FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY (SHIRLEY TEMPLE)

It's funny how time slips away.

  Reading this AP article (Link) makes me think there are others (besides Willie Nelson, of course, and me and thee) who feel this way.

  Shirley Temple's passing seems to mark the certain ending of something, the 20th century, perhaps.

  She was as much a part of its essential fabric as Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill, who were, of course, born in the 1800s.

  Margaret O'Brien's and June Lockhart's comments in the piece are touching and charming, but so, particularly, are the ones spoken by Shirley's fellow thespians George Clooney, Kevin Costner and Bob Balaban, and also those of Marc Grossman, Cesar Chavez's speechwriter.  These gentlemen are all vocal political liberals, but Democratic/Republican differences did not cause them to withhold their praise (and express as best they could their awe) of Shirley Temple and her talent, achievement and good character.  The actors' words are especially touching "pro"-to-"pro" (as Variety would say) send-offs.

  It's good that former president George H.W. Bush weighed in and Nancy Reagan also.

  Barack Obama, usually present and accounted for at showbiz celebrity death time, is notably absent.  That doesn't surprise me one bit.  I remember reading how this vain man thought that his speeches would soon wind up carved into stone pediments and pillars.  I doubt that will happen anytime soon.  In the meantime, there's this (Link).  Bowdown yourself.

But Shirley Temple's work will endure. It even survived (and triumphed over) colorization.


Willie Nelson: Funny How Time Slips Away (Link) 

[1]  I am inclined to suggest that the poet Ted Berrigan’s passing in 1983 also indicated the conclusion of the 20^th century, and the time when modernism, something I believe in and understand, transformed (or so they say) into post-modernism, something I "disbelieve in."  I was too busy, foggy and fearful in 1983 to take stock of this. Il faut être absolument moderne.

ANTI-GRAVITY (MOVIE REVIEW)

Small, water-dwelling, segmented micro-animals with eight legs, waterbears are really something.

One of the most complex of all known polyextremophiles, they can thrive in physically or geochemically extreme conditions that would be detrimental to most life on Earth. 

They can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, pressures about 6 times stronger than pressures found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a person, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce.

But could they survive more than a single viewing of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, the astonishingly bad, but incredibly popular, space junk soap opera currently orbiting US and international multiplexes?  I have my doubts.

Jane and I saw Gravity this afternoon.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, in this superficial, clichéd melodrama, says or shows anything that wasn't expressed or implied more economically, elegantly and powerfully in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially beginning with the scene in that film where HAL 9000 murders astronaut Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) and astronaut Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea in his finest role) confronts and corrects the situation.

2001 is a brave, passionate, but unsentimental work, which like many of Kubrick’s films affirms the enduring nature of human dignity (however flawed the ultimate results of human efforts) achieved through determination, diligence and active intelligence.  Character is revealed through action rather than over-explanation and gassy discourse and digression.  To paraphrase Kubrick’s immortal Colonel Bat Guano from Dr. Strangelove, Gravity is a movie that went into combat with a lot of loose change in its pocket.   George Clooney’s Rip Torn-as-Patches O’Houlihan (DodgeBall) homage is unintentionally hilarious Best Supporting Actor Oscar-bait, as they say.  Rip was robbed in that department, giving a far superior performance as the Knute Rockne of dodgeball.

Space was integral to 2001’s drama, as it was to Forbidden Planet, the Alien series, and even to the less potent Star Wars sagas.   Gravity is simply a kitchen sink potboiler that could just as easily been set in a tenement apartment building, at a business office or on a psychiatrist’s couch.  Space and especially weightlessness are used as flimsy, overly-symbolic props, reminding me of the teary, vaprous Tennessee Williams dramas I endlessly endured in high school productions. 

Poor Water Bear.  Change the channel, little fellow.  DodgeBall’s starting in a few minutes.

James Bond Speaks (I Listen)

Daniel Craig as "Will Atenten" in "Dream House"

Daniel Craig: Pols are 'sh**heads' By: Tim Mak   December 26, 2011

Actor Daniel Craig put on a display of straight-talk that might have endeared him to voters had he been on the campaign trail, telling Men’s Journal that politicians are “sh**heads” who “stab you in the f**king back.” “Politicians are sh*theads,” he said in an interview that appears in the January edition of the magazine, which is on newsstands now. “That’s how they become politicians, even the good ones. We’re actors, we’re artists, we’re very nice to each other. They’ll turn around and stab you in the f**cking back.” Craig said that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had done unprecedented outreach to celebrities, but that he had turned off to the idea. “Tony Blair started it much more than anybody’s ever done. ‘Go and have tea at 10 Downing Street’,” he said. “…You immediately are aligning yourself with a political party.” The “James Bond” and “Girl With A Dragon Tattoo” actor said that he doesn’t have the grasp of knowledge to articulately speak on politics, unlike fellow actor George Clooney. “George has his finger on the political pulse, and he’s one of those guys who can get up and talk, and I don’t have that,” Craig said. “If someone shoves a microphone in your face and says, ‘Explain yourself,’ you have to have a 100 percent understanding of why you’re doing it, and unless you’re 100 percent, don’t f**king do it, leave it alone, let your work speak for itself.” Craig also talks about what’s it’s like to be under a microscope because of his celebrity. “I’m not a politician - you don’t need to know everything about me, you don’t get to see my tax returns,” he says. “If you sell yourself and give yourself up and share your innermost secrets, don’t be surprised when that bites you in the end.”

© 2011 POLITICO LLC NOTE:  A little unseasonal, but what of it?   I mean, we're practically post-season (although we  leave our Christmas tree up until January 14th.)  Straight-ish talk from the usually excellent   Daniel Craig,  who makes a pretty good James Bond,  I think.   I even liked him in  Dream House.   Personally, I think he's just being diplomatic about George Clooney, who recently suggested that the Democratic party could and should "market and sell" the 2009-2011 period as   "three pretty good years."  (Probably true if you're George Clooney from Lake Como, who probably already owns that personal triumphal arch (link)  I've been  dreaming about for so long.)    I mean -- would you like to live through another three years like the past triplet? All that being said, the shaken vodka martini is a cloudy dilute abomination that is not even a martini.  And I have no idea whatsoever what Daniel is driving at in the second sentence of the second paragraph.  If you can figure it out, I'll meet you (and stand you) a martini.