Agosto Machado 1940?-2026

 

Who Killed Teddy Bear 1965

 You might want to have a good hot shower waiting for you after you view this cheapo B thriller from 1965. There is a sadness attached to it, maybe it has to do with seeing the late Sal Mineo at the end of his short and sometimes impressive career or the cheap actual dingy apartments, or the time lost footage of the long gone Times Sq. The plot is sordid. A sexual stalker is on the loose and we know who it is pretty much as soon as the film begins. The investigation is led by a police detective played by an unexpected Jan Murray whose wife was slaughtered by a sexually crazed killer who has never been found, and he takes a deep personal approach to the new crimes, especially the threatening calls that Juliet Prowse keeps getting.

Juliet spins disco records at a seedy dance club managed by Elaine Strich where Sal also works. Strich who is lesbian and in keeping with the times will not have a happy time of it. Strich along with Murray and Mineo have eyes for Juliet, oh those legs but all three get nowhere with her. The calls continue and the chase is on to find the stalker before he turns into a killer. The film is fun for its actual shooting on New York streets and in Times Sq. along with the campy disco where these people from another time, do these silly dances that look scary and dated.

Sal lives in a cramped dump with his mentally challenged sister who saw something when she was a kid that caused her to fall down a flight of stairs in fright. Sal takes care of her as best he can and our sympathies are with them. At least for a time. What she saw finally comes out, and you will have to sit through this B to find the answer which is very sordid and ugly especially for its time. Also the images of sal in a tight bathing suit showing off his bulge and butt did not sit well with the censors at the time, and the film had trouble finding places to show it. It was banned in England for a time. Feminists applaud the film for the strong woman Juliet Prowse projects especially for the time who takes no prisoners or shit from anyone. I'm not on the bandwagon for this film, its just too sordid and nasty for me, but the nyc footage by joseph Brun is great, and seeing the wonderful Sal Mineo is a treat. This film has a big cult following and it is now showing on the Criterion Channel.

Robert Mueller 1944-2026

 

jane LaPotaire 1944-2026

 

Calvin Tomkins 1925-2026

 

 The Bicycle Thieves 1948

Talk about great movies, and it should lead you to this superb Italian neo realist classic directed by the great Vittorio de Sica in 1948. I haven't seen it in years, and thanks to the Criterion Channel I was able to view it in a really nice transfer the other night. It took the silliness of the Oscars and put them where they belong, I think Sean Penn would agree with me. Set in the post war city of Rome which is also one of the “stars” of the film, the story is simple but the emotions are complex. A struggling father with a little baby and a nine year old boy, is desperate to find a job, but the one he does find posting advertising bills and posters requires a bicycle which is in the pawn shop.

His sad wife literally takes the sheets off their bed and takes them to the pawn shop to hopefully get the money to get his bike out of hock. They do, and if you think things are looking up for this family forget about it. I'm not going to give away much of the plot but there are many scenes of tenderness and sadness especially between the father beautifully played by Lamberto Maggiorani and his young son brilliantly acted by Enzo Staiola. The scene of them eating out in a restaurant maybe for the first time tore me up even though the scene has some obvious touches.

Actually the entire film tore me up, and I'm still looking for the pieces. This is neo realism which means of course that it was filmed in the actual streets of Rome with mainly real people but De Sica uses many actors both professional and untrained in most of the key acting roles. The film won the honorary Oscar in 1949 as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the united states during 1949 and also was nominated for the screenplay Oscar but lost to “A Letter To Three Wives.”. Of course the title gives the plot away but you need to see it to get the raw beauty and yes elegance of this great film and I promise that the ending will reduce you to tears or at least stay with you for a couple of days. One of the ten best films of 1948.

Country Joe McDonald 1942-2026

 

The Secret Agent 2025

A heartbreaking work of staggering beauty and intensity. If the Oscars get it right with their oncoming onslaught of glamour and bad taste, then Wagner Moura will walk off with the best actor Oscar, but I'm not holding my breath. This is the 3rd time I've seen him act. His most famous role is his intense on going part in “Narcos” that harsh series in which he played Pablo Escobar.

I also caught him in an early film from 2014 “Futuro Beach” in which he plays a young gay man who works as a lifeguard and gets involved with a German tourist who becomes his longtime lover. His recent appearance in”The Secret Agent” takes place in the past of 1977 when Brazil is under the long and violent arm of their long military dictatorship that took place from 1964 to 1985.

The film's title brought up for me The 1930's Alfred Hitchcock film about spies and yes secret agents, but don't let the title mislead you as it has nothing to do with the Hitchcock film or the short stories by W. Somerset

Maugham that it was based on.

