One of the most significant of the great Brill Building songwriters has passed on at age 68. On many of her most famous songs Phil Spector’s production style may have got the attention, but he would have had nothing to produce without songs like this.

The first guitar hero who, I guess more than anyone, made all this rock and roll racket possible has passed on. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine post-1955 pop music without his innovations.

There’s no point in ignoring the posthumous Michael Jackson mania sweeping Movietown today. So, here’s a creepily sentimental movie moment with a lot of poignant subtext which also happens to feature the late singer’s first solo hit. “Ben” was a sequel to the earlier “Willard” which was remade in 2003. I’ve seen neither film, but they were horror flicks featuring nasty but (I guess) lovable killer rats. It looks like the first film tried to combine “Psycho” and “The Birds,” but “Ben” appears to be going for something more like “Rattie Come Home.”

The song, by Walter Scharf and Don Black, was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe, and there’s no denying the awe-inspiring vocal abilities of the eleven or twelve-year old Jackson. He sells the song with delicacy and emotion, and it saves the final scene below. However, it probably helped with the Top 40 success of the song that most listeners had no idea it was about a rat.

Embedding has been disabled, but YouTube also has a powerful video of Jackson performing the song on the Oscars in 1973.

(Also posted at Premium Hollywood.)

Given that many of his films reflect what you might call the broad sweep of black history, a way-too-clever writer might try to compare Denzel Washington – exemplary family man, matinee idol with a conscience, two-time Academy Award winner and the first African-American to win a Best Actor Oscar – to our current president. A smarter writer, however, might compare him to other actors, perhaps including those of other ethnicities.

Washington is, among other things, an old-fashioned movie star. Trained on the stage, he confesses to being influenced by “the method,” yet his acting has none of the emotional fetishism that is so common in the post-Marlon Brando movie world. Indeed, his complete ease before the camera and his low-key joy of performance is probably most similar to Spencer Tracy. The stocky, un-pretty Tracy was nearly the physical opposite of Washington. Still, the relaxed charisma, the ability to generate a laugh or a shiver with a simple expression, and Washington’s awe-inspiring commitment and confidence mirrors the ability of the classic era great, whose only advice to young thespians was to learn their lines and avoid bumping into the furniture.

Indeed, as the meticulously handsome Washington steps into the shoes of slob par excellance Walter Matthau in director Tony Scott’s remake of “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3“, it’s an opportune time to take a look at some of the lesser-known films from the actor’s back catalog. They’re quite an assortment, sometimes messy and imperfect, but always worthy of your attention. Denzel Washington rarely makes a boring choice.

CLICK HERE FOR TEN FROM WASHINGTON’S BACK CATALOGUE.

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Special FtY Not Really Exclusive Bonus: Denzel Sings!!!!!

Best known as Louis Prima’s great saxophonist, Sam Butera was a terrific singer and bandleader in his own right and really the musical backbone of the Prima act for years as the arranger of such classic recordings as “That Old Black Magic” and “Just a Gigolo”/”I Ain’t Got Nobody.” (Apparently, he received nothing from the David Lee Roth version, which pretty much lifted his arrangement whole, that was a massive hit in 1985.)

Butera was also a credible entertainer in his own right. Sometime in the late eighties, I was fortunate enough to see him and his great band, the Wildest, performing with the wonderful Keely Smith, doing a variation on the old Prima-Smith nightclub act at, where else?, the Desert Inn in Las Vegas…and it was definitely the next best thing to actually being there during their fifties heyday. (Their onstage banter so closely followed the old Prima-Smith shows, which I knew little about at the time, that the pair actually had me convinced that they were also a couple. I also understand that “gullible” is not in the dictionary.) It was a night of truly great entertainment, all for the price of a couple of screwdrivers.

Anyhow, here’s the L.A. Times obit and another from NPR. And now a video of Sam with Louis Prima on Ed Sullivan.

I was so taken with the beautiful performance in this post, I kind of felt the need to provide some more….

From the Smothers Brothers Show….

A trailer for a film about Harry…

Can anyone tell me why this documentary is not available and has, I think, only been shown in a few places. Another music clearance clusterfrak, perhaps?

Anyhow, here’s some more Harry. Among the very best and still all but unknown.

Tom Hanks has an image problem. It’s that he’s – you know – polite, decent, pleasant. No matter how darkly interestingly some of his roles have been since relatively early in his career, we still think of the hilariously likable guy and gifted comic actor who turns up on award shows and “SNL,” not the sometimes tortured, more complex characters he insists on occasionally playing – and playing increasingly well.

Jimmy Stewart, the star to whom Tom Hanks will forever be compared, had a similar deepening and darkening of his persona during his middle years, but his experiences in the World War II Army Air Corps provided the kind of simplistic explanation we writers like to hang onto. So, how do we account for the power of his shattering performance in “Saving Private Ryan” since, as far as we know, the closest Tom Hanks has been to the insanity of random violence is being in the same room with Mel Gibson?

