Matt’s Week in Dork! (5/25/14-5/31/14)

    Sunday involved a lot of riding around the Northern Virginia area, seeing some parts I hadn’t seen before, and moving a bigass TV.  When I dragged my sorry butt back home, I sat down and finished Annihilation, which was really good.

Dinner at Eight:  “You’re young and fresh.  And I’m burned out.”  An all-star cast digs in to a comedy-drama about various people trying to keep it together or get it together in the post collapse world of New York City’s wealthy elite.  It’s funny and sad, in much the same way Grand Hotel was.  John Barrymore is typically charming.  It’s not as good as Grand Hotel, but it’s pretty good.

The Immigrant:  A beautiful film, with a fantastic performance from Marion Cotillard, The Immigrant is ultimately sunk by the male leads.  Be it performances or script (or a mix of the two), Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner are frustratingly uninteresting.  Phoenix is particularly bad, too.  It's like he's channeling Marlon Brando from On the Waterfront, where he's acting in one movie, while everyone else is acting in a totally different film.  I loved the world that was created, and even most of the bit parts and supporting players were quite good.  This all makes the failures of the film more pronounced.  There was a great film in this mix, but it’s lost the shuffle of love triangles and murder, and obscured by weird acting choices.  While worth watching for fans of the period, the movie is ultimately a disappointment.  It’s also part of that ‘all men are monsters; all women their victims’ subgenre that has become so tiresome.  That too could have been avoided by removing the two male angles of the love triangle.

A Fistful of Dollars:  “That’s not gonna break my heart.”  Clint Eastwood is just so darned likeably charming as the wandering gunslinger out to make a buck off two warring families.  This remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (itself an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest) finds the story transported to the Mexican/American West…by which I mean Spain.  Plenty of colorful characters, awkward dubbing, double crosses, and tough guy dialog.  And a lot of wacky killing.  The Western would never be the same.

    On Thursday night, Brad and I went back to The Alamo (we'd gone there to see A Fistful of Dollars the previous night).  This time dressed like idiots, draped inappropriately in the Flag, to see one of the most 80s films ever.  Walking up to the counter, our outfits tipped off a fellow to which movie we were going to see.  Perhaps it was a bit obvious.  And then, while we were getting ready to go into the theater, a rep from a beer company spotted us, asked to take our picture, and bought us beers (Rye of the Tiger).  Awesome.

Rocky IV:  “Whatever he hits, he destroys!”  The only Rocky film I’ve ever seen, and the only one I ever will, Rocky IV has been a weird absence in my life, now filled.  Such a wonderfully stupid, wonderfully 80s film.  Four montages?  Four?!  Fantastic.  It’s poorly shot, poorly written, and even the montages are clumsy (did I mention there are four?).  The jingoistic idiocy is palpable.  Dolph Lundgren and Brigitte Nielsen are about as Russian as Jack Kennedy.  And seriously.  What’s up with Paulie and the robot?  What’s up with Paulie and the robot?!  Excellent.  So dumb.  So awesome.

La Bete Humaine (The Human Beast):  This Jean Renoir film helps presage the Film Noir genre that would rise a few years later.  There’s even a proto-Femme Fatale.  But it’s also full of Renoir’s love of people, reveling in the everyday life of the working class.  If you’re a train person, this is some serious porn.  The train footage alone is worth the price of admission.

Witchville:  Another straight to video movie that seems like someone wrote the script based on an old D&D game.  The acting is all over the place…if that place is where bad acting lives.  The CG is typical TV level.  The costumes aren’t bad.  The action isn’t good.  Sadly, the film is just silly and goes over territory that lacks freshness.  I see so many of these movies made on very limited budgets, with limited resources, that manage to do some impressive things.  But they’re sunk in the scripting.  All the low-budget pluck and can-do spirit amounts to little if there aren’t some solid, interesting ideas at their heart.  All those great third string science fiction movies from the 80s are remembered because they combined can-do attitude with creativity.  With movies being easier than ever to get made (not saying it’s easy), creativity is too often skipped.

The Magic of Melies:  A good, informative discussion of Georges Melies and his wonderful films.  There are interviews and some recreations, as well as plenty of clips of Melies’s films, other films of the era, and photographs.  His story is a fascinating one, and very important to our understanding of film as an art form.  Movie buffs should see this, for sure.

