Death Week

Here in Memphis we are in the middle of Death Week, as the anniversary week of Elvis Presley's death is popularly known. There are a lot of activities in town for the observance, and there are always an increased number of tourists. Graceland has a full schedule. The Memphis Travel site has suggestions. If you can't come to Memphis in person, Graceland offers virtual tours of the mansion exterior, the mansion foyer, and the Jungle Room. You can take a virtual tour of Sun Studio, where Elvis was first recorded.

The actual date of his death (well, if you believe he's dead. Not everyone buys into that view.) is August 16. This year is the 40th anniversary. Take a moment on the day, if you will, and remember Elvis. He was only 42 years old when he died.

If you want to watch a movie, I'd recommend my favorite King Creole, directed by Michael Curtiz and also starring Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Dean Jagger, and Vic Morrow. The film got good reviews and is still well thought of. You can rent it for $2.99. Here's a trailer:

Another one of his best films is Flaming Star with Barbara Eden. He plays the son of a Kiowa mother and a Texas rancher father. You can rent it for $2.99. Here's the trailer:

Elvis could actually act, but his string-songs-together movies did better at the box office so there tended to be pressure to keep putting out more of them.

You can pass on the movies if you like and just listen to his music instead.

If I Can Dream:

That's All Right (Mama):

Heartbreak Hotel, my personal favorite:

It's not that I've been a particularly ardent fan of Elvis, but this is Memphis after all. I'm showing respect.

Live Graceland Camera

Now that the tourists have finished paying their Death Week homage to The King, it's quieter at Graceland. You can see a picture of the house that updates every minute at this link. There are 3 virtual tours linked here.

The picture above is from Wikipedia Commons.

Elvis Presley

The Daughter offers these 2 tasteless Elvis jokes in honor of the day:

• Q: What was Elvis' last big hit?
  A: The bathroom floor.

• Q: What would Elvis say if he were alive today?
  A: "Let me out, let me out, let me out!"

If she really had a full appreciation of Elvis and real faith that he is still alive she would, of course, not think those jokes were so funny. She is not, however, a true believer. What can I say? I have tried to convince her, but she remains more than skeptical.

As a finish for our Elvis Presley Tribute Film Fest we watched Lilo and Stitch, which I wrote a blog post for back in January.

Earlier tonight we watched Elvis Has Left the Building and Bubba Ho-Tep.

Blog posts on other Elvis movies:

King Creole

Elvis Has Left the Building

2nd in our Death Week Tribute Film Fest is Elvis Has Left the Building, a 2004 film about Elvis impersonators who are dropping like flies. It stars Kim Basinger, around whom no Elvis impersonator is safe and John Corbett, a man whose soon-to-be-ex-wife is an Elvis impersonator. Annie Potts, Sean Astin, Angie Dickinson, Pat Morita and Wayne Newton (as himself) are also here.

trailer:

Elvis Has Left the Building (2005)
Uploaded by m0vietrailerpark. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

MSN has an overview. Reviews are hard to come by, but we think it's hilarious.

Bubba Ho-Tep

In honor of Elvis Presley on the anniversary of the date of his supposed death, we watched Bubba Ho-Tep, a 2002 Elvis movie starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as President ("They dyed me this color") Kennedy. This is my 3rd time to see it, the 2nd time for The Husband and maiden voyages for The Daughter and The Younger Son.

trailer:


Moria gives it 4 stars. 1000 Misspent Hours calls it "the best mummy movie I’ve seen in years, probably the best to hit the screen since 1959." Variety calls Bruce Campbell's performance "inspired". Rolling Stone says it's "absurdly clever". The New York Times starts off, "I'm not sure you could do much better in terms of high concept than the premise for the action-comedy ''Bubba Ho-Tep.''" Roger Ebert begins,

Elvis and JFK did not die, and today they're roommates in an East Texas nursing home whose residents are being killed by an ancient Egyptian Soul Sucker named Bubba Ho-Tep. I want to get that on the table right at the get-go, so I can deal with the delightful wackiness of this movie, which is endearing and vulgar in about the right proportion.

BBC says,

Cult horror classics don't come more instantaneous than Bubba Ho-Tep, a fiendishly funny comedy horror, in which an ageing Elvis Presley battles an Egyptian mummy with a little help from former President John F Kennedy.

King Creole

The Younger Son and The Daughter had never seen an Elvis movie before. I felt like I had somehow failed as a Memphis native, so when I saw that King Creole was one of the movies being shown as part of the Elvis Film Fest, I bought tickets and took them yesterday. I think they were surprised by how good it was. The first time I saw this film it was on television. This was my third time to see it and my first time to see it in a theater.

King Creole is a 1958 Elvis movie directed by Michael Curtiz. It also stars Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau and Vic Morrow.

trailer:


Variety praises Elvis' acting. The New York Times also praises Elvis, saying,

In Paramount's surprisingly colorful and lively "King Creole," most of it outright drama, he does a good, convincing walk-through as a downtrodden New Orleans youth who tangles with some gangsters (along with that blasted guitar). It's a sturdy, picturesque job

Elvis Lives!

