AN OBSERVATION ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956)

Watching THE TEN COMMANDMENTS from an adult perspective — and a dirty-minded one at that — is a totally different experience than it was when I was a kid. Seeing this sequence again right now, I only just noted that Baka (Vincent Price) had those tethers at the ready in his lounging area when about to whip Joshua the stone cutter (John Derek) to death. Baka was clearly a slimy motherfucker, as evidenced by his conscripting slave girl Lilia (Debra Paget) into unwilling sexual slavery and his statement that he would only keep her "for a little while," then return her to her life of everyday slavery "a bit more worthy." If he had those tethers ready, what the hell kind of scene was he into, and how many previous slave girls (and boys; he seemed like he would be rather fluid) must he have whipped into oblivion?

THE FREEDOMOBILE

9:14am Currently in the car to the dialysis center. 

Got one of my favorite drivers. She’s a Russian who’s fluent in English and has Captain America’s shield on her steering wheel. She’s friendly and doesn’t play the awful Freedom FM radio favored by most of the Russkie drivers. (In case you don’t know, Freedom FM is a local Russian language station that plays stale ‘80’s hits interspersed with awful Russian pop music that stopped evolving somewhere around 1977.)

ON WEATHERING THE HORRORS OF NYC LIVING

While I was ruminating on this morning's subway horrors — a mass shooting on the train, a mere four stations south of the one at the end of my block — several friends contacted me to see if I had been anywhere near the incident and find out if I was safe. (I was bundled up in bed when it all went down.) While responding to one of them, this is what I told her:

The crazy thing about NYC living is that once you have been here for as long as I have, it's kind of like being an animal in a jungle. You just go on about your business, fully accepting of the fact that someday, with zero warning, your number may be up. It's kind of like adopting a zen readiness for death, so one has no fear should it come, and one just soldiers on until one can no longer do so. It's kind of freeing, really, and I have that way of thinking deeply ingrained into me after 32 years in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Believe me, it has come in handy many times, most notably on the day of 9/11, which speaks for itself.

"MEMORY...ALL ALONE IN THE..." (HURLS SELF ONTO THE HIGHWAY)

After the longest dialysis day in a good while, a length dictated by my car service picking me up nearly an hour late (thus making my release time also an hour late) and by my ride home also being late and making the return journey during the time when the streets are dominated by and congested because of afternoon school buses, I am finally, blessedly, at home. I'm just glad I took the time to make a decent breakfast before this morning's departure. Otherwise, I would be insanely ravenous at the moment. And let me note that you have not truly lived until you ride in a car whose Russian driver has his iPhone set up to play a concert performance of famous movie and Broadway themes and tunes played by a full orchestra with some guy on a Pan flute as the headliner. When selections from CATS came on, I nearly rolled down the window and leapt out onto the Prospect Expressway.

A FOOL FOR YUL

 

Yul Brynner as Rameses, a larger than life antagonist perfect for one of classic Hollywood's greatest spectacle films.

This Friday evening, Passover, will find me bundled up (after the day's dialysis session) for my annual screening of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956), a film that I have loved since childhood and one that's on my short list of favorite classic Hollywood epics. Its scale and sweep are vast, and the piece is dominated by Yul Brynner as Rameses, a charismatic villainous turn for the ages. The guy wields unlimited power and has not concept of just how much of an asshole he really is, so since childhood I have enjoyed the character and performance that much more by thinking of Ramses as perhaps the only time the screen will ever see the Sub-Mariner's look and overall character perfectly portrayed (despite the only water in the film being the Nile and the Red Sea, neither of which does Rameses live in).

HAPPY 50th ANNIVERSARY, PINK FLAMINGOS (1972)

No lie, one of the movies that changed my life.

 

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the general release of PINK FLAMINGOS, the third feature by legendary groundbraking writer/director John Waters, and I shared it at a screening at my friend Lexi's place. Including myself, there were eight attendees, three of whom had not seen the film. I was somewhat disappointed to see the reaction of the newbs, which was far more reserved than I would have thought. Too bad they did not see it before years of being able to watch any kind of filth imaginable fro the privacy of a laptop. Anyway, when I asked "Well?" at the end, Charlie, the hostess's little brother, simply said "Of all the films I have seen, this one of them."

Consuming a chocolate Ho-Ho, in honor of the film's legendary ending.

 

The classic ending.

WITHDRAWAL

 As seen across the street from my friend and former roommate Patrick's home in Bedford Stuyvesant, the eastern edge where it meets Brownsville and Weeksville. Yes, they got the cash box.

When I was growing up, Bed Stuy was one of the most feared of all NYC neighborhoods, but over the past three decades gentrification has sanded away much of its once-savage edge. However, traces of its hardcore nature are sometimes clearly present.

DELECTABLE WEREWOLF CHOW.

 May 1957 PLAYBOY Playmate Dawn Richard, forever burned into my memory as the high school girl who meets her horrifying fate at the hands of Michael Landon's adolescent wolfman in I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957). I saw that film when I was six, the first werewolf movie I ever saw, and her upside down POV of the slavering monster is one of my favorite shots in all of horror cinema.

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY...NOT

I was thinking back over my torturous years of dealing with the agonies of unchecked all-over atopic dermatitis, which rendered my skin looking like I had been using a chicken joint's deep-fryer as a hot tub, and I recall with horror the time that I was prescribed a cocktail of Gabapentin and Doxepin as a way to relieve the relentless itching and peeling of my skin. I'm no stranger to psychoactive chemicals, but I can say with authority that that combination gave me what I can only describe as an actual out of body experience, coupled with flesh-crawling imagined terrors. From drugs.com:

"Using doxepin together with gabapentin may increase side effects such as dizziness, drowsiness, confusion, and difficulty concentrating. Some people, especially the elderly, may also experience impairment in thinking, judgment, and motor coordination."

I took that combination for a total of three days, after which I took myself off of it and told the prescribing doctors that I refused to continue with that course of treatment. It's the closest thing to what I imagine the worst kind of demonic possession being.

THE LOST CITY (2022)

Bullock and Tatum, up Shit Creek without a paddle. (Actually, a South American jungle, but you get what I mean.)

While caught up in the activity of the past 60 hours, I forgot to mention that Michele and I saw THE LOST CITY the other night. It's as light and fluffy as the trailers portray it to be, but it's also aggressively silly and very, very funny. 

I'm a fan of both Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, and the two have an undeniable chemistry when working opposite one another. Daniel Radcliffe, completely shedding his Harry Potter image, strikes all of the right notes as an unhinged rich kid with major sibling jealous issues, and Brad Pitt steals the movie in an extended cameo as the kind of adventure hero that every guy wants to be, the kind of rugged dude whose mere presence women's panties into a swamp. 

The film knows exactly what it is and aims to be a crowd-pleasing want to spend a night out at the movies, with Channing Tatum being especially fun as a seemingly vapid bohunk romance cover model. He pokes fun at his own beefcake appeal, and for those who enjoy ogling quality man-flesh, you'll get what you want to see, but his masculine perfection is totally deployed for laughs. (The scene with the leeches being the go-to example...) 

Anyway, THE LOST CITY is the very definition of a "popcorn flick," a fun romp and a great date movie.

Poster for the theatrical release.