Matt’s Week in Dork! (4/20/14-4/26/14)

    Oh, the perils of a social life.  Didn’t get a lot of Dork business done this week.  I was out on the town, having a blast.

The Asphalt Jungle:  The dingy underbelly of urban life is exposed in this nasty bit of work.  Sterling Hayden is but one of the film’s monsters, bent on filling his belly with hate and greed.  It features a lot of the usual Noir dialog, plot twists, and ugly characters.  And it features a pretty good heist.  The characters are a lot of fun, and there are a surprising number of them.  Even a young Marilyn Monroe shows up as a sympathetic floozy.  John Huston knew how to make a mean movie, tinged with grit and sadness.

Smiles of a Summer Night:  I guess I had this realization last year some time.  But yup.  I’m an Ingmar Bergman fan.  I love how fun this film is, how bawdy and funny it is.  And I love how sexy it is.  Gunnar Bjornstrand is so charming, the ladies are so lovely, and the shenanigans so much fun.  Bergman is not the cold, symbolic, unapproachable filmmaker he is often made out to be.  While some of his films are dense with symbol and some are certainly challenging, I think he is very much the populist; crafting excellent films for everyone to enjoy.  Smiles of a Summer Night is not difficult to understand.  It’s about our passions, our lusts, and our loves.  It’s about being alive.

Sorcerer:  Bring a change of clothes, a cool drink, and some freshly soothed nerves.  This movie will put you through the wringer.  A brutally slow burn, this film builds and builds and builds, until what is, in a sense, the main action of the film begins, probably an hour in.  It’s wonderfully shot, and absolutely revels in the awful, hot, poverty stricken, disgustingly wet world of South America.  And when the action does happen, it’s gripping and nasty.  Sorcerer is an excellent, thrilling, adventurous piece of mean spirited 70s cinema.  Desperate and awful people, hiding out on the fringe of civilization, taking on a job only a sucker would do.  Man, it’s good.

Burnt Offerings:  The 70s produced a lot of cool films, but it also produced a very particular type of horror film that seems unique to its time.  Burt Offerings is a perfect example of what I’m talking about (see also: The Sentinel, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, and Don’t Look Now) .  The characters are all totally insane, and not at all relatable.  The plot doesn’t make much sense.  The atmosphere is monstrously thick.  But sadly, so is the writing.  Frequently, very little happens, but there’s almost always a flippin’ crazy ending that doesn’t make much sense.  I enjoyed watching this film.  The actors are all good (even Karen Black isn’t bad), and it’s creepy and weird.  But it’s also, like so many others of its time, ultimately disappointing.  The big reveal at the end was a huge let down.  If Oliver Reed had opened that door and found some kind of great spider demon or something, I’d have lost my s%#& and this might be one of the coolest films ever.  Alas, what was behind the door was kind of boring.  If you’re looking to watch more movies of that particular 70s vibe, this was better than some, like The Other or the afore mentioned Don’t Look Now (I’ll never get why people like that one).

    On Thursday night, I read Godzilla: Gangsters & Goliaths.  It was OK.  Felt like a comic version of a lesser film in the classic (Showa) era.  Readable, with a few good bits, but nothing special.

The Apartment:  You can feel the yoke of the Hayes Codes slipping in this 1960 comedy about a wide-eyed pencil pusher striving for the American Dream.  As bosses keep using his apartment for their extramarital affairs, he starts to fall for the dame in the elevator.  Things get really out of hand when the big boss calls him in and demands the use of his place (but offers a sweet promotion).  Jack Lemmon balances sweet charm with wannabe corporate shark quite well.  Shirley MacLaine is kind of adorable as the broken girl with dashed hopes.  And Fred MacMurray is an absolute monster as the boorish, heartless, blowhard boss.  Lots of great character performances, a great style, and a clever script all make for a fine film.  I love Lemmon’s apartment, too, which seems like a realistic, lived in place, without seeming either too fancy/swinging or too rundown/slumy.

    After The Apartment, in keeping with the 60s theme, Mad Men hit the screen.  It’s been a long time since I watched season 1, but it didn’t take long for me to slide back in to the smooth, casually evil world of smoking, drinking, and rampant misogyny.  Awesome.

    Saturday, I headed in to DC to meet with a friend who was visiting from Europe.  It was an amazing day, gorgeously sunny without being too hot, and darn it, but I do love DC.  It’s so pretty, and so walker friendly.  Love it.  The only problem we had was with the crowded streets of Georgetown, but it wasn’t unexpected, and once you leave the main drag, it’s not bad at all.  Very pretty community.  I really love living in this area.  I don’t take advantage of living next to DC nearly as much as I should, but then, that makes these trips all the more special.