My Fail Lady:  Rex Harrison is charmingly cruel as the language expert who decides to make a proper lady out of a low-class flower seller.  Audrey Hepburn…Well, she’s not so great as the flower seller.  The movie is fun and lavish, if a bit overlong (OK, maybe more than a bit overlong).  Several of the songs are quite good.  But I can’t get over Hepburn.  I know the movie is supposed to be somewhat broad, somewhat exaggerated, but her accent is absolutely awful, to the point of being distracting.  And they never really make her look like anything other than cute little Audrey wearing a funny costume.  Though I didn’t love the movie, Rex Harrison is enough fun that I still recommend checking it out.

    In between watching these movies, I’ve been watching more Space 1999.  Cool show.  I like how often episodes have a somewhat horror story vibe.  There’s certainly a lot of mystery and weirdness.  Other than that, I’ve just been trying to read Preacher again (limited success) and I started Authority, the sequel to Annihilation.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Matt’s Week in Dork! (4/27/14-5/3/14)

    Life has been pretty swell for this Dork. 

Transcendence:  Oh, man.  Where to begin.  There was so much potential for telling a good story here.  All missed.  I’ll just start with the biggest problem the movie has.  It’s really, really, really boring.  I mean, BORING.  No, it didn’t need fistfights, or explosions, or more CGI.  It just needed characters one could care about, and a plot that was at all engaging.  Unfortunately, this film is populated by idiot scientists; the kind that are all too common in film, and frustratingly, almost the rule in science fiction.  Even the Luddite terrorists don’t make much sense.  Nobody seems willing to act, to accomplish anything.  There seems to be little growth in character, simply an alteration in behavior as demanded by the advancement of the carbon-copy plot.  And what about those actors.  Depp is fine, I guess.  Frankly, he seemed to be phoning it in.  Rebecca Hall is kind of annoying, but no more so than usual.  Kate Mara…Oh, man.  Kate Mara.  Every danged time she opens her mouth, she spews forth grown inducing dialog and the worst way.  She speaks like a child actor, wooden and stupid.  It’s awful.  Worse still, about 20 minutes into the movie, her character stops being important…but that’s when she becomes a major character…even though she does NOTHING.  So crappy.  Sadly, I’m with everyone else on this one.  This movie is crap.  Hire writers.  Do some research.  Make better films.  This sort of thing is, really, inexcusable.

I need to make better choices.

Welcome to the Jungle:  I didn’t have high hopes for this film, and it isn’t good.  But, Jean Claude Van Damme is extremely funny and by far the best part of the movie.  Otherwise, it’s a bunch of tired sitcom level jokes with the raunchiness of straight to video.  The characters are all stock, mostly played by actors who play essentially the same characters on crappy TV shows.  Honestly, when JCVD is off screen, which is far too often, it drags.  Worth checking out if you don’t have to expend any effort, but pretty much exclusively for the Belgian wonder.

Small Apartments:  This is one of those very odd, small comedies that gets lots of weird actors together in one place and has a lot of fun.  I don’t know that it’s great, but it’s sure different.  And it’s got a lot of bits I really liked, and performances I really liked.  For crying out loud, Johnny Knoxville was good.  What’s that about?  Definitely one to check out if you’re in the mood for something a little bit out there, kind of dark, kind of funny, and certainly not like everything else.

The man loves his Moxie.

    Watched a bunch more of Mad Men’s second season.  It’s a darned fine show.  The awful behavior is fascinating.  And Don Draper.  He’s just so darned cool.

    On Wednesday night, we headed out to The Alamo for a Spaghetti Western and spaghetti dinner (though I was not up to the spaghetti that night).  Here’s hoping we’ll be seeing a lot more of these events there (and from the schedule, it looks like we will).

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:  “More feeling.”  A sprawling journey through Hell for three men looking for some gold.  To say this movie takes its time would be like saying deep space is a bit chilly.  Shots and whole scenes that are held for extremely long times and a meandering story may make it a challenge for some viewers.  But I love their weird Odyssey.  And when they start to stumble upon the soulless, listless combatants of the Civil War, the obviously not American setting gives it a haunting, displaced feel that really does seem like some horrible limbo or hell.  It’s almost certainly too long, the dubbing is kind of wonderfully bad, and many bits can be quite jarring.  But it’s a mad kind of wonderful.  Eastwood, Wallach, and Van Cleef are all great.  And that whole ending…nice.  This is top notch Western/Fantasy.

