Welcome to 2022

Here at Shades of Gray, we wish you a Happy New Year--whether you're coming...

... or going!

We're seeing one year end, as another begins. We hope you'll join us for at least one more time around the sun here at Shades of Gray!

Betty White has passed away

This is a post that's been revised from one we had planned for January 17, Betty White's 100th birthday. Sadly, we're making it now, on the final day of 2021... the day on which Ms. White moved onto even bigger and better things.

 

Comedienne and actress Betty White is best known for her roles on "Mary Tyler Moore" (1970-1977) and "Golden Girls" (1985-1992), White had been a star on both radio and television long before then--including starring in her own self-titled series. Her television career began in 1952, and by the mid-1950s, she was already well-deserving of her nickname the Queen of Television. Among her pioneering achievements during the 1950s was having complete creative control of, and an ownership stakes in several of the series she headlined, whether they were for networks or syndicated.

White passed away at her Beverly Hills home on December 31, 2021, a little over two weeks shy of her 100th birthday. She leaves the world richer for her being it, with over 100 characters portrayed on television (including starring as the ditzy Rose Nylund on two different series, and as a recurring guest-starring as her on two others). We celebrate with some photos of her from the early 1950s when her star became permanently affixed to the firmament of TV!

'The Diadem': Emma Peel's Most Secret Mission?

The Diadem (1967? 1968? 1969?)
Starring: Diana Rigg

Director: Uwe Beetz

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A woman of mystery (Rigg) engages in a deadly struggle with a group of murderous thugs over a secret recording, a piggy bank, and valuable jewelry.

 

Either shortly after she left "The Avengers", or during or shortly after she finished work on "In Her Majesty's Secret Service", Diana Rigg made a pair of made-for-home-viewing short films for a German production company. One of these, "The Diadem" was released both in color (the shorter version, which runs about 7 minutes) and black-and-white (the longer version, which runs about 12 minutes).

The information available about "The Diadem" is long on speculation and short of facts. There are no credits to speak of on the film, so the supporting cast, writer, and crew outside the director are anonymous... and since there only seems to be one source for the director's name, one has to wonder if even that is accurate.

To make matters more complicated, it seems like there are people who may be commenting in authoritative tones about this silent short film who seem to not even have seen it... since they reference events that don't seem to take place in it. (At least not in the version I watched. Maybe the color version isn't just a shortened release of the black-and-white one, but has a different scene or two?

One thing all sources seem to agree upon is that "The Diadem" was made while Rigg's star was shining very brightly during the late 1960s. There is no logical reason for her to star in this weird, ultra-low budget short film. so maybe she did as a favor to a friend? Maybe she had a spare weekend, and she thought it would be fun working with friends? Perhaps, someday, writers and historians more devoted to research and Truth than I will find the answers, but that day is not here.

As for what is actually in "The Diadem", it plays like something of a tribute to "The Avengers", the series where Diana Rigg played Mrs. Emma Peel, the role that catapulted her to fame. One can easily imagine this as a solo adventure for Mrs. Peel, either before, during, or after her gig as a "trouble-shooter" for the British government. Every minute of the film plays like an overly stylized attempt to capture the feel of action scenes from "The Avengers" and the character that Rigg portrays is Mrs. Peel in every way except by name. 

Although for all we know, perhaps we ARE to imagine that this is Emma Peel taking down bad guys and that the filmmakers meant for this to be an authorized sequel to her television adventures... something that hard-core fans could enjoy in their homes on their 8-mm film projectors. The music that plays during the version that watched is even slightly reminiscent of what you might hear on "The Avengers"... although I have no way of knowing if this is what heard when the film was first released.

I think that if you've enjoyed any episodes of "The Avengers", you'll find the "The Diadem" to be a lot of fun. What passes for the plot is a little disjointed and illogical, but the action and weird, artsy choices of camera angles make up for that. The Six Rating I am giving it is as high as it can be, and the only reason it's not a Seven is because the otherwise rapid pacing sputters a bit and is uneven at the halfway mark.

We began 2021 with a look at Emma Peel's first big adventure while she was still a teenager, and we're ending with what could be the last of her adult adventures... bringing The Year of the Avengers to a perfect close.

We hope you have fun watching "The Diadem", and we hope to share another 200-300 posts with you in 2022!

The Milla Jovovich Quarterly

Milla Jovovich has been a mainstay of this blog since its first full year of operation in 2010. Even during the quiet period between 2012 and 2017, where less than 100 posts were made each year, we got at least one Milla post in.

