An Emotional Dance:My Midnight Hour

I like the early morning hours with the change from dark to light, too. I have found myself with my eyes closed and brush in hand when I try to push it into the night. I hear the robins around 4: Hi Lynn… Everybody has different rhythms I guess. Oh well… just so we keep making art! Mail will not be published required. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Liza Myers - Painting and Sculpture. At 18, however, Pickett couldn't depend on music for his livelihood, and he had no other steady employment.

Moreover, he had a wife and daughter to support. Poverty weighed on him -- the young couple went on public assistance -- and he responded to stress the way he would later in life: On one night, his stepmother intervened when she overheard a fight between Pickett and his wife, who said he had beaten her. The couple reconciled but soon separated for good, finally divorcing in Pickett, despite his misgivings about leaving gospel, auditioned for the group. When the lead singer abruptly quit, Pickett was hired, despite mutual doubts: But as a Falcon, Pickett earned an income, gained visibility, and came into his own as a performer, so much so that James Brown fired the group from a tour when his audiences responded a little too enthusiastically to Pickett for his liking.

Thus began an artistically fruitful, if often contentious relationship, between Pickett and Wexler. He soon informed the other Falcons that he was leaving the band, which subsequently broke up. But Pickett's recording career didn't catch fire until he went to record in Memphis for Stax Records, the soul label founded by two white people, Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton.

In , Pickett, with Stax's integrated house band, cut the record that would be his greatest hit and his signature song for the rest of his career. Noting that "more than fifty years later" the record "remains impervious to the thought of improvement", he explains why it works so brilliantly. His musical exegesis is, in fact, an object lesson in how to use technical language without alienating the lay reader. Behind the deceptive simplicity of the record lies "masterful musicianship" evident in every aspect, including the rhythm, "driven by [drummer Al] Jackson and [guitarist Steve] Cropper, who hammer home the second and fourth beats in tandem with an almost imperceptible mutual delay, the former with a snare sound so bright that it defies the mono recording, the latter with a sharp, consistent downstroke".

He became an international superstar, performing to adoring fans in Europe and, in , in Africa, as the headliner of the Soul to Soul revue that also featured Ike and Tina Turner, the Staple Singers, and Roberta Flack. That triumph, coming when Pickett was only years-old, turned out to be the peak not only of his international popularity but of the decade itself; the early '70s would be the beginning of a long downward slide, in his career and personal life.

He recorded one last great album, Don't Knock My Love , in But his brand of gospel-based soul fell out of favor in the disco era, and the hits stopped coming. His alcoholism was exacerbated by heavy cocaine use, and he became increasingly violent -- toward his male children, his bandmates, and his women. The violence was horrific, sickening his longtime, loyal friends and associates. Mark Ribot, today a guitarist esteemed for his genre-crossing versatility, briefly was a member of Pickett's touring band and he witnessed the abuse. Because they fucking can," he tells Fletcher. I've worked with black bandleaders and white bandleaders who are respectful, courteous, and generous human beings -- and then I've worked with Wilson Pickett.

Pickett's last years were a slo-mo disaster movie, with the fallen star arrested for domestic abuse, drunk driving, and weapons possession. In , he failed to show up for his induction into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame; later in the decade, he served two jail terms.

After he was released from prison in the late '90s, he struggled to re-start his career, performing mainly in casinos and on cruise ships to mostly white audiences. Although he remained an alcoholic, he evidently curbed his once-lavish cocaine use. He recorded an album, It's Harder Now , that won him his best reviews in years and a Grammy Award nomination. But Pickett's hoped-for comeback fell through when he didn't win the Grammy and refused to tour to promote the album.

He made his last public appearance in and, suffering from multiple ailments bulimia, diabetes, and kidney disease among them , he died two years later, at Pickett's life brings to mind some old questions. Can bad people make great art?

Does great art somehow redeem the failings of the person who made it? The answer to the first is obvious: So all that hunting should tell you how good a movie this really was! If you are looking for gore and horror, keep in mind that this was a TV movie. This was the family version of all those "horror" movies of the 80's. A parody of sorts, if you haven't seen it, I suggest you do! Dapope 29 September Being an avid fan of horror movies both clean and strong in content, I would have to say this is probably my favorite clean horror movie. Some mild death scenes, some small sexual situations but no nudity whatsoever, mostly clean language.

I highly advise this movie for any school related halloween party all except the really young ones like kindergarten through 3rd grade and I say this because the movie co-starts Levar Burton and most kids will recognize him from "The Reading Rainbow". Thats the only negative I warn about this movie. Other than that, it is good clean fun. And definently a must see for any Halloween fan for it has monsters galore think a softer version of Waxwork.

