Matt’s Week in Dork! (7/21/13-7/27/13)

    A slow start, but a nice finish.  Good week.

Red 2:  Not quite as cute or charming as the first film, this sequel still dishes out morbid humor and silly action aplenty.  Everyone seems to be having a good time, and they sure go to a lot of nice places.  But the tension never quite ratchets up, and the plot feels a bit too meandering.  Still, not a bad sequel and worth watching if you enjoyed the first film.

MST3K: The Incredible Melting Man:  “Don’t shoot!  I’m Ted Nelson!”  One of my favorite episodes, Mike and the Bots rip into a truly dreadful movie.  Another ‘guy goes into space and comes back a monster’ movie.  It’s great.  They’re all on fire as they unload with both barrels.

Your Highness:  “Just punch the top and twist it.”  A very, very crass fantasy film about a crappy prince and his dashing brother on a quest to rescue a pretty girl from a devil wizard, it‘s often uncomfortably funny.  Pot smoking, butt sexing, and all kinds of goofing.  Great actors team up with not so great actors to abuse decency.  And I love it.

Night Passage:  Jimmy used to be bad, but now he just wants to play the accordion and maybe work for the railroad.  But he’s got a history and history has a way of creeping up on you.  There’s nothing especially amazing about this Western, but it’s solid and well made.  Nice character actors and a good action resolution.  Worth checking out.

River of No Return:  I just don’t go for Marilyn Monroe, and that’s a large part of what this movie is pushing.  She’s charming enough, I guess.  And Robert Mitchum is nicely terse.  Their adventure together doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but it’s good clean fun.  That is, until the attempted rape (“I didn‘t mean it.”  What?!).  The blue-screen work, though.  She ain’t so good.  Overall, a good but not great Western.

    I read the current issue of the magazine Classic Images, because it had an extensive article on one of my new favorite classic actresses, Ruth Chatterton.  Annoyingly, many of the movies the article picked out as being especially good are not on NetFlix and are going to require deeper searching and perhaps pocket digging.  There was also a good write-up on the recently deceased character actor R.G. Armstrong.  It prompted me to queue up a few more of his films, and kept my Western thing alive (I’ve been on a bit of a Western kick lately…though I’m not gonna try to do an official month or anything).

Queen Christina:  “Must we live for the dead.”  A bawdy tale of a tomboy queen who loves her country, desires peace, and wants to love on her own terms.  But duty drives.  Garbo exudes life, lusty and joyous.  The sequence at the inn, with the shared room, the discovery, and the aftermath are totally worth the price of admission.  And my goodness, somehow she makes eating grapes look like the most intensely sexually charged act.  It felt like something too intimate to be watching.  Crazy.  Though the overall movie isn’t amazing, it’s a very fun film.  I wish there was more to the third act, I guess.  I don’t know.  Events just sort of happen and then it’s over, without much heart.  But the first two thirds of the film are great.

    Friday night we ended up using a kind of fill-in book for our graphic novel club, Locke & Key, which was pretty last minute and surprisingly seemed to win everyone over.  This marks only the second time (I think), where everyone was in agreement and happy with the book (the first was Blacksad).

Bridget Jones’s Diary:  “Oh f*%$ I love Keats.”  A cute romantic comedy about several broken people struggling through love.  There’s nothing especially new or interesting, but the cast is charming and there are some good bits.  I appreciate the liberal F-bomb dropping.  One thing that is perhaps a bit disturbing is that Jones is supposed to be/feel fat.  I remember a lot was made of Renee Zellweger putting on weight for the role.  But she looks perfectly normal.  Not plump.  Just normal.  If she were any thinner, she’d look weird.

Disgusting. She must be an almost healthy weight. For shame.

Nick Carter: Master Detective:  A short, fairly uneventful mystery about saboteurs at an aviation plant, this is more fun as a time capsule of a paranoid era when all foreign people were trying to destroy America.  Vague, unnamed organizations with evil on the mind and limitless resources and personnel have infiltrated…well everything.  Nobody can be trusted…except maybe old, creepy beekeepers.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone:  “Nope…You’re a dude.”  There are some very funny bits in this mostly by the numbers comedy.  Nothing especially shocking or new, but an OK outing for all the cast, who seem to be having a fun time.  Jim Carry hams it up, as usual, and I could have dealt with about 60% less of his character.  Otherwise it was fine.

