About Fred

Here’s my April music playlist:

I watched just three movies last week:

• Some very strong performances and well constructed songs aside, Merrily We Roll Along never quite worked for me. Some of that is maybe this particular production, which is filmed a lot more in close-up than a traditional stage musical, but it’s not impossible to understand how the material itself notoriously failed to connect with its original Broadway audiences and critics. (This is the only production of it that I’ve ever seen, so it’s difficult to say.) The musical’s hook of telling the story in reverse chronological order leads to a few clever moments—and is understandably a holdover from the play on which it’s based—but more often it robs the narrative of forward momentum and any kind of character arc. And the songs, while frequently impressive and energetic in the moment, were almost immediately gone from my head at the end of each number.
• If The Blue Gardenia works, it’s largely on the strength of Anne Baxter’s performance (as well as that of some of the supporting players). The plot is a little silly and over-wrought, but they almost make it work.
• Rental Family is odd and sweet, and it benefits tremendously from an endearing Brendan Fraser.

I also rewatched Them!, which is everything you want a 1950s sci-fi monster movie to be.

I read just two books in April:

• Things That Fall From the Sky by Kevin Brockmeier
• Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie

It was a busy month, what with my trip to Belgium and the Netherlands and Kaleidotrope re-opening to submissions for the first time in over a year. (I’m back from my trip, and Kaleidotrope is now closed, but I’m still reading submissions.)

Anyway, I made an occasional effort to read a few other, published, short stories, but I just managed the one short story collection and the (slight, but fun) Christie novel. (And both of those were on my trip.)

I will try to read more in May!

Last week, Glen swept the entries with a single guessed lyric!

Can the winning streak continue? Can anyone else guess any of these song lyrics?

1. “Paragraph President” by Blackalicious
   “Sit ya ass down while I rip the tracks and spit the facts”
2. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day, guessed by HL
   “My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating”
3. “Look Out Below” by One Block Radius
   “The rhymes that I wrote are stuck in your throat”
4. “Sing it Loud” by k.d. lang
   “Bit my tongue when I saw you taking chances”
5. “One Engine” by the Decemberists
   “Some kind of trouble in some kind of way”
6. “Q.U.E.E.N.” by Janelle Monáe, guessed by Glen
   “Is it peculiar that she twerk in the mirror?”
7. “Not an Addict” by K’s Choice
   “If you don’t have it you’re on the other side”
8. “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth” by Neko Case (orig. Sparks)
   “Grasp at straws that don’t want grasping”
9. “California” by Tom Petty
   “Hope it don’t fall into the sea”
10. “The City of New Orleans” by Arlo Guthrie, guessed by Glen
    “Good morning, America, how are you?”

Leave a comment if you can, and good luck!

I watched 6 movies last week:

• Nightfall may suffer a little in its pacing from the way it’s told, through piecemeal flashbacks, but it’s an otherwise tidy little noir.
• It says something that Phantasm III is at its best when it’s entirely incomprehensible. On those rarer occasions when you have some idea about what’s going on, it’s never to the movie’s benefit. The first Phantasm movie kind of works as a weird low-budget meditation on grief and nightmares, like some kind a surreal art piece. I think a problem with the sequels is they think the first movie works on any other level and try very badly to build from that.
• I haven’t seen Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire in many years, but even in my memory of it, the remake, City of Angels, can’t help but suffer by comparison. There are some nice moments in this one, mostly thanks to supporting players like Dennis Franz and the lesser-used Andre Braugher, but I didn’t find these characters particularly compelling.

• I guess the best you can say about Nothing Sacred is that it’s largely inoffensive—except in those moments when its very dated racial stereotypes make it briefly very offensive—but it’s also very scattershot in its laughs.
• John Ford made the late-career Cheyenne Autumn in many ways as an apology for the depiction of Native Americans in his earlier Westerns. Which is an admirable goal, even if he casts few if any actual Native Americans, and the first half of the movie handles that respectably. It’s in the film’s middle layover in Dodge City, however, with Jimmy Stewart’s laconic Wyatt Earp, that Ford largely loses the thread, and the whole thing becomes a bit of an episodic mess. (What looks like some terrible third act rear projection doesn’t help matters either.)
• Rockula isn’t so much a movie as an excuse for some goofy musical numbers and silliness all around. It hangs together, more or less, on its weird plot, but a lot will depend on how amiable you find it, or how catchy the tunes.