Dork Art: Mondo in 2014

I acquired only four prints from Mondo in 2013.  I magically won Tyler Stout's Shaun of the Dead at The Alamo screening of the Cornetto Trilogy.  I forked over big bucks at Comic Con for Drew Struzan's Dark Tower.  I was one of thousands who ordered the timed edition Martin Ansin's Man of Steel.  And I clicked at the right second for Francesco Francavilla's Black Beetle.  It's an old story, but eight years ago I could snag a Dirty Dozen or Bad Lieutenant poster months after release.  These days if you're not one of the lucky few to click the link at the right second then you're out of luck.  Such manufactured limited editions have caused quite a bit of backlash.  I get it.  I want the William Stout King Kong as much as you do, and I can't afford to pay the ebay prices.  It's the nature of the beast.  But I'm not gonna crap on these guys.  I love their work.  And when Hollywood chooses cheap high school photoshop over illustration 9 times outta 10 then I'll choose the hipster option every time.

If we're judging them on their first three prints of the year, then 2014 is going to prove hotter than ever for Justin Ishmael and his Mondo Team.  Released just yesterday, Rockin Jelly Bean's Kill Bill print went for $55 and now sells for $140 (average) on ebay.  Dave Rapoza's Clash of the Titans print will currently set you back $74.  But the real story is Francesco Francavilla's Clash of the Titans = $165.  Obviously, we're massive Harryhausen fans here at ITMOD, but we're not the types to bow down to Titans.  In fact, if you twisted our arms Matt & I would admit a fondness for the remake and it's God War sequel.  That being said, the Francavilla print is absolutely gorgeous, and the idea of him tackling other Harryhausen films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad or - gulp - Mysterious Island brings butterflies to my stomach.  Francavilla is a helluva get for Mondo and together they slayed 2013.  Can't wait to see what the two cook up in the New Year.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (2/3/13-2/9/13)

    On Sunday evening, thanks to Ben, I finally saw a movie that everyone under the sun has been telling me forever that I needed to watch, but in all honesty, I’ve never much been interested in.  Goodfellas.  I didn’t do up a list of New Years movie resolutions, but if I did, Goodfellas would have been on it.  Maybe now I should think about that list.  Shawshank Redemption, I would probably have put Birth of a Nation on it, which Brad and I watched a few weeks back (gah!), The Seventh Seal, and maybe An American In Paris.   And maybe this is the year I should put my heart into giving a few directors another try.  Fellini, Kurosawa, Woody Allen (shudder), and Altman (not that I would say I don’t like Altman, only that he never drew me in).

Goodfellas:  I’ve never seen the appeal of mob types or their lifestyle.  Yet this movie manages to show the lives of some pretty useless dumbasses in such a way that I still found them occasionally charming.  The cast does a good job, and the period-piece aspect was interesting.  Watching these guys live through the 60s, 70s, and 80s, rise up the ranks, fall on hard times, get into drugs, murder and all sorts of poor behavior.  These guys all seem like stupid children, easy to anger, violent and impulsive, so concerned with honor and image they can’t figure out how keep from f’ing up.  It’s like a collection of people you don’t want to stand next to, because they’re the dumb fools who get other people killed.  It’s a solid film with a good cast and some grim humor.  The violence exists mostly as a constant threat, only actually hitting the screen on a few dramatic occasions.  The soundtrack is pretty awesome.  Why is it hailed as one of the greatest movies of all time?  I don’t know.  It’s good.  It’s very good.  One of the greatest movies of all time?  I don’t see it.

The Sun Also Rises:  “I’m just…detached.”  Ava Gardner is fascinating.  I know she’s considered one of the great beauties (and in this film, she is quite comely), but I’ve never thought of her as ‘beautiful.’  But she is somehow more comfortable in her skin (seemingly) than most women, giving her an attractiveness that isn’t about her looks.  And unlike Lauren Bacall with Bogart, Gardner and Tyrone Power look more appropriate.  Don’t get me wrong, Bogart was the man, and I hope one day to have my ugly old mug next to a woman half as beautiful as Bacall.  Anyway, the life of Americans drifting around Europe in the aftermath of the Great War is the subject of this film, and Power is good as the broken, haunted and sad man, wounded in a way that makes him useless to a woman.  Bar crawling, trysting, moping, and drinking.  And one woman capturing and destroying the souls of several men.  As a dour and taciturn fellow myself, I do empathize Power’s journalist who just wants to be left alone, who has love in his heart, but an inability to get it out without un-survivable pain.  And like him, I want to go fishing in France with Eddie Albert.  But, how does anyone in this movie even manage to stand up, with all the booze they consume.  I’ll admit, I’m a lightweight.  However, I think most people would be staggering and slurring their speech at best.  Errol Flynn as the busted sot is weirdly charming, in spite of being kind of a douche.  He and Eddie Albert are highlights.  It’s an OK movie that does capture a certain mood.  It reminded me a bit of the Bill Murray version of The Razor’s Edge.  That whole, Lost Generation in Paris thing is rich with mood and kind of fascinating, though not really my cup of tea (much like the late 60s San Francisco business).