    On Saturday night, Lisa, Brad, and I headed to the AFI Silver to see Phantasm and Phantasm II (yeah, I’ve seen Phantasm II on the big screen…I can honestly say I never expected that to be a thing I could say).  The first film was presented by local celebrity movie presenter and commentator Count Gore De Vol.  Much fun was had.

Phantasm:  It doesn’t get a heck of a lot weirder than Phantasm.  Not just because it’s a horror movie that’s really a science fiction movie…maybe.  Not just because it features rabid jawas, flying spheres with drills and blades, a stripper-hooker who might also be a cold hating Tall Man, a giggling old seer, a kick-ass ice cream man, and a tuning fork dimensional gateway.  No, not just for those things.  It’s also so jarringly edited and aggressively scored that it never lets you rest, never lets you get your bearing, and never lets you in on quite what the hell is going on.  And it’s great.  The music is completely over the top, the acting ranging from stiff to wooden, and the story…well, it’s complicated.  But somehow, it all works when it really has no right to.  I’ve mentioned this before, but if the stars are right, Cthulhu walks the Earth, and we have become as the Old Ones (read: a shift in reality big enough to put me in control of a Hollywood motion picture), Phantasm is one of the properties I would absolutely love to get my grubby little hands on (along with Hellraiser and The Creature from the Black Lagoon).  Reggie, man.  Reggie.

Phantasm II:  The sequel has some issues, but is still quite cool.  Part of the charm of this series is its rampant continuity confusion, and this film has it aplenty.  But the wacky editing is gone, making the film less uncomfortable and challenging.  The idea of the Tall Man and his dwarfs is expanded a bit, and the hints of a greater, growing disaster facing the world begin to drop (laying the groundwork for III and IV).  Reggie takes up the mantle of badassery.  And the music continues to be a major part of the experience.  Overall, not as good as the first film, though it is more professionally made and of more consistent quality.

Reggie's makin' friends.

    That’s about it.  Still listening to a bunch of Prog Rock.  Still poking at the Bible and trying to get more reading in.

-Matt

Matt’s Ten Favorite Film Noir (at this moment)

    A friend requested a list of good Film Noir to watch, so I put this together.  Like most genre there is no 100% sure rule for what does or does not count as Noir.  So I’m listing my ten favorite films that I think of when I think of Noir.  These are all must sees.  While I don’t think the order is arbitrary, the exact placement largely depends on how fresh in my mind each film is.  I think these should serve as a solid jumping-off point for any new Noir viewer.

10.  Double Indemnity (1944) Two horribly unlikable people fall into a sick kind of love that can only lead to one place.  Grim and weirdly kinky, it’s a must.

9.  Detour (1945) Don’t pick up a hitch-hiker.  Just don’t do it.  Things go from bad to much, much worse for a poor schmuck too dumb to get out of his own way when he gets mixed up with one seriously crazy dame.

8.  Tension (1949) A meek pharmacist with a horrid wife gets the rage and plans a murder.  Things don’t quite go as planned.  The twists and turns in this film are a bit hard to swallow, but the cast is so good, it manages to be a lot of fun to watch.

7.  Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles directs and plays the disgusting ogre good ‘ol boy cop at the heart of the movie’s darkest depths.  Charlton Heston is the honorable Mexican cop who has to brave bigotry and corruption.  Janet Leigh is his pretty young wife who goes on a whirlwind journey into terror.  Beautiful and disgusting.  And Welles saves the harshest and ugliest stuff for himself, looking like a bloated toad, ranting with vile hate.  It’s great.

6.  Pickup on South Street (1953) Perpetually shifty Richard Widmark is delightfully sleazy in this gritty tale of life on the streets and those danged dirty Reds.

5.  Out of the Past (1947)  Robert Mitchum plays a guy who just wants to be left alone.  But his dark and dirty past won’t stay behind him.  A very cool film with a really good cast.

4.  The Big Heat (1953) Filled with all the nasty this genre has to offer.  Glenn Ford is a bastard.  Lee Marvin is a beast.  And Gloria Grahame proves that Hell hath no fury like a woman scalded.

3.  The Hitch-Hiker (1953) This down and dirty, low budget flick is full of uncomfortable tensions and sinister behavior.  Director Ida Lupino may have been better known for her work in front of the camera, but it’s clear she had plenty of talent behind it as well.

