television Archives - Page 19 of 43

Tommy Lee Jones turns 70

The Fugitive (1993) – One of my favorite movie trailers ever.

On these Facebook ads I see often, one of the questions is which actor was former Vice-President Al Gore’s roommate in college. Yes, it’s the guy from Texas, Tommy Lee Jones.

In fact, “in 1970 he landed his first film role, coincidentally playing a Harvard student in Love Story (Erich Segal, the author of Love Story, said that he based the lead character of Oliver on the two undergraduate roommates he knew while attending Harvard, Jones, and Gore).”

“At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, he presented the nominating speech for…Gore, as the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States.”

He was a guest star in a bunch of dramatic shows such as Barnaby Jones and Baretta that I used to watch. But it was before I knew who Tommy Lee Jones was. I did see him in these movies, and almost always like HIM, even when the movie is not great.

Lincoln (2012) – Thaddeus Stevens. I was rather fond of his portrayal. Jones received his fourth Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor
Hope Springs (2012) – as a part of a couple aging.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
Space Cowboys (2000) – a bunch of aging astronauts

Men in Black (1997) – the movie that sealed Tommy Lee Jones as a bankable actor
Batman Forever (1995) – as Two-Face / Harvey Dent
The Fugitive (1993) – One of my favorite movie trailers ever. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford): But I’m innocent! US Marshall Samuel Gerard (Jones): I don’t CARE!” No wonder he won Best Supporting Actor for his performance
JFK (1991) – as Clay Shaw. If I’m remembering right, he was sleazily great. He earned another Oscar nomination

Lonesome Dove (TV Mini-Series, 1989) – he earned another Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Texas Ranger lawman Woodrow F. Call in the acclaimed mini-series, based on the best-seller by Larry McMurtry
The Executioner’s Song (TV Movie, 1982) as Gary Mark Gilmore. Chilling. He received an Emmy for Best Actor for his performance as the murderer in an adaptation of Norman Mailer’s book
Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980) as Doolittle Lynn; for which he earned his first Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of country singer Loretta Lynn’s husband

August rambling #1: Dystopian Reader

Tony Bennett is 90!

Alan David Doane’s new blog The Dystopian Reader; see, in particular, the lead story here

Arthur@AmeriNZ’s political notebook #1 and #2 because otherwise this post would be filled with these links.

The Latest Beaverkill Sinkhole, On South Lake Avenue in Albany

Please read this before you post another RIP on social media

Why George W. Bush stood there and took the wrath of a soldier’s mom

Donald Trump: stop calling him crazy, even as his Assassination Dog Whistle Was Even Scarier Than You Think; NBC’s Katy Tur: My crazy year with Trump

DJT Parody: Trump tore into the media for what he called their “extremely unfair practice” of reporting the things he says and he would only use nuclear weapons in a sarcastic way and Robert Crumb and friends flush him down the toilet (1989)

No, the Pope did NOT endorse Hillary Clinton

Survey Reveals a Startling Truth About White Christians

ESPN’s John Saunders, RIP at age 61

1968 Olympics: The White Man in That Photo

Goodbye to ‘Honeys’ in Court, by Vote of American Bar Association

If Walls Could Talk: Albany’s Historic Architecture: Myers Residence

Western New York Love Letter: Adventures in the 716

The Jedi religion of Australia

Kliph Nesteroff interviews writer Merrill Markoe about the ’70s Laugh-In revival, which introduced Robin Williams to American TV

A great Stan Freberg story

Buck O’Neil for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2020

Godfather of Gore H.G. Lewis to host a marathon of his splatter classics – I met him once, nice guy

Obits: Kenny Baker, 81; played R2-D2 in ‘Star Wars’ and David Huddleston, 85, ‘Big Lebowski’ actor and Emmy-Winning Stage and Screen Star Fyvush Finkel Dies at 93

What is Bulldada? What is NOT?

Air Canada to start charging for emotional baggage in 2017

They Have A Word for It

Now I Know: The Man Who Bounced Around A Bit and The Thin Red Deer Line and A Moist Upsetting Word

Derrick Boudwin and retinitis pigmentosa: Ever Dimming Room

Tony Bennett is 90!

