Matt’s Week in Dork! (9/14/14-9/20/14)

    Not much in the way of Dork living this week.  Just watched a few movies and zoned out a lot.

The Smiling Ghost:  A goofy comic caper in the style that would go on to influence Scooby-Doo, this bit of fluff is enjoyable, with some fun performances.  But it also features some of that old timey racism that is so bloody awkward.

Borgman:  There’s about 75% of an awesomely weird movie here.  The missing 25% is the kicker, though.  While I’m all for films that don’t explain themselves, I still need enough to work out an explanation for myself.  Things are left so vague, there are simply too many ways to look at the events for my taste.  Sadly, the one that seems most popular (that Borgman is the devil) is the lamest.  Perhaps he is an alp, a sort of nightmare faerie.  This could have been so good.  But like the recent film Thale, it doesn’t have enough to build its mystery upon.

Destroy All Monsters:  Aliens and stock footage attack the world in this mid-level Godzilla film.  It’s more fun to watch than its almost clip-show reliance on previously filmed material would suggest.  The human characters and the aliens are fun.

Hector and the Search for Happiness:  “Whoever said money can’t buy you happiness? …Fuck you!”  When the movie started off, I was enjoying it.  I liked the cast and I don’t have a problem with obvious, uplifting plots.  Heck, I enjoyed the heck out of the Pollyannaish film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  But somewhere in the middle of this movie (right around the kidnapping in Africa), it all goes wrong.  From that point on, the message becomes not just obvious, but condescending and wrong-headed.  In a way, it reminded me of Life of Pi, which you may remember I was not the biggest fan (it was my worst film of 2012).  The last twenty minutes of the film are kind of insufferable, in spite of a wacky Christopher Plummer performance.

Castle of Blood:  Barbara Steele bug-eyes her way through another black and while horror film with delusions of Hammer.  The look of the film is good, but the story kind of dull.  And the resolution doesn’t hold interest especially well.  I guess it wouldn’t be uncharacteristically crass of me to say, the film continues to promise lots of skin, and never delivers (apparently there is a version that does feature nudity...this wasn't it), which doesn’t help.

    On Friday night, I finished up Andre Norton’s Secret of the Lost Race, a fun Golden Age science fiction novel.  I love her early work, full as it is of that 50s/60s wide open universe storytelling.  Not hampered so much by the later 60s/70s doom and gloom.

The Juniper Tree:  The Brothers Grimm get the indie film treatment in this black and white Bjork vehicle.  The accented English was a surprise.  I figured the film would be subtitled.  It looks pretty good, but feels too long.  As a thirty or forty minute short in a lager Grimm anthology film, it might have worked better.  Not bad, but not especially captivating.

Blonde Venus:  Marlene Dietrich heads an excellent cast in this film about a woman who tries to help her sick husband, only to succumb to the charms of other men.  Following the story arc is crazy.  But it’s a pretty good story, giving Dietrich plenty of material to sink her teeth into.  And very, very young Cary Grant is devilishly charming as the film’s almost villain.

    On Saturday, I caught two of the three silent comedies on my resolutions list.  I’m hoping to get The General in by the end of this next week.

The Gold Rush:  One more of my cinematic resolutions down.  When my resolution list was made, I had never seen a Charlie Chaplin film.  Since making the list, I’ve seen two; this is my third.  Unfortunately, it’s also the weakest.  There are some very good bits and gags.  But the overall story is only meh, and the very good bits are few and far between.  Still, the actors are charming and some of the comedy bits are impressive.

Safety Last!:  Famous for its stunts, this comedy is pretty typical of the 20s, with a poor kid going off to the big city to make his bucks, only to fail and try to make people think he didn’t.  Expected comic hijinks ensue.  The stunts are impressive and Harold Lloyd is good.  But the star of the film is obviously the big building climb and all the associated stunts and gags.

    And that’s about it.  Like I said, not much Dork living.  I know I’ve got a couple things coming right up though.  And I sure as heck have a bunch of reading to do.  Oh, and Lisa came up with the idea of doing a 30 Day Sketch Challenge.  I’ve been having fun defacing things with illustrations.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Matt’s Week in Dork! (8/24/14-8/30/10)

    Not much in the way of movie viewing this Week in Dork, but I had a lot of fun and got a lot done.  So there’s that.  It all started with a journey in to DC with Rebecca, where we checked out Andrew Greene and the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra.  Turns out the Kennedy Center does a free show every evening, and Sunday night it was some Ragtime and Charlie Chaplin.

One A.M.:  Charlie Chaplin does his Drunk bit, as a wealthy guy trying to get to bed.  I would say the whole thing goes on a bit too long, even with a run time of 24 minutes.  But some of the stunts and gags are quite impressive, and a few of the laughs come from deep in the belly.  It’s an odd complaint, but this probably should have been about 4 or 5 minutes shorter, and would have been a better piece.  Still fun, though.

Altered States:  I’ve been hearing about this movie (rarely anything positive) for a long time, and nearly seeing in for nearly as long.  So, I finally sat down to watch it, and…I liked it.  It’s part of that 70s post-hippie, utopian idealist, scientific failure subgenre I enjoy so much (see also; Rabid, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Idaho Transfer, the middle seasons of Lost, etc.).  William Hurt shows uncharacteristic amounts of emotion (ironically, playing an emotionally distant character).  Bob Balaban is enjoyable.  The effects are a mixed bag, but they get the job done.  I can’t say that I loved it, but I certainly enjoyed it.

    I know I’ve found a keeper when she says to me, “let’s not go in to DC for dinner and a movie tonight; let’s sit on the couch and watch Channing Tatum films.”  Done and done.

She’s the Man:  Getting past the fact that at no point would anyone with functioning eyes or ears mistake Amanda Bynes for a guy, this is a pretty standard, kinda bland teen comedy with echoes of Shakespeare.  Young Channing Tatum displays some genuine charm with his physical comedy, even if emoting isn’t his strong suit.  Plus, isn’t it like a law (since 1972) that a girl who wants to play on a sports team is allowed to try out?

Step Up:  Typical of low budget teen films, this story of a Channing Tatum from the wrong side of the tracks and a girl from a privileged upbringing is moderately sweet, and lacking in any surprises.  Beat for beat, it follows the path you know it will in all the ways you expect.  But in that, it has its own dumb charm.  The streets and the halls of higher education must come together to save the world of dance!

    On Friday night, Ben and I sat down to another 70s classic.  I’ve been in the mood to crack back into some Blaxploitation lately.  And you can never go wrong (well…) with Fred Williamson.

Hell Up in Harlem:  Low budget, and sometimes ill made, but darned fun.  This sequel to the Godfather retelling Black Caesar is filled with crazy angles, wildly moving camera work, and NO SECOND TAKES.  So much fun, so silly, so low budget and over the top.

    On Saturday, we headed in to the National Book Festival.  This was my first time attending it for my own edification, and it was pretty cool.  Like Baltimore Comic-Con, but for book nerds.  It was held in the Convention Center, which was MUCH better than having it on the Mall.  We saw Sandra Day O’Connor and her brother H. Alan Day.  H. Alan Day has written a book about rescuing wild mustangs, which was cool.  Lynn Sherr talked about her biography of Sally Ride, which was fascinating, and hit me hard in my science organ.  Eric H. Cline talked about his book 1177 B.C., which made me really want to read it.

    I ended up with some time on my hands while in the City on Saturday night.  I was going to do some reading or something, but instead I thought I’d do some prep work for some stories or something.  Ended up actually writing a short story, which was surprising and gratifying.  A good day, and a nice end to a good week.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Matt’s Week in Dork! (1/26/14-2/1/14)

    Heck of a week for this here Dork.  Sunday started with something of a bang, when I finally assembled a handful of friends for a tabletop roleplaying game.  It’s been so danged long since last I gamed, and the first gathering was mostly logistics, explanations, and finally making characters.  But it was good, none the less.

    Sunday evening, Lisa, Brad, and I headed out to the Alamo to see City Lights, my first experience with Charlie Chaplin.  I know.  How could I have lived this long, loved classics, and enjoyed so many silent films and not seen Charlie Chaplin?  I don’t know.  But there it is.  City lights isn’t the movie I picked to be my cinematic resolution (that was The Gold Rush).  But I had it on good authority that it was very good.

City Lights:  My first experience with Charlie Chaplin, this silent comedy is extremely charming.  After a lifetime of seeing imitators, it’s really something to see the original, and he’s so much better.  The film is very funny, with plenty of physical comedy, but also a lot of situational laughs.  The entire boxing sequence, from the first moments in the locker through the fight and its aftermath had me laughing.  But I think my favorite moment in the film is the nude statue in the window bit.  So danged funny.  I’m looking forward to watching more Chaplin in the near future.

I, Frankenstein:  I re-dub thee: I, Exposition.  When reading books on writing screenplays, I think the creators of this film got things mixed up.  Instead of ‘show, don’t tell’ they must have read ‘tell, don’t show.’  In a generic European city, where it’s always dark and there appears to be maybe ten or twelve normal humans, mostly riding in a single subway car, there’s a secret war that’s been going on for hundreds of years, between demons and gargoyles.  Didn’t catch that?  Don’t worry.  Every character will explain it in excruciating detail to every other character a half dozen times.  They’ll also repeatedly explain how demons ‘descend’ and gargoyles ‘ascend.’  And they’ll go over Adam (aka Frankenstein’s Monster), his origin, his nature, and his power…again and again and again (he’s strong, he’s got no soul, he wasn’t created by God…seriously, they’ll tell you about it every five minutes).  The script for the film is absolutely awful.  Half way through I couldn’t shake off how much it felt like something Chris Claremont would have written around the time he was doing X-Men.  Stilted dialog, ham-fisted exposition, and ‘probably sounds cool to a twelve year old’ tough-guy dialog.  If you watch it with friends, and give it the ol’ Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, it’s lots of fun.  Otherwise, I have a strong feeling it’s just super dull.

Killer Snakes:  Willard with snakes.  That’s pretty much it.  A dirty little perv can’t catch a break, because he’s a spaz and a creeper.  So he kills people with snakes.  And then with lizards for some reason.  The lizards seemed out of character.  It would be like Leatherface using a gun.  It’s not that he can’t.  I’m not trying to limit his options.  It just seems…I don’t know, like he’s not sincere about the whole thing.  Stick with the snakes, man.  It’s your thing.  Anyway, the movie sucks.

The Ghost:  “Anything yes…Not that.”  The creepy, bulgy, fish eyes of Barbara Steele lurk in the shadows as her invalid husband clings to life.  There’s the usual philandering and naughty doings.  And it’s all dubbed very poorly.  Typical ghost-revenge movie stuff.

Dead Eyes of London:  Those evil blind people are up to no good…gropingly, clumsily up to no good.  Pretty standard horror stuff, with a big blind murderer and some hints at old family badness.  A few twists and turns and the story plays out in much the way you expect.  Still, it’s very well shot and drips with atmosphere (almost literally, as the fog machines seemed to be cranked to 11).  Worth a watch if it’s on, if not an extra effort.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2:  In recent years, there have been a few genuinely surprising kids movies, films far better than what one expects.  Pixar’s secret of not trying to pass off crap because kids don’t care has started to catch on.  The first Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was one such surprise, and even more unexpected was how good the follow-up is.  It’s laugh out loud funny, a good story, and visually impressive.  The voice work is good and the script is excellent.  And they managed to create a good sequel without just rehashing the first one.