Heaven and Hell:  “You’re the Ghost with the Rotten Heart!”  Most Martial Arts movies are half way to fantasy anyway, so one would think a full-on fantasy film would be amazing.  Sadly, most of them are just dull and awkward.  This one is a bit more surreal than most, which makes it a bit more entertaining.  There’s a lot of smoke, a lot of crazy sets.  And yeah, they fight with a metal hula-hoop.  Then it switches to the real world, which is much more the surreal world, with more strange sets, a horribly dubbed singing number, and extra loads of goofy.  There are a lot of fights, but they feel kind of meaningless, and so lack a level of excitement.  At least when they travel to Hell things become a bit more interesting visually.  Frankly, Chinese Hell(s) seems very complicated, with far too many obscure rules and regulations.  Is there a ‘For Dummies’ guide?  Good and bad seem to go there.  But good guys get a visit from the Buddha of Mercy, who gives them the go-ahead to fight their way out of hell.  That’s weird, right?  Like the David Lynch film Inland Empire, this feels like it might work better as a video installation, playing in the background while you’re hosting a party or something (I suggest a tiki-type thing with lots of little umbrellas in drinks and crap).  What do they call movies like The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari?  German Expressionism?  This is Hong Kong Expressionism.  The actress who plays Red Dress is kind of fascinating.  She’s not really pretty, exactly.  Kind of ‘ugly-pretty,’ really.  But fascinating.  She has a unique look.  Overall, not one of the better Shaw Brothers movies I’ve seen, though it’s certainly better than Black Magic or Cave of the Silken Web, though.

Cat Chaser:  “We made a pact.  Us against them.  Shirts against skins, man!”  A lot of Elmore Leonard stories have been translated to film.  Some are good.  Some are not so good.  A few just are.  This one is.  Some good location shooting but kind of blah, otherwise.  Look, what I’m about to say is almost certainly horribly sexist and/or insensitive.  But the fact that this movie features a lot of nudity makes it kind of like Christmas.  The fact that that nudity is Kelly McGillis makes it kind of like getting a sweater for Christmas…a sweater with a reindeer, bells, and pompoms on it.  I wasn’t into her in Top Gun, and nothing has changed.  It’s like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.  We’re supposed to believe that Michael Douglas is gonna give up everything and destroy his wife for…Glenn Close!?  Kind of the same here.  Peter Weller seems more than happy to throw his life away for an emotionless, chain-smoking mannequin with old lady hair.  And it’s all directed by Abel Ferrara.  If Brian De Palma is a poor man’s Alfred Hitchcock, Abel Ferrara is a dead broke guy’s De Palma.  It’s not that Weller is better than this movie.  He’s just more interesting than it deserves.   They made a lot of these attempted Noir films in the late 80s and through the 90s.  I don’t know if it was intentional, or what.  But it seemed like there was a factory churning out movies about world-weary guys caught up trouble outside their control, while some dame twists the knife.  There’s always a broken buddy (usually a drunk), a wealthy, jealous guy, and loads of bad lighting.  Whatever it was that made Noir that special kind of magic was missing in these movies.  The whole subgenre feels like a straight to video cure for sleepless nights.  It’s where actors who never quite made it to the big time, like Weller, Tom Beranger, Eric Roberts, and the like all did time.

Shaolin & Wu Tang:  “Never teach the Wu Tang…To the Ching.  Uhhhhh.”  When the styles of Shaolin and the forces of Wu Tang come together in two friends, one painfully stupid and short sighted lord wants to put his clumsy fingers in their martial pie.  He wants those fighting styles, and he’s willing to kill, poison, offend, fight, steal and verbally harangue (while pointing imperiously) his way to victory.  Sadly, the quality of the DVD was appalling.  Not just that the dubbing was bad, but the recording of the dubbing was bad, or the sound mixing, or whatever technical thing makes it hard to hear individual voices.  The video quality was bad, too, with the hard to read subtitles cut off by the bottom of the screen all too often.  And of course, it’s pan & scan, so half the picture is cut off, sometimes including stuff that would probably be helpful (like yet more of the subtitles).  Getting past the technical issues, the movie is pretty badass, with some rockin’ fights and typically crazy narrative paths.  The sequence in the women’s prison, introducing the ‘Mad Girl’ is so perfectly nuts.  It reminds me of some of the crazier Kung Fu films I’ve seen, like Legend of the Liquid Sword.  I need a girl to nipple twist me back to mental health.  Gordon Liu and Adam Cheng are fun as the two fighting buddies, and their martial arts rivalry produces some great mad bastard fighting.  And when the dudes team up with the ladies, the battles are taken to the next level of total insanity.  Beauty.  Of course, there are twists, turns, betrayals, revenge, redemption, and fists a’flying.  You may be asking yourself if there are extremely weird and overcomplicated training methods explored through montage.  If you are asking this, you haven’t seen enough of these films and need to get on it.