2.  Kiss Me Deadly (1955) From Ralph Meeker’s casual evil (and he’s the protagonist) and the crackling dialog to the absolutely terrifying conclusion, this is one of the more brutal and nasty films of its time.  I’m often surprised people don’t talk about it more.

1.  The Maltese Falcon (1941)  While this is not even close to my favorite Humphrey Bogart film (that‘s In a Lonely Place), nor my favorite Noir (possibly Kiss Me Deadly), it does seem to be the film all others in the genre are judged by/compared to.  And with good reason.  The cast is awesome and it plays out in a lot of cool and crazy ways.  And when you think Bogart, you’re probably thinking about this or Casablanca.  It's an absolute must see and worthy of its classic status.

-Matt

Dork Art: Mondo's Night of the Hunter & The Old Dark House

Mondo & Phantom City Creative have teamed up for this beautiful Night of the Hunter print.  One of my all time favorite movies, if you have not seen this sinister Robert Mitchum performance than you need to immediately purchase the Criterion disc from last year.  It's one of their greatest achievements.

Here Mondo & Elvisdead have met creatively for this creepy and wiggly image for the James Whale classic.  But now it's confession time...I've never seen The Old Dark House.  Shame on me.  Gonna have to correct that soon.  All I really know about the flick is the director and it's cast--and that Ridley Scott is always quoting it during Alien interviews.

Both posters will set you back $40 bucks and will go on sale at the typically random time tomorrow.  Good luck internet trolls.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork (6/12/11-6/18/11)

As always, we begin with the movies I checked out this week. 

His Kind of Woman:  If for no other reason, this movie must be seen for the Vincent Price performance.  Mitchum is cool, sure.  And the twisting story of mob bosses, dames, plastic surgery, and drunken expatriates is fine.  But Price is far more then worth the price of admission.  His genius performance as a twisted version of himself is alternately sad, charming, and exceptionally funny.  A good deal of it actually feels adlib, and I gather this film was kind of slap-dash, with script pages being written on the day.  But it doesn’t stop it from being entertaining.  And, certainly Jane Russell is easy on the eyes, but she’s also charmingly tough.  The ending is a touch drawn out, but the film is enjoyable.

The Secret Service:  Another Gerry and Sylvia Anderson supermarionation show, this one uses a distracting amount of live action material, including nearly all long distant shots and much of the driving about.  And generally, it’s just not all that interesting.  A vicar/secret agent handler and his shrinking agent solve various, not especially good problems.  Meanwhile, they continually play up the gag that when the vicar is talking to his agent, people think he’s praying.  That gets old within the first episode, but doesn’t stop throughout the first six episodes.  It’s not bad, but it’s probably the least exciting and watchable of the  Century 21 Television Production shows I’ve seen so far.

Doctor Who: The Monster of Peladon:  The Doctor returns to Peladon a generation after his last visit to find that trouble is still brewing.  The story is pretty good, with a nice twist in the middle.  But, as with many Jon Pertwee stories, it’s a bit overlong.  It is nice to see the effects of time passing on a location the Doctor visited.

Doctor Who:  Planet of Spiders:  This one takes a while to get going, including an excessive chase sequence that takes almost an entire episode and serves pretty much no purpose beyond extending run-time.  However, once they actually reach the titular planet, things get interesting.  While not amazing, it’s a solid send-off for Pertwee.

McQ:  Oh, the 70s, where charisma-lacking old men could still draw the ladies.  Where rough cops made their own rules, roused the occasional beatnik, and blasted their way to justice.  Overlong and filled with the typical genre cliché, it reminds me of all the reasons I don’t like John Wayne movies, even when he’s not riding a horse.  Some good supporting performances help, but it’s not enough to make an interesting film.  Not even Clu Gulager.  Good music though.

The Emperor’s New Groove:  There’s some good stuff in this film.  It’s occasionally quite clever.  But honestly, another Disney animated musical comedy?  I kept wanting the jokes to stop, but it seems like telling a serious story has long since gone out of fashion with the powers that be.  It’s worth watching, but has none of the timelessness of a good Disney film.

