Matt’s Week in Dork! (8/3/2014-8/9/14)

    Coming back to the world after a genuine vacation…Ugh.

Howard the Duck:  What can I say?  I love this movie.  Yeah, it’s got some awkward dialog and acting.  Yeah, it’s weird as hell.  Yeah, it’s super goofy.  But it’s so wonderfully 80s.  I just can’t get enough.

Game of Thrones Season 3:  The third season is more of the same.  If you’ve liked the previous two, you should like this one.  It does feel slightly more on task this season.  There was a point at the beginning of season 2, where even I, nudity aficionado that I am, was wishing everyone would just put their danged clothes back on and get on with the story.  Season 3, while heartily dosed with naked flesh, doesn’t let it get in the way of telling the tale.  A fine show, and some seriously good fantasy.  I keep going back to my thought that this is a chronicle of the events that happened in the next Age of Men, after the King’s return in the Lord of the Rings.  Anyway, good show.

Redline:  While it has more style and panache than 90% of the anime you’re likely to see, Redline will still feel just as familiar.  People who aren’t bored to tears by the handful of recycled plots/characters/designs that you find in anime should find plenty to enjoy.  I am not one of those people, so I found the whole thing pretty dullsville.  If it wasn’t for the attempted, pseudo-Heavy Metal magazine vibe, there’s be nothing to make it stand out.

Hercules:  This is not a good movie.  The script is bad.  The usually charming Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a bit bland.  The effects aren’t good.  That said, I mildly enjoyed watching it.  I liked several of the supporting characters/actors, particularly Ian McShane.  I liked the idea of how the mythology was used, even if I didn’t always actually like it.  I like the idea that people, so indoctrinated in their supernatural worldview, would see the supernatural first, and reality a distant second.  Actually, that very thing is quite common today.  I was frustrated by the way Atalanta was used.  A supreme badass in the myths, and a member of Jason’s crack team of heroes, she is written like a token female in this film, and dressed in what looks like ancient Greek fashionable work-out gear.  Now, the costumes in these films are never going to fly in modern film, with everyone being so prudish.  If they were going for accuracy, there’d be a lot more male nudity, and a lot more nudity in general.  But her costume stood out in a way I found off-putting.  It looked extra wrong.  Anyway, this is better (by far) than The Legend of Hercules, but not as good as most of the other Greek myth related films of recent years (Clash and Wrath of the Titans, Immortals, 300, etc.).  Well, it’s better than 300: Rise of an Empire.  But then, most things are.

    Friday night, I headed into DC where I enjoyed a Lincoln Assassination walking tour.  Another of those events in US history it seems like we hear about all the time, but hear very little detail of the affair.  The tour had many interesting factoids I was completely unaware of, and it was cool to walk to the various locations where the events took place.

The Trap:  Richard Widmark bastards his way around the high desert as a mob lawyer roped into doing what he doesn’t want.  Tensions run high, blood will spill, and Widmark will stare hatred as fierce as he fires bullets.  Lee J. Cobb is extra sleazy, with his squinky eyed smarm.  I feel like this is a forgotten classic.  Fans of Noir especially should like the mean characters and vile dialog.  Worth tracking down.

Vera:  I can’t say that I loved this movie, but it was certainly interesting.  It’s a heck of a weird movie, with lots of images and not much talking.  It suffers a bit from the lack of budget, but then if it had a much bigger budget, they’d have probably had trouble getting such a strange film made.  It feels a bit like a horror movie, and a lot like a particularly strange fantasy film.

    I read Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites.  It’s the selection for the next graphic novel club meeting.  I wasn’t blown away, but it was definitely the best thing we’ve read in a while.

The Tiger Woman: Perils of the Darkest Jungle:  Though she does get knocked out and tied up a lot, The Tiger Woman is a shockingly tough lady for the time this movie serial was produced.  Though women wielding their strength weren’t all that unusual in pre-Code movies, by the 40s, they certainly were.  So this Tarzan knock-off stands out.  Linda Stirling isn’t a great actress (few in this serial are), but she trades jabs and kicks with the roughest of them.

