your El Paso rally...

BO:     Hey, I had to hammer that home, believe me. At the end of the day, thousands of alive Trumpanzees are worth a hell of a lot more than a pile of dead Mexicans at Wal-Mart.  For all you know, that kid with the gun probably did us all a favor......half of those dead bean-eaters were probably rapists anyway.....

BQ:   Mr. President, you do realize that I'm posting everything you say on my blog, right?

BO:    Knock yourself out, Mr. Beached Whale or whatever your name is.......10 seconds from now I'll deny I said any of this, and the numbnuts who voted me in will believe me!  Plus, I'll come up with some new crazy shit that'll take everybody's mind off it.......

BQ:    You are superb at that, I agree.........speaking of new crazy shit, what's up with you re-tweeting a conspiracy theory that the Clintons killed Jeffrey Epstein?

BO:   Well........people are sayin' this.......I hear this from a lot of people......

BQ:   Excuse me, sir......but 'People are saying' and 'I hear this from a lot of people' are your favorite phrases whenever you're spewing out complete bullshit.........Which people?   Who did you hear this from?

BO:   That information's on a need-to-know basis. Even the Intelligence community doesn't need to know. Actually they don't need to know a goddamn thing anyway.......as long they start agreeing with me......

BQ:     You mean agreeing with you that the Russian interference in our election is a hoax.

BO:     Of course it is. Vladdy told me so. And Vladdy would never lie to me.......

BQ:      Vladdy?  Okaaaayyy. Speaking of murderous dictators, that's an awful lot of missiles Kim Jung Un fired off lately.........

BO:     Nothing to worry about. Boopsie-Woopsie assured me on the phone. He just likes to see them go up and make pretty designs in the sky......like a kid with fireworks.

BQ:      'Boopsie-Woopsie'??

BO:      My pet name for Kim when we speak.......he calls me his 'Cuddly-Wuddly Orange            Boo-Boo'....what can I tell ya, it's a love affair........

BQ:     I'm feeling a little nauseous right now, Mr. President, so I'll end it right here. I appreciate you took the time to heal and console our divided nation in this time of crisis.  As usual, you made things ten times worse......and made even more people realize what a despicable human being you are.....

BO:     But not the shmucks who vote for me! And that's all that counts. Thanks for your call.......which never happened......and I never said any of this.

BQ;     Thanks your time, Baby Orange........

BO:      Wait......what?  What did you call me???!!!!!

BOINNNNGGG!..........GOES "THE SICILIAN CLAN"......

The Sicilian Clan (1969)   I simply couldn't resist using the signature sound effect from Ennio Morricone's brilliant score to title this post. ..........

                No doubts, no question, BQ LOVES this movie.......

                Euro-Crime thrillers don't come better crafted and slicker than this one. Its 2 hour pace is measured but you won't find a single wasted minute in it.......all the way through, it's riveting....

                 First and foremost.......that powerhouse International triumvirate of Lino Ventura, Jean Gabin and Alain Delon.  To use an imaginary comparison, think of an American crime film that would team up Spencer Tracy, John Wayne and Steve McQueen.......

                 From the start, you're hooked by the opening set piece.......the elaborate escape from police custody of  cold-hearted cop-killer Sartet (Delon), his breakout cleverly engineered by Paris-based Sicilian crime boss Vittorio Manalese (Gabin).

                  Sartet's a loose cannon pain in the ass to the extended Manalese clan, especially since he's being  hunted down by relentless police chief Le Goff (Ventura). But the suave lethal crook has key intel for a potential huge jewel heist, the main reason the family broke him out.

                   While Gabin figures out an outrageous way to grab the jewels, the ever horny Delon dallies with a hot-to-trot Manalese daughter-in-law (Irina Demick).......which ultimately leads to everybody's undoing...….

                   And by the way, we have the va-va-voom Demick to thank for 20th Century Fox footing the bill for the film......since she was Fox  mogul Darryl F.Zanuck's Girlfriend-Of-The-Year.....(which is why you see her pop up in "The Longest Day" and "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines".......to be kind, Demick's better than some other Zanuck Bimbos-Du-Jour that he jammed into Fox movies.

                    For anyone who hasn't seen the film, I don't want to spoil a single detail of the spectacularly crazy jewel heist........for apparent reasons, you'll know at once that in no way on earth could the gang  ever pull this off today, but don't let that spoil the fun of it.

                   And the many suspenseful Hitchcock-ian touches thrown in here make for extra-delicious treats in an already entertaining movie......

                   So BQ says treat yourself and track down this clan......they're a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.

DEEP IN THE MARVEL SEPTIC TANK............"VENOM"

Venom (2018)   BQ searched for an appropriate metaphor to describe what it's like watching a film like this........

