RECENTLY RATED MOVIES #17: SAME AS IT EVER WAS?

Ah! Summer movies! Love 'em, hate 'em... who can freakin' decide? Just like their cliched "It was a so-so year at the movies" annual denouncement of the past twelve months, the media likes to spend the few months before summer building up anticipation for all the big-budget, no-brainer, superhero junk-food flicks that they cram up our turkey asses like delicious stuffing from May through August. "Hey, Fat America! Run over your neighbor's kids with your resource-squandering H2 (while sucking down a 87-ounce Pepsi) to SEE THIS NOW!"

Then in September, the media chides us for not eating our greens, worrying about the depravity of our souls, and tell us why movies are in such a bad state THIS YEAR, which will turn out to be, inevitably, the big-budget, no-brainer, superhero junk-food flicks that you are still cleaning out of your anal cavity. Then they tell us the films we SHOULD BE WATCHING, all from September through November, and all of them POSSIBLY OSCAR-WORTHY. Oh, but then Christmas rolls around, and it's just like summer again, only with yellow snow. And then, suddenly its January, and the next batch of POSSIBLY OSCAR-WORTHY films are out, and the media is nagging at you again about all of those brain-dead Christmas films you wasted your time on (that they, again, crammed in your info-hole building up to the holidays). But you don't care. No, you're still trying to scoop that last handful of Santa Clause 3 out of your ass, and remembering sadly that Martin Short used to be so funny.

Summer movies... go to the ones that look interesting to you, forget the rest. Loved Over the Hedge enough to drag Jen's mom to it three days later. Washed down the sugar, though, that came with that flick's initial outing with a little blood from a heavy-duty Nick Cave western. I almost bored myself into carving "Dogs Playing Poker" on my chest, but was saved by Audrey Tautou's eyes in an underwhelming deciphering of the Code. Oh yeah, Ian McKellen rocks the world in both that flick and as Magneto in the new (and c'mon, there's no way this is the last) X-men charge. Not enough Colossus and Angel, but you gave me loads of Kitty Pryde and the Beast. It's a fair exchange.

But after that? We have a free night tonight, both Jen and I off together for a change, and we thought about seeing a film. Then we looked at the listings, and RV? Poseidon? Mission: Impossible III? Just My Luck? I think we are going to spend the night shopping; I will see anything once, but Jen is a little more discerning where our disposable income is concerned.

Speaking of M:I-III, outside of himself, can anyone take Tom Cruise serious in a non-ironic way in a film again? Oh yeah, Keanu Reeves gets by that way; I guess that so can the Couch Potato...

The List:
Over the Hedge (2006) - 8; The Proposition (2006) - 7; The Da Vinci Code (2006) - 6; X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) - 7; Closer (2004) - 6; The Dreamers (2003) - 7; Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (2003) (DVD) - 5; Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) (TCM) - 6.

THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON UP IN CEL BLOC #6

It seemed like I fought every inch of the way this week to get any of my posting done on both sites. Truly behind at work, throwing small temper tantrums along the way, and learning how to handle both Dreamweaver and Photoshop, two programs of which I went into the week with a total time experience of, oh... an hour, and that was mostly on Dreamweaver, all because I had to temporarily take over some website duties in the abscence of our graphic designer, who high-tailed it to better economic fortunes and a job more closely suited to his talents. It's been fun, but each evening I was wiped out and really fought with my self-proclaimed journaling goals.

Almost gave up on my project this week, as the only person keeping me writing at such a clip is little ol' me. But, half of the purpose of this experiment is that I keep doing it, and do it I did. It's also a little harder to do when Jen and I have the same schedules, or she has several days off in a row and we have a houseguest. The latter scenario was the case last week, so I spent a few late nights polishing off that day's review just before midnight. Luckily, I don't sleep very much, but it has led to this weekend's onslaught of blinding headaches. Despite that, I am back on track, and in a comfortable spot again.

Last week, two Barney Bears (both with Benny Burro, who also had his solo cartoon written about), two crazy Flip the Frogs, the last Popeye theatrical cartoon, and a Toonerville Trolley flick. Quality all over the scale and a couple of disturbing subtexts. One truly swell cartoon that points up exactly why I am in this experiment. Next week, a rare treasure and a handful of Aesop's Fables. And please go to animationarchive.org to check out some interesting Chiquita Banana commercials created by Famous Studios. Weird, fleetingly offensive, and wonderful...