    While in the city, we hit up the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.   I still don’t think it’s as good as the Udvar Hazy location, and sometimes the displays can seem a bit dull (maybe rudimentary is a better word?).  But this time around there were a few especially good exhibits.  The Spirit & Opportunity exhibit was breathtaking.  Gorgeous images of Mars taken by our robot explorer brothers.  Any one of those would make amazing art to hang on a wall.  Really wonderful.  And yeah, if I hadn’t been on top of it, I’d probably have shed a tear.  Quite impressive.

    Turns out, a lot of stuff is closed in DC on Saturday, which I was a bit surprised by.  So, it took a bit to find a place to eat.  But finally, we found Wicked Waffles, one of those obscure theme restaurants you find in bigger cities.  They make waffles, and they put things on ’em, like open faced sandwiches.   OK.  Why not.  It was pretty good (not amazing), and unusually inexpensive for food in the city.

    So, on the Dorkside, there wasn’t all that much to this week.  But on the personal side, it’s one of the best I’ve had in a long time.  Spring is finally in the air and I feel great.

-Matt

Brad's Week in Dork! (11/3/13-11/9/13)

Aren't women just the worst?  I spent most of this week wrapped in the shadowy pleasures of Film Noir and what I pulled away from these dark tales of woe is that a woman will most certainly be my undoing.  That's right, I'm watching you Wife!  Is that a revolver behind your back!?!?  Time to hide under the blankets.  Seriously though, I love watching saps get undone by dames.  Why is that?  I have no idea.  Some form of dominance I'm craving?  Gulp.  Don't like to psychoanalyze myself too much.  Whatever the case, Rita Hayworth can ruin my life anytime.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe continued this week as well.  Thor - The Dark World didn't take over my heart (RDJ still claims that real estate), but as we get deeper & deeper into the comic book mythos I find myself positively giddy for super heroes.  Since we all know what's coming down the pipe, Thor's mid credit tag was no real surprise, but it left me bewildered at the reality of next year's big summer movie.  Also, October might be over, but I'm plugging away at my Reverse-John-Carpenter-A-Thon with his greatest effort, The Thing.  I've seen it a million billion times, but I'm still wildly in awe of its power.  So yeah, maybe not the most packed Week in Dork, but I had a blast.  Need to get some reading done though.  Darwyn Cook's next Parker adaptation is almost here and I'm a few novels behind.

The Big Combo:  "Shoot yourself in the head, you'll make everything a lot simpler."  When Cornel Wilde's investigation into Richard Conte's numbers racket goes cold, he sets his sights on Conte's terrified girlfriend for some sleazy backstory evidence.  Wilde is a bit of a bore as the lead, but Conte's diabolical gangster is deliciously hateful and certainly makes this a must-see noir.  It doesn't hurt that Lee Van Cleef & Earl Holliman chew the scenery from the sidelines as a pair of hitman lovers quick to machine gun dames as they are to choke down salami sandwiches.  The climax apparently apes Casablanca, but it manages to strike a nerve all on its own.  Bullets, bastards, and fog.  Just what you've been craving.

Gilda:  "Women are funny little creatures."  I loved this movie.  Sure, it's a classic - you have to love it. It's one of those films that has lived in the pop culture consciousness for decades, but while the iconography of Rita Hayworth's hair flip appears over and over in critic's top ten lists, the details of the story are left unknown to the mass audience.  Gilda is a brutal, angry film that gleefully depicts the rage of a romance gone sour.  Glenn Ford finds a new life in George Macready's South American casino, but whatever happiness he has, is shattered when Macready's new bride reigns down some serious sexual terror.  I've loved a lot of Femme Fatales in my time (Gloria Graham, Barbara Stanwyck), but none are hotter or as mean-spirited as Rita Hayworth's dance hall moll.  I don't think I will ever really think of Gilda as a noir (the emotionally out-of-place climax stricken it from the genre), but the film has all the hallmark rat-a-tat dialog you come to expect, and it's delivered exceptionally between the battling sexes.

The Asphalt Jungle:  A solid heist flick directed by master filmmaker John Huston.  But if you compare this to The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or even The Man Who Would Be King than The Asphalt Jungle certainly feels like a lesser entry.  Sterling Hayden is a street level hood looking to make some extra scratch by falling in with a group of thugs committing crimes above their intellect.  It's your typical collection of baddies populated by character gems like Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffe, James Whitmore, Anthony Caruso, and even Special Guest Star Marilyn Monroe.  The scheme would have gone swimmingly if not for the typical double crosses and downright bad luck.  Good, not great.