As previously mentioned in this space, we've been fans of Milla Jovovich since we first encountered her in "The Fifth Element" and there we've yet to see her in a movie that we completely hated. (Even if "Million Dollar Hotel" came perilously close to earning that dubious honor...) Thankfully, since she's always split her time between modeling and acting, there's an abundance of photos of her to feature, and we've always had plenty of material to work with for straight picture posts, or from which to draw inspiration for more elaborate efforts such as this or this.

While we are hesitant to make predictions about what 2022 will bring, we feel confident that Milla will show up here every few months... in black...

... and white.

'Black & White': Fun take on the hardboiled genre

Black & White (2018)
Starring: Emily Inserra, Nick D'Ambrosia, Amber Walker, Tommy Barbara, Jaime Plitnick, Dave Cifelli, and Alex Luckenbaugh
Director: "Collective Brain"
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

After getting black-out drunk at a party, college girl Rose (Inserra) wakes up to find that everything around her now appears in shades of gray. She sets out to reconstruct what happened the night before and to hopefully get some color back into her life!

"Black & White" is a well-crafted spoof of the hardboiled detective thrillers where the main character is trying to piece together a mystery that has deep and personal ramifications for his or her future, but which consists of clues and mysteries within mysteries that defy meaning until they are all uncovered and put together. In this case, the detective role is a party girl who has a bad habit of getting drunk and breaking up with her boyfriend, but her narration is hilariously hardboiled, as is a couple of the actions she takes while seeking out witnesses and gathering clues to solve the mystery.

Over its 9-minute running time, "Black & White" pokes fun at college campus stereotypes (especially as they manifest in romance fiction and dramas), detective fiction, the film noir movie genre, and perhaps even one or two other subjects that escaped my notice. The script is hilarious, with Rose's internal monologue causing me to have a near-constant smile on my face as the film unfolded, and the "what are going to do?" scene had me laughing out loud. I also loved the splashes of color that entered into the film as it reached its conclusion, effectively driving home the point that Rose has reached the end of her journey of discovery and that maybe better days are ahead. 

I also thought the film was nicely photographed, the soundtrack music was perfect, and the sound was always clear and well-balanced. That's actually a bigger deal than someone who doesn't watch a lot of these sorts of YouTube videos might realize. There have been many, many shorts that I've not bothered featuring here or at the "Terror Titans" blog, because the sound was so badly done that dialogue couldn't be heard clearly due to background noise or was drowned out by the soundtrack music due to bad mixing, or because the sound effects so badly integrated so as to be distracting. There are even some otherwise good films that are weakened by bad choice of soundtrack stock music.

I really only have one real complaint about "Black & White", and I don't know if I should be grateful for the filmmakers for giving me the opportunity to make it. There's a scene where Rose barges in on a guy sitting on the toilet, but he has his long-johns fully pulled up. Why? How? What could he have been doing there, dressed like that? It was such a weird moment that it pulled me out of the film. (There are some nitpicks, but I'm not going to call them out, because I understood and appreciated and was amused by what the filmmakers were going for, even if they didn't quite manage to pull it off.)

All in all, if you like film noir or college-based dramas or romantic comedies, I think you'll get a kick out of "Black & White". 

--

"Black & White" was made by a group of then-students at Ramapo College in New Jersey. They created films under the name Collective Brain, because, according, to the person monitoring their Facebook page, their films were true group efforts and there was no clear delineation between who wrote what and who directed it. Unfortunately, if the views, likes, and subscriptions visible on the Collective Brain YouTube Channel are any indication, their efforts have not gotten a whole lot of traction or attention. That's too bad, because, if "Black & White" is any indication, they were creating good stuff. (It's not all bad news, though; I found a smattering of credits at IMDB for several of the members of the Collective, and at least one has been performing with a Shakespearean theatre company in Massachusetts. It appears they on their way to success in the Real World, YouTube be damned!)

Musical Monday with Paloma Sridhar

We present a very appropriate song for the final Monday of 2021--"My Way".

 

We've had a soft spot for this song here at Shades of Gray since we were kids (which may mean were morbid kids...) and we rank this version from Mumbai-based singer Paloma Sridhar's version of it right up there with the great Frank Sinatra rendition.

Will there be Musical Mondays in 2022? Time will tell. (If you've enjoyed any of the music posts that have showed up here, feel free to let us know in the comments section.)

