Dork Art: Mondo in 2014

I acquired only four prints from Mondo in 2013.  I magically won Tyler Stout's Shaun of the Dead at The Alamo screening of the Cornetto Trilogy.  I forked over big bucks at Comic Con for Drew Struzan's Dark Tower.  I was one of thousands who ordered the timed edition Martin Ansin's Man of Steel.  And I clicked at the right second for Francesco Francavilla's Black Beetle.  It's an old story, but eight years ago I could snag a Dirty Dozen or Bad Lieutenant poster months after release.  These days if you're not one of the lucky few to click the link at the right second then you're out of luck.  Such manufactured limited editions have caused quite a bit of backlash.  I get it.  I want the William Stout King Kong as much as you do, and I can't afford to pay the ebay prices.  It's the nature of the beast.  But I'm not gonna crap on these guys.  I love their work.  And when Hollywood chooses cheap high school photoshop over illustration 9 times outta 10 then I'll choose the hipster option every time.

If we're judging them on their first three prints of the year, then 2014 is going to prove hotter than ever for Justin Ishmael and his Mondo Team.  Released just yesterday, Rockin Jelly Bean's Kill Bill print went for $55 and now sells for $140 (average) on ebay.  Dave Rapoza's Clash of the Titans print will currently set you back $74.  But the real story is Francesco Francavilla's Clash of the Titans = $165.  Obviously, we're massive Harryhausen fans here at ITMOD, but we're not the types to bow down to Titans.  In fact, if you twisted our arms Matt & I would admit a fondness for the remake and it's God War sequel.  That being said, the Francavilla print is absolutely gorgeous, and the idea of him tackling other Harryhausen films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad or - gulp - Mysterious Island brings butterflies to my stomach.  Francavilla is a helluva get for Mondo and together they slayed 2013.  Can't wait to see what the two cook up in the New Year.

--Brad

A Fistful of Titans! (Brad's Picks)

Yes!  I can not express how happy it is to report my enthusiasm for Guillermo Del Toro's latest genre smackdown, Pacific Rim.  It's not a flawless masterpiece (save those squees for The Devil's Backbone, Blade 2, & Pan's Labyrinth), but it is a joyous celebration of all things titanic - be that of the Harryhausen or Honda variety - and it's the Blockbuster this Summer Season so desperately needs.  Of course, Pacific Rim begs ITMOD to question, what are our favorite cinematic titans?

5.  Godzilla (Gojira):  Look, I love Godzilla.  And it feels really weird to drop him at the bottom of my Titan list.  But if I'm going to be honest with myself, I really only love the original film and the comic book incarnations.  I have not experienced the pleathora of rubber suit flicks like I should have as a kid.  With Matt's help, I'm going to make up for that now in my 30s.  He's got a slew of films lined up for me, and I'm hoping that if I were to put this list together next year, the big lizard will appear much higher on the chart.

4.  Chev Chellios (Crank 2 - High Voltage):  I don't know if you guys have been paying attention, but ITMOD holds Crank 2 in very high regard.  It's easily one of my Top 5 films of the last ten years; mostly due to its complete insanity, highlighted twenty minutes into the movie when Statham suddenly transforms into a monstrous rubbery Kaiju.  This has to be one of the wildest & whackiest moments in movies - a genuine Need-To-See-It-To-Believe-It.

3.  The Rancor (Star Wars - Return of the Jedi):  The Rancor is the beginning of my own fascination with stop-motion beasties.  Before I knew the names of Ray Harryhausen or Willis O'Brien, I knew the terror of this piggy-munching grotesque.  I look back at Return of the Jedi & it's easily my least favorite of the original trilogy, but Jabba's Palace is still a magnificent wonderland of creatures & curiosities, and the Rancor is it's ultimate treasure.

2.  Galactus (Fantastic Four - Rise of the Silver Surfer):  This is a cheat.  The Galactus seen in the Fantastic Four sequel is a lame ass cloud of insects.  BUT!  That lame ass cloud of insects is based on one of comics greatest behemoths.  Behold, The World Eater!  In 1966, when Jack Kirby hit a creative wall of stereotypes, he turned to the Bible for inspiration and crafted a supreme being worthy of those Old Testament threat levels.  Galactus cares not for our human problems, he just hungers, and our pitiful ant hill will satiate him until he hits the next planet on the buffet line.

1.  King Kong:  All beasts go back to King Kong eventually.  The Eighth Wonder of the World is a scary ass monster that goes toe-to-toe with T-Rexes and Pterodactyls, but eventually reveals the lovelorn soul in all of us.  Willis O'Brien brought life to the tiny puppet, and birthed a generation of fanboys that would eventually go on to create Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Pacific Rim.  But not just an icon; eighty years later and the film still packs an emotional wallop that sends this geek to tears every time.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (5/12/13-5/18/13)

    Busy week, but not much nerdy stuff going on.  I did read Superman: Red Son, which was pretty good.  It’s the best Superman thing I’ve read, for sure.  And then on Friday night, we met for the book club again.  This month’s book was The Massive, which is apparently an indie darling, but most of us found lacking in substance.  However, one brave voice defended the book for its potential.  And I have to agree, it has potential.  I just have a feeling it won’t be living up.

