The Passing of Leonard Nimoy

Though not surprised (he had been experiencing serious health issues for some time), I was still saddened to hear of the passing of Leonard Nimoy today, at the age of 83.  Watching Star Trek is among my earliest and fondest of memories.  The morality of the show was key to my development as a human, and Nimoy will always be a part of that.  He will be missed.  

-Matt

Good Bye, Richard Matheson...

Like a lot of genre fanboys my age, I first encountered the work of Richard Matheson through the citations of Stephen King.  And once you read I Am Legend it's impossible to digest books like 'Salem's Lot without recognizing the foundation laid by the true master of suburban terror.  However, Richard Matheson is not some dusty "Father of Modern Horror" best left acknowledged rather than consumed.  Last night, after getting word via Twitter that he had passed at the age of 87, I immediately went to the local bookshop to snatch a copy of his short fiction.  As I munched over a fast food dinner I read the terse tension of "Duel."  It's a terrific bit of boogyman writing - a simple act from a careless mind leads to a torturous assault on the everyman.  Matheson took us out of the far off, exotic hoodoo and brought the beasts to our doorstep - Stephen King ran with it, but even he couldn't muster the power and fear of the all-time-great apocalypse novel.  The Stand struggles to match the weight and intensity of what Matheson did in just 160 pages.

Published in 1954, I Am Legend is the story of The Last Man on Earth, Robert Neville.  Each day he raids the shops & homes of Los Angeles researching what caused the end of man, and possibly what could save it.  At night he retreats to his fortified bunker as the rest of humanity has been transformed into vampiric scavengers.  These are not the vein sadsack Draculas of Bram Stoker or Anne Rice.  These are beasts.  Monsters.  Real horrors that taunt him from the streets, aching to snap their fangs into his neck and complete the consumption of the earth.  I Am Legend is a dystopian downer with bursts of terrorizing siege action, and it climaxes with a fantastic Twilight Zoney philosophical twist that's all in the title.  It's astonishing how effective it is with its scares, and walloping with its heartbreak - all under 200 pages, something doorstop bestsellers often fail to grasp.  And, yeah,  I Am Legend is the perfect book for the big screen...

The book has been adapted three times already, but they keep screwing it up!!!!  God Damn Hollywood, how can you possibly be this inept when the source material is so simplistically brilliant?!?!  In 1964, Vincent Price certainly grasped the doom & gloom of being The Last Man on Earth, but his Dr. Morgan stumbles around a shanty set, beating upon faceless vampires without ever scratching the mythic dread of the conclusion.  1971's The Omega Man barely resembles the source material, but Charlton Heston's turtle neck sex machine is sooo dang charming even when he's swimming the deep end of crazy town.  The Omega Man is a rather striking bit of disco cheese that elevates itself into earnest exploitation through performance and audacity.  And easily my favorite of the three adaptations.  Will Smith's 2007 extravaganza gets the title right, but squanders it all in the last act.  For most of the film I was flabbergasted by its faithfulness to the novel, and Smith's relationship with the dog is one of the sweetest & saddest representations of man's best friend I've encountered in cinema.  The fact that they ignore the genius of the novel's climax shows that the producers either didn't have the balls to follow through or were utterly dense to its impact.  We finally get to hear "I Am Legend" uttered on the big screen and it's laughable.  Do I dare ask for a fourth adaptation?  Give it ten years.  I sometimes have fantasies of a low budget (what's that $50,000,000 these days) version directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt.  Can't you just see a fifty year old Pitt laying the undead to waste?!?!  Forget Word War Z sir, this is where you should be exploring the human condition through the filter of genre.

Of course, the general consensus is that if you're looking for the great I Am Legend cinematic experience than you look towards George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.  For a low budget filmmaker with just enough jingle jangle in his pocket, it's easy to see the appeal of I Am Legend as the base for a screenplay.  He had access to a house and a group of wannabe actors.  A shelter from an outside force.  A siege film.  Plague.  Damn scary.  The modern zombie certainly owes more to Matheson's vampires than the haitian undead seen on screen before 1968.  We currently live in a walking dead world where every third horror film seems to involve a brain eater, and it's impossible to imagine the current state of the genre (for better or worse) without Romero's zombies, and in turn without Richard Matheson.

