Not the latest documentary on the Bush administration but  the tale of clever vagabong Abu, the boy from India, in a top-notch color adventure with excellent special effects.  He gets turned into a dog by evil magician Conrad Veidt, uncorks the genie bottle, flies to the end of the earth to battle the giant spider, steals the idol's ruby eye, rides the flying carpet.  Rex Ingram is the genie, John Justin and June Duprez are the lovers.  An all-time family favorite, good entertainment for young and old.

This installment features:

1. UFO REMIX (THE ARRIVAL) by Power Themes 90.
2. DOC SOLARIS: MAN OF THE FUTURE by Michael Park.
3. COINCIDO CONTICO ENCOOTRO (I COINCIDE WITH YOU IN THE OTHER) by  Itziar Barrio.
4. WORDS ON PEACE PEACE by Lili White.
5. WHEREVER SEPTEMBER/ ROSALIND by Nisi Jacobs.
6. DON'T STOP by Ned Ambler.
7. THE BLOND LEADING THE BLOND by Jack Waters (featuring Philly).
8. CANDY-COATED EVIL by Mike Kuchar (featuring Samoa and Kembra Pfahler).
9. TURNTABLE TRAUMA by Kevin Jarvis.
10. WHOLEY MOSES by Todd Heyman ( with a guest appearance by Linda      Hamilton)

A Christmas Spectacular!!!
Cast to be announced.

Ernest Hemmingway once remarked that the best thing a writer could do, as far as the movies were concerned, was drive to California, toss a script over the border, grab the cash, and split as quickly as possible. In the bad old days, the studio system did not assume that the Book Reading and Movie Going Worlds had any sort of Venn intersection, and treated the novels they purchased accordingly.

Case in point: Nelson Algren, a once celebrated author whose books did not fare well on the silver screen. He was kicked off the set of the film adaptation of his 1950 novel, The Man With the Golden Arm, after butting heads with director Otto Preminger, a man with a reputation for crushing souls (for example, Dorothy Dandridge). The resulting movie, while a classic in its own right, bore little resemblance to the novel that inspired it. Algren swore he would never deal with "Hollywood" again.

He was happy, however, to take the money and run, as evidenced by the 1962 adaptation of his novel, Walk on the Wild Side, just released on DVD for the first time. There are worse adaptations, to be sure, and the book's digressive, symbolic prose style is highly resistant to dramatization. Still, the film does little to evoke his skills.

The book takes place during the 1930s, following Dove Linkhorn, a small-town Texas boy, in his Candide-like journey from the Dust Bowl to the seedy underworld of New Orleans. Like all of Algren's work, it focuses on the lowest of the low, but resists "poor but clean" clichés. A product of the Depression, Algren echoes Steinbeck's class-conscious anger, though far less didactically.

The script by John Fante and Edwin Morris (assisted by an uncredited Ben Hecht) whittles the novel's rambling, nearly plot-free narrative down to a fine point: Dove (Laurence Harvey) is transformed into a man on a mission, traveling to New Orleans to be reunited with his one true love, an artist named Hallie(Capucine). On the way, he meets scheming teenage vagabond Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda), who helps him hitch a ride to the Big Easy. Meanwhile, Hallie languishes in a classy bordello called the Doll House, run by the iron-willed, steel-jawed madame Jo (Barbara Stanwyck).

The lovers are eventually reunited, though Hallie breaks Dove's heart when he learns what she does for her money. He vows to take her away from this life, but the vengeful Doll House management is loath to let Hallie go, and employs Kitty in a plot to blackmail Dove into leaving her forever. The film ends on a dour note, atypical for its era, but it also reassures the viewer that all the guilty were appropriately punished.

Edward Dmytryk makes fine use of the French Quarter's Byzantine ironwork, its shadowy foyers, and the Escher-like twists of its courtyards and balconies. This is unfortunately marred on the DVD by a sloppy digital transfer full of static and sound dropouts (there are few extras, beyond foreign language subtitles). However, the film itself has more salient problems. Little of Algren's grit and grime is evident in the finished product. The opulent Doll House features a full jazz band and well-appointed bar to cater to its customers, and its well-dressed employees' biggest problem seems to be fighting off boredom. Contrast that with the cathouses in Algren's novel, dives with savage pimps, shamed fetishists, and sad girls who dream of better lives more out of habit than earnest desire.