Secret Files of the Inquisition:  This four part series based on the Inquisition files released a while back by the Vatican features good narration and some interesting interviews, as well as nice looking dramatizations.  But it feels very surface.  The first episode covers the end of the Cathars.  Watching it, you can’t help but feel for the rebellious sect, but this is largely because their weirdass dogma is mostly ignored (though their mostly pacifist beliefs made it preferable to the violent lunacy of the Church).  The second episode deals with the Spanish Jews who had either chosen to convert or been force-converted to Catholicism, and their treatment at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition.  Again, interesting and important issues are glossed over.  With the third episode, we see the rise of a zealot pope in Rome, who brought back persecution of Jews in Italy.  And the last episode deals with the final days of the Inquisition, as it is first knocked to the ground by Napoleon, then finally brought down by its own system of kidnapping and intimidation that didn’t sit well with the modernizing world.  Overall, the series is OK, with a few interesting glimpses into a few eras of the Inquisition, but its odd mix of the microscopically personal and vaguest of overview means too much is missing.  By focusing on just a few cases from four different locations and times, the series lacked context (with the exception of the final episode, which is probably the best of the bunch).  Also, three out of four specific cases were related to persecution of the Jews, which was certainly a mainstay of the Church, but not the only thing the Inquisition was up to.  A bit of variety in what was covered would have been better.  It feels like the Cathar episode was thrown in there because you can’t really talk about the Inquisition without talking about how and why it was formed.  But otherwise, the series was about anti-Semitism in the Church.  The one thing it does manage to get across fairly well (intentional or not) is the danger posed by religion and state working in conjunction.  Be that the Roman Catholic/Saudi Arabian religion as state, or the Maoist/Stalinist state as religion, the end result is always the same; oppression, degradation, corruption, and villainy of all stripes, guarded by a cloak of official sanction.  Every perversion is justified when done in the name of gods or patriotism, more so if it’s both.

The peasants are revolting.

Star Trek: Insurrection:  Though often disparaged by Trek fans, I think this somewhat light hearted entry is a lot of fun.  Lots of good character exchanges, beautiful space sequences, and a dilemma to solve, as opposed to a big villain to fight.  Of course, there’s still a couple thugs so they can still shoehorn in a fistfight (this is a post Khan Trek film, after all).  One thing I noticed watching it again is how much of a raging bitch Donna Murphy’s character is.  By this point in the franchise, Trek had sadly descended into a near constant barrage of word-salad technobabble.  It started in Next Gen, got worse in DS9, and reached parody levels in Voyager.  There’s WAY too much made-up BS vocabulary (the phased tachyon inverter couplings must be reversed so that the particle beam emitter doesn’t have a malfunction in its ionic coils).  The message is pretty darned heavy handed, but that’s not surprise from Trek (remember the whales?).  Still, this and First Contact are well done, nice looking films, worthy of the Next Gen cast and crew.  They are, unfortunately, the only two.  This is the closest thing the Next Gen crew got to a Star Trek IV.  If I could go back in time and work my magic, First Contact would have been the first Next Gen movie (skip that craptacular Generations), followed by a very dark, Mirror Universe type story (the crew makes it back to their own time after First Contact, but something ain’t right), and then cap it off with something more like this, a dilemma movie with a lighter tone.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger:  “For him I would risk my life.  For you, I would give it.”  This third outing is the weakest of the lot, for sure.  Part of the problem is Patrick Wayne, who is horribly miscast as the titular character.  Jane Seymour is a stone fox.  That’s just science.  And the Ray Harryhausen creatures are typically cool.  Plus, it has another classic Doctor, Patrick Troughton as a mad hermit-wizard.  But it could really use some John Phillip Law.  Wayne is so danged deadpan.  Tyrone Powers’ daughter…she’s an uh, actress and whatnot, I guess.  But what’s up with her romance with the baboon?  The story is pretty good, with lots more crazy jumbling of myth and magic, though the production feels a bit cheaper than those previous.  There’s still plenty to like, but it’s missing something.

G-Men:  “He’s a darn good lawyer.”  James Cagney is an honest lawyer in a crooked town.  When his buddy gets whacked in the line of duty, he decides to take up the FBI mantle and take down crime.  The Yoda-like crime boss who paid Cagney’s way through law school is kinda genius.  James Cagney is all smiles and smarm, but he’s charming as the devil and cool as Joe Camel.  And big shootout near the end is crazy violent.  Great lighting and lots of bullets flying.  Even the gun molls get in on the action.

