Stonyford, Red Bluff, Corning...

...

Dang!

Just heard the sad news, that the historic -- opened 1931, no lie! -- one-screen movie house in the city of Colusa has been closed as a cinema-screening theater (complete with an old-timey box office)  since March 6th. Colusa itself is long-storied and otherwise still thriving, as it has been since the 19th century along the Sacramento river (boats used to haul people to their second homes there from San Francisco, through the bay and up through the delta, long ago...) -- despite the fact that the I-5 has changed so much else of California over the past many decades it's existed.

I wish there was some way someone could help (yes, they are still available for private parties and such, but dang...) I just saw STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE (2016) there in December, right around the time one of my greatest faves Carrie Fisher passed...

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You'll Never Want to Leave the Theatre...

Here's A Tip

I would encourage the younger guys -- guys who served in Afghanistan and Iraq -- to watch FIRST BLOOD (1982).  Excellent movie for them.

(See?  Huh?  That'll teach you to be homeless and a veteran...)

A Blow To Tweaker Pride

What shame!  What ignominy!  I'm not sure I can ever show my face in public or private or among hallucinated voices ever again...  There I was, so haughty and full of myself, exultant in my victory, thinking the whole time during production that I alone had been cast as the lead in the exciting, groundbreaking DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE II:  METHPOCALYPSE!, when in fact, as I found out during the well-attended screening, that all along I was a bit player billed far down the credits as "Anonymous Terrified Hot Bitch From The 70s #5."  I was more mortified than if I had been Courtney Love turned down for the role of Nancy Spungeon, after she had seen her own lackluster acting thrown into sharp relief onscreen as a second banana she had originally esteemed herself as better than.   At least she still has her hubris, delusion, and self-righteous indignation, whereas I now find myself bereft of every comfort.

Oh, painful reality!  Oh humiliation!

From Great Moments In Cinema

Charlie Chaplin's speech at the end of the film, "The Great Dictator":

"I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

"Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

"The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

"To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

"Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

"In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: 'the Kingdom of God is within man' - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

"Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

"Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!"

Frankie Haros At The Movies

Frankie and I like movies, but seldom the same ones.  The following terrified or repelled Frankie, but I found them to have their charms:

• LUCY (2014):  An American party girl in Korea overdoses on some fly-ass dope and acquires god-like powers, without any apparent downside.
• MAMA (2013):  The bitch stabbed a nun and gets run down by a hunting party.  After death, she's got voices and moths -- I fold.
• CARRIE (1976):  "You get in that closet and you pray, little girl!"
• MATILDA (1996):  Okay, so Miss Honey should have killed this little monster and saved the world.  But Matilda is the hero of the story, and that's so deliciously immoral that I love it.
• FIRESTARTER (1984):  Go Charlie, it's your birthday!  Set that motherfucker on fire WITH YOUR GODDAMN BRAIN!
• X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (2006):  I love the scenes where Dark Phoenix goes apeshit and blows people up with her mind.

The next list gave Frankie a wide-on, whereas I could have done without seeing them, thankyouverymuch:

• FATAL BEAUTY (1987):  A bad batch of drugs is made and bagged by a naked Asian girl in San Francisco.  A poor, refrigerator-sized, unarmed black man gets high as a kite on those drugs, walks out of a house, and gets dozens of rounds put in him by the SFPD, which is so like them.  Frankie loves that scene, but I see it and want to beat Whoopi Goldberg to a pulp.  Goddamn you, Whoopi.
• THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY (2008):  Infuriating teenager Molly Hartley is spotted by the community as an unholy creature, and is persecuted and nearly killed -- including by a clergyman's daughter.  Finally, Molly embraces her true evil nature and joins the ranks of the sinister Them. Frankie wanted this to happen to me.
• THE OTHERS  (2001):  The voices Nicole Kidman hears are the living and she's the one who's dead...Boo!  Good one, Frankie...

We both liked CHILDREN OF THE CORN, and both wanted to be He Who Walks Behind The Rows.  I don't know what we would have done with SCANNERS...

Movies That Were Unintentionally Hilarious: LUCY (2014)

Scarlett Johansson is the girl to party with.  Just don't get on her bad side.

Basically, she gets roped by the Korean mafia into being a drug mule for some of the best dope ever manufactured.  One of the heavies kicks her in the stomach, into which a bag of screaming shit is sewed, and the bag breaks.  She immediately overdoses and catches fire -- I mean, for real.  The girl over-amps and it's not just in her head:  she physically, objectively levitates and hits the ceiling, then flies around the room like a witch from Club Universe.  It just gets better from there...  "Hello, my name's Scarlett Johansson, and I look hot in Versace while I kill evil motherfuckers with my god-like brain."  She discovers a taste for this rather empowering successor to flakka and meth, and instead of crashing, burning, and going to rehab, essentially becomes a deity.  And of course, there's Morgan Freeman in a cash-grab role as the stentorian (when is he not stentorian?), avuncular neurologist she contacts for "help."  Not help with twelve stepping, but help slamming and jamming until the bitch is time travelling and divulging the secrets of the universe in a way that would make Philip K. Dick put down his rolled up dollar bill.

This empty calorie action romp is gleefully immoral (drugs really help you transcend time and space to become a ruler of the universe) and sabotages any case Luc Besson wanted to make about his issues with women.  I give it 4 out of 5 stars -- it had me screaming at the screen:  "Ooh girl, I wanna party with you!  I got some shit, come on over!"  Highly recommended for those of you at Walden House (although it's more triggering than BREAKING BAD.)