    Though getting back into the swing of things is always difficult, the week had some bright spots.  Also, as the Dreamlands crowd-funded film made the needed money, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Dreamlands, and about some of that trippy, psychedelic 70s fantasy music.  Iron Butterfly, Caravan, David Bowie, and more.  Good stuff.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Brad's Week in Dork! (2/16/14-2/22/14)

Slow week.  No real reason.  Just taking it easy.  Gotta recharge my batteries every now and again.  The Academy Awards are right around the corner - I've seen more nominations this year than any other, but there are still a few crucial films I need to hit up before March 2nd (I'm looking at you Frozen).  So far I've avoided the documentary shorts & a couple of foreign films.  Gotta correct that...next week.  Honestly though, the stuff I'm most excited about these days are comic books.  Not satisfied with the completion of Grant Morrison's Supergods (look, it's beautiful madness, but I want more history less peyote), I blitzed through the audiobook of Sean Howe's Marvel Comics The Untold Story.

Just days before I turned the last page, Marvel unleashed the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer...90% of which we saw at last year's Comic Con, but it was still enough to get be jazzed about all things Cosmic and Raccoon.  I ran to my local comic shop, but they were already sold out of the source material.  All my coworkers are gaga for Groot, and I'm starting to hope that the world is ready for the murderous furball.  Doctor Strange is right around the corner, then...Black Panther?  And yet DC is still floundering with their properties.  Marvel is spanking Warner Brothers.  I love it.

The Darjeeling Limited:  A month out from Wes Anderson's new film, The Wife & I are still chugging along his filmography.  When originally released, The Darjeeling Limited was met with lackluster enthusiasm from fans and a tepid critical reception.  Looking back at my own Top Ten Lists of the last several years, I was pleased to see that Darjeeling ranked as my favorite film of 2007.  My opinion has not changed.  As an only child myself, I've always been fascinated with sibling relationships, and even if I don't quite understand the battle for paternal love, I am charmed by how this brotherly war passive aggressively erupts in every one of their actions.  Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman may not at all resemble each other physically, but they expertly inhabit one another's mannerisms.  It really is a thrilling performance trilogy, and as they reach their destination and lives are lost and narrative gaps are filled, I find myself emotionally strained in a way that no other Anderson film has managed.  Is it my favorite Wes Anderson?  No.  I gotta go Life Aquatic, Tenenbaums, or Fox, but Darjeeling is close behind.

Marked Woman:  Bette Davis is a carefree mobster's moll who catches the attention of Humphrey Bogart's District Attorney after her sister is stolen of the streets.  Despite the formation of the Hays Code in 1930, an uncredited Michael Curtiz (Casablanca!!!) still manages to deliver plenty of scandalous behavior from this sordid ripped-from-the-headlines tale.  These goons are some real beasts, and Bette Davis takes a helluva scary beating behind closed doors.  Bogart is a bit dry, but that's okay because this is Davis's show and she rocks the woman wronged role.  Maybe not as iconic as some similar films of this era, Marked Woman is a hidden Hollywood gem.

Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume 2 by Alan Moore:  After months and months of pestering, I finally caved to Matt's demands and dove into this classic series.  The first trade took some time getting off it's feet, but by the end I was hooked to the plight of The Green.  In volume 2, Swamp Thing continues to explore what it means to be a Plant with delusions of Manhood, and Moore takes his saga deeper down the rabbit hole of comic book legacy.  My favorite moment from this entry, is when the original Len Wein & Bernie Wrightson stories are used as a gateway into a biblical origin of the House of Mystery.  As Mystery & Secrets collide, I was hooting & hollering to myself.  This is weird, wild stuff.  Is this genius?  Nope.  At least not yet.  But I'm starting to get that tingle that I am certainly reading something special - the hype is earned. The goal is to crank out a volume a week.  Alan Moore is too dang dense to blitz through.  Besides, I want to savor this gothic dread.

Game of Thrones - Season 3:  I am not the world's biggest Game of Thrones fan.  I've never read the books, and I'm not planning to either.  However, every time one of these DVD sets comes out, I stop whatever I'm doing and concentrate on nothing else until the discs have been devoured.  It's TV crack.  Smoke it up!  I don't love every bitty plot point.  I am not too keen on the Jon Snow story - in fact, I find his whiney fumblings around the lust of a wildling to be utterly annoying.  The Mother of Dragons is spending too much damn time wandering the desert.  It's time to get into the action lady!  But then you have the sad, honorable, and patriarchally tortured Tyrion Lannister.   The hell that is Kings Landing owns this show.  If you have a good bone in your body, George RR Martin will crush you.  The good die young here folks, and only villains reap reward.  Last year, all I heard was "Red Wedding, Red Wedding, Red Wedding" from every coworker, friend, and Entertainment Weekly spoiler headline.  So I thought I knew what I was getting into with the third season climax.  But damn...I was not at all prepared for the depths of viciousness Martin had in store.  The Red Wedding might be one of the single most wonderfully hateful acts of fiction I've ever experienced.  Just wow.  Who to root for?  Hard to answer that question in this blood soaked world.

Marvel Comics - The Untold Story by Sean Howe:  "The heroic journeys are forever denied an end."  In this golden age of comic book to silver screen adaptation everyone seems to love the Cameomeister Stan Lee.  Sean Howe's tell-all style approach to the rise, fall, & rise again of Marvel Comics certainly sets its sights on Smiling Stan.  Yep, it's disheartening to read interviews & radio excerpts in which Lee dismisses the medium of comics as a lesser art form to novels and movies.  The book paints a picture of a man who settled into comics because that's what would have him.  Is Stan Lee the godfather of spandex?  Or is he simply the benefactor of opportune nepotism, sneaking his way into cousin Martin Goodman's magazine distributor?  The debate surrounding creator rights is nothing new, and I only have so much sympathy when we're talking royalties in Work-For-Hire art.  You signed a contract, Marvel owns your ass.  But lets give credit where credit is due.  And it is genuinely upsetting to discover that Stan Lee sued Marvel for 10 million dollars after decades of dismissing similar claims from Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko.  This is nothing new for comicbook fanboys; the bitter contempt from his co-creator contemporaries tarnished Stan Lee's shine long ago.  The man is his greatest creation.  Sean Howe spends plenty of time (maybe too much) taking the icon down a peg or two.  My favorite bits are the ones exploring the financial reasoning behind some of our favorite Event Storylines, and the cashgrab desperation driving Marvel to LA LA Land.  A not so inevitable success when you look at blockbuster flops like Howard the Duck or limp direct-to-video releases like Dolph Lundgren's Punisher.  Marvel once touted itself as the four-color Disney, and it's a trip to see Walt's Kingdom gobble them up, but how long will the mass audience be appeased by Robert Downey Jr's Avengers?  Bubbles always burst.  At the very least, Marvel Comics The Untold Story, got me aching for both my own back issues and those not acquired yet.  I seriously need Steve Gerber's rage fueled Destroyer Duck - so much deliciously not-so-hidden Marvel Hate!

Avengers - Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 1:  The first season takes its time assembling Earth's Mightiest Heroes, using 11 half hour episodes to fully form the roster.  Once gathered, this Saturday Morning Cartoon goes completely bonkers for comic book continuity, borrowing everything from Brian Michael Bendis' New Avengers run to classic arcs like The Kang Dynasty.  The Avengers battle Hydra, Ultron, Enchantress, Klaw, and The Purple Man....yes, THE PURPLE MAN!!  Nerd nirvana here.  Sure, some of the voice cast is cloying with Tony Stark in particular grating the nerves with his Robert Downey Jr impersonation, but the show hits more than it misses.  And with a second season promising even longer story arcs in the form of the Skrulls Secret Invasion and Galactus, Devour of Worlds - I am hooked.  No more picking away at this series, all must be consumed.

The Price of Gold:  I don't care much about the Olympics these days.  I haven't watched a single one in well over a decade.  But in 1994 our family household was overwhelmed with the competition...I'm guessing every family home was that way back then.  Thanks to the bizarre figure skating rivalry story between poor white trash Tonya Harding and ice princess Nancy Kerrigan...and a kneecap hit that spun the media into True Crime bliss.  Part of ESPN's 30 for 30, The Price of Gold attempts to dissect the fervor around the events, but never quite elevates itself beyond a talking heads documentary.  It's certainly interesting to hear what Tonya has to say, and I appreciate Nancy Kerrigan's refusal to participate, but The Price of Gold is little more than a "Remember When."  A footnote for those families that fell victim to the circus, but I don't think a modern audience would find this hour plus doc terribly satisfying.  If anything, this just reaffirms my belief in the utter failure of contemporary TMZ journalism.  Anchorman 2 got it right.