Could if be that acting is a craft – the kind you get better at with practice? Could it be that we all have a certain amount of darkness and fear in our lives and that good actors are just extremely skilled at figuring out how to access that darkness? Looking through this assortment of lesser-known performances from Hollywood’s best-liked, double Oscar-winner, multi-hyphenate actor-producer-director-writer and all-around power player, one can see real development and, more intriguingly, proof that you don’t need to be half-insane to be a good actor.

Read my look at ten less well known Hanks opuses at Bullz-Eye.com

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And, with thanks to Hanks-fan extraordinaire RJR (who also consulted with me on which films to watch).

When “This is Spinal Tap” premiered twenty-five years ago, the now classic mock-documentary about lightly-brained, heavily sedated British metal stars on the skids received good reviews but unexciting box office. Considering that most people who saw it – and understood that it wasn’t a real documentary — thought it was one of the funniest movies they’d ever seen, it wasn’t too big a surprise that it soon became a very significant cult hit via home video. What was a bit harder to predict was that a film featuring three only moderately well known comedian/satirists and directed by then first-timer Rob Reiner would become one of the most influential comedies of its era. It certainly wasn’t clear that lines such as “this goes to eleven” or “it’s such a fine line between stupid and clever” would enter the general musical and cultural lexicon, and that, decades on, “mock docs” would remain among the most popular of low-budget movie subgenres — and not only for comedy.

Still the biggest surprise of all was that, as musicians, improv geniuses Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, turned out to be better at music as a sideline than most of those who do it fulltime. Not only could the trio play rockers like “Big Bottom” and “Sex Farm” live with brio and dexterity, “unplugged” versions of such vintage Tap classics as “Listen to the Flower People” and “Give Me Some Money” were among the highlights of their early live shows. Of course, the shows were funny, but the big surprise was how well played the music actually was, wowing both metalheads and metal-haters (that would be me) alike.

Read more about the Unwigged press conference (with actual FtY questions) at Premium Hollywood.com

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Wigged and Plugged….

Up to now, I’ve been a no-show at the several cinephile exams that have been hosted over the last couple of years at Dennis Cozzalio’s legendarily brainy film geek blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Well, before splitting for a hard-earned vacation, Dennis has posted a new exam on film-related matters, up in honor of the cartoon dog genius, Prof. Peabody, which you’re all encouraged to take.

I’ve posted my responses in the comment thread over there already, but now that I’m a SLIFR slacker no more, I thought I’d make ‘em do double duty here because we know that my opinions matter, or something.

Here goes….

1) Favorite Biopic

“Lawrence of Arabia” – an obviously great film and a rather pedestrian choice given that I really like biopics, sometimes the cheesier and and more ridiculously fabricated the better. Therefore, quasi-demi-honorable mention is alluded this triumvirate of absurdly wrong biopics – “The Jolson Story” (it’s amazing how much Al Jolson’s life was just like the plot of “The Jazz Singer”!), “They Died With Their Boots On” (the love affair between Custer and the Indians your socialist history teacher doesn’t want you to see!) and “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” (he didn’t just appear in action movies…he lived them!).

2) Dyan Cannon or Tuesday Weld?

It’s close, but I give it to Dyan Cannon for being hilarious onscreen and genuinely wacky offscreen.

3) Best example of science fiction futurism rendered silly by the event of time catching up to the prediction

The Jetson’s treadmill? I’m drawing a blank here.

4) Annette Funicello & Frankie Avalon or Troy Donahue & Sandra Dee?

Frankie & Annette – I grew up watching those movies on channels 5 & 9 (I think) out here up to age 10 or so. Not that those movies are in any sense “good” (I wonder if I could sit through any of them now?), but F&A at least have a certain amount of charm and sense of humor, which I really can’t say about Troy Donahue, at least.

5) Favorite Raoul Walsh movie?

Not really “White Heat,” and no, definitely not “They Died with Their Boots On”… The winner is “The Roaring Twenties” – by far. Just a magnificent entertainment. I need to see that one again some time soon.

6) Sophomore film which represents greatest improvement over the director’s debut

This is tough, but I guess I’m going to say Polanski’s “Repulsion” as it’s brilliant and “Knife in the Water” left me feeling merely 90 minutes older after it was done. Though, that was in college and I might have a very different reaction now. (Another possibility is “Rushmore” – though I loved “Bottle Rocket” quite a bit, so it’s dicey.)

7) Ice Cube or Mos Def?

Mos Def – because he convinced me he was actually English in “Hithchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Favorite movie about the music industry.

Many, many fun movies in this category, but I guess I’m going to have to go with “Nashville.”

(more…)

This is only an edited version which, sadly, lacks many of the funniest moments and my own and every other press question. However, it does include some highlights and a very nice medley (which sounded far more amazing in person in person — I think only one guitar made into this mix, and there’s just the slightest thump of bass in there, too) from a press event I attended heralding the upcoming plainclothes Unwigged and Unplugged tour of SpinalTapsters/Folksmen Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest, interviewed below by Kurt Loder — who I actually didn’t recognize when I first saw him in the parking lot, looking kind of bored.

More on this in the coming weeks.

I also spent a few hours at the dentist yesterday, but, sadly, they don’t allow video cameras.