Similarly troubling is what Fante and Morris's script do to the novel's moral outlook. Algren does not condemn his whores and hustlers -- he saves his contempt for the city fathers who urged poor folks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, while at the same time profiting from their misery. The film, on the other hand, is replete with the muddled double standards of Eisenhower-era sexual mores. No longer an innocent, Dove is here a crusader who eventually decides to "forgive" his woman for what she's done. He spouts Biblical platitudes about faithfulness and love, despite an implied romance with Terasina (Ann Baxter), a Mexican café owner who lets Dove stay with her while he searches for Hallie. Baxter's performance teeters on the brink of stereotype, typical of those from a time when it was "acceptable" for white actors to portray characters of other races.

In the hands of Capucine (now best remembered as Mrs. Clouseau in the first Pink Panther movie, but once considered an exotic beauty of the Sophia Loren sort), Hallie has an air of Gallic cool about her, and looks she couldn't care less whether she ever escapes her "life of sin". There isn't the slightest bit of chemistry between her and Harvey, who displays little of the feverish intensity he brought to The Manchurian Candidate. For spark, you have to turn to the strangely homoerotic battle of wits between Capucine and Stanwyck, who displays the calculating drive common to that trope from the Celluloid Closet of old: the Implied Lesbian Villainess.

Few of the performances register at all, save that of Jane Fonda, seen here in only her third film role. In a film ostensibly about the "wild side", Kitty is the only character who displays the slightest trace of animal lust. The way Kitty tries to get into Dove's pants, then betrays him when she can't, is the closest that Wild Side comes to approximating Algren's vision, a world where people bite and claw their way not to the top, but simply to keep from being on the bottom.

Faithfully translating Wild Side for the screen would have been a tall order in 1962, when the restrictive Production Code was still in full effect. However, it is less the book's explicit depictions of poverty and whorehouses that is missed, and more its view of the people who inhabit this world. It changes a novel that studiously avoids moralizing into a trite screed against "fallen women". This wouldn't be so galling if the film didn't clearly want it both ways: to entice the viewer with promises of a glimpse into the brothel life, while at the same time wagging its finger at something it never even dares to show.

And so, in its own perverse fashion, the film of Wild Side illustrates Algren's description of Depression-era New Orleans, one that could just as easily apply to the Hollywood that cheated and embittered him: "They were all trying to make an honest buck, in a crooked sort of way."

 Jimmy Buffet Christmas Special

The Spirit of Christmas has been lost thanks to Jimmy Buffet and his super Santa Robot. Is Christmas now just a store bought video game programed by Jimmy Buffet's brain?  Special guests include Dame Darcy, Electra Elf, Mitch Magee, and musical guest Marianne Nowattny

This is not a Screening,... this is a Live Performance of a TV show!!

If you like Doctor Who, Andy Kaufman, and Mr Rogers Don't Miss this Bizarre
Event!  Quantum Theory, Puppets, and Magic!

WHO IS JARED WHITHAM?  

Check out other featured episodes at http//www.jaredwhitham.com and find out!

A beautiful film, a perfect comedy, and a gentle triumph of silliness over pomposity, self-importance, and intolerance - "Life of Brian" could be the best British comedy ever.

In Judea, a mother tends her newborn child. Lo, from the east three wise men appear to pay tribute to the infant - but they want the stable next door: this is Brian Cohen not Jesus Christ! Rolling forward 33 years, Brian joins the People's Front of Judea, a wannabe terrorist cell out to undermine the occupying Romans. Brian gets roped into their plot to kidnap Pontius Pilate's wife but they run into another terrorist gang on the same mission and everyone is captured while squabbling among themselves.

From the opening scene and the belting Shirley Bassey-esque score, this is Python par excellence. This is the "Catch 22" of cinema, and in its politics, like Joseph Heller, the Python crew refuse to spare anyone. Always threading in and around biblical stories, the plot never contradicts or denies the Bible, it just pokes fun at the hangers-on, charlatans, and pompous officials that organised religion often attracts. This playful subversion is hilariously shown in the scene where Brian escapes from the Romans by posing as a preacher. At first he is mocked by a crowd of jaded messiah seekers, then they seize on a bizarre interpretation of his words and proclaim him their Messiah. Brian denies it, only to be told "I say you are Lord, and I should know. I've followed a few."

 

Electra Elf: The Beginning starring Rev Jen, Annie
Sprinkle, Taylor Mead, Ann Carr, Ivan the Horrible

 Hellzapoppin by Gray Miller

 Good Lovin Guitar Man by Direct Art Productions
 starring The Jickets

 Nymphomania by Tessa Hughes Freeland/ Holly Adams
starring Holly Adams

The Operation by Jacob Pander