A message from Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders. Democratic Convention, Chicago, 1968.

 
Loyal, goon-like GOP mouthpiece Sean Hannity posted on his blog that he will be making a cameo appearance in the upcoming Atlas Shrugged Part Two, portraying someone who “may be a character close to home.”

An overconfident, self-important frat-boy dim-wit? I can’t imagine he’s got all that much of a range… although he’d be great in a Planet of the Apes movie.

Salon’s Jillian Rayfield mentions that the critically savaged first installment of the Atlas Shrugged screen adaptation made just $4.6 million at the domestic box office on a production budget of some $20 million:

“That’s the free market at work, folks. Maybe next time the producers should ask for an NEA grant.”

That would make them “moochers,” Jillian, and not merely losers. The first Atlas Shrugged film has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 11%. Atlas Shrugged Part Two is released on October 12th.
 

 
In celebration of Sky Movies 007 HD launching on October 5—yes, an all-James Bond channel—here’s some fancy editing of all six Bonds pitted against each other in one glorious car chase scene.

The footage used is from Dr No, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me, The Living Daylights, Goldeneye, The World Is Not Enough and Quantum of Solace. 
 

 
Via High Definite

 
Bang a gong, get your T-Rextasy on with this little-known promo clip for 1974’s “Light of Love” single.

Light of Love was Marc Bolan’s sole US-only album and came out on Casablanca Records. It was a flop and ended his attempts to crack the American market. It was also his first album without Tony Visconti and it shows. The soul-influenced Light of Love used to be for sale in cut-out bins across America for 50 cents back in the day and you can still find used copies sealed at flea markets. The songs from Light of Love appeared as Bolan’s Zip Gun in the UK in 1975, his least successful release there.
 

 
Two great tastes that taste great together, here’s an inspired musical pairing of two of pop’s most famous “belters,” Tom Jones and Janis Joplin, performing “Raise You Hand” in 1969 on the This is Tom Jones TV series.

Crazy good stuff on display here. Crazy good.
 

 
Esteemed singer, songwriter, producer and musician Joe South died of a heart attack yesterday at the age of 72 at his home outside of Atlanta.

Early in his career as a studio musician, South played guitar on Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” and Tommy Roe’s “Sheila” and the quietly throbbing bass lines of Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” from 1966’s Blonde on Blonde. As a performer, South was known best for his 1969 Grammy-winner “Games People Play” and “Walk A Mile In My Shoes” (covered by the likes of Elvis, Bryan Ferry and Coldcut).

Other hit records that South wrote include Billy Joe Royal’s “Down in the Boondocks,” Deep Purple’s “Hush,” and “Yo-Yo” by the Osmonds. His biggest hit, the monster crossover county-pop classic he penned for singer Lynn Anderson in 1971, “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden” will probably be remembered until the end of time. Rest in peace, Joe South.
 

 
Today is the “birthday” of the launch of the Voyager 1, the farthest traveling man-made object we have sent into space to date and an amazing piece of research equipment that continues to provide us with immeasurably meaningful information about our universe.  If you’re one of those arty nerd types like myself (who frankly, always had trouble with physics), you may well know it as the “Noah’s Arc” of mankind. Voyager 1 contained “The Golden Record”, a collection of mathematical equations, music, speech, and sounds that could someday be the first representative of humans to other life-forms, (“Murmurs of Earth - The Voyager Interstellar Record” has a more in depth assessment of the content). Ann Druyan (whose brain and body sounds are also on the record), was head of the Voyager Interstellar Message Project, the initiative behind the cultural message in a bottle. In one of the most lovely science romances of all time (I dare you to think of a better one), she and Carl Sagan fell in love over their mutual work on the project.  They were married until his death in 1996.

And now, some words from my favorite pothead, waxing romantic on the universe, from his Cosmos: Carl Sagan series, co-written with Druyan.
 

 
So rarely have I ever been quite beautifully claw hammered by a movie than I was by the 1965 film, Who Killed Teddy Bear? It’s one of those films that can leave you slack jawed over what you have just seen and all the while it just seeps further and further into your consciousness. It’s been days since I last watched it and I still cannot stop thinking about it.

The basic plot revolves around a young, beautiful DJ and aspiring actress, Norah (Juliet Prowse), who soon becomes the focal point of a stalker. He starts off as a creaky voiced, hot and heavy breathing obscene phone caller, making comments like “I know what you look like right now” and “I can make you feel like a real woman.” She’s annoyed at first but gets progressively more rattled as the number of calls grow and violence starts to blossom around her.

Where things get really interesting is that instead of building up the identity of Norah’s mystery obsessive to the very end, we find out who he is midway through the film. The lithe but muscular figure, often shiny with sweat and clad in white briefs, turns out to be the boyishly handsome busboy, Lawrence (Sal Mineo), who works with her at the discotheque. The jolt of seeing former teen idol and Rebel Without a Cause star Mineo as the sexually damaged obscene phone caller with homicidal tendencies is as strong now as it must have been back when it was originally released.