Expo: Magic in the White City:  This documentary about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair feels like a brief traveler’s highlight guide.  It features a great number of fascinating photographs and historic tidbits.  This would make a good companion to Devil in the White City, which dealt more with the ‘how it happened’ as opposed to this film’s ‘what happened.’  Gene Wilder’s narration is a touch surreal, but effective, none the less.  For a look at a fascinating and weird event in American history, this is a good one.  And I would certainly recommend reading Devil in the White City if you’re interested in what you see.

Star Trek- Into Darkness:  Well, that sucked.  If my ass were a cannon, I would have shat my heart upon it.  Look, I really, really liked Abrams’ Star Trek.  I did.  It was fun, exciting, and an interesting way to re-launch the franchise.  This film squanders everything.  After basically remaking Wrath of Khan in 2009 (like every Trek film other than The Voyage Home has done since Wrath of Khan), they actually straight-up remade Wrath of Khan, only stupid.  That’s it.  It’s Wrath of Khan.  Only f%$#ing terrible.  Every emotion is false.  Every call-back is infuriating.  Instead of taking things in a new direction, it stupidly tries to ape what has already happened, even awkwardly cramming dialog from Wrath of Khan into the mouths of new actors.  WHY!?  And everyone’s plan was completely idiotic.  Totally idiotic.  The Admiral’s plan?  Dumb.  Khan’s plan?  Dumb.  Kirk’s plan?  Dumb.  Spock’s plan?  Dumb.  Carol Marcus’ plan?  That s# %t don’t make no sense at all.  Any of the chemistry between cast members in the first film is totally absent here.  Shoehorning in that blonde bimbo (Marcus), and then having the pointless underwear shot?  Really?  When I heard the title of this film, my interest dropped.  When I saw the trailer, my interest dropped more.  But now, having seen the movie, I was impressed that my low expectations not being low enough, and the fact that the film was bad enough to actually make me angry in spite of not having a lot of built up anticipation.  Is it the worst Trek film?  No.  That honor still goes to Nemesis, with Generations a close second (or Generations with Nemesis a close second, depending on which one I‘ve watched more recently).  But this isn’t too far behind in third.  And it’s missing the one thing that makes all the others (except Generations) watchable, good character interaction.  No shock that the guy behind last year’s monster disappointment Prometheus also helped script this.  It suffers from many of the same failings (read: interesting ideas unexplored, characters acting in the stupidest way possible, retread plotting, etc.).  My hope now is that Abrams and his writing crew leave to mess with Star Wars and leave Trek to someone who gets it.  And maybe we can finally have another movie that isn’t about Kirk punching a bad guy.

Somebody saw the script.

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 5:  “I know what a robot looks like.  I seen Star Wars.”  This final season of the youth-aimed Doctor Who spin-off is short, but strong.  There’s a melancholic feeling watching it, knowing that Elizabeth Sladen was in the final days of her fight with cancer, while she put on her actor face and did the job.  There are only three stories, but each one is pretty good.  Even the slightly awkward attempt to recapture the first season’s ‘fish out of water’ character by adding a new cast member doesn’t get too annoying.  The second story, with Clyde getting cursed is actually unsettling and has a ham-fisted but good social message mixed in.  And the third story works as a finale.  Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith was one of the great companions on Doctor Who, and I love that not only did she come back in the new Who series, but then had a successful show of her own.  And in fact, made Sarah Jane much, much better with age and experience.  It stands as a solid series that I think supplements Who’s universe well, and is a much better and tonally correct spin-off than Torchwood.

The Cry of the Owl:  I checked this film out for two reasons.  Mathilda May is a shockingly beautiful and strange looking woman who has fascinated me since Lifeforce.  And, I am interested in Patricia Highsmith’s work.  This one is pretty danged weird.  The charming and damaged Robert is an oddly chaste peeping tom, who eventually introduces himself to his subject (May) and apologizes for his actions.  She finds him charming and they strike up a relationship.  That’s when things go down hill.  As more characters are added, more layers of weirdness and villainy pile on top of poor Robert.  Then people start dying, and the blame keeps coming back to our damaged peeper.  It’s an interesting movie, and clearly made by a fan of Hitchcock.  But I don’t know that it’s satisfying.  Several things just happen.  And the finale is memorable, but perhaps a touch too vague.  Mathilda May plays one of those crazy women that seem to only exist in movies, the gorgeous madwoman who may be worth the pain.  The femme fatale end of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype spectrum.

The Curious Dr. Humpp:  “Your love means nothing.  Your body already belongs to me and I’ll use it in every way that I want.”  One should not bandy about words like genius, lest they lose their special meaning.  That said, this movie is genius.  There are big mutant henchmen, a talking brain in a jar, ace reporters, Amish barkeeps, and boobs, boobs, boobs.  Almost every line of dialog is a classic, like the Casablanca of stupid.  It’s seriously entertaining.