Mothra Vs. Godzilla:  I think this is the beginning of the wonder and madness the Godzilla films became known for.  It’s super weird, and awesome.  The twin fairies, a giant peace-loving moth, money hungry developers, and plucky reporters.  It’s not my favorite of the series, but it’s chronologically the first one I really love.

    Brad and I went on a mad comic book shop crawl on Saturday (Free Comic Book Day).  Third Eye Comics out in MD, Phoenix (aka Laughing Ogre) out in Ashburn, Big Planet in Vienna, Phoenix again in Fairfax, and The Comic Shop at the Fair Oaks Mall.  In keeping with the spirit of the day (supporting local comic shops), I made sure to find something to buy in each place.  I don’t know if it was timing, or what, but one frustration was that all the shops we hit seemed to have the same handful of titles, in spite of there being nearly 60 different free comics produced.  The awesome thing was that every shop we went to seemed full of people (really, really full in some cases), and people were buying stuff.  Awesome.  After all that madness, Brad and I hooked up with Lisa and headed out to The Alamo again for one of their Late Night shows.

Mad Max:  “They say people don’t believe in heroes anymore.”  The world is going to hell, with only Max and a few of his Bronze brothers keeping civilization's light alive.  I love this glimpse into an ugly, entropic future where civilization wasn’t destroyed by some catastrophic event; it simply ran out of juice.  It’s an ugly, uncomfortable films, with jarring music and nasty characters.  It doesn’t have an easy climax, or a happy ending.  It’s brutal and mean.  It features one of the all time best film endings.

    Other than my list of anticipated Summer films (here), that’s it for this week.  I’m going to try to spend Sunday on my couch, reading comics and watching movies.  Let’s see how that works out.

-Matt

Brad's Week in Dork! (3/16/14-3/22/14)

Most of this week has been spent in a fidgety state of anticipation.  Marvel Studios (THOSE BASTARDS) decided it was just peachy to screen Captain America - The Winter Soldier to the online critic community a month out from the public release, and my Twitter Feed has been abuzzing with copious spurts of geekgasms.  If you believe the hype then Captain America 2 is not only better than The Avengers (a feat I personally would find astronomically astounding), but the single greatest comic book movie ever made.  That certainly cannot be true, and I'm immediately attempting to temper expectations on the homefront.  But that is oh so hard for us dorks, right?

In an effort to distract myself from the social media blitzkrieg, I've made it my mission to complete Ed Brubaker's Epic Run on Captain America that began in 2007 with The Winter Soldier, and completed in 2012 with the oh-so-lackluster Hydra Island business with co-writer Cullen Bunn.  That's a crap ton of comics, and I've only completed the first 25 issues, but I think it's a goal this dork should have no problem accomplishing.  And I'm not the only one in this apartment excited to see Chris Evans crush some (Red) Skulls.  As we did with Wes Anderson (more on that later), The Wife & I are making our way through the entire Marvel Studios canon.  We've already brushed through the Iron Mans & The Incredible Hulk, and this week saw Marvel go all-in with the comic book crazy in the first Thor film.  Taken on their own these movies range from "ok" to "pretty good," but when you look at the Universe Building getting done as well as the climactic whiz bang wow of Joss Whedon's The Avengers, I cannot help but love each and every building block in the series.  Here's hoping they can keep this spandex ball rolling.

But enough of that super hero silliness!  The rest of the week saw another totally badass screening at The Alamo with Dirty Harry, Veronica Mars crawled her way back into our Marshmallow hearts, Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neal unleashed their latest fanboy apocalypse with The Roses of Berlin, and yes, Wes Anderson delivered what is possibly my favorite film in his dollhouse universe.  I really am stunned at the degree in which I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel.  I hate to leave a theater spouting the superiority of the latest work above all previous past efforts, but it's an enthusiastic urge I find difficult to stifle here.