--Brad

Dork Art: Justin White's Rated G - The Sequel

Here's another helping of Justin White's devilishly cartoony genre makeovers.  Rated G - The Sequel will be showing at Gallery 1988 through September 14th.  Again, why does LA get to have all the fun?  The 2001 monkey madness print might be my favorite, but the smiley American Psycho is a close second.  You can buy some of the prints on the Gallery 1988 website, and you can explore other Mickey Mouse interpretations over at Crome Yellow.  Good stuff.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (7/14/13-7/20/13)

    With co-Dork Brad and many others on the left coast this week for the Nerd Jamboree, Comic-Con, I have remained here, keeping the light on.  Not a particularly exciting week, but not a bad one, either.

Game of Thrones Season 2:  Watching a regular episode of this show can be stressful, because you know anyone could die at any point, but watching the last couple episodes, you know death is riding.  The second season of the show is quite good, though it gets off to a wonky start.  Look, I love me some nudity and I’m no prude, but the first two episodes had me looking at my watch thinking, ‘can we please just put the tits away and get on with the story?’  And then they do, and the rest of the season keeps it balanced pretty well.  Peter Dinklage remains my favorite part, though there’s plenty to love.  His character is probably the most interesting and he plays it with gusto.  I haven’t read the books, and frankly, have no interest.  But my hope is that Tyrion Lannister is the last man standing to claim the throne.  If you don’t mind wall to wall swearing, violence, and sex, this series is a great companion to the Lord of the Rings films.  It feels like Middle Earth in the centuries after the King.

King Kong:  One of my all time favorite films, I was super excited to see it on the big screen.  However, some awful, literally snot-nosed little kid that couldn’t keep still pretty much ruined it for me.  Whatever.  Still one of the great movies, and a must see.  But parents, either don’t take the kids, or serve as a buffer between them and strangers.  Don’t let your hyperactive, sinus-shunt needing spawn ruin a someone’s 30 year aspiration.  Dick.

FDR: American Badass:  “I’m a motorcycle of death.  I ain’t got no sidecar.”  You have to know, going into this, that a movie called FDR: American Badass is not going to be some classy discussion of the life of an American president.  It’s about a guy who gets polio from Nazi werewolves, becomes President, smokes Lincoln inducing weed, and personally leads the attack on werewolf Hitler and Mussalini.  It’s crass, stupid, goofy, awkward, extremely cheap looking, and pretty much straight up awesome.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II:  “The mind is a labyrinth.”  This is a profoundly strange movie.  It’s an old favorite of mine, and I totally get why.  But after probably a decade without seeing it, this rewatch put how bloody strange it is into perspective.  The editing is all off, the story hops in weird ways, the acting and dialog are very wonky, and the music is bugnuts.  It’s totally anti-climactic and has several pretty big problems.  But I still find it very compelling, like a very gory adult fairy tale.  All the puzzle/riddle/maze stuff is great, and I think handled the best of all the films in the series.  It doesn’t shy away from physically traveling to hell, as most movies of this sort would; teasing for an hour and ten minutes, then giving a couple brief glimpses in the last reel.  No, this time we spend a third to half the film in the twisting strangeness of mat paintings and forced perspective.

Evil Dead (2013):  As soon as the Paul Dano looking chump opened the book and it was revealed to just be garden variety Satanism, I pretty much checked out.  One of the things I always liked about the original Evil Dead films was the Lovecraft hints.  The movie looks nice, but otherwise is just a bunch of boring retreads.  I’m not against remakes.  But Evil Dead 2 and (to a lesser degree) Army of Darkness already remade Evil Dead, and both movies had 100% more excitement and fun.  Skip it.  Watch the original.  Nothing to see here.