This week on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc -
Sunday, 5/21/06: The Prospecting Bear (1941) Cel Bloc Rating:5
Monday, 5/22/06: Little Gravel Voice (1942) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Tuesday, 5/23/06: Half-Pint Palomino (1953) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Wednesday, 5/24/06: Funny Face (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Thursday, 5/25/06: Toonerville Trolley (1936) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Friday, 5/26/06: Spooky Swabs (1957) Cel Bloc Rating: 4
Saturday, 5/27/06: Spooks (1931) Cel Bloc Rating: 7

FIVE DISCS OF DEATH #5

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
It seems that many of my childhood nightmares rest squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Clint Eastwood. Love the guy, love his westerns, tolerate his cop flicks, deeply appreciate his skills as a filmmaker. But a rare excursion to one of the two drive-in theatres in Alaska as a child (more on this subject at a later date) and its triple-feature Clint Eastwood western marathon (or so I have been told it was; it may have only been a double-feature), left me with a lifelong intolerance for hanging scenes, to the point where I get all wigged out at the conclusion of films like Dancer in the Dark and Capote. Likewise, in Outlaw Josey Wales, there is a scene early on in this film where a Gatling gun is employed on a group of soldiers. While I can handle the use of machine guns just fine in most gangster films, somehow as a youth I could not understand the fairness of such a weapon as a Gatling gun, which could devastate at a remarkably high firing rate. Of course, any weapon that can take a human life is highly unfair, and there are many, many far worse weapons developed before and since. But since I saw this film at the age of 12, even with the nuclear fear welded into my soul at a relatively youthful age, and even with my vision already being compromised by an ceaseless array of monsters and aliens, the relatively obscure Gatling gun became a minor nightmare item for me for a couple of years. Outside of this weird item regarding my nightmares, though, the film itself is certainly up there with Clint's best, and the scenes between Clint and Chief Dan George are still highly enjoyable. A great western epic of vengeance and the way one man finds his way back from the edge. (Really, I've just described most Eastwood westerns...) Now, with some neat digital editing, we could finally get rid of Sondra Locke...

The Frighteners (1996)
Director: Peter Jackson
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
I miss Michael J. Fox on the big screen. While not a fan of most of his films, his is an easygoing, welcoming presence, even when the character he is portraying is deeply troubled and melancholic, as he is in this underrated Peter Jackson take on the flipside of the Ghostbusters movie. The only ghosts getting busted in this flick are the ones in Fox's employ, until a truly malevolent spirit gets in the way of the scheme, and murders a whole lot of people in the process. It is a comedy, but a very dark one for large portions of the film, laced with rich splashes of true horror, and that mood is only exacerbated by the buzzy support provided by a clearly unhinged Jeffrey Combs character. I saw this film for the first time at an afternoon showing on its opening day, with a large theatre filled, or rather, not filled with about 20 like-minded souls. I saw it, again, later that evening. Perhaps the world had given up on Fox in the movies by that point, and I must admit, I wasn't going for him, but for Combs (and a lingering affection for Trini Alvarado since Times Square back in 1980), but Fox proved his talent for comedic displacement was still a vital and charming weapon. Now, due to his illness, he works only intermittently, and outside of his voice work in the Stuart Little movies, his turn in this movie was his last major lead role in a film. No shame in this, for I believe to this day that this is his best screen work, even counting Back to the Future. And when are filmmaker's going to wake up to my assertion that each and every film released should have gratuitous amounts of John Astin in them? "There's a reason they call me the "hanging" judge!"

Robocop (1987)
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
The Criterion Collection 023
I'm not sure how I feel about this movie anymore. I have only watched it once since I bought the Criterion Collection version on its release several years back, and I am loathe to discuss my current attitude towards its fascistic future (a specialty of Verhoeven's, when he wasn't busy unleashing Showgirls and Basic Instinct on us) until I have given it a fresh spin. Off the cuff, I will tell you that I loved this movie when it came out, and saw it about six times in the theatre. It was dark, irreverant, cheeky, and crammed with some terrifically slimy supporting characters, played to the over-the-top hilt by the likes of Kurtwood Smith, Ronny Cox, Ray Wise, Paul McCrane and Miguel Ferrer. These are all elements which would normally attract me to the film, but at that time, I was really there for the special effects and the gore. The film was off its rocker with the violence, and I recall the script as being both wildly funny and appropriately comic-book campy where needed. I also bought a boxful of Robocop toys, including the cap-blasting figure of ED-209, the swell killing machine robot that takes out the entire boardroom. Once upon a time, after playing both Buckaroo Banzai and the title character in this film, I thought Peter Weller was going to be a monster star. Talk about your short-sighted vision...

Tapeheads (1988)
Director: Bill Fishman
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
"Yo, friends! Check this out!" Loads of cameos by both famous stars and by obscure music, TV and movie footnotes; an amazingly rich soundtrack with Devo singing in Swedish (or is it mock Swedish?), Fishbone performing Howard's Beach Riot in a country-and-western bar, a theme rap ad for Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, and Sam Moore and Junior Walker blasting through a suite of "classic" R&B standards (all written for the movie) as the incomparable "missing" duo, the Swanky Modes; and starring a tandem, that in a far better world, would have been run through their paces and won great acclaim as the "thinking man's comedy team", John Cusack and Tim Robbins, both friends still relatively fresh in their burgeoning careers at this point. What else could you want out of another weird and edgy project from executive producer Michael Nesmith? How about a decent rerelease of the soundtrack, with all of the extra music bits added, included the "extra extended" Roscoe's Rap that burns us through the end credits? My ex- owned the soundtrack, and at that time, I didn't have the foresight to burn copies onto my computer of all her music (at least, the stuff that wasn't Sophie B. Hawkins crap). So, away went the Swanky Modes, and when this DVD was released in '01, it came with a second CD disc insert, but only went so far to include one song: Ordinary Man. What the hell were they thinking? "Let's get into trouble, baby!"

Don't Look Now (1973)
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
This is one of those films that people either love or hate, it seems, and some people that I have shown it have never spoken to me of films again, while others have searched for years to find another Roeg film so richly hypnotizing. (I will point to several Roeg favorites of my own: Walkabout and Insignificance, hop over to The Witches for fun, and especially lead them to the astounding Bowie-starrer The Man Who Fell To Earth, but inexplicably, that film seems to divide people even more than this one does.) If I were to tell you there was another film from 1973 even creepier than The Exorcist, would you believe me? And that there is a fairly graphic sex scene so erotically charged that it could almost be considered X-rated just by intent alone? (Yeah, you get an extremely naked Julie Christie, but you also have to contend with buck-naked Donald Sutherland, too, so that is a judgment call you have to make on your own, kiddo.) I'll spill not word one about the mind-bending plotline; the less said in advance, the better for your experience. I'll just quote the attendent from the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror when he was asked if the ride was scary: "Well, it ain't called the Tower of Rainbows and Puppy Dogs, kid." Proceed according to your own sensibilities...

THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON UP IN CEL BLOC #5

Since the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc relies not just on cartoons from my own collection of DVDs and dusty VHS tapes, I just want to take the opportunity to point people to the Refrederator, from which three of the past week's cartoons were culled. Honestly, I already own these films on DVDs with quality ranging from terrible to OK, but the form in which the fine folks at Refrederator place them is well considered and the quality, despite the agedness of the material, seems to be relatively high, or at least, the best that can be found. You can go to iTunes and sign up for the podcast (which I have), and I will say, it is nice to get on the computer each day and fine a nicely gift-wrapped cartoon waiting for you when you open iTunes. (They seem to play better, however, when you reopen them in QuickTime, though.) I hate to rip on fellow cartoon fiends, but the Vintage ToonCast (also available on iTunes) also presents some of the same films, but with ugly black bars wrapped around half of the screen, presenting reminders that the films are archival footage courtesy of archive.org. I don't appreciate the distraction, and since the films can be downloaded sans this information for free on archive.org, I just find this whole business of the black bars unnecessary. Refrederator opens and closes with plugs for their site, but they are brief, and once the film starts, there are no further interruptions or distractions. Kudos to the Refrederator! (Thanks, Leif/Hepcat, for pointing out the site, but I was already signed up!)

This week on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc -
Sunday, 5/14/06: The Bear That Couldn't Sleep (1939) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Monday, 5/15/06: The Fishing Bear (1942) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Tuesday, 5/16/06: Heir Bear (1953) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Wednesday, 5/17/06: The Paneless Window Washer (1937) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Thursday, 5/18/06: The Valiant Tailor (1934) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Friday, 5/19/06: A Bout With A Trout (1947) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Saturday, 5/20/06: Is My Palm Read (1933) Cel Bloc Rating: 8

FIVE DISCS OF DEATH #4

A Shot In the Dark (1964)
Director: Blake Edwards
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
The Pink Panther Strikes Again may have been my first theatrical Peter Sellers film, but I was already well-versed in Inspector Clouseau's unique style of detection from watching, in the limited means I had in those days, not just the Inspector cartoons on Saturday morning TV (which is, really, a totally different guy), but the first two films in the series, The Pink Panther and this film, which is the first true pure Clouseau showcase. (The original film focuses as much, if not more, on David Niven's thieving character.) This film sets up Herbert Lom's blustery Inspector Dreyfus and also introduces the precious Burt Kwouk as Clouseau's karate-attacking equally bumbling houseboy Kato. That it works is astounding, since the film was a Sellers project that he wanted out of until Edwards was brought in. The applause needs to go primarily to Edwards and budding screenwriter (and eventual Exorcist creator) William Peter Blatty, who reworked the detective play adaptation that it was originally to turn it into an umpromptu Clouseau vehicle. Sellers revels in the opportunity to expand his silly creation to even greater extremes, though it remains my second favorite film of the series. I just can't seem to get past that disintegration ray in Strikes Again.

Dracula (1931)
Director: Tod Browning
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
So, maybe Lugosi wasn't an actor with tremendous range, and his career got mired in the sub-B movie realm; he is still terrifically effective as the famous Count, and despite a thousand imitators thus far and still to come, he is the definitive movie vampire. (I personally prefer Max Schreck, but that's me.) Yeah, visually the movie sputters out after the first quarter-hour, and the screenplay is so stage-bound you can hear the boards squeak, but Lugosi believes so much that he possesses the superhuman qualities of the Count that he seems to actually be able to hypnotize the viewer into an almost dream-like trance. We are carried into the fantasy of the story by Lugosi's powerful but human will, as filtered through that of a imaginary monster, and if that is not great acting, even though hammy, I don't know what is. You can get this on the Van Helsing tie-in Legacy Collection, but I had the original DVD release already, and it struck me while preparing this post that you can tell that I have been grabbing DVD's since their beginning simply from the fact that many of the discs in my collection have been supplanted by new sometimes-phonily "special" editions. I'll say this at greater length in the future, but its the movie, not the extras, that you should concern yourself with when purchasing a disc. It's amazing how little I actually utilize the "special features" on any disc that I own, except for that cursory glance when I first acquire a new DVD. Commentaries are nice, but even as a film student, I would rather just watch the movie than listen to a listless director, screenwriter, or worse, producer, prattle on about minutiae for two hours. This disc has the swell writer David Skal on comments, and an extra score for the film by Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet. The Legacy Collection has these, too, but you have to do it while basically visiting a video-billboard for the execrable though mostly unintentionally amusing Van Helsing, so be warned. I'll take this one for the cover alone.

The Tingler (1959)
Director: William Castle
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
Boy, I'd love to see this film in a theatre setting with the seats rigged to shock the urine out of the patrons at the appropriate moment. There's nothing worse to me than reading about past film experiences in some movie history volume and not getting the chance to have that same experience myself. For my part, I didn't see this Vincent Price mad scientist thriller until I was around 20, and my pals and I went to an all-night Halloween movie marathon in the Pub at the University of Alaska Anchorage. There, on a regular pull-up classroom-style movie screen, we watched The Tingler and another William Castle schlockfest, the original 13 Ghosts, along with a host of other fine films, while camped out on the Pub floor in sleeping bags and blankets, munching on whatever junk food we could manage to scrape together. All in all, it was a fine time, but watching the film and knowing that there was a missing part of the experience kind of brought it down for me personally. It didn't stop me from getting the 40th Anniversary DVD when it came out a few years ago, though, and Price is always a hammy delight.

Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) (2002)
Director: AJ Schnack
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
That I have only given this film a rating of 7 will come as a shock to those who know that not only am I a They Might Be Giants fan of long and outspoken standing, but that I still possess my old LP's and EP's from back in the day, that I have kept every magazine article and newspaper clipping regarding the Johns into which I have stumbled, and that even when I have replaced duplicate cassette versions with new CD copies, I find it impossible to part with the crappy, murky-sounding cassettes. I wouldn't say that TMBG is my favorite band; they probably are, and I have even suggested to some people that they are, but it goes past just simply being into a band. I have never seen them in concert (they never traveled to Alaska, and since I have moved to Anaheim, they have yet to appear here, either), so its not like I am going to weird sicko-groupie-stalk them or anything. Love of the Giants for me is a simple acknowledgement that these seemingly normal Johns are living my secret dream life: that of being simple working musicians who have a unique musical vision (though many try over-earnestly to copy it) and have plowed through two decades doing what they love. I am not a musician, but if I were, it seems that I would opt to veer more in the path of the Giants than in the self-destructive and cliched path that is almost synonymous with rock 'n roll. My brother is a musician (and though he doesn't make his living at it, I suspect he would like to), and every time that I visit his home in Santa Rosa, and his friends come over to hold jam sessions, I get a taste of what real musical bliss is like. It's not the money or groupies or fame (though those are just fine if you can get them); it's the emotional lift from fine music being played by people who care about what they are doing. Some people find the Giants a little archly intellectual and too clever for their own Giant smarty-pants; so, sue them for being brainy. Director AJ Schnack captures all of this feeling in his fine documentary, but I think some loose editing choices mar the final product just a tad. However, when I bought it (still living in Alaska), it was the closest I had come to seeing the real Giants in concert. Hopefully, that will change in the near future.

Blue Velvet (1986)
Director: David Lynch
Cinema 4 Rating: 9
It's been twenty years since I first saw this movie about a half-dozen times in the Polar Theatre in Anchorage. Twenty years since I watched an angry father of three kids drag his weeping brood out of the theatre shortly after the severed ear is discovered in the open field by a then wide-eyed and innocent Jeffrey Beaumont. The father yelled at the screen, saying "This shit is sick!", and I yelled, over my shoulder, "Please, not in front of the kids!" (What I wanted to yell was "What letter in the "R" rating don't you understand, you dumb fuck?") Most of my friends don't like or even appreciate Lynch, and that is fine. I tried, but perhaps foisting Eraserhead on them first back in 1985 wasn't the way to go. Don't even get me started on Mulholland Drive, which I did not even see with this particular group of people when they saw it 16 years later, nor did I tell them to attend it, but they still gave me crap about it as if I were the one who dragged them to it. People, if you don't like a painting, don't go to any later exhibitions of the same artist. If you hate, for instance, Piss-Christ, then you are probably not going to appreciate any of Andres Serrano's other photographs. Sure, he might throw a cute picture of a puppy in there to throw you off and get you all comfortable, but then you'll happen upon the next shot of a picture full of that puppy's wizz with the Virgin Mary floating about in it playing "Marco Polo". If you don't like or have never liked Lynch, don't go to his next film. (Though, seriously, Wayne, you'd love The Straight Story. No, seriously... Richard Farnsworth, all the way...) As for Velvet... still absolutely brilliant and shocking, and this is written a day after I just went to see The Proposition, an Australian western written by Nick Cave and starring Guy Pearce. The film, like Velvet, has some not-very-nice things to say about humanity, and I warn all of my friends back home to not even get on the same street on which the theatre that will play it exists. I'm not taking the hit on this one...

THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON... #4

Terrytoons, Warner Bros., Ted Eshbaugh, Walter Lantz, Columbia, Van Beuren, and back to Warner Bros.; we hit 'em all, or rather, we hit a bunch of studios this past week on the Cel Bloc. No plan; just jumping on to whatever film I ran across online or in my collection or on television. A little freestyle ani-hoppin', if you will.

Because we are dealing with films of a certain antiquity, I have (quite purposefully, I might add) rung up a bit of debate on the use of stereotypes in cartoons, a subject which will get touched on here and there throughout the course of the site. I will also mention that a couple of the commenters come from some interesting backgrounds and/or websites. I won't drop any names nor will I comment here on their comments (I will in later reviews, for the Cel Bloc is ever progressive and cannot be backtracked upon); suffice to say, that I would just like to draw your attention over to the reviews for the Bugs Bunny war propaganda short Any Bonds Today? to discover more.

This week on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc -
Sunday, 5/07/06: The Prize Package (1936) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Monday, 5/08/06: Any Bonds Today? (1943) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Tuesday, 5/09/06: Cap'n Cub (1945) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Wednesday, 5/10/06: Wonderland (1931) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Thursday, 5/11/06: Bars and Stripes (1931) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Friday, 5/12/06: Neptune Nonsense (1936) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Saturday, 5/13/06: Fin 'N Catty (1943) Cel Bloc Rating: 7

FIVE DISCS OF DEATH #3

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Director: Robert Hamer
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
Alec Guinness, long, long before Obi-Wan Kenobi, plays 8 different parts. 8 PARTS! If that is not enough to pique your interest, then there is nothing I can do for you. If you are interested, when a distant relation of the titled d'Ascoyne family blames his mother's death on the clan, he vows to gain his revenge on them, and take in a sizable inheritance, by doing in the eight members of the d'Ascoynes who stand in his way of the dukedom. The problem? All eight d'Ascoynes, male and female, are played by Guinness, and it might not be as easy as it seems at first. Deliciously dark and riotously funny, but with a typically British understatedness in the delivery of some of the gags (pay close attention to everything going on around the characters). I know some people who come out underwhelmed, but they are wrong. With our American viewpoint, when you think of comedy from the late 40's, it often comes down to Abbott and Costello or Hope and Crosby, with broad slapstick, cheap gags and punny one-liners; extremely fun, but easy to digest. This is another matter altogether; it begs close attention, but it is equally funny, and a bit more intellectually satisfying, even if such a haughty position was being lampooned, as well. Proof that Guinness was a King of Comedy in the 40's and 50's.

Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey (1993)
Director: Steven M. Martin
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
Not that Steve Martin! (And especially not the Gojira reporter played by Raymond Burr...) If you have ever heard "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys (and if you haven't, I do not acknowledge your existence) or have wondered what on Earth made that high-whining unearthly noise in countless space travel and haunted house pictures, let me introduce you to the theremin. Invented by Leonard Theremin as the world's first electronic musical instrument, this documentary brilliantly traces his entire life, career and half-century disappearance and reemergence in a puree of insane name-dropping and historical connect-the-dots. When this film came out, after seeing the preview on Siskel and Ebert, I immediately wanted to see it. It never came to Anchorage, and when it was released onto VHS, try as I might, plead as I would, not a single video store in town would carry the film. Despite my fervor, I still didn't want to pay upwards of a C-bill for the new release (after all, I had not actually seen the film, but I will say now, the old VHS pricing system was so idiotic). When DVD's hit the scene, eventually, MGM was kind enough to put the film out under the subtitle of its "Avant-Garde Cinema" wing (along with Bakshi's Fritz the Cat), and I finally had my quarry. After all that wait, that the weird, fascinating, somewhat ungainly film lived up to the promise I had built up in my head was only a bonus. Recommended viewing for any musician (which I'm not).

Scarface, the Shame of the Nation (1932)
Dir: Howard Hawks
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
I did not purchase this DVD, but I probably would have gotten around to it, if only for the fact that Boris Karloff plays a non-monstrous supporting role (and, predictably, quite well). No, I ended up fortuitously with this marvelous, tough film through a friend's gift of the DePalma version of this film, of which I am not really a fan, except in the mode of enjoying a ridiculously cheesy, over-the-top modern melodrama with boatloads of sex, blood and f-bombs. It has become the fashion to believe that DePalma's film is a classic, especially amongst rappers and their followers (the producers of MTV's Cribs made a note of the films in each of the homes that they have visited, and the DVD that is in nearly every celebrity's collection is the '83 Scarface), but I think the film is more of an anti-classic -- revered, though unknowingly, because it is so bad. It's the same standard that makes normal, seemingly functionable people believe that Top Gun is "just the greatest!" The original Scarface, however, is the real deal: tough, uncompromising, more than a little shocking given the day in which it was made, and though limited to a certain degree in its scope, it uses that constraint to its advantage, and the film has a way of making you feel like a caged rat. And all without a titanic mountain of cocaine.

C.H.U.D. (1984)
Dir: Douglas Cheek
Cinema 4 Rating: 5
Someday, I will tell you of the "Ballad of C.H.U.D.", a song of inexhaustible verse (86 total when first written after the movie came out, with a verse for each year) that my buddy Robear and I devised when we were desperately trying to coax our friends into creating an only-slightly tongue-in-cheek fan club for this film. (We were unsuccessful, as always, in these endeavors -- if the Internet were about at that time, it would have been easier.) When we couldn't even get our closest friends to buy into the silliness, we knew it was doomed (and, believe me, we all bought into a lot of silliness over the years, even today -- it's the strength of our friendship, actually). Now, there is a movie review site called C.H.U.D., and the name itself comes up in referential punchlines on TV and in movies, so it seems our work completed itself on its own (if totally without our interference or even effort). When all is said and done, however, the film itself is merely OK, neither as bad as some would decry it, nor as good as the lowbrow wish to believe it. I jumped at getting a copy on DVD when it came out, but I have only watched it once since then, and I believe it would take a gathering of all two members of our club to coax me into another viewing. And, Hey! Is that the famous Wayne Mitchell, dancing elbow star of Psychos in Love, playing the second lead to John Heard in the film? Oh.. it's only Daniel Stern...

Go (1999)
Dir: Doug Liman
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
Tarantino-esque; Tarantino-lite; Tarantino-at-a-Rave; Tarantino with Liman-Flavored Salad Dressing... however I have heard it described, and however I might imagine it has been described, one thing is for sure: I am tired of writing "Tarantino" in this paragraph. Sure, it hops about between story and time in the manner of QT, and it has punchily sharp, cynical pop-culture referencing dialogue like QT''s films, and it is punctuated by bursts of shocking violence much like... well... OK, maybe it is more than a little -esque, -lite, -at-a-Rave, and that last thing. But, unlike so many actual imitators of the "in" style to copy in the 90's and 00's, writer John August has his own axes to grind, and director Doug Liman, of Swingers and The Bourne Identity, has his own completely unique, though equally hip, visual sense. I found this film in a bin at an unnamed retail dive for 6 bucks (shocked I was!), and even if I liked the film only a little, I would have grabbed it. At the time, much like a large proportion of the male population, I had a slight crush on Katie Holmes, even with her squishy-templed cat-shaped head. It is only since her dalliance with that Cruise guy that she has become one of the Unclean. Nowadays, I would have just bought the movie for the diverse cast and the film's remarkable urgency. [For the record, I am partial to women with cat-shaped heads, but you have to admit -- Katie Holmes' face is kind of, well, oddly proportioned -- sort of like John Merrick's great-great-granddaughter (had he ever actually gotten laid).]

THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON... #3

There was a concentration this week on Tom and Jerry at the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc, but not the Tom and Jerry with whom most of civilization is familiar. Instead, this is a human Tom and Jerry, not a cat and mouse team, but who similarly fought, drank and played their way through nearly 30 adventures in the early 1930's for the Van Beuren Studios. The films are simple but fun (for the most part -- I take major issue with one of them), and while there were no great strides made in the art of animation, there are a handful of clever gags in most of the entries in the series. Many of them, all public domain, can actually be found at archive.org, and many others can be found on DVD; not essential viewing, but if you have the time...

This past week on Cinema 4: Cel Bloc --
Sunday, 4/30/06: In the Bag (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Monday, 5/01/06: Piano Tooners (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Tuesday, 5/02/06: Plane Dumb (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 4
Wednesday, 5/03/06: Pencil Mania (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Thursday, 5/04/06: Rocketeers (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Friday, 5/05/06: A Spanish Twist (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Saturday, 5/06/06: The Swiss Trick (1931) Cel Bloc Rating: 6

SLIPPED DISCS: ROYAL FLASH (1975)

I'm twelve years old in early 1977, and I am at the Denali Theatre in Anchorage, Alaska for a showing of the latest Inspector Clouseau film, The Pink Panther Strikes Again. (The date is approximate; in Alaska, at that time, we often did not get films on time. The film was released mid-December, 1976; I have adjusted to account for this.) I am already familiar with Peter Sellers' buffoonish Inspector, though I know just as much about the character from the cartoon series that aired every Saturday morning on The Pink Panther Show (in whatever form it was in from year-to-year), and truth be told, though I had seen the first two films in the series at that tender age already, I was at the theatre almost as much for the opening animated credits as I was to see Peter Sellers.