The Slammin’ Salmon:  “Twins are disgusting, man.”  The Broken Lizard boys take on the restaurant business in this extremely funny little movie.  It’s low budget and somewhat claustrophobic.  But that adds to the comic tension of one crazy night working at a classy Miami restaurant.  A series of awesome cameos, great lines, and awkward situations.  And Michael Clarke Duncan.  He is so flipin’ funny in this movie.  It’s a performance for the ages.  He’s a crazy, stupid, evil monster who haunts all these poor bastards who are working their low-end jobs.  His rambling thought spirals, his butchery of the English language, he violent mood swings.  Glorious.

    That was basically it.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading and I’m revisiting an old movie script I wrote a few years ago.  It won’t stop raining.  So, I haven’t been on my bike in quite a while.  Life goes on.

-Matt

Brad's Week In Dork! (5/5/13-5/11/13)

We're two weeks into the Summer Season and I'm having a blast.  Granted, I'm still a little obsessed with The Alamo Drafthouse DC and their preshow entertainments go a long way into granting me a serious giddy schoolboy glee.  Just 12 hours after seeing Iron Man 3 at The Alamo, The Wife & I were back to chow down on fried pickles and guffaw at Don Cheadle's amazing Captain Planet monstrosity. Immediately upon returning to the household I leapt online to consume the rest of Cheadle's environmental horror shows.  Pure comic gold.

I also tracked down a blu ray copy of Martin Scorsese's New York, New York but just when I thought that movie marathon was back up and running, I fell into some deep boredom with that disastrous movie musical sendup.  I'd like to say I'm ready to dive into Raging Bull next week but with Star Trek Into Darkness on the horizon I've got some serious Trekkie preparation to complete.  On Wednesday, I had Matt over to the household for my first every Peckinpah Party...well, not so much a party when it's just Matt, the little lady, and myself.  But I don't think the joys of Peckinpah warrant a big damn event shindig.  The man is so wonderfully depressing and only a special few can find good times in his doom & gloom entertainment.

Iron Man 3:  I love the Summer Movie Season.  Especially when it's launched with such a bombastic mega movie like the latest from Marvel Studios.  Reading the nasty nitpicky reviews of the flick, I just shake my head.  The last minute arrival of the Iron Army, the voiceover rush job of a climax, blah, blah, blah.  Most of the film's problems are neatly swept under the carpet with a couple throwaway lines, and the film is more concerned with its set pieces than its motivations.  However, this is an exhilarating sequel to The Avengers and manages to add an extra layer of neurosis to Tony Stark.  The rotating cast of buddies to banter allows Shane Black to showoff his wit and the twist in the script might mock a long ago Marvel mainstay, but it's a character worthy of a good mocking.  Iron Man 3 might not be as simply revelatory as the original film (the revelation being "Holy cow that's Iron Man and he's got cool lasers and stuff & Robert Downey Jr is amazingly snarky!") but it evolves the story of Stark's super hero delusion forward while at the same time bringing it home with another "I Am Iron Man" finale.  Solid symmetry in a season most critics are rewarded with Battleship bitchfests.

Hulk:  Ang Lee's HULK is Sophocles meets Marvel. Not spandex cinema. The director reaches back to the Jekyll/Hyde story that inspired Stan Lee and digs even deeper into mythology. It mucks with the character, twisting the origin to fit the needs of the screenplay - Nick Nolte's hobo patriarch growls rage & hate, jealous of his big green son. Eric Bana is reduced mostly to a sulker, but the way his pants popping counterpart tears through the supporting cast is fantastically barbarous. The super hero antics are reduced to a couple of puppy fights, but the real theatrics are saved for the climactic Shakespearean stage war between father & son. And when words aren't enough, a big bite of electricity launches the mondo saga into a conceptual combat grasping for A Space Odyssey. HULK is violently ambitious, not entirely successful, and enthusiastically alienating. Not the film Marvel Studios would dare force upon the world these days, but a flick striving to do something different with the genre.  And the last time Ang Lee really hit my mojo.

All New X-Men #11:  The Secret of the All-New traitor is revealed and it's...not at all shocking thanks to it being casually spoiled in last week's Uncanny X-Men.  So, despite having last month's cliffhanger ruined in another book (by the hands of the same writer no less, thanks Bendis), this is still another solid issue in the time traveling melodrama.  I dig the traitor.  It feels right.  Each of these guys has a reason to be horrified by their future selves, but I think the character in question easily has the most pathetically sad transformation and given his already narcissistic upbringing I can easily see him walking over to bad guy Cyke's side.  The other half of the issue sees Mystique strike out against another Marvel top dog, and it looks like it brings the attention of the Uncanny Avengers; we've got more big guest stars to look forward to next month.

Thanos Rising #2:  I really enjoyed the first book.  Kiddie Thanos learning the joys of anger & killing.  This issue continues his descent into pure evil, but I'm not sure I like the whole serial killer in training bent.  Also, I'm starting to wonder if we even needed this book.  Do we need to know why Thanos is such a bad guy or how he learned the pleasures of murder?  I want the story to march on to Universal Domination and leave the teen angst behind.  Give me Alexander The Great with a side of Space Hitler.