    I don’t know if I’ve written much about this on the blog before, but I wrote a script for a short film, an idea I’ve been kicking around for many years (since before I left Maine).  Through luck and timing, I found someone looking for a new project, and willing to read my script.  A few re-writes later, and we’re ready to move on it.  On Saturday, Satnam (the director) and Torsten (the actor) stopped by the apartment for a read-through of the script.  It was really something.  I’m still riding a high from hearing words I wrote spoken by someone who knows how to act.  I had a similar thing the first time I saw a comic script realized by an artist.  Very cool.  I’m very excited for the actual filming and for seeing it all completed.

The Singing Ringing Tree:  “Now you don’t look quite so ugly.”  A German production of one of the less well known (seemingly) Grimm Brothers story, this is thankfully narrated by a BBC fellow, as it isn’t re-dubbed or subtitled.  It’s very fanciful and very staged, but charming in its way.  It feels like a mix of Beauty and the Beast, Hans My Hedgehog, and little bits and pieces of some other stories.  But a lot of these fairy tales seem to mix and match moments, themes, and characters.  More so when they’re made into films.  I really like this one, in spite of its obvious technical limitations.

    So, a good week.  Scheduling the next game meeting was challenging, but we seem to have gotten it figured out.  Between that, getting the movie together, and a bunch of social plans, I’m gonna be a busy bee for a time.

-Matt

A Fistful of Cinematic Resolutions 2014! (Matt’s Picks)

    Last year, co-Dork Brad put together a list of ‘cinematic resolutions,’ conspicuous holes in his film viewing history.  I enjoyed watching several of them with him, and decided I’d missed the boat by not making my own list.  This year, I’m not making the same mistake.  So what follows are movies many can’t believe I haven’t seen.

5.  Glengarry, Glen Ross:  I briefly thought I was a David Mamet fan, after seeing the Spanish Prisoner and being totally jazzed to find a modern day Alfred Hitchcock.  But while I enjoyed several movies he wrote and/or directed, none ever quite lived up to that initial discovery.  And along the way, I happened to not watch Glengarry, Glen Ross.  It was never an intentional thing; I would frequently look at it in the rental shop.  Just never actually rented it.  However, more and more, I hear it referenced, and it seems like everyone's seen it but me.

4.  The General, The Gold Rush, and Safety Last:  I’ve watched a lot of silent films and classics in general, but I’ve never seen a Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, or Harold Lloyd film.  Though I know The Great Dictator is usually considered Chaplin’s best, I figure I’m gonna hit up his silent film first.

3.  The Shawshank Redemption:  I don’t remember this movie ever causing much of a stir when it came out, but over the years, it seems to have grown into quite the beloved classic.  Nobody ever seems to talk about it, but it’s been in the number one spot on IMDB’s top 250 since I can remember.  I like the cast, and I hear nothing but good things.  But I’ve never been one for prison films.  Still, I’ve had enough shocked responses to finding out I haven’t seen it.  It’s time to finally get down to brass tacks and check it out.

2.  Rio Bravo:  I do not like John Wayne movies.  Hearing him talk and looking at his ruddy meat-face create ugly feelings that burn in the lump of coal I have in place of a heart.  He represents some kind of ‘back in the day’ America that makes me feel bad to be alive.  So, generally speaking, I try to avoid watching his shitty films.  However, I continually hear about Rio Bravo, and that it’s one to watch, in spite of The Duke being in it.  OK.  Fine.  I’ll give it a try.

1.  Sunset Boulevard and The Lost Weekend:  Two classics about personal demons and lives going down the tubes.  Each is often featured on Film Noir lists, though I don’t know that either should quite qualify.  Still, they’re films I’ve heard about frequently over the years, that always show up in ‘must see’ books and articles.  So this year, I’m going to finally mark these two off my list.

    I feel a bit bad that I didn’t put any foreign films of note on my list.  I still need to see La Dolce Vita, for example, but after seeing 8 ½ last year (and totally hating it), I’m not quite ready to try Fellini again any time soon.

-Matt