Dork Hero: Christopher Lee

    For a long time, Christopher Lee existed as photos of various monsters (often Dracula) in creature books I’d pore over as a kid.  Though I’m sure I saw him in a few things (Man with the Golden Gun?), it was with my delving into Peter Cushing’s filmography that I began to get into the venerable old gentleman’s work.  You could write books on the man, about his various exploits and esoteric knowledge.  He’s a Tolkien fan (maybe THE Tolkien fan).  He’s former British Special Forces.  And he speaks several languages.  His voice is like the cracking of the Earth.  And yes.  He’s in a metal band…at 92.

Five Favorite Christopher Lee Movies:

5. Hannie Caulder
4. Hugo
3. Horror of Dracula
2. The Man with the Golden Gun
1.  The Wicker Man

-Matt

Dork Hero: Peter Cushing

Like many of my generation I first became aware of Peter Cushing late in his life, as Grand Moff Tarkin, the real villain of the first Star Wars film (Vader was just a lapdog for Tarkin).  But I quickly saw him in several other films, and realized that he was quite the cool old dude.  As I transitioned into my teen years, he was my gateway drug, getting me hooked on the world of Hammer Horror.  I remain a junkie for bodice ripping, Gothic tinted, British horror/weird films.  Today is the 101st anniversary of his birth.  A tip of the hat to one of the great gentlemen of film.

Five Favorite Peter Cushing Movies:
5.  Star Wars
4.  At the Earth's Core
3. The Curse of Frankenstein
2.  Twins of Evil
1.  She (1965)

-Matt

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

Matt’s Week in Dork! (10/14/12-10/20/12)

    Not much in the way of Dork life for most of the week.  But on Friday night, there was another meeting of the Justice League of Extraordinary Book Club.  This month, for Halloween, we read the Hellboy anthology The Chained Coffin.  I was surprised (and very happy) that folks seemed to really like it.  Much more than I was expecting.  And several people expressed interest in reading more (Jill’s already started).  Hellboy is so rooted in the things I love.  The weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson, and others; the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and others; Judeo-Christian mythology; medieval history and legend; the pulps like The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Spider; and so many more.


Lust for a Vampire:  There are elements of this film that I really like, but it is a total mess.  Pretty young women dancing about in Greek-type robes, Ralph Bates’ mousy freak, and the wacky pseudo-Christopher Lee jabbering on in Latin.  Oh, yeah.  But the production looks…well, it looks like a TV episode or something.  Even the nudity is awkward.  As usual, there’s plenty of bodice-ripping opportunity, but much of the nudity that is in the film seems tacked on or wedged in where it doesn’t belong.  It also doesn’t help that Yutte Stensgaard looks so much like Shelly Long.  Not one of the better Hammer Gothics.

Fright Night:  This surprisingly charming update to the minor vampire classic does a pretty good job of bringing things to the modern day, while still capturing a bit of an 80s vibe.  Collin Farrell turns in one of his best performances, and everyone seems to be having a good time.  It is frustrating that in spite of the blood, the film feels very PG-13, and I was surprised to find out it was R.  I guess they drop the F bomb too many times.  As always, a little less obvious CG would have been nice.

The Brood:  Oliver Reed, man.  Somehow, I don’t think he’d have been a good psychologist.  Every move he makes, every expression on his face lets you know he is filled with raging contempt and barely checked violence.  His outer calmness is clearly hiding an seething inner chaos of hate.  Not conducive to mental health.  Winter bleached Canada is once again the depressing home of horror as David Cronenberg explores our violent impulses and what happens when we don’t want to deal with them.  There’s some cool stuff in this movie.  However, I don’t know if it’s the hero or what, but I don’t find it especially interesting.  Not one of Cronenberg’s better films.