Winter Soldier #18:  Man, it sucks that this is the second to last issue in the series.  It never really had a chance, beginning with Ed Brubaker coasting out of the Marvel Universe but finally finding its feet under the tenure of Jason Latour.  This latest entry is a brooding downer with Bucky learning the origin of Tesla Tarasova, an opportunity Latour uses to express his Warren Zevon love ("That Son of a Bitch, Van Owen!!!") and gain another foothold in my appreciation.  The Winter Soldier has always been the bummer book of marvel - Super Heroics mixed with shame and dread.  Bucky Barnes is probably the saddest character in their bullpen and I kinda get why people aren't buying the book.  But dammit, they should.  Too late though.

Abe Sapien - Dark and Terrible #2:  The second issue still sees Abe on the run from the BPRD, but we're also given a little flashback to explain his flight.  I'm excited to see the fishman on an adventure of self discovery and now that Hellboy's trapped in Hell, it's good to have another dissatisfied agent lurking along the fringes of the Mignolaverse.  Having worked years alongside Mike Mignola, Scott Allie obviously has a deep understanding of these characters but the real star of this book is artist Sebastian Fiumara.  The man knows horror.  He's EC personified and I never want him to leave.

New York, New York:  The film lost me 15 minutes into the runtime. As Scorsese orchestrates a fantastic crane shot across a V-J Day celebration, and Robert De Niro practically sexually assaults his way into Liza Minelli's heart, a poisonous idea scratched into my brain - New York, New York is Martin Scorsese's 1941. A thought that's good for a chuckle, and not even that accurate. After all, Steven Spielberg's 1941 is a righteous disaster filled with a colorful array of confused cinematic icons stumbling about a spectacularly unfunny screenplay. 1941 is so damn odd, it's interesting. A train wreck worthy of your best gawk. Martin Scorsese's New York, New York like 1941 is trying to ape a time and a genre, but failing miserably to excite. This film doesn't have the parade. It's a somber saga. Robert De Niro's sexfiend manages to score some tender moments with Minnelli cuz her character is too dang shy to fend off his attack. The next thing we know they're in a relationship, falling bassackwards into a big band career and a marriage doomed from that first moment of Hate At First Sight. The rest of this too damn long story is filled with typical Hollywood Couple jealously. When Minnelli hits the big time & De Niro slips, neither their marriage nor their child can soothe the ambition. Maybe if this film was actually a musical than I could handle the banal romance, but what little Glenn Miller cool slips into the film is not enough to keep your mind from wandering or the zzzzzs from setting in. A real dull bore.

Star Trek - Countdown To Darkness:  The two prequel comics produced by IDW leading into 2009's Star Trek were not great, but they had a couple of interesting insights.  This latest Countdown, on the other hand, adds absolutely nothing to the JJ Abrams experience and completely screws an opportunity to play with Enterprise history.  At 4 issues, there is very little story to consume.  First Captain of the Enterprise, Robert April has been leading a civil war on an alien planet for decades.  With the aid of Mudd's daughter, April has lost his way in a skirmish with the Klingons but when the young Captain Kirk smashes the Prime Directive (as all Kirks are destined to do) he gets the devious idea to reclaim the chair.  I'm not sure how this relates to Into Darkness, but hopefully very little with only the obvious retrofitted Klingons & references to First Officer Marcus leaking forth from Abrams' mystery box.

Jason and the Argonauts:  Perfectly capturing the joy and excitement of Greek mythology, Jason & The Argonauts understands the Clash of the Titans better than any film baring that name. My go-to Harryhausen flick, it offers several stopmotion set piece classics like the bronze giant Telos, the Hydra attack, and the screaming skeleton assault. But as cool as all those effects sequences truly are, Jason & The Argonauts also supplies some fine human performances. Todd Armstrong squares his jaw as best he can, takes command with a puffed chest, and eats the melodrama with the appropriate theatricality. Nigel Green's Hercules is the absolute coolest, and seriously badass depiction of everyone's favorite demigod. He's all beard, smiles, and bravado. It's a shame when the tussle with Telos sends Green on his way, as his Hercules is worth a handful of spin-off films. I may prefer The 7th Voyage of Sinbad & Mysterious Island, but Jason & The Argonauts is the film Ray Harryhausen will be remembered for - pluck this out of cinema's history and the genre landscape would be utterly unrecognizable.

Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid:  "Remember me to whoever rides by." Sam Peckinpah's ultimate expression on the passing of the American West (a sub genre all utno itself), Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid is a passionately somber saga in which James Coburn's bought sheriff damns his soul in the pursuit of Kris Krisstofferson's outlaw spirit. Billy the Kid might be a cattle rustling murderer, but through Peckinpah's twisted morality he represents independence and the pursuit of happiness. Peckinpah's Garrett is a man who sold his freedom for the white picket fence, and the house to box his converted Mexican bride. The film is preachy with nearly every frame coated in Bob Dylan's lyrics, and Peckinpah's hatred for institution poisons the well for those looking for the simplicity of High Noon. It's a film busting at the seams with Western icons - Jack Elam, Slim Pickins, LQ Jones, Harry Dean Stanton, RG Armstrong - most of which violently fall in the conflict between legends . Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid tackles the fiction of American mythology; it's angry, mean, but mostly sad - not the rollicking adventure we often seek from the genre, but a heartfelt sendoff from its most iconoclastic creator.

Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia:  "There's nothing sacred about a hole in the ground or the man that's in it." After expressing his gloomy displeasure with the disappearance of The American West, Sam Peckinpah's follow-up film documented an all-out descent into hell that mirrored his own self-destruction. Warren Oates is Bennie, an ex patriot bartender who attempts to rise above his station by collecting a million dollar bounty on the severed head of a gangland lothario. A real hero's quest...if you replace Gilgamesh with a bottom feeding drunk and the will of the gods with blind luck and a sure shot. Tagging along for his damnation is his prostitute girlfriend, Isela Vega.  Their relationship seems to start the film as one of mutual convenience but through horrific circumstances they fool themselves into love but down south such fantasies will not last. The final third of the film is not just melancholic like Pat Garrett, but downright depressing. Warren Oates is said to be mimicking the look and mannerisms of his director, and considering Peckinpah's eventual collapse into self pity, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia is one of cinema's hardest watches. That being said, it's also a brilliant bit of dread; a mean, hateful, ugly, angry film. A real sick puppy that wallows in its filth. Peckinpah would make other movies, but this is his final statement.

Batman #20:  Well, this was a real disappointment.  And coming off of my lukewarm reaction to Death of the Family, Snyder has a lot to prove with his next Zero Year arc.  Last year at the Baltimore Comic Con, Greg Capullo was giving away mini prints of Clayface with every autograph.  It's a beautifully grotesque image that currently hangs above my television in the living room, & when I heard this muddy rogue was going to make an appearance in this two issue arc I was pretty dang excited.  Now that it's all said and done, Capullo never delivered on the horror of that tiny print.  This goofy tale of Bruce Wayne imitation hits the basic beats already explored years ago in The Animated Series, and awkwardly ignores the crushing damage hammered down on Commissioner Gordon last issue.  3 issues past the last big arc, and Batman has slipped behind both Detective Comics & Batman Inc as the third best Bat-Title.  Lame.

Avengers #11:  "I am here because the universe demanded it."  Don't let the crappy manga cover fool you.  None of those goofy costumes appear in this issue, and it is easily my favorite book from Jonathan Hickman's run so far.  The team heads to Hong Kong in an effort to infiltrate an A.I.M. bidding war.  Shang Chi is the standout of the book, striking gorgeous Bruce Lee poses as he brings his Kung Fu against a series of ninja strike attacks.  But this issue also offers some great chuckles with Cannonball & Sunspot discovering the joys of gambling with tuxedoed A.I.M. agents, and the Black Widow popping headshots on a batch of terrorist assholes.  Hickman has taken this series all over the universe - from Mars to the Savage Land to the far reaches of Gladiatorial space.  With each trip he gives us a new texture, and this 70s Spy Puncher is the best genre vacation yet.

Thor - God of Thunder #8:  Young Thor slaves away for The God Butcher while meeting his future children, The Godesses of Thunder.  Meanwhile, Avenger Thor & Old Man Thor sail the cosmic seas and drink all the ale.  Jason Aaron's high concept romp is barreling towards its conclusion and I have no idea how these three timelines are going to collapse into each other and resolve themselves.  And dammit, that's exciting.  I have a feeling that Arron's run on Thor, how ever long it eventually lasts, will go down as one of the great arcs.  Mark my words.

Homicide - Life on the Street Season 6:  "In this world Dead is Dead."  Probably the toughest and most emotionally complex season of the show so far.  If you thought Detective Kellerman gunning down Luther Mahoney was the end of the gang war than you were seriously misguided.  Luthor's sister lands on the scene, and Georgia Ray is ten times the villain her big bro ever was; the back half of the series is populated with a sea of gangland killings.  With each dope death, Kellerman brings the department closer and closer to an apocalyptic outcome, threatening the lives of everyone touched by the Luthor Killing.  If I had one complaint about Season 6 is that super cop Frank Pembleton is given the back seat and I completely understand why Andre Braugher was ready to leave the show.  New additions Ballard, Garrity, & Falzone are welcome but neither of them can hold Pembleton's shoes.  The show just aint the show without Frank.  Still, other highlights of 6 include Charles Durning's racist cold case cop, James Earl Jones' devious Twinkie king, and Vincent D'Onofrio's subway flattened worker bee.

