Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Something/Someone Old 222old.jpg

My Something Old this week is this little cult gem from the early eighties:

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I freaking *love* this movie, and I'm not sure I can tell you why. Of course, I can tell you that the sets are marvelous--as my mom said, "There's nothing that's NOT atmospheric about this movie:"

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I love it when directors care what their movie looks like. I know, I know, all directors--well, most of them--care about that. But in some movies, the visuals truly look like works of art. I'm not saying this movie is comparable to Werner Herzog's Nosferatu, or Zhang Yimou's Hero. It is to those movies what truly great graffiti art would be to the impressionists. It doesn't matter to me, though, whether the visual art is lowbrow or highbrow--just that it's well done. And this is.

They called this movie "a rock and roll fable," and it is rather like a fairy tale, if the fairy tale in question had crash-landed on a little-known noir film from the 50s. The main plot is not what draws me to it, and though Diane Lane and Michael Pare did perfectly competent jobs on their characters, as the beauty who gets captured by the bad guy and her roving soldier ex-boyfriend aka the bad boy hero who saves her, it's not the leads that remain in the mind after the movie is over. This little movie is star-studded: Willem Dafoe plays the unfortunately dressed but still menacing bad guy who kidnaps the girl so he can have sex with her for a couple of weeks before dropping her (my mom said, "He looks like what would happen if a naked man decided to go fishing:"

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Rick Moranis plays her mercenary, geeky manager/new boyfriend:

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and Amy Madigan gives the performance of the film as the tough, funny sidekick the hero picked up in a bar. The part had been conceived for Edward James Olmos, and the director wanted Madigan to read the part of Cody's sister. She insisted on reading the part of McCoy, a tough, hard-drinking, cigar-smoking Army veteran, and she did it so well they had to cast her. She stole the show.

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If you’ve never seen Streets of Fire, the first thing you must understand is that there’s nothing like it. Despite featuring the convergence of a multitude of generational talent (the film’s stars include Willem Dafoe, Bill Paxton, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, and Diane Lane, with Jimmy Iovine as the soundtrack’s primary producer) it was a box-office bomb; its legacy today is very much that of a cult film. By his own account, Hill made the film in an attempt to create what his teenage self would have considered a perfect movie — something with “custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high-speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets, and questions of honor.”

It's a fun ride.

Something New
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I rarely put up my periscope, musically speaking, spending most of my time deep in the past. This track makes me think better of that stance. Maybe I should break surface more often. Damn, Shannon Lay! What an awesome piece of work. Extra points for doing something new and lovely in folk music, probably the second-least "cool" musical genre around (next to bluegrass). Have I mentioned that I love folk music and bluegrass?

Many thanks to the Pitchfork website for bringing this song to my attention.

https://pitchfork.com/best/

Apparently Lay has been both a folk and a punk artist. Woman after my own heart. Her previous work in bands includes time with Facts on File and a band I'd never heard of called Feels.

By the way, I'd be remiss if I didn't include something very new indeed: there's a commemorative stamp coming out for Ursula LeGuin. LeGuin is one of those authors that you read your whole life through. Her work has grown with me since I was about 13, and it's still not exhausted. She is one of my moral touchstones.

The background of the stamp is a scene from her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, set on a winter-bound planet peopled by an ambisexual folk called the Gethenians. For those who know the book, those small figures are Therem Harth and Genly Ai struggling across the Gobrin Ice.

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Something Borrowed
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Now, I would not have the guts to cover Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You." Finding out that somebody actually set out to record a cover of that song reminds of the time my friend Vic from grad school told me he was writing a novel. "About what?" I asked. "Well, it's a rewriting of the Odyssey," he replied.

I know I said something in response, but my brain was slackjawed. You're going to rewrite a story already told by both Homer and James Joyce?

I felt an echo of that moment when I found "A Case of You" on a list of best-ever covers.

But it works.

I hope somewhere, my friend Vic, whom I have not seen in over twenty years, has had a similar success with his novel!