As you're growing up geek, even if you skip past Stephen King, George Romero, & I Am Legend, you're eventually going to stumble upon Rod Serling's Twilight Zone.  Richard Matheson wrote 16 episodes of the anthology series, most of which spawned from his own short stories.  His most famous episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is a staple in this household, and we watch it every year around Shat Attack.  William Shatner's recovering madman boards a plane and comes face-to-face with a furry gremlin.  It's dated, goofy, melodramatic, and George Miller's big screen version is certainly more successful.  But Shatner sells the hell outta his psychosis and it's rather painful to witness the rejection from his spouse - an element missing from Lithgow's nightmare.  Other Matheson highlights from the series are Lee Marvin's "Steel" (also the basis for Hugh Jackman's Real Steel), Agnes Moorehead's teeny tiny "Invaders," the time traveling "Last Flight," and that other Shatner tale "Nick of Time."

Matheson wrote one Star Trek episode, "The Enemy Within."  I don't see it get a lot love these days on the internet (where all geek matters are settled, right?), but as a Shatner obsessive it is essential viewing.  A transporter accident splits Captain James T Kirk into two personalities.  One good, honorable, and a little meek.  The other one bad, alcoholic, rapey, and filled with screams.  The good Captain Kirk tries to coax the bad Captain Kirk back into the transporter room, but in the end it comes down to some nasty Kirk on Kirk violence.  It might not be a significant moment in genre television - it's certainly no Twilight Zone - but I couldn't write this post without giving it a little love.

A couple of years ago, I read a great interview with Richard Matheson in the pages of Fangoria.  In it he bemoaned the various adaptations of his work (the I Am Legends, Richard Kelly's underrated The Box, A Stir of Echoes), but when the interviewer reminded Matheson of his own liberal adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe for Roger Corman, the novelist did some serious backpedaling.  I was a little bummed.  Not just because Matheson seemed to have disdain for what others had done to his work (I suppose that's only natural), but mostly he seemed to have little enthusiasm for those colorful Vincent Price adventures.  Sure, they're working on the flimsiest of skeletons, but The House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, & The Raven are whole heaps of fun and some of the most joyful work to come from Vincent Price.  Well...in Usher, Price is at his most dour, but The Raven is an absolute lark with its Boris Karloff wizard battle and animal transformation hijinks.  They might not have been Matheson's proudest moments or the most influential, but they certainly helped Roger Corman take claim of his B Movie Empire.  It's possible that if The House of Usher had bombed then Corman would have faded into obscurity and the cinematic landscape would be a far blander arena.  No Matheson = No Corman = No Scorsese, Coppola, Demme, Dante, etc.  Ok, that's extreme and unreasonable...maybe...

Finally, I can't talk about Richard Matheson without mentioning the loony monstrosity of Jaws 3D.  It has to be one of the clumsiest and lamest sequels ever crafted, and at least some of it came for the pen of Matheson (at least two other writers worked on the script).  I've enjoyed the film since I was a wee lad; possibly only a 4 year old could find the merits of this dreck, and I'm sure most of my youthful glee came from the Sea World setting.  Having recently partaken in a Fish & Chips Alamo Drafthouse screening, I am still a firm believer in its horridness but I can't shake the giddiness of long ago.  And I can't help but take sick glee from the fact that Matheson contributed to the bastardization of Steven Spielberg's first blockbuster after having jumpstarted Spielberg's career with the television movie Duel.  It's a small world, and Hollywood is even smaller and delightfully incestuous.

This has all just been a long winded way of thanking Richard Matheson.  His work has been with me for nearly 20 years, and I will continue to revisit his worlds for the rest of my life.  And I look forward to experiencing the future stories of those standing on his shoulders.  The next Kings, Romeros, Spielbergs. 

--Brad

A Fistful of Harryhausen! (Matt’s Picks)

    Ray Harryhausen, along with Frank Frazetta, were the interior designers of my imagination.  My dreams were built of bricks made from their images.  I can’t say that I was surprised to hear of the death of Harryhausen; as I had been surprised about ten years ago to discover that he was still alive.  Like Frazetta, he went dark in the 80s, and until the advent of the internet (and DVD special features), I had to go on rumor and innuendo.  With his absence, I assumed death.  I am glad that both men lived long enough to see their work appreciated and available to new generations of awestruck children.  Stop motion animation has a magic, something unreal, yet undoubtedly physical.  And he was a master of that magic, creating some of the coolest monsters to ever fight superimposed people.  From skeleton warriors and dragons to dinosaurs and aliens, the man knew his creatures.  Not content to tape fins on a lizard (as so many did), he made monsters that leapt off the screen to terrify and delight.  He died this week at the age of 92.  He will be missed.  But his legacy lives on.  What follows are a few of my favorite Harryhausen creations.

