'Best of TBH Politoons'
Ralph Cuts The Classics #9
The Sea Hawk
Ralph Cuts the Classics
Since Monday, September 19th was national "Speak Like a Pirate" Day (celebrated in conjunction with the release of the porn spectacular "Pirates", Ralph took one of the more beloved pirate movies of all time, The Sea Hawk, with that old salt himself, Errol Flynn.
So much has written about Flynn's sexual escapades I won't repeat them here except to offer that he was charged with, but eventually acquitted of, raping not one but two teenage girls aboard his yacht, the Sirroco.
"Come here, little girl...hehehehe"
Flynn led the unhappy life of a film star, anointed as the impossible heir to the immortal Douglas Fairbanks, Flynn ended up typecast as a pirate captain. Unhappy in his studio-imposed cell, Flynn blew his life savings on his yacht and his pet project, "William Tell," a magnificent swashbuckling film developed outside the studio system that eventually bankrupted him.
In The Sea Hawk, Flynn is at his swashbuckling best as Captain Geoffrey Thorpe, a privateer in service to Queen Elizabeth, who is played by Flora Robson - who plays the part so well I am tempted to grant her status of the ultimate QE1, even over (gasp) Bette Davis, who also played a weepy, softer Elizabeth opposite Flynn in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.
Thorpe takes a Spanish Galleon containing the Spanish ambassador and his niece. Don José Alvarez de Cordoba is played by Claude Rains, one of Ralph's favorites, but Rains' makeup job has got to be the worst in the history of filmmaking. It's like night of the living ambassadors or something - which is actually an insult to crummy zombie movies.
"I must have brains..."
Flynn is much taken with the fetching Donna, Cordoba's niece, played by Brenda Marshall, chiefly notable because she looks like Mrs. Ralph.
"Flynn was a great actor; he played my love interest even though I had gone through puberty."
Of course, good girls don't go for pirates, but since he gives her jewels back, he can't be that bad a pirate, right? She goes head over heels and prepares to betray Spain to help him avoid an ambush.
Now, the ambush scene bears special mention. The rest of the movie is shot in black and white, with film that Warner Brothers got out of the MGM dumpster. Really low quality. But the ambush, which takes place in Panama, is shot in sepia. I'm not sure why this annoyed me so much, but it does. We can't tell it's hot and sweaty without sepia? Hey, if Houston can shoot The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in black and white, the jungle can also be in black and white. The sepia just makes the jungle look dusty.
Thorpe is captured and sentenced to work on a Spanish galley, rowing - did the Spanish really employ rowers? Don't tell me I don't care. Now, you may think the movie is stuck going down a dark hallway from which it can't emerge without a series of very improbable events - and you'd be right. The escape is so corny and the Spanish sentries are so inept that one actually starts rooting for them, you know, like the Keystone Cops or the Three Stooges. The timing of everything is so perfect that if it were planned it would never come off. Luckily, they didn't plan any of it. Taking the Spanish ship, Thorpe returns to England, where he is subject to arrest. But not before the pirates get to break into song! Singing pirates! This movie has EVERYTHING!
No problemâ€"Donna Maria shows up to whisk him back to the palace, where he avoids capture to deliver to Elizabeth proof of his enemy's disloyalty and encourage her to release all the privateers to defend England from the Armada.
A final word about set designs. Evidently, this movie spent every last dime on the ship sets, because the palace sets are pathetic. Bare walls and obviously painted backdrops. The ship designs are wonderful. It's bizarre to see such Spartan digs for the Queen of England and the King of Spain.
Actually, a final word about man boobs. Errol Flynn had man-boobs? Who knew? Lots of Hollywood teenagers, evidently. Hey, just kidding, he was ACQUITTED! Alan Hale, former opera singer and father of the Skipper from Gilligan's Island, also sports a double-D set of man-titties.
Is this a guy flick? This guy said no. Is it a chick flick? Mrs. Ralph says, "Ew, man-boobs!" I'm not sure why this movie is so beloved. They don't even talk like pirates. Avast.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
GEORGE J. TANBER: 2 Toledo tourists stranded in Louisiana prisons after Katrina
"I thought I was going to die in that jail. I was locked down in a cell made for two with five people, no working toilet, no food, and no protection. People were panicking, breaking windows, setting fires - anything to try to get someone's attention from the outside. No one knew if we were forgotten. Three days later they [authorities] cut the jail bars and let us out. The water was up to my chest. I was drinking that water for a day and a half. It was filthy and contaminated. But I did not know what else I could do. I wanted to live."
Molly Ivins: Breaking the 1st Commandment of Governing (AlterNet)
Reagan promised to rid the nation of waste, fraud and abuse. Bush and his cronies have turned waste, fraud and abuse into national policy.
Sean Gonsalves: The 'Blame Game?' It's Called Accountability (AlterNet)
''The blame game?'' Game implies sport and fun. There's nothing particularly sporty or fun about the breakdown of government and civil society in the Gulf Coast. Stop the blame? You can't preach personal responsibility out of one side of your mouth and ''stop the blame game'' out the other and still expect people to take you seriously.
Books, Looks, and Schnooks
David McCorkhill: "Is it my imagination, or has it become the primary agenda of the modern Republican Party to create an American aristocracy? Based on their proposals for the estate tax, I could easily devise a family tax shelter for a super-wealthy clan (mere millionaires need not apply) which would virtually guarantee a large supply of money for all heirs at a vanishingly small tax rate (especially if the long-time dream of GOP tax-policy strategists of eliminating the tax on dividends were to be realized). It seems like some of these people are out to create a class of people supported by the rest of us who neither work nor pay taxes. Sounds like aristocracy to me."
ROGER EBERT: Nanook of the North (1922) (A Great Movie)
There is an astonishing sequence in Robert J. Flaherty's "Nanook of the North" (1922) in which his hero, the Inuit hunter Nanook, hunts a seal. Flaherty shows the most exciting passage in one unbroken shot. Nanook knows that seals must breathe every 20 minutes, and keep an air hole open for themselves in the ice of the Arctic winter. He finds such a hole, barely big enough to be seen and is poised motionless above it with his harpoon until a seal rises to breathe. Then he strikes and holds onto the line as the seal plunges to escape.
Goodbye to Bag End
Mind Like a Lumber Room
September 29 - It's been a week since Frodo's birthday and already so much has happened. The hobbits were captured by a barrow wight the night before. Today, they are rescued by Tom Bombadil. This is one of the key moments in the whole book, and it was virtually left out of the movie (actually, glossed over). Tom takes from the barrow mound four daggers of ancient make and gives them to the hobbits. These daggers were made by men of Westernesse in their wars with the witch king of Angmar, aka the leader of the Nazgul. Later, it is Merry's dagger that wounds the witch king and makes it possible for Eowyn to kill he who cannot be killed by the hand of man. Without that dagger, Eowyn would have died, Gondor would have fallen, and with Gondor defeated, Sauron could have bent all his power on finding the ring, thus making it unlikely that Frodo could ever have reached the mountain of fire.
And people say the Bombadil chapters are pointless.
Gandalf arrives in Hobbiton and speaks with the Gaffer. The hobbits arrive in Bree and join up with Aragorn, who convinces them to not stay in their rooms, thus saving the book from an early and disappointing end when the Inn of the Prancing Pony is attacked. Black Riders also attack Frodo's house at Crickhollow and learn he is not there. The hobbits survive but their ponies are driven off.
Mind Like a Lumber Room
Hubert's Poetry Corner
Oral Pleasure
Please, please NEVER allow Alberto Gonzales and his vaunted 'Porn Squad' to read this. They may begin to speak in 'tongues' or, worse yet, just skip the speaking part and go directly to 'tongue'!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Hot & dry.
Because of the fire in the Valley there has been no local news - just hours & hours of fire 'coverage' & incredibly banal blatherings.
But the stations are still breaking for commercials - if it was a really serious situation, there'd be no ads.
Heard one guy thank god that his electric gate opened so the fire fighters could come in to save his mansion. He used the word mansion.
Good thing god had nothing more pressing to deal with than opening his gate.
Reunite After 25 Years
Barbra Streisand & Barry Gibb
Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb hadn't worked together in 25 years. But Gibb still knew the best way to express what Streisand was thinking - especially when it came to the war in Iraq.
The result was "Stranger in a Strange Land," written by Gibb for Streisand's new album, "Guilty Pleasures."
While the album contains romantic duets and ballads tailor-made for the legend's soaring voice, "Stranger In a Strange Land" may be the most compelling track simply because of its subject matter. Though it never mentions Iraq, its message is clear from the opening verse: "You may be someone else's sweetheart, fighting someone else's war, and if you suffer for the millions, then it's what you're fighting for."
Of course, Streisand, a liberal Democrat, has never been one to shy away from politics. She regularly updates her Web site with scathing missives against the Bush administration and articles that underscore her views.
Barbra Streisand & Barry Gibb
Desk To Auction
Johnny Carson
The rosewood desk Johnny Carson sat behind for countless celebrity interviews is among several "Tonight Show" items headed for the auction block.
In April, Heritage Galleries sold Carson's on-air microphone at auction for $50,787.
Other memorabilia up for grabs: a studio clock, a 3-foot-square section of flooring Carson stood on to deliver his monologue from August 1985 to May 1992, and audio recordings he made in 1949 at the University of Nebraska for his senior thesis, "How to Write Comedy for Radio."
Johnny Carson
Plunge 96 Percent
Indecency Complaints
The number of indecency complaints against television and radio broadcasters plummeted more than 96 percent during the second quarter, according to data released by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday.
The agency reported receiving 6,161 complaints about indecency between April and June, versus 157,016 complaints during the first quarter, the agency said in its quarterly update.
FCC spokeswoman Rosemary Kimball would not comment on the reason for the decline or what prompted the number of complaints during the first three months of 2005.
Indecency Complaints
War Musical Premieres in Denmark
'Let's Kick Ass!'
A musical about the Iraq war, "Let's Kick Ass!", was to open in Copenhagen, featuring a satirical depiction of US resident George W. Bush and his faithful ally in Iraq, Danish Premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
"Let's Kick Ass!", a reference to a Bush quote, is an adaption of British musical "Follow My Leader" by Alistair Beaton, which targets Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The show, sung in Danish, gives a satirical account of a White House breakfast, a meeting of CIA agents Laurel and Hardy at the Pentagon, features the "tropical paradise" at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, and gives a biting account of the Danish parliament's narrow vote in favour of sending troops to Iraq.
'Let's Kick Ass!'
World's Favorite Song
Queen
We Are The Champions by Queen has been voted the world's favourite song in a global poll of 700,000 music fans.
The 1977 single kept Toxic by Britney Spears in second place, followed by Michael Jackson's Billie Jean.
Hotel California by The Eagles was ranked fourth, followed by Latin American singer Shakira with her international hit La Tortura.
Nirvana's grunge anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit was sixth.
Queen
'Prison Break,' 'The Office'
Renewals
Wednesday was a happy day for producers of Fox's "Prison Break" and "American Dad," NBC's "The Office" and USA Network's "The 4400."
Fox ordered nine episodes each of taut drama "Prison Break," which led the charge for network this season, and animated comedy "Dad," bringing their complement to a full season's worth of 22 episodes.
NBC confirmed it has given the green light to produce seven additional episodes of "The Office," bringing the total for the offbeat comedy's sophomore year to 13 episodes.
USA signed up for a second 13-episode season of the Emmy-nominated "4400," a sci-fi saga about the reappearance of 4,400 people who were previously reported missing or dead but suddenly returned to Earth with mysterious powers.
Renewals
Rabbi Donates Collection
Jewish Americana
For the past 25 years, Rabbi Peter L. Schweitzer has collected Jewish Americana: rabbi postcards, neon kosher hot-dog signs, bar mitzvah photographs and tins of Passover candy. Now Schweitzer, leader of The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in New York City and a one-man museum, has donated his collection of more than 10,000 items to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, which plans an exhibit next year.
The museum has borrowed extensively from the collection over the years to stage several exhibits. Now, its acquisition "will make our lives so much easier," said Gwen Goodman, the museum's executive director.
The bulk of the collection covers the years from 1880 to 1950, but it also includes a few earlier items - newspaper ads for Jewish-owned businesses that date from the mid-18th century - as well as more recent finds, like a poster of a young woman with a purple mohawk that proclaims, "I survived a Jewish mother."
Jewish Americana
Breaks Out Lawsuit
Danny Bonaduce
Danny Bonaduce on Wednesday sued Los Angeles radio personality Jamie White, his former cohort at 98.7 Star FM, for allegedly slandering him on air while he was in rehab last May.
