Return With Us Now To TV Westerns: ‘SKY KING’
By Steve CrumKirby Grant, who portrayed the title heroic character in TV’s Sky King from 1951-52, did not age that much–which is apparent in these photos taken in 1951 and 1984.
Grant tragically died in a car accident on Oct. 30, 1985, near Cape Canaveral. He was on his way to observe the Space Shuttle Challenger liftoff.
Return With Us Now To TV Westerns: ‘THE CISCO KID’
By Steve CrumWas The Cisco Kid a friend of yours like he was mine? One of the earliest TV shows filmed in color, The Cisco Kid [1950-56] starred Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carillo. (It is still rerun today.)
At right is Renaldo shortly before he died in 1980. He was actually of Romanian descent.
Since Carillo, who died in 1961, was elderly when he portrayed Pancho, I’ve included his early portrait. Carillo was an original California aristocrat who has a state park named after him. The correct Castilian pronunciation of his last name is Cay-reel-yo.
Excessive violence kills Bond-spoof ‘Kingsman’
By Steve CrumThe comic book-based Kingsman: The Secret Service tries so hard to spoof Bond films, but never quite succeeds. God knows serious money was loaded into it, from extensive digital effects to star power. But at best Kingsman only emulates Bond takeoffs that have preceded it over the last 50 years, making it a spoof of a spoof. Let me put it another way: Via the hind teat this movie sucketh.
Directed and co-written by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass; X-Men: First Class), Kingsman: The Secret Service most closely echoes the Matt Helm series, an early James Bond spoof, which starred Dean Martin. There have been other take-offs on Bond flicks—from movies (Our Man Flint, Austin Powers) to TV (Get Smart). My guess is that since the Bond franchise is still alive and well after all these decades, why not give today’s young audience something old, which to them translates to something new: another Bond parody.
After all, how many 20 year-olds have seen even one of the four Matt Helm movies, a series that ran from 1966-69? Update that sub-genre with more sex and profanity, and add a heavy dose of digital effects to really enhance the violence. For Kingsman, fail to include any of the humor, wit, and suspense its predecessors contain.
Like the Bond setting, Kingsman is British based and centers on the exploits of licensed to kill agents protecting the Queen’s realm. The plus of the story is the focus on “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton), whose secret service father was killed years ago by enemy agent Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), who sports prosthetic legs resembling razor sharp swords. Shades of Bond’s Oddjob with that slice and dice hat. It turns out that Eggsy’s dad’s friend and fellow agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) has waited 17 years until Eggsy is grown so he can basically recruit the young man to become a Kingsman, thus following in his father’s footsteps.
Eggsy reluctantly agrees, and undergoes combat and survival training along with other young recruits. This is where Kingsman: The Secret Service is interesting and thoroughly original. Once trained and properly dressed for the part, thanks to Hart, Eggsy is off to avenge his father and save the world from a nefarious, lisping, hip-hop villain, Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson). (How appropriate this movie opens on Valentine’s Day weekend.) Valentine plans to control the world via cell phones and electronic implants.
The second half of the movie becomes a loud, f-bombing cliché of excessive violence. There is a near endless, disgusting mass murder sequence occurring inside a church that is over-the-top gross. Don’t we get enough of decapitations and shootings on the evening news? Despite the violent sequences (that go on too long) featuring mass killings and heads exploding, there is not much blood spilled…even when one guy is literally sliced in half. Accept this as an observation, I am not a fan of bloodletting.
Another original touch is the naming of secret service agents, borrowing from the legendary King Arthur’s knights. Michael Caine plays home-based leader Arthur; Colin Firth is Galahad; Mark Strong’s Merlin trains the candidates; and Eggsy’s father was Lancelot. Clocking in at 129 minutes, Kingsman: The Secret Service seems even longer.
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Grade on A-F Scale: C
Despite glitches, ‘Selma’ is powerful filmmaking
By Steve CrumSelma is a powerful dramatization of events that occurred between white supremacists and voting rights African-Americans led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, in 1965. Recreations of brutalities perpetrated by Selma, Alabama police and many of its citizens upon unarmed civil rights marchers and demonstrators are unsettling and brutally graphic.
