Matt’s Week in Dork! (6/2/13-6/8/13)

    More Twin Peaks helped me start the week off well.  And it carried me through, even when I was feeling down.  Dang, but I love that show.  Sad it didn’t get another season.  It goes by too fast.  And I watched a few more episodes of Space: Above & Beyond.  There is certainly potential for good in the show, as it takes on the lives of soldiers at war, drawing on WWII, Vietnam, and others for story and character cues.

After Earth:  Well, it didn’t suck.  Was it great?  No.  But it didn’t suck.  And that was a pretty big shock, truth be told.  The tech and design work were excellent and the story was fine, I guess.  Will Smith was OK.  His kid is dreadful.  There are wonky bits, to be sure.  But it was an all right sci-fi tale, probably best for kids.  Yes, there’s some violence and scary stuff, but nothing that would have been kept out of kids movies before Tipper Gore and her morality police turned everyone into hyper-sensitive wimps in the late 80s.  One thing that kind of drove me nuts was the writing around the tech.  While I loved the look and design of it, and the organic ship interiors were great, I was bothered by the environment suits.  Considering that suits with all weather capability are in the works now (one suit would work in the blazing heat of the desert or the frozen wastes of the Arctic), and that manufacturing air, water, and energy through that same suit shouldn’t be too difficult, the fact that his couldn’t do any of those things was bothersome.  But what really bugged me about it was the super advanced element that was missing…gloves.  If I travel to an alien planet, what’s the first thing I’m gonna do?  Put on some danged gloves.  When I do my gardening?  Gloves!  Still, the movie didn’t suck.

Twin Peaks Season 1:  I remember catching this during Summer re-runs and falling completely in love with the strange and magical world of demon serial killers, Zen FBI agents, mysterious woods, and haunting music.  That has never gone away.  It was also my introduction to David Lynch.  I think I’d seen Dune at some point, but it hadn’t left an impression.  This was my real doorway into his madness.  Seeing the show again for the first time in probably 10 years, it still grabs me and draws me in.  Is it for everyone?  No.  But it sure is for me.  And I’m still comfortable calling it my favorite TV show of all time (sorry, Star Trek…I do love you, though).  Agent Cooper is still my hero.

The Earth Dies Screaming:  “Oh, get on.”  Another sci-fi horror film from the UK.  It looks nice, has some interesting character tensions, and a solid premise.  The social commentary is typically heavy-handed.  Still, a worthy, if not especially great bit of creepy fun.  Though all the characters do seem a little too skilled at not running and not putting up any resistance to menace.  It is rather incorrectly titled.  The Earth actually dies rather quietly.  But I guess The Earth Dies All Mellow and Quiet-like doesn’t have the same ring.

Warm Bodies:  “Bitches, man.”  The last act is a bit wonky, but otherwise, this is a very cute and funny retelling of Romeo & Juliet, set against a zombie apocalypse.  Our hero, R, is going through something of an identity crisis.  He’s dead, and he doesn’t feel fulfilled.  When he meets a young women (and eats her boyfriend’s brains), he gets a yen for the love.  Chalk this one up in the My Boyfriend’s Back, Fido, Shawn of the Dead subgenre of zombie comedies.  It mostly works, and considering the tidal wave of zombie films that don’t, it’s a welcome change of pace.

The Vampire Lovers:  “Shall I make Gustav big and gray for you?”  Oh, that Hammer magic.  The sets.  The music.  The women.  Blah, blah; Something about a story.  Vampires, villagers, night visitors.  But who cares?  It’s about the Gothic atmosphere and the gorgeous women.  They’re nearly exploding out of their bosom baring dresses as they slink around old stately manors and darkened forests.  And it’s amazing.  Add in a great cast of staple UK character actors and you’ve got another classic.  My favorite Hammer film is probably still She, but The Vampire Lovers is up there (Twins of Evil and Vampire Circus are also must see greats from the masters of their craft).