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Blazehgehg 9 October The Midnight Hour is a little slow, a little cheesy, and a little saccharine, but it evokes the Halloween mood well. The moments that really stand out in this movie are the moments where it does finally push the boundaries a little bit -- when it stops being "wacky Halloween fun for the whole family" and actually tries to be a little bit violent, or scary, or even racy. Who knew Levarr Burton could play such a stereotypical horny teen?

The overall movie may not stand out in my mind, but these individual moments do and it's always interesting when a made-for-TV movie tries to find a way around showing blood while still evoking the imagery of blood. The way the movie progressively gets just a little darker, and a little darker, etc. In modern times, a lot of things make this movie feel very dated, though.

Phil the protagonist 's weird Dracula costume, for one, with the bizarre face paint and tinsel wig. That just screams Two, the movie's obsession with "golden oldie" music; it's been at least a decade or more since all of the oldies stations I know about updated their selection to include songs from the same era this movie was produced in you have to turn your radio's dial to AM to hear anything made before , these days -- assuming you even still HAVE a radio.

And it's not just that these elements make the movie dated, it's that they're spun in such a way as to be things "modern teens" relate to. Even the way Levarr Burton's character speaks, with that sort of hold-over "jive" slang, feels distinctly 's in a way that nobody talks anymore.

It feels like an older director was trying to bridge two generations his and the next , which leaves us in the modern era out of the equation. Don't get me wrong, it's still enjoyable. The first time I watched this movie was in But it's important to watch this movie and think about the context it was shown in, because it's a context that doesn't exist anymore.

Come for the fun costumes and special effects, stay the moments where the movie threatens to bend its family-friendly content rules. After a group of teenagers unlock a centuries-old curse on Halloween a town becomes overrun by the demons of hell from zombies to witches. Directed by Jack Bender there's some great make up monster effects and it's far from a mediocre made-for-TV horror comedy. With homages to The Wolfman, Dracula and the more recent Night of the Living Dead and Thriller there's plenty of cobwebs, graves and gate crashed suburban Halloween parties to hold attention.

As with the risen from the dead 50s cheerleader Sandy Jonna Lee highlighting the differences of , that's The Midnight Hour biggest hook as now plays a great piece of 80s nostalgia. There's also a subplot love story town in amongst the TV horror shenanigans. Not too scary for junior children, werewolf, vampires, zombies, ghouls, and goblins add up to on screen creepy campy fun, you can't go wrong.

Awesome movie tshawnhardy 17 September Remember when TV was fun? This movie stuck with me too for all these years and I've always wondered why they didn't play it again on Halloween. If your a big fan of Halloween like I am, this movie will definitely put you in the mood for the holiday. It has it all.

User Reviews

The classic horror, the classic love story. Come on Disney channel, give it a play. A DVD release would be Awesome. A box set with other classic Halloween hard to find gems such as witches night out A very hard to find cartoon would be really awesome. I saw this when it originally aired Pickett-San 3 April I was in junior high and was staying at home sick when this film came on. From what I remember, it was an attractive cast for that 80's period. I was very much into horror movies and that genre during that time in my life, but the most well done part of this TV movie and the true heart of the it was the development of the relationship and the eventual losing of the girl.

It was completely different, but the only other television show to make me have that same sense of loss between characters was an episode of the 's Twilight Zone. That episode was called 'A Message from Charity'. A group of dumb teenagers accidently raise the dead, who eventually crash their Halloween party and start killing off everybody in the town. The film covers virtually every single horror genre and reminds me a lot of those creature feature films from back in the 40's and 50's.

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A lot of fun, highly recommanded. One of the best horror films to come fro the 80's. BandSAboutMovies 6 October With so much of television now just fodder for streaming services, we may never have the days of Halloween specials and strange movies like this ever again. The world is a worse place for this. But then they go too far and read a spell in the cemetery, which causes the dead to rise, led by Melissa's great-great-great-great grandmother Lucinda Cavender. While everyone else is having fun at a Halloween party, Phil hooks up with a mystery girl named Sandy who ends up being an undead cheerleader.

Lucinda is also turning everyone into vampires to the sounds of "How Soon is Now? The only way our heroes can stop the curse is to find a spirit ring that is in the grave of witchhunter Nathan Grenville, who is, of course, Phil's great-great-great-great grandfather and perhaps more troubling, the former slave owner of our main villain. If Phil and Sandy don't stop the spell by midnight, the town will be cursed until the end of time.

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It's interesting to say the least. It's the kind of movie that wouldn't get made today, a movie that crosses genres and emotions while trying its heart out to entertain you. I remember as a youth every Halloween on channel seven in Nyc aka abc watching with friends year after year. I also rented it numerous times at my local video store back in eighties. The midnight hour is one of my favorite films. The acting and musical choreography was amazing. I know all the lines by hard.

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