In the process of chronicling those transitional, too often grim days following The Civil Rights Act of 1964, director Ava DuVernay and screenwriter Paul Webb have Hollywoodized the story to the extent of depicting President Lyndon Johnson as an obstructionist to the African-American cause. Nonetheless, Selma is compelling cinema. Opening with King’s 1964 acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, a tragic event in Birmingham, Alabama is then shown: the murder of four youngsters in a Sunday morning church bombing. (That terrorist act actually occurred in 1963.) 
Cut then to Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey) as she attempts again to register to vote in the Selma courthouse. Once again, she is thwarted by ridiculous regulations like having to recite each of Alabama’s 67 county judges. Faced with a requirement not required for the white population, she leaves defeated and unable to vote. Jump to Dr. King (David Oyelowo in a superb performance) meeting with President John (Tom Wilkinson) at the White House. “We want the right to vote,” King says to LBJ’s noncommittal ears. “This administration will just have to set that (voting rights) aside,” Johnson retorts. According to the film, LBJ later meets with FBI Director J. Edgar Hooever to nullify any voting agitation stirred by King and his followers. Wire tapping King in his bedroom is Hoover’s method of choice.
As Alabama’s Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) consults with his henchmen, as well as President Johnson, about how to physically deal with Dr. King, meticulously planned, peaceful protests resume. The culmination of that event was the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. incidentally, the movie was filmed in various George and Alabama locations, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the Bloody Sunday assault by Selma police actually occurred.
While Selma serves as a heartfelt tribute to the memory of Dr. King, it also documents events that shaped our nation.
Technically, DuVernay uses, maybe overuses, shadows in many closeups of King. Since Oyelowo is not an exact match for King, maybe this was a wise choice.
Technically, DuVernay uses, maybe overuses, shadows in many closeups of King. Since Oyelowo is not an exact match for King, maybe this was a wise choice.
Pluses extend to Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King and Bradford Young’s cinematography.
However, the minuses center on a couple of miscasts and a few historical flaws. Why Tom Wilkinson and Tim Roth were cast as Southerners is a puzzlement, particularly since neither physically resemble their characters (LBJ and George Wallace). Neither do they exude the necessary fervor nor speak with believable accents.
Frankly, knowing they are both British got in my way. OK, so Oyelowo is also British, but he is a virtual unknown. Of course his celebrity is now forever changed.
Throughout the film, I was shocked to see LBJ portrayed as such a racist obstructionist to the Civil Rights Movement. Later I commented to a screening rep that I had no idea Johnson used the n-word when he was president (referencing King and his followers), that he pushed Hoover into wiretapping King, and that he repeatedly refused to compromise in regard to the Voting Rights Act. As it turns out, my suspicions were not entirely warranted since there are White House-taped conversations in which Johnson used such racist language. I was shocked to discover (and hear) such after seeing Selma. In order to paint a story picture of good versus evil, even President Johnson had to appear as one of the bad guys.
Referring to the relationship between King and Johnson, Mark Updegrove, Director of the LBJ Presidential Library, recently said, “They were very much supportive of each other.” Rep. John Lewis, portrayed in Selma by Stephan James, agrees with Updegrove, but dismisses the criticism as “unfair.” Both he and DuVernay consider the Johnson depiction as nothing more than poetic license for the sake of an even better story.
“I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie,” DuVernay boldly asserts. In other words, the devil with Lyndon Johnson.
“I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie,” DuVernay boldly asserts. In other words, the devil with Lyndon Johnson.
With that skewed objective, she should have renamed the movie King.
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GRADE on A to F Scale: A-
2014 celebrity obits: a personal connection
By Steve Crum
Like an old song will provoke memories of the first time one heard it, a celebrity’s death triggers recollections. Among the many showbiz folks who died in 2014 are a baker’s dozen I cannot think about without also thinking of friends or family.
Permit me to share why these deceased celebs have personally connected with me…outside of appreciating their individual talents.
•Shirley Temple Black [85, Feb. 10]…One Sunday a month, for many years, my parents, sister, and I would drive about an hour to get to our cousins’ farm located in Birmingham, Missouri. I never watched “Shirley Temple’s Storybook,” which ran from 1958-61, except when we visited our cousins. But my cousins did, and we were guests. So my sister and I watched too.
•Sid Caesar [91, Feb. 12]…
I have dim recollection of watching Caesar’s early TV work, but his wonderful acting in 1963’s “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” always makes me smile as I also think of my Dad. He had divorced Mom a few months before, so he, my sister, and I were pretty dazed and depressed. Adding to that was the recent assassination of President Kennedy. Not long before Christmas that year, Dad treated us to the movie, in Cinerama, at the Empire Theatre in Kansas City, Mo. Dad laughed at Caesar and his cohorts…big time, nearly falling off his chair. His explosive outbursts made my sister and me crack up even more. I’ll never forget it. We three really needed those laughs.
•David Brenner [78, March 15]…It was Brenner my second wife, Peggy, wanted to see perform when we vacationed in Las Vegas. He was actually her second choice after Siegfried and Roy. But they were sold out. Peggy made a good choice in David Brenner. He was very funny. 
•Mitch Leigh [86, March 16]…
I think of the “Man of La Mancha” composer and associate him with Dr. Richard Rohan, my World Literature professor at Emporia State. When the touring musical was about to play in downtown Emporia, Kansas, Rohan was its greatest promoter, wearing a large “I’ve Seen ‘Man of La Mancha’” button to class every day for weeks. I saw the great production free while ushering it via my Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity.
•Mickey Rooney [93, April 6]…Here is another great who starred in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” Like Sid Caesar in the same film, Rooney contributed to making my Dad extremely happy. I also have to mention a hilarious bit Rooney did in the late 1950’s on “The Ed Sullivan Show” with Joey Foreman. Rooney played a man on the street who is pranked on a “Candid Camera”-like TV show. Mickey is absolutely hilarious. 
•Lee Marshall [64, April 26]…It seems like a thousand times I heard Tony the Tiger, along with his animated image, pitch Kellogg’s Sugar Frosted Flakes on Saturday morning TV during the 1950’s and ‘60s. Marshall voiced Tony with that deep, resonant voice. He was “Grrrrreaaaat!”
•Ann B. Davis [88, June 1]…Davis won an Emmy for portraying Bob Collins’ office secretary Schultzy, on “The Bob Cummings Show,” 1955-59. THIS is the show I associate with her, not “The Brady Bunch.” Bob Collins was a glamour aka cheesecake photographer, and my father loved the show enough to take up photography as a hobby.
•Eli Wallach [98, June 24]…Back in 1966, movie sneak previews were mysterious in that the film’s title was never announced ahead of the showing. That’s how I saw “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” at K.C.’s Plaza Theater one evening. Eli Wallach, as The Ugly, remains unforgettable.
•James Garner [July 19]…The impact of “Maverick” on the TV audience was so great that when my family visited our cousin’s house in Raytown, Mo. in late 1957, all activity and talking ceased when the show started. We gathered around the TV to enjoy Bret’s latest escapade. James Garner had everything to do with that attraction. 
•Don Pardo [96, August 18]…As often occurs, when one divorces, one loses friendship with favorite in-laws. My ex-wife’s aunt and uncle, Karen and John, were very near our ages. We were best friends, in fact, seeing each other virtually every weekend for the years their niece and I were married. It was a tradition among us to watch “Saturday Night Live” together, which we had done since the show began in 1975. Don Pardo’s distinctive voice introduced each program. 
•Richard Attenborough [90, August 24]…A perk of being a film critic is the free screenings of movies not yet released. For many years, I took my daughter with me if the movie would so warrant. “Jurassic Park” was such a film. Shelley was 12 in 1993 when we saw it. Afterwards, on the way back to the car, the impact of the movie was still with her. “Dad,” she said, “I feel like I’ve been with real dinosaurs!” Richard Attenborough’s role as the park keeper no doubt added to the illusion.
•Robin Williams [63, August 11]…The first time I really appreciated Williams’ stunning gift of humor was when I saw his HBO “Off the Wall” special that my best friend, David Laudick, had recorded on Beta tape in 1978. I was visiting David in Scott City, Kansas when I watched Robin’s creativity stretch from stage to audience to him literally climbing up to the balcony of the theater. This was funny, improvisational, and electric. David has since unexpectedly died, and now Robin. 
•Ben Bradlee [93, October 21]…Nothing impacted my teaching high school journalism like the publishing of both the book and movie of “All The President’s Men.” When the film was released in 1976, interest in journalism, particularly investigative journalism, increased enrollment in college and university journalism programs nationwide. It certainly impacted my j-classes at J. C. Harmon High School. Ben Bradlee’s real-life role as editor of The Washington Post was a vital element.