Prince of the City:  “Go ahead and try me.  Not for a lousy $400.  At least get me for assault.”  This feels very much like an attempt to do the cop version of The Godfather.  It’s long, beautifully shot, and well acted.  However, it lacks compelling characters.  The performances are good, but I never found myself emotionally invested in the people or what they were doing.  Perhaps this was ground breaking at the time.  I don’t think there were a lot of movies about corrupt cops before this.  But having seen NYPD Blue, The Shield, Training Day, and a dozen more, little in this movie felt especially fresh.  And it is danged long.  But it’s of an era, and it’s certainly well made.  And Jerry Orbach.

Vengeance is a Golden Blade:  Twisty and curvy, the plot of this forgettable but perfectly fine Martial Arts actioner does have a few good surprises.  Everyone seems to be doing a fine job, and there are some good, if not especially memorable fights.  If you’re in the mood for a Shaw Bros. movie, and haven’t seen this one, it shouldn’t disappoint, but don’t expect too much.

    I read All Star Superman for the next book club meeting, and Phantom Stranger for my own edification.  And I read more of Boom! Studios’ Hellraiser comics, which I find myself enjoying quite a bit.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (5/26/13-6/1/13)

    On Sunday morning, I muscled my way through Silver Surfer: Parable.  That could have been a heck of a lot better, with a writer instead of Stan Lee.  And I read a few science fiction short stories.  Expediter, a Cold War story with a decidedly subversive bent and dashes of 1984, by Mack Reynolds.  One-Shot by James Blish, another Cold War tale that wasn’t really science fiction as far as I could tell.  Shipwreck in the Sky, a very brief story by Eando Binder.  And Zen, by Jerome Bixby.  All of ‘em from a collection of classic sci-fi tales that cost me like 2.99 or something on my Nook.  Still a dozen or more stories to read.

The Great Gatsby:  I had heard a lot of opinions about this movie before I saw it, most of them negative.  In fact, not just negative; almost hateful.  People really didn’t like this film.  I guess I get that.  If you don’t get into the style of the movie, there’s no way you’re going to enjoy it.  But once you get past the specifics of its rather outlandish and theatrical style, I don’t think there was enough of anything one way or another to warrant deep feelings of any kind.  It’s a rather workman-like adaptation of the novel, with actors all doing OK jobs portraying the characters.  Nobody stands out, except maybe Toby McGuire as the narrator.  He kind of sucks.  He’s playing an almost Ewan McGreggor type ‘naïve to the point of parody’ character, but unlike McGreggor, he doesn’t have the charm to pull it off.  I found the film frustrating because it didn’t seem to be able to make up its mind.  It’s too crazy for a normal drama, and not nearly crazy enough for a fantastical Jazz Age myth.  The director did much better hitting the right bugnuts tone in Moulin Rouge, and whoever made Idlewild did a better job of capturing the era’s strange fantasy (both of those films used contemporary music to better effect).  I like where Baz Luhrmann was headed with this movie, but he didn’t get there, and that’s too bad.  And like his Australia, the first half is much better than the second, though Gatsby is far more coherent, likely owing to their near slavish devotion to the plot and dialog of the novel.

Nosferatu, Phantom Der Nacht:  “The Master has arrived!”  Mad bastard Werner Herzog and madder bastarder Klaus Kinski take on the classic vampire tale, Dracula, seen through the filter of the silent film Nosferatu.  Bruno Ganz gives Jonathan Harker more personality than he is normally portrayed with (or written with, for that matter).  The location shooting and the music are extremely moody and effective.  Kinski is disgusting, but that’s not new.  Bald head, white makeup, and little rat teeth make an already terrifying man slightly more terrifying.  Admittedly, I’m not a vampire movie fan, and not especially enamored of Dracula adaptations.  But this, along with the silent film of the same name, are probably my two favorites.  This also seems the most spirited and stylistically interesting version I’ve seen (an argument could be made for the Spanish language version made by Universal, but meh).  There are some interesting variations on the original, like Lucy (played by Goth princess Isabelle Adjani) being Jonathan’s wife (Mina seems to be a housekeeper or some such), and it being Lucy who takes up the battle against the Count, being a much stronger person than seemingly anyone else in the film.