But Mineo’s performance is much more than just a teen dream novelty. He brings some serious depth and layers to Lawrence, creating a character who is alternately sad and frightening, mostly due to his childhood rooted dysfunction. Whether he is taking his mentally challenged sister to the zoo or working out with an intensity that precedes either the hottest sex act or the worst murder, Mineo is a powerhouse here. His Lawrence is right up there with Anthony Perkins in Psycho and John Amplas’s titular role in George Romero’s Martin.

The film itself is a powder keg of beautifully moody B&W cinematography and the grimy underbelly of the human condition. The opening credit sequence alone sets the tone, featuring a blurry undulation of bodies as a little girl watches, clutching her cherished teddy bear. She turns away, only to fall down the stairs, with her face now suddenly blank, as if she is dead or brain damaged. Without a breath of relief, the actual film starts in a cramped, shadowy bedroom, complete with a nightstand littered with lurid publications, featuring titles like French Frills and When She Was Bad. A mirror reflects the image of a man caressing his bare chest while looking at photos of Norah, right before calling her up.

The elements of sleaze continue as Norah encounters police Lieutenant Dave Madden (Jan Murray), a single dad whose fascination with all manners of sexual deviancy infects his home life. (At one point, one of his coworkers mentions how Dave’s young daughter talks like a “vice squad officer.”) Even Norah’s boss, the glamorous ball buster Marian (Elaine Stritch), comes across like an uneasy mixture of maternal and less than pure motive. We even get some now-historic footage of a seamier New York City, with the highlight being Lawrence’s jaunt to an adult bookstore. Seeing shelves lined with girlie mags and books ranging from Fanny Hill, William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch, Hubert Selby Jr.‘s Last Exit to Brooklyn to more purple prose titles like Dance Hall Dyke and My Naughty, Naughty Life is a much beloved peek into the pre-gentrification and Disneyfication of Times Square. 

Who Killed Teddy Bear? is a brave film that gives you no easy answers. Sadly, it didn’t really do a thing for anyone that was involved, career-wise. Mineo did continue to do film, TV and theater work, including staging a controversial version of the prison drama Fortune and Men’s Eyes that featured a young Don Johnson. All of that was cut short in 1976, when he was murdered by a drifter. Elaine Stritch continues to be a monolithic character actress on Broadway, film and TV. Juliet Prowse, Jan Murray and Daniel J. Travanti, who has the small role of Carlo, Marian’s deaf bouncer, all went on to have healthy careers in television. The same could be said for director Joseph Cates, though perhaps that is the biggest shame given that he never was given the chance again to direct anything as nuanced and challenging as Who Killed Teddy Bear?. In an ideal world, this film should have forged a different career direction for Cates and certainly for Mineo, whose wounded eyes and brutal actions are hard to forget.

Who Killed Teddy Bear? is ripe for proper rediscovery. It’s a mystery why this great film is still not available legally on DVD here in the US. (It did get a release in the UK, though that appears to already be out-of-print.) It is viewable on YouTube, for anyone who does not have access to the UK, PAL formatted disc. Hopefully, it will someday get the proper release that it so justly deserves.
 

 
Multi-award-winning author and graphic artist, Hervé Bourhis has produced a beautiful illustrated history of the world’s most famous pop group, The Beatles Graphic.

The Beatles’ story maybe as well known as certain Biblical tales, but Bourhis’ approach has made the whole saga - from their births, through early years and successful careers, to the untimely deaths of Lennon and Harrison, and up to present day lives and careers of McCartney and Starr - fresh and compelling. Bourhis has written the text, reviewed all of the discs, and drawn the fabulous illustrations to this delightful, fascinating and heartfelt biography.

Already available in the UK, The Beatles Graphic will be released in the US on November 1st. It’s a must for Beatles’s fans and for anyone interested in the history of modern music.

The Beatles Graphic available form the Omnibus Press.
 

 

 
Bonus pix plus video of French language video of Hervé Bourhis, after the jump…
 

 
Don’t ask me why, but the wife and I were just having a conversation about the lame mid-1970s group Angel. Remember them?

Angel was a heavy metal progressive glam rock band from Washington, D.C., who were discovered by Gene Simmons. The group was formed in the mid-70s by pouty pretty-boy guitarist Punky Meadows and bassist Mickie Jones and their gimmick, basically, was that they dressed in all white and were extremely androgynous. Simmons got them signed to Casablanca Records and generally speaking, they were considered the “opposite” of Kiss.

Or something. I never followed them, and paid them no mind, but I did find them vaguely amusing. At times Angel sounded like a 1970s version of what would later become the 1980s hair metal sound, at other times like The Sweet would if their songs sucked, and sometimes they even sounded like Supertramp. There is no doubt that Angel influenced This Is Spinal Tap. None at all.

Punky Meadows was disrespectfully immortalized in Frank Zappa’s “Punky’s Whips” but was a good sport about it and even joined Zappa onstage in his white Angel stage garb.

Below, “The Tower,” a song well-known on 70s FM radio:
 

 
After the jump, a 1978 TV commercial for Angel…