                    Dumpster diving?

                    Septic Tank cleaning?

                    Toilet flushing right after a bout of explosive diarrhea?

                     Feel free to pick one, or come up with your own. The only method I've found to endure something like "Venom" and still retain a smidgen of sanity.........search for at least one shining light in the dark, dark morass of CGI........

                     In this movie, I suppose it's Tom Hardy's portrayal of a scruffy reporter infected with an alien parasite.......it turns him into a super-powered monster with a lot of teeth, a Gene Simmons tongue and an insatiable need to bite people's heads off......literally.

                     Hardy's on the right track, trying desperately to wring some comedic subtext out of this junk, but he gets no help at all from the director and 3 screenwriters........they're too far gone, up to their necks in the Marvel Universe quicksand.......

                     And that, of course, means lots of human beings and cars tossed around in the air with minimal attention to the laws of gravity and actual physical damage........

                    Other than Hardy's semi-satiric mumbling, the rest of "Venom"s worthless........it can't even meet the low bar set for superhero movies.  The villains are complete non-entities......it looks like the real actors for these parts never showed up and they just used the stand-ins.......

                      If you stick it out for the usual, interminable credit crawl, the film does reveal a major star as Hardy's next opponent......in the...(pardon me while I gag)......sequel.

                      Also depressing.......seeing one of BQ's faves, the incredibly gifted Michelle Williams wasting her time in one of those throwaway, thankless "girlfriend" roles. (The dopey filmmakers take no advantage of having a world-class actress in their midst........they treat her like she's Megan Fox)

                       I'll give Tom Hardy 1/2 a star for his tireless efforts to offer up a brief chuckle or two (especially in his self-voiced bickering with his alien pal, like a pissed off ventriloquist with a rogue dummy)........but you can only sit for so long and watch this poor guy tread water in a pool of excrement.  The rest of it......a genuine AFH......an ABOMINATION FROM HELL.....


             
                 

BBG ALERT! (BEST BAD GUY!),,,,,,,,,,,;RED' LYNCH OF "EXPERIMENT IN TERROR"

Experiment In Terror (1962)   I briefly touched on this film, a BQ fave, a couple years ago.....in a post on sporting events used for thriller climaxes........

                It's the perfect film to return to, kicking off  a new regular department here.... celebrating the all time BBG's.....(Best Bad Guys)........

                 First up......the creepy asthmatic Garland 'Red' Lynch, as ripely, richly played by character actor Ross Martin.....

                  Red's a murderous psycho who avoids robbing banks himself.......instead, he terrorizes bank tellers into stealing the cash for him, promising them a 20% cut of the haul.......

                  Yeah, right.........just like Trump promised his suckers Mexico would pay for his wall......

                 His latest teller-victim (Lee Remick) endures Lynch's usual reign of terror.......this includes threatening phone calls, a 'gotcha' physical assault, and best of all, a cameo ladies room appearance dressed yo in grandmotherly drag.

                  And a few extra nasty threats thrown in, directed at Remick's sweet innocent teen sister (Stephanie Powers)......

                  A stalwart, stolid FBI guy (Glenn Ford) and his platoon of agents try protecting Remick and Powers, but Martin's Red Lynch outfoxes them at every turn.....and has little or no trouble scaring the bejeezus out of Remick and abducting Powers for some strip-to-your-undies abuse....

                   Director Blake Edwards, armed with Henry Mancini's jazzy, ominous score, indulges in the same kind of noir-ish black-and-white moodiness that defined his hit TV show "Peter Gunn"....
.......a prime example: Lynch stalks one of his unlucky-in-love gal pals in an apartment, festooned with unclothed mannequins she refurbishes for a living.........(guess who ends up as dead as her dummies.....)

                     But let's get back to fabulous  Ross Martin, our wheezing, wack-a-doodle. He's really the whole show here......and more than earns his isolated actor's credit, held until the film's last shot.......(the film even humanizes him a tiny bit, offering a backstory of Red Lynch financing a crippled child's hip socket operation.....)

                   Blake Edwards not only doesn't want you to know who Martin is throughout the film, he effectively hides the actor in the first half, though shadows and only extreme closeups of his lips.  Halfway through the film, you start to see him at last......his huge expressive eyes bulging with madness and expected mayhem.

                    Ross Martin was one of those ebullient 'actor's actors' who fully embraced accents and costumes..... a talent which a few years later, made him the Robert Conrad's beloved sidekick 'Artemis Gordon' on  TV's "The Wild Wild West"......(sadly, his ongoing heart condition felled him at only 61)

                    So here's to you, Ross.....BQ couldn't think of a better villain portrayal to kick off our BBG department.....your Red Lynch lives forever as a 5 star (*****), FIND OF FINDS Best Bad Guy.