Embryo:  “I’m also what I believe is called a ‘junkie.’” The atrocious transfer on the DVD makes it hard to know what the quality of the film was originally.  Of course, seeing the boom mike and/or the shadow of the boom mike isn’t a good sign.  Still, when Rock Hudson develops a super-smart dog with a crazy-science drug cocktail, I got on board.  Of course, the next step is jumping into totally unethical human testing, which needless to say results in a Frankenstein’s Monster.  This came out during the initial explosion of anti-science films that we’re still seeing the blast waves from to this day.  Like pretty much every movie that involves an artificially enhanced human, said superhuman becomes intellectually (and possibly physically) superior, then subsequently violently evil.  Erg.  The music is awful made-for-TV soap crap.  The massive computer room sequence, where you know your laptop (if not your phone) could run circles around that warehouse full of dinosaurs, really puts technologic advances in perspective.  I do want Number One, though.  That’s got to be about the coolest dog ever, and his murderous rages seem mostly reserved for annoying little yappy dogs and bitchy sister-in-laws, so no problem there.  This is 70s PG, so there’s some nudity and see-through clothing.  The oversensitive and repressed should beware.  This would have an R rating by today’s puritanical, sex-fearing MPAA (graphic murder is OK; bare breasts are evil).

The Brain Machine:  “Anyway, in the Land of the Blind, the one eyed man is king.  …Nuts?”  Boom mike!  Evil, shadowy government and corporate interests are forcing a scientist to do experiments on four human subjects.  I guess.  This film is shoddy, with weird (bad) editing and overuse of what appear to be stock establishing shots.  There’s an interesting movie here, but it’s lost in the spotty script, low budget, and terrible technique.

The Stunt Man:  “I’ve fallen madly in love with the dark side of your nature.”  Casting a movie is very important.  Obviously, you want great actors.  Sometimes, you get a great actor, but the rest of the cast isn’t up to the job.  Sometimes, you have one of the greatest, Peter O’Toole, cast alongside one of the worst, Steve Railsback.  For some confounded reason, in the last 70s and early 80s, there seemed to be people who thought Railsback was going to be the new ‘it’ guy, kind of like how they keep trying to make Josh Hartnet a star, but it won’t take.  He’s bloody awful, and it’s made all the more obvious when he’s in scenes with O’Toole.  This movie is all about movies and their artificiality, keeping the viewer on constant edge, wondering what’s real and what’s not.  It reminds me a bit of Walker, where film and reality seem to trade back and forth, while trying to make a statement I just don’t understand.  Barbara Hershey sure is pretty in a very 70s kind of way.

Beowulf:  “How ‘bout a quick gobble?”  One of the greatest heroes in literature gets a lavish CG animated treatment, which shockingly manages to capture some of the epic’s magic.  The sins of a king come back to haunt his kingdom.  But glory-seeking Beowulf and his men are ready to come and dish out some bloody retribution.  This film version does not, as so many adaptations do, try to modernize the hero too much.  He’s not a nice and sensitive guy who miraculously embodies current American social mores.  He’s a brutal, violent, glory hunting, boastful bastard.  I still favor Odysseus, a man unwilling to bow to the will of the gods, and perfectly willing (possibly glad) to spit in their faces.  But Beowulf is up there.  He’s flippin’ hardcore.  Violence, sex, revenge, heroics, guilt, redemption, and madness.  Grand stuff.

Enter the Dragon:  “A woman like that could teach you a lot about yourself.”  Thanks again to the Alamo Drafthouse and co-Dork Brad, I got out to see this on the big screen, and it was all kinds of fun.  From the start, you’ve got loads of bad dubbing, awkward humor, strange flashbacks, and the pop-philosophy of Bruce Lee.  With cohorts Jim Kelly and John Saxon, Lee gets all up in evil martial arts master Han’s smiling face.  And no army of unfortunate looking henchmen are going to stop him.  Just a darned fine bit of 70s exploitation.

Where Danger Lives:  “We both got what we wanted…after a fashion.”  A poor sucker gets hooked into some bad, bad business.  Then it’s a slow, steady descent into a mad hell.  While not at all a great Noir, this one is a fun watch, and where it finally arrives is pretty nutty.  Again, not great.  But worth watching.  There’s some interesting technical aspects, including extremely long shots with few cuts.
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Tension:  “I got a file goes back further than you’d like to remember and up to where you wish you could forget.”  An uptight milktoast is married to a fickle, slutty monster.  I mean MONSTER.  He loves her, for some danged reason.  But when she pushes and pushes and pushes, something’s gotta give.  Obviously, the next step is to create a new persona, then harass, threaten, and eventually murder her boyfriend.  Of course, the fact that you start dating a smokin’ hottie, who isn’t a spawn of the devil, while living in your new persona should not distract you from your duty.  Obligatory twists and turns, and suddenly the cops are on the trail, but who killed who, when, where, and why?  The cast is especially enjoyable to watch, even if the circumstances are outlandish.  This one is very, very weird in its plotting, but loads of fun.  Hard to describe really.  But multiple people have excellent and unusual characters that they get to play with.  The cop, the pharmacist, the other cop, the hottie, the monster, even the a-hole boyfriend.

8 ½:  Well, that was something.  Way back in the prehistory of this Dork, in those dark days before Bob Dobbs invented the internet, a handsome young Matt made his way to the dusty backest of the back rooms at Dirty Daves to paw over obscure titles in the Art & Foreign section, hoping to discover a hidden gem (or at least some of that Euro-nudie stuff) he gave that Fellini fellow a try.  And it sucked.  I don’t know what I watched, Roma was one, I’m sure.  Anyway, I hated it.  Fellini and that awful Russian version of Solaris nearly turned me off of foreign films.  Fast forward 20 years, and I’m sitting down at the AFI Silver to check out a screening of the classic and much lauded 8 ½.  Well, nothing has changed.  I hated it.  It’s such a self serving, self aggrandizing, self indulgent bunch of artsy-fartsy crap I was shifting in my seat like a kid with ADD after like 10 minutes.  While the lead actor was obviously good and there are some funny moments, I went from mild discomfort to outright hatred somewhere near the last half hour.  Just in case you haven’t picked up on what he’s trying to say (Helen Keller couldn’t have missed it), the last half hour is a full on audio-visual assault that blares at you ‘GET IT?!  GET IT?!  GET IT?!’ like you’re a slow child struggling with the subtleties of Dick & Jane.  But hey, at least there’s Barbara Steele and her Picasso face.  AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!  Is this a movie that is well liked because people think it’s obscure, but that they ‘get it’?  That’s the only thing I can figure would justify its film-fan street cred.  The problem is, it’s not actually obscure.  Fellini spends the entire movie outright explaining what the movie is about.  Every scene features dialog about what that scene means.  He spells it all out, even spelling out why he doesn’t spell something out, which pretty much spells it out.  Gah!  Anyway, the movie is crap.  Leave this to the oh so clever hipsters and college film professors, and watch something better.

Needs more clowns!

Splinter:  The X-Files/The Thing/Fringe type ‘creature’ in this movie is pretty cool, and there are some good effects and gore.  The actual characters aren’t too good, though they’re not as completely useless as a lot of modern horror characters tend to be.  Still, not good.  As always in movies like this, I kept yelling “Stop talking! Start running!”  Why, when speed is of the essence, do horror movie characters feel the need to drag ass.  It doesn’t ramp up tension, it makes me angry.  Still, it’s mildly enjoyable.  There’s potential here for something more.

The sequel should be called 'Shredder.'

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter:  “On lonely nights, I shall think of you.”  This is an odd, but very good little Hammer Horror gem.  Horst Janson is the dashing blonde hero, Kronos.  And the Sweet Mother! hot Caroline Munro is the gypsy girl.  A supporting cast of solid character actors helps keep it all going.  It’s surprisingly funny, with a stripe of humor black as pitch.  It’s too bad that this was in the final days of Hammer’s glory days.  A series of Kronos adventures could have been very cool.

    I started watching Space: Above & Beyond.  I’d seen the first few episodes back in the Dark Ages of the 90s, and I’d enjoyed it.  Watching it again, I can’t help but be frustrated by the potential unrealized.  The general idea, telling the story of a group of new soldiers struggling through a war with an alien menace, has plenty of potential.  The design and setting are pretty good.  But the CGI is rough, and the main cast intolerable.  The two lead guys are a bundle of cliché packed in bad acting.  It feels like the show was put together by writers with ideas, and all the writing around the core cast was done by producers (‘Let’s not try anything new or potentially contravercial, only things that have been done time and again in every other TV series.’).  Hawkes is absolutely dreadful with all his bad-boy posturing and put-upon rage.  But West, with his crying and teeth gnashing, and idiotic pursuit of his wife…UGH.  The lingo feels fairly accurate, like they had an actual Marine advisor.  Though shows like this are kind of inevitable, helping to change the status quo, while not managing to survive themselves, it is too bad this didn’t come along 10 years later, when budget and unwritten rules of TV production could have  been different.  Battlestar Galactica has a similar vibe, but came out at the right time.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol:  “I would like to show you my collection of art.”  World travel, wild stunts, sexy dames, and weird high-tech gadgets.  No, it’s not James Bond, it’s the MI team up to their old tricks.  While the first movie was meh, and the second a steaming turd, the third and fourth have substantially improved the franchise, finally getting back to the roots of the original show.  Something about this one, the way their tech and their stunts don’t always work, where they miss their mark or slip or whatever, is a nice change of pace.  They’re not being stupid, just not always getting it right.

    On Saturday, I caught Studio 360 on NPR.  It was a whole episode on Superman, as an American icon.  Plenty of interesting stuff.  It even reveals how some of the worst elements of the character came about (he started flying on the radio, not in the comics).  But there is something enduring about his honorable, honest, and empathetic heroics.  I’m not a fan of the character generally, because it seems to be mostly an excuse to write oneself into a corner, then magically break out of it (like the last season or so of Doctor Who).

    And on Saturday night, I took a trip home.  Well, to the place I’ve always kind of felt should have been my home.  I decided to start watching Twin Peaks again.  It’s been 10 or so years, and it felt like the time was right.  There’s a magic, right out of the gate, about that crazy little town.  And if ever there were a place I’d fit in, I think it’s there.  I could go fishing with Pete, get some wisdom from Big Ed, avoid the Log Lady, crush on Norma over some cherry pie and darned fine coffee, and catch a show at the Road House.  Oh, sure, there’s the occasional alien (?) abduction, serial killing demon, dream dwarf & giant, and what have you.  But it’s a magical place.

-Matt

Dork Art: Justin White is Rated G

Boy, it's been too long since I've posted any Drive Dork Art.  I feel much better now.  Slashfilm just posted some exclusive art from Justing White's upcoming Rated G show and it's all kinds of adorable.  White apparently made his bones through Threadless shirts, and now he's hanging out with those cool kids over at Gallery 1988.

--Brad

A Fistful of Cabins in the Wood! (Matt’s Picks)

The Dream Team

    Apparently, the internet is aflame with buzz about Cabin in the Woods.  OK.  So, this week, we’re looking at some of our favorite cabins, also in the woods (well, wilderness, anyway).  And though sorely tempted, note that I did not choose the Capital Building from Logan’s Run.

5.  Arianne’s witch house from Centurion.  Haven to wandering Romans and a nice place to eat some fish (if you don’t piss on it first).  Plus, the hostess provides great service.

4.  The White Lodge and the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks.  The less said, the better.  But I do hear that the owls are not as they seem.

3.  The winter home from Hanna.  Hanna’s dad needed a little time off from work, so he headed north for a nice relaxing home.  Hunting, fishing, and living close to nature helped Hanna grow up strong.

2.  John Matrix’s weekend getaway from Commando.  Living with his daughter, carrying logs, feeding deer.  Matrix’s life is pretty swell.  And he’s far enough that nobody will ever find him.  He’d smell ‘em coming, even if they did.

1.  Oliver Yates’ bayou love shack from Cat People.  When you’ve got a shape-changing panther woman working at your zoo, why not inviter her out to your secluded cabin?  Sure, she likes to get tied up, and her brother wants to sleep with her, but we’ve all got problems, right?

I like rabbits, too.

-Matt

Brad's Week in Dork! (2/19-2/25)

Well, I definitely didn't crank out as many movies this week as I've been doing lately but that's probably a good thing for all of us.  You can only steam ahead at that speed for so long before you burn out.  That being said, I still caught a lot of great stuff this week and even started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars.  But the highlights of the week centered on The Wife & I finally completely Twin Peaks and the AFI Silver's screening of Fritz Lang's Metropolis accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra.  These guys were amazing and the idea that my first experience with the Fritz Lang classic was on the big screen with a brilliant accompaniment pounding away to the visuals fills me with great gobs of geeky joy.  If you haven't already you should check out there site and purchase their stuff for your silent film collection.

Got some sad news this week.  My favorite restaurant in the whole dang world, The Tortilla Factory, will be closing March 1st.  The place has been in my neighborhood for the last 37 years and I've been eating there for the last 16.  Since hearing the news I've hit the place up everyday.  I had to make sure that I got my fill of the #5 Beast Feast: A burrito w/red chile sauce, a taco, two enchiladas, and a heap of beans and rice.  It's funny, but as much as I love the place none of my friends or my Wife share the crazy love like I do.  Why is that?  The food is Tex Mex, but it's a Tex Mex that might have been popular in the 70s...your grandma's idea of Tex Mex.  Every time I enter through the doors there's a little bit of a time warp going on.  The loss of that feeling brings genuine sadness to this Week in Dork.

My Last "Beast Feast"

This week also saw the 1 Year Anniversary of In The Mouth of Dorkness.  Seems like a few of you guys out there in Internetland have been enjoying our ranting, but probably not as much as Matt & I have  had with this personal bit of insanity.  Not only has this blog brought us closer to a lot of likeminded madmen and got us an incredibly fantastic regular gig over at cineAWESOME! but it's spared a lot of our friends and coworkers from suffering our Movie Rants/Rages.  To sum it up, this blog makes me as happy as Chewbacca standing behind Marilynn Monroe in a bikini.

"Let's Par-Tay!"

TV OF THE WEEK!

The Walking Dead "Triggerfinger":  Things are starting to go all Dawn of the Dead on Rick & Company.  The retrieval of Herschel from the bar in town became a lot more difficult with a shoot out confrontation with The Others and this week it escalated in some serious gunplay.  But this appears to be just a taste of the hell that's about to come down on The Farm, and I imagine this building to a Human War on par with The Governor battle in the comics.  But will we get The Governor this season?  Is it Michael Rooker?  Who knows, but I doubt it.  And I seriously doubt this season will end with everyone holding up in the prison.  At least I hope not cuz they've done enough holding up at Herschel's place.  Time to get on the road.  And time for Lori to die already.

Supernatural "Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie":  Another week, another fun and silly episode of Supernatural.  Feels like forever ago that we dealt with the Leviathan problem and this season definitely lacks some focus, but if these monster-of-the-week episodes are going to be as fun as this one than I really don't mind.  Sam & Dean investigate the death of a batch of parents and it leads them to the Chuck E Cheese terrordome of Plucky Pennywhistle...and you guessed it, there are plenty of Pennywise-like clown demons to rule your nightmares, or at least Sam's nightmares.  The episode also provides for one of this silliest chase-takedowns I've seen as you can witness in the above image.  I really hope Supernatural never ends.  I want these boys to be hunting goblins & ghouls for the rest of my life.

