WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP

Check out my review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey....

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

BEST RESULTS

Once again I'm proud to have been among the authors of Phoenix Magazine's annual "Best of the Valley" feature...

...now on the stands. Check it out to find hundreds of Valley amenities which we have peremptorily chosen as the best our community has to offer. While you're reading, guess which 13 little mini-masterpieces of prose composition are the work of Your Humble Narrator.

THE LAND OF THE FREE (PASS)

Check out my review of Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

At the screening, I was presented with my own Official Celebrity Sex Pass...

You'll notice that it remains blank; at this writing I still haven't decided which lucky celebrity gets me...

TO FRISBEE OR NOT TO FRISBEE

Not long ago I walked into the Pet Supplies Plus near my house...

...and encountered a young woman sitting at a table laden with prizes and a small wheel of fortune. I was invited to give the wheel a spin. It landed on "TRIVIA QUESTION." The question: What is the life span of a bearded dragon, the endearing Australian lizards popular at pet shops...

Your Humble Narrator prides himself on an above average knowledge, for a layperson, of reptiles. I guessed that in captivity, a properly cared for bearded dragon might hope to live ten years. The young woman said the answer was 8-12 years. Nailed it!

I was therefore invited to choose a prize. I selected a sleek, shiny black plastic frisbee with "PET SUPPLIES PLUS" printed on it in bold green letters. I brought it home, thinking our Stewie...

...might enjoy chasing a frisbee in our back yard as opposed to the customary hard rubber balls. And so he did, but after less than ten minutes with him this was the disc's condition:

Very soon after this, oddly enough, I was given another frisbee. This one was a promotional item for the movie Pressure...

After less than ten minutes in the back yard with Stewie...

...this was its condition:

The main reason this post exists is so everybody knows I nailed the question about the bearded dragons.

LOBO TO ME

On the weekend of Our Nation's 250th anniversary, Your Humble Narrator once again had the honor to introduce this week's edition of Reel West Sundays at Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, and lead the post-movie discussion. The selection was...

Rio Lobo (1970)--In the last film that Howard Hawks directed, John Wayne plays a Union army colonel in charge of moving a shipment of gold at the end of the Civil War. Confederate raiders rob the train, and after the war ends, The Duke goes west to get even with the traitors among his men who betrayed the mission.

This was the third Hawks western starring Wayne in just over a decade, after Rio Bravo in 1959 and El Dorado in 1966, all written or co-written by Leigh Brackett. But the similarities run deeper than that; the three films seem almost like loose remakes of each other. All three feature The Duke and his allies guarding a prisoner in a besieged jailhouse from corrupt forces who would like to free him. There are other devices that pop up almost obsessively--prisoner exchanges, dynamite used as a weapon--and all three feature a crotchety old sidekick and a plucky young sidekick; in Rio Lobo the youngster is the lively Christopher Mitchum as "Tuscarora" and the oldster is Jack Elam, having a high time as Tuscarora's maniacally giggling father.

The glamour comes from Wayne's hunky second lead, the Mexican star Jorge Rivera as the leader of the raiders, and from Jennifer O'Neill, one year away from fame in Summer of '42, who looks every inch the Cover Girl model she was. She rocks her leather pants and feels very 20th Century, as do her female co-stars Susan Dosamantes and Sherry Lansing; they come across more like the women in a Beach Party movie. But however anachronistic, they do follow in the Hawks tradition of self-directing, non-subservient women.

Rio Lobo is the least of this odd trio of films, maybe because the seige part doesn't start until the homestretch of the film. Until then it feels a bit aimlessly structured and rambling. But it's still pretty entertaining; Wayne is at his most likable and the movie is full of terrific, reliable supporting players including, among others, David Huddleston, Mike Henry, Victor French, Robert Donner and even a glimpse of George Plimpton, of all people, among the heavies.

MINION SOUP

Now playing in the multiplexes is Illumination's latest, Minions & Monsters...

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine.