Cool Beveridge

Say Captain

2012-01-31T17:33:00.000-08:00

Was Captain America: The First Avenger really the first Avenger? What about Iron Man? There were 2 Iron Man movies before Captain American. OK, I guess that's in chronological order.

Because Captain America starts in the 1940s, with Chris Evans as 90-lb. weakling Steve Rogers. Now, I know what you're thinking - Chris Evans is the Human Torch, how can he be Captain America? Or were you thinking - gee, he was an ass in Fantastic Four, did they have to put him in Captain America too? But no, he's pretty likable here. He's small but scrappy and all he wants is to serve in the military. A cute agent played by Hayley Atwell and a mad scientist played by Stanley Tucci have a way to make this happen - a mad-science process that will make him into a super soldier.

Hayley Atwell's character, Peggy Carter, is pretty boss. She faces the bad guys, takes a foursquare shooting stance and starts blowing them away. Tucci is great too, doing a German accent but coming across like Umberto Eco or maybe Primo Levi - some wise old bearded European intellectual. I wish he had more screen time.

After they make Rogers super, the Army doesn't let him do anything but USO shows. But he gets to the frontlines where our boys (including Dum-Dum Duggan, Jim Morita, James Falsworth and other obvious members of Nick Fury's outfit) are getting slaughtered by a mysterious Nazi. That Nazi is really the head of Hydra, the Red Skull, played by Hugo Weaving. Weaving, I guess, has become the go-to guy for expressing himself behind a full-face mask, as he did so well in V for Vendetta.

Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), Tony's dad, gets a lot of time here. He's obviously inspired by Howard Hughes with a touch of Walt Disney. He's not a nice man or good father to Tony, but at least he's better than Bruce Banner's dad, Nick Nolte.

I'm not sure why, but this may be my favorite superhero movie this year. It felt denser, meatier than Thor, and more authentically period than X-Men: First Class. I like the female lead, and Chris Evans does a good job - better than as Torchy.

Bring on Avengers!

Yo Eleven

2012-01-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

It's not like I liked Soderbrgh's Ocean's Eleven - but I respect it, you know? I'm not a great fan of the original Rat Pack version, either. But they share the same loose, relaxed, who-gives-a-damn charm.

Danny Ocean is George Clooney this time. He has just gotten out of prison on parole, which he immediately breaks to pull the biggest job of his career - to clean out 3 Las Vegas casinos. He gets in touch with Brad Pitt and they start to put together the team.

The team will be made up of "a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever". Actually, that's a synopsis of the plot, not the team. Anyway, it sounds cool. It takes a special kind of cast to reel that line out and hook you.

The best team members, in my opinion, are Elliott Gould as the old macher who bankrolls the heist, and Carl Reiner, the alte kaker who will run the con that gets the man into the vault. Lovely to see these old hams - er old hands - interacting with the youngsters.

So, if you enjoy a mindless plot, and hearing Frank, Dino and Sammy bullshit around, watch the 1960 Ocean's Eleven. If you want the same thing with Clooney, Pitt and say, Bernie Mac, get this one.

And of course, I'll get around to Ocean's Twelve someday. But I've seen Ocean's Thirteen, and that's about enough.

In conclusion, good soundtrack, but they didn't play the Sammy Davis theme song.

Lucky 13

2012-01-20T16:08:00.000-08:00

Japanese director Takashi Miike is known of course for gruesome violence and psychosexuality. He also likes to have a bit of fun. We've avoided his more intense films, and watched some of the goofier ones, like The Bird People in China and Sukiyaki Western Django. Now, we've watched 13 Assassins, which isn't goofy, but not as gruesome as expected. I'd say it's mainstream Miike.

The nephew of a daimyo in late feudal Japan is acting badly, raping and killing with impunity because of his rank. Worse, when he goes to the capital, he will be given a position of authority. One lord has been given to understand that the daimyo would prefer it if he did not live to visit the capital. And so this lord calls his best samurai, and with 10 others, they set out to kill a rogue noble protected by at least 200 warriors.

The first few acts of the movie set up the premise and then show the assassins training and planning. Their method will be surprise - surprise and fear... I'll start again. They plan to buy out a village on the evil lord's route and set up a killing field. The last 20-30 minutes are devoted to a long battle in that village.

The earlier parts of the movie are very much what you expect from a samurai movie: gorgeous costumes, elegant architecture, low camera angles as men discuss points of honor and warfare. The little touches, like the angle of a samurai's fingertips on the floor when he kneels before his lord. There are some Miike touches as well - a seppuku (hara-kiri) and one of the evil lord's victims: a woman with 4 limbs and her tongue cut off.

Then the final act is a long action sequence, also what you expect from a samurai movie. You definitely feel the influences of Seven Samurai, 47 Ronin, etc. The 13th assassin is a lot like Mifune's 7th samurai: a rogue and wanderer without nobility, but with strength and honor.

Well, no wonder it looks like a classic samurai film - it's a remake of the 1963 Thirteen Assassins, which I don't remember seeing. Now, back in the early 80s, Ms. Spenser and I used to watch 2 or 3 samurai double-bills a week at the Coolidge Corner theater in Brookline. So we've seen a lot of samurai movies (or chambura, as the Japanese say). And this movie is definitely one of them.

A lot is made of the duty of a samurai - Is it total loyalty to his lord, even if the lord is corrupt, insane or evil? Or should a samurai be devoted to a higher cause, justice or honor? Or is the whole concept of the ideal samurai misguided? All of that is fine, but it really comes down to strength and skill with a sword, because the best fighter gets to enforce his ideals.

To extend the metaphor, Miike's strength with the sword - his skill at sweeping yet clear fight scenes - lets him set the agenda and pronounce the moral. A nice trick he used often was a single warrior, fighting against impossible odds, almost ready to fall - then an ally comes from out of the frame to his aid and the fight goes on.

All in all, we liked this a lot for the nostalgic quality. But I don't think Miike has as much to say about this style of film as, for example, Hideo Gosha. Or what the heck, go watch something by Kurosawa.

Who's on Fist?

2012-01-11T18:58:00.000-08:00

Legend of the Fist: Return of Chen Zhen is Donnie Yen's tribute to Bruce Lee's Fists of Fury. But actually, I didn't get that from watching, only from reading about it on IMDB. Watching it, I got the impression that someone (maybe director Andrew Wai-Keung Lau) wanted to make Lust, Caution as a martial arts film.

The movie takes place in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation. Drifter and secret martial arts hero Chen Zhen (Donnie Yen) gets friendly with a casino owner to undermine the Japanese. In the process, he gets involved with a beautiful, self-destructive singer, played by Qi Shu - she was the cargo in the first Transporter movie. Eventually, he gets a Kato-like black leather outfit and starts kicking butt.

However, if it's butt-kicking you are here for, you're not going to see a lot. It is quality Donnie Yen action, but that is not the focus of the film. Instead, you're going to see some fine period costumes and architecture, a few nightclub acts and some Casablanca-style intrigue and melodrama.

I probably should have watched Lust, Caution instead. Or Fists of Fury.

Lights, Camera, Action

2012-01-08T05:45:00.001-08:00

Once again, I blame Filmsack for making me watch Last Action Hero. In case you haven't heard of this, this 1993 bomb almost ended Arnold Schwartzenegger's career. But, you know, it really isn't that bad.

Austin O'Brien is a kid who lives with his single mom in a gritty New York neighborhood. But he really lives at the movies, slipping out for midnight shows at an old movie theater. His favorite star is Jack Slater, played by Arnold Schwartzenegger. One night, the kindly old projectionist gives him a magic ticket, that lets O'Brien into the movie.

This is a good enough setup, as we've seen in Keaton's Sherlock Jr. and Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo. LAH has a lot of fun with it, pulling out and/or spoofing all the action movie tropes they can think of. Arnold/Slater is up against mob boss Anthony Quinn and his one-eyed hit man Charles Dance, both very funny. And the kid has seen the first part of the movie, plus every other action movie ever made, so he can figure the whole thing out long before Slater.

Then, for the fourth act, O'Brien, Schwartzenegger, and the bad guys are all dumped out of the movie and into "real" New York, more dangerous than movie-world LA. And movie Jack Slater gets to meet actor Jack Slater (or is it actor Arnold Schwartzenegger, plugging Planet Hollywood with Maria Shriver?), as well as O'Brien's mom.

I can understand why this bombed when it came out. The script has a bad case of too many cooks. Schwartzenegger/Slater's son was killed in a previous film, O'Brien needs a father figure, this theme is boring and doesn't pay off. The movie-world/real-world logic is screwy. There are a few kitchen sinks tossed in (cartoon cat detective?). Plus, the movie was hyped to the skies, and failed to meet expectations.

But none of this bothers me. I liked it - it was a goofy romp. What worked, worked and what didn't work slid right by. Compare it to, say, Kindergarten Cop and see what I mean.

I saw Kindergarten Cop. It wasn't bad. It was economical, funny and did what it set out to do. It wasn't noisy or over the top. It was much better put together than Last Action Hero. But which was more fun? I'd rather watch the sloppy silly one. It plays to Schwartzeneger's strengths.

In conclusion, never trust F. Murray Abraham. He killed Mozart!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T13:16:00.001-08:00

Posting has been a little weaker than usual (which is usually pretty weak) during the holiday season. I've been spending the time with the family up in MA and ME. You'd think with no work and lots of quiet time, I would have at least caught up on 2011 (I'm 2 or 3 movies behind), but no. I resolve to do better in 2012.

But seriously, it was great to get a chance to see the Spenser family and my reader, Mr. Schprock. New England was lovely - We had snow on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, but not enough to make driving dangerous. Which is good, because my sister's family lives 350 miles from my parents and brother's family, and they live about 15 miles apart. So I also got to spend a lot of time driving around, listening to Filmsack. Great work, guys. Keep it up.

Didn't watch many movies, but we did see Steve Carell's 2008 Get Smart with the nephews. I was pretty worried about this, since we are original series Get Smart fanatics (me and Ms. S - the nephews haven't seen it). Carell and crew manage to get the the essence of the show without actually following the premise very closely. They pay homage to all the classic lines, but Carell never tries to imitate Don Adams. Ann Hathaway is good as 99, putting her own stamp on the role - but at the very end, I swear I heard the ghost of Barbara Feldon speaking through her.

But of course, Feldon is still alive, so that can't be right.

Anyway, as usual, I have no New Year's resolutions, no best of lists, no plans or projects. We will probably re-activate Netflix disk rental sometime soon. We may continue our yearly tradition of watching a different edition of the Ring trilogy, or we may not. Stay tuned!

No Sh!t Sherlock

2011-12-10T09:33:00.001-08:00

You know, we still aren't in love with Netflix streaming. We kept our streaming subscription after we dropped disks just so that we could watch Have Gun - Will Travel. Now that those are done, we had to search around for something else to watch. We came up with Sherlock, the new BBC Sherlock-Holmes-set-in-modern-times series. Needless to say, we are keeping our streaming subscription.

For this version, John Watson (Martin Freeman) is a wounded veteran of the war in Afghanistan - just like in the original! But he is a veteran of the current conflict, not the British Empire's last fracas in the area. That is touchstone for the series: when they update the stories, some things translate directly, some are strangely changed. For example, Watson makes Holmes famous by writing about him, not in the penny-dreadfuls, but on his blog.

Holmes is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, a name to be reckoned with. He has spooky eyes, wideset, pale blue, with slight epicanthic folds. His Holmes is brilliant and autistic, although he prefers to be considered a "high functioning sociopath".

This is not the Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett Holmes. He is younger and somewhat twitchier. He certainly isn't Robert Downey Jr. He is much more cerebral. He is also quite modern, always texting or checking something on his laptop. Although he is much less charming, his boundless self-confidence has a touch of Dr. Who about it, which is natural, since writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are also writing Doctor Who.

Freeman's Watson, on the other hand, reminds me a bit of Arthur Dent. He has the same peeved expression, with a touch of incomprehension, when Holmes breaks another convention of normal civilized behavior. He is much less of a bumbler than some past Watsons, but around Holmes, anyone will eventually feel like an idiot.

Watson isn't the only source of humor in the show. Holmes' ego and other's reactions to him are a lot of fun. The mysteries are pretty good - maybe not great, but not shabby - and new (as far as I remember), not updates of the original story. But the characters of Holmes and Watson are the best part.

Now the bad news: There are is one season available, 3 episodes of about 90 minutes. We've seen them all. There's another 3 episodes coming up. After that, who knows?

You know, we've been watching a lot serial films lately - James Bond, Fast and Furious, Marvel Comics, Pirates of the Caribbean. When you find something good, you want more. We want more.

Boone Companion

2011-12-10T09:19:00.001-08:00

It was on TV from 1957 to 1963. It was the reason that we kept Netflix streaming when we dropped the disk subscription. We watched it all 221 episodes, mostly over dinner. Have Gun - Will Travel may have been the best TV show of its era.

HG-WT starred Richard Boone as Paladin, a gentleman, man of fashion and learning and a gunfighter. He lived in post-Gold Rush San Francisco. It still showed some rough edges as a frontier town, but the Carlton Hotel, where he resided, was the peak of civilization. When he was in town, he dressed in elegant brocades and opera cloaks, ate gourmet meals and intrigued with fashionable ladies. But he also read newspapers from every frontier territory in the west. When he found a problem that he thought he could solve, he sent a note along with his business card.

The card shows a chess knight and the words "Have Gun - Will Travel/Wire Paladin/San Francisco". The card has its own theme, written by Bernard Hermann, that is played when the card comes out, which happens in every episode.

When he is on business, he wears his working clothes, all black, with a black hat and a black holster with silver (possibly platinum) chess knight on it. He is very good with this gun. Possibly the fastest in the West.

Boone is wonderful in this role. His lumpy face, with its big nose and silly little mustache, does not look like either a lover's or a fighter's, but he was very convincing as either. He was at his best when he was concerned, peeved or outraged. He hated injustice or cruelty. He had a great sense of humor and a large, uninhibited laugh. But when he was worried, his fingers twitched by his gunbelt, ready for action.

He knew how to use his fists as well (although confidentially, a blow to the back of the head would take him out of action for a few hours). Paladin's spirited scrapping probably owes more to stuntman Hal Needham. He went on to double for John Wayne and to direct Smokey and the Bandit, he got his start doubling for Boone.

He wasn't the only great supporting actor on the show. We see Lee Van Cleef, James Coburn, George Kennedy and Charles Bronson, Whit Bissell, Mike Connors, Strother Martin and Ken Kurtis, Duane Eddy, L.Q. Jones and Jack Elam, even Vincent Price playing a ham actor. But even when the faces aren't familiar, the actors, and especially the actresses, seem to be delivering a lot more than expected.

It might be the directors - Andrew McLaglen did the honors most often, and he was indeed Victor McLaglen's son. Others were directed by Sam Peckinpah, Ida Lupino and Boone himself. Lupino's work was notable for the great fight scenes. Boone's episodes often had small touches of classic black-and-white cinema, close-ups with beautiful studio lighting that really stood out among the 2- and 3-light shots.

We also get shown some beautiful scenery, with whole episodes taking place in the wilderness, mostly around Bishop, Lone Pine or Bend OR. Admittedly, we do see the same 2 or 3 Old West town back lot sets over and over, but that doesn't really make any difference. Some of the best episodes are set on a single soundstage set, perfect little one-act plays.

Because the real star of the series was the writing. The stories tend to be as sophisticated as Paladin himself. They are often tragic - the classic plot is: A father hires Paladin to find his son and bring him to justice. Usually, the job is to make sure he is hung by the authorities and not lynched. The father doesn't want Paladin to free the son, not if the son is guilty. But he wants him punished with dignity. Sometimes the son is innocent, and Paladin can help him. Sometimes, he is guilty due to a momentary lapse, and, although it is terrible, he must pay. Even when he is just plain evil, Paladin makes us see the tragedy of his inevitable doom.

Of course, not every episode is tragic. Some have happy endings, with the bad guys gettting a come-uppance, or the enemies reconciled and everyone sharing a laugh and a feast. Some of them had women at the core, deceitful yet alluring women. Not too surprisingly, these are often written by Gene Roddenberry.

Another repeated theme is prejudice - against Armenians, Mexicans, Indians, Chinese, Jews, Gypsies and even African Americans. I felt that they were pussyfooting around the civil rights fights with Armenians or Chinese standing in for blacks, but several episodes were very specifically about equal rights for the recently freed slaves. A lot of these scripts are written by Shimon Wincelberg, with sensitivity and understanding of prejudice and oppression.

Since I mentioned Chinese, I have to talk about Hey Boy. In San Francisco, Paladin's factotum and comic foil is the Carlton Hotel's Chinese bellboy called Hey Boy. He is not ashamed of the name - when someone calls him Hey You, he corrects him. Although he is pretty much the stereotyped bowing Chinese gofer, as played by Kam Tong, he has a real personality, and a life in his immigrant community. A few episodes deal with his family and the San Francisco Chinatown. If he is a stereotype, he is a well-rounded one, and when he mutters in Chinese, Paladin knows enough of the language to reply in kind.

I would love to tell you more about this series, my favorite episodes, like the one based on Paladin's knowledge of molybdenum, or the one with Odetta. I could talk about Paladin's knowledge of cooking or his discernment of fine whiskey - he may have encouraged Jim Beam to bring his beverage to a wider audience in one episode. I could mention the love of his life, a bluestocking lady doctor, played by June Lockheart.

But really, you owe it to yourself to just watch these. Start at the beginning - the series is strongest in the first few seasons.

Now, I assume everyone has heard of Hec Ramsey?

Blame it on Caine

2011-12-04T11:17:00.001-08:00

Pulp (1972) is sort of the opposite of Get Carter (1971), the first movie that director Mike Hodges made with Michael Caine. Get Carter is a tense revenge thriller. Pulp, on the other hand, is a goofy romp.

Caine plays a pulp fiction writer who is living on Malta, possibly hiding out from an ex-wife. His internal monologue supplies the unreliable narrative. He is approached by gravel-voiced thug Lionel Stander to ghost-write an autobiography for an unnamed personage. Quick digression - We last saw Lionel Stander in If Only You Could Cook. He makes a great thug/stooge - definitely worth the price of admission.

Caine goes on a Magical Mystery Bus tour to meet his patron, only knowing that one of his fellow travelers would contact him. One does, but may not be the right one. Especially when he ends up dead. At the beginningof the movie, Caine's narration gives the body count, so you can start counting now. Of course, it is unreliable.

His contact turns out to be a cute backpacker, Nadia Cassini. And the subject of the autobiography he will be writing is a retired film star with mob connections, played by Mickey Rooney. It may be that some of those connections don't want this book published. Or maybe the trouble is coming from the fascist-lite politician Cippola, who never appears in the flesh, but his wife (Lizabeth Scott, last seen in Dead Reckoning) is one of Rooney's character's ex-wives. Anyway, someone is trying to stop the book - if that is the reason people are dying.

This is not a tightly plotted thriller - or comedy. It mostly makes sense, but just barely. Someone compared it to Beat the Devil, and there is indeed a Bogart and a Lorre imitator on hand to drive the point home. I hope everyone enjoyed making this. I enjoyed watching it.

The One and Only

2011-12-04T11:03:00.001-08:00

I guess it was Mr. Peel who got me in the mood to watch a Bond film, so when On Her Majesty's Secret Service showed up in the Netflix streaming recommendations, Ms. Beveridge and I realized that neither of us had seen George Lazenby's one and only Bond and decided to watch.

I believe Mr. Peel also argues that Lazenby might be the best Bond, for some value of best. He does bring a certain weightiness to the role. His Bond takes things seriously. He can flirt with Moneypenny and drop a one-liner with the rest, but he is neither flip nor camp. He has feelings.

For example, he hates Blofled, incarnated by Telly Savales. He hates him so much that Q takes him off the case, fearing that he has lost his objectivity. So he goes on a busman's holiday, using shady character Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti) to get to Blofeld in an unofficial capacity.

And love? As much as he hates Blofeld, he love Tracy Draco - Diana Rigg. And who is better suited to be wooed by James Bond than Mrs. Emma Peel? Because this isn't a Bond girl he beds and forgets - he gets plenty of those in Blofeld's Alpine allergy clinic. No, this is one for the ages.

Indeed, this is a great Bond film, with some great mountain locations, including Piz Gloria (mirrored in the film Inception). However, I'm afraid I can't accept Lazenby as Bond - he just doesn't have the face for it. His low forehead and long nose give him a rodent-like look from some angles. From other angles he looks fine, and from still others, he looks different. Maybe if he had stuck around for a few more movies, his look would have settled down.

Best Bond ever? Daniel Craig.

Thor Head

2011-11-26T06:20:00.001-08:00

Yes, Thor is a Marvel superhero movie directed by Kenneth Branagh. Makes more sense than Ang Lee directing Hulk.

To sum up, Thor, Chris Hemsworth, is the crown prince of Asgard, expected to inherit the throne when elderly Odin (Anthony Hopkins!) steps down. Odin could pass the reins to his other son, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), but that doesn't seem too likely. But Thor gets all arrogant and mounts an impromptu war party against the Frost Giants. This gets him exiled from Asgard to New Mexico, Mittelheim. His hammer gets exiled too, sitting immovable in a crater.

In New Mexico, he meets up with scientists Natalie Portman and Stellan Skarsgard, and their assistant/comic relief Kat Dennings. Since he doesn't know from life on Earth, they take him to their totally cool converted-car-dealership laboratory. But meanwhile, his hammer is attracting tourists (including guess-who in a pickup truck) - and the government.

So, in my opinion:

Asgard is awesome. It has a nice art-deco magnificence with a lived in look
Hemsworth is a great Thor - really dynamic, strong and noble. Or maybe he just has a great beard. The rest of the Old Gods are great as well. Special appreciation for:

Idris Elba as Heimdall. He gives his role some real heft.
Rene Russo as Odin's wife Frigga. I thought she was a little young for the part but turns out she's older than me. Very majestic.

Natalie Portman's Jane Foster (not Nurse Foster in this continuity) is a little on the bland side. Her romance with Thor seems a bit pro forma. Maybe I just miss the Kirby version, doting on her crippled Dr. Blake.

A rousing good adventure and another step along the way to the Avengers movie! Well done, Mr. Branagh.
In conclusion, I really want to live in that car dealership lab.

Five of a Kind

2011-11-24T11:50:00.001-08:00

I think Fast Five is pretty much a direct sequel to Fast and Furious. The series gets kind of confusing with the reboots, sequels with little relation to the main sequence, etc. Anyway, it starts where F&F ended, Diesel on the bus to Lompoc and his buddies coming to rescue him.

After they break him out, they hightail down to Rio to hide out in the favela. I kept expecting them to run into Ed Norton as Bruce Banner. They get into trouble with the local crime boss, Joaquim de Almeida, and decide to take him down. In the meantime, a big bad government agent comes searching for fugitive Diesel - yes, it's that other no-necked bullethead: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. This could get confusing, with 2 heavily muscled bald guys running around. But Johnson is so ridiculously bulked up that Diesel looks like a skinny kid next to him. So that's OK.

The movie plays out as a heist film, with Diesel bringing in his team from previous films, buying a replica of the safe he wants to crack, recreating the course they need to drive, etc. This seems like it should be in a different movie, possibly the Italian Job or Ocean's 11 remakes. In fact, I think I counted 11 in Diesel's team, but I might have been seeing double. And there is a garbage truck playing the same role as in the original Ocean's 11.

It all builds up to a fun and literally unbelievable climax. -SPOILER- two cars could NOT outrace all the cops in Rio is they were dragging a 10-ton safe. Could they have at least put a creeper under it?

Never mind, it's all in fun. Some (Ms. Spenser, for ex) might prefer more car chases, but there's plenty of action, and not too much romance. One of the hookups was between Ms. Spenser's heart-throb Sung Kang and Gad Galot. I have to agree with the Ms. - she's cute, but too skinny. She wouldn't get a second look in Rio.

Make sure to watch to the end - set up for sequel.

Print the Myth

2011-11-24T11:49:00.001-08:00

It's interesting to look at Annie Oakley as presented by Barbara Stanwyck in 1935. I wouldn't picture her as a hillbilly type, and her accent doesn't sound much like the Ozarks to me, but I think she sell it.

Oakley starts out as a country girl from a small town who bags quail for a Cincinnati hotel. Her signature is hitting them square in the head, leaving no buckshot to pick out. The hotel manager brings her up to shoot against sharpshooter Preston Walker, and she is so taken by his good looks and smooth manner that she lets him win.

Melvyn Douglas sees her act and hires her on with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, setting up the triangle between her, Walker and Douglas. Now, she's an easy sell - everyone is against the idea of a girl sharpshooter until they meet her. She's just so sweet and charming. Walker on the other hand is pushy, self-promoting and obnoxious. But here's the twist. He confides only to Annie that this is just his show-biz persona. He is going to build up their rivalry to increase her audience.

So, in this version, the sharpshooter that she is in love with is not a jerk, he only pretends to be one. Interesting choice.

In addition to Stanwyck and her beaux, we have Moroni Olsen as a pretty majestic Buffalo Bill, and Chief Thunderbird as Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull is largely a comic foil, but there's a great scene where he spots someone from across a crowded stadium and then chases him across New York. Pretty good for an 80-year-old Indian.

So, all in all, pretty fun. Not Stanwyck's most difficult role. The heartache and melodrama is kept to a minimum, and they run through the mythmaking at a good clip. And I didn't miss the songs at all.

Powers' Pirates

2011-11-21T16:45:00.001-08:00

We were looking forward to Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides for the usual reasons - Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow, pirates, swashbuckling, etc. I was looking forward for one more reason, "Suggested by Tim Power's On Stranger Tides".

When Philip K. Dick (who's every novel and short story will soon be a movie) lived in LA, he was friends with three young authors: K.W. Jeter, James Blaylock and Tim Powers. They are all great writers, who, among other things, invented the genre of steampunk. Powers has a great trick of weaving high myth, low folklore and history. In Last Call for instance, he mixes the Grail legend with the gamblers' superstition in Las Vegas. In The Stress of Her Regard, he shows that the Romantic poets were vampiric succubi. In On Stranger Tides, he has Blackbeard the pirate searching for the Fountain of Youth with the aid of voodoo.

One clever bit in Tides is the the sailors' tale of Mate Carry-For, a spirit who is always willing to help a sailor out. But his true name turns out to be Maitre Carrefour - the Master of the Crossroads, voodoo god Papa Legba.

Now, very little of this cleverness gets into PotC: OST. Basically, nothing but the phrase "Blackbeard the pirate searching for the Fountain of Youth with the aid of voodoo". Considering the amount of voodoo in previous movies, there was very little here. Basically, two zombies and one voodoo doll.

Also, considering Blackbeard is the most awesome of all pirates, known for sticking lit fuses in his hair and beard, Ian MacShane's Blackbeard is not as scary as could be hoped. He does let his beard smolder a bit, but that's pretty much all.

It seems that the new director, Rob Marshall, felt that he couldn't go bigger than the previous movies, so he toned it down. However, we don't have a sensitive character-driven movie here. It is still a big rowdy adventure. Even dialed back, there is plenty of room for fights, chases, capers and fun.

One thing this has going for it is the lack of Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley. Great actors in good roles, but they had become a bit drippy. Let's face it, people come for Capt. Sparrow.

We get him in spades - acting loopy, setting off without a plan, meeting his dad (Keef!) and an old love, played by Penelope Cruz. She's great in this, as you might expect.

The look of the film is great, also as expected. If you liked the others, you should like this. It doesn't top them, but should be a good foundation for another trilogy.

Class Act

2011-11-21T16:39:00.001-08:00

Well, we are now members at the Video 21 video store in Tallahassee. It's on E. Lafayette, across Appalachee from Governer's Square, if you're in the neighborhood. It's connected to Craig's Killer Coffee and they share a common theme of love for [coffee]/[movies] in defiance to commercial consideration. I think we'll like getting our video from them.

Even though they have a bunch of rare cult Asian and other DVDs (and tapes!), we went right to the Recent Arrivals and rented X-Men: First Class. If you are not familiar with this, it is the X-Men prequel/reboot. Of course, if you aren't familiar with this, you probably aren't paying attention to the X-Men movies at all.

This movie takes us back to the 50s and early 60s, when Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) was a telepathic PhD and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) was a concentration camp survivor, searching for the man who killed his mother to force him to develop his mutant powers (Kevin Bacon). They meet, bond, and start training a band of mutants to help the CIA battle the rogue mutants who want to use the Cuban missile crisis to start WWIII.

McAvoy plays Prof X with a full head of hair and pair of functioning legs. He is good, but I don't know if he really owns the role the way that Patrick Stewart did. Likewise Fassbender - he plays the proud, tortured, Magneto in civvies beautifully, but until he puts on the helmet, I don't get a real feel for him as Magneto.

On the other hand, Jennifer Lawrence looked great as Raven in civvies and all blue and prickly as Mystique. In this continuity, she is Xavier's more-or-less adopted sister, who only goes over to Magneto when she realizes that only he appreciates her in her true form. Which is the theme of the movie really - Mutant Pride vs. mutant assimilation. And it appears that Xavier is on the wrong side of the argument. He really is kind of a dick, making Magneto the good guy.

I saw a lot of comments about the great 60s feel of this movie, with its Mad Men and James Bond inspirations. Unfortunately, I don't think this came through very well. Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), for example, wears a bushy, bushy blonde hairdo that won't be popular in America for a decade, and evil mutant Alex Gonzalez looks like disco era Euro-trash.

Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy hits the right note with a Buddy Holly look. January Jones as Emma Frost also hits the Nancy Sinatra look dead on (anachronistic by a few years only). Unfortunately, she plays the role very stiffly, like she was a model and not a real actress. Maybe that hairstyle was slowing her down.

All in all, a very good entry in the X-Men series, if not quite what I could have hoped for. It suffered a little from the usual problem of having too many mutants who are just sketched-in extras, but that might be unavoidable. I'm not sure director Matthew Vaughn succeeded in putting an indelible stamp on the franchise, but he did entertain.

The Swarming Inferno

2011-11-19T12:17:00.001-08:00

I guess it just all came together for The Swarm. First, This Island Rod, Roderick Heath's blog, did a terrific takedown of this 1978 Irwin Allen made-for-TV disaster.. movie. It was hilarious and without mercy, calling Allen a "second-tier George Pal", and worse. Now in my family, when the menfolk read something funny or interesting, of course they read it out loud to their wives. So I started reading selections to Ms. Spenser.

Unfortunately, she thought the movie sounded like fun.

Then I found out that the Filmsack podcast would be sacking The Swarm this week, and that sealed our fate. Since they only do movies from Netflix streaming, we now knew it was available. And so we watched.

The movie features Michael Caine as a shouty British bee scientist. He is found wandering around a nuclear missile silo full of dead soldiers. His story is that he walked in while following a swarm of deadly bees. Although the military don't trust him, when the bees threaten small town Texas, he gets to lead the defenses. SPOILER - he is not very good at this.

As is traditional in these Allen cheesefests, we get a number of roles for the long-time or soon-to-be washed up. Caine's team includes Richard Chamberlain and Henry Fonda. The Texas townspeople include Olivia de Haviland, Fred MacMurray and Ben Armstrong as a geriatric romantic triangle. It was sad to see Melanie from Gone with the Wind playing a matronly school marm, but MacMurray was Walter Neff! With two Fs, like in Philadelphia! To have fallen so low.

Anyway, I'm not going to go on about this, except to say that it is way more than 2 hours long. Read This Island Rod and listen to the podcast. Whether you watch the movie is up to you.

Way!

2011-11-17T18:29:00.001-08:00

The Warrior's Way was another Netflix suggestion - I imagine the criteria were "Likes psycho kung-fu Westerns with Korean leads". Netflix sure has us pegged.

Directed by (first timer?) Sngmoo Lee, Warrior's Way (2010) stars Korean Dong-gun Jang as the world's greatest ninja assassin, dedicated to wiping out the enemies clan. But when it comes to killing the last member of the clan, a baby girl, he changes sides, and takes the girl to America, to hide out in a dusty Western town.

There he meets a spunky girl played by Kate Bosworth and the remnants of a stalled travelling circus, including a short person named 8-Ball (Tony Cox) and drunk sharpshooter Geoffrey Rush. He protects the town against its enemies, but can he protect it against his enemies?

The look is that hyper-real comicbook style that the kids go for these days. I thought it was very well done. Of course, I went in assuming it was going to be a kind of B-movie, maybe even direct to video. For top budget feature, it was kind of weak. For a B-movie kung-fu Western, it was pretty good. Sort of a Sukiyaki Western Django knockoff.

In conclusion, Sngmoo Lee. Remember that name.

Tiki - Florida style

2011-11-13T11:31:00.001-08:00

I'm a big fan of tiki, although not hardcore enough to actually have visited to more than one or two. I keep the spirit of tiki in my heart; plus, I mix a mean Singapore Sling.

So I was pretty excited when I got to Florida and started hearing about all the tiki bars. They seem to be everywhere. But I soon found out that, around here, a tiki bar is just an outdoor bar, with maybe a palm roof for decoration. No tiki mugs, nets with glass ball floats, or wooden Moai. And the drinks tend to be Bud light rather than Mai-Tais or Singapore Slings.

But maybe I've been missing something because I just don't understand the lingo. You see, Mai-Tais and Singapore Slings are Polynesian cocktails - west-coast style. In Florida, tropical cocktails are inspired by the Caribbean - Tequila Sunrises, Pina Coladas Bahama Mamas, Run Runners.

As it turns out, I am not well versed in this idiom. But I had a Rum Runner down in Tarpon Springs, and I loved it. Here's one recipe:

1 oz light rum
1 oz dark rum or aged rum
1 oz blackberry liqueur
1 oz banana liqueur
1 oz pineapple juice
1 oz orange juice
Splash grenadine

Shake over ice. Serve in a tall glass.

I haven't tried making one of these myself, since I haven't been able to bring myself to stock banana liqueur in my drinks cabinet (also, our local liquor store doesn't have decent looking blackberry brandy).

It actually sounds pretty weird, but tastes very nice.Anybody suggest any other east-coast tiki drinks for "research"?

Arkham Express

2011-11-03T20:23:00.000-07:00

I know it is long after Halloween, but I still have a few movies to mention, like Die Monster Die!. This 1965 American International picture starring Boris Karloff takes the outline of its story from H.P. Lovecraft's Color Out of Space.

It starts with American Nick Adams arriving in Arkham England (must be what the Arkham in America is named after) and meets a hostile reception when he says he wants to visit the Witley Manor. It seems that strange things are happening there. Nick's girlfriend, the daughter of the family is a normal young woman. But her mother is suffering from a strange aliment, the butler, Terence de Marney, is a bit peculiar, and her father is Boris Karloff, confined to a wheelchair.

The manor itself is perhaps the best part of the movie. The director, Daniel Haller, was art director for a number of Vincent Price films, and it shows. His sets are sumptuous and beautiful. Other than that, there is not a lot to recommend this.

Other than a few Cthuloids!

Pickup Artists from Mars

2011-11-01T20:23:00.001-07:00

We're still on Netflix streaming - we might be getting out of the movie watching habit. It happens, you know. We used to have cable, then they cancelled Mystery Science Theater 3000. Turns out that was all we were watching, so we cancelled our service.

I used to have a great disk queue with over 300 movies, everyone of them eagerly awaited (well, at least 50 of them, some of the rest were just "ehh"). But my Instant queue - kung fu, b-movie, boring, b-movie, depressing classic, obscure b-movie, kung fu, b-movie, and so on. So we go to Netflix recommendations, which are usually worse. But it did serve up Mars Needs Women.

This 1978 AIP cheapie stars Tommy Kirk and 4 other Martians who have come to Earth to abduct human females to repopulate Mars. Naturally, they pick a stewardess, a coed, a stripper (played by Houston burlyque star Bubbles Cash), a cheerleader, and - Tommy Kirk's pick - a sexy geneticist.

The geneticist is played by Yvonne Craig - TV's Bat Girl. Director Larry Buchanan apparently got her to work cheap, because the movie was shot in Houston, and she could visit family there. He shot a whole series of these zero-budget made-for-TV movies, and claims this was the only one that anyone remembers, because of the intensity and professionalism Craig brought to the role. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but she does give a little more than this movie requires.

Of course, this movie is 40% stock footage and has no special effects other than a plastic model spaceship...

For me, the big standout is Tommy Kirk. He is always the insufferably dweeby kid in movies like Catalina Caper and Village of the Giants. He is drippy and whiny and you just want to punch him. But here, as Martian Fellow #1, he shows a sort of wooden resolve, mixed with blank puzzlement, that gives him a kind of dignity. He reminded me a lot of Keanu Reeves in this. He has that same kind of stoic incomprehension.

So, all in all, a pleasant, short piece of camp. Thanks, Netflix streaming.

Terrible Comedy

2011-11-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

The Comedy of Terrors isn't that terrible. It stars Vincent Price as a drunken undertaker, with Peter Lorre as his dimwitted and felonious assistant, Joyce Jameson as the wife he abuses and Boris Karloff as her senile father, who owns the funeral parlor.

Now, Price hasn't had a "customer" in a long while, and if he can't come up with some money, landlord Basil Rathbone will have him evicted. So Price and Lorre set out to make some corpses. Nothing works right until they get the idea of killing two ... of solving two problems at once, by killing Rathbone. Then things really start to go wrong.

This is more comedy than terror, the kind where the film speeds up for slapstick and there are slide whistles and a tympany "bow-oing!" to mark the gag. But the real fun is watching Priced drink, insult his wife and try to kill his father-in-law (among others). To see Lorre try to build a coffin so they won't have to keep re-using the only one they have. Sadly, Karloff spends most of his time drowsing over a teacup - his arthritis didn't allow him a more active part. But he does get to play a manic fiddle and deliver a vague eulogy.

Rathbone has a lovely role as the Shakespeare-quoting landlord who can never quite be killed. It must have been fun to get to play the ham so richly.

I have to say, however, my favorite character was Rhubard the cat, in his role as Cleopatra. This veteran of the classic cats-and-baseball movie Rhubarb adorns every scene in which he deigns to make an appearance.

Although this was directed by Jacques Tourneur, it is a long way from the subtle implied menace of Cat People. There isn't much menace and no subtlety. But at least a bit of fun.

Bisk Limpet

2011-10-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I listened to Netflix when it suggested Don Knott's 1964 The Incredible Mr. Limpet. I vaguely remember some of my film bloggers praising this movie, and I don't think I'd seen it as a kid, so I figured, what the heck?

It stars mild-mannered accountant Don Knotts, who lives only to dream about fish. He lives in Flatbush with a glamorous redheaded wife (who has a slight resemblance to a goldfish), who plainly prefers their chubby sailor friend Stickle (as in stickleback?). It is 1941, just before the war, and the navy won't accept Knottts, because he has poor vision and is generally Don Knotts.

But what he really wants to be is a fish. And on a trip to Coney Island, his wish is granted. He falls into the water and becomes an animated fish - with a musical number and everything.

After some adventures with a crusty crustacean (really, he gets called Crusty) voiced by Paul Frees and a sexy lady fish (yes, he names her Ladyfish), Knotts realizes that he could be helping with the war effort. So he gets in contact with his old friend Stickle (chubby Jack Weston) and becomes a secret reconnaissance weapon.

It was Jack Weston who got me thinking of recasting this movie for a modern remake - he wold be perfect played by Jack Black, or even better, Seth Rogen. But who would do Don Knotts part? That's when it hit me: Johnny Depp! It's just the kind of wacky thing he would do!