Snake Dancer (aka Glenda):  “There was only one dirty minded person in that audience tonight, Ken, and that was you.”  All a girl wants to do is dance and play with snakes.  Why does everyone want to stop her?  Apparently in uptight South Africa, people don’t like their Sunday School teachers dancing naked with snakes on stage.  She’s supposed to be this great dancer, but she’s doing the same thing a million hippie girls did every day.  I guess the summer of love didn’t hit South Africa?  Glenda Kemp (playing a fictionalized version of herself) is very cute in that fresh-faced 70s chick kind of way, but it’s hard to see what all the fuss is about.  But then, isn’t that always the way with oppressively moralistic and hypocritical societies.  Her goofus brother is kind of charming in a Paul McCartney (Wings era) kind of way.  I said it before, many moons ago, that in spite of what my brain (or something) wants and expects, a woman dancing with a snake is actually not particularly erotic.  Snakes just hang there, like nothin’s nothin.  So it becomes more ‘look at this woman with a big thing hanging off her shoulders.  Snore.  Though Kemp gives it the old college try, and it more successful than most (are her snakes on pep-pills or just really hungry, because they’re far more active than normal)  The vaguely racist first snake dance is rough.  At least the dancers weren’t in blackface.  Of course, knowing some of the horrible stuff that was going on in South Africa at the time puts a weird spin on things.  As a kid who grew up in the 80s, the only thing I ever heard about the country was the constant ethnic violence and oppression by the Apartheid government.  It existed like a weird evil state in my mind’s eye, so in a sense, this feels like a movie made within Nazi Germany during WWII, that never mentions any of the ‘troubles’ going on.  Perhaps that’s not fair, but that’s what the movie brought up in me.  You have a large population of people being excluded from government, the legal system, society in general, and people are getting upset over some bare breasts.  Reminds me of the States today, where our young men and women are getting chewed up and spit out by constant war, maimed for life, psychologically broken, committing suicide on an unprecedented scale, and people are more concerned with what to dudes are doing in their bedrooms.  Anyway, the stripping routines are more awkward than sexy.  I like naked women and people sticking it to the Man.  So that’s pretty cool, I guess.  I can’t even say the movie is bad.  Just kind of odd.  And I find it odd that people going to see scantily clad women dance would be offended by a naked woman dancing.  But people are weird like that.  They’ll watch Janet Jackson gyrating, half naked on stage for five minutes, but one flash of a weird looking pasty and the country goes into a fit of mock-moralistic rage.  These same shocked and appalled people will then go home and watch two nearly naked beefcake men roll around together while plastic surgery disaster women walk around in their underwear, frequently debased in the most horrendous of ways, and they’re all smiles and sunshine.  It’s just good clean fun.  I’ve been subjected to professional wrestling, which is one of the most disgusting displays of human indignity I’ve seen but is well loved by Bible-belters and rednecks nation wide.  Homophobic wrestling fans are possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever encountered.  The irony they embody is worthy of the greatest satirists.

The Big Easy:  “Aw man, now they killin’ retards.”  Accents are a dangerous thing.  Frankly, my take on it is simple.  If you can’t do it and do it well, then don’t.  I’d rather the guy from Boston, or the guy from Russia sound like he’s from…well, wherever the actor is from than sport a dreadful accent.  This movie is so self-consciously set in New Orleans it bathes in voodoo, breaths gumbo, eats Creole, and shits Mardi Gras beads.  I could have used about 30 less references to it being the ‘Big Easy.’  I like Dennis Quade.  I really do.  But I don’t know.  His weird down-home charm, especially with such a bad Cajun accent is kinda grating.  I think he had Wilfred Brimley’s dialect coach from Hard Target.  And I’ve never thought much of Ellen Birkin, so that doesn’t help.  It has a super 80s vibe, with lots of blue jeans, a fridge stocked with Bud, and a painfully unique apartment for our lead.  At least it didn’t have a freight elevator.  80s cop movies have a comic-book feel, where the world obeys rules that only make sense in the context of 80s cop movies.  Good natured police corruption goes up against the bad kind.  Organized crime doesn’t much like a corrupt cop who still tries to bust the really bad guys.  Evidence tampering, witness intimidation, and what-all.  It’s all in good fun.  I guess if you’re in the mood for this specific brand of thing (akin to Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, Stakeout, or what have you), you could do worse.  Ned Beatty is one of those character actors who pretty much just plays variations on a theme or type, but he always does it well, sells it.  And his performance here is another good variation on the Beatty.

Speed Racer:  “He was trying to change this rotten business and they killed him for it.”  It took a lot of flack, and still gets lambasted by many.  But F the haters; Speed Racer is a sweet candy explosion of stylistic panache that manages to fit in some heart & soul between the Technicolor flash.  The cartoon sensibilities, zany characters, and occasionally subversive hints balance well with the genuine relationships between a father and his sons, between siblings, and between competitors and champions.  The Racer family isn’t perfect, but they’re a charming idealized 1950s kind of thing, with love to spare.  With madly over the top villains, the story needs to crank up the operatic intensity, and it does so with aplomb.  Grand theatrics and heart-string plucking.  And man, every time I watch this movie, I like Matthew Fox as Racer X even more.  I’d have loved to see a Racer X spin-off, but obviously, this movie did not set the world on fire.  John Goodman is swell as the worried but love filled father.  Christina Ricci turns in one of her best performances in a long time as the bubbly Trixie.  And even Susan Sarandon, who I normally do not like, is very sweet as Speed’s loving mother.  But in order to properly enjoy this film, you have to check your cynicism at the door; you have to go into it with a child’s heart.  Accept that it’s not a realistic action/drama.  Accept that racing is a metaphor for the search for enlightenment.  Like in classic Kung Fu films, it’s not simply a physical contest but the outward reflection of the interior journey.  It’s a 60s cartoon turned live action.  The filmmakers embraced that, and in order to enjoy it, you need to, too.  My hope is that this will become a Donnie Darko, Buckaroo Banzai, or Rocketeer, which may have failed in their initial run but went on to become beloved cult classics.