The following was NOT on any of the lists of best covers I found--a sad failure of judgement on the parts of the listmakers! Get a load of The Lottery Winners' take on Nickelback's song "Rockstar:"

Nickelback were so delighted with the cover that they made a full-length video with The Lottery Winners. If you're feeling down at all, put this on. You'll feel better:

Something Blue
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I love Steven Kenny, who is what I think of as a magical realist painter, though I guess technically he'd be considered a surrealist. (He also happens to work at the Salvador Dali Museum as a docent, so, yeah, I guess he is a surrealist!) His paintings combine human figures and mechanisms with the natural world in truly lovely and startling ways. I like him much better than Dali, actually.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

How are you doing today?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

math.PNG

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enhydra lutris's picture

@gjohnsit
as opposed to the poster's math that is problematic, leading others to suspect willful misinterpretation or smart-assery. "only successful post-election lawsuit" is not the same as "only successful lawsuit". Even if one reads and speaks mostly casual, sloppy, slanguage based stuff, one should never elide a single word of a law, judicial decision, or anything that an attorney writes. That's beyond common sense, it is both dogma and legal doctrine. Short form: Words have meaning

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris
But how many "lawsuits on behalf of the President's reelection" do you think happened BEFORE the election?
I'm guessing zero, or nearly zero.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@gjohnsit

most of the ones I know of were lost by team trump.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Dawn's Meta's picture

k.d. lang. It knocked me out. Your Steve Kenny painting is magical. Thanks for that too.

I'll see if we can find that movie, now that we know about it. We are very curious.

[video:https://youtu.be/q7ojP9cHsAg]

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Dawn's Meta

Just remember, it's a bit campy/kitschy.

I love it, but it's not High Art (tm).

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1 user has voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

but the stills are all evocative. I see allusions to Nighthawks and The Wild One immediately, plus a faint allusion to The French Connection, and others that I can't quite bring in beyond the shot of Ms. Madigan looking very Sherlockian.

Very nice painting at the end which I see as surrealist, but a very realistic surrealism.

The rockstar sea shanty made my morning.

It's a bit cool here today, only supposed to get to the seventies, which is good. Too bad a have a stack of largely indoor priority chores and such to do before I can pop outside for very long. Somehow the year now a wee bit over 53% done; how the hell did that happened and where was I when it did, that's what I want to know. Yo ho ho, wot? or is that wat?

Be well and have a good one

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4 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris

One of the main things that makes Streets of Fire so enjoyable is that the director/writer (I think) has most of the same references and, if you will, mythological structure, that many of us who are Boomers or Gen X have. We've seen this story before, but that just makes it better. The particular little tweaks and business that the artists add to the standard roles is what makes it special.

A little like what the old repertory theater was like, I expect, but with slightly less rigidly defined roles.

I hope I'm making sense here!

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
the repertory theater reference.

be well and have a good one

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2 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

travelerxxx's picture

I've seen snippets, bits and pieces, maybe a half an hour straight, of Streets of Fire. Don't believe I've ever watched the whole thing, but I may have. You're right to highlight it. It always took something really pressing for me to take my eyes off it whenever it would show up on TV. Considering that I seldom watch TV and almost never can sit through a movie, it obviously left a mark. Something about it is mesmerizing and it always seemed a bit of a cinematic hallmark to me. Evidently not to many others – I had no idea it is considered a flop.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@travelerxxx

and The Princess Bride were also flops, so it's in good company.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@travelerxxx

The sets, perhaps?

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1 user has voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I wish I could find a video or DVD.

How do you figure Princess Bride for a flop? It is part of our cultural memory now. "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means." Robin Wright was just 18 I think. Finally, finally, a fantasy movie in which the female lead doesn't, isn't required to, play her role as a sex symbol.

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Mary Bennett

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Nastarana

There's a lot of "flops" that I love dearly and remember better than some massive box-office successes.

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2 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

words "New York Times bestselling novel" on a book cover, I tend to conclude the book is not worth reading.

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Mary Bennett

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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0 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver