April 1

I spent years reading too much JFK assassination literature without really getting anywhere, so I eventually pushed back from that table. Oh, I still completely believe that there is lots going on there; I'll never be a "Can't we just close the book on this already?" type like Vincent Bugliosi or Gerald Case Closed Posner (and how's that plagiarism thing going for you, Gerald?). I'm much more Oliver Stone-ish in this respect (and I loved JFK). But there are undoubtedly plenty of cranks in JFK-Land, and it doesn't inspire confidence when, say, a Jim Marrs follows up the absorbing Crossfire with Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us. One way in which assassination theory recapitulates the actual assassination is, you just can't know whom to trust. So I try to steer clear of the field these days, but as with any addiction, recidivism is high, and occasionally I just can't help myself: I thoroughly enjoyed the National Geographic Channel's recent special The Lost JFK Tapes, for example.

So basically, I need a full-length book on the Zapruder film (!!) like I need a hole in the head, but I'm sure I'll take a look:

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2010/03/book-you-have-to-read-great-zapruder.html

It's that time of year again: Cannes Film Festival selection speculation!

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/03/more_cote_dazur.php

If your festival energies can't wait, Bill Goodykoontz at The Arizona Republic does an excellent job of whetting my appetite for all ten features he capsulizes in his preview piece on the Phoenix Film Festival (April 8-15):

http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/movies/articles/2010/03/31/20100331festival0402list.html

The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is already over, but it sounds like you missed some good ones there. Put them on a list (that's what I do!) and keep an eye out for them:

http://diedangerdiediekill.blogspot.com/2010/03/sfiaaff-roundup.html

Matt Zoller Seitz's video essay on "Class Envy in Film Noir" is well worth a look, with excellent clips from Joseph Losey's The Prowler. (Watching the piece a second time, though, I did notice that it doesn't truly develop its ideas in the manner of a good written essay.)

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/03/to-have-and-to-have-not-class-envy-in-film-noir/

Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere responds enthusiastically to a preview of the Green Day musical American Idiot, opening on Broadway on April 20:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/03/chewed_up_power.php 

Charles Isherwood of the New York Times had earlier written thoughtfully about the show's first production at the Berkeley Repertory Theater last fall:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/theater/reviews/10isherwood.html

I like that Isherwood honestly states that "Line by line, [the] lyrics, like the words to many (if not most) contemporary pop songs, do not stand up to rigorous exegesis. It often seems as if they were written “on a steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin,” to borrow one of [the] more pungent phrases, with their forced rhymes, confused grammar and imagery that is either obscure or clotted with grandiosity and angsty clichés." Rock lyrics tend to be very hit or miss, sometimes inspired in an intuitive way, but not backed by the sort of craft that earlier generations of poets absorbed through hard work in the classroom (especially through sustained consideration of metrics and of Latin grammar). 

I don't have to always agree with Virginia Postrel to find her writing thought-provoking, and she's at the top of her game in this essay on two books about the concept of "glamour":

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/power-persuade?nopager=1

Among notables born on this date are composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Ferruccio Busoni, novelists Edgar Wallace, Francine Prose, and Milan Kundera, science fiction novelists Anne McCaffrey and Samuel R. Delaney, poet Maria Polydouri (Greece), playwrights Edmond Rostand (France) and Rolf Hochhuth (Germany), historian William Manchester, psychologist Abraham Maslow, broadcasters Vladimir Posner and Rachel Maddow, sculptor Dan Flavin, reggae artist Jimmy Cliff, "proto-rapper" Gil Scott-Heron, blues singer Alberta Hunter, blues pianist Amos Milburn, pop singer Rudolph Isley, bandleader Eddy Duchin, baseball players Phil Niekro and Rusty Staub (Le Grand Orange), film directors Barry Sonnenfeld and Allen and Albert Hughes, and actors -- take a deep breath -- Cicely Courtneidge, Lon Chaney Sr., Debbie Reynolds, Ali MacGraw, Wallace Beery, Toshiro Mifune, Jane Powell, Grace Lee Whitney, Annette O'Toole, Laurette Taylor, Gordon Jump, and George Grizzard. The shocker for me in putting today's birthday list together was discovering that Debbie Reynolds (born 1932) is only six years older than Ali MacGraw (born 1938). I think of them as members of entirely separate generations. But Debbie Reynolds, one of our last living links to "Old Hollywood," got a very early start -- she was only 19 when she filmed Singin' in the Rain (1952) -- and Ali MacGraw was already past 30 when she played a collegian in Love Story (1970).

By the way, anyone who wants to see MacGraw at her best should look up Sidney Lumet's and Jay Presson Allen's inspired 1980 comedy Just Tell Me What You Want, in which she plays against the powerhouse Alan King and more than holds her own. This movie puts today's predictable, watered-down "romantic comedies" to shame; it's got more energy than any ten of them.