Thor - The Dark World:  It seems like I'm one of the few folks out there in Internetland that really loved the hell out of the first Thor film - in fact, pre Avengers, I'd say Thor is my favorite of the Marvel Movies.  I love how small it is.  Chris Hemsworth's Asgardian navigating the absurdity of Middle America and falling in love with Natalie Portman's dogooder scientist.  I really appreciate the low stakes of the story.  The world does not necessarily hang in the balance like it does it most tentpole pictures.   But Marvel listens to its audience.  You want more Asgard, you get more Asgard.  Not enough Loki, here's a whole lotta Loki.  The Thor sequel is a lot of fun, but it's also fairly ordinary is this comic book landscape.  The villain is certainly the weakest aspect of the story - The Dark Elves want to bring about absolute darkness using something called The Aether & what ties does it have with The Infinity Gems????  None of that really matters, it's a rather weak McGuffin that puts the God of Thunder back on Earth and in the arms of Portman.  The Dark World offers more of the Nine Realms and hints at the goofier science-fiction that will hopefully dazzle us in next year's Guardians of the Galaxy.  This is a fun sci-fi fantasy adventure in the spirit of Krull.  Is it a Marvel Masterwork? No, but the beauty of their cinematic universe is that not every film has to be The Avengers.  Bring on the talking trees and rocket raccoons.

The Thing:  "It's weird and pissed off, whatever it is."  I watch this film at least once a year, and will mostly likely do so until the day I die.  It is absolutely my favorite monster movie, and still ranks as my third favorite film of all time.  A shapeshifting E.T. is awoken from a centuries long slumber by a group of half-baked & totally cracked pirate scientists morally led by Kurt Russell's helicopter badass.  Half the film's fun certainly comes from Rob Bottin's still stunning makeup effects, but this film deserves its place among the All Time Greats because of the terrifying paranoia carefully cooked by filmmaker John Carpenter.  I can forgive a thousand Ghosts of Mars thanks to to power evoked by this not-so-simple monster mash.

The Visitor:  "Aren't you a cripple molester?"  Yep.  This is a weird flick.  And in that weird way only the Italians can produce.  I dare you to watch the Alamo Drafthouse trailer and tell me differently.  The film has something to do with an evil alien child, her mother, an evil cult led by Mel Ferar, and a good cult led by Franco Nero.  John Huston's Jerzy is the heroic babysitter of the piece while Lance Henriksen is the demonic stepfather commanding a murder of pigeons.  Glenn Ford stops by for a couple of scenes as a doomed detective, and Sam Peckinpah lends his face, but not his voice as the abortionist ex-husband.  The plot is secondary, but that's what you want when the visuals are so beautifully absurd.  What's it all about?  Who cares?  The style is the substance.  And I need this on blu ray now.

The Misfits:  "If it wasn't for all the nervous people in the world, we'd still all be eating each other."  The final film for both Clark Gable & Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller's The Misfits as realized by John Huston is Film Noir smashed into the dying Western that's preparing for the modern morality of the 1960s.  Monroe is a seemingly naive divorcee but reveals that Femme Fatale heart as she storms through the lives of Gable, Eli Wallach, and Montgomery Clift.  This trilogy of man is a real sorry lot, a group of studs desperately trying to stay outta wages and hold on to their irrelevant cowboy lifestyle.  At times, Monroe's performance borders on the shrill (please stop screaming), but more often than not she proves an actual talent and not just that pretty face from The Seven Year Itch.  I imagine, if given the opportunity, Monroe could have matured into a bevy of meaty roles.  Again, similar to Gilda, The Misfits feels like a story that wanted to take you down a much darker path than its actual conclusion allows.  The venom being fired from the characters is just too dang heated to result in a "happy" ending.

The Central Park Five:  I don't even know where to begin.  This doc will set your blood to boil.  In 1989 five black youths were arrested, bullied into five separate & wildly different confessions, and convicted of the rape of a young New York jogger.  It took 13 years for the truth to finally be revealed, but by that time lives had already been ruined.  Who do you blame?  The cops?  Certainly.  The Media?  Yeah, them too.  Mayor Ed Koch?  Yep, F that guy.  To hear Koch openly dismiss the concept of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" on the air is mind numbingly enraging.  I'd love to think that something like this couldn't happen today, but you know that's a falsity.  The Central Park Five is a great reminder of the casual evil committed by us all every time we nod our heads to the nightly news.

--Brad