Matt’s Week in Dork! (10/20/13-10/26/13)

    I’ve been trying to get a lot of reading done, and I have.  But I’m not finishing a lot.  Too many things going at once.  Still, when it comes to geeky stuff, this was a pretty good week for this Dork.  And as I've given it more of a listen, I've been really digging that new Devo CD I picked up.  Which is handy, as it plays right into some of the reading I'm doing about AI and robotics.

In the Mouth of Madness:  “God’s not supposed to be a hack horror writer.”  The last great John Carpenter movie, this Lovecraft inspired journey into madness is fantastic.  It’s just the right mix of creepy, weird, and pulpy, with a great Lovecraftian hero in insurance investigator John Trent.  Nobody pulls his strings.  And he’s on the trail of Stephen King type bestselling horror writer Sutter Cane.  Cane’s writing seems to be having an effect on his readers, and that effect is becoming more pronounced and more violent.  Can Trent find him, find his last manuscript, and get back to civilization?  Or is the Door about to open, letting the Old Ones spill back into our world?

Niagara:  Joseph Cotton and Marilyn Monroe play a horribly dysfunctional couple who seem to be falling apart in their hotel room by the famous titular falls.  When a happy young couple shows up, their worlds collide.  I can see why this movie isn’t necessarily talked about a lot, but it’s pretty good.  It’s got a kind of second rate (and I don’t mean that in a bad way) Hitchcock vibe to it.  Not up to snuff with Hitch’s best, but in that spirit.

The Wall (Die Wand):  Oh, my gosh.  This is a danged sad, danged depressing, and danged fine film.  There are elements of those ‘man alone’ films like Jeremiah Johnson or Omega Man.  But it goes so, so much further.  A grim meditation on profound loneliness, it’s also a sort of love letter to the natural setting of rural Europe.  A woman wakes up to find herself the only living human, locked within a mysterious invisible bubble.  Her only companion is a skittish dog.  It’s a heck of a fascinating movie, and worth seeking out.  Beautifully shot, well acted, and fascinating to see.  And brutally, emotionally devastating.

Gun Crazy:  Two young people go on a bullet flinging crime spree.  A guy with a love of guns and a dame with a taste for money are a match made in Noir heaven.  I really like the way this film is shot.  The sequences where the camera sits in the back seat and just lets them talk as they head into or flee a crime scene are quite good.

    Read volume 1 of the New 52 series Shazam!  I definitely did not find myself as into it as co-Dork Brad.  I think something in the air or water has simply soured me to DC and Marvel.  Could it be the high frequency of terrible stuff they seem to put out?  I’m not sure.  But I’m feeling less forgiving toward them.  If I’d read it a year ago, I’d probably have enjoyed it.  Right now, however, they’d have to be writing some mighty fine stuff for me to give two shakes, and this isn’t it.  I also read (or skimmed, anyway) volume 2 of Aquaman, which saw a drastic drop in quality from The Trench.  It became scattered, confusing, and ultimately, boring.  Sad, as volume 1 was one of the big surprises from the New 52.

Neither the Sea Nor the Sand:  There’s some lovely footage of the UK coast.  Otherwise, it’s a bunch of unlikable, unrelatable characters in weird relationships.  It feels like a student film that got a big budget for reasons I don’t understand.  While well made, it’s quite grating.

    On Thursday night, Robert hosted Triple Horror Movie Night, an annual celebration of October.  Each year, he, Brad and I choose a movie each; one fabulous (Robert), one classic (me), and one scary (Brad).  This year, we changed it up a bit, and I brought the scary (or sleazy) movie, while Brad brought the classic.  A few others joined us, and while I think everyone enjoyed the social aspect, I don’t know if everyone was prepared for just what it is that we were going to be watching.

Brad’s Pick

Macabre:  The plot for this film is just too danged complicated, with too many characters, too many previously dead people, and too many cooks in the kitchen.  It’s also not very scary, even looking at it from the 50s horror movie perspective.  There are flashbacks where you’re not quite sure it’s a flashback, cuts to other scenes where it seems like it might be a flashback…but isn’t.  It’s weird.  Not great.  But worth a watch if you like William Castle movies.

Robert’s Pick

Vampire Boys 2:  If you thought Vampire Boys was poorly made and featured lots of bad acting, you haven’t seen anything yet.  This crappy sequel looks like it was 'filmed' in someone’s basement.  And that’s probably the best thing about it.  Everyone is shot in close-up and nobody has the face for it.  When anyone tries to act, it’s hammy.  And the story is dumb, dumb, dumb.

Matt’s Pick

Cat People:  I absolutely love this movie.  The longer I live with it, the more I enjoy it.  I love the cast and all the characters they play.  I love the kinky love story and the even kinkier obsession story.  New Orleans has never looked better or more like somewhere I’d actually think about visiting.  The slow build takes it to some powerfully strange places.  And the ending is so crazy.

    Then Friday night was the latest meeting of the graphic novel club.  We read the New 52 Aquaman (first two volumes) this month.  The reactions were mixed.  I liked the first volume, but not the second.  Lisa didn’t like the 4th wall break in the first volume (blogger talking about how much Aquaman sucks).  Many found the second volume needlessly complicated and scattered.  But many also came away with a new appreciation of the character.

    After an extremely stressful week (and last couple months), I decided to do a sort of Horror movie day.  I sat on my couch, ate Boo Barry cereal (thanks to Robert), had some snacks, grabbed a Firehouse sub while I was out for a walk in the middle of the day, and enjoyed a day of watching various horror films.  A nice way to spend a Saturday.

Taste the Blood of Dracula:  Three bored rich guys looking for kicks get way more than they bargained for in this Hammer Dracula film.  Overall, it’s not bad, though not especially interesting.  I like that the tale has an unusual plot progression, though the atmosphere is still mainline Hammer.  Fans of the studio’s Gothic thrillers should certainly watch it, but it’s not one of those ‘rush right out and get it’ titles.

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang:  Victorian London is the scene of some sinister goings-on involving a shadowy Chinese cult and a horrible little thing.  It’s a cool story, rooted in Sherlock Holmes tales and that sort of thing, but with plenty of the usual Doctor Who madness.  You would not be wrong to say that there is some outright racism on display.  In part this is reflective of the time the story is set within, but of course, Li H’sen Chang being portrayed by a guy in ‘yellow face’ makes things pretty awkward.  Still, this is the kind of ‘historic’ story that worked best on Doctor Who.  I usually prefer the more out-there science fictiony tales, but the horror themed histories work fairly well.

The Fly:  A reclusive scientist falls for a plucky reporter, then has dirty, unsafe sex with his own genes, getting pumped through of inhuman DNA.  Jeff Goldblum is do danged awkward, and things get really nasty pretty quick.  Watching it, I was struck by how danged weird it was, and how a lot of pretty out-there stuff was made for mainstream audiences in the 80s that would likely not fly today.

Godzilla VS Destroyah:  “What radioactivity!”  Every time I watch one of these later films in the series, I can’t help but pine for the older ones.  There’s some really cool stuff, but the production feels shoddy, the ‘science’ is so extremely stupid, and the human stories are totally uninteresting.  I feel like a lot of the creature sequences would never have flown in the original run.  I like the introduction of a hoard of little creatures, more human sized problems in this one.  Of course, by the end, it’s a giant monster that has to go up against Godzilla.  But it makes me want to see a better Godzilla film that features little things for people to deal with, too.  There have been hints of that before, with radiated parasites left behind my the big guy, but it hasn’t been very well explored.  The Godfather-like assassination of Godzilla is weird, too.

Hellraiser III:  I stalled on my attempted re-watch of the Hellraiser series a while back, in part because I knew this was the next on the list, and I remember really disliking it.  Well, things haven’t changed.  The script for this one, as well as the acting and production design all feel very made for Canadian TV.  The creepy, mysterious, and weird are replaced with awkward cheese.  Totally lacking in any kind of passion or imagination, everything feels so bland and by the numbers that at no point do I care what happens to anyone.  Lifeless.  That’s the word for this movie.  And as a side note, why the hell did Doc get turned into a Cenobite?  There was no indication that this was a path he was on.  It doesn’t just happen to random victims of Pinhead.  It happens to those who seek it out.  F’ing stupid.

Rodan:  Rodan has what I’m looking for in a Kaiju film.  It takes its time, develops a bunch of human characters and follows them through their investigation of strange events.  Then, quite a way into the film, it brings out the big guns and starts the mass destruction.  But the ‘ground level’ story is still a major part.  Rodan is a giant bird, and some kind of master of the wind.  So this movie features lots and lots of stuff getting blown to pieces, which is strange, but kind of cool.  It’s also steeped in the post-Hiroshima fears of fallout and poisoned earth.  Giant mutant grubs are the first thing that tips people off to the problem, and they’re disgusting and creepy.

     I read the first issue of The Star Wars, which is right up my ally.  It's an attempt to adapt George Lucas's original Star Wars script into comic form.  You can see a lot of similarities, but there are also some pretty big differences.  I don't know if it would have worked as well, and maybe some of those changes were needed.  But I like some of the characters more, especially Luke, who isn't a child.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (9/23/12-9/29/12)

    On Sunday, Brad, Ben, and I took a trip to a favorite Dork spot (seen in that stupid sequence…well, one of those stupid sequences…of Transformers 2) the Udvar Hazy.  Seeing the Discovery was nice, a shuttle that’s actually been to space and back.  A good start to a Week in Dork.

    And on Friday night, Lisa hosted anther meeting of the Justice League of Extraordinary Book Club.  This time ‘round our book was Get Jiro, and the reception was fairly tepid.  Not that it’s bad, but it’s certainly the weakest and least meaty book we’ve consumed.  Good food, good folk, and good conversation.  Another lovely evening.  The consensus seems to be that the book had potential, but was greatly lacking in depth.  The food-nerd stuff was great, but far, far too brief.  If the setting and many of the players were more fully realized, and more of the food culture was explored, this could be a very fun read.  As it is…Meh.

Dredd:  I can’t tell you how glad I was that this film didn’t disappoint.  It’s R-rated violence, over the top action, and some danged brutal human behavior.  No Rob Schnider to suck things up.  This is the Judge Dredd film I’d been waiting for.  No, the plot isn’t complex.  No, there’s no discussion of the human condition.  Yes, Dredd teaches Anderson how to kill, and yes, she does it pretty well.  Heads explode, people get skinned, lots and lots of people get blown all to crap.  And Dredd dispenses a whole pile of justice on some murdering, drug dealing scum.

Lee Miller: Through the Mirror:  A model and photographer, a contemporary of Picasso and Man Ray, Miller stands as a complicated figure.  Women like this fascinate me, as they defied expectations and helped to break molds in an era where it seemed that anyone could be anything with enough will, luck, and skill.  Troubled youth, interesting associations, haunting beauty.  There’s an alien quality, a distance to the woman herself.  And then there is her work.  Though I would never actually want to live in any time previous to now (and frankly, now is a bit too early), there is a part of me that would really like to spend a couple years traveling through the social circles of the 20s and 30s, Paris, Cairo, New York, the artists, writers, explorers, and scientists.  There is a movie in this woman’s life, especially her days with the troops in WWII.  It’s also interesting to see her son, trying to understand his mother and an old friend remembering the dear departed.

The Devil Hunter:  Rule of thumb: if you have to ask yourself, “is this racist?” the answer is almost certainly, “yes.”  Appallingly dreadful movie.  Digitized nudity?  What, are we in Japan?

Voodoo Black Exorcist:  Is everyone in this movie in blackface?  In spite of a kind of awesome opening credit sequence, not unlike that of Soylent Green, this is (shocking, I know) a super crappy movie out the worst movie industry on Earth (not true, it’s not the Philippines), Italy.  Racist, exploitative, poorly filmed.  Yup.  It’s Italian.  This movie has the editing equivalent of Touretts.  I’ll admit, I kind of like the insane, over the top music that plays during the red saturated flashbacks to happier, pre-Voodoo murder days.  I’d like to use that music for something better.  The voiceover work is amazing.

The Yesterday Machine:  Some swingin’ 60s jazz accompanies the groovy doings of a bunch of heppcats.  A story out of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, though nowhere near as well crafted.  This could have made a great Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.  While fairly entertaining in its own right, I think Mike or Joel and the Bots could have had a field day.  And then, Nazis!!!

Robot & Frank:  A quiet, near-future tale about a daft old man getting saddled with an infinitely patient medical robot, this movie is fairly light hearted and mellow.  Frank reminds me of myself, if I had a career that would afford me to live as he does, with all his eccentricities and cantankerousness.  The robot is a must.  Seriously, when is this gonna happen, because I’m sick of living in a robot-free house.  Aging, the remnants of our past, the nature of life.  And robots.

Dracula’s Fiancée:  Possibly the first Jean Rollin film I’ve seen that looks like it was edited by someone who knew what they were doing.  It’s also one of his most dialog heavy.  But again, I love that in 2002, he’s still making the kind of films he made in the 70s, polished though this is.  Though his subject is usually the undead of some kind, the movies are more surreal fantasy than horror.  Of the films I’ve seen to date, this is probably Rollin’s best.  I don’t want to say most coherent, because that would be a big lie.  And Brigitte Lahaie (still looking pretty good) rides in on a horse.  How awesome is that?

Hysteria:  “Steady as she goes Mrs. Parsons!  Steady as she goes.”  I don’t think it’s legal to make a movie in the UK about stuffy, uptight old world England without casting Jonathan Price.  The horrors of Victorian medicine and psychology give way to science and the realization that woman can experience sexual pleasure.  This movie is so amazingly British, looking at the whole Upstairs, Downstairs world with a wink and a nudge.  It’s all very charming.

    And of course, some more Charlie’s Angels, more Magnum, and more Battlestar Galactica.  All good fun in their own way.  We’re getting close to the point where Battlestar starts getting really brutal and where the first of the more long term cast starts to buy it.

    I’ve been enjoying a bunch of Simpsons and Futurama comics lately, so I thought, ‘why not?’ and grabbed the one-shot (I assume) Ralph Wiggum issue.  Ugh.  Ralph is often the surreal, stupid cherry on top of a good joke, but a whole comic devoted to him kind of feels like kicking an especially stupid dog.  Most of it isn’t funny, and most of it doesn’t feel true to the show at all; like the writers just didn’t get Ralph.  The final story, Ralph the Role Model is the best, and the only one that really captures the character.  Overall, not very good.

    The Li’l Homer one-shot was much better.  This one feels like it was written by fans of the show, who get the show.  Tales of Homer when he was a young boy, dealing with his awful dad and life in general.  Nothing amazing, but it’s fun.  I like Bongo Comics’ attempted retro stuff.  Adding the extra stuff, like the Li’l Homer cardboard puppet.  There’s a gimmicky 60s/70s vibe to it.

    At my local comic shop, I found Gangsta Rap Posse, as super-small press, ultra-offensive comic about an NWA-type rap group that doesn’t take to getting dissed by other rappers.  They swear a lot, drink a lot, and shoot a lot.  And they do like their ho’s.

    Issue 2 of Gangsta Rap Posse is more of the same, with more of the much abused agent, Saul, who seems to be kind of a badass with a van.  If you didn’t get your copy of “GRP Gangbangs Mrs. Mayor,” you need to read this.  It’s offensive, disgusting, and adults only.  As Brad said, it’s kind of the comic version of Body Count’s song ‘KKK Bitch.’

    I finally got back to Winter Soldier with issue 9.  I’m thinking more and more I should wait until this comes out in trade to read it.  Reading only a handful of pages at a time is frustrating to say the least.  It’s not amazing, but it’s a good read.  Just too many ads, to few pages.

    “Ragemoor’s will be done!”  The final issue of Ragemoor is the spiraling cacophony of mayhem and madness you probably expect from this twisted series.  Lovecraft filtered through Hammer Horror and drawn by the…distinct?…Richard Corben.  I may have to get this in trade when it comes out.  I still don’t quite know how I’ve become something of a Corben fan in the last couple years.

    I finally read the Clive Barker novella Cabal, which I’ve been meaning to read since first seeing Nightbreed all those many years ago.  I know Barker wrote and directed the film, but I was still surprised how slavishly the film followed the story, up until the final act (and even then, it was pretty close).  It was OK.  Because of how close the movie was to the story, there wasn’t a heck of a lot more to learn, not much more depth to backgrounds or history.  It is the set-up for something pretty grand, that I’m fairly certain Barker never revisited.  My primary complaint is his description of sex, which is just awkward especially when it comes to the vocabulary used.  It’s not the acts being depicted, but how they’re done and how often they don’t really fit with the story.  Distractions.