The Grand Budapest Hotel:  Having recently watched every single film from Wes Anderson in chronological order, I can safely say that I've enjoyed all of his movies to one degree or another.  Picking a favorite is tough (The Life Aquatic & Fantastic Mr. Fox will probably be locked in a death struggle for some time), and even my least favorite movie (Moonrise Kingdom) found its way into my Top Ten Films of 2012.  Haters accuse the director of arrested development - the Father/Son theme drummed to death, the stagnation of style, the twee aesthetic.  However, as we left the theater Sunday evening, The Wife compared his films to the Baroque era.  Anderson is variations on a theme; his career so far has been an attempt to work/rework and perfect his technique, and I am hypnotized by his craft.  The Grand Budapest Hotel certainly dabbles with the Father/Son issue once again, but what I found myself gravitating towards was what the film's framing device says about the importance of storytelling to the human experience.  A young woman sits down at a grave to read a book...an author struggles with his introduction...an old man tells his story.  Ralph Fiennes gives a career best as the profane Gustave H, a concierge who stuffs his basest urges to sleep his way into prosperity.  Never mind the World War grinding its wheels all around him.  Anderson has dabbled with violence and tragedy in the past (Machetes in Aquatic, severed tails in Mr. Fox), but he brings real darkness to his pristine workshop and it clobbered my emotions.  The Grand Budapest Hotel demands a rewatch real soon, I'm guessing next week, but if it is not at the very top of my Top Ten Films of 2014 I will be very, very, very surprised.  And probably utterly elated since that will mean this year will go down as one of cinema's finest.

Dirty Harry:  Kicking off that vigilante spirit that eventually climaxed in a dozen crappy 80s wannabe Death Wishers, Don Siegel's Dirty Harry is a beastly statement on the public's frustration with perceived runaway crime.  Clint Eastwood is Judge Dredd, a San Francisco police detective who rips free from political red tape to blast his way through the scum of the city.  Loosely based on the unsolved Zodiac killings, Andrew Robinson's Scorpio sniper holds the city hostage from the rooftops while Harry beats the streets below.  Killer vs Killer.  Eastwood is super cool TNT with his elbow patches, sunglasses, and .44 Magnum.  As much as I love The Man With No Name, it's' really in Harry Callahan where the mancrush solidified.  Who doesn't love righteousness?  Law & Order?  F-That.  He's the badguy.  Shoot the badguy.  Clean up the streets.  Black & White Justice, that's the dream.  Or a deeply troubling fantasy for good ol' U-S-of-A.

The Dead Pool:  When I got home from The Alamo on Tuesday night, I was not done with Harry.  Jumping over the first three sequels, I chose The Dead Pool for my followup because it was the first film I ever saw starring Clint Eastwood, and therefore it holds a very special place in my heart.  It's not a good movie.  And it's a terrible Dirty Harry sequel.  But it is fun as all hell.  When Jim Carry's Guns & Roses lipsinker cokes out in his movie trailer, Harry Callahan is called to solve the case of Celebrity Threes.  Gorehound Director Liam Neeson is prime suspect number one, but does he have the know-how to construct an army of remote control car bombs???  Yeah, what the hell is going on in this movie?  Dumb, dumb, dumb, and the Dirty Harry schtick is wearing thin.  "You know what that means?  You're shit out of luck."  Not quite "Feelin' Lucky Punk" is it?  But dang it, The Dead Pool still makes me smile and I would certainly shill out some cash for another senior citizen Harry flick.  Come on Eastwood, you gotta another Harry in you for sure.

Thor:  Here is the film that made The Avengers possible.  The God of Thunder.  How do you make that work in the world of Iron Man?  You avoid the God issue by transforming Asgardians into immortal aliens.  You snatch this space age Shakespeare play and drop them into Middle America for a lighthearted romcom with explosions and hammer fights.  Job well done.  The stakes may be low, the scope may be tiny, and the budget is certainly lacking.  But Chris Hemsworth embodies The Mighty Thor in the same way that Christopher Reeve WAS Superman.  Tom Hiddleston is a breakout star as the trickster Loki, and Natalie Portman acts the hell out of Golly Gee WonderLUST.  Marvel Studios sells us on one of their whackiest creations, and not only does it pave the way to The Avengers, but also The Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, and The Inevitable Crusade of D-Man...ok, that last one might not happen, but here's hoping.

