The Fractured Mirror entry: The Lady Killer (1933)
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 06:57:28 AM
Lady Killer (1933) FM
The genre-hopping 1934 show-business crime comedy-drama thriller Lady Killer typecasts James Cagney as a slick-talking, hot-tempered tough guy with deep connections to the underworld. But he also intriguingly and successfully plays a James Cagney-style movie star famous for playing shady characters who are fast with their mouths and their hands.
Cagney’s Dan Quigley begins the movie a humble usher at a movie theater who gets fired for gambling and other unprofessional behavior. The quick-thinking hustler stumbles into a dangerous role at the center of a high-stakes , big money burglary ring.
When things go sideways and the anti-hero has to split town and lay low he impulsively decides to go to Los Angeles, where he gets into acting, first as an extra with bit roles, including a regrettable redface turn as a Native American chief and then as a proper movie star.
Movie stardom is an awfully peculiar, counter-intuitive profession for someone to choose if they’re trying to stay off the radar of both law enforcement and their deadly criminal associates. Sure enough the unlikely matinee idol’s past comes back to haunt him when the crooks Dan used to run with show up in Hollywood expecting him to help them rob the rich and famous, AKA his new peer group.
Lady Killer puts a clever new spin on the gritty Warner Brothers James Cagney crime movie by fusing it with movie world satire, romance and melodrama. Nothing in its first act suggests that Lady Killer will shift its focus to the motion picture industry, with the exception of Dan’s very loose connection to the business as a movie theater employee. Lady Killer is delightfully unexpected in the way it combines seemingly disparate genres.
Cagney is a powder keg of dynamite as a principled hood who becomes a popular entertainer. The only thing keeping this from being the perfect role and showcase for Cagney’s explosive talents is an understandable absence of song and dance numbers.
The Fractured Mirror entry: Bottoms Up (1934)
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 09:19:54 AM
At some point I will write about a movie people have heard of for the book. I promise!
Bottoms Up (1934)
A trio of mugs on the make set out to elevate an extra to movie stardom in the 1934 musical Bottoms Up. The pre-code romantic comedy is most notable as an early vehicle for Spencer Tracy, who was only a few years away from winning back to back Academy Awards for 1938’s Captain Courageous and 1939’s Boys Town.
Tracy brings effortless charisma, humor and authenticity to the lead role of “Smoothie” King, a film flam man who meets struggling actress Wanda Gale (Pat Paterson) and resolves to make her a movie star. Smoothie is assisted in his unethical enterprises by wonderfully nicknamed fellow grifters “Spuds” Marco (Sid Silvers) and “Limey” Brooks (Herbert Mundlin).
Spuds’ con involves passing himself off as a gentleman jockey while Limey presents himself as Lord Brocklehurst, a British royal and Wanda’s fake aristocratic father. The duplicitous outsiders will do anything to catapult the beautiful actress to stardom, including light blackmail.
The sleazy star-makers convince a neurotic studio head that Hal Reed (John Boles), the star of his big new production, took liberties with an underaged girl but that if they cast Wanda in his movie they’ll look the other way.
The handsome matinee idol falls in love with a woman he thinks is the daughter of a Lord. Smoothie is sweet on her as well. The smartly cast Tracy, Silvers and Mandlin make for a fast and funny triple act. Like the Marx Brothers, they’re a propriety-puncturing whirlwind of energy and subversion. Unfortunately, the musical and romance elements of Bottoms Up are weaker than the comedy in a way that recalls the Marx Brothers’ lesser vehicles as well. Bottoms Up is a decidedly minor showcase for a major star that’s good for some surprisingly dark chuckles but not much more.
The Fractured Mirror entry: Young and Beautiful (1934)
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 08:57:43 AM
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I am excited to announce that the Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition of the Joy of Trash is officially out!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 06:40:18 AM
Hey you beautiful people,
I know I usually rap at ya about weird old movies you've never heard of but today I am writing to you about something much different but equally awesome: a brand spanking new version of a book that is near and dear to my heart, and, like The Fractured Mirror, an ambitious literary spin-off of my website Nathan Rabin's Happy Place.
It's been a LONG time coming but I am pleased to report that I just put out an extended version of The Joy of Trash we're calling the Flaming Garbage Fire extended edition. It's got sixty pages of additional material on scoundrels like Bill Cosby (Fat Albert), Dustin Diamond (The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story), John Kricfalusi (Ren & Stimpy: "Adult Party Cartoon"), Joe Camel (A Camel Named Joe: An American Icon) and the James Belushi-led Blues Brothers, who figure prominently in an epic closing chapter that explores the blues, the prison-industrial complex, nostalgia and my complicated feelings about my home town of Chicago.
It also includes a new cover and a new illustration from my brilliant illustrator Felipe Sobreiro as well as brand new pieces on the notorious Easy Rider sequel Easy Rider: The Ride Back and the notorious Spike TV Kelsey Grammer vehicle Gary the Rat created specifically for the book.
I would love it if you would buy a copy over at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
To sweeten the deal I'm throwing in a free signed copy of Felipe Sobreiro and my 120 page "Weird Al" Yankovic-themed coloring book The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Cynical Movie Cash-In Extended Edition with each purchase.
Since the book is about terrible people and terrible entertainment only a masochist like me should have to experience I want to do something positive as well so I'm offering a Joy of Positivity set of signed (by Felipe and myself) and numbered (to 100) hardcover books, all of which will feature a hand-written recommendation of a piece of entertainment as good as the stuff in the book is not just bad but abhorrent. PLUS you get a free coloring book with each purchase. What a bargain!
They're going fast so get in on this excellent deal before it's all gone!
I'm officially launching the book today so I would love, love, love it if you would help me get out the word via Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Substack and every other form of human communication. I would love to feel a tidal wave of love and support on this very important day, when I introduce the second coming of what I feel is my best and most entertaining book I've ever written.
And I've written my share!
You're gonna love the book! It's like the original The Joy of Trash but longer and better and even more awesome!
The Fractured Mirror entry: Being Michael Madsen (2007)
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 05:33:21 AM
Being Michael Madsen (2007)
Predators become prey and prey transforms into predators in the supremely silly 2007 mockumentary Being Michael Madsen. The scrappy, low-budget independent comedy inhabits an alternate universe much like our own, except that Michael Madsen is so popular that he’s hounded relentlessly by the paparazzi and a fixture in the tabloids.
This bizarro world Michael Madsen decides to turn the tables on the professional vultures who make his life a living hell and keep him from scoring plum movie roles by making a muckraking movie of his own targeting Billy Dant (Jason Allan Smith). Dant is a disgraced journalist who traded in a promising, legitimate career for one that involves accusing Michael Madsen of murder with zero in the way of evidence.
A revenge-hungry and appropriately grizzled Madsen sends a skeleton crew of documentarians to terrorize the tabloid ghoul the same way he menaced him and, one would imagine, substantially more famous actors as well.
Madsen is a weirdly distant presence in a film that bears his name. He delivers a performance oddly devoid of self-deprecation because the film’s comic targets are sleazy, documentarians and equally unethical tabloid creeps rather than tough guy character actors. Being Michael Madsen’s take on bottom-feeding tabloids and mercenary non-fiction filmmakingis moderately clever and reasonably amusing but this nevertheless feels like a clever short expanded unnecessarily into a watchable but deeply forgettable feature.