Spontaneous Combustion:  This movie is crazy.  A seemingly forgotten Tobe Hooper film that is well worth rediscovering.  In the same semi-genre as Scanners, Firestarter, The Dead Zone, and other psi-power awakening films.  I think, in the aftermath of the 50s and 60s, when a lot of secrets about experiments the government had been getting up to came out, there was a brand of anxiety this film cashes in on.  The late 70s and 80s were full of movies and TV shows about the results of science run amok, always awakening nasty bits of human potential.  Poor Brad Dourif.  He’s a nice guy, but everybody’s dumping on him, and his inner fire is about to get out of hand.  This movie doesn’t always work, but there’s enough cool in it to make it worth watching.  This is one I’d love to see get a good remake.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:  “Nothing shocks me.  I’m a scientist.”  Often dismissed, I think this is a good entry in the series, with plenty to love.  I grant you, Kate Capshaw is quite aggravating.  And the effects don’t always play.  But there’s some excellent action.  I think my major complaint about this movie is its limited setting.  After a brief stop in Hong Kong, the rest of the film takes place in India.  But Indiana Jones is kind of like James Bond.  He’s a world hopper, and having him stuck in one location feels wrong (like that Bond film where he spends all his time in Japan).

House of Whipcord:  Ugh.  They’re called lights.  They’ve been using them on film sets for a century.  Half the time, you can’t see anything that’s happening because it seems the filmmakers didn’t pay the lighting bill.  But worry not, the annoying, sniveling voice of Penny Irving never stops.  And while you can’t always tell what she’s saying, you can always tell it’s stupid.  I guess this is S&M porn (it’s not actually porn), but it’s all pretty silly.  I suppose if anyone ever turned a light on, there would be a lot of nudity.  But they don’t.  A right wing group of sexually repressed weirdoes kidnap young women to abuse them for imagined crimes.  And plenty of bad lighting and editing later, I still don’t care.  Is that prison matron John Noble in drag?

King Kong:  “I’m just an actor with a gun.”  Peter Jackson’s remake of the original 1933 King Kong, one of the best adventure films of all time, is clearly made with a great deal of love.  And generally speaking, it’s very good.  An epic of weird retro-adventure.  But on a few occasions it does fail.  The most obvious and glaring problem is the canyon stampede scene, which is super clunky, totally unneeded, and looks bloody terrible (seriously, it looks horrendous…how did this make the final cut?).  Some sequences run too long, especially the big Kong VS ‘V-Rex’ scene, which feels like it will never end.  And some of that time could have been better spent exploring the island and its mysteries.  But, problems aside, there are great characters, fantastic visual feasts, grand adventure in the spirit of the original, and some very emotional and beautiful scenes.  Kong is rendered with supreme skill and technical finesse.  Naomi Watts is a beautiful woman, and can sell youthful innocence with a tinge of world weary resignation (she really doesn’t look her age…it’s kind of creepy).  This was Jackson’s dream project, the movie he’s wanted to do since getting into the movies (and before, I’m sure).  And I get that.  It would be one of mine, too (along with Creature from the Black Lagoon and Conan).  It’s not a perfect film.  But it’s a grand adventure film like they rarely make these days.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad:  This is actually two separate stories in one movie.  First up is a story taken from The Wind in the Willows.  It’s a pretty good short film.  But I think that UK stop motion version from 15 or 20 years ago is much, much better.  The second is the adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  It’s a pretty good, pretty freaky telling of the tale.  Some good funny bits, and some good creepy bits.

Massacre in Dinosaur Valley:  “Want a banana?”  Ah, Brazil.  Land of cockfighting and plastic surgery disasters.  Amazing ADR.  Better music.  Spectacular acting.  Tip-top editing and cinematography.  And that ‘humorous’ sexual assault scene.  Didn’t it get nominated as one of the all time greats by the AFI?  This movie is really, really dumb.  It’s only mildly entertaining.  By the way, you don’t get to call your film Massacre in Dinosaur Valley if there are in fact, no dinosaurs.  Now, some attractive women take their clothes off, and that makes up for a lot.  But I’m darn well owed some dinosaurs.  The disk has a bunch of special features.  Probably my favorite are star Michael Sopkiw’s personal photos from his time in Brazil.  The interview is kind of interesting; hearing the story of a guy who had a strange kind of success, but a temporary kind.