    I tried to read the second volume of Batwoman, one of the best New 52 titles from DC.  But the jarring change in artwork pretty much killed my interest on page one.  Maybe I’ll try it again sometime later.  But for now, I’ll move on to something else.  I had better luck reading The Film Club, an interesting memoir about a guy trying to connect with his troubled teen son through a shared love of film.

    And with The Thing From Another World, I started what I’m hoping to be a new series for the blog.  I’m going to focus on science fiction films from various eras.  I can’t promise they’ll always be based around a theme, but I think I will try.  For example, this first round will be in the loosest way, about identity.  The Thing From Another World is missing much of the concept of the original story, Who Goes There?, and so not as much about the question of identity.  But I’m counting it anyway.  ‘Cause that’s what I do.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (1/27/13-2/2/13)

It’s lean days for this Dork.  And I’ll admit, I don’t think my head is in the game.  Still, got a few solid selections in and got some reading done.  So all is not lost.  Without intention  I spent a lot of time in Asia with my movies this week.  Japan, China, Indonesia.  That and more time with British science fiction.  But that’s not new.


Maverick:  “Gums his food and his women.”  Remember the good old days, when we didn’t know Mel Gibson was a belligerent nut-job?  I could have gone forever without finding out.  The 90s were a bad decade for a lot of folks for a lot of reasons.  Few suffered quite as much as 80s action icons.  Arnold, Van Damme, Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Stallone, and yeah, Mel Gibson.  Somehow everything had this made for TV blandness about it, and the larger than life personas of the previous decade seemed like they were on tranquilizers or something.  Non-threatening scripts, non-threatening cinematography, no nudity of course (or very, very little), no blood or gore, and the f*%#ing music of f*%#ing Randy Newman.  As Raul Duke would say, this is what the world would look like if the Nazis won the war.  Out of this came Maverick, a movie re-envisioning of the classic TV series.  There’s nothing essentially wrong with the film, and maybe that’s what’s wrong with it.  It’s extremely OK.  What’s the word?  Banal.  It never displays the kind of balls it takes to be really good, or to dramatically fail, which leaves it in a kind of default ‘something I’m watching’ state, which was sort of what that whole decade was like.  It has a cornucopia of ‘that guy’ actors with great Western faces, and I love Jodie Foster.  But she feels completely wrong here.  The Danny Glover cameo is painful but Graham Greene’s appearance is a highlight.  The story?  Meh.  Characters?  Meh.  It’s the 90s, man.  I guess I should just be glad Julia Roberts wasn’t in it.

The Time Machine:  “All the time in the world!”  H.G. Wells wrote two of my all time favorite books, The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.  Both have inspired countless works and been adapted in various ways many times.  Neither has ever really gotten its due on film.  But this George Pal adventure film is a pretty good attempt, even if it misses many of the best aspects of the book.  Wells did not tend to feature romantic subtext.  And in fact, it would have been somewhat inappropriate in The Time Machine, as the simple folk the Time Traveler encounters in the distant future are little more than humanoid sheep or passive children.  In this version, they’re more like vacuous, beautiful, Aryan 20 somethings in Jessica 6 outfits.  Unlike The Island of Dr. Moreau, which desperately called for the sexual tension so conspicuously absent from the novel, I’m still not sold on it in The Time Machine (though it did give filmmakers an excuse for dressing Samantha Mumba in that crazy mesh getup in the lackluster remake, and that earns a lot of forgiveness).  Whatever the case, our dashing, turn of the century inventor catapults himself through time, seeing the disintegration of civilization by prolonged war until he arrives in an almost unfathomable future.  The exploration of this new world has always been my favorite part of the film.  Much like the first 30 minutes of Planet of the Apes, or the first 45 minutes of Alien, or that middle 20 minutes of Beneath the Planet of the Apes where they’re in the underground, the exploration of an alien environment and all its potential danger and wonder pulls me in.  And though I know the movie must move on, I’m always a bit sad when it ends, like my playtime has been spoiled by the inevitable setting of the sun and call to supper.  The production design is interesting and the music the right brand of crazy.  Rod Taylor is a great leading man, and I’m always a little sad he wasn’t in more quality movies (sure, he’s got a few really good ones, but not enough for me).  The whole thing is more upbeat than Wells’ novel, but that’s no shock, as I don’t think Hollywood could handle his less than optimistic outlook on humanity’s future.  I do still hold out some hope, however misguided, that one day both The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine will get a more loyal adaptation.  I know that print and film are two very different means of storytelling, but I think both novels could be done better, for sure.  In the meantime, this is a darned cool sci-fi adventure film.

House of Bamboo:  “You better go.”  In post-War Japan, a G.I. is murdered and zzzzzzz…  The footage of Japan is a fascinating glimpse into the state of things in the wake the second World War.  It doesn’t matter what Fox’s DVD box says though, this is not a Noir film.  At least it does deal with hoodlums and crime.  But all in the bright light of day, in vibrant color.  Robert Stack is the lifeless dolt who blunders his way into trouble after trouble, but he’s got a secret.  Seriously, Stack seems to be purposefully trying not to project anything that might accidentally be seen as charisma.  Robert Ryan is the criminal boss picking at the bones of a city trying to build itself up.  And his journey from successful boss to cracked nut is kind of fascinating.  Other than Robert Ryan, the film’s only real selling point is as a visual record of a particular time and place that doesn’t focus on (but doesn’t ignore) the tourist hot-spots.  I can’t help but wish filmmakers could go back in time and make a better film so I could enjoy the setting more.  Run Don’t Walk is still many years away, and much of the character seems to have changed by then.