The Great Gatsby:  When Baz Luhrmann's at his most Baz Luhrmanny I was thoroughly enjoying this movie. You see that first trailer and you want the anachronisms, you want the artifice - bring on the Jay-Z, bring on the Jack White. Sweeping CGI landscapes populated with gyrating stripper flappers. But The Great Gatsby is far too faithful of an adaptation to be interesting; an hour and a half into the film you're pretty much sick of dopey Tobey and you want to throttle Leo and his "Old Sports." Baz Luhrmann is too in love with the novel, and his theatricality is suffocated by the Summer Reading selection. I would have much rather seen Baz revel in the period than find the modern in Fitzgerald.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (5/5/13-5/11/13)

    Day after day, week after week, rain and threat of rain.  It’s starting to get to me.  I’ve only done maybe five or six bike trips so far this year, which is unacceptable by this point.  Otherwise, just stress broken up with movies and books.  Woot.

    I got in a few more episodes of Fraggle Rock.  I’m in season 3 now, and the quality has not dropped.  I continue to be impressed by the show’s solid foundation in basic morality without being too preachy or condescending.  Truly one of the greatest youth oriented shows I’ve experienced.

Star Trek: First Contact:  “This far.  No farther!”  Picard faces his Khan, the Borg, in this darned exciting and action packed film.  This should have been the first movie for the Next Gen crew, instead of the wishy-washy, gutless and stupid Generations.  After the Hugh episode of Next Gen pretty much eviscerated the Borg, making them little more than a bumbling bunch of communist thugs, First Contact made them scary and menacing again.  And oddly, by putting a ‘human face’ on them, helped to make them less human.  The so called Borg Queen is, I think, a manifestation of the species’ intellect as opposed to its leader.  As she says, you see disparity where there is none.  She is the Borg.  And she drips with sexual menace and Vaseline, becoming an all consuming fertility goddess, a bottomless hunger that consumes all.  The Borg are obviously the dark side of the potentials of cybernetics.  But they are not evil, simply alien.  Along the way, we also see the story of the fist warp vessel launched by a backyard astronaut-entrepreneur.  The movie looks great, it moves fast, has some really good moments, and a solid story.  I know everyone is about Star Trek II, but First Contact remains my favorite of the franchise’s films.

House on the Edge of the Park:  Well, that was unpleasant.  A film that makes beautiful women taking their clothes off difficult for me to watch.  I guess that’s something.  David Hess is hard to look at.  Don’t.

    As I’ve said before, I grew up in the late 70s and 80s, in the shadow of the Cold War, but also during a fairly tectonic shift in technology and its democratization.  The personal computer, the early days of what would become the internet, the explosion of prosthesis, transplants, and implants.  It was pretty wild.  Every year felt more and more like I was living in a new age, a science fictional world.  Part of that shift was captured in a somewhat short lived, but key movement in science fiction literature that I felt attuned to then, and still hold a special place in my heart for now.  Cyberpunk.  It was a movement born of and reflective of its time, a specifically 80s thing, though ripples of its influences continue to wash through books and movies and culture.  All that is just to bring up that I randomly picked the cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades off the shelf this week and read the story Snake-Eyes by Tom Maddox.  Darned fine and cool tale.  Reading about the protagonist and his desire to experience the strange reminded me of myself.  I think my friends think I’m kidding when I say I want to get 360 degree vision, or the ability to shift my perception through various spectra, or just that I want mechanical legs.  But I’m not.  Not at all.  And here is a character after my own heart, as he struggles with what it means to have these implants within him, unleashing his primitive impulses.  I also like that the story isn’t about ‘tech bad/bio good’ or ‘instinct bad/logic good.’  It’s about the dangers of technology and the benefits, and its about balancing the deepest and most base lusts with the rational control of civilized Man.  I’m all about that.  Good stuff.

The Last Dragon:  “Shonuff!”  Oh, man.  What the heck is up with this movie?  It’s funny (sometimes intentionally) and weird as all get-out.  Bruce Leroy.  Vanity.  Young William H. Macy.  It’s some kind of alternative 1985, fueled by coke, neon, and awful post-funk Motown.  The acting is truly inspired.  And something about Bruce Leroy running around in that rice farmer’s hat seems racist.  I’m not sure how, but it feels racist.  Vanity really was cute, though.  Talentless, but cute.  So, when the Shogun of Harlem is giving you some guff, you just call Bruce Leroy with his Power of the Glow.  This movie is what the Double Dragon film should have been like.

Shonuff!!!

