Adrastos, Diary, Film, Fog Of History, Music, Odds & Sods, Political Crack, Television

Saturday Odds & Sods: Night Ride Home

Blue Night by Edward Hopper.

I’m vexed that another cold front has hit New Orleans. It looks as if Parish the nutria was wrong, and Punxsutawney Phil was right that winter will drag on. He’s still a putz.

I went with a Joni Mitchell song because of the whole Out, Damned Spotify, Out mishigas. She wrote this week’s theme song in 1991. It was the opening and title track of her Night Ride Home album. It’s one of my personal favorites in the Joni canon.

Night Ride Home is a highly evocative song. It makes me think of driving on an empty rural road in the wee small hours of the morning:

Another favorite from that album is Cherokee Louise, which makes me think of my late “outlaw” Louise Allen Cobb Couvillion:

Now that we’ve reminisced, let’s jump to the break.

I know Shapiro will plotz if I don’t post a certain Springsteen song. I added one of Bob Seger’s biggest hits because I tried and failed to find one of his songs that would fit the Michigan malaka post.

One more song co-written by Bob Seger. I’ve had Glen Frey on my mind because of the Eagles references in the last episode of Billions:

We begin our second act with another piece by Dana Stevens. We have to stop meeting like this.

The Silents Were Golden: In her Buster Keaton book, Stevens assessed the state of women directors in the silent film era. It all changed but it was glorious while it lasted.

Women, who until around 1916 had wielded a degree of power in the film industry unmatched to the present day, were vanishing from the high places they had occupied and being shunted into the narrow space they would be allotted for the rest of the 20th century and into our own.

For that short span of time, though, what now seems like a shockingly high number of women held positions of real creative power in the world of film. Not to say that the gender balance of the industry even then was anywhere near equitable; as a cutting-edge technology with mass moneymaking potential, the new medium remained predominantly the province of men. But a higher percentage of American movies were directed by women in 1916 than has been true in any year since, a bracing reminder that gender discrimination in the film industry is about as old as the Ford Model T and, unlike that long-obsolete vehicle, still rolling.

Get thee to Slate for the details.

Yellowjackets: I’ve had dreams on my mind this week. One of my worst nightmares is crash landing in remote mountains full of wolves and other predators. Yet, I still enjoyed Showtime’s Yellowjackets, which centers around my worst fears. So it goes.

Dr. A and I weren’t sure if we’d like Yellowjackets, so we waited until after the finale to check it out. We loved it, then binged it. It’s structured to be watched every week like a proper serial. Next time, we’ll watch it that way.

Yellowjackets is a genre jumper. It’s part thriller, murder mystery, teenage dramedy, horror, and survivalist movie. The appeal of Lost was lost on me, so I didn’t watch it.  Yellowjackets is favorably compared to Lost by those in the know. I may have to check it out. I already know it has a shitty ending, so it won’t bother me that much.

I’m not always a fan of flashbacks, but they work here as does the dual casting of many characters. The acting is superb, and the atmospherics are, well, atmospheric.

I don’t want to spoil things for those who have yet to see the series, so I’ll cut it off here. The knife image is deliberate: they’re important, especially to Shauna. Nuff said.

Here’s the trailer:

It’s grading time. I give Yellowjackets 4 stars and an Adrastos Grade of A.

The last word of our second act goes to three versions of a famous knife song:

We begin our third act with our favorite stolen feature.

Separated At Birth Twitter Edition: It’s a tweet from the creator of SAB. If you were wondering why I posted Sting’s Mack The Knife, this is why.

Will this lead Sting to use Ike’s V for Victory sign?

I don’t see why not; Ike stole it from Churchill. Nixon stole it from Ike, Sting could be next.

Born On This Day: The February 5th babies are an interesting group. If Errol had met Andreas, there might have been a movie about the former Prime Minister.

Here they are: Feminist legal eagle Sarah Weddington, Greek political dynast Andreas Papandreou, baseball God Henry Aaron, documentarian Errol Morris, and actress Laura Linney,

The Papandreous are among the people my late father claimed as kinfolks. Lou didn’t like Papandreou’s politics so it’s possible. You never can tell.

Saturday GIF Horse: I mentioned knives in the segment about Yellowjackets, here’s a GIF that nobody axed for.

The character’s name is Misty. She scares me so I thought I better play this song:

FYI, Play Misty For Me is one of Clint Eastwood’s best early directorial outings.

Coffin Nail Corner: In lieu of a movie or teevee list, Joan Fontaine and her hat.

Tweet Of The Week: It comes from one of the few Never Trumpers I like. It’s a podcast plug but Tim Miller embedded a zany GIF therein. I’m all about the embedding.

Suck on it, Ted.

Let’s close down this virtual honky tonk with some more music.

Saturday Classic: Janis Joplin saved the best for last. Pearl is her best album by far. It makes her death even more tragic. There was a lot of great music in that small woman with the big voice.

That’s it for this week. The last word goes to the main characters of Yellowjackets: Melanie Lynskey as Shauna, Christina Ricci as Misty, Tawny Cypress as Tai, and Juliette Lewis as Natalie.

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