Captain America (1990):  Oh, hey you, Marvel Movie Haters...HOW DARE YOU CRAP OVER JOSS WHEDON'S THE AVENGERS!!!  "It's not as good as the comics!" Blah, blah, blah - SHUT UP!  You don't know how great you've got it.  You weren't there in the trenches of Direct-To-Video Hell like us oldtimers.  You don't remember Nick Fury - Agent of SHIELD, The Punisher, or this miracle of crap.  But now thanks to the wonders of blu ray and the good folks over at Shout Factory, you too can experience this "film" from master craftsman Albert Pyun.  However, if you squint your eyes and if you're in a MST3K kinda mood, then this very shoddy Captain America is actually a good deal of fun thanks to its puttied Red Skull straight off the set of Star Trek Voyager, and The Captain's baffling rubber ears.  Ronny Cox guest stars as The President of the United States, and Ned Beatty is his four-eyed cub reporter hungry for a good story.  So you know...squeal like a pig and enjoy!

Veronica Mars:  It's been what, seven years since the final season of Veronica Mars aired on television?  I really enjoyed that first season, the second season was ok, and I could never finish the date rapey college years.  As much as the people of the internet screamed for more, I was good.  But then came kickstarter, three million fanboy/girl dollars, and a mad marketing campaign.  The Veronica Mars movie is solid.  It's like an extra long episode of the tv show.  Veronica ditches Piz and her high paying job to head back to Neptune for a high school reunion and yet another murder case involving bad boy Logan.  I can't get too excited about it, but I can't crap over it either.  It's fine.  I'd watch another.  That's bout it.

Captain America - The Winter Soldier Omnibus by Ed Brubaker:  Sooooooooooooooo gooooooooooood.  Robert Kirkman's Invincible is my all time favorite Super Hero Comic Series.  But Ed Brubaker's Captain America run is my all time favorite Marvel Super Hero Comic Series.  And I initially refused to read it back in 2007.  Bucky Barnes, back from the dead?  Hell no.  You don't resurrect Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy, Bruce Wayne's Parents, or Bucky Barnes.  That's law.  And yet...Brubaker breaks it with so much damn class that fanboy history be damned.  Retcon away sir!  Brubaker's run on Cap is a noirish spy thriller involving a demonic leftover from The Cold War, and heaps of sinister espionage.  The first half of this book is damn near perfect.  It opens with the apparent assassination of The Red Skull by a shadowy agent from Soviet Russia called The Winter Soldier, who has now fallen under the control of villainous businessman Alexander Lukin.  Where The Skull is involved so is Steve Rodgers. Captain America's investigation leads him through various A.I.M. laboratories, hand-to-hand combat with Nazi goon Crossbones, and another horror of domestic terrorism.  And it climaxes with a face to face assault from long ago sidekick James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes.  The back half struggles a little as Brubaker tries to integrate Marvel's Civil War Event.  I've seen such tie-ins handled much worse, but it certainly feels like you're missing some serious plot if you don't read Civil War in accordance with the back half of the Omnibus.  The Death of Captain America cliffhanger though...that will certainly send you into the next chapter quickly.  If all you know about Cap are the movies then you seriously owe yourself to at least read the two-part Winter Soldier storyline.

American Hustle:  I was reading some review or some tweet or some something that said that the best thing to ever happen to American Hustle was not winning The Academy Award.  Now the film is free to just be a film and not worry about that Oscar baggage.  It's a little pompous, but I get it.  It's certainly Scorsese-lite, but I think time will distance it from those comparisons, and eventually you'll just be able to watch it as the fun time at the movies that it is.  It's a fantastic bit of performance - been too long since I've seen this Christian Bale.  He takes a character that should be an utter scumbag, and makes him a sympathetic little sadsack of a conman.  Bradley Cooper is hilarious as the FBI tool desperate for recognition, and Amy Adams is - god damn - a freaking monster of manipulation.  Last year I gave Cate Blanchett my Best Leading Female Performance, but this second watch has me seriously questioning that decision.  That scene between her & Cooper in the Disco Bathroom Stall is scary, scary, scary.  And it makes this movie a must watch for me.