Seattle's Best House Blend

Once upon a time, I was a self-employed writer/editor/game designer, working out of my home. When I got tired of  the scenery outside my office window, I would grab my laptop computer, drive down to a nearby Seattle's Best shop, get a large cup of coffee, and sit there and write. And when I was at home, I would also drink Seattle's Best Coffee, because I bought bags of their medium roast in the store and made my own coffee blends. With this latest coffee review, I return to those days... sort of.

 

SEATTLE'S BEST COFFEE: HOUSE BLEND

The subject of today's review came to me via the grocery store when I caught sight of it. I used to go to Seattle's Best all the time, pay table rent (in the form of a Large Coffee or Large White Black-and-White Mocha), and sit their and write all afternoon and into the evening. The staff knew me and would chat, some of the other regulars knew me and would chat... it was an oasis of friendliness in the otherwise stand-offish Northwest. But then Starbucks purchased Seattle's Best and over the space of a year, things changed and the store was closed (to eventually reopen, remodeled and rebranded as a Starbucks location). This was the fate of all the Seattle's Best locations. Except in airports.

But the Seattle's Best brand name lives on in the grocery store. The other day, I noticed bags of Seattle Best's House Blend. This was, basically, the coffee I always got there, either with a bunch of creamer and sugar added, or as part of the aforementioned Black-and-White Mocha. I decided to take a trip down memory lane and bought a bag.

Given the negative experience I had not long ago when I tried the Starbuck's Pike Place Roast for the first time in several years, I did not have high hopes for this, but, as will all media items or coffee I review, I start from a place of expected to enjoy myself; I'm never going to waste my time on something I am certain will be disappointing.

As it turned out, I was not disappointed. The House Blend was every bit as smooth and tasty as I remembered it. As I expected, it's not a coffee that I am happy drinking straight, but a couple Stevia packets fixed it right up... and when I added some Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, it was great!

The House Blend works for me on the level that it works for the many blends from Bones Coffee that I've been reviewing. It's got a strong coffee flavor, but it doesn't have the bitter edge that darker roasts have, so it mixes perfectly with a range of creamers (like my favorites--sugar free Vanilla Creamer and sugar free Italian Sweet Cream creamer) and serves as a great foundation for my home-made chocolate coffee (which is a mix of dark unsweetened cocoa powder and coffee). It also works nicely iced with just unsweetened Vanilla Almond milk added... or as part of my own half-assed spin on a "Black Russian"... which is iced coffee, chocolate almond milk, and vodka.

The House Blend was every bit as good as I remember it, and I enjoyed blending my own flavors as much now as I did back then. I was particularly happy with the chocolate/cinnamon/coffee concoction I came up with and drinking a "Black Russian ala Steve" for the first time in years was a real walk down memory lane.

The House Blend also mixed nicely with some of the Bones Coffee blends that I found too intense for my liking. I brewed pots of coffee made from House Blend and half Peaches and Scream, and half House Blend and half Strawberry Cheesecake, and I ended up with some very tasty flavored brews that were nearly perfect when I added some sugar free Italian Sweet Cream creamer or Unsweetened Almond Milk. I liked the results whether I drank they hot or iced, with a slight preference toward drinking them iced.

I liked the flavor of the House Blend so much that I can't help but wonder if the horribly burnt-tasting cup of Starbuck's Pike Place Roast I got during Free Coffee Day was more the fault of the barista who made it than the coffee that was used? I also loved the great results I had mixing it with other coffees and beverages, and I wonder if I would find the same level of fun and enjoyment through the Pike Place Roast?

I always preferred Seattle's Best over Starbucks Back in the Day, so experiments with the Pike Place Roast might not be as successful, but I won't know until I try.

Watch the space for updates!

She's watching for Steve to arrive with bags of coffee for experimental brews!

Christmas is here!

 Christmas is here, and Santa and his helpers are criss-crossing the globe, leaving toys for all the good boys and girls out here! (If they don't show up at your place... well, then you know you're on the same list as we are!)

It's the Night Before Christmas...

 ... and Martha Sleeper is taking it easy, reading a holiday classic while lounging in front of the fire.

We here at Shades of Gray hope your Christmas Eve is as relaxed and enjoyable, whether you are spending it with family or alone. And we hope Santa Claus (or one of his diligent assistants) fills your stockings with just want you wanted!

Christmas Lunch with the Cat

Here's a merry little Christmas cartoon that all cat-owners can relate to. (And if you're a new cat-owner, you can view this as an instructional video.)