Cat-women of the Moon:  “You‘re too smart for me, baby.  I like ‘em stupid.”  I’m not sure if I’d seen this before, or if it’s so typical of the genre that it just felt that way.  Chicks in unitards hide out in the ruins of an ancient civilization.  The usual battle of the sexes crap.  A bunch of near-immortal sex kittens need to learn what wholesome and slightly dim American men can do for them.  It’s fine, but pretty by the numbers.  But hey, it’s short.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid:  “I got my shotgun full of 16 thin dimes.  Enough to spread you out like a crazy woman’s quilt.”  Everybody who was alive when this film was made shows up to look ugly as heck and do evil things to each other Peckinpah style.  I’m not a Dylan fan, but his music on this movie isn’t bad, and his extremely affected acting performance is fun.  Otherwise, it’s just nasty, nasty, nasty.  Oh, and depressing.  But it’s also a pretty good flick.  Not going on my list of best Westerns, but it’s a good one.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia:  “I been here before and you don’t know the way.”  Wow.  Ever think you’re just in too good a mood, and want to bring it down a notch?  This is the movie for you.  A relentlessly grim and angry film, it rages at you with whiskey stinking breath and grime covered hands.  You are the white whale, Peckinpah is Ahab, and he’s shooting his heart upon you with his chest cannon.  It isn’t the Western I was expecting, though it often feels like one.  It’s modern, but dingy and aged, beaten by the sun and spit on by life.  I keep thinking of Mister Eddy in Lost Highway with his throat all slashed, gurgling, ‘you and me buddy, we can sure out-ugly them som’bitches.’

Prey:  A dumb young woman and her obsessive lady friend are living the life in a secluded English estate, when a bird hating alien shows up looking for lunch.  One long, awkward dinner party later, who can tell hunter from prey.  This movie has a lot of screeching.  The dumb woman screeches a lot.  A LOT.  Her lady love also screeches…but not as much.  Even the alien screeches a bit.  Maybe they should have called the film Screech.  It’s not a good movie.  But it has a dubious charm.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad:  “We may be thieves and murderers…but we are not fools.”  One of literature’s great adventure heroes, Sinbad, gets a definitive presentation with this Ray Harryhausen creature packed fantasy film.  Like the tales of the Arabian Nights, it is a hodgepodge of traditional stories from various cultures and whole cloth.  Kerwin Mathews is an adequate Sinbad (though I prefer John Phillip Law), and Kathryn Grant is adorable as his chosen bride.  I notice watching this film, the evil wizard was hardly out of line in his requests for aid.  Granted, his reaction is perhaps a touch extreme, but I really do think he was used rather poorly by Sinbad and his sultan.

    Friday night and Saturday morning, I read new book The Centrist Manifesto by Charles Wheelan.  It’s a solid exploration of the need in American politics for the moderate, centrist elements to stand up and be counted.  The first rational call for a serious and useful third party I’ve seen in my lifetime.

    I also read the prequel graphic novel Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness that leads into next week’s Star Trek: Into Darkness theatrical release.  Can’t say I’m surprised to report it’s not very good.  The art is blah, the script is more blah, and the story isn’t interesting.  The portrayal of Robert April is straight-up silly.  It also does nothing to alive my fears for where they’re taking this new movie.  Conspiracy this, war that; fistfight, fistfight, fistfight!

Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island:  Fleeing a Confederate prison, some Civil War soldiers end up in a balloon, trapped in a powerful seemingly endless gale that takes them away from any known land.  Crash landing on a …mysterious island, they find some danged peculiar things going on.  The film works as a kind of sequel to Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a nice stylistic companion to Journey to the Center of the Earth (though, that makes its lack of James Mason conspicuous).  Ray Harryhausen once again creates some very cool creatures to menace our heroes.  I love these adventure films.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad:  “My friend, you can not pick up two melons with one hand, and I cannot work miracles.”  John Phillip Law is definitely the best Sinbad of the Harryhausen era, and my Caroline Munro fetish can not be denied.  Plus, fourth Doctor, Tom Baker as the evil wizard is enjoyably hammy in that stage actor sort of way.  Even the supporting characters are more interesting than usual.  Lavish production and exotic locations give it a grand fantasy feel.  The story is pretty wild and the action solid.  Fantasy movies of this much imagination are not unheard of today, but they are rare.  I’d like to see more.

One Million Years B.C.:  “Errr!”  Hammer Studios takes on history in this caveman epic featuring the awe-inspiring body of Raquel Welch and the stop-motion wizardry of Ray Harryhausen.  Truth be told, this isn’t a particularly good movie.  Its grasp of history is…well, absent.  The acting, even without sensible dialog, is not good.  It’s pretty much made watchable by Welch (who is infinitely watchable) and the cool creatures.  Martine Beswick isn’t too hard on the eyes either, I guess.  The music is interesting.  Where do you find a village of beautiful blonde spear-fishing cavegirls, anyway?  Sweden?  Was this filmed on location?  I do kind of get Tumak.  All Welch’s emotions are weird and she’s kind of clingy.  I wonder if the scriptwriter began with ‘two fur bikini-clad women in sweaty cat-fight’ and worked backward from there.  That seems about right.

Where is this film's Oscar?

    And lastly, I started watching the PBS series Secret Files of the Inquisition, a look into the Vatican’s records.  The narration and dramatization are well done, though the pacing and editing is a bit weird.  It frequently feels like it’s going to commercial, but as it’s from PBS, I assume there wasn’t one.  And there’s a lot of unnecessary foreshadowing, often of events about to be described.

-Matt

History was AWESOME!