Nemo - The Roses of Berlin by Alan Moore & Kevin J O'Neal:  Spinning out of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and a direct sequel to Nemo - Heart of Ice, this latest dip into the pantheon of literary & cinematic history revels in the worlds of Fritz Lang's Metropolis while peppered with the evil of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.  If that doesn't get you jazzed, nothing will.  It's 1944.  The Daughter of Captain Nemo & Broad Arrow Jack has been taken hostage by Hynkel's forces, and it's up to the crew of the Nautilus to storm Berlin and rescue the child.  It reads quickly if you want to, but I'm already desiring a second trip with the aid of Jess Nevin's essential annotations.  LXG proves time and again that being an English Major and film fanatic is super cool.

Pride of Baghdad by Brian K Vaughan & Niko Henrichon:  I closed out the week with the 22nd meeting of The Ultimate Justice League of Extraordinary Graphic Novel Book Club.  Wow.  I can't believe we've been doing this for almost two years.  Crazy.  I love it.  In those nearly two years we've only read one author more than twice and that's Brian K Vaughan (Y The Last Man, Saga, & Pride).  Each one of those books grabbed a positive vibe from the majority of the crowd.  Everyone seemed to dig Pride, and I cannot disagree.  It's a solid fable based on the "True Story" of a group of lions that escaped the Baghdad zoo during the second Iraq conflict.  It's a brutal little tale with an obvious message.  War is hell.  People suck.  Why do we do this to each other?  Brian K Vaughan is preaching to the choir.  Personally, I would have liked a little more story, a little more character.  As is, decent book with some freaking gorgeous art from Niko Henrichon.  I want more of this guy.  I need to track down every bit of art he's done and consume it.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/16/14-3/22/14)

    This week is a bit of a blur.  In the aftermath of filming, I went into a slightly more funky funk, combined with some unrelated stress, and just didn’t have my mind on the Dork Life.  Still, there were bright points, to be sure.

Star Trek Into Darkness:  Upon second viewing, I find this film both better and worse.  On the one hand, I find a lot of things that I really enjoy.  Little bits of dialog, sequences, or production design.  But I’m also more bothered by how much better it not only could have been, but absolutely should have been.  Kirk is made into a horrible, sniveling, weak-willed little child.  Spock is a whiny a-hole.  Uhura has become a shrewish nag.  And the unnecessary villains are bordering on mentally enfeebled when it comes to plans and schemes.  At almost every turn, the writers had chances to make a very interesting movie, that continued to take the new timeline Trek on its own course.  Alas, at every turn, they made silly call-backs, rehashed old characters and plots, and on more than one occasion bent plot and story out of whack, just to do something stupid.  If Harrison wasn’t Khan?  Better film.  If Khan and Kirk teamed up, then went on their separate paths?  Better film.  If it had been a dilemma to solve, not a villain to punch?  Better film.  If Carol Marcus wasn’t involved?  Better film.  If the Klingons weren’t involved?  Better film.  And didn’t they already do the Admiral Robocop storyline in Star Trek VI?  I mean, why rip off both Star Trek II’s plot and Star Trek IV?  Anyway, this ultimately aggravating film has a ton of potential, but drops almost every ball it tries to juggle.  After such a good start to the re-launched series, this stumble feels catastrophic and probably terminal.  My interest in the franchise dropped down to the levels Star Wars has been enjoying for the last fifteen years.  And that ain’t good.

Alice Adams:  Katharine Hepburn plays a somewhat spoiled daughter of a struggling middle class family, who, along with her mother, is a bit obsessed with being perceived as part of the more sophisticated upper class.  What follows is an enjoyable light comedy of manors and misunderstandings.  Nothing too heavy.  One thing I find odd/interesting is the politics of race in the film.  You see racism, and there is certainly a character that seems like a racist archetype when you first see her.  But, it seems like the movie is lampooning racist assumptions and behaviors.  Or is it?  I’m removed enough from the time period that I’m not quite sure.  Was it subversively forward thinking, or am I giving them too much credit?  Overall, I really liked the movie, even though Fred MacMurray was the romantic lead.  Though his boring stiffness may have been to the benefit of the picture.