Doctor Who: The Krotons:  After scouring the English countryside for the weirdest looking people possible for the guest cast, this story about crystal-robots keeping human slaves and occasionally eating their brains is fairly well done, but a bit formulaic.  Granted, this is early enough in the series that perhaps it’s more of a formula establishment, but whatever the case, it feels like pretty familiar territory for this Who fan.  Still, I’m always glad to see one of the all too rare Patrick Troughton stories.  Zoe and Jamie are cool companions.  I like that Zoe does a lot less screaming than other female companions.  She’s possibly the Doctor’s intellectual equal (maybe even superior), but much more rational and cool headed.  And Jamie ain’t too bright, but he’s clever, strong, and resourceful.  All in all, a perfectly fine, if not especially memorable story.

Challenge of the Masters:  “The Death Kicks?  Killing Spear?  Those techniques come from the North!” Gordon Liu has such a strange, child-like, almost alien way about him.  He makes for an extremely charming lead, even when he’s playing kind of a tool.  I love all the completely ape-nuts contests you can find in martial arts films.  The firecracker contest that is so important in this movie seems about as reasonable perfectly safe as one of those Dan Ackroid Christmas gifts from that old SNL skit (what kid doesn’t want a bag o’ broken glass?).  But I dig these crazy mellow Kung Fu masters.  The good ones are so chill.  Some mole-faced bastard has to come along and cause a ruckus.  Still, that results in killer kung fu in several wild battles.  Spears, fists, plant pots.  And everything is so dusty!  And it’s true what they say, “although your breath control’s good, it can’t beat my death kick.”  As expected, nay, demanded, there are lots of weird training rituals that our hero must work through.  And there’s some rockin’ spear fighting, which is a favorite of mine, and not a weapon I see used a lot, at least not in key fights where the techniques are prominently featured.  It’s also one of the few martial arts films that seems to do more than talk the talk when it comes to the philosophy.  The ending is genuinely in tune with the ethical teachings.

Lady Terminator:  “That’s an authentic reproduction.”  So, the movie starts out with a chick who can’t get no satisfaction, killing the dudes who don’t… uh, make her happy.  Then a guy shows up, does his bit, and steels a snake out of her lady business (it bites the wangs off the guys that don’t please her), which then becomes a dagger.  She’s having none of that, so curses his descendants before going to the bottom of the ocean to join forces with evil.  You know.  That old story.  Fast forward to the present day where we find a scientist, a cop, and a rock star on a collision course with an evil goddess and her penetrating snake.  Combining dreadful acting with even more dreadful dubbing, they manhandle an inept script like it’s their job.  Presaging the crafty creation of Tara Reid’s Alone in the Dark scientist (She is wearing GLASSES, man!  Of course she’s a scientist.), our dim-bulb nymphet anthropologist has all the subtlety and naturalness of a porn star (“But…I didn’t order any …pizza?!).  Indonesia went movie making mad in the early 80s.  Unfortunately, they didn’t go in too much for quality in writing, production, or acting.  Our lady terminator also has magic undies, which only appear when she’s facing the camera, but are absent when she’s facing the other direction.  And I guess you don’t need robots from the future.  You just need a snake in your hoo-hah to be an unkillable machine of death.  There are hints of better films, like Layer of the White Worm, Cat People, …The Terminator (OK, not hints, but blatant rip-offs in the case of The Terminator), etc.  But it fails in just about every way possible.  Snake, though.  He has to be the coolest Debbie Gibson haired, giant nosed, girly bird-man in a Canadian tuxedo I’ve ever seen.  If this movie worked really hard, it might eventually rise to amateur hour at the Half-Ass Hotel Jamboree.  Sadly, like all too many movies filmed in Southeast Asia, it is not only extremely derivative, it’s also crushingly dull.  Although the spiraling insanity of the climax, especially Snake’s part in it, makes the movie worth a watch.  I recommend gathering friends, as without their helpful MST3K banter, you might not stay conscious until the last ten minutes, where it gets kind of amazing.

OK, on Friday night, thanks 100% to co-Dork Brad, I got to the AFI Silver to see House of Frankenstein, hosted by local celebrity Count Gore De Vol.  Not being from this area, I sadly don’t have the history with the man and his show that I am sure I would have had growing up here.  In my own hometown, we had Eddie Driscoll and the Great Money Movie.  And I know, around the country there were various local stations with their own crazy character for horror, sci-fi, or crime movies.  The Count was very fun, and there was lots of footage from his old shows (what was with all the Penthouse pets?).  This was his 40th anniversary as the Count, and House of Frankenstein was his first film.  There were games, guests, and ghoulish good times.  And one lucky winner gets to co-host an episode of his web show.  It’s one of the biggest crowds I’ve seen to date at the AFI.  Maybe the biggest.