5.  The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was one of his earlier films, written by his friend Ray Bradbury.  It’s also one of the earliest monster movies I remember watching (along with The Creature from the Black Lagoon) which fostered in me a life-long love of monsters and monster movies.  It’s a great design and has a more ‘realistic’ feel than many big lizards from movies of that era, being more lively, not plodding like most.

4.  The Selenites from H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon are a great menacing alien, big heads, big eyes, and devious plans.  Living in crystal caves on the Moon has no doubt made them rather irritable, and humans showing up and messing with their giant caterpillar cattle doesn’t help.  Plus, they probably want our women.

3.  The 7th Voyage of Sinbad features a bunch of awesome creatures, but the one I love the most has to be the Cyclops.  Some combination of traditional depiction, reptile skin, and a horn, along with Harryhausen’s brand of magic made a creature menacing and cool, without the usual dopiness one gets with the creatures.

2.  Probably the most famous sequence in Harryhausen’s amazing repertoire, the animated skeleton battle in Jason and the Argonauts is simply one of the coolest moments in adventure film ever conceived.  Just a great scene, and so inspirational for future special effects movies.

1.  The Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth is one of the coolest monsters ever conceived.  It’s semi-humanoid, but reptilian and strange.  And yet, somehow, like King Kong before, he becomes the sympathetic figure, trapped by the hatreds and violence of Man.

-Matt

A Fistful of Ebert! (Brad's Picks)

Like most film freaks out there on Internetland, Siskel & Ebert At The Movies was essential to my growth as a film fan.  I still remember the first episode I ever watched - Fletch Lives/Leviathan/Police Academy 6.  In 1989 I was ten years old and obsessed with the Police Academy series.  I was infuriated at the idea that these two Critics didn't understand the comic talents of Lasard & Company.  Didn't they understand that Michael Winslow made funny sounds with his mouth!?!?  That Bubba Smith was really tall and mean looking but actually a sweetheart!?!?  No, they did not.  And I've always been the kinda fanboy that gets hurt when someone doesn't love something the way I do.  Just ask my wife after we watched The Terminator or Matt when he casually "meh"ed Matt Fraction's Hawkeye comic book earlier this week.  However, despite my frustration with their complete misunderstanding of Police Academy 6, I continued to watch At The Movies throughout my childhood.

In 1999 after Gene Siskel died, my enthusiasm for At The Movies dwindled.  Ebert partnered with various folks like Elvis Mitchell, Harry Knowles, and eventually Richard Roeper.  But the Two Thumbs magic was gone.  Ebert & Roeper never quite seemed to have that genuine banter, that rivalry/friendship that brought depth to the review show.  So I stopped watching, but followed Ebert online.

Thyroid cancer might have forced Ebert off the air, but he continued to strive via his website and twitter feed.  He gifted me more film knowledge in the last five years than in the entire run of At The Movies.  His Great Movies column is absolutely invaluable to cinephiles, and his twitter feed was a fantastic source of quotes and articles.  He never hid from the public, and he certainly wasn't shy about his appearance.  As he said on Sunday Morning "Don't Make It Your Problem."



It was a rare experience when I agreed with a Roger Ebert review, but his passion for cinema was so obviously joyous that even when he Hated, Hated, Hated a movie you loved and you were shouting empty screams at his An American Werewolf In London review, you couldn't help but appreciate or admire his words.  Siskel & Ebert were the first legitimatized fanboys.  Ebert proved that you could win a Pulitzer simply by loving film hard enough.  They're what all us faceless bloggers strive to become, but will no doubt never be.   Today, I urge you to visit RogerEbert.com.  He may have built a cadre of writers around him, but he was plugging away till the very end.  His last film review, The Host.  Probably not the ideal film to go out on, but the man was cranking out the opinions until the very end.   That's truly awesome, and inspiring.

(UPDATED:  Roger Ebert's Final Film Review was actually for Terrence Malick's upcoming To The Wonder.  Read it here.)

If you haven't figured it out already, here are five more reasons why Roger Ebert is a cinematic icon and a total badass.  R.I.P. sir.

5.  Beyond the Valley of the Dolls:  Ebert was no snoot.  He could drone on and on about Truffaut or spend days giving a shot by shot analysis of Vertigo.  But he is also the man who penned some of the sultriest and bustiest films of Russ Meyer.  And Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is the best of the bunch.  Imagine Josie & The Pussycats but sexed to the extreme and psychedelic to the point of psychotic.  The acting is laughable, the plot utterly mondo, but the cleavage is plunging and the narrative is nearly as eye-popping.  Pure, cheezy gold.  A must stop on the map of exploitation.