The former Partridge Family fixture claims White, who still cohosts a morning show for Star, lied about him showing up high for work, and is seeking compensatory and punitive damages from her.
He also claims White dissed him by claiming that the station couldn't insure him because of substance abuse issues, that he cursed out his daughter in front of coworkers and that he chose to go into drug treatment because it would make for good TV.
Danny Bonaduce
New Opera
'Doctor Atomic'
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams's latest opera ends with the biggest bang of all -- the detonation of the first A-bomb in the New Mexican desert in a test that changed the world.
Adams, who has a reputation for writing works "ripped from the headlines," has taken on his biggest challenge yet in "Doctor Atomic," a tale of the conflicts Manhattan Project head J. Robert Oppenheimer suffered as he oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb.
The 2-1/2-hour work premieres on Saturday at the San Francisco Opera and it has become one of the opera world's most hotly anticipated events. Adams' previous two operas -- "Nixon in China" and "The Death of Klinghoffer" -- stirred political controversy, especially the latter work, about the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro which outraged both Palestinian and Jewish groups.
'Doctor Atomic'
Erotic Prints Exhibited
Rembrandt
If you haven't seen this side of Rembrandt--and most people haven't--get ready to be shocked, astonished and even a tiny bit titillated. A new exhibition of prints at the British Museum in London is causing a stir because it includes rarely displayed erotic prints by the Dutch Old Master. The scenes range from a virtuous Joseph resisting the advances of Potiphar's wife to a couple in flagrante delicto in "The French Bed."
Though scholars have generally avoided the sexual side of Rembrandt, he himself seems to have felt equally comfortable depicting both spiritual and earthy subjects. He was working within a tradition of erotic subject matter that was well established in the fine arts by the 17th century. The curator of the show, Martin Royalton-Kisch, notes that Rembrandt's contribution to the genre was far from pornographic. "He draws the subjects with amusement and tenderness rather than with a view to stimulating anybody," says Royalton-Kisch.
That may be the case, but past curators clearly thought otherwise. For years, they simply consigned Rembrandt's erotic prints to the storeroom; even recent catalogs of his print oeuvre fail to mention their existence. Rembrandt only produced four or five prints that fall within the description of erotica, and they were not widely distributed in his lifetime. The current show at the British Museum is the first time they have been on public display in England.
Rembrandt
Long-Lost First Novel To Be Published
Truman Capote
Truman Capote's long-lost first novel "Summer Crossing," discovered among a cache of the author's papers last year, will be published next month, Random House said on Thursday.
Random House publisher Gina Centrello said the manuscript of "Summer Crossing," which Capote began in 1943, was among the papers in a box of documents put up for sale in late 2004 through Sotheby's by a relative of Capote's former housesitter. Capote apparently thought the manuscript had been destroyed.
The manuscript, comprising four handwritten notebooks with many corrections and a sheaf of loose leaf notes, is now kept at the New York Public Library.
Truman Capote
Vetoes Gay Marriage Bill
$chwarzenegger
California Gov. Arnold $chwarzenegger (R-Philanderer) in a widely expected move vetoed a bill on Thursday that would have allowed gay couples to marry.
The Republican governor had earlier this month indicated he would veto the bill passed by California's Democrat-led legislature. The bill was the first of its kind approved by a state legislature.
$chwarzenegger
Broadband Connection
Electric Outlet
The common electric socket will serve as your home's connection to broadband with a new chip developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. - doing away with all the Ethernet cables or the hassle of hooking up to a wireless network device.
Products are still being developed, but gadgets embedded with the chip from the Japanese manufacturer of Panasonic products can hook up to a broadband network by plugging into the common electrical outlet, company officials said Thursday.
The technology has been around for some time - including in the United States - but Matsushita's system is unique in that it delivers fast-speed broadband information at up to 170 megabits per second, which is faster than Ethernet.
Electric Outlet
Checks Into Rehab
Kate Moss
Two British newspapers reported Thursday that Kate Moss has checked into a rehabilitation clinic in Arizona.
Friends of the 31-year-old supermodel who was photographed apparently snorting cocaine told The Times that Moss flew to The Meadows clinic, where she will spend a month in "medical treatment and therapy."
Kate Moss
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