Moura plays a widowed research professor with a young son who is being hounded by the fascists and he has to get himself and his charming young son out of the country. That is basically the plot, but this is a long film and there is a lot of meat on its bones that brings together all the horror of a brutal dictatorship along with moments of surreal and deadly humor, that mainly involves a severed foot found in the belly of a shark.

Sharks both human and the other kind are also here, especially in the references to “Jaws” the movie that is playing in one of the big movie palaces that is operated by Moura's father in law, and is the one movie that his young child is possessed by, begging his father and grandfather to allow him to see it, and even doing many drawings based on the movie ads that he gets inspiration from. This is a wonderful touch and Kleber Mendonca Filho who did a marvelous documentary called “Pictures of Ghosts” about his childhood memories of the many movie palaces that filled his youth in his home town of Recife, which is also the city that The Secret Agent takes place in and these palaces are also referenced in this film.

This is not an easy film, its nearly 3 hours, it jumps back and forth between the present, and the past and its politics will not sit easy with the average American viewer who wants their guts and glory preferably under 2 hours. However for the rest of us, this is an unnerving look at what happens when countries are taken over by harsh fascistic dictators and the thousands of lives that they destroy. From its shocking opening to its final sad ending this is a film that will stay with me for a long time. One of the ten best films of 2025.

Oddball Magazine

Oddball Magazine, that oddball oddball has just published a poem by Jules Nyquist along with one of my fat donnie pieces. You can see it all at the link below. 


 https://oddballmagazine.com/poem-by-jules-nyquist-3/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQS12lleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF2ZDFubDQ3aEtmd1FmVGxmc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHm3xPg1FVnDRvVOENbptTk3bx17VKhgGjPZP_SXuv3C7fF_qhxwFQ2Phh8yT_aem_6CSxKjtskQhkhEqw6OlUvw

Newest piece. Untitled. Mixed Jan Feb 2026

 

Neil Sedaka 1939-2026

 

Willie Colon 1950-2026

 

Tom Noonan 1951-2026

 

portrait

 It was quite a shock to see myself with John hanging in the Brooklyn Museum in this portrait by Sylvia Sleigh. I'm not in their collection, they have constantly ignored my art forever so it seems, so I have mixed feelings about this. Glad for Sylvia though and it was fun to watch viewers looking at me. what were they thinking? 

Jesse Jackson 1941-2026

 

Frederick Wiseman 1930-2026

 

Robert Duvall 1931-2026

 

Love Story John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette

Ok I know, but I couldn't help myself. I started the series last night and I was hooked, its so smooth and well done in that Ryan Murphy way. The leads have the looks of the famous couple which helps, although Paul Anthony Kelly is not as beautiful as the real Kennedy Jr. was.

For baby boomers this is another piece in our Kennedy saga that just doesn't seem to end. We all know where we were on that terrible day in November, I was appropriately and ironically in my high school art class. Years later when my mom was working as the waitress for the federal judges in their private dinning room, (in my early teens the summer before I went to high school I worked as a busboy here) she would bring home autographs of some famous people including one autographed on a tattered piece of notebook paper of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

How did you get that one? I asked. Well she was in the courthouse for the trial of that photographer who was bothering her, and I just went up to her. At first she was not going to sign it “Why do you want my autograph? The most famous woman in the world asked my mom. My mom then mentioned that she was an old friend of a well known furniture designer who use to babysit for me when I was a kid, and had made some pieces for Jackie. My mom said that she lit up and quickly signed the paper for her.

I later sold it along with the John and Yoko autograph with little drawings that they both made, the Clint Eastwood, and the Trump, which was very easy to part with. My mom was pissed at me, but hey that's the life of struggle for artists in this world.

Years later as I would live and walk in Manhattan I would sometimes see John Jr. riding his bike or walking briskly. I looked and he would acknowlede my stare with a hello or a hi. He was stunning. These sightings were in the late 80's I guess before he was married, and I did have a close encounter with him and his wife Carolyn in the mid or late 90's that left me tattered and sad.

It was a spring day and I was walking by the now long gone Barnes & Noble on 6th ave in the 20's when in spite of the crowds I noticed that the couple was walking very close to me, and they were having an argument that was loud and nasty. I'm amazed that I was the only one who was aware of this, but then again I was pretty much walking next to them and the street was noisy and crowded.

He was walking fast and yelling at Carolyn who sheepishly was trying to keep up with him saying nothing, as he harangued her. I was shocked and appalled and sadden by this candid scene and a short time later they were both dead. This was a New York moment that I wish I hadn't had but I did, and I pretty much kept it to myself until now.