You want dinosaurs?  Try a different movie, buddy.

Terror of Mechagodzilla: “Your heart is frozen and dry.  Who’d love a cyborg?”  One of the better late Godzilla films, it’s got some pretty good storytelling and cool creature effects.  I love these movies.  And I’m not normally a fan of Japanese film.  Aliens, cyborgs, peaceful monsters, electrocutions.  Oh, yeah.  It’s interesting that Godzilla doesn’t show up for 50ish minutes in this movie (and it’s a great entrance).  There’s other stuff going on, and the giant sea monster Titanosaurus blows some stuff up (or over, anyway).

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Beginning of the End:  “Women on the verge of an atomic breakdown.”  This dreadful bit of 50s Atomic Horror is full of Burt I. Gordon awfulness.  But with Mike and the Bots along for the ride, it’s a fun bit of wackiness.  They’re pretty on with this movie, cutting it up pretty hard.  And the grim views into the private life of Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank will strike terror into the stoutest heart.

Sound of Horror:  “She’s only an amateur.  And a woman.”  This movie teaches a few lessons.  Don’t go to Greece and blow up Neanderthal burial mountains.  Especially if those Neanderthals date all the way back to the Siege of Troy!  If you like seeing old sweaty dudes dig holes in a cave, this is the movie for you.  There is actually some potential here, but it’s sabotaged by profound technical failures.  It’s shot poorly, and the audio and dubbed voices make it feel extra crappy.  There’s a taste of the weird tale and the classic monster movie.  But sadly, this is no classic.  Check out young Ingrid Pitt as the go-go dancing hanger-on.

Tosca:  “My love nest has been defiled!”  Puccini’s opera gets a cinematic adaptation in this 1976 version.  Placido Domingo with his Riker beard is pretty awesome.  But I was quickly reminded of something I’ve said many times.  I just don’t dig Italian opera.  German?  Sure.  Italian…Meh.  As far as the story goes, I think the lesson learned here is don’t hook up with a crazy, jealous bitch.  Tosca is a paranoid harpy who continually suspects poor Mario of every kind of infidelity with little or no cause beyond her own self-obsessed insecurity.  I’m a loyal guy, but two hours of this woman’s flip-flopping emotions, accusations, and suspicions would probably drive me into the arms of another woman…Or a monastery.  Though she eventually becomes less awful as their situation grows more terrible.  And the end is pretty badass.

P.J. Harvey on Tour -Please Leave Quietly:  P.J. Harvey is probably my favorite currently active musical act.  She’s frequently on my computer’s rotation, her CDs often near the top of the pile.  Hers was also the first real concert I ever attended (what can I say, I lived in Maine for 31 years and 38 Special didn’t do anything for me).  So when she put out a live DVD, of course I picked it up.  Sadly, it’s just not what I wanted at all.  It’s super disjointed and looks thrown together.  The music sounds good, but it’s not shot at a single event.  Even within a single song there is footage from several different performances.  It just feels weird and fake.  Parts of various performances are really good, but I really, really don’t like the format.  Also, her guitarist who keeps twitching and falling about is annoying as hell.

Master of the Flying Guillotine:  Jimmy Wang Yu is the One Armed Boxer, and he’s got old man assassin problems.  A blind old dude, with a long white beard has a wacky head chopping weapon, is looking to trim some martial artists… a bit off the top.  A fighting contest, a bunch of foreign fighters, and some fantastically weird music all crank up the kung fu chop-socky.  Some pretty good fights and some unintentionally hysterical dubbing.  Great stuff.