House of Frankenstein:  I love Boris Karloff more and more as the years go by.  I don’t think he ever really let it get him down, but the fact that he was type cast as a horror movie villain-type is too bad.  He was a heck of an actor, with a lot of subtlety that could have added strength to many other films, drama, comedy, whatever (check him out in Targets!).  Still, within the genre, he flexed a great deal of muscle, playing a range of characters from the pathetic, to the sympathetic, to charming, to the absolutely diabolic.  House of Frankenstein was pretty late in the Universal Monsters run, and it was obviously a gimmick.  Let’s see how many monsters we can clumsily work in.  But, it’s a lot of fun and Karloff is a great villainous protagonist, on a trek across the continent with evil science on the mind.  After totally screwing over Dracula, he manipulates the Wolfman and Frankenstein’s Monster in a fiendish plan to put brains in dogs or something.  And all the way, his hunchbacked manservant and former fellow inmate does his bidding.  But when Hunch gets his heart broken by a fickle Gypsy vixen, all hell will break loose.  It’s not a great movie.  But this and House of Dracula were both fun and they sort of paved the way for Toho’s Destroy All Monsters.

Mothra VS Godzilla (aka Godzilla VS The Thing):  Less the allegory for atomic weapons, Godzilla has become more of an embodiment of uncontrollable nature.  The movie starts with a tremendous storm that wreaks devastation upon the region.  Out of that comes Godzilla, like a continuation of the storm; impersonal, dangerous, but without purposeful malice.  Then there are the tiny twins and their magical connection of a gigantic moth and the brutalized survivors living on a bombed out island.  Will a couple of brave reporters be able to convince them to work their songstress magics in an effort to direct one giant monster against another?  One of the best classic Godzilla films, it features many of the elements that make the series so much fun to watch.  Good human drama, a fast pace, excellent use of music, cool sequences of miniature destruction, and a sense of wonder and awe.  It also deals with director Ishiro Honda’s frequent theme of the Brotherhood of Man, the idea that love and understanding between all the world’s peoples could reshape and heal our future.  For what in many ways is a disaster film, it has an uplifting message, and it’s no surprise that these films resonated so strongly with young and old.

Doctor Who: Death to the Daleks:  When the Tardis suddenly looses all power, The Doctor and Sarah Jane are stuck on a desolate, ugly world.  Lurking about are awkward somethings in dirty robes that blend in with the terrain.  And blue-suited invader types who can’t get their ship to take off.  To top it off, a sophisticated city of light shines like a beacon on the horizon, but promises death to anyone who goes near.  All in all a pretty standard set-up for a classic Who story.  And then, the twist.  Sadly, the title of the story arc kind of gives that away.  But then, another twist!  Multiple factions, various interests, trouble of all kinds.  Oh, Doctor.  The music is weird, with a kind of goofy, humorous tone.  The story does have some interesting ideas, and like a lot of the better ones, uses the standard situational set-up to good effect by playing with your expectations.  Sarah Jane is much better here than she frequently is during this era, not nearly as screamy and whiney.  The guest cast is very good, and their stories play out in different ways than you might expect.  The thing, the Root, I think it’s called, that guards the city is pretty cool, too.  It reminds me of the gun-head from the War of the Worlds ships, but acts kind of like a snake.  Though yes, you can see the wires, I thought the scene where it comes out of the water to kill the slave guy was darned effective.

Sapphire and Steel:  This was an odd one for me.  I saw the first story (the first disk) a few years back, and it didn’t really click with me.  I’m not a Joanna Lumley fan at all, and David McCallum seemed to be phoning in his usual dour terseness.  Little character development, a rather shocking slow pace, and a lot of obscurity.  Why did I watch another disk?  No idea.  I didn’t much care for it either and gave up.  For some reason, a few months back, I decided to try watching it again, and I’m glad of it.  The series as a whole has some issues.  And a LOT is left unexplained and unexplored.  The deeper nature of the elements, their goals and greater purpose, remain vague.  They seem to work for someone/thing.  They seem to be tasked with repairing breaks or imperfections in time.  And they don’t seem to be human.  What is causing the time imperfections?  Is it directed?  Sometimes there seems to be a force at work against them, others it seems to simply be random or natural.  The pace never increases, remaining a snail throughout.  But the ideas and general haunting strangeness make the whole thing kind of grow on you.  There is an essential Britishness about it, in its stubborn refusal to go where you expect, to reveal the truth, and to have easy answers, or to have a relatable, likeable cast.  Due to strange subject matter and time of production, I am sometimes reminded of the more kid-aimed Tomorrow People, though that show was less inscrutable.  I don’t know that I can recommend it to most people, but if you like UK sci-fi, if you like the surreal, if you don’t mind working for it, you might want to check this one out.  And what an ending!  I would love to see someone do a serious reworking of this show’s concept.  Limited cast, extremely limited location.  You could do it on a small budget.  You just need the writing.

Tokyo Drifter:  “A drifter needs no woman.”  From the ultra-stylized opening, you know this isn’t your average film.  Right away I was reminded of lower budget crime films from the States, like Killer’s Kiss or Murder by Contract.  But swingin’ 60s Tokyo has a look and feel all its own.  Contrasting black and white with some crazy vibrant colors cranks up the wild and strange.  And the accompanying jazz is perfect.  This is the Japan James Bond should have arrived at in You Only Live Twice.  Director Seijun Suzuki was apparently quite the pain in studio boss’s ass, making movies they just didn’t get.  But you can’t accuse them of being dull.  I really can’t talk up the madness of the color usage enough.  Sin City used some similar techniques, but it feels totally different here, more theatrical, more surreal.  Not to mention the equally surreal, seemingly always going on, go-go dancing.  And the crazy old-time bar fight?  OK.