    Issue 0 of Justice League dealt with surprising topics.  The origin of Shazam (I guess they’re not calling him Captain Marvel now), a bit of Pandora, and…a Question.  It also ties into the 0 issue of The Phantom Stranger.  They’ve changed Billy Batson’s origin, I think.  Granted, my Captain Marvel/Shazam knowledge is limited almost exclusively to the 40s serial.

    Green Lantern Corps’ issue 0 reminds me why Guy Gardner is pretty much the lamest Lantern.  He’s just a jerk.  One of those mad at the world punks I always hate in books and movies.  Still the whole ‘almost a cop’ thing makes sense for someone gifted with a ring.

    Talon didn’t interest me from the start, but issue 0 hints at what could, in the right hands, be an interesting story.  But I’m not holding my breath.  What kind of stories will it feature?  A superhero Fugitive?  I do like the Court of Owls as villains, and this helps keep them in the picture.  Time will tell.  But I won’t be reading it anytime soon, to find out.

    Nightwing issue 0 looks into Dick Grayson’s evolution into Robyn.  But who cares.  No, it’s not bad or anything.  But yawn.

    Issue 0 of Catwoman is certainly less repugnant than issue 1, which just left me feeling kind of dirty.  I still don’t care much for it.  She seems a bit daft and weak, which is not at all how I imagine Batman’s ultimate femme fatale.  Strength, mystery, subtlety, and sexiness are Catwoman’s methods, but this version bashes a few heads, gets tossed around, and looks like she’s trying out for a manga, with her HUGE eyes that make her look a bit…Dim?  High?  Crazy?

    Wow.  I’ve got no frickn’ clue what the heck is going on in the whole Green Lantern side of the DC Universe.  I read a bit of the early Geoff Johns rebirth of Hal Jordan stuff, and it seemed pretty good.  But I didn’t keep up with it and now I’m totally lost.  Blackest Night?  Sinestro Corpsmen?  Zamarons?  I got no idea.  It’s a rainbow of insanity.

    Unlike the first several issues of her regular series, Diana (Wonder Woman to be) seems like she has some personality in this look back to her youth.  I guess the story is interesting enough.  But it would have been better if the regular comic were like this at all.  Reading this issue, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how 90s and pseudo-Goth the regular series is, which couldn’t be much further from what I’d want a Wonder Woman comic to be.  She’s a goddess, for crying out loud.  Why is her comic about brooding and moping?

    Taking place on Krypton, Supergirl issue 0 is the story of Superman’s uncle, a scientist like Superman’s dad, attempting to save his city with a power field and his daughter with a rocket.  I find the various portrayals of Krypton to be fascinating, be it in the movies, the cartoons, or the comics.  It makes you wonder, why didn’t the Lanterns do something about it?  Whatever the case, I can’t say the story is especially interesting.  It echoes Superman’s origin a bit too much.

    I’m still surprised that Batwoman of all characters has turned out to be one of the more interesting I’ve checked out from DC’s New 52.  Issue 0 is pretty good, going into Kate Kane’s ugly, ugly past and pretty grim personal life.  And it deals with her training, and her complicated relationship with her dad.  Batwoman really seems to be on the extremely dark side of the scale, perhaps even more so than Batman.  It’s interesting that the art and look of the comic is more fanciful than most, but the content feels more ‘real world.’  Christopher Nolan’s version of Batman’s Rogues Gallery seem more in line with her than with Bats himself.  Like when I read the first trade of this series, I’m just curious where they’re planning to take things, and how interwoven it will be with the rest.  I feel like it should be, especially with some of the weirder, fringe/horror elements, like Swamp Thing.

-Matt

Dork Art: Des Taylor's Retro Heroes

Artist Des Taylor's Retro Art re-posted over at Geek Tyrant.  Has a Loony Toones/Warner Brothers look that I really appreciate.  The Rocketeer and the Mary Marvel are my absolute favorites.

--Brad