Chuck Miller: The Monks’ “Black Monk Time” is an Album I Want to Be Buried With

Playing for Change: Fumaza | Live Outside

Coverville 1136: The 50th Anniversary Tribute to The Beatles’ Revolver

The Beatles: A New Video For While My Guitar Gently Weeps (LOVE version)

Several versions of Up The Ladder To The Roof

Glenn Yarbrough, Folk Singer With the Limeliters, Dies at 86 Glenn Yarbrough, Folk Singer With the Limeliters, Dies at 86

Obscure Winnipeg band reverberates on eBay a half-century later

The Atlantic: The Electric Surge of Miles Davis

Google alert (me)

My buddy Eddie Mitchell, the Renaissance Geek wrote nice things about me, and Smilin’ Ed. Not incidentally, the Smilin’ Ed book of collected stories and additional stuff is available from Amazon. I do believe it is the first book for which I have a credit.

Google Alert (not me)

The Lubbock ISD Ag Farm has received a donation of over 15 goats after the dog attacks that killed 10 more of their goats Monday morning.

“This is the agriculture community coming together,” Ag farm manager Roger Green said. “They will all jump in to help you out.”

Lucy-Desi Museum

The radio show My Favorite Husband morphed into the TV show I Love Lucy.

Lucile Ball's monogrammed 1972 Mercedes-Benz — Lucile Ball’s monogrammed 1972 Mercedes-Benz

Lucy-Desi Museum, Jamestown, NY: July 12, 2016

A stop in Jamestown was a last-minute addition to the itinerary when we decided that we should see a state park on the return trip, rather on the way out.

We knew that Jamestown was the birthplace of actress Lucille Ball, back on August 6, 1911. There’s something about a small town that needs to embrace its stars the way that New York City or Los Angeles simply cannot. Her childhood home is in nearby Celeron, on what was 8th Street, but is now Lucy Lane. Those homes are privately owned.

But in downtown Jamestown is the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Museum on West Third Street, where you can find out about the early years of Lucy, from her grade school piano to costumes and gowns from her wardrobe, and some paintings and photos that once hung in her Beverly Hills home.

You also get the background about her future first husband, the Cuban-born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha, III (1917-1986), whose father was the youngest mayor of Santiago, and his mother’s father an executive at Bacardi Rum. The family fortune was seized during the Batista revolution of 1933, and the family eventually fled to Miami, FL.

I was particularly interested in learning about a radio show called My Favorite Husband, starring Ball and Richard Denning, who played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, as a happily married couple. “Beginning with the 26th episode on January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change Cooper.” Apparently, coincidentally, Desi Arnaz had played guitar for Cugat.

My Favorite Husband morphed into the TV show I Love Lucy, with Desi as Ricky Ricardo, a struggling orchestra leader, and Lucy as Lucy (nee McGillicuddy), a housewife with show business fantasies but no real talent. It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this television show on the medium.

Adjacent to the Luci-Desi Museum, and at no additional charge, is the Desilu Studios, which has costumes and prop. But most impressively, it has replicas of both the Ricardos’ New York City apartment of the first six seasons, and the Hollywood Hotel suite of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (shown), thirteen hour-long episodes which aired from 1957 to 1960.

“On March 2, Desi’s birthday, 1960, the day after the last hour-long episode was filmed, Lucille Ball filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz.” But they managed to maintain a friendship until he died of cancer. She died in 1989

Desilu Studios would produce Lucy’s subsequent programs, plus Dick Van Dyke Show, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek.

Even though she was largely unfamiliar with I Love Lucy, The Daughter was captivated with the actress and wanted an Andy Warhol-designed cup as a souvenir. We were so fond of the site that we recommended the Lucy-Desi Museum for some family members at the family reunion.

We did NOT see the Scary Lucy statue that was not too far away but agree that the new rendering is much more suitable.

All photos c 2016 by Lydia P. Green

B is for Betamax

There was a story late in 2015 that Betamax cassette tapes would be discontinued in March 2016. This surprised me. Sony had discontinued making the RECORDERS more than a dozen years earlier.

Betamax was “a videotape format in competition with VHS (introduced in Japan by JVC in October 1976 and in the United States by RCA in August 1977)…”

According to Sony’s own history webpages, the name came from a double meaning: beta being the Japanese word used to describe the way signals were recorded onto the tape, and from the fact that when the tape ran through the transport, it looked like the Greek letter beta (β). The suffix -max, from the word “maximum”, was added to suggest greatness…

Betamax and VHS competed in a fierce format war, which saw VHS come out on top in most markets. The VHS format’s defeat of the Betamax format became a classic marketing case study. Sony’s attempt to dictate an industry standard backfired when JVC made the tactical decision to forgo Sony’s offer of Betamax in favor of developing its own technology…

It is odd, too, because all the experts, and most of the users, considered Betamax a superior product in terms of recording quality.