Lost Horizon:  I like this quiet and thoughtful, almost wistful movie about a man’s hope for a better world.  After fleeing violent conflict, a diplomat and a ragtag group of refugees crash in the mountains of central Asia.  From there, a dangerous journey through the snow takes the group to a hidden land of peace and tranquility.  But not everyone wants peace.  Not everyone is ready or willing to be happy.  Not everyone can cast off the trappings of their former life.  The movie is like a dream, a meditation on paradise, and a contemplation of life and desire.  It’s a fascinating classic, which was not well received in its day, and there’s no wonder.  Not an action movie, but a grand spiritual journey.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:  “Goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them.”  I know this is an unpopular opinion, but this is probably my least favorite of all the Indiana Jones films.  Don’t get me wrong, that still puts it up there.  It’s pretty great.  But it has some major problems.  The entire opening, featuring young Indiana, is bloody awful.  It’s too humorous and goofy (what‘s with that fat kid?).  Even the credits kind of suck (and that’s not something I usually notice).  Why is Marcus a bumbling idiot?  And as a friend recently pointed out, it’s lame that all of his trademark quirks (hat, whip, chin scar, snake fear, etc.) all come out of one single event.  Plus there is too much of an attempt to remake the first film.  Another Judeo-Christian artifact, more Nazis, a very similar plot progression.  The differences are what make it work, in spite of the problems.  The relationship with his father and the more fatale femme.  And the world hopping is back, which is something I want in this kind of film.

The Mummy:  I have such mixed feelings about this movie.  I was pretty jazzed to see it when it first came out, but was seriously disappointed upon watching.  It still feels like they were trying to do too many things, go in too many directions, and thus failed at all.  It’s not funny enough to be a comedy, not scary enough to be a horror movie, and not exciting enough to be an action movie.  But over the years, I’ve come to enjoy it as a light bit of pulpy fun (not good, but fun).  Of course, the Egyptian history nerd in me screams out at how much they bungle things.  But that happens every time ancient Egypt is used (10 Commandments, I’m looking at you!).  This movie did finally give me a name for a character archetype.  The Beni Character is that guy who shows up in a story only because the writer needs someone to create conflict.  Pay attention to Beni (Kevin J. O’Connor) in this.  He is directly responsible for every single bad thing that happens.  And, if someone just put a bullet in him the first time he did something that clearly warranted immediate execution (At the ten minute mark, by the way.  Though an argument could be made for eight minutes, I would vote for a severe beating, not death, for that act.) then everything would have turned out fine.  The Beni character is all too common these days, especially in the realm of horror, where nearly every horror movie (and most science fiction) relies purely on at least one character being as stupid as humanly possible in order to move the plot along (see: any ghost movie, Drag Me to Hell, Prometheus, Sunshine, etc.).  It also serves as a reminder that while CGI can do amazing things, it shouldn’t be a star unto itself.  Anyhow, I think this was the movie where I first really noticed Rachel Weisz.  And for that, it deserves a certain place in my movie lover’s heart.

    I read B.P.R.D. volume 3.  That continues to be an excellent series, and I can’t wait to read the next volume, which should be out in a little over a month.  And first volume of the New 52 Aquaman, which was a heck of a lot of fun.

    And in the wake of the Hellboy reading of last week, I finally sat down to the Library Edition volume 5, as well as the finishing part of that story, the trade paperback The Storm and the Fury.  Kept chugging along and read the short story anthology The Bride of Hell.

    After the extremely fun Aquaman: The Trench, I figured what the heck, and read that series’ issue 0.  It’s pretty much just a glossed over origin story.  Not much actual depth, but at least it gives you a few facts of his beginnings.

    Issue 63 of Futurama was pretty funny.  It got a couple good chuckles out of me, actually.  They do a good job of capturing the characters from the show.  You can almost hear the voice actors as you read.  There’s certainly nothing of consequence going on.  But it’s perfectly enjoyable silliness.

    Issue 0 of Batman The Dark Knight is a reminder of how familiar Bruce Wayne’s origins are at this point, and how it might be time to stop revisiting it.  Everything here is stuff you’ve seen before, from a slightly different angle.  Not really an interesting one.

-Matt