I knew it all along:

The stark, black-and-white snapshot taken by a stunned fan on June 26 clearly shows the aging superstar resting in a wheelchair on the grounds of his Graceland mansion in Memphis.

HT: Memphis Flyer

Bela Lugosi

Today is the anniversary of the death of Elvis, and Elvis always gets all the attention, but today is also the anniversary of the death in 1956 of Bela Lugosi. Bela Lugosi, like Elvis, has his own tag here at my blog. I've seen many of Lugosi's movies, and some of them are available online and are embedded in the posts I wrote when I watched them:

Dracula (1931)
White Zombie (1932)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Mark of the Vampire (1935)
The Phantom Ship (1935)
The Devil Bat (1940)
Invisible Ghost (1941)
Spooks Run Wild (1941)
The Wolf Man (1941)
The Corpse Vanishes (1942)
The Body Snatcher (1945)
Scared to Death (1947)
Bride of the Monster (1955)
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

There is an official Lugosi web site. FilmReference.com has a page devoted to him. There are several fan groups at Facebook.

Elvis Presley

Today is the 30th anniversary of the untimely death of Elvis Presley at the age of 42.

a tribute:


extras:

Faith Central has links to more religion-related Elvis stories.

Time has old photos.

Elvis and Religion

GetReligion comments on recent stories in the press on Elvis' religious side.

No picture of Elvis is complete without faith, as well as failure. He was not the first or the last devout country boy to stray in the big city.

Here's Elvis singing How Great Thou Art:

Elvis Sings King Creole

Elvis as Religion

Faith Central offers some links to religious connections. The King lives in various guises.

Here is an interview with the author of Elvis Religion: The Cult of the King:

Jailhouse Rock

In honor of Death Week:

Lord of the Beans

This parody of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is priceless. In this version Billboy Baggypants leaves the shire, leaving everything, including the Bean, to his nephew Toto. The wizard Randalf heads up the Fellowship of the Bean, and they begin the quest. Scaryman and his Spork minions are the bad guys.

The Silly Song with Larry was Larry as an Elvish impersonator. Priceless, I'm telling you, complete with guitar, white jumpsuit and Elvis lip.

Here's the Silly Song:

Elvis Movies

As we get ready for Death Week, we might want to consider watching an Elvis movie. He made 31 films, some more watchable than others. I've been looking for King Creole, my personal favorite, at the local stores and can't find it on the shelf anywhere.

Here's a list of his movies (in reverse chronological order):

Change of Habit
The Trouble with Girls
Charro!
Live a Little, Love a Little
Speedway
Stay Away, Joe
Clambake
Double Trouble
Easy Come, Easy Go
Spinout
Paradise, Hawaiian Style
Frankie and Johnny
Harum Scarum
Tickle Me Girl Happy
Roustabout
Viva Las Vegas
Kissin' Cousins
Fun in Acapulco
It Happened at the World's Fair
Girls! Girls! Girls!
Kid Galahad
Follow That Dream
Blue Hawaii
Wild in the Country
Flaming Star
G.I. Blues
King Creole
Jailhouse Rock
Loving You
Love Me Tender

The photo above is from wikipedia.

Vitals, by Greg Bear

I liked the first 3/4 of Greg Bear's Vitals much better than the last part. I must've gotten lost in there somewhere, because it got to where I couldn't figure out what was going on. From the back cover:

Fueled by a wealth of research and the money of influential patrons, Hal Cousins combs the ocean depths for organisms that might lead him to the most sought-after discovery in human history: the key to short-circuiting the aging process. But he barely reaches the surface with his valuable samples when his world explodes in violence. Suddenly on the run for his life, Hal is trapped inside an ever-twisting maze of shocking revelations, including news that his identical twin brother, a fellow scientist working on the same research, has been brutally murdered....

There's a wealth of pop culture references in the book, including one to Star Trek's original episode "Mudd's Women" and one to "Elvis has left the building" and one involving the old "Kung Fu" TV series. That was fun.

This is not, by far, my favorite book by Bear, but it was interesting and readable.

Oh, and it also features mitochondria. I've been fascinated by mitochonria since I first read A Wrinkle in Time.

I never accepted the death of Elvis

and now I have proof he lives:

The Telegraph says

It might sound a little crazy, but our standard theories of cosmology and physics suggest that an infinite number of Presleys still exist, says Marcus Chown. And if that's not scary enough, it also means that you, and these words, are repeated ad infinitum across the universe

Elvis is alive. No, really! He didn't die of a cardiac arrest in his bathroom at Graceland on August 16, 1977. Instead, he slipped out of the back door under cover of darkness dressed as a nun, had a sex change and worked for several years in a gas station in Ohio. She/he has now retired, is living on the Gulf Coast and is in tip-top health. After all, she's still only 71.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

CrookedTimber reminded me of her. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was cited by Elvis as having influenced his music. Here she is singing "Didn't it Rain":