And then it came back to me - the vague memories of film blog discussions. A little googling did not turn up the exact blogs, but I had remembered correctly. Johnny Depp was planning to star in a remake. I don't know if it is still on, but I'm looking forward to it, more than to his upcoming Dark Shadows.

I can't say I'm in love with this, although there are a lot of "pretty good" things about it. I do think it would be a nice opener on a double bill with Mr. Peabody's Mermaid. Ann Blythe's uninhibitedly amorous mermaid seems to represent the same kind of male fantasy as Ladyfish. A fishy kind of a kink, I must say.

Master of Reality

2011-10-29T15:40:00.000-07:00

Since it's getting to be Halloween, we naturally thought of streaming some Vincent Price. Since The Abominable Dr. Phibes is not available on streaming, we thought we'd try some non-horror, adventure Price: Master of the World (1961).

It starts in pre-Civil War Pennsylvania, where strange explosions and Bible-quoting voices are heard from the top of Great Eyrie Mountain. Government agent Charles Bronson goes to the Philadelphia Ballooning Society to recruit a balloon for aerial surveillance, and picks up arms magnate Henry Hull, his daughter Mary Webster and her fiance David Franken. In short order, they are up in a balloon and just as quickly, shot down by a mysterious missile.

They wake up in a great steampunk airship, run by the Nemosque Capt. Robur (Price). They soon find that he plans to use his mastery of the air to destroy all armies and navies and abolish war - regardless of the wishes of the nations of the earth.

Price is clearly a noble, altruistic genius, and his "guests" are a war profiteer (Hull), a simpering ninny (Webster), an arrogant bully (Franken) and sadly miscast (Bronson). And yet, he's the villain.

But this irony is intentional. What is not intentional is the woefully threadbare special effects - scant models, international locations that never get much past Malibu, and what appears to be extensive stock footage. By the time it gets to the - I think - genuinely exciting climax, this movie had used up all of my good will, and I was just making fun of it.

I understand that most of Vincent Price's oeuvre represents a triumph of art over budget. I'd call this a draw at best.

Still here

2011-10-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

I am still here, just not watching movies.

1. I'm still fairly jet lagged, and can't stay awake after 9 o'clock.
2. We haven't gotten around to renewing our Netflix disk account or visiting the video store.

Last night, I started watching Hellgate with Sterling Hayden on streaming. Somehow I had gotten the idea it was a pirate movie. The tiny picture of the poster seemed to show a guy in a Robin Hood hat fighting in front of a ship's rigging. Well, it was a Civil War military cap, and the rigging was the wooden grating over a the entrance to a subterranean prison - the titular Hellgate.

So, basically a prison Western. It looked like a pretty good one, and you've got to love Sterling Hayden, looking stern and strong-jawed whether faced with a horse having trouble with a foal or a pest-infested military hellhole.

But, you know, it was on streaming, and for some reason I just don't commit to watching streaming the way I do to disks. So I watched about 25 minutes - just enough to ensure that he wasn't going to suddenly get on a ship and turn pirate - then gave up.

I do that a lot with Netflix streaming. Partly because the selection has a lot of bombs in it, but partly because of some psychological quirk in me. I don't like to watch part of a movie. I hate to come into a movie after it has started, or stop before it's done. I want to commit to a movie, give myself up to it. Something about streaming feels casual to me, makes it too easy to lose focus and drop out of the experience.

So, Netflix, it isn't you - it's me. I'm feel like I want more than a streaming relationship. I want the commitment that comes with a solid disk in the mail. And I don't know if I trust you to provide that.

I'm Back and Qwikster is Gone

2011-10-10T06:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back from Japan. Flew into Miami Beach BOAC - no I didn't, that's something else. I'm still suffering from from jetlag and a serious sinus issues (deaf in right ear, constant vertigo) but I'm very happy to be back.

And it looks like Netflix is welcoming me back by cancelling (postponing, I suppose) their plans to spin the DVD-by-mail business off to a new company, derisively called Qwikster. I still kind of want to try out the local video rental place, but I know I am going to reward Netflix by signing up for disks again.

And the dirty secret is, we are hooked on streaming as well. Yes as many bad things as I have to say about streaming, we watch about an hour and a half of streaming every day. That's right, 2 episodes of Have Gun, Will Travel washed down with an episode of The Addams Family.

The way I see it, streaming is for TV, movies should be watched on disk. At least as long as that remains an option.

Plan B

2011-10-04T05:40:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of the B-Movie Cast, a couple of chuckleheads who discuss their favorite B movies (along with guests and lately, the lovely, non-chuckleheaded wife of the host). Lately, I've been listening to the Naschy Cast as well. This is a different set of chuckleheads discussing the B movies of Spanish horror auteur Paul Naschy.

These are both great fun. The hosts are funny and interesting, neither intellectual nor dumb. They have great affection for the movies they cover, without losing track of their basic trashiness. Thanks to Curtis in Mountain View who got me started listening to them.

But one thing they don't do is inspire me to watch the movies. I love me some B movies, but am not a big fan of the horror genre. They aren't the same thing you know. Not all B movies are horror, monster, thriller or gorefests.There are B comedies, gangster, melodramas, westerns - OK, I don't like the melodramas or westerns much, either.

But they never seem to inspire the same kind of fandom, do they? Was there ever a magazine like "Famous Comedians of Filmland"? Did kids stay up at night waiting for a Jack Haley or Joe E. Brown movie to come on (other than me, I mean)? I suppose that's the key - the visceral experience a kid hiding behind the couch scared silly just sticks with you in a way that a few corny jokes or a tough guy noir doesn't.

I still love these podcasts, and enjoy listening to them much more than I would enjoy watching the movies. So, thanks to Curtis from Mountain View, frequent B-Movie Cast commenter, and the guy who turned me on to these 'casts. I know he enjoys hearing about, say, Yolanda and the Thief, but would never want to watch a musical. Well, to each their own.

Wish List

2011-09-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

While I'm here in Japan, I could watch some movies, at least while I'm not at the salt mines. But it just doesn't feel right. So I'm dreaming of what I'll watch when I get back. Since I lost the ~300 films in my Netflix queue, I'll have to start building that up.

One of the movies on the queue was Undisputed II, mainly because Michael Jai White is in it. We fell in love with him in Black Dynamite, and we'll definitely consider anything he's in.

But a direct-to-video sequel? We were apprehensive, but I recently read this appreciation of direct-to-video action films in Movie Morlocks: Action Items: Direct-to-Video, Into My Heart. It starts out with the premise that the best action is on DTV, but it turns out that is mainly true if it involves English actor Scott Adkins and Israeli director Isaac Florentine. And Undisputed II (and III) meets that criterion.

So far my new queue is mostly mental. It includes all the usual suspects, the films everybody wants to see - Thor, X-Men First Class, Spaceways with Howard Duff. And I think we can find time for a little DTV.

Basketball Jones

2011-09-24T04:50:00.000-07:00

Kung Fu Dunk is one of the last Netflix movies I saw before heading off to Japan. As a result, it's going to be one of the last Netflix movies I'll blog about, at least for a while.

To get the obvious out of the way, KFD is a Shaolin Soccer rip-off, and by no means as inspired as Steven Chow's masterpiece. It is also a Jay Chou vehicle. We know Chou as the recent Green Hornet's Kato. In China, he is a combination rock/rap/pop star and action hero - sort of a combination Marky Mark and Mark Wahlberg. Except he looks more like Justin Beiber, with his adorable moptop hair.

He was abandoned as a baby at a Shaolin monastery, where he becomes a bit of a rebel. It's kind of a lousy monastery anyways, with a corrupt head monk, few lazy teachers and a gay couple (unless she was supposed to be a butch nun?).

When Chou runs away, he meets a homeless genius, played by Eric Tsang, who decides to make him a college basketball star. Tsang I recognized from a thousand Sammo Hung movies - he was one of the Lucky Stars/Aces Go Places crew. A lot of the other faces were familiar as well.

Chou's teammates include a matched pair of cute guys, both the thin-faced, scraggly-bearded pony-tailed Chinese hipster types. You could tell them apart only because one was a drunk. He was the one who taught Chou the mystery of the Slam Dunk. It isn't clear why this is needed, because Chou could hit the basket from anywhere on the court. I guess if the opposing team has wire-fu skills, they can block pretty well, so you have to carry it in.

Skipping over the lame romantic angle and the meager laughs, we jump to the final big game, which has been fixed by gangsters. The opposing team are all thugs and the ref looks the other way. Only Kung Fu can save them. Interestingly, I watched this right around when a Shanghai team was playing a "friendly" game with Georgetown in the US that wound up in a brawl, supposedly due to biased refereeing. No mention of kung fu on either side, though.

OK, so it was a pretty lame, messy movie. But how were the action scenes? Pretty good, actually. The fights and games were all really well done, best that money can buy. Let's just say I've seen worse and enjoyed it.

But Jay Chou seems a lot less cool to me now.

Qwikster? Really?

2011-09-20T05:50:00.000-07:00

I guess we've all heard the news from Netflix. They are now all streaming, and the DVD-by-mail business will be handled by a new company called Qwikster. Just the name alone shows how much contempt they have for the whole old-fashioned business model.

Since everybody else's blog has already covered this to bits (even though the email was sent in the middle of the night on a Sunday), I don't have much else to say. I've already explained why I prefer a near infinite variety of crisp, clear disks to a limited selection of highly compressed streamed video. And Netflix has explained why it thinks I am wrong, and that they don't want me as a customer - although they never quite explain why.

I get that they think streaming is the future. Fine. I'll switch over in the future. For now, it is distinctly lower quality. This isn't dumping vinyl for CDs, this is dumping vinyl for 8-track. I'm not refusing to buy an iPhone, I'm refusing to buy a Newton.

So I should probably hold my nose and join Qwikster with the rest of the old media losers. As Netflix slowly starves it of resources, I can decide when to jump. Just because Netflix abandons a media that still has a couple of good years left in it, there's no reason that I have to.

Then Mrs. Spenser had a brilliant idea. Although I complain about Tallahassee a lot, there is a funky coffeeshop not too far from our place. It is shares a storefront with ... a video store! If DVDs are so danged old-fashioned, we might as well go all the way. Video 21 here we come!

Only a Dream

2011-09-18T04:25:00.000-07:00

We got Jennifer on a tip from MovieMorlocks - and a great tip it was.It stars Ida Lupino - hooked yet? She has come to a desolate old Spanish mansion in the Santa Barbara hills looking to take a position as caretaker. The owner, rich young Mary Shipp, tells her that the last caretaker, cousin Jennifer, just disappeared - probably just left, the flighty thing - and can you start right away?

Of course, like Rebecca and Laura, this is a movie about an absence.

Lupino needs the job, and doesn't mind being alone. In fact, she seems to want to spend time by herself. She seems to have had a recent past - romantic disappointment, nervous breakdown, it isn't clear. But she becomes obsessed with Jennifer, reading her diary and eventually wearing her dress. And finally believing that she was murdered.

But who did it? The laconic gardener? The chatty grocery boy? Or could it be - Howard Duff, the guy who is making himself just a little too much at home in the mansion. Always dropping by and helping himself to a beer, trying to make a date with Lupino and not taking "no" for an answer. He seems like a nice guy...

Lupino is predictably excellent in this low-budget thriller/melodrama. She conveys her character's vulnerability and growing hysteria wonderfully. But secretly, I'm really here for Duff. As radio detective Sam Spade, his voice has the prefect combination of deadpan humor and tough guy nerve. Here, I get to see his face, and it just fits. I didn't realize he was married to Lupino until I looked him up just now.

So, an atmospheric thriller (albeit low budget and short) with Ida Lupino and Howard Duff. Good enough for me.

Pink Drink

2011-09-16T22:50:00.001-07:00

I have written before about my love of the French passionfruit liqueur Passoa. In large doses, it tastes like fruit punch cough syrup, but a drop can make any drink taste tropical.

Case in point, from an Indian restaurant in Shinagawa - Passoa lassi and Passoa beer. The lassi was pretty sweet, but I liked the beer a lot.

Thanks to model/cocktail tester Ms. Y.

Great Scott

2011-09-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

Roberta from 1935 seemed like a natural - Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott. It turned out to be Scott that I enjoyed the most.

Astaire has travelled to Paris with his band, the Wabash Indianians, along with buddy Scott. When the gig falls through, they look up Scott's old aunt Roberta, who runs the swankiest dress shop in town. Scott quickly falls for Roberta's secretary, a Russian emigre, played by Irene Dunne. Meanwhile Astaire is interested in Ginger, a Russian singing sensation who can get his band a job.

No need to tell you that love doesn't run smoothly until the last act, or that there are several song and dance numbers. Dunne sings beautifully - I didn't know that. She does "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in a high-class manner. Astaire does "Lovely to Look at" and "I Won't Dance". Rogers sings in a phony Russian accent but with a little swing, but that's the gag. Astaire recognizes her as his grade school crush from Wabash. Norma Shearer pulls the same gag in Idiot's Delight 4 years later in 1939.

I've always thought of Randolph Scott as a big stiff, the Ralph Bellamy sort. I guess I don't watch enough Westerns. He is big, and a little stiff, but it fits his straight arrow character. He's a pleasure to watch, even when sharing the screen with Irene Dunne.

Of course, it all ends with a gala fashion show, which is a disaster. The gowns seem to come from one Bernard Newman, and he should be ashamed. The lines are generally competent, but he has two tricks:

Clunky, eccentric fur collars, cuffs or sleeves
A huge bow (18-24 inches) on the left breast

I don't think that started any trends.

The movie did start a trend - it was remade in 1952 as Lovely to Look At, with Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Marge and Gower Champion, Anne Miller, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Red Skelton. It's one of those movies where everyone is unpleasant, except the comics, who are unfunny. Nice dancing though. Stick with Roberta.

Spirited Away

2011-09-10T04:42:00.000-07:00

Juliet of the Spirits is a movie that I wanted to see with Mrs. Spenser. I think it helped her understand how I feel about its star, Giulietta Masina.

Masina plays Giulietta, the middle-aged wife of some hotshot fashion world PR guy, Mario Pisu, looking like a shopworn Marcello Mastroianni. She lives in a tiny jewelbox villa in the country by the beach, with a pair of maids, her visiting nieces and the friends and family that come to visit.

Her husband is rarely home, and when he is, he brings his crazy scenester friends. They are all glamorous grotesques, and sweet, frumpy Giulietta doesn't really fit in. Even her mother and sister are great beauties and social lions. But she shares an interest in spirits with this gay crowd, and joins them to visit mediums and seances.

Although Fellini makes the world of glamour deliriously fascinating, like in La Dolce Vita, it clearly disgusts him. Whereas Giuletta, quiet, grounded, loving is greatly attractive, even if everything in the movie conspires against her. Her friends ignore her or give her bad advice and the mystical truths that the spirits speak are all hateful and stupid.

Some of us know Masina from Il Strada and Nights of Cabiria - but I haven't seen these movies. I did she her as the prostitute Cabiria in The White Sheik. But that's not why I fell in love with her. Fellini, who was Masina's husband at the time, lets all of his love for her show. He might not do her any favors by making her middle-aged and dowdy, but he lets her soul shine through. And Masina seems to have the soul for the job.

The ending is ambiguous. I was contented by it, Mrs. Spenser was not. But I was glad she was willing to watch it with me.

40 Days over Tokyo

2011-09-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned previously, I am now in Tokyo. I will be here a total of 40 days, plus or minus. I will not be watching Netflix during that time. So (I ask myself), what happens to the blog?

Well, I've still got a backlog of movies I haven't discussed. (I never mentioned the we saw Inception - I figured, what can I say?) I can still write about cocktails, although I doubt I'll be visiting any classic cocktail lounges here. I've been doing short restaurant reviews on Facebook just to pass the time - convert to foodie blog?

Maybe I'll go with the ever popular free-form, whatever's-on-my-mind Bill Needle from SCTV kind of thing. Actually, I think I'd rather go on hiatus.

But I haven't used up all of my material yet, so don't go away. And who knows? Maybe I'll start reviewing Kabuki.

Update: I'd be remiss if I mentioned Kabuki without linking to the MST3K Japanese Theater Sketch.

Kids like Us

2011-09-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

Two reasons that we watched Spy Kids: director Robert Rodriguez, and Machete. This was a good idea.

There was plenty of Robert Rodriguez, especially if you consider Antonio Vargas to be his onscreen presence. Antonio and his wife, played by Carla Gugino, are raising 2 kids (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara) in a big house somewhere in Mexico. They seem like normal parents, but they have a secret: they are retired spies. The secret comes out when they are captured by mad genius and kiddie show host Alan Cumming and his minion Alexander Minion, played by Tony Shaloub.

The kids are forced to become spies themselves, and turn to a spy gizmo maker for help - their uncle Machete! Yes, it's Danny Trejo as a family friendly version of Machete.

Overall, the film is fun and satisfying. It looks great, but not slick enough to be pure spectacle. Instead, it's just lo-fi enough to pull you in.

I don't know how much kids would like this, but we did.

Netflix Apocalypse

2011-09-02T03:27:00.000-07:00

I guess I've been pretty bad about keeping up with this blog - it's partly because I got an iPad. I use it for recreational websurfing instead of my laptop, but it isn't much good for blogging, so I just tend to not get around to it. It's only going to get worse. More about that later.

What do you think about the Netflix-alpyse - their new fare structure that decouples DVDs from streaming? Streaming is no longer going to be "free" - included in the price of the DVD rentals. You can get either DVDs or streaming, or both, but it will cost you.

We are mainly into Netflix for the DVDs. I've explained my problems with streaming before, but there's something more than that. Basically, we want a particular movie watching experience - a special time set aside for a specific movie, planned in advance, etc. We have the 3-disc plan, and I tend to try to get a well balanced set of movies, something exciting, something silly,something classic - for Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

The Netflix streaming experience is more like TV, flip through the channels, see if there's something you want to watch.

So, maybe we'll just drop streaming? Well, we could, but we do use streaming - to wach TV. Recently, we've been addicted to Have Gun Will Travel. And, because HGWT can get pretty grim at times, we use The Addams Family as a chaser. This is an experience that's hard to match with discs - we'd need to subscribe on the 15 discs-at-a-time plan.

So, we're dropping the disc part of the subscription. Partly to protest Netflix's price plan, but mainly because - I'm on an extended business trip to Tokyo. I won't be back until early Oct, and Mrs. Spenser doesn't watch movies when I'm not around. We'll sign up again when I get back, probably 3-at-a-time, with streaming.

But don't tell Netflix, it would ruin the protest.

One benefit of this: It will zero out my queue, which is full of movies that I don't really want to watch. And I can lovingly build it up from nothing!

It's a Swamp Thing

2011-08-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

I guess I queued up Swamp Thing based on the Film Sack podcast, and based on wanting to see a dumb comic book movie. The presence of Adrienne "Boobeau" had no influence on my decision to watch this.

Barbeau is visiting a secret government lab deep withing the swamps of So. Carolina when they are attacked by commando-thugs, seeking the magic plant-life elixir. At the same time, scientist Ray Wise has been exposed to the elixir and become - the Swamp Thing! AKA, stuntman Dick Duroc in a rubber suit.

Made by horror-schlockmeister Wes Craven in 1982, Swamp Thing is surprisingly tame. It's mostly swamp chases - he gets the steamy atmosphere dead on. Barbeau looks surprisingly ratty, with big 80's hair and a rode-hard/put-away-wet face. The monster looks totally like a guy in rubber suit. The magic plant powers are pretty silly. Still, it's fun in a retro monster movie way. And the ending gallops right along.

Enjoy it. We did.

Dicking Around

2011-08-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

The Adjustment Bureau is another Philip K. Dick movie adaptations. It's not a blockbuster like Bladerunner or Total Recall. It's kind of a small picture, like Paycheck.

Matt Damon is a young New York politician, whose senatorial bid has just been crushed by the publication of a youthful indiscretion. He meets the girl of his dreams, Emily Blunt, in the men's room of a hotel before his concession speech, then on the bus the next day. So, he loses the senatorship, but gains a cute British girlfriend. He's OK with that, until the Men with Hats show up.

Not the alt-disco group Men without Hats, but the Adjustment Bureau, a group of long-lived beings with mysterious powers tasked with adjusting reality to make destiny come out right. Their powers are mainly:

Books with sketches that update automatically and show what is going to happen, similar Harry Potter's Marauder's Map
The ability to go through doors and come out almost anywhere
To wear hats without irony

They let him know that he is destined to be a great senator, but not to ever see Blunt again. Care to guess whether he accepts this, or decides to fight?

Good things about this movie:

Blunt plays a ballet dancer, and they get a very good dancer to double her. Her dancing really is inspiring, and you can see how Damon would be touched
The Men with Hats are suitably drab and anonymous, except:

African-American agent Harry, played by Anthony Mackie in a cool stingy-brim
"The Hammer", a high-level agent played by Terence Stamp

New York - this is another New-York-Looks-Wonderful movie. The city may be the best character in the film

Bad things? Well, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It is not Damon's best acting job. I personally would have liked a bit more action. But all in all, I liked it. It was fun, sweet, easy on the eyes and no deeper than it needed to be.

Extra credit, compare and contrast w/ Paycheck: Damon/Affleck, free-will/determinism, love/fate, etc.

Carrying On

2011-08-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

Carry On Cruising is the fourth in England's classic Carry On series. If you have heard of it, that may be all you need to know. The series ran from the late 50s to the early 70s, plus a few latecomers. The basic premise is: Throw a loose cast of regulars into a setting (cruise ship), add as many slapstick gags and double entendres as you can think up, and go.

In this episode, Sid James is captain of a cruise ship, the Happy Wanderer. James is a great character actor - famous for his dirty laugh. I was going going to describe his accent as "cockney", but further research indicates it is Johannesburg Jewish. Fans of British comedy series Are You Being Served can think of Mr. Goldberg for reference. Actually, fans of AYBS should enjoy the Carry On movies in general.

There are some new crew members and two lonely young women looking for romance, and so forth. The young lovelies are not the usual voluptuous bimbos, but rather ordinary-to-attractive, not that young women, Liz Fraser and Dilys Laye. (Or am I misreading them? Maybe these are considered bombshells by local standards.)

The hi-jinx are pretty tame - for example, Sid James is a captain, not a sponger, pervert or conman, his natural strengths. The innuendo is mostly mild, the titillation limited. Still, fun for those who like this sort of thing, and the only Carry On film available on streaming, except Carry On Columbus, a late entry, reportedly a stinker.

The Patsy

2011-08-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

Pigskin Parade is an average 1930s college comedy, good as any and better than some. It also stars Patsy Kelly.

Yale intends to challenge University of Texas to a charity game, but accidentally invites tiny Texas State University. TSU has just got a new coach, Jack Haley (the Tinman) and his wife Patsy Kelly. Their is a bit of nonsense with the coeds (including an early Betty Grable) and then they need to find a ringer.

On a roadtrip up to Arkansas, they meet a melon farmer (no euphemism), Stuart Erwin, who can toss a casaba the length of the melon patch. They round him and his hayseed sister, Judy Garland up and enroll him.

But first there's some nonsense with a college socialist, played by Elisha Cook, Jr (!). Plus a lot of musical numbers - not very good - mostly featuring some superannuated sophomores called the Yacht Club Boys. And that's all before the big game. Not bad for 93 minutes.

In fact, the movie is not bad at all. The musical numbers are weak, even Garland's, but the big game, played in the snow, is well-staged. I'd say they spent a little money and it shows.

But what I was really interested in was Patsy Kelly. I read about her and Thelma Todd on Movie Morlocks, and it piqued my interest. You see, Kelly was an open lesbian, and this made it hard for her to get roles - at least until the 60s, when her TV career picked up.

She's a sharp-tongued comedian here, and smarter than her husband Jack Haley. They make a good team, him a little weak and clueless, her all spiky and full of vinegar. She makes an OK film into one that's worth watching. Next up: Road Show, where she has at least a minor role.

Gen X

2011-08-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

Genever is a mystery to many Americas, who don't even know it is pronounced, more or less, "yenay-ver". Not my gin loving friend DW. He knows that this Dutch liquor, flavored with and named after juniper, is the predecessor of English gin. He is well versed in the flavor profiles of classic and modern artisanal gins and genevers. At a recent meeting, he introduced me to the Gen-Gin, a variation on the classic 2-ingredient cocktail, the gin and ginger:

2 oz. Bols Genever
2 oz. Reeds Extra Ginger Beer

Mix over ice in an old fashioned glass.

Chin chin!

Spaced Out

2011-08-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

I don't remember Joe Dante's Innerspace from when it was released in 1987. I have seen it in video stores many times, but never bothered to pick it up. It was only when Mr. Peel did a writeup that I was moved to put it on the queue. Thank you, Mr. Peel!

Innerspace stars Dennis Quaid as a drunk, washed out test pilot who volunteers to test a new miniaturization process - the latest thing from Silicon Valley. He is going to be miniaturized in a mini-sub, Fantastic Voyage style, and injected into a rabbit. But industrial spy terrorists invade the lab and in the ensuing mixup, Quaid is injected into hypochondriac nebbish Martin Short.

Quaid is able to communicate with Short through his auditory nerve, which makes Short think he is going crazy. They find Quaid's ex-girlfriend, Meg Ryan, and she thinks they are crazy. They all go after the bad guys, and it is crazy.

The sci-fi plot framework is handled pretty well. I'd call the effects good for the money, assuming this was not a big budget feature. But Martin Short makes it hilarious.

I like, but don't worship, Joe Dante. This film is done with his tidy workmanship and frequent little touches. There is some nice casting, including William Schallert (from Trouble with Tribbles and a lot of other TV work), Orson Bean, and Henry Gibson as Short's manager. The staff at the minaturization lab was played by real lab technicians, to get the real lab feeling down (and possibly to keep salaries down).

Two final points:

Big 80's feel here, including a visit to a San Francisco club, with the limpest dance music ever.
Even though it was shot in LA and Marin, with a few SF locations, they got the Silicon Valley feel just right. And the final scene, driving over Mt. Tam towards the Bay made us very homesick.

Animal Style

2011-08-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Talking animal cartoons - the latest thing? We watched Kung Fu Panda, which is pretty much a standard silly kung fu movie, except everyone in it is a cartoon animal. Jack Black plays the eponymous panda, the chubby lazy son of a noodle shop owner. But he dreams of being a great warrior, and in typical film fashion, it comes to pass.

There's a lot to like about this movie - the look can be beautiful, the fights are fun, and the voice cast is stellar. Black fellow students are the Furious Five: Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, David Cross, Seth Rogen and Lucy Liu. But all in all, I felt this was only standard quality - good but not great.

We mainly watched to hear James Hong, playing Black's father, say "We are noodle folk!" Hong is a hero on the Filmsack podcast, and that's good enough for me.

Rango, on the other hand, is a takeoff on Westerns, starring Johnny Depp as a lizard. He lives in a terrarium with a windup goldfish and a headless, legless, one-armed Barbi torso. His world is shattered when it falls out of a car in the great American Western Desert and he has to make his own way and find himself.

He comes to the town of Dirt a stranger, and becomes sheriff when he takes the name Rango and starts bragging about his skills with a gun. At this point, the movie becomes The Shakiest Gun in the West, and Depp starts doing Don Knotts. But the town of Dirt is dying from lack of water, due to a plot by the mayor, a tortoise voiced by Ned Beatty - doing John Huston from Chinatown.

Funny, the chief temple priest in Kung Fu Panda was a tortoise as well.

This all plays out to the tune of a mariachi band of burrowing owls, who let us know that Rango may become a hero, but he will certainly die - and soon. These cheerful critters are my favorites - but that's partly because the character design is mostly pretty gross. These are a mangy pack of low-life cartoon animals and no mistake.

Gore Verbinski, who directed Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, has a lot of fun with the source material here, making this a bit deeper and a lot more fun than Kung Fu Panda. Both movies have that problem where the incompetent lazy boob can defeat any villain if he only believes in himself. But in Kung Fu Panda, it's Jack Black. In Rango, it's funny.

Masterful

2011-07-27T19:45:00.000-07:00

We watched Ronin because From Paris with Love (and Renaissance) made me want to watch a good car chase set in Paris. In my case, this was a re-watch, but I have to admit it - I remembered almost nothing.

I remembered the start, an edgy group of strangers gather in a Paris bar, all recruited by Natascha McElhone for a shadowy mission. They include Sean Bean (or Deadmeat as they call him), Jean Reno and Robert DeNiro. I also remembered that there would be car chases and gunfights. I didn't remember Nice at all - car chases on narrow roads hanging above the sea. I didn't remember Katerina Witt playing an Olympic skater. I didn't remember what was in the MacGuffin. I did remember that there would be awesomeness and I was right.

I think Mr. Schprock recommended this to me. Going in the first time, I guess I expected it to be kind of lame. I mean:

Pretentious Japanese title - how Jean-Pierre Melville
DeNiro - a little old to play a tough guy
Frankenheimer - not my favorite director, too old-fashioned

I was just wrong. Frankenheimer's next movie (and last feature?) may have been Reindeer Games, but he clearly knew what he was doing here. A classic in the action genre.

In conclusion, Luc Besson. He's not related to this, but with Paris, Jean Reno, action, his spirit is present.

What's Up Doc?

2011-07-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a nice continuation of the Wallace and Gromit tales, with Nick Park's traditional stop motion animation with some CGI to pull it all together.

Wallace and Gromit have become pest control specialists, under the name Anti-Pesto. Their biggest job is to remove a massive infestation of rabbits from the manor home of Lady Tottington ("Totty" to her friends). This leaves them with a lot of rabbits to be held captive - or could they be rehabilitated? If they no longer craved vegetables, they would no longer be a threat to the annual Tottington Giant Vegetable Competition. But the experiment goes horribly wrong, and they have created - a Monster!

The movie overflows with little jokes all over the place. If you've seen any of the other Wallace and Gromit pics, you know what I mean. If not, why not?

In conclusion, Totty is a bit all right.

Rude Mechanical

2011-07-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

The Mechanic is the original 1972 version of the Jason Statham movie of the same name. It's pretty much the same, but completely different.

The title character is played by Charles Bronson, and he's plays it a lot like the Statham character - cool, methodical, detached. But where Statham has an emotional range that includes mildly amused and pissed off, Bronson feels nothing. But he unlike Statham, he can't sleep at night.

The mechanic's mentor in the later movie is played by Donald Sutherland, as a lovable old coot, a retired spook turned professor. In the Bronson version, he's played by Keenan Wynn as a shifty fixer.

His son, who becomes the mechanic's apprentice, was played as an annoying hipster by Ben Foster in the 2011 movie. In 1972, he is Jan Michael Vincent. His role is the 1972 equivalent, but I guess annoying hipsters were cooler in the 70's. He's not just a spoiled punk, but he has a chilly existentialist core. He is also Jan Michael Vincent - Big Wednesday, Damnation Alley, Airwolf (OK, skip that). He was the Val Kilmer of his day (hmm, maybe skip that too). Anyway, he was a great beatnik anti-hero, like Buck and Ron from Kitten with a Whip.

Also, in 1972, the movie takes place in LA (Hollywood, Malibu) and Naples, instead of Louisiana. I liked Statham's bayou pad, but Bronson's has it beat solid. And the sleazy side of LA looks even better than New Orleans.

As far as the action goes, there's some pretty decent explosions, motorbike chases, etc, but of course, nothing up to modern standards. They claimed the largest explosion in LA for the time - took out an old hotel.

I'm not sure how great this movie was - we liked it, though. But maybe that's just in comparison to the comparatively soulless 2011 version.

Judgement of Paris

2011-07-19T19:38:00.000-07:00

From Paris with Love showed real promise: an action comedy buddy film written and produced by Luc Besson, directed by Pierre Morel of District B13, set in Paris, with John Travolta as the tough guy and John Rhys Meyers as prissy partner. It actually works pretty well - at first!

Meyers is the secretary for the American ambassador to France. It is established that he is meticulous, has a lovely exotic girlfriend, and is dabbling in espionage. His spy-bosses instruct him to help get Travolta into the country and take him around. Travolta is an ugly America, with a bald head and goatee, a leather jacket, and a potty mouth. But do his provocations conceal a deeper purpose?

Yeah, of course. Travolta has bulked up a lot as well as shaving his head for this. He looks more like Jess Ventura - but he still sounds like Vinnie Barbarino. That tenor is just not so tough.

I'm pretty sure you can write the first hour of the script yourself: Travolta does something inappropriate, Meyers is mortified. Big fight scene. It turns out that Travolta was really exposing some criminals, Meyers is impressed. Big fight scene. Travolta makes Meyers do something ridiculous (carry around a large Chinese vase full of cocaine), and it turns out really useful. Big car chase scene. And so on.

But toward the end, the stakes get higher, and the action gets more serious. I'll leave out the spoilers, except to say that the action gets more serious, but the movie never does. They do some awful things and never really acknowledge it. In the end, Travolta and Meyers both seem totally unsympathetic, and we kind of hate Besson and director Morel as well.

In conclusion, this just made me want to watch a good action movie set in Paris, so Ronin has been queued up.

Whip It: Good

2011-07-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we like to take a break from the contemporary action comedies and black and white obscurities to see something just plain good. For example: Whip It.

In Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Ellen Page plays a 17-year girl in a small Texas town. Her mother wants her to be a beauty queen, but she's a little too indie rock for that. On a shopping trip to Austin, she sees a flyer for the local Roller Derby girls - the Hurl Scouts - and it becomes her dream. Her best friend, a spunky Wendie Jo Sperber-type played by Alia Shawkat, helps her steal away and join the team.

Now, I'm not sure which calls for more suspension of disbelief - that Ellen Page could pass for 22 when she's supposed to be 17 in the movie, or that someone whose last pair of skates had "Barbie" could become the star of the Derby in a few short weeks. Well, Page the actress is 22, so that works ok, and it is established that the Hurl Scouts suck, so maybe it doesn't take much to become their star.

None of this really bother me - nor that a shy smalltown kid gets the cute guy who tours with an indie band. We believe Page can do anything. I haven't seen her in Juno, but she's great here: beautiful in a quiet way, like Janeane Garafolo, smart, mixed up but determined. And she doesn't get a lot of clever lines like some of the kid's comedies lately (Easy A, Juno?). She just seems nice - and so do her parents, friends and even the destructo roller derby maidens.

Yes, I've saved the best for last. There isn't a lot of skating in this movie (but you could say the same for Rollerball), but what there is, is choice. The other skaters, including one played by Barrymore and several played by real skaters plus Kirsten Wiig and Juliette Lewis, are all great, goofy, nasty and fun.

Special shout-out to Zoe Bell, the stuntwoman featured in Double Dare. She stunted for Xena and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, now she's getting some face on camera time. Good to see her.

Plain Black and White

2011-07-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

Renaissance is an interesting experiment - sci-fi noir black and white animation. And we mean Black and White. Not only is there very little color, there are very few shades of gray.

Daniel Craig voices Karas, a cop in future Paris who plays by his own rules. He gets a little too involved in the case of a missing scientist and her lovely sister. It's all tied in with the Avalon Corporation and their search for the cure for progeria and the secret of immortality.

But that's not important. What is important is the look, the style. The animation is amazing - I assume they did some motion capture, then turned it into black shadows and white highlights. It is lovely and impressive, but gets tiring pretty quickly. The information content is quite low, so your eyes have to fill in the details that are lost in the high-contrast. But they do some amazing tricks with reflections, rain, surveillance, shadows and the whole film noir vocabulary - in high-contrast black and white.

Future Paris is given an interesting look - it reminded me some of Immortal, the Enki Bilal graphic-novel-inspired semi-animation. It has a retro-future look, with the canal boats floating along in cast-iron aqueducts high above the streets (but far below the toits de Paris - the rooftops of Paris).

So - visually stunning (although facial expressions were a bit crude in contrast to the rest of the artwork). As far as the story goes, somewhere between disappointing and disposable. I suggest ignoring this part, and letting the artwork wash over you.

More Myths

2011-07-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

Watching Clash of the Titans got us psyched for more Classical mythology, so we queued up Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. We we kind of expecting a Motown or gospel group, but that turns out to be Percy Sledge.

So, young Percy (Logan Lerman) is a disturbed high-schooler who likes to sit on the bottom of the school pool. He lives with his mother and stinky stepfather in Hell's Kitchen and has ADD and dyslexia. But one day in a museum he discovers that he is a demigod - his absent father is Poseidon, and there is a War in Heaven, because someone stole Zeus' (Sean Bean) lightning.

So - first he goes to demigod summer camp. This looks like a nice place in the Saugerties, with log temples and archery, spear and shield practice. His best friend Brandon T. Jackson, a satyr, is with him, and he meets another nice demigod, Annabelle, daughter of Athena.

Soon, they are off on a random series of quests through mythical America:

Uma Thurman as Medusa
Nashville's Parthenon
The Lotus Eater Casino in Las Vegas
And finally, Hades by way of Hollywood - Hades played by Steve Coogan as a rock'n'roller, with Rosario Dawson as slutty Persephone

Just a note - this makes 2 films from 2010 with a Medusa and Charon the ferryman. And neither one used the obvious Chris de Burgh song.

Directed by Chris Columbus, this movie came across as sort of sub-Harry Potter. We rather enjoyed it, although I would have liked to see the same style (special effects, etc) applied to a story with a little more hef, or at least coherence. I guess fans of the books agree, considering the movie to be a desecration. We were thinking that a light-weight version of something by Gaiman, like "American Gods".

Actually, "American Gods" is being made into a movie, and I don't really want Chris Columbus to make it.

In conclusion, don't pay the ferryman. Don't even name the price.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a Pirate's Life For Me!

2011-07-12T19:10:00.000-07:00

What could be cooler than pirates, huh? A pirate double bill, maybe? The Yankee Buccaneer / Double Crossbones DVD might be just what you are looking for.

Double Crossbones features Donald O'Connor as a shopboy who falls among pirates. The only way out for him is to become a pirate captain himself. He gets to do a little crazy legs dancing, some swashbuckling, and he wins the girl, played by Helena Carter. In the process he meets several famous captains, including Blackbeard, Capt. Morgan, Ben Avery, Capt. Kidd and Anne Bonney. Bonney is played by the large and homely Hope Emerson, in a style that would have done Margaret Hamilton proud.

I'm a big fan of O'Connor's physical comedy, and he didn't get to make many movies, so this was a must for me.

Yankee Buccaneer is a bit more serious. It stars Jeff Chandler as a straitlaced naval commander who is ordered to turn pirate and find out who is behind all the piracy in the Caribbean. He runs into Suzan Bell as a Portuguese senhorita who gives him the info that he needs. It doesn't make any sense to me, but for him, it cracks the case wide open.

There are a few sea battles, some melees on land, and capture by Carib Indians - led by Jay Silverheels! This is really pretty tepid fare, but Jeff Chandler has a certain allure. He is absurdly handsome, but he also looks exactly like Eugene Levey of SCTV.

In conclusion, what is cooler than pirates? I'd say, robots and ninjas, but not monkeys or zombies. But robot monkey ninjas vs zombie pirates? I'll leave that one up to you.

Rehash the Kraken!

2011-07-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe that Ms. Spenser and I saw the original Ray Harryhausen 1981 Clash of the Titans together in the theater. But it's not like seeing the new 2010 Clash of the Titans was a big nostalgia trip or anything. This is a whole new movie. Except for a quick cameo from the mechanical owl. And the Kraken.

The overall plot is approximately the same - Perseus, Andromeda, Medusa, Pegasus, etc, etc. This time around, it is overlaid with a strange Men against the Gods theme. This doesn't quite make sense - The gods are fighting each other, some men are fighting the gods, the men who love the gods are kind of Hindu suicide bombers, Perseus hates his father Zeus for being an absent parent and also hates Zeus' enemy Poseidon for killing his step-family, but Perseus also gets all of his powers from the gods, and he doesn't hate that. I think the political stuff was just put in for modern sensibilities, so of course it is incoherent.

The old Perseus was pretty boy Harry Hamlin, all curly hair and jutting jaw. The new version, played by Sam Worthington, goes the other way, with big muscles and a crewcut. In fact, he's the only guy in the movie with short hair, which makes him look kind of weird. I guess he was afraid of looking like a sissy.

But of course what you are really interesting in are the monsters. How do today's CGI beasts compare to Harryhausen's stop motion creatures? Well, they are bigger and more polished, but I can't say they are really better. The giant scorpions are fun, but edited to make it hard to really see them. The Kraken looks swiped from H.R. Geiger, and was really short on personality. I liked the sea monster from Voyage of the Dawn Treader better.

But, muddled editing, clumsy plot, silly haircuts and all, this was a fun action movie. It may have been less original than the original, but it served the same purpose - mindless entertainment - and served it well.

In conclusion, "Release the Kraken!"

Nobody's Perfect

2011-07-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

Back before television, they used to make a lot more movies. People would expect to watch a new double bill every week at least, and they wanted to see something reliable. Big-mouthed, rubber-faced Joe E. Brown is best known now for having the last line in Some Like It Hot: "Nobody's perfect." But in the 30s and 40s he was starring in 2 or 3 movies a year. I figure they are all worth watching, although none of them is great. Like the man says, "Nobody's perfect."

The Gladiator / Wide Open Faces is a nice double bill. In The Gladiator, Brown is an assistant at a children's pediatric hospital who loses his beloved job to a college man. When he comes into some money, he decides to go back to college. There, he is given an experimental super-serum that takes him from weakling to star athlete instantly. This lets him court coed June Travis and fight Man Mountain Dean. You may not remember Man Mountain, the 300-pound bearded pro wrestler, but it's great to see him here. Brown's love for the kids at the hospital also adds a sweet touch to the usual college sports plot

In Wide Open Faces, Brown is a small-town soda jerk who bumbles into the capture of a bank robber. The robber was heading for a rundown inn at the edge of town, which is owned by Jane Wyman (Mrs. Ronald Reagan the First) and Alison Skipworth (last seen with W.C. Fields in Six of a Kind). Soon, gangsters from all over are flocking there, looking for hidden loot. It all ends with a rather snappy car chase, better than what I was expecting.

Of course, I wasn't expecting much. A guy with a silly face, a pretty girl or two, some pratfalls, and I'm happy. If I get two movies on one disc, all the better.

Lights, Camera, Action!

2011-07-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

Action Jackson is a nice little cop action film from 1988 that manages to slip in a little bit of a late blaxploitation feel. Big man Carl Weathers is police Sergeant Jericho "Action" Jackson, busted down from Lieutenant for excessive violence. He is working on a case that involves people around auto magnate Craig T. Nelson dying noisily (e.g. falling from a tall building through a skylight onto a restaurant table. On fire).

He starts by meeting with Nelson's wife, Sharon Stone, but she winds up dead in his apartment. So he moves on to Nelson's mistress - Vanity. Yes, the Vanity who sang with Prince and "acted" in Berry Gordy's Last Dragon. Yes, she has a musical number. No, I do not know why.

I was put onto this movie by the guys at Filmsack - thanks, guys! And I would be remiss if I didn't use their old catchphrase here: "Boobies!" Both Vanity and Sharon Stone work topless for this movie, if that is of interest to you.

The 'Sackers also pointed out the joy that is Chino "Fats" Williams as retied boxer Kid Sable. He has a gravelly voice with a New Orleans twang, and is practically indecipherable. But very lovable.

So, the movie has a badass Detroit setting, lots of great action (gun, fist, knife and cab fights), plus Sharon Stone, Vanity and Carl Weathers with no shirt on. What's not to like?

Win or Loser

2011-07-05T09:40:00.000-07:00

My take on The Losers is that it's the same old thing with a bunch of new guys.

A crew of renegade adventurers is deep in the Bolivian jungle, calling in an airstrike on a druglord or something when it all goes wrong. They discover that their shadowy masters meant them to die on this mission. They conceal the fact that they survived, and, with the help of a hot local chick, make their way back to the US - and vengeance!

These losers are

George Clooney-like leader Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Scary enforcer Idris Elba
Ice-Cube-ish driver Columbus Short
Cool Latino sniper Oscar Jaenada
Chris Evans, who I actually recognize from Fantastic Four, on comms

Hot chick is Zoe Saldana, from Star Trek, among other things. I kind of recognized her, too, but probably was thinking of someone else, like Halley Berry in X-Men.

That was my reaction throughout this movie - I recognized the actors, then realize I was thinking of someone 20 years older. I can't tell if this is intentional, if the actors are inhabiting the archetypes, or maybe I'm just bad at recognizing actors.

Anyway, this is a fun action movie with a real evil villain, some funny scenes, and big guns and explosions. If that's your thing, you should like it. And I expect we'll be seeing more of these guys, maybe even after they get old enough to have replacements.

Good Buzz

2011-07-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

I wasn't expecting much from Seth Rogen's The Green Hornet, because, like, Seth Rogen. I figured it would be a parody of an action film, without actually being funny. It would be a little wacky, inappropriate and there would be humorous situations, but no laughs. I got that, and more.

Rogen plays Britt Reid, neglected and spoiled playboy son of a crusading newspaper owner. When his father dies, he inherits the empire, and meets his father's chauffeur and companion Kato. Now, to get a head of things a little, Kato is played by Jay Chou. I had never heard of him, but in China, he is a rock star and martial arts hero. Possibly brain surgeon and theoretical physicist as well. As Kato, he is infinitely cool. I don't know if he is as cool as Bruce Lee's Kato, but cool enough for this story.

Right, back to the story - Rogen and Chou hang out, get drunk, play pranks, the kind of bad boy stuff Rogen was doing before his dad died. But one day they save a couple from some muggers and Rogen decides they should fight crime, by posing as criminals.

Their opponent, Christopher Waltz as Chudnofsky (or "Bloodnofsky" as he liked to call himself), is one of the best parts of the movie. He rules the LA underworld, but worries that he doesn't inspire fear due to a lack of a snappy catchphrase.

Joining GH and Kato in their fight against evil is Lenore Case, played by Cameron Diaz. She honestly doesn't have a lot to do except to give Rogen someone else to be a dick to. He calls her an old hag and hits on her, basically, while she figures everything out.

So, Rogen plays Reid as an insenstive, entitled, selfish asshole, which is what I was expecting. He condescends to treat Kato as an equal, when Kato is clearly his awesome superior. And, yet, somehow it works. Maybe because he is so unapologetic - he doesn't expect you to love him even though he is an jerk. He expects you to point and laugh at him. Or maybe it's just because Jay Chou is so awesome.

In conclusion, the car chases are probably the best part of the movie. As one of the special features describes it, every time they came up with an effect that needed CGI, they wrote it out of the script. So it's all practical effects, with just a little CGI for wire removal, etc. It's worth it for that alone.

Mechanical

2011-06-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

Nothing like a good Jason Statham movie. The Mechanic is close enough.

Statham is, as usual, a meticulously expert criminal, an assassin this time, although possibly working for the government. He has a cozy hideout on the bayou in Louisiana, possibly near John Malkovich's place from Red. His only friend is elderly Donald Sutherland, retired spook and professor. But his boss convinces him that Sutherland has gone bad and needs to be killed, so Statham reluctantly does him in.

But when he finds out that Sutherland's ne'er-do-well son Ben Foster is taking the death hard, Statham takes him under his wing and trains him to be a covert killer.

Now, this doesn't make much sense, but neither does much else in this movie. There are enough gunfights, fistfights and explosions to keep you interested, but don't think too much. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that Ben Foster is total jerk, and Statham is too uptight to be likable. A little charm or humor would have been appreciated. Sutherland might have been good for that - he also looked cool with the big beard - but he gets killed early on.

Also, either the sound was poor or everybody mumbled all the time. That's normal for Statham, but I didn't get most of the dialog. Fortunately, that is not what this movie is about.

In conclusion, this is a remake of a Charles Bronson movie. Which is in the queue.

Don't Say Cthulu!

2011-06-30T18:31:00.000-07:00

We just wanted something short to pass the time. When we streamed The Call of Cthulhu, we little realized that we would soon face the unspeakable horror of the Elder Gods!

This is a 47-minute, black & white, silent film adaptation of some of H.P. Lovecraft's chilling tales. It shows the influence of German Expressionism, and the acting is a bit primitive, as you might expect from the early days of cinema. But it was made in 2005.

We were expecting a Larry Blamire style comedy, but they actually play it pretty straight. So if you have ever wished that someone in, say, 1920 had made a Lovecraft movie, this is your flick.

But, please, don't say Cthulu!

About the Torpedoes

2011-06-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

Colonel Effingham's Raid lives or dies pretty much on your love for Charles Coburn. Since The More the Merrier is one of our top 10 favorites, we were pretty happy.

Coburn plays Col. Effingham as his usual character - irascible, old-fashioned and overbearing. He has moved back to his home in small-town Mississippi after a long career in the Army. The town is run by the Down Home party, a slightly crooked bunch of pro-business demopublicans who want to tear down the old courthouse so the Mayor's brother-in-law can rebuild it on a no-bid contract. When the Col. finds out about this, it's, well, "what Admiral Farragut said. About the torpedoes."*

This is framed by a love story about Coburn's nephew, played by William Eythe, and Joan Bennett (from TV's Dark Shadows), who work together on the town's smaller paper. The background is the coming World War II (the movie was made in 1946, set in 1940).

But there's a problem underneath this patriotic element: These southerners are always ready to defend their country - or to rebel against it, as the Col. is a big supporter of the Lost Cause and the Confederate Heroes. And the government is made up of scoundrels and crooks, so we should ignore elections and run the town based on mob-rule, led by retired army officers. Without the indomitable Charles Coburn, this flimsy froth quickly falls apart.

* If you haven't seen The More The Merrier, Coburn's catchphrase is "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" This is delicately rephrased in Colonel Effingham's Raid by the Col.'s elderly sister.

Robot Monster Meets Bikini Babes - in Space!

2011-06-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

I couldn't tell you how Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster got into my queue. I suppose someone described it as a combination Monster-a-Go-Go meets Mars Needs Women, with bikini girls, and I fell for it.

The movie starts out with a lot of stock footage of the space program, and that sort of sets the tone. That tone is a combination of garage rock and stock footage. We meet our antagonists - a Space Babe and her weird sidekick Nadir in a flyng saucer, who destroys NASA with his catch phrase, "Maximum energy!"

Then we meet Astronaut Frank, who is secretly a robot ("Frankenstein", get it?). His mission is scrambled, along with his face, by the saucer, and everybody lands in Puerto Rico. NASA sends its best team to recover it: a bland scientist and his hot assistant. They hop on a Vespa and take off on a romantic tour of San Juan while the sub-Beatles-esque love theme plays.

So, more bad costumes, cheap props, military stock footage, very few bikinis (I was promised bikinis!), "our weapons are powerless", etc, etc. It's enthralling really.

I think this movie calls for a remake. I want the doughy general played by Joe Flynn. But since he's dead, let's get Jack Black. I want someone bland for the scientist - Keanu Reeves has the right emotional range, but has too much charisma. Maybe Megan Fox for the evil Space Queen. But most of all:

Nadir: played by Jon Lovitz

Frank: played by Jim Carey

Who do you want to cast? And is it worth watching to find out?!?!??

Love Jones

2011-06-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

Cleopatra Jones is a great blaxploitation film from 1973 that does not star Pam Grier. Sorry. The globe-trotting, drug-crime-fighting, presidential-authorization-carrying Cleo Jones is played by Tamara Dobson. She is in Turkey, bombing the poppy fields when she finds out that the fuzz have been hassling the drug rehab house she sponsors in LA. She rushes right back to get to the bottom of it, driving around in a custom Corvette, wearing slinky outfits, and high-kicking anyone who gets in her way.

Along with the crooked cops, we have pimp/dealer Doodlebug, played with goofy gusto by Antonio Fargas (TV's Huggy Bear). But the lady behind it all, the Big Mommy, is Shelley Winters, a shrieking lesbian crime boss. She also seems to be having a great time in this.

This movie isn't very street, more comic book in style. The production values are great - the hair, the fashions, the rides. The big car chase is Fords v. Chevy and they race through the LA River with water in it. The kung fu is possibly not the best, but Tamara can kick over her head, and she's a tall woman. I've got to rate this as a superior blaxploitation.

But Dobson isn't Pam Grier. She doesn't have those eyes, those lips, those cheekbones. So I'll leave it up to you, readers: Friday Foster or Cleopatra Jones?

Documentary Night

2011-06-15T18:43:00.000-07:00

Documentary night. Sounds pretty dry, right? Good news, the two I watched were fun, exciting and full of heart.

Double Dare is about 2 stunt women:

Jeannie Epper, who was stunt double for Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman in the 70s. As the intertitle says, "35 years later...", she is still working.
Zoe Bell, the young New Zealander who doubled for Lucy Lawless in Xena. When that series wrapped up, she is still a teenager, heading to Hollywood and the unknown.

Both of these women have amazing lives, great spirit and bravery, and have a lot of fun. Bell is particularly magnetic - well, she's young and beautiful and the Kiwi accent doesn't hurt. She should really be acting in her own right, not just doubling. Checking IMDb, I find that she has.

Béla Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart documents NewGrass banjo artist Fleck's trip to Africa. Since the banjo was an instrument that came to America with the slaves, he wanted to take it back to Africa to find its roots. He seems tentative at first - how will he adapt his bluegrass/jazz/avant-garde style to the polyrhythmic vocal and instrumental styles of Africa? -SPOILER- He does and it's beautiful.

There's some great music here, not too much scenery, and some lovely people that Fleck meets. I'm getting the album.

Short Films

2011-06-09T18:09:00.001-07:00

The things that bubble up from the depths of my Netflix queue. Like For Your Height Only: Double Feature - a Pilipino James Bond parody starring midget Weng Weng, the shortest person to ever star in a movie.

Weng Weng is an appealing character, with big soulful eyes and a rather cartoonish nose. He's fine at comedy, but not much of an action star. He looks too sad and a little too tentative for the super spy role. I know that that's the humor of it, but I don't think they pull it off. He does have good moves - he's always sliding across the floor under the bad guys gunfire.

I couldn't watch the second part of the double feature. I can't recommend that you watch even the first.

Casino Night

2011-06-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

Monte Carlo: What's not to love? It's a frothy love story directed by Ernst Lubitsch in 1930. Well, for one thing, it stars Jeanette MacDonald. At least her leading man isn't Nelson Eddy, it's Jack Buchanan. So, let's just say I'm not a fan of the stars. But I do love the Lubitsch touch.

MacDonald has run out on her wedding to some Duke. She heads to Monte Carlo with a little cash and a system at roulette. Buchanan falls in love with her from afar as she gambles away her last franc. To get close to her, he poses as a hairdresser and moves in with her as part of the staff.

We get some not-too-bad songs, and some stinkers. We get MacDonald swanning around in her underwear. We get some lovely Art Deco sets and a romance that is almost believable. If Buchanan wasn't so funny looking...

The style is a bit old-fashioned - it's early in the talkie era and you can see they are still figuring some of this stuff out. So I would not call this first-rate Lubitsch: the earlier Love Parade or later One Hour with You are superior (maybe it's Maurice Chevalier?). But as a frothy love story? Enjoy.

Cut! Print!

2011-06-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

I was reviewing the films I've seen this year for the film quiz and I was surprised to see how many disappointments and just mediocre movies there were. On the other hand, Machete really satisfied. I'm going to call it the best film I've seen this year.

Based on a phony trailer in in the Grindhouse roadshow, Machete is the story of Danny Trejo, a Federale who is set up and supposedly killed by a drug kingpin. He turns up alive in Texas, a day laborer without documentation. He attracts the attention of Michelle Rodriguez, a taco truck operator and leader of the immigrant underground, and of Jessica Alba, an INS agent with a conscience.

Trejo is an amazing presence as Machete. He is about 60 years old, scarred, pock-faced and utterly badass. Machete is his name, and his favorite weapon. Dismemberment, beheading, impaling and the occasional bisection are his stock in trade. Will he run into the man who set him up and killed his family? Ya think? But did you expect it to be Steven Seagal?

He's great here, as is Cheech Marin, Lindsay Lohan, and, well, everyone. I suspect everyone was having a great time, especially Robert Rodriguez. On the other hand, rumor says that he didn't want to do this, but Danny Trejo forced him into it. Because you don't want that guy mad at you.

This is pretty much a comedy (albeit grisly) - a Mexploitation parody, almost as broad as Black Dynamite. It's funny, exciting, sexy (Jessica Alba is CGI nude!). And Danny Trejo is our new hero, along with Michael Jae White. Best chop-em-up of the year.

Back to the 30s

2011-06-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was recommended (by M. Monkey, my other fan) as a romantic comedy for adults. That and Ms. Frances McDormand in a leading role were enough for me.

It takes place in England just before WWII. McDormand is a governess who has lost her position. In fact she has lost everything, and is starving to boot. Her only chance is a position as social secretary with Amy Adams, a flighty actress with a complex social life, involving a naked man in bed, the man who's keeping her showing up and an old flame just getting out of prison. McDormand is a woman of morals and propriety, but she is determined not to starve so she makes herself indispensable to Adams.

She is rewarded with a peek at the luxurious life lived by the other kind of woman. And even though she may still starve, she does meet an interesting gentleman who designs women's undergarments.

We get a nice mix of near-screwball comedy of manners and something a little more serious, as England is on the brink of war. The script doesn't talk down to us, and it is both fun and entertaining. Unfortunately, the whole thing has the feel of a good BBC TV production - The lingerie specialist, for example, seems to want to be Jeremy Brett or a Stephen Fry. Nothing wrong with these BBC productions - some are very good. But I feel like we should get something a little more in a feature film.

I guess you could call this a Small Film - not ambitious, it does what it sets out to do. Needless to say, McDormand inhabits her role effortlessly. But I am reminded of the famously boring headline "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative". I'm afraid this film is something like a "Worthwhile 1930s Comedy".

The End Part 1

2011-06-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Pt I is the beginning of the end for the Harry Potter franchise. I didn't read the books, so I guess I'm just a muggle, but I enjoyed these a lot. The cast was particularly appealing, and the mechanics of movie making let them grow up at about the same rate as their characters do - a rare case where real life and movies work out together.

I'll miss these movies when there are no more new ones being made. Still, they can't string something like this out indefinitely - at least they shouldn't. It's gotten darker and darker, until you don't want it to go much further. The romantic subplot can't be teased much longer. And we expect and demand some actual battles between Good and Evil.

Still, it seems that there is still a lot to tell, maybe too much. This movie seemed to be full of "new character enter", and new legends and gimmicks that everybody has heard about except for me and maybe Harry. I think he says "Does everybody know about this but me?" at least twice.

Once is about the symbol for the Deathly Hallows - a line in a circle in a triangle. The line symbolizes a wand, the circle a stone and the triangle a cloak. Because cloaks are triangular, I guess. It seems a little late to pull this McGuffin out, but we have a bunch of them: an old lady historian, a brother for Dumbledore, etc.

Then there is a whole Ministry of Magic subplot, a 1984/V for Vendetta style political dystopia. I feel that this was almost forced on Rowling by current events. I don't think it worked well with the rest of the story. Still, it gave a chance to use some great visuals of oppressive architecture.

So, one more movie and it's over. I suppose it is time.

Pencils Down!