4.  His DVD Commentary Tracks:  One of my greatest dork disappointments will forever be that I never had the opportunity to attend Ebertfest.  For the past 15 years, Roger Ebert hosted a film festival in Champagne, Illinois devoted to the great works of cinematic art.  He screened classic films like Days of Heaven alongside modern notables like Take Shelter.  Q&As that probably amounted to a solid block of film class.  It might be an experience most of us will never know, but what we do have at our fingertips are several excellent commentary tracks that Ebert recorded over the years.  Obvious classics like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, & Floating Weeds but also bizarre gems like Crumb, Dark City, and his own Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  Each track offers intelligent insight along with that joyous Ebert spirit.  Seek 'em out.

3.  Siskel & Ebert on Batman - Mask of the Phantasm:  Ok, how cool is this.  Shortly after the release of Batman Forever, Gene Siskel dipped into his Laserdisc collection to review Mask of the Phantasm, the animated Batman film they didn't even bother with upon its initial theatrical run.  If you've been reading this blog for a while you know that we're obsessed with Bruce Timm's animated series.  It's easily the best incarnation of Batman (outside of the comics) that the mass public has been granted so far.  And it is so geeky cool to see Gene & Roger award it the coveted Two Thumbs Up.  Even if they don't understand that Mark Hamill's Joker is the only Joker.  Screw Jack Nicholson.

2.  The Great Movies:  When I first heard of Ebert's passing I went running to my bookshelves.  This is the best book out there if you want to take full pleasure in the writing of Roger Ebert.  However, I could not find it on my shelves or in the piles of books that scar my apartment's terrain.  I had no choice, off to the bookstore I went and snagged another paperback copy.  Started as a column for the Chicago Sun Times in 1997, Ebert was becoming frustrated with some of his students' aversion to Black & White cinema as well as their complete lack of knowledge concerning great auteurs like Bunuel, Bresson, & Ozu (confession time, I'm one of those philistines who's never seen an Ozu flick).  The Great Movies is Ebert's ultimate celebration of cinema.  As I look at its table of contents, I see dozens of films I have yet to consume.  Lately, I've been trying to complete the gaps in my movie knowledge, but Ebert's passing has motivated me to get serious.  Starting last night with 2001 - A Space Odyssey, I'm making it my mission statement to work through the entirety of this book.  I'll read the review, watch the movie, get educated.  It's going to take a while (years probably if I toss in Parts II & III of Ebert's series) but I'm gonna get it done.  Next up, The 400 Blows.

1.  Ebert Picks Dark City as his Favorite Film of 1998:  Each year, when the Top 10 Films start to sprinkle across the media landscape, you see a critical trend.  Tree Of Life, There Will Be Blood, The Social Network.  If you follow along you know what's coming.  However, in 1998 you had no idea that Ebert would pick Alex Proyas's Dark City as his Number One Film.  I remember being rocked by that choice.  Based on his review I knew he had loved the film.   But never in a million years would I have thought a big time Critic would choose a science-fiction noir as the year's best film.  That's the kinda choice freakshow bloggers like myself pick, not respectable media types.  And in choosing Dark City as his favorite film of 98, Roger Ebert cemented himself as one of the geeks.  Go ahead, hate on An American Werewolf in London.  Balk at the gory simplicity of Phantasm II.  Ebert was not a hoity toity.  He reveled in the same bosoms as Russ Meyer.  And he loved creepy ass fedora aliens.  One of us, one of us...

And for the curious, Roger Ebert recently updated his Top 10 All Time Favorite Films to include Terrence Malick's Tree of Life.  (In Alphabetical Order) Aguirre - Wrath of God, Apocalypse Now, Citizen Kane, La Dolce Vita, The General, Raging Bull, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, Tokyo Story, The Tree of Life, Vertigo.

--Brad

Book Review: Mortality

    How does one review a book like this?  Christopher Hitchens explores encroaching death with his usual brutal honesty and wit.  Of course, he can’t help but take some jabs at his usual targets.  He tries to remain open and unsentimental.  Mostly, he succeeds.  But throughout, you can sense his frustration, he anger, his sadness and his disappointment.  He still had living to do.  But then, don't we all.

    There are moments of heartening joy, fond memories of a life well lived, and the warmth of loving friends and family.  But there is also the futility, the brutal poking and prodding of well meaning healers, and crushing petering out of a literary titan’s life.

    The forward by Graydon Carter sets the stage, but the afterward by his widow Carol is heartbreaking.  Hitch was one of those people others seem to orbit around, a gravity well that draws in diverse bodies, each with their own strengths.  His writing was smart without being pedantic, challenging and provocative, but charming.  His death leaves a vacuum.