After they were killed I happened to me in a local dvd rental place that I liked in Chelsea, and as I waited at the counter, two loud nasty butch lesbians were saying the most horrible things about John Jr. how glad they were that he was dead and more. I freaked and gave them hell. “What the fuck did he ever do to you two that you have such hatred for him. And on and on I went with my well deserved rants against these two awful members of my community. They were stunned as I was hoping they would be and I was still ranting at them as I took my dvds and left. I will continue to watch the series of course, because as I said I'm hooked.

Bud Cort 1948-2026

 

James Van Der Beek 1977-2026

 

Wow

 Today my friend the wonderful photographer Ross Bennett Lewis gifted me with this photo of his. I love it.

Christa Fuller Lang 1943-2026

sam and christa owned a piece of mine, sam said he would send me money but he never did. I hope my piece is taken care of. The piece is in the background of their home in hol

lywood and in Paris. Yes that's truffaut.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti 1989-2026

 

The great Catherine O' Hara has passed 1954-2026

 

Oddball Magazine January 2026.

One of my trump portraits along with a poem by Chad Parenteau. Click on the link

https://oddballmagazine.com/poem-by-chad-parenteau-20/

Valentino Garavani 1932-2026

 

Elle Simone Scott-1976-2026

 

First piece of the new year 2026 Mixed on paper

 

Sinners 2025

 

For the first half of this Ryan Coogler audacious movie I sat in awe and pleasure as I was expecting a large and imaginative take on African American life in the Jim Crow south of 1932. I had really no idea what was coming and knew very little about this blockbuster movie and even its blockbuster status surprised me before seeing it. Now of course I understand why it was such a huge hit and it has nothing to do with African American history in the deep south of 1932. More about that later on.

The story concerns two grown twin brothers both played by the fine charismatic handsome actor Michael B. Jordan. The first surprise for me. They are home from Chicago where they were members of the Al Capone gang and are now ready to spend some of their ill gotten bucks on opening a big Juke Joint for the pleasure and enjoyment of their down beaten community in a huge abandoned sawmill that they buy from an obvious racist and maybe even a KKK member.

The two twins are nicknamed smoke and stack cute right? and upon returning they are greeted by close friends and some new buddies. Among the new buds is Sammy a young cousin of theirs who sings and plays the guitar beautifully, and is soon taken under the twin's enveloping wings. Sammy has conflicts with his father who is a no nonsense minister of a small southern church and does not like what Sammy is doing.

The film actually opens with Sammy all battered and bruised holding the remains of his guitar driving confused up to his father's church in a vintage red convertible. We know nothing of what happened until the movie flashes back in time to a few days earlier. For some reason known only to Coogler the screen ratio keeps going from wide screen to 4.3, one of the annoying things I didn't like.

Its in the long flashback that takes up most of the movie's running time of 138 minutes and where the story unfolds we meet all the major and minor characters of the movie We meet the Chinese couple Grace and Bo Chow and their teenage daughter Lisa who own two groceries one selling to whites only and the other to blacks. They are old friends of the brothers and I love the affection and feelings that they have for each other. I knew nothing about the vibrant Chinese community who had homes and lives in the deep south during this period or indeed any other period so I welcomed this new addition of knowledge.

One of my favorites in the film is played by the great Nigerian British actress Wunmi Mosaku who gives another terrific performance as Smoke's estranged wife and practitioner of hoodoo and mother of their dead infant. She is a majestic and monumental figure.


There is a lot of great music in the film, and a highlight is the large dance number at the juke joint where dancers come back from the far and recent past to perform in this wonderful dance and music number. It is a successful attempt at mixing music, fantasy and dance and the look of this number brought back to me images of paintings by some of the great African American artists of the time including Archibald John Motley, Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence whose works I've posted with the review.

Spoiler Alert

However my admiration for the film starts to go downhill with the introduction and take over of the story by the far fetched appearance of vampires. Why vampires? Are they a metaphor for the racists and KKK? This strange brew just didn't work for me, it was as if another film had stumbled into this movie and it's a silly intrusion into what was for me, a marvelous interpretation of the period and the African American experience during this time. It just didn't work for me. I know I am in the minority about this vampire thing, but that's ok.

I can only think that Coogler who has made some of the Marvel films and the Rocky spinoff “Creed”wanted to capture the younger audiences which he did. However I pretty much turned off during the last part of the film with all the vampire bloodshed and bullshit. He also adds two Addenda endings both of which were unnecessary and mawkish including a one man bloody attack on the KKK and a later look at the character of Sammy also unnecessary.

None of this has hampered the generally very good critical response, and the film's appearance in most of the year end award nominations and winners, and then there are those stunning blockbuster box office returns. Listen I have nothing against the mixing of history with fantasy. In fact one of my favorite series of the recent past is “Lovecraft Country” that wonderfully mixed fantasy, sci fi and horror with the African American experience in Chicago during the 40's and 50's and featured a stunning group of African American actors including Wunmi Mosaku.