2011-06-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Just finished the Film Quiz. Hope I can get partial credit on some of the questions.

1) Depending on your mood, your favorite or least-loved movie cliché
Least loved: Whore with heart of gold, even if it is Marlene Deitrich in Destry Rides Again.

2) Regardless of whether or not you eventually caught up with it, which film classic have you lied about seeing in the past?
Well, I've exaggerated about Knife in the Water. I really did see most of it on a black and white TV that cut off the subtitles. But honestly, I didn't watch the whole thing.

3) Roland Young or Edward Everett Horton?
E.E. Horton, of course. If only for Fractured Fairy Tales.

4) Second favorite Frank Tashlin movie
What makes you think my favorite is The Girl Can't Help It? Although it is. Second favorite is anything else that doesn't have Jerry Lewis or Doris Day. Porky Pig is OK.

5) Clockwork Orange-- yes or no?
Yes, but I don't know if I'll watch it again. (Fun fact: I can play I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper on the ukulele.)

6) Best/favorite use of gender dysphoria in a horror film (Ariel Schudson)
All I can think of is Rocky Horror Picture Show.

7) Melanie Laurent or Blake Lively?
Melanie Laurent, because I have vaguely heard of Blake Lively.

8) Best movie of 2011 (so far...)
I'm going to say Fast Five, although we haven't seen it yet. That's the way we feel about car movies.

9) Favorite screen performer with a noticeable facial deformity (Peg Aloi)
I say Rondo Hatton. Mrs. Spenser says that's too easy - How about Humphrey Bogart? It's subtle, but noticable.

10) Lars von Trier: shithead or misunderstood comic savant? (Dean Treadway)
I've always liked his Dogme. Never seen a movie, though. Never wanted to.

11) Timothy Carey or Henry Silva?
Henry Silva. Leave the Bronx!

12) Low-profile writer who deserves more attention from critics and /or audiences
I'd have to pick gritty fantasy author Glen Cook, although he has nothing to do with movies. For movie writers, I got nothing.

13) Movie most recently viewed theatrically, and on DVD, Blu-ray or streaming
Theatrically, nothing. On DVD, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - worthy, but not completely satisfying, like a decent BBC miniseries. Last movie on streaming was Call of Cthulu - a 2005 version of a 1920s silent Cthulu horror film. Not a joke, actually.

14) Favorite film noir villain
I just know everybody is going to say the same thing: Tommy Udo - Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death.

15) Best thing about streaming movies?
That they are streaming. Everything else stinks - low quality, poor selection, hard to rewind/ff, no features... But if the DVD you got from Netflix has a crack in it, at least there's something to watch.

All that said, we've been watching old TV shows on Netflix streaming. Our favorite now is Have Gun - Will Travel.

16) Fay Spain or France Nuyen? (Peter Nellhaus)
France Nuyen, mostly for being on Star Trek, but also Operation Diamond Head.

17) Favorite Kirk Douglas that isn’t called Spartacus (Peter Nellhaus)
The bad, beautiful one? The one called Einar? (Ok, I looked that one up.)

18) Favorite movie about cars
We are so in love with car movies - we even saw Ron Howard's directorial debut for Roger Corman, Grand Theft Auto. Not our favorite, though. Mrs. Spenser wanted me to say Two-Lane Blacktop as a good snobby answer, but I have to tell the truth - It's Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift.

19) Audrey Totter or Marie Windsor?
Marie Windsor for so many reasons - Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy among them.

20) Existing Stephen King movie adaptation that could use an remake/reboot/overhaul
The Shining really cries out for a Mel Brooks style parody, with maybe Rick Moranis in the Jack Nicholson role.

21) Low-profile director who deserves more attention from critics and/or audiences
Is Carlos Saura considered low profile? He makes amazing movies about dance, mostly flamenco. I never hear anything about him, though.

22) What actor that you previously enjoyed has become distracting or a self-parody? (Adam Ross)
Mickey Rourke comes to mind, but we haven't seen The Wrestler. We did see The Expendables, but everyone in that was a self-parody.

23) Best place in the world to see a movie
At my house, because they know how to make a Margarita there. We don't have a video set up in our bedroom - yet.

24) Charles McGraw or Sterling Hayden?
Sterling Holloway. Or am I thinking of Earl Holliman?

25) Second favorite Yasujiro Ozu film
As it turns out I may have only seen one - Ochazuke no Aji. We actually moved to Japan because we loved Japanese films so much, but it was for the samurai films, not the home-drama.

26) Most memorable horror movie father figure
Here's Johnny... (Note: So you don't think I'm lying about films I've seen, I have not see The Shining.)

27) Name a non-action-oriented movie that would be fun to see in Sensurround
Maybe one of those crazy Bollywood movies, where the dance numbers go from the marketplace to the Eiffel Tower to the Alps? And the movie is all dance numbers?

28) Chris Evans or Ryan Reynolds?
Mrs. Spenser hates Chris Evans for his Human Torch. I kind of like him.

29) Favorite relatively unknown supporting player, from either or both the classic and the modern era
We've got a million of them. How about Nat Pendleton, perennial dumb cop of the Thin Man movies? You recognize him immediately.

30) Real-life movie location you most recently visited or saw
Wakulla Springs Florida, where they made Creature of the Black Lagoon. Lovely park with a great boat tour that goes right to the place where the Gill-man surfaces. Gill was played by a park lifeguard who later went Hollywood.

31) Second favorite Budd Boetticher movie
You can ask a Budd Boetticher question every single quiz - I'm still not going to watch any of his movies.

32) Mara Corday or Julie Adams?
This one stumped me, but since Julie Adams seems to have been in the Creature from the Black Lagoon, then her.

33) Favorite Universal-International western
I don't think I've ever seen one, but I guess Winchester '73 is the one I'm most likely to see someday.

34) What's the biggest "gimmick" that's drawn you out to see a movie? (Sal Gomez)
I guess it would be stunt-casting, like Neil Young's cameo in Love at Large, or Jerry Garcia in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (he was the bum with the banjo and the dog).

35) Favorite actress of the silent era
Does Zasu Pitts count as silent era? She was pretty big in talkies, too, but great in Greed.

36) Best Eugene Pallette performance (Larry Aydlette)
Singing "Landlord fill the flowing bowl", then demanding "Where's my breakfast!?!?" in The Lady Eve. We love that scene. I quote itabout every morning.

37) Best/worst remake of the 21st century so far? (Dan Aloi)
Pass.

38) What could multiplex owners do right now to improve the theatrical viewing experience for moviegoers? What could moviegoers do?
Owners could set aside a theater or two for themed film-club style programs - fright night, samurai sagas, New Wave, what ever. Moviegoers could just shut up! Except where appropriate, of course.

No Illusions

2011-06-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

If you've seen all the Jacques Tati films I mentioned earlier, and you want more, then you pretty much have no choice but to watch The Illusionist. Although it is an animated film, made in 2010 by Sylvain Chomet (Triplets of Belleville), it is based on a Jacques Tati script. Best of all, it stars a M. Tatischeff - Jacques Tati's real name.

M. Tatischeff is a stage magician, working 1930s Paris music halls and getting shoved off the bill by an an anachronistic rock band. His search for bookings takes him to the far Hebrides, where he performs at a pub to celebrate the coming of electricity. There he meets a naive teenage girl who seems to believe that he can really do magic. Because he produced a pair of red shoes for her out of thin air (that he had bought for her as a surprise), she follows him to Edinburgh.

The animation for M. Tatischeff is remarkable - he is like the poster for Mon Oncle come to life. He moves with M. Hulot's gawky precision, leaning into a stiff bow or turning on his heel. His young charge is drawn with a simple gamin beauty - part elf, part Eskimo, all Scots.

And Edinburgh is rendered in loving detail, a handsome dirty complicated city, overlooked by castle and crags. It's a character in the same way the Studio Ghibli makes the surroundings into a character, like Tokyo in The Cat Returns.

So, a must for lovers of M. Hulot - BUT! I must warn you, the effect of this movie is very different from a M. Hulot story. M. Hulot is a bumbler and a fool, but always a happy one. M. Tatischeff is more wise, more world-weary. His face is older than even the latest M. Hulot. He is tired, he is failing and he knows it. The girl he has taken under his wing will be fine - she is young and beautiful. He may not be so lucky.

As a magician, of course M. Tatischeff has a rabbit. It is a terror, who bites everyone and refuses to get in the hat. Yet in a quiet moment, just before dawn, we find M. Tatischeff asleep with the rabbit on his chest - probably just for the warmth. And finally, at the end of his rope, M. Tatischeff takes the rabbit to the peak of one of the crags overlooking the city and releases him. Seeing this rabbit alone in the wild is perhaps the most heartbreaking moment of the movie.

Oh, that was a spoiler, I guess. The spoiler is that this movie may leave you sad and depressed, and not in a wistful, rueful, warm and melancholic way.

Tati wrote this script when he was at his peak - before Playtime bankrupted him and all of his backers. He dedicated it to his daughter - and there is a bit of a scandal about an illegitimate daughter he never recognized. But clearly, this is not about daughters, but about the public, who see Tati as a magician who can produce a pair of shoes, a dress, or a comedy out of thin air. He wants us to acknowledge the price he pays to produce the magic. And the price seems to him to be very high.

I'm sorry. M. Tati, I prefer the illusion.

Snap Quiz

2011-06-01T18:48:00.000-07:00

You know those dreams you have where you're in school with no pants on and there's a test that you didn't study for because you don't go to school any more, you're a grown up darn it? Well, that dream just came true! Unless you're wearing pants. Or still in school.

That is to say - Prof. Avery has just posted the CORTIZONE-FUELED, BIGGER-THAN-LIFE, SUPER BIG GULP-SIZED SUMMER MOVIE QUIZ over on Sergio Leone and and the Infield Fly Rule. I'll be working furiously on it for the next few days - get your answers in fast or nobody will read them.

Hint: the answer to 5 is Yes. What are you putting for 31?

Gardenia Blues

2011-05-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

The Blue Gardenia is a neat little 1955 semi-noir from Fritz Lang. Ann Baxter is a phone company operator, living in an LA apartment with 2 other women - divorcee Ann Sothern and mystery loving tomboy Jeff Donnell (a tall girl, the actress took her nickname from "Mutt and Jeff"). When she gets a Dear Jane letter from her boyfriend in Korea, she lets calendar girl artist Raymond Burr take her out. He meets her at the Blue Gardenia Chinese Restaurant, where they listen to Nat King Cole and drink Polynesian Pearl Divers.

He takes her home and attacks her when she passes out. She comes too for long enough to take a swing at him with a poker, and passes out again. When she comes to, he is dead.

Now she not only has a terrible hangover, but faces a murder charge. Newspaperman Richard Conte is one her trail, but since he knew Burr, he has a lot of sympathy for his murderer.

Lang gets a nice feeling for mid-50s LA life into this detective story. The three working woman aren't glamorous or especially man-crazy - Ann Sothern goes on dates with her ex. They share a bedroom and take turns making orange juice. Telephones are a minor theme, the way some Hong Kong comedies use cellphones. And of course, there's a happy ending.

In conclusion, a Polynesian Pearl Diver is not the modern Malibu/Midori poison, but more likely related to Don the Beachcomber's Pearl Diver Punch. I haven't found an authoritative recipe, but it includes Don's Grog Batter, which is honey, butter, cinnamon, vanilla and allspice, in the form of pimento dram. Butter in an iced drink may seem dangerous, but who knew it could lead to murder.

Tourist Trap

2011-05-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

The Tourist is another one of those how-can-it-go-wrong movies: Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie on location in Venice. At best, you get a Bourne-style thriller, at worst, Bored to Death in Venice. I would have said I'd watch these actors read the phonebook - would this movie give me the chance to prove it?

Jolie, the girlfriend of a fugitive criminal is under heavy police surveillance. In a chic Paris cafe, she gets a note from her boyfriend with the following plan: get on the train to Venice, pick a dupe who looks like him and befriend him. Since boyfriend has had plastic surgery, everyone will think it's him.

She picks Johnny Depp, a mild-mannered math teacher from Madison. Maybe she likes his looks, maybe it's the spy thriller paperback he's reading. They get to Venice and tangle with the usual assortment of Interpol, Anglo-Russian mafia, corrupt local officials, arrogant desk clerks, etc.

Throughout, Jolie is dressed in gorgeous Chanel-style shmattes - looking, as Ms. Spenser said, like a mix between Audrey Hepburn and Sofia Loren. She looks beautiful, and has quite the acrobatic hipswing, but really, she has one expression (a kind of Mona Lisa smirk) for the whole film. She also is looking a bit worn - I thought this was intentional, that she was supposed to have an "older woman" vibe for Depp. But he's actually more than a decade older than her.

Depp isn't great in this, until the end, which is horrible. I probably don't need to say SPOILER, but the twist ending completely wipes out everything that came before it. You know how some twist endings make you go, "Oh yeah, now I see! That's what that was about. It all comes together." This is the opposite. After the twist nothing makes sense: The characterization is all a farce, the plot depends entirely on coincidences, and you will hate this movie and yourself for watching it.

But other than that, I actually kind of enjoyed this movie. Venice is beautiful, and so is Ms. Jolie. That's usually enough for me. Maybe I should have watched it with the sound off.

Dawn's Early Light

2011-05-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as I understand it, is slightly problematic, in that the main character, Eustace Scrubb, is a pill. Edmund and Lucy Pevensie are stuck with their relatives the Scrubb family in Oxford during the Blitz. Their cousin Eustace hates them for barging in, disturbing his quiet life dedicated to scoffing sweets and writing an emo journal. Will Poulter, who plays Eustace, has round little cheeks and scowling brows, instantly has our sympathy. When he expresses scorn and disbelief for Narnia, even as he is flailing in its ocean, we are with him all the way.

So, Lucy, Edmund and Eustace wind up on the magical ship the Dawn Treader with Caspian, Reepacheep et al., on a magical quest for a magical isle and some magical stuff, and the effects are very lovely. Beautiful dawn skies are featured for obvious reasons. The climax features -SPOILER- a neat dragon v. Chthulu-Kraken that wouldn't be out of place in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Tilda Swenson as Ice Queen makes an all-too-brief appearance, although Laura Brent does a nice (also short) turn as some kind of nymph-angel.

The conclusion, at the end of the world, is one of my favorite effects, possibly in all cinema ever - a wave endlessly breaking and never advancing up the beach where Aslan hangs out.

All in all, good fun. I don't know what C.S. Lewis fans think of this, but someone looking for a G-rated adventure fantasy should have a grand time.

Kung Fu Kid

2011-05-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

Legend of the Red Dragon is just another kung fu movie, right? Well, pretty much, except:

Fight choreography by Corey Yuen (director of Transporter, So Close, etc.)
Starring Jet Li: Nuff said
Totally wacky

The movie starts with some gruesome violence, so you may not be expecting laughs. Jet Li and his young son set out to get revenge on the folks who killed their village. The boy, Miu Tse, we know from The Enforcer - once again Jet Li's son, and once again a martial artist of great power and cuteness.

The plot is Shaolin vs. Manchu's (again), which is the excuse of a lot of little boys to be in on the fights. But there also a beautiful con woman and her supposedly dead mother, adding some sex appeal and humor. There is also a bizarre scene in a wax museum, and... but never mind.

In some ways, just another kung fu movie. In other ways, a great one.

Trafic Jam

2011-05-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

If you love Jacques Tati's character, M. Hulot, and you haven't seen Trafic, well, you should. If you have not seen M. Hulot, I would recommend starting with one of the other 3 films:

M. Hulot's Holiday
Mon Oncle
Playtime

They are all available on streaming, although Playtime seems to be missing the soundtrack. Each one is better than the last. But sadly, Playtime was so expensive that Tati was pushed out of the movie business, and Trafic, his comeback film, is not his best - but still pretty great!

M. Hulot is Tati's alter ego, a tall awkward Frenchman with a pipe and a short raincoat. He is nearly always silent, but Tati's films aren't silent movies - they are filled with polyglot dialog, sound effects and music. In Trafic, Hulot is an automobile designer, whose futuristic camping car must be delivered from Paris to the Amsterdam Car Show. With him are the driver for the car's truck and the PR woman for the firm, Maria Kimberly (played by Maria Kimberly).

Maria is a wonder - a chic American with a tiny sportscar, a huge wardrobe, a gigantic ego and very poor grasp of European languages. She creates chaos where ever she goes, followed by a tiny ragmop of a dog. Maria, the actress, was a fashion model and girlfriend to a billionaire art dealer. She must have been acting, but it seems so natural that one wonders how much of a bimbo she really is. As the film progresses, she begins to dress down a little, and we start to accept her incompetence as just another part of the nature of things. And possibly, M. Hulot gets the girl.

The jokes are small, and sometimes take a while to sink in. Sometimes, they are just visual rhymes, like when the ragmop dog passes a man dusting his car with an identical looking ragmop. There is no gag here, no comic confusion of the dog and the mop, no double take from the man. Just - look at that, dog, mop, huh.

Of course, some of the jokes are less subtle, like when the hippies steal the dog and replace him with a look-alike shaggy vest. Or the setpiece traffic accident at the climax of Act 3. But much of the movie is just a reflection on the nature of traffic, a road trip, and people in cars.

In conclusion, very very good, but watch the other ones first.

Life's a Beach

2011-05-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

Love him or hate him, you've got to admit that it's fun to watch Leonardo DiCaprio go nuts in The Beach.

DiCaprio plays a somewhat pompous backpacker, travelling around SE Asia on his own, looking for kicks - like drinking cobra's blood in Bangkok. He meets a drunk raving Scottish lout, who tells him about an isolated beach on a deserted island, where food and dope grow on trees. Next morning, the lout has killed himself and bequeathed to DiCaprio a map.

He convinces a French couple to join him in quest of the island, mainly to wolf on the French girl (Virginie Ledoyen). When they get there, they find heavily armed pot farmers on one end, and the Beach on the other. The Beach is a commune-resort dedicated to international hedonism, run by Tilda Swanson. It's all very hippie-tribal, but you don't need to have seen Lord of the Flies to guess at the fascism laying beneath the surface, like a shark. The horror, the horror!

Actually, I would compare this movie more to The Valley, Obscured by Clouds. We get the same rich, privileged Europeans looking for self-fulfillment in a strange land, and the inevitable (?) descent into madness and starvation. But that movie has Bulle Ogier and a Pink Floyd soundtrack.

I've spent a little time on the backpacker trail, hanging in hostels and losmen across Java and Bali, and that part looked pretty realistic to me. Of course, no body went insane or got killed, at least when I was around. I probably just needed to keep at it a little longer.

Complain Complain

2011-05-07T12:37:00.000-07:00

I don't spend a lot of time in this blog talking about Netflix as a service. The last time was to complain about cracked Blu-ray disks. They got that under control, by the way.

It seems that Netflix is changing, though. They clearly want to get out of the disk shipping business and become a streaming company. I can understand their point of view but:

Lower quality. We have a wired connection to a cable internet, and get barely DVD quality. Maybe ok for a laptop or for watching old TV shows, but nothing close to Blu-ray.
Lower functionality. Rewind is very clunky, at least on our cheap player. There's no commentary track, or chapter menu. At least it remembers where you left off watching, which our cheap DVD player doesn't do.
Smaller selection. Here's the rub. Netflix for me is what Napster was to many - a way to get anything you could think of. Classic musicals, obscure art films, Hong Kong chop-socky? If it was released on DVD, you could probably get it from Netflix. But not on streaming.

I don't know what the ratio of DVDs available to streaming films - 10:1? But it does seem to be shifting - partly because more things are available on streaming, but it also seems that they are making more and more DVDs unavailable. My queue almost never listed a wait for any movie - maybe because I don't go for a lot of recent releases. Now, 15% of my queue has short or long waits. And many movies are dropping down to the Saved queue as they become unavailable.

Maybe they are just economizing, or growing too fast. But I suspect they are starving the disk side to grow streaming. And that's fine, if I can find the movies that I want. And in general, I can't go elsewhere, because, for all these problems, Netflix still has the biggest selection.

I guess in some way I'm complaining about the free ice cream - Netflix is an amazing service and I get a lot out of it. But I nag because I care! Netflix, you are better than this.

Beatles Backlog

2011-05-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

Readers who have been reading may notice that I haven't been keeping up with the blog very well. Since I watch ~3 movies a week, I should be posting about 3 times a week. But it has been much less, hasn't it?

One trick I use when I get behind like this is the omnibus post - combining several movies that I have recently watched with a shared theme. This one starts with Magical Mystery Tour. We'd never seen this 1967 Beatles movie, for a couple of reasons. The album was released when I was 11, and I considered it somewhat creepy: "Yellow matter custard/seeping from a dead dog's eye". The booklet that came with the album has a gross illustration of a fat woman being fed spaghetti with a shovel. Plus, it wasn't supposed to be very good.

I needn't have worried about the grossout factor, but I guess it wasn't very good. The idea was for the Beatles and a bunch of regular folk to ride around in a tour bus, goof around and see what came out. And that's pretty much what they got. Ringo comes off best, spending most of the ride fighting with his fat auntie (she's the one who gets the spaghetti - filmed quite tastefully). Paul looks very naff in a colorful cardigan, but doesn't have much to do. John and George don't do much at all.

The Beatles songs are performed with visuals that would not have hacked it on the earliest days of MTV - oh well, this was a long, long time ago. My favorite is "Blue Jay Way", performed by George, sitting on the floor, playing a keyboard drawn on the floor like a mystical diagram.

Probably the high point of the film comes when the bus stops to take in a strip show, with the Bonzo Dog Band performing their Elvisesque "Death Cab for Cutie." Now that's entertainment!

Seeing Neil Innes in the Bonzos got us psyched to see The Rutles - Eric Idle and Neil Innes' Beatles spoof. Along with John Halsey and Rikki Fataar, they are the Rutles, subject of this documentary , narrated by Eric Idle. The band, its history and especially their songs are remarkably similar to another British band. We get interviews with people like Mick Jagger who knew them when, and interviews of the Mississippi bluesmen from deep on the Delta, who stole all their material from the Rutles.

But the best part are the songs - spot on Beatles pastiches. Some are funny, some are just too well-done: Is it a parody if it is just as good as the original?

So we went back to the original to find out: A Hard Day's Night. The Beatls 1964 film debut is directed by Richard Lester. It only seems like they put the Beatles on a train with a bunch of people and filmed what happened. Actually, it was carefully scripted to find and enhance the Beatles characters - responsible Paul, snarky John, thoughtful, iconoclastic George and Ringo, friendly, insecure, a bit dim but very sweet. In fact, my favorite part is Ringo, playing hooky from rehearsal, wandering around town, kicking rocks by the river, and meeting up with a lad, 10 and 3/4s, who is also deserting. Their banter is the loveliest - the kid mentions his friend Ding-Dong, and Ringo says, "Ding-Dong Bell?" because of course anyone named Bell will get nicknamed Ding-Dong. Listen close and you'll get to hear a lot of the vernacular.

In fact, George uses the term "grotty" and glosses it as grotesque - possibly the first use of this term in the media. He uses it to a swinging marketing man, trying to sell shirts to the youth market. It seems strange to me that prefab youth culture marketing was so well known as to be parodies in 1964, before even I, aged as I am, was a teenager.

Anyway, we were now on a roll. We streamed Richard Lester's How I Won the War, an odd WWII comedy with John Lennon in a small role. Lennon plays a sneaky little private to Michael Crawford's Lt. Goodbody. Crawford is a terrible officer in a stupid army who nevertheless wins the war for the British with a bad check. Strange, funny and a bit depressing.

And I'm going to wrap this post up now. We still have a ton of Beatles-related material queued up, like Ringo's Caveman and Lester's The Bed Sitting Room and The Knack ... and How to Get It, but we'll save it for later - or just skip over it.

In conclusion, Yellow Submarine does not appear to be available, disc or streaming.

Sniping at Sly

2011-05-05T19:06:00.000-07:00

I guess seeing Stallone in The Expendables got us to queue up Demolition Man - that and Mr. Peel's review. Shout out to Mr. Peel - he is the king of late 20th C. movies - especially 1970-1990. He writes about the trivial, the sublime, the flawed masterpiece and the guilty pleasure. And sometimes, he makes me want to see a movie against my better judgment.

In a dystopian 1998 future LA, supercop John Spartan (Stallone) tangles with supervillain Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes). When he goes to far, he is given the same punishment as Snipes - being cryogenically frozen for 40 years. Snipes wakes up in a peaceful utopia, where violence is unknown and strong language is subject to a fine. Perfect, he thinks, this culture will be no match for his evil.

When he starts his rampage, future cop Sandra Bullock figures that they need to fight fire with fire, so they defrost the legendary crimefighter, Stallone.

Mostly, this is just a goofy sci-fi comedy, like Woody Allen's Sleeper - there is even an orgasmatron. It's also an action film, of course, with the requisite fights and explosions, but it always seems eager to get back to the gags and social commentary. Can you believe, for instance, that in 1993, they predicted the Schwartzenegger presidency? They may have gotten the year wrong, but still.

I actually don't mind Stallone when he isn't trying to be serious - his comic timing is not bad. I like Bullock in this role - chipper, bright and very naive. Snipes has to wear some heinous outfits - Osh Kosh B'Gosh overalls with a blond fade - but is undeniably cool.

So cool, that we had to watch Blade 2 on instant view. I really don't have much to say about it, except there was a lot of action, blood, and special effects make up. Also, Kris Kristofferson as the Obi Wan character. Still, we got our Wesley Snipes fix, and without any Sly.

In conclusion, Sly rocks the beret in Demolition Man. It had to be said.

GTA: 1977

2011-05-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

Mindless action, thrills with no gore, and a happy ending. That's what I wanted, that's what I got: Ron Howard's directorial debut for Roger Corman, 1977's Grand Theft Auto.

Little Opie plays a college student from the wrong side of the tracks in love with Nancy Morgan, the daughter of a Beverly Hills fat cat who is running for congress. When her parents refuse to consent to their marriage, these two crazy kids steal the family Rolls and head for Vegas. Her mother steals the gardener's VW and gives chase. Nancy's suitor, a polo-playing rich kid joins the chase. They call the LA's KTNQ radio and offer a reward for the return of the eloping bride, and this gets everyone into the game.

So - chases and crashes. There is a low-budget, go-for-broke feeling like the first Gone in 60 Seconds. But there was also a touch of Vanishing Point with the radio DJ following all the action. Come to think of it, that was part of Gone in 60 Seconds and Convoy as well. I guess that in the 70s, no car chase was complete w/o a DJ to narrate. Kind of like the TV news copter of today.

The long scenes of Rolls and pursuers barreling through the desert kicking up huge clouds of dust were also very Convoy, but I don't know if this is homage, or just unavoidable - a long distance car chase from LA will always wind up in the desert.

It all ends in a demolition derby, which only makes sense.

You'll see a lot of familiar Corman faces, notably Paul Bartels as an eager bridegroom.

Oh, did I mention car crashes?

I don't think we see a lot of genius from Howard, but this is a perfectly serviceable crash-em-up. It's light-hearted fun and just what we were looking for.

In conclusion, no connection at all to the video game and movie spinoffs that came later.

They Love Him in France

2011-05-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

So, if I hate Jerry Lewis so much, why do I keep watching his movies? I hate to say it, but I respect his craft. I find his voice grating, his style either irritating or saccharine, and yet - he is really good at what he does. And in The Bellboy, he does what he does in the purest way.

The Bellboy is set in Miami Beach's famed Fountainbleu Hotel. It is a loose series of sketches centered around Lewis' bellboy character, Stanley. Like the M. Hulot comedies, the hotel and its rituals are a character in themselves. Like Tati, Lewis doesn't speak much, although this is not a silent comedy. Maybe the reason I liked this so much is that we don't have to listen to Lewis' adenoidal ravings.

The sketches are silly, touching, and sometimes quite surreal. Jerry Lewis turns up as himself, the movie star, surrounded by an impenetrable entourage. Milton Berle sees Stanley the bellhop and Lewis the star, and can't figure out what is going on. But you can figure out where this is going.

But the fun is seeing it go there. A lot of the gags are just Jerry doing a series of "takes" - something happens and Lewis:

Looks to the side, frowns
Opens mouth to speak, maybe raises a finger
Shakes head, frowns
Looks front, back to the side - double take
Starts to speak again
Raises eyebrows, purses lips in "Oh well" shape

And so on.

It might sound like I'm making fun of this, but Jerry Lewis has raised it to an artform. You might not laugh out loud, but if you watch closely, you'll learn a lot. To give you a clue, Lewis includes a Stan Laurel impersonator to guide you.

Also, I'm living in Florida now. A long way from Miami Beach and a long time from 1960, when this was made (Lewis' directorial debut). Still, I wanted to get a little bit of the flavor of the state.

Twice Upon a Time in the West

2011-04-23T17:05:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm not much of fan of cowboy movies - that's my only excuse for having not seen McCabe & Mrs. Miller until now. This was Robert Altman's 1971 revisionist Western, and I became a big Altman fan in '76 or there abouts.

It stars Warren Beatty as McCabe, a gambler who comes to a frontier town in Washington state to set up a whorehouse. Julie Christie shows up shortly, to let him know that he needs an experienced partner. The house flourishes, becoming the center of civilization and refinement for the town. But when the syndicate from the city decides to take over, will McCabe be tough enough to hold onto it, or was he just a big talking blowhard? Remember, it's a revisionist Western.

The story is sordid and sad, with McCabe realizing too late that the only woman he ever loved, Mrs. Miller, is a whore, and not even realizing that she is also addicted to opium. But it is also very beautiful - the wet and snowy country, the rough-hewn town rising out of a few shacks and tents. Like Popeye, it seems that half the film is about the architecture of the town, the other is mumbled dialog that you can only half understand.

The loveliness and sadness is greatly enhanced by Leonard Cohen's lovely music - sounding so young, not even 40.

Now, you might call Jonah Hex a revisionist Western - it sure isn't a traditional one. It's based on the DC comic book about a hideously scarred bounty hunter. In the movie, he is played by Josh Brolin with some real heavy, gross makeup. When Hex was in the Confederate Army, he made his commanding officer, John Malkovich, mad. I'd like to mention that I don't think much of Malkovich as an actor - those beady little eyes and weird affected speech. But don't mind him in comic roles (Red) or as a psycho villain. That seems to work for him.

Malkovich killed his family and burned the right side of Hex's face off and left him to die. But some Crow birds and Crow Indians brought him back to life. This gives him a superpower - he can talk to the dead. Still, all he seems to want out of life is to catch bad guys for the bounties and hang with his prostitute girlfriend, Megan Fox. Oh, there's the connection to McCabe and Mrs. Miller!

Anyway, Malkovich gets this steampunk superweapon and plans to use it on President Grant (Aidan Quinn in a very unlikely role). So Hex gets to save the day and get revenge on the man who killed his family.

Really, this movie has more in common with Wild, Wild West than McCabe and Mrs. Miller, including steampunk weaponry and sketchy President Grant roles. I think it was about as well received - that is, poorly. Well, we enjoyed it for what it was, a silly action movie. McCabe and Mrs. Miller was lovely, and left me thoughtful and depressed. Jonah Hex was silly, and left me slightly stupider and entertained.

Elemental Miyazaki

2011-04-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

An old-fashioned neighborhood in Japan reveals an elemental secret. A sweet child or two. Atmosphere, magic.
My Neighbor Totoro or almost any of Miyazaki's animes from Studio Ghibli.

In Totoro, a dad and his 2 daughters move to an old house deep in the Japanese countryside. The house appears to be haunted by soot gremlins. Rather than being frightened, the girls are delighted. The younger daughter finds a giant tree and the round grinning giant monster who lives at its root. And so on, through many adventures.

There isn't much plot, or even conflict, until the end when the younger daughter gets lost. The spirits, hauntings and mysteries could almost have been skipped, and the movie would have worked as well. The joy is mostly in the quaint architecture, the changing seasons, the countryside and the simple folks who live and work there. That's so Miyazaki.

The Cat Returns is less so - a Studio Ghibli not written or directed by Miyazaki. In place of the Japanese inaka (countryside), it takes place in Tokyo - a Tokyo just a pretty and magical as Miyazaki-san's countrysides. Put-upon high-school girl Haru discovers that the cat she rescues from traffic is the Prince of the Kingdom of Cats, and she will be married to him, whether she likes it or not. A mysterious voice tells her to seek a huge white cat at the crossroads. This cat leads her through Tokyo back ways to a tiny courtyard, with miniature houses. The smallest and quaintest is the Cat Bureau, run by a small, nattily dressed bipedal cat - the Baron.

The story and characters are a lot of fun, but I found them a little arbitrary. I did not get the deep sense of wonder I sometimes find in Miyazaki's anime. But - we were able to turn off the English language dubbing and watch in good ol' Japanese with English subtitles, which is not always an option. It made all the difference.

Aptitude Zero

2011-04-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

Latitude Zero was described as Star Trek produced by the makers of Godzilla, but I would describe it more as a Japanese attempt at a live action version of the Andersons' supermarionation show Stingray.

Although made in Japan by the director of Godzilla, it was made in English with a mixed cast. It starts with 2 scientists and a reporter getting in trouble in a bathysphere. They are rescued by a supersubmarine captained by a Nemo-esque Joseph Cotten.

Poor Joseph Cotten. He looks terrible, gaunt and aged, but is dressed in swishy gold lame with a kicky neckerchief. I started out feeling sorry that he was so hard up for money that he took this role. I wound up sorry for him because he was so hard up for money that he couldn't buy up every print of this movie and burn it.

Cotten lives in an undersea Utopia with a bunch of immortal scientists and statesmen. Their only enemy is the evil Cesar Romero. He has a lair in the requisite volcano island, quite close to Latitude Zero, and he makes horrible experiments, grafting human brains into hilariously inept animal suits. At least he seems to be enjoying himself. Of course, he was the Joker on TV's Batman, so he knows he has no dignity left.

We went into this movie expecting it to be so bad it would be good. We were half right.

Paul Williams: Demonspawn!

2011-04-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

I saw Phantom of the Paradise pretty much when it came out in 1974. I've got to tell you, it looked goofy and dated then, too. Trying to sell Paul Williams - who wrote "We've Only Just Begun" and "Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song" - as a glamorous Satanic demon? He's about as evil as Barry Manilow. OK, maybe I see their point.

Anyway, Paul Williams is Swann, a rock producer/impresario whose big stars are like an evil version of Sha Na Na (that is, like Sha Na Na). He hears geeky singer-songwriter William Finley singing part of his rock cantata "Faust", promises him fame and fortune, steals the music and dumps him. This causes Finley to seek out revenge, become hideously scarred, get a cool costume, haunt Williams' rock palace the Paradise, etc.

Meanwhile, both have fallen in love with aspiring singer Jessica Harper. Actually, it was the Movie Morlocks article on Harper that pushed me over the edge to watch this again. She does have a nice voice, although it doesn't get much of a workout here. Reminded me a little of Sandy Farina, from Sgt. Pepper. But I don't know if she really sold the rock diva thing - or even the rock innocent.

That's pretty much the whole problem with this movie: Williams' score isn't very exciting. Harper wasn't exactly electric. The big sub-Rocky Horror glamrock stage show finale just looked silly. It was all too goofy to be evil, and too earnest to be goofy.

And Paul Williams!?!? I'm not saying they should have gotten Bowie or Iggy Pop, but James Taylor would have been more threatening.

So Long Sidney

2011-04-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

I rarely do Memorials, watching a movie because someone died. We watched The Anderson Tapes because Mr. Peel reviewed it a few weeks ago, and I didn't want to have to read around the spoilers. It was mere coincidence that Sidney Lumet died shortly after we watched it.

He is not one of my favorite directors, and I guess Anderson Tapes isn't really typical. It stars Sean Connery as Duke Anderson, a convict just released from prison, along with an old guy called Pops and a very young Christopher Walken. Walken looks gorgeous, like Terence Stamp as Willy Garvin - all shaggy blond hair and cheekbones.

We watch him released from prison and visit Dyan Cannon, his callgirl girlfriend - but we also watch him through security cameras, surveillance systems and we see the man who is bugging Cannon's apartment. Because in the modern world into which Connery has been released, no one goes unwatched. This may be a problem for him when he decides to rob everyone in the high-rent apartment where Cannon lives.

All unknowing, he sets up the heist. He gathers the team - Walken and Pops, Martin Balsam as a swishy antiques dealer, Dick Williams as driver (under surveillance because he lives over the Panther's HQ in Harlem). they get mob funding from Alan King. All this is played loose - not quite a comic heist, but not too serious. Thn things start to go sour. Spoilers ahead.

First, the guy who has been paying for Cannon's apartment wants her to leave Connery, and she does. What makes this so creepy is her reason - it's clear that she is getting real feelings for Connery, and as a hooker, she can't afford that. Earlier on she told him, "I hated it. It felt like I was losing control." It's not clear what "it" is - but they are discussing it in bed.

The heist part of the film is masterful, with flash forwards to police interviews with the victims that just up the suspense without giving anything away. I won't give anything away either, except to say that this one won't leave you laughing.

A for Effortless

2011-04-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

Is there an established genre for movies like Easy A - comeidies about quirky, smart talking teens who are are just too smart and sophisticated to fit in? Because I think I like them. Like Olive (Emma Stone), I was an alienated kid who lonely because I was smarter than everyone. I was always making brilliant wisecracks that nobody else got. Also, my good looks intimidated all of the girls - OK, I'm not kidding anyone...

Stone plays a nice, shy girl at a high school in Ojai CA who tells her obnoxious best friend that she lost her virginity. Next, a closeted friend asks her to pretend to have sex with him, to give him hetero cred. Soon, she is pretending to have sex with half the outcasts in school. She is considered the school slut by everyone else, and starts wearing a scarlet A in defiance.

The tone is breezy and light. One of the nicest parts is Stone's family, Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson and adopted brother Bryce Clyde Jenkins. They are far from the standard clueless parents - close and supportive without being clingy or smothering. Thomas Haden Church has a nice role as the Cool Teacher, and his wife, Jennifer Aniston, makes a satisfying villain.

Youth in Revolt has a similar feel, but from a boy's point of view. Michael Cera is a teenage virgin whose love of Sinatra, Fellini and, well, culture makes him an outcast in his hometown of Oakland. When his trashy mom's trashier boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis) has to hide out in a trailer park in Clear Lake, Cera meets the girl of his dreams, Portia Doubleday. She likes Belmondo and Serge Gainsborough, and would be perfect for him, but she likes French bad boys.

So Cera develops and alter ego, Francois Dillinger, who wears a French moustache, smokes and likes to blow things up. That's sure to make her fall for him.

Nitpicking Dept: I know I bring this up every time, but the young women in both of these movies are beautiful, which makes the stories a little implausible. But not entirely:

In Easy A, why doesn't a girl who looks like Emma Stone have boyfriends swarming all around? Well, she clearly states that this is her version of the story -unreliable narrator. Maybe she isn't that good looking in "real life", and maybe she isn't as completely ignored as she lets on. It makes a better story.
In Youth in Revolt, Doubleday is not a beautiful girl who is mysteriously available - here boyfriend is a handsome intelligent poet, target of every girl in school. She just happens to like Cera, too.

In conclusion, it looks like I have to watch Juno now.

I Love a Swing Parade

2011-04-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

You know, I love old musicals, comedies and the Three Stooges shows. How could a movie that is all three be bad? Trust me, it is. What could make it better? Commentary by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I give you: RiffTrax: Swing Parade.

It is the usual story of an aspiring singer, and wannabe nightclub owner, and the Stooges who love them. It's remarkably reminiscent of Dancing Lady, but dumber. On the upside, we have Ed Brophy as the Stooges boss, and Louis Jordan, king of jump blues doing a number with neon lined instruments, which must have been dangerous.

On the downside, there is no swing parade, and precious little swing.

The boys do their best to liven this up, but the quipping really doesn't help ease the pain much. I'd say this is for hardcore lovers of musicals, comedies and the Three Stooges.

Eiger Counter

2011-03-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

My wife wanted to see The Eiger Sanction for the rockclimbing scenes. Then she fell asleep waiting for them. Well, it is a long movie.

Based on a story by Trevanian, this was 1975 movie was Clint Eastwood's directorial debut. He also stars as Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, art historian, mountain climber, government assassin. He was also a rock star and brain surgeon, but they cut that part. He is blackmailed out of retirement to kill one of an international team climbing the Eiger. But first he has to do some training in Monument Valley with George Kennedy and some hot chicks.

In re: Chicks - some shockingly racial and sexual stuff. That Clint is seduced by Vonetta MacGee as "Jemina Brown" might start to give you some idea.

The climbing, on the other hand is awesome. Some amazing zoom shots: From the full mountain, to a part of the trail, to a few small dots, who turn out to be the climbers. Clint clearly does a lot of the stunts, climbing chimneys and ropes, and traversing ice. Gripping stuff, if you could stay awake for the build up.

The politics of the Eiger climb seemed a lot less realistic.The other climbers all seemed like nuts - reckless, egotistical, poorly prepared - I wouldn't have wanted to climb with any of them, even if just to kill one of them.

Final gripe: for some reason, the DVD we got was letterboxed on all 4 sides. We really needed a big theater screen, but we didn't even get the full 32" from our home tv. Closer to 27". But who's counting?

Rock Lobster

2011-03-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

Lobster Man from Mars (1989) is a pretty funny riff on 50s space invader movies. It is also a pretty funny riff on the 80s movie business. I'm not sure they really go together though.

Some kid is just putting the final touches on an amateur feature film about a Lobster Man who is invading from Mars. In the meantime, film producer Tony Curtis (!) finds out that he made too much money last year and needs a tax write-off fast. Fate brings them together.

That's the framing story. Most of the footage deals with a young Brit and his girlfriend visiting his scientist uncle Patrick MacNee (!) in California, near Old Faithful. Their enormous car breaks down when a UFO lands, people start turning into skeletons, and who is that mysterious private eye? He's Tommy Sledge, who I guess had a TV series. I've never heard of him.

This sci-fi parody got plenty of laughs out of us, but it was definitely sub-Larry Blamire (Lost Skeleton, Lost Skeleton Returns Again). Also, who did that framing story work? Why was a kid in the 80s making a 50s monster movie. Was it supposed to be period or just retro? Was it supposed to be funny, or just incompetent? Picking a tone and sticking with it would have helped. But, so what? It's only a stupid movie about a stupid movie. And it did have a gorilla monster in a diving helmet, can't hate that.

The story behind the story is that Stanley Sheff and Bob Greenberg wrote the movie using the student film concept to allow it to be filmed cheaply. But it wasn't made until after Greenberg had died, and Sheff directed as a tribute to his dead friend.

As for Tony Curtis, he needed to make a child support payment. I can't explain what Patrick MacNee was doing it this.

In conclusion, they did use "Rock Lobster" as the theme song. It didn't really go, but who could resist using it? Not me.

Counting Crows

2011-03-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

Ong Bak introduced Tony Jaa, an incredibly skilled Thai martial artist, to the world. In Ong Bak 2: This Time it's Historial, Tony Jaa shares the director's chair, and they go back to an early incarnation of his Ong Bak character. He is tortured to death at the end, with the promise that he will be reincarnated in time for the first movie. So what will happen in Ong Bak 3: The Ong Bakening?

To start with, more killing of Tony Jaa. They pick up right where Ong Bak 2 ended, and spend about 20 minutes doing harm to him, breaking every bone in his body, etc. Then he gets saved at the last minute, and is whisked off to a small village to recuperate.

Meanwhile, the evil king who was torturing him is having problems with someone eviler than him. A goth, tattooed crow-demon type is haunting his dreams, and daytimes too. Now, I've never seen any of the Crow movies, because Brandon Lee died making the first one - too creepy. But even I said, "The Crow" when he showed up.

So King and Crow fight while Jaa regains his physical and mental strength. As excruciating as the torture was, the rehabilitation was almost more so. I guess these days, there are plenty of chances to witness the process of a broken warrior being rehabilitated. Jaa presents the process from a Buddhist perspective.

Then, when Jaa must fight the Crow, he takes a Buddhist path there, as well. Well, kind of Buddhist - as peaceloving as possible when taking on an army single-handed. But his fighting style has a rhythmic flow to it - like Aikido. Thai classic dance also plays a role in this movie, like in Ong Bak 2.

Jaa's movie all seem to feature a strong spiritual component, but I felt it much more strongly in this one. It appears that Jaa did as well, since he became a Buddhist monk when this was done. After the emotional workout this film put us through, I feel like I could use a little time in meditation too.

In conclusion, Jaa's reportedly out of the monastery. I look forward to his next movie.

The Acceptables

2011-03-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

The Expendables is famous for putting a ton of action movie heroes together for the first time, including Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the same scene. This isn't just stunt casting.

Sly heads up a mercenary band that includes Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren and some other guys. Their headquarters is in Mickey Rourke's tattoo parlor. One day, Bruce Willis comes to them with a business proposition. He tries to get Schwarzenegger involved, but he declines. That is the famous Stallone/Willis/Schwarzenegger scheme. Remember when I said it wasn't stunt casting? I lied.

The gig is to take out a South American dictator. The hitch is, he has a really cute daughter who is also trying to take him out. He also has Stone Cold Steve Austin working for him.

So, a lot of fighting, shooting, blowing things up. Stallone rockin' the beret, Rourke in a cowboy hat. Some in-jokes that I probably missed, like Randy Couture fighting Austin - did they have some professional grudge, or am I just guessing?

Mostly fun, but the dictator's daughter gets waterboarded - I know, this isn't torture when Americans do it, but these are South Americans. Or wait, it's the CIA, so it's OK. Hold on, it's rogue CIA; does that make it torture or is it still OK? Anyway, I thought the waterboarding scene was way too extreme, and morally confusing. I wish they'd left it out.

I haven't listed all of the kick-ass stars in this movie, but I'll drop a hint - mostly it's just Sly and Statham. And Statham doesn't really do much. Jet Li is totally wasted in a comic role as a small guy who wants more money, because he has to fight harder than the big guys. His big fight is not the best in the movie.

Honestly, this is about as good as most supergroup movies are - this one has TEN action hero stars, it must be 10x better than any other action movie. In fact, it's pretty uneven. They could have done as well with Stallone and 9 random stunt guys, with maybe a cameo or two, like Willis and Schwarzenegger. But it doesn't matter.

In conclusion, you already know if you want to see this. In fact, you probably already did, or never will. As for me, I've started adding Stallone movies to my queue.

Yippee Kay Yay Old Guy

2011-03-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

When did Bruce Willis become the grumpy geezer who is too old for this shit? I think he was doing that act in Die Hard II - any earlier? He really locks it down in Red.

He plays a retired government killer who spends his days waiting for his retirement check - so he can tear it up and call Mary-Louise ~~Masterson~~ Parker at the agency to complain. She is a cute clerk who likes to read romance novels and chat with old guys on the phone at work.

One day a black ops wetwork team come to take Willis out. Like that is going to work. He decides that Parker is probably implicated, so he picks her up and goes on the lam to kill people and blow things up. He starts collecting his old team, getting the band back together.

Yes, Morgan Freeman actually says, "We're getting the band back together." Your reaction to this information may determine how you feel about this movie.

Other members of the team include John Malkovich as a paranoid assassin brain damaged by psy-war experimentation, and refined killer Helen Mirren. I can't stand Malkovich in dramatic roles - he's too creepy with eyes too close together and the forehead and weird speech cadence. But as a psycho in comedy, he's a hoot. Mirren is wonderful - I hate to say she's too good for the picture, but she can do this little thing with her eyes that is electrifying. A real actress when everyone else is kind of phoning it in.

Nothing wrong with phoning in a performance in a casual fun little action comedy like this. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, except the people who get blown to bits by an RPG. My only reservation would be with Parker's role as Willis' girlfriend. The idea is that she's a homebody who dreams of adventure and romance, then gets it. Her part is a little underwritten, though, and she doesn't have the chemistry with Willis to pull it off. It's a thankless role anyway,

In conclusion, I have no idea who was trying to kill Willis or why. Just glad that they did. He may be old, but not ready to retire.

Passion in Fashion

2011-03-06T18:53:00.000-08:00

Passion fruit was flavor of the year a few years ago - right after pomegranates, I think. It is still one of my favorites. I love the lilikoi (Hawaiian for passion fruit) jelly that it seems you can only get in Hawaii. I love passion fruit juice, and use it in cocktails whenever I can find it, which is never. I have enjoyed Alize, a French passion fruit and cognac concoction. Recently I discovered Passoã.

It's a passion fruit liqueur, made by Remy Martin (it isn't Brazilian, as the Portuguese name hints). It is very sweet and rather pink, but has a good strong passion fruit flavor. just a splash in orange juice makes a nice refreshing (nearly non-alcoholic drink. That inspired me to make a little rum punch:

Passion in Fashion
1 oz. orange juice
2 oz. rum
1/2 oz. Passoã

Shake over ice and strain into a champagne flute. Top with about an equal amount of chilled sparkling wine.

Honestly, this has a somewhat restrained flavor profile. I think it would be better with lemon instead of orange, to cut sweetness. Grounds for future research.

Stone Cole Porter

2011-03-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

Anything Goes (1956) probably didn't kill movie musicals, but it isn't completely innocent either. It has a few Cole Porter songs, a few other songs, a story that has nothing to do with the Broadway musical or earlier film of the same name. It has some appealling stars, and an appalling lack of charm.

Bing Crosby and Donald O'Connor are two stars who agree to do a musical together. Bing is the established name, O'Connor the television crooner beloved by all the bobbysoxers. I guess he's a stand-in for Sinatra, Crosby's traditional nemesis. Although both are insecure egomaniacs, they are also insincere, and agree that the leading lady can be anyone either of them choose. Then they go off on separate European trips.

In England, Bing discovers Mitzi Gaynor and gives her the job. In Paris, O'Connor discovers Zizi Jeanmaire and gives her the job. Then they all get on the ship and sail back to New York. Such is the plot.

I like Mitzi Gaynor, although she is a little too perky sometimes, like Debbie Reynolds. She can dance, though, unlike Reynolds. Jeanmaire is a ballet dancer of exceptional talent, with a beautiful "line" - her modern dance numbers especially allow her to combine sinuous curves with cubistic angles.

On the other hand, the songs are pretty limp, and the dance numbers with Bing or O'Connor are not very inspired. This is pretty disappointing, because O'Connor is a great dancer, as anyone who has seen Singing in the Rain knows. He really didn't get a lot of chances to show it, and this film is not exception.

So, two annoying male leads, some lackluster songs and a few great dance numbers, especially those involving Jeanmaire. Maybe this movie didn't kill the musical, but you can see the musical dying in it.

In conclusion, guess what they used as a substitute for "cocaine" in "I Get a Kick Out of You"? Hint: If you took one little whiff, it would bore you terrifically too.

Name Your Persian

2011-03-01T20:56:00.000-08:00

I never played the game, but as soon as the trailer started playing, I recognized it as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The game goes way back, to the early days of the Mac, and the jumping, leaping, running style is pretty recognizable. The movie delivers that style in spades, plus beautiful art direction and some very appealing actors. So why does it ring so hollow?

Jake Gyllenhall is the titular Prince, a street beggar adopted by the king. He has a lovable mutt-like look -- not like a mixed breed or a shaggy dog, but a mug, a lug, a dope. He is fearless and goes in for streetfighting and commando tactics. But he runs afoul the evil vizier, Ben Kingsley, and is soon on the run with beautiful Princess Leia - is that right? Gemma Arterton. Kingsley makes a nice Persian villain - he reminds me of his role as the Rabbi in Luck Number Slevin. There is some Disney-style comedy relief, and a lot of derring-do. David Bell choreographs the parkour stuff.

I guess I enjoyed it, and I can't say any part of it didn't live up to expectations. But I never really bought into the whole experience. It seemed like a movie spectacle, a corporate enterprise. I realize that this would disqualify pretty much every ever made, so maybe that's not the problem. Maybe it was the hype, maybe I'm reacting to the bad reviews. It just didn't grab me.

In conclusion, watch it without expectations. You might like it better than I did.

Music and Spirits

2011-02-23T20:16:00.000-08:00

Here's another Carlos Saura dance film: Salomé. In some ways, it follows his usual pattern, mixing the process of making a movie, the planning, the rehearsals, with the movie itself. He shows us a group of dancers preparing a flamenco-inspired ballet about Herod, his wife Herodias, John the Baptist and Salomé. Then, he shows the resulting dance.

He doesn't play around much with his usual meta-dramatical tricks. In another mood, he might have shown how the director is really Herod, seduced by the ingenue playing Salomé away from his true love, the dancer playing Heriodias. He might even be tempted to "sacrifice" the career of the dancer in the John the Baptist role. But he doesn't do that. Look to Tango or Carmen for those kind of games.

Instead, we have an insightful documentary followed by a fine modern ballet ala flamenco. The choreographer and Salomé is Aída Gómez, very talented. Her dancers show amazing style and precision - when the corps is dancing together, every movement is perfectly synchronized. More importantly, they show duende, the all-important spirit of flamenco.

The Fantasticks, on the other hand, lacks a certain spirit. The story is about a boy and a girl whose fathers pretend to feud so that the kids will fall in love. Then, they hire an actor to abduct, or "rape" the girl, so the boy can rescue her. The original off-Broadway production was famously spare, a nearly bare stage, a few painted backdrops, letting the music stand out.

The movie takes a different approach, using slightly stylized sets and Montana locations. Mrs. Spenser is a big fan of the original production, and was disappointed at this approach. She was more disappointed by the presentation of the songs and the acting.

I was not familiar with the show, outside of the hits "Try to Remember" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain". I was pleased to find Joel Grey as one of the fathers - I like him because his dad was Yiddish comic musician and Spike Jones comrade, Mickey Katz. Also, Teller of Penn and Teller has a (silent) role.

Other than that, a pretty lackluster show. They tone down the "rape" stuff, shorten the songs, pad the dialog and action, generally make a movie out of it. Still, it's fun, and the songs are good. Just doesn't seem to meet its potential.

Salt in the Wounds

2011-02-21T19:35:00.000-08:00

Salt starts with Angelina Jolie getting beaten to a bloody pulp. It pretty much ends that way too. You get the impression that someone enjoys this.

Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who has held down a desk since she was tortured by the North Koreans. Things are going pretty smoothly until a Russian defector comes in with a story about a plot to kill Russian president Medyedev at the American vice president's funeral. I didn't even know Cheney was sick.

The kicker - the assassin's name is Evelyn Salt. So Jolie goes on the run to clear her name, in the simplest possible way. She goes underground and heads for the funeral, the last place they would think of looking for her.

I am going to try not to spoil any plot twists - you can probably figure them all out mathematically, based on permutations and statistics. Or when Liev Shreiber shows up. I won't be giving anything away if I say most of the movie is about Jolie running, jumping and kicking butt.

I'm a big fan of Jolie, but I have to say, she really doesn't move that well for an action hero. I saw a review of Salt (Ebert?) to the effect that it makes Run Lola Run look like My Dinner with Andre. But Franka Potente looks strong and athletic when she is running. Angelina Jolie looks like she's used to wearing high heels.

Still, most of the action is editing and special effects, and she looks good, even if she can't move well. (Actually, she has a signature move, where she kicks off a wall to get a little height, then kicks someone's head. It's not bad.) And she sure can take a punch.

The last movie we saw her in was Wanted, where she looked emaciated and heavily tattooed. In this movie, her look is bruised and covered in blood. I'm not sure where she's going with this.

Are You a Pepper?

2011-02-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

If i hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't believe in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - a movie featuring the songs of the Beatles, starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton? Seriously? Yes, and it's all that and worse.

It seems that Sgt. Pepper and his band were small town American WWI heroes. Their descendants, Peter Frampton as Billy Shears and the Bee Gees as the Hendersons, have resurrected the band at the request of the mayor, Mr. Kite (George Burns!). Like the Beatles, Frampton and the Bros. Gibbs are seen as symbols of pure middle American virtue - like rock 'n' roll and other things that conservative rural Americans have always championed.

But lads are tempted away to the big city by music promoter Donald Pleasance, and oh, I just can't go on. There are some side plots about a non-musical brother who is greedy, and a disco group called Lucy and the Diamonds. Then a Mr. Mustard steals the original Lonely Hearts Club instruments and the hometown becomes Potterville. The instruments go to Steve Martin, Alice Cooper and Aerosmith, who are all evil and each gets a musical number. Martin is over the top, Cooper is under the weather, and Aerosmith does a pretty fair version of "Come Together".

But get this: Peter Frampton kills Steve Tyler in a fight. Frampton! That gives you some idea of the wrong-headedness of this whole enterprise.

In my opinion, Frampton and the Bee Gees are talented musicians, well suited to the Beatles carefully crafted pop harmonies. But, while they don't insult the music, they fail to put their own stamp on it. George Martin is producing, and perhaps that contributes to the feeling of slavish imitation./ One exception was Sandy Farina, embarrassingly named Strawberry Fields. She has a nice pop voice, with a little roughness, sort of a Rita Coolidge feeling. Actually, any feeling at all was welcome - she was the only singer who seemed didn't seem to be singing the music by rote. Of course, this movie ended her career.

Actually, Earth, Wind and Fire did a pretty funky "Got to Get You into My Life".

I hate disco as much as the next guy, but I think I would have preferred a full out Saturday Night Fever disco version of these songs. In fact, at the very end, you get a couple of "Can't Stop Dancing" style "Sgt. Pepper" shout-outs. Refreshing.

So - totally worthless? No! About the ending. The last song is performed by the band and just about anybody they could round up in LA 1978, ala the Sgt. Pepper album cover. We watched it with hand on the Pause button, playing Where's Waldo with a crowd of notables and nobodies. There's Carol Channing and Tina Turner, Dr. John and Bonnie Raitt, Curtis Mayfield, Rick Derringer and Leif Garret, Jose Feliciano, Dame Edna Everage and I don't know who all.

Does that last scene make it all worthwhile? I wouldn't go that far. Throw in Earth, Wind and Fire and I guess you get your money's worth.

Foreign Intrigue

2011-02-16T19:59:00.000-08:00

The Emperor and the Assassin is a Chinese historical drama about the first emperor to unify the warring kingdoms of China. His lover, played by Gong Li, is an impetuous headstrong woman who comes up with a plan to allow him to start a war with a neighboring kingdom: She will recruit an assassin, who will fail in his mission, giving the emperor a casus belli, and an aura of invincibility. But the assassin just wants to leave in peace.

This plot takes up only about 1/3 of the movie. The rest is politics, pageant, and the emperor going mad with power. It is set ca. 200 BC, and the sets and costumes are said to be quite historically accurate. It certainly looks interesting, and the story is a great one, even at 3 hours. I'm not even a casual student of Chinese history, so this was all new to me. It's not an action or military movie, although there is some of that. The character development gets a bit operatic (or Shakespearean, like King Lear?), but you can't say it's boring

Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, on the other hand, is a ridiculous Thai imitation of Charlie's Angel. It is full of lazy, wire-fu fights, supposedly sexy women, bad jokes, jaw-dropping plot developments, and at least one transvestite. It looked like it would be fun and it was on streaming, so I watched it in a moment of weakness. Don't make the same mistake.