Mortality
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher:  Twelve
ISBN:  978-1-4555-0275-2

-Matt

The Passing of Neil Armstrong

    It’s no secret that space exploration is very important to me, so the death of a champion, not for nation but for Humanity, saddens me.  However, I think not of his death, but his achievements on your and my behalf.  And the light he held should guide us forward.  Showing in the strongest possible way (for his time) that humanity is more than a simple ape, more than hand-molded mud, more than a simple collection of chemistry.  We, as a species, have harnessed fire, shaped earth, produced Beethoven, and thanks in large part to Armstrong, stood on the surface of another world.  Dreamers and doers, we struggle against our biology, to rise above our primitive fears, face, understand, and glory in the wonder of reality.

    For a time, Neil Armstrong carried the torch of human progress.  He carried our hopes and our dreams, and for just a moment, we were all up there with him.  From our ignoble, primordial beginnings to the surface of the Moon, we made our mark and he was our pen.  It falls to every one of us to make sure that his efforts, and those of all our ancestors, have not been without cause.  We must rise up.  We must not stand on the beach when the ocean is in front of us.

    The man will be missed, but his achievements will remain.  And his spirit of adventure and wonder will continue with us to the stars.

-Matt

The Passing of Mary Tamm

    This last couple years have been pretty brutal for fans of classic Doctor Who.  So many beloved actors and actresses have passed, many still painfully young.  And now another is added to that list.

    Mary Tamm played the first Romana, during the Key to Time mega-arc.  The haughty, competent Time Lord served as a worthy foil for the often frumpy and cantankerous Doctor.  Though only on the show for a season, she certainly left an impression.  And she had a lengthy career outside of the venerable science fiction series.

    If you haven’t watched the Key to Time, do so.  Great stuff.

-Matt

Dork Hero: Ernest Borgnine

Another Dork Hero has past.  I grew up loving Ernest Borgnine in Escape From New York and The Wild Bunch, but I don't think I truly appreciated him until I saw a couple of films in quick succession.  Emperor of the North pits Borgnine's railway dick against Lee Marvin's hobo and their axe wielding climactic clash is the stuff of legend.  In The Devil's Rain he outchews William Shatner's scenery and manages to be goofy as hell, but pretty darn scary as well.  The combo punch of these strange flicks made me a lifelong fan.

And yeah, this Magnet rests on my fridge this very second--

--Brad

The Passing of Ray Bradbury

Painting by Les Edwards

Ray Bradbury has died.  Age 91.  A long life that left an undeniable mark upon literature and media.  Growing up obsessed with science-fiction and horror, Ray Bradbury was one of my first genre loves.  Getting a hold of The October Country and The Martian Chronicles at the age of 12 or 13 was essential in my development of the Dork that writes for this blog today.  Stories like "The Emissary" and "The Veldt" still haunt me and as a budding wannabe writer it was easy to see his influence upon other author obsessions like Stephen King.

And then there's Something Wicked This Way Comes.  A perfect novel.  Quick wham bam reading.  It's at once sweet and nostalgic/warm and fuzzy...and then it turns dark, and scary as a nightmare.  Also a really fantastic film starring the shadowy Jonathan Pryce and the good-hearted Jason Robards.  A real must, if you haven't seen it already.

In the brief time I taught Middle School English & Creative Writing, Ray Bradbury was one of four authors I chose to force feed to my students (the other three were Harlan Ellison, Ernest Hemingway, and Ambrose Bierce).   One of my proudest moments of that oh-so-brief career was when one of my students asked to keep my copy of the Ray Bradbury Omnibus that I taught from, complete with highlights, notes, doodles, and underlines.  I was so surprised by his desire to continue down the Martian landscape that I just handed the book over, and I like to think that that student, a college graduate by this point (damn, that makes me feel real frickin' old) is still tearing through the pages of that big beast of a book.

--Brad

Moebius Has Left Us...

Artist Jean Giraud aka Moebius has died.  He was 72 years old.  And he created some of the most stunning images of the medium and worked on the design work for two of my favorite genre films:  Alien & Tron.  I first became aware of his work through my teenage years obsession with Randy Bowen sculptures; I snatched up an Arzach just cuz it was a Bowen bust and that led me to the weird-o Arzach comics and those lead me to the even weirder Blueberry Westerns of Moebius.  And those Blueberrys brought me to his collaborations with Alejandro Jodorowsky which led me to the Dune movie that never was and to the bonkers cinema of El Topo!  It was a lot to take for my tiny teenage brain and it's a trip I hope a whole lotta other kids will take in the future.

--Brad