Corman’s Campy, Culty The Little Shop of Horrors:  The Inspiration for the Off-Broadway Musical Was One of the Cheapest Hollywood Films Ever Made by Adam Abraham   Vincent Price called Roger Corman “dead serious, humorless.”  Screenwriter Charles Byron Griffith suggested a “man-eating plant” for a screenplay.  Griffith entitled his new script “The Passionate People Eater”—a variation on “The Purple People Eater,” a 1958 novelty song by Sheb Wooley.  In the song, a creature from another world descends to the earth and proclaims, “I want to get a job in a rock ’n’ roll band.”  So the song blends a monster movie and rock music:  a potent combination.  He shot with two cameras simultaneously to get more coverage in less time.  The actors were engaged for one week; they rehearsed for three days and shot for two.  The total cost:  less than $30,000.  Retitled The Little Shop of Horrors, the film opened at the Pix Theatre, in Hollywood.  Nicholson attended, and there was a strong reaction, at least to his scene:  “They laughed so hard I could barely hear the dialogue.”  A tagline on The Little Shop poster is adapted from a song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, appended by musical notation:  “the flowers that kill in the Spring / TRA-LA.” So The Little Shop of Horrors, a horror-comedy, appears to be a musical.  Two decades later, Howard Ashman remembered the story about the man-eating plant.  Ashman reimagined Corman’s nasty little thriller as an Off-Broadway show, with music by Alan Menken.  Audiences have been singing “Little Shop of Horrors” ever since.  Adapted from ATTACK OF THE MONSTER MUSICAL:  A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors by Adam Abraham.  Copyright © 2022   https://lithub.com/behind-the-scenes-of-roger-cormans-campy-culty-the-little-shop-of-horrors/ 

Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni (1924–1996) was an Italian film actor, regarded as one of his country's most iconic male performers of the 20th century.  He played leading roles for many of Italy's top directors in a career spanning 147 films between 1939 and 1997, and garnered many international honors including 2 BAFTA Awards, 2 Best Actor awards at the Venice and Cannes film festivals, 2 Golden Globes, and 3 Academy Award nominations.  During World War II, after the division into Axis and Allied Italy, he was interned in a loosely guarded German prison camp, from which he escaped to hide in Venice.  Mastroianni made his screen debut as an uncredited extra in Marionette (1939) when he was fourteen, and made intermittent minor film appearances until landing his first big role in Atto d'accusa (1951).  Within a decade he became a major international celebrity, starring in Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958); and in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) playing a disillusioned and self-loathing tabloid columnist who spends his days and nights exploring Rome's decadent high society.  Mastroianni followed La Dolce Vita with another signature role, that of a film director who, amidst self-doubt and troubled love affairs, finds himself in a creative block while making a film in Fellini's 8½ (1963).   He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times:  for Divorce Italian Style, A Special Day and Dark Eyes.  Mastroianni, Dean Stockwell and Jack Lemmon are the only actors to have been twice awarded the Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival.  Mastroianni won it in 1970 for The Pizza Triangle and in 1987 for Dark Eyes.  Mastroianni starred alongside his daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, in Raúl Ruiz's Three Lives and Only One Death in 1996.   For this performance he won the Silver Wave Award at the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival.  His final film, Voyage to the Beginning of the World (1997), was released posthumously.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Mastroianni   

'Two cents worth':  An individual's opinion.  'My two cents' worth' (or 'two bits' worth') implies that, in order to express and opinion, a small charge is levied. This could well be a simple notional charge and not related to any actual payment.  It has been suggested that 'two cents' was the minimum wager required of a new player in order to enter poker games.  There's no documentary evidence to support that idea.  The US version of the phrase is pre-dated by the British 'two-penneth' and there's little reason to believe 'two cents' worth' to be anything other than a US translation of that.  The card-playing origin of the phrase could just as well apply to the British version but, without evidence, that's merely speculation.  The earliest example I can find of the US-variant phrase in print is from the Olean Evening Times, March 1926.  That includes an item by Allene Sumner, headed My Two cents' worth.  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/393950.html  Copyright © Gary Martin   

Zun is a type of bronze wine vessel used by Shang-dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) aristocrats during ritual ceremonies to honor their ancestors.  This owl-shaped zun is divided into two sections:  the removable owl’s-head lid and the bird’s hollow body. Vessels shaped like animals constitute virtually the only bronze sculpture known from the Shang period.  Besides this owl, vessels in the form of buffalo, boars, rhinoceroses, elephants, and rams have also survived.  See Nun wine vessel in the shape of an owl, 13th-12th century BCE at https://www.jigidi.com/solve/7z4ef01z/zun-wine-vessel-in-the-shape-of-an-owl-13th-12th-century-bce/   

Get up on the wrong side of the bed and wake up on the wrong side of the bed are idioms with ancient roots.  To get up on the wrong side of the bed means to start the day in a grumpy mood and remain that way for the entire day.  An alternative rendering of the phrase is wake up on the wrong side of the bed.  The generally accepted origin of the phrases get up on the wrong side of the bed and wake up on the wrong side of the bed is ancient Rome, where superstition was rampant.  Ancient philosophers equated the right side of anything as the positive side, and the left side of anything as the sinister or negative side.  The story says that Romans always exited the bed on the right side in order to start the day in contact with positive forces.  If one rose on the left side of the bed, he started the day in contact with negative forces.  The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary of the idioms get up on the wrong side of the bed and wake up on the wrong side of the bed is from 1801.  https://grammarist.com/idiom/get-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed-and-wake-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed/  2022 © Grammarist 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2571  September 30, 2022