Halo Legends:  Much like The Animatrix and Gotham Nights, this animated anthology is uneven and too weighed down by anime cliché .  The Halo universe is surprisingly well thought out and interesting for a first person shooter, and the idea of an anthology to explore it is great.  Unfortunately, like the afore mentioned anthologies, the powers that be equate ‘adult animation’ with Japanese animation.  Thus we’re subjected to giant eyes, pointy chins, long weird pauses in action, and vaguely depressed leading characters.  Still, there are some beautiful images, and a couple of the shorts were pretty good.  But then, right in the middle there’s a comedy story that is absolutely painful to sit through.  For fans of the game, this is probably worth a watch.  I don’t see that it would be of much interest to anyone else.  I wish it had more substance, and perhaps some non-anime directors working on it.  But it’s watchable. [Upon watching this for a second time, I’m struck once again by the limitations and rampant cliché in anime.  I swear, there are like 8 plots, 8 characters, 3 art style variations, and maybe 3 themes.  They just mix and match over and over to produce something ‘new.’]

Haven't we been through all this before...frequently.

Brokeback Mountain:  Between the near constant, almost tuneless guitar picking and Heath Ledger’s mumbling, the first 45 minutes of this film are a grueling trek.  Yeah, mountains are pretty.  Buy a postcard.  Eventually things pick up, becoming simply dull.  If the two leads weren’t gay, this would be just another forgettable Lifetime movie.  People lying to each other and themselves.  Crying.  A little yelling.  And a whole lot of me needing a cup of coffee to keep my eyes open.  Yeah, Ang Lee makes beautiful looking films.  But he’s also been known to make interesting ones.  This isn’t on that list.

Yep.  Dem sure are some purty mountains.

Green Lantern: First Flight:  Origin stories, origin stories.  Honestly, how many do we need.  Much of this film could have been done in a flashback, but it’s still fairly watchable.  DC certainly seems to have a good handle on the animated film.  I just wish they’d stop doing origin stories (well, and Batman/Superman films).  Good voice work, pretty good animation, and a quick pace.  If you don’t know anything about the Green Lantern or his particular patch of the DC universe, this is a good introduction.

    On Wednesday, Brad and I played a bit of Halo.  I’ve been wanting to play it again for a while, plus, I’ve got access to a 360 now, so I may finally be able to play Halo 3.  While reading Reality is Broken, I was reminded of how much I enjoy the game, and recruited Brad to help me out.  Having not played it in a while, I’d sort of forgotten that the game is ten years old.  Seeing it, on an HD TV, you can really tell that graphically, it’s not up to snuff with modern games.  I mean, what do you expect?  But the scenery is still gorgeous and the gameplay still fun.  All the little Aliens references.  The beautiful ringworld setting.  Bouncing across the landscape in that dreadful Warthog.  It comes together quite well.  And the cooperative play is a lot of fun.  It was one of the first games I ever played with that good a cooperative mode.  We didn’t get very far, and haven’t really gotten into the story yet.  But it was a nice little intro.  I believe on our next go, we’ll be storming a Covenant ship.  That should be fun.  Seeing the game again, and having just seen the announcement of Halo 4 last week, I’m just glad to see a serious science fiction property being developed.  Yes, it’s basically one of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers teaming up with the Space Marines from Aliens to fight the Church on Larry Niven’s Ringworld only to discover Heinlein’s Puppetmasters.  But though derivative, it’s still solid and a great deal of fun to play.  And it does have a good story.

    Sure, I’d love to see a Halo movie.  I mean, it kind of lends itself to film.  But then, so did Wing Commander, and look how that turned out.  What it really makes me long for, however, is some old style, grand scale science fiction.  The big idea stuff that was more common in the 50s and 60s, before everything became so filled with fear and an obsession with human weakness.  I want to see Foundation, Ringworld, or something like that.  What the original Star Trek had aspirations of being, but not the budget or technological capability.

     I'm almost finished with Reality is Broken, and it's been something.  Very readable, but very challenging.  I want to do more than just write a review when it's done, so stay tuned.  And I did finish the fourth Conan volume, The Hall of the Dead and Other Stories.

     I had a nice surprise this past week, when my old high school friend Serena Andrews released a new music video.  It's very catchy. 

     And I continue to enjoy Kate Nash, who does such a good job of capturing the pain and awkwardness of fumbled love.  This song was kind of a gut-punch, having gone through the same thing myself.

-Matt