By Mark | February 5, 2020
One of my favorite actors, the great Kirk Douglas, died today at the age of 103. If you’re stuck at home tomorrow, due to the snow, do yourself a favor and watch him in Billy Wilder’s brilliant film Ace in the Hole. It’s really an amazing piece of work, and more timely now than ever. […]
An old friend of mine who teaches at a public high school in Minnesota just got word that he’s inherited a 12-week elective course on film, and he’s reached out to me, asking if I might help him design the curriculum. All that he’s been given to work with thus far is a list of […]
Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1957, 1974, A Face in the Crowd, Algeria, Algerian War of Independence, Andy Griffith, Blade Runner, bugging, celebrity culture, curriculum, Dan Richardson, documentary film, Donald Trump, Double Indemnity, drifters, Elia Kazan, Eugene McCarthy, film criticism, film history, film school, films, folksy, foreign film, France, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman, Gillo Pontecorvo, Glenn Beck, great films, Harrison Ford, Harry Caul, high school, Hot Channels, House Committee on Un-American Activities, Italy, Lonesome Rhodes, M, Martin Stett, Mildred Pierce, neorealist, populism, privacy, red scare, simple truths, small town America, social media, Sunset Boulevard, surveillance, surveillance culture, terrorism, The Battle of Algiers, The Conversation, The Killing, The Night of the Hunter, torture |
By Mark | October 29, 2013
A few years ago, I decided to invest in a copy of the 1942 Ernst Lubitsch film “To Be or Not to Be” starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. The brilliantly quirky little black comedy, set in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in the run up to WWII, had long been a favorite of mine, and I’d gotten […]
Posted in Other, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1942, black humor, Carole Lombard, Clementine, Ernst Lubitsch, Hitler, Jack Benny, Nazi, political satire, screwball comedy, To Be or Not to Be, when to talk with your kids about the Nazis, WWII |
By Mark | September 17, 2013
Two things happened this week that prompted me to write this post. The world celebrated what would have been Roald Dahl’s 97th birthday, and, a day or two later, my friends Murph and Cara welcomed two beautiful little babies into the world. So, as Linette set off in one direction this evening, to arrange for […]
Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life | Also tagged Arnold Lobel, books, Cara Talaska, children's literature, Eric Carle, Frog and Toad, genocide, Go Ice Cream, Harry Potter, Huckleberry Finn, Laura Ingalls Wilder, life lessons, Little House on the Prairie, Mark Twain, Marquee Moon, Murph, n-word, Native Americans, Richard Murph, Roald Dahl, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Star Wars, The Onion, The Prisoner, Thin Man, Tom Sawyer, truth pond |
Last night, I listened to Marc Maron’s interview with Andy Kaufman’s old writing partner, Bob Zmuda. My sense is that Maron… who has a brilliant podcast, by the way… found the experience somewhat frustrating, as Zmuda insisted on being evasive about a few things, like the circumstances surrounding Andy’s death, and the question as to […]
Posted in Art and Culture, Crimewave USA, Uncategorized | Also tagged Abraham Lincoln, Andy Kaufman, Andy Kaufman Revealed, Andy Warhol, Ben Franklin, Bessie Smith, Bob Zmuda, brilliant comedy, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, Charlie Chaplin, comedy, FDR, gaffer's tape, George Harrison, Gregory Peck, Harriet Tubman, Houdini, J.D. Salinger, Jack Benny, Joey Ramone, Katherine Hepburn, Kurt Vonnegut, Leonardo Da Vinci, Malcolm X, Marc Maron, Mark Twain, Martin Luther King Jr., Myrna Loy, Nicola Tesla, Norman Wexler, Patrick McGoohan, Peter Falk, Robert Kennedy, Stanley Kubrick, tape, taping down penises, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Pynchon, Tim Carey, Tony Clifton, Woody Allen, Woody Guthrie, wrestling, wrestling women |