Justified "When The Guns Come Out":  Three seasons in and we finally hit an episode of Justified that I really just did not like.  Bummer.  But before we get to my complaints let me sing at least one praise.  The confrontation between Timothy Olyphant's Raylan and William Mapother's pimp was plenty fun.  Never bring a knife to a gunfight.  And I hope we see more of Mapother this season.  But most of this episode is wasted on a poor excuse to get rid of Natalie Zea's pointless love interest.  I don't know how she reaches the conclusions that she does after her profession of love to Raylan last episode.  And the final scene of this ep was the sorriest excuse of screenwriting we've had from this usually brilliant series.  Hopefully, this is just a hiccup and next episode will put everything back on track.

Twin Peaks Episodes 26-29:  The Wife and I finally completed our epic run of Twin Peaks and even though I enjoyed the trip immensely (granted, I knew how dark things were going to be left off), I cannot say the same things for her.  As Season 2 builds to a climax and Agent Cooper and Windom Earle march towards The Black Lodge the humor and charm of the series start to fade into the background.  And the final episode of the show is pretty damn scary as Coop navigates the red curtain walls of Bob's kingdom.  The pulsating strobe light, Laura Palmer's screams, Bob's visage.  It's incoherent and rather terrifying.  And as the final episode ticked away, The Wife could sense the very dark place where she was going to be left off at--but even then, she was not prepared for the utterly bleak prequel movie...

MOVIES OF THE WEEK!

Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me:  ‎"I am the arm." I completely understand why fan & critical reaction was so harsh towards Fire Walk With Me. In a lot of respects it is a slap to the face of loyal viewers after the shocking cliffhanger climax of season 2--I don't want to go back to the final days of Laura Palmer; we got all that jazz outta our system! Let's see The Black Lodge! Let's see Windom! Let's see Agent Dale Cooper! So, yeah, Fire Walk With Me will illicit your basic prequel rage explaining plot that didn't need explaining and even mismanaging several key characters. However, I definitely appreciated the Chris Isaak/Kiefer Sutherland's opening investigation, the weird David Bowie phasing, and the tiny glimpses of The Black Lodge that float in and out of the mumbled narrative. Still, it's been 25 years now and I'm ready for David Lynch to finally conclude the Twin Peaks story...a pipe dream? Yeah, but one worth having.

Silent Tongue:  ‎"Insanity is a sorry thing." After his Indian bride dies during childbirth, River Phoenix goes mad with grief refusing to bury his love; he stands guard over the elements hollering at the wildlife and possibly communicating with the dead. His father, Richard Harris travels to the medicine show where he originally bought the squaw for three horses and attempts to barter for Alan Bates' other halfbreed daughter. Things get freakier from there. Silent Tongue is an excellent Weird Western from playwright Sam Shepard that stands on its varied performances and rich dialog. River Phoenix died just months before it's Sundance premiere and it only took in a few thousand dollars at the box office. If you're looking for something different in the genre look no further.  And, as usual, check out cineAWESOME! for my latest Western Review.

Anonymous:  The True Story Of William Shakespeare The Fraud as directed by the man who brought us Independence Day, Godzilla, The Patriot, and 2012. And it doesn't suck. But the story of the Shakespeare conspiracy does not really engage this particular viewer either. Rhys Ifans is rather good as the Earl of Oxford, but why bother with the Derek Jacobi framing device? Is it's purpose to give the plot an air of truth? No, it's just obtrusive and rather silly. Still, I suppose it's good to know that Roland Emmerich can put a film together that's somewhat emotionally engaging, and contains only one good EXPLOSION!

Hard Hunted:  ‎"We Were Never Lovers and I Faked That Orgasm!" *Machete To The Stomach* The seventh film in Sidaris's Malibu Express Saga starts off a little slow, trading the tropical locals of Hawaii for the rocky deserts of Arizona where Agents Donna & Justin are sunbathe-waiting for their friend to be killed by Al Leong's Raven helicopter. But once the T & A espionage gets back on track in Hawaii the crazy dune buggies, hovercrafts, jetplanes, and speedboats bring these ridiculous characters into explosively odd dialog collision. Seriously, where does Sidaris get all these wonderful toys?