Dirty Harry:  One of the great pieces of 70s sleaze.  One of the best anti-hero cop films.  Dirty Harry is pretty much a rehash of Bullitt, but 100% more entertaining.  Clint Eastwood grimaces and sneers his way through life, hating the world and every piece of scum in it.  And when a giggling whack-job with a rifle starts picking people off, nothing is gonna stop Harry from getting his hands dirty, with punk blood.  No pointless romance sub-plot.  No great moral victory.  No personal growth.  Just hard, mean, ugly business.  A great score, fantastic footage of San Francisco, and some memorable lines help cement Dirty Harry as a landmark in cynical cinema.

    Because I’ve had a hard time focusing on reading lately, I paid a lot more attention to the music I had on during bus trips this week.  I really got into St. Vincent’s new, self titled CD.  After a few listens, I give it an enthusiastic thumbs up.  Very good.

The Astronaut Farmer:  This is a great family movie, about a family working together to realize dreams.  In a lot of ways, it felt like a film from the earlier 1980s.  Another case of ‘they don’t make movies like this anymore.’  It’s heart warming, gentle, and seriously enjoyable.  It’s got plenty of ‘that guy’ actors and lots of solid character performances.  Heck, even the kid actors are good.  This is the kind of thing I can imagine inspiring little kids to reach for the stars, and we could certainly use more of that.  Matt’s Family Seal of Approval.

The Grapes of Wrath:  The Great Depression shot by John Ford?  Normally, that idea would not thrill me at all.  But this adaptation of the classic novel of one of America’s darkest times is engrossing, entertaining, and ultimately uplifting.  Though the end sugar coats the book’s message, I find its hope filled look off into the distance of time to be satisfying.  The movie looks great, with some excellent faces and the desperate human misery of displaced peoples in stark black & white.  The acting tends toward the theatrical, but as the film takes on an almost mythic cast, that’s not such a bad thing.  Watching it made me want to dip back into HBO’s Carnivalle and follow it up with Sullivan’s Travels.  I’ve got a week off coming up.  We’ll see.

    Thursday night I watched the first disk of The Waltons.  Man, I hated that show when I was a wee lad, but I find it charming and fun now.  It’s wholesome and perhaps a bit saccharine, but it’s also refreshing and pleasant.  I know that over the course of its near decade run (plus several movies) the characters grow and experience snippets of history (from the Depression through WWII), and I find that interesting.  I may be sitting down for a long haul, watching the entire show.

The Call of Cthulhu:  I still find myself enjoying this darned faithful adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic story.  On a limited budget, they attempted to recreate the silent movie era, and for the most part, it works.  Not even close to my favorite Lovecraft tale, it’s still nice to see some of the author’s essential content make it onto the screen, something so rare in previous purported adaptations.  It makes me more and more hungry to see a faithful adaptation of The Shadow Out of Time or of course, At the Mountains of Madness.  Heck, a well made Shadow Over Innsmouth would still make me smile.

Legendary Weapons of China:  An excellent, probably way over-complicated martial arts adventure movie, Legendary Weapons of China is set in the latter days of the Boxer Rebellion (or just after).  It involved conflicted philosophies of martial arts and its place in society…and lots of fighting.  The tone is odd, with a good deal of goofing, but with some serious issues being discussed and fought over.  Yet, unlike some, it manages not to strike any notes too jarring for this viewer.  I enjoy hand to hand martial arts, but my preference is for weapon combat, and as the film’s name implies, this one features weapons.  Lots and lots of weapons.  Excellent.

    Saturday night was the latest meeting of the graphic novel club, where this month we discussed Brian K. Vaughn’s Pride of Bagdad.  The book left me cold upon reading it, but I did gain some appreciation for it, seeing it through some other readers’ eyes.  The art is nice, but it felt the most like when we read Get Jiro a while back; a bunch of potentially interesting ideas that didn’t go anywhere.

    I finally got back to and finished Philip Reeve’s Goblins.  It’s a fun children’s fantasy novel in the spirit of Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain cycle (see…or don’t…Disney’s boring adaptation of The Black Cauldron).  The fact that it took so long from the time I started to the time I finished is not a statement about the book’s quality, but my own scatterbrained funk and lack of focus I’ve been suffering for some months.

-Matt