Sunday morning, I finished Penn Jillette’s book Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!, which I received as a Christmas gift.  Heh.  Anyway, I’d picked it up to look at the introduction, figuring I’d put it on my ‘to read’ pile for the upcoming months, and ended up blowing through like 60 pages.  So, it’s sat on my end table serving as my early morning coffee book for the last month and it’s been great (sadly, it did get a mouthful of coffee spit on it at one point due to the stupid set-up of the human repertory and digestive system).  Definitely worth seeking out and reading.

And on Saturday morning, I finished My Year of Flops, which is a great book for film buffs who aren’t stuck in the Art House mode.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (1/13-1/19)

    I got some reading done.  And as usual, several movies.  But the Dork highlight was Brad’s Macaroni Western night.

Gangster Squad:  Pretty much an L.A. based Untouchables, this bit of post-War tomfoolery is a fun watch if you’re in the mood for some action packed cops and robbers.  The cast of misfits fighting against a Dick Tracy villain while trying to avoid the cesspit of Burbank is a perfectly enjoyable, if by the numbers bit of fluff.  My one major complaint is the end, not only because it features a totally silly and out of place fist-fight, but because the digital cameras make the action look like TV sports.  Where Michael Mann and David Fincher can make digital look like art, this looks like live footage, which doesn’t work for me at all.  Whatever the case, while it’s no Chinatown, it’s leaps and bounds above more boring L.A. period pieces like Mulholland Falls or The Black Dahlia.

Drive:  I really dig this movie’s crazy slow build, driving early 80s style retro soundtrack, and sudden explosions of intense, graphic, extreme violence.  Driver is like some kind of sociopath, quietly minding his own business, but with a deep river of brutal animal violence just waiting to crest.  Bad luck, bad timing, and bad people make his life all complicated, and he needs to get things simply, fast and hard.  Stompin’ heads, hammerin’ hands, and kissin’ dames.

Spinout:  Elvis loves cars, singing, and skirts.  Those are the ingredients for whole cake full of trouble.  When all the birds want a piece of his hip-swinging, car driving, rocker, he’s got to do his darnedest to keep himself and his band (a lady drummer, no less!) out of the slop.  Holy smokes, his band is bananas, and they keep it classy with midnight picnic feasts (glad the drummer can make the coffee).  That poor drummer just wants some lovin’ but Elvis ain’t biting, so maybe that local cop will give her the business.  But what about that aggressive author?  Or the rich dude’s daughter (the rich dude is played by a clone of Darren McGavin, I think)?  Swinging pads, groovy gals, funky music, and love in the air.  But E knows the score.  There are a log of very sexy go-go dancing honies in this bit of 60s musical fun.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days:  “Why are you hugging me when mom isn’t around to see it?”  This poor kid isn’t aging well.  Still, this series remains charming and funny, focusing on all the horror and awkwardness of being a kid.  I didn’t have the same problems this kid has.  But I had all the embarrassment and dread.  Thankfully my summers really were an oasis freedom.  Still, I’m sure many people are stuck with parents who won’t let them be kids.  His exceptionally awkward best friend is fuel for many painful childhood flashbacks.  Greg and his dad’s hatred of Li’l Cutie is awesome.  It reminded me of reading Family Circus (“It’s not even a joke”).  And his brother’s band rocks that stuffy party hard.

Doctor Who: The Mysterious Planet: “I always like to do the unexpected.  Takes people by surprise.”  This story starts off the Trial of a0 Time Lord arc from the Colin Baker era.  Like The Master, I find myself much less engaged in Gallifrey centered episodes than I was when I was a kid.  And I find the court case set-up off-putting.  Still, the model work on the space station at the beginning is dared cool.  And the subway tunnel ruins are Beneath the Planet of the Apes awesome.  The giant black robot is super-cool, too.  And I’m glad they’re back to the 25 minute episodes.  45 minutes was an interesting experiment, and I think could have worked if it had been better handled.  But they never seemed to get the rhythm quite right.  Speaking of not getting the rhythm right, the them music has been substantially changed for this story, and…well, I’m just not into it.  Apparently, Doctor Who had actually been cancelled (nobody seemed to know exactly why), and this was its return to the air.  So the season long story arc was conceived as an attempt to shake things up and give it some new life.  The relationship between the Doctor and Peri is much more fun to watch, too.  And the guest characters in this story are a blast, especially the two oddly charming thugs.

Charro! “…Taco.”  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this non-musical Elvis Western.  Not at all what I was expecting.  It’s actually pretty grim, and E does a pretty good job as the reformed crook who can’t get away from his old gang leader.  The gang is pretty dastardly, and the ladies are comely, for sure.  It doesn’t cover any new ground, sitting as a pretty standard classic Hollywood Western.  But as such, it’s quite enjoyable.