By 1980, JVC’s VHS format controlled 60% of the North American market. The large economy of scale allowed VHS units to be introduced to the European market at a far lower cost than the rarer Betamax units. In the United Kingdom, Betamax held a 25% market share in 1981, but by 1986, it was down to 7.5% and continued to decline further. By 1984, 40 companies made VHS format equipment in comparison with Beta’s 12. Sony finally conceded defeat in 1988 when it, too, began producing VHS recorders though it still continued to produce Betamax recorders until 2002.

In Japan, Betamax had more success…, but eventually both Betamax and VHS were supplanted by laser-based technology…

One other major consequence of the Betamax technology’s introduction to the U.S. was the lawsuit Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984, the “Betamax case”), with the U.S. Supreme Court determining home videotaping to be legal in the United States, wherein home videotape cassette recorders were a legal technology since they had substantial noninfringing uses.

I never owned a Betamax machine. Seeing two incompatible technologies vying in the marketplace, I bought NEITHER machine until it was clear that VHS was going to win out. My first VHS player I didn’t purchase until c. 1985, one of the late adapters.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

TV review- O.J.: Made in America

O.J. Simpson – race be damned – was one of the most popular figures around.

Seriously, I didn’t know it was going to be on, but came across it flipping through the channels. On the heels of the popular The People v. O.J. Simpson, part of the American Crime Story series on the FX network – which I did not see – comes O.J.: Made in America, a sprawling five-part documentary on the cable sports network ESPN.

Many people know about the bizarre low-speed chase of Simpson’s Ford Bronco, Most are aware of the “trial of the century,” an appellation that may very well be correct. At least in the United States, almost EVERYONE had an opinion about the former football player’s guilt or innocence in the murders of his estranged wife Nicole Brown, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

The most mild-mannered person I have ever known was incensed when Simpson was acquitted of the crimes, as was most of white America. Yet many black Americans literally cheered the verdict. This phenomenon is established fact. What the documentary explains, among many other things, is WHY there was such a disparity in response.

The first segment shows how Simpson went from Heisman-trophy-winning running back for the University of Southern California Trojans to stardom in the NFL, becoming the first player ever to rush for 2000 yards in a season. But when Simpson retired from football and returned to Los Angeles, he remained famous, as an actor (The Naked Gun movies), advertising pitchman (Hertz car rental), and broadcasting (Monday Night Football). He met and fell madly in love with a young, blonde, beautiful actress named Nicole Brown.

I loved the second part. It was about the two different versions of Los Angeles, one “wealthy, privileged, and predominantly white. A world where celebrity was power, and where O.J. – race be damned – was one of the most popular figures around… Then there was the other LA, just a few miles away from Brentwood and his Rockingham estate, a place where millions of other black people lived an entirely different reality at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department.” In fact, in describing the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots that erupted in 1992, the filmmakers spent about a half-hour not talking about O.J. at all.

Part 3 was about the murder itself, and the chase, and while I knew much of it, there were details I was unaware of. Part 4 described the trial and the re-Negrofication of Orenthal James Simpson by the defense team. Part 5 detailed all the bizarre stuff after the acquittal, including the book O.J. wrote, If I Did It.

The story was enhanced by the recollections of district attorney Gil Garcetti, lead prosecuting attorney Marcia Clark, LA police detective Mark Fuhrman, LA policeman and Simpson friend Ron Shipp, Ron Goldman’s father Fred, defense attorneys F. Lee Bailey, Carl Douglas, and Barry Schreck, and many other participants. The narrative speaks deftly about the power of celebrity and class, spousal abuse, police/community relations, and racial identity in a way that resonates to this day. I concluded that 1) O.J. likely did the murders but that 2) the prosecution did not make its case due to the tremendous efforts of the defense team and some of the rulings of Judge Lance Ito.

I’m glad I watched O.J.: Made In America, though it was quite depressing. The series is available on some streaming services, and no doubt will be available on DVD soon; perhaps it’ll be rerun someday. Ron Shipp believes O.J. Simpson will hate it.