Metropolis:  It's taken 32 years, but after last year's tributes to the silent cinema (Hugo & The Artist) and a few key Criterion releases, an interest in cinema's original art form has taken a serious hold. And it's impossible to be a fan of film without knowing a little about the history of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and I've owned the Kino release of the 2010 restoration since it's publication. However, when I heard that the AFI Silver would be screening the film with the Alloy Orchestra I made a pact to wait and experience the sci-fi classic on The Big Screen with a Sold Out crowd. I am so glad I did. Similar to my encounter with Citizen Kane a few years back, watching Metropolis for the first time was a revelation. It is indeed the Masterpiece that you've heard about. But unlike Kane or Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, the plot and most of the visual flair of the film had not been spoiled to me via years upon years of pop culture saturation. Yes, I had seen several of the key images depicting Hel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge's Rotwang, and the myriad of fantastic expressionistic sets. But I was unaware of Fritz Rasp's creepy Thin Man. Or Brigitte Helm's seven sins dance. Or the entire plot involving father vs. son. Metropolis on the Big Screen was an amazing experience and will be the movie event to beat in 2012. And Alloy Orchestra's score was stunning; sitting next to them as their music thumped and pounced was similar to living in the film itself.  And yeah, I absolutely had to purchase their score to sync with my blu.

Anatomy of a Murder:  Law & Order's Dick Wolf owes his entire career to this quintessential courtroom drama starring America's Actor Jimmy Stewart as Defense Attorney Paulie Biegler presiding over the not-so-innocent life of Ben Gazzara. Anatomy of a Murder is a long haul story, that draws over all the particulars of the plot with a fine tooth but it's serious eye puts the audience right in the courtroom and it must have been quite an experience for someone who wasn't raised on endless reruns of Sam Waterston's speech of the week . Top notch performances from all involved and it's a beautiful looking film despite being stuck mostly in courtroom benches.  And ya gotta dig Duke Ellington's score.

COMICS OF THE WEEK!

I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason:  Well, as to be expected, this was a weird one.  Norwegian artist Jason applies his puppy dog style to this science fiction story depicting a future world where anyone can hire hitmen to kill the human pests in their lives.  It centers on one hitman, recently separated from his longtime girlfriend, who accepts a job from a scientist with a time machine to kill the Fuhrer.  Things don't go according to plan and this quick read will supply you with lots of cute pictures involving animals shooting out each other's brains.  Plus Hitler.

Who Is Jake Ellis? by Nathan Edmondson & Tonci Zonjic:  Lots of folks at my local comic shop have been recommending Who Killed Jack Ellis? to me for a while now.  I finally conceded and gave it a read.  It's a fun espionage story with a science-fiction (or supernatural) twist.  Ex-CIA Jon is on the run from both The Americans and a shadowy organization, but it's no big thing cuz he has Jake Ellis living inside his head.  And Jake knows when he should duck and when he should plug a guy.  The first trade could be read as a single story and it's almost tempting just to leave it at that, but I might give the next volume a read in a week or two.  So yeah, good but not a new obsession or anything.


BOOK OF THE WEEK!

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:  If I hadn't been so darn tired I could have easily read the book in one sitting, but as is all I got was fifty pages into the classic pulp adventure story.  I first read the John Carter books nearly 20 years ago but my memory of the tales of Barsoom has pretty much faded completely.  And I have to get this book consumed before the March 9th release date of the new Andrew Stanton movie.  I will say that 50 pages in you can already see where the new Disney film is taking liberties.  The White Apes of Mars are gonna be a whole lot bigger than their novel counterpart and the Attack of the Clones thunderdome seen in the trailer is a cinematic creation that probably should have remained a storyboard concept.  But what's amazing about these books is how fresh they feel for having been written in the early 1900s.  Sure, there's a lack of quotation marks and the dialog is just sorta told at you, but the imagination, the language, and the imagery found inside still holds up.  I do hope we get a good portion of The Old West before the spaceward journey.

--Brad