Jack the Giant Slayer:  Another ‘revisionist’ fairy tale, this by the numbers snooze-fest looks and feels like a made for TV movie from 20 years ago (10th Kingdom, Gulliver’s Travels, etc.).  A cast of better-than-this actors phone in performances, dishing out lifeless dialog that doesn’t even have the good taste to be memorably bad.  CG used where practical effects would have likely been easier, cheaper, and certainly look better.  Ho-hum.

Welcome to the cutting edge of 1992.

    Friday night through Saturday, I was on mission.  Co-Dork’s lair.  Blu-ray player.  Chinese food.  Like John Rambo before me, I got the job done.

Melvin & Howard:  Man, can I pick ‘em.  I thought this movie was going to be about a guy hanging out with Howard Hughes, not a s#!+ kicking hillbilly without the sense (or cents) to get his slack-jawed life together.  Between his soft-headed first wife, sleazy bosses, and own lack of brain cells, it’s a wonder our grease stained blue collar hero can drive and sing crappy songs at the same time, much less succeed in life.  As the movie progresses toward its climax (?!), the filmmakers rely on the viewer to be well versed in the actual shenanigans the film is inspired by…which I’m not.  This was up for Oscars?  This WON Oscars?  Maybe I can stop using Geena Davis’ win as my example when I point to how moronic the Oscars are.

My 2 minutes are the best part.

Jubal:  A good cast does a good job with a fairly standard collection of Western tropes.  There’s not really a heck of a lot to this movie, nor a lot to make one take note, beyond the excellent cast.  It was fine, and perfectly watchable, but not especially memorable.

Videodrome:  “Nobody on Earth was made for that show.”  Cronenberg’s grimly disturbing, and creepily prescient vision of the entertainment industry is quintessentially 80s in its execution, but timeless in its vision.  James Woods only thinks he’s an amoral would-be TV tycoon, peddling sleaze to the lowest of the low.  But when he discovers Videodrome, he may have found a line even he isn’t willing to cross.  Is it simply broadcasts of sadistic murders, or is it the beginning of a new political/religious/evolutionary force?

The Video Dead: A really, really weird 80s zombie movie, it’s not very good, but it’s certainly …um…unique.  A cursed TV, wandering zombies, the Garbage Man, a cowboy.  OK.  This isn’t a great movie by any means.  But it’s a fun 80s weirdo, with a cover you probably remember from poking around video stores 20 years ago.  Worth checking out for the strangeness, if nothing else.  And it doesn’t play out as one expects these films to go, which is a nice surprise.

French Stewart!  What happened?

    After my return from the abode of my counterpart, I finally cranked out the last few pages of da Vinci’s Ghost, from the author of The Fourth Part of the World.  Good, entertaining and informative history.  Da Vinci seems like he’d have been fun to hang with.

Fantastic Voyage:  The slow pace might be tough for some, but this voyage into inner space is pretty good.  Nice effects and a solid cast, as well as some rather overblown theatrics of Science! help sell the crazy.  There’s also a good dose of Cold War paranoia.  The opening of the movie feels like it dropped right out of a spy film.  It goes astray in the last act, and I can’t say that the resolution is especially satisfying.  But all in all, a fair sci-fi adventure flick from the 60s.

    Other than that, I’ve been addicted to Prog Rock all this week.  Started reading a book, Yes is the Answer, which is spawning more interest than usual.  It’s interesting going back to this music as a total outsider.  I don’t use drugs.  I wasn’t alive when Prog was at its height (or, I was just being born).  But I feel a certain connection to it.  The grandiose storytelling, the operatic sound and theatricality, the more Classical than Country composition.  Love it.

-Matt

Dork Art: Mike Mitchell's Mondo Portrait Gallery

A few days ago I posted my Week in Dork with a header image provided by Mike Mitchell's Django Unchained portrait.  It's a striking piece of art that's only just a portion of the Mondo Gallery show currently on exhibit in Austin, Texas.  Ah, to live in that hipster paradise....sigh.  I can only hope that some of these appear as prints at this year's SPX cuz I desperately want to put the above Dredd shot in my bathroom.  Why, the bathroom?  Not sure, exactly.  Above the toilet, keeping watch, disapproving Karl Urban.  Just seems right.

--Brad