Birth of a Nation:  Gah.  What an awful thing this is.  That this was a technical and narrative shift in movies, ushering in the feature film makes it of historic significance for film historians and geeks.  There, that’s the good thing I can say about this appalling work of despicable sociopaths.  The obvious and easy label to give it is ‘racist.’  But I don’t think that really captures it.  This isn’t the subtle, misguided, or even good intentioned racism of Lovecraft, Conrad, or other authors of the time.  This is outright, hostile, and ugly.  And the actors in ‘blackface’ crank that ugly hostility up several notches.  Bah.  I need a shower.

    So, Friday night we all descended on Brad & Lisa’s place to watch some Spaghetti Westerns (while eating macaroni).  There were like eight of us, but I don’t think a lot of us were into it.  But hey, that’s what these nights are about, getting people to watch things what they wouldn’t otherwise see.

The Mercenary (aka Revenge of the Gunfighter): “I will demonstrate how a small jealous idiot can be punished.”  Franco Nero is beautiful, and he does his business for money.  While selling his services to Paco and fighting Curley, our gun fighting hero has all the swagger of a grand leading man.  A wink and a smile, a match lit on a woman’s chest, lessons taught to a man covered in pig poo.  Glorious.

    Lisa made some amazing food (as always).  And Sarah & Paul brought more.  Plus, we had some Bullet Rye, which was…Paaahhh! Smooth.

The Great Silence:  “You can arrest or execute anyone you want.”  This grim Western features lots and lots of snow, a whole bunch of ugly people, and Klaus Kinski.  It’s nasty.  And what an ending.  Not the best Spaghetti Western I’ve seen, but it’s solid, and has an interesting vibe.  And again, what an ending.

Django:  Franco Nero is the man, and when he travels to the nastiest, most rundown, muddy city on Earth, he shows everyone what the man does.  He doesn’t take kindly to anyone messing with the local prostitutes or the barkeep, be they Mexican banditos or soldiers.  One of the coolest, ugliest Spaghetti Westerns out there.  It’s no wonder it became an international hit, even if it never made much impact in the States.

    That was as far as I could go.  Brad popped on another one, but I checked out.  Old man blues, but at midnight this princess turns into a scullery made and goes to bed.

The Shaolin Drunken Monk:  Gordon Liu and his amazing hair (it changes length from scene to scene) star in this pretty cool low budget flick about a kid on a revenge quest who grows into a master of Drunken Boxing.  Liu is so crazy precise and rigid in his style that he makes an interesting counter to Jackie Chan’s more famous use of the style.  As usual with these movies, there is an impressive and wacky training sequence.  I agree with Rick Meyers when he says American movies could use these sorts of sequences, where we see how Arnold or someone trains to become the badass they are in the film.  There are some really excellent fight sequences.  Far better than the film probably should have.

Magic City Season 1:  “I will crush you with a legal s#!% hammer.”  I want this show to be better than it is.  It improved over the course of the season, but it still needs work.  Lacking the writing of Mad Men or the intensity of Boardwalk Empire, it is sadly saddled with a bit too much of Stars’ sensationalism.  I like Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Olga Kurylenko a lot, and I want to like Danny Houston more than 90% of his film appearances allow me to do (stop playing brutish villains for a while, man).  And while Miami doesn’t interest me at all, the time period (1959) does.  The shadow of Cuba’s fall hangs over the town, the mob flexes its muscle, and a self-made man tries to remain true to himself, his family, and his ideals in a dirty town and a dirty business.

Immortals:  “Titans…Unleashed.”  Definitely Tarsem’s best film to date, it finally marries a decent script with his usual visual flair.  This is grand, fun myth shaking adventure, like a modern day Harryhausen film.  It’s absolutely the sort of thing I would have loved as a boy.  Heck, it’s the sort of thing I love as a man.  One day, they’ve really got to focus this kind of attention on the other pantheons (obviously, Egyptian would make me happiest).  Man, would I love to see a really good Odyssey.  It is rated R for good reason.  The violence is at times extreme and bloody.  When the gods get to fighting, well, human bodies don’t put up much resistance to divine weapons.  They mostly just explode in bloody bits.

    Watched a few more episodes of The Clone Wars.  Pretty good show, though season 4 isn’t as good as some previous.  It is so sad that these cartoon episodes are so much more creative in story and design than the most recent batch of films.  I can’t help but think whatever Disney does with Star Wars, it’ll almost certainly be better than anything the silver screen has seen from the franchise in a couple decades.

    “On the contrary.  I’m afraid he’s a bit dead.”  I also watched some more Sapphire & Steel.  Really an interesting show once it gets going.  Like so many UK sci-fi shows, the creators had some pretty crazy ideas, even if it doesn’t always live up.  This story, Assignment V: Dr. McDee Must Die sets up a very strange tale.  A bunch of old people, a break in the time stream, broken memories.  This one was written by a different person than the rest of the series, and you can tell.  But it’s devilishly twisting.  Inspired by those Agatha Christi mysteries so popular on UK TV at that time, but with an almost Ray Bradbury type of haunting and surreal science fiction, this one keeps you scratching your head for all six episodes.

    In preparation for the next graphic novel club meeting, I read through the first two trades of The Walking Dead.  It’s a good series, but I have to admit, I’m just not in the headspace to get into it right now.  Too many years of over fishing the zombie waters have left this old fisherman coming up empty.  I’m just not feeling the love anymore.

-Matt