In that day, films were still shown as double-features, and when you paid for one movie, you got another usually inferior film with it. Example: later in 1977, when my mother and I took in The Spy Who Loved Me, we were regaled with Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, which served as a then-fun but, in retrospect, bad introduction to the aged Ritz Brothers. Sometimes, however, that second film was just as fun or good as the feature. Such is the case with Royal Flash, a film directed by Richard Lester and released in 1975, and which we saw packed into the program with the Panther film in the Denali on that day..

Lester, along with directing a couple little films called A Hard Day's Night and Help! (along with another personal favorite, The Knack ...and How to Get It) directed the acclaimed Dumas cinematic duo The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, and Royal Flash, too, not only contains a large dollop of Lester's trademarked slapstick jauntiness, but also comes laced with their dash of ironic cruelty, as well. In fact, more than a dash of it, for Royal Flash is top loaded with the stuff, and if you were to discover that Musketeers screewriter George MacDonald Fraser was also the mind behind Royal Flash's witty deconstruction of both heroism and scoundrelism, it should not be so surprising.

Fraser has written a dozen Harry Flashman novels over the past 37 years (with the latest coming out just last year), and in 1975, the second novel was turned into a starring feature for Malcolm McDowell, who certainly knew a thing or two about playing scoundrels. But Harry Flashman is a different sort of scoundrel; for while he has the most mercenary of hearts, and cares only for himself and his safety, to the point of being an utter coward in situations that call for a man of stern and true intentions, fate has conspired to allow the bulk of the world to see him as a conquering hero, and reward and honor are bestowed upon him over better men, even when he tries to do things the right way. He lies, he cheats, he steals, he leaves others to die, and he still lucks his way out of the most dire circumstances, and he always survives to meet the next battle where he is hopelessly outclassed and outgunned again. Karma is his bitch, and magically, he always perserveres...

Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Lionel Jeffries, Britt Ekland, Alastair Sim, Michael Hordern and even Bob Hoskins (in a early role) are along for this backstabbing parody of The Prisoner of Zenda: all mistaken royal identities, swordfights, trapdoors, torture dungeons and whatnot, which Fraser had the cheek to have Flashman say in the novel version that Zenda author Anthony Hope stole the idea from Flashman!

My mother, to this day, still insists that the film we saw in the double feature with the Panther film was I'm All Right, Jack, a comedy from 1959 that is about labor unions, and one which I would have remembered as excrutiating, no matter the quality (which is great; I've seen the film for the first time recently), because no matter how funny a film is, a twelve-year old is generally not going to finish watching a Pink Panther flick, and then hold still for a film revolving around businessmen. Now, the film also stars Peter Sellers in a supporting role, but my mother always insists that Jack starred Stanley Baker, which it does not. I am therefore going to have to go with my memories and dreams of the sword duels, and the chained water torture sequence, and the scene out from under the castle, etc., and declare that Royal Flash was the film that we saw. Besides, I have friends who went to the same double feature and back me up on this.

It's all terrific though slightly dark fun, and I can't imagine why it is not out on DVD. Most of Lester's ouevre is out already (with a couple of prime films missing, this being one of them). In fact, the film never came out on VHS either, and the only way that I have a copy is that I taped it off of WGN in the early 1980's. When I started watching it, I immediately realized in the first scene that this was my long-lost double feature film, and thus, my copy is missing the first minute or so. Sadly, due to its basic cable status, it was roughly edited for content, shown in fullscreen (no one thought about widescreen in those days), and the cuts for the commercials (which represent the full array of lame tile and carpet warehouse genre) sometimes happen right in the middle of dialogue sequences.

But, it's all that I have for now, and for the foreseeable future. At least I have the novels to keep me twirling my imagined mustache...

RECENTLY RATED MOVIES #16

Finally, Jen and I are getting out to films again. And I am just giddy about it. Despite my hatred of crowds, and hesitancy to engage myself with the public in general, there is no place better to watch films than in a movie theatre. It is not merely the chance to see a film up on a big screen (sometimes even a showing a bad print on a pull-up screen with an old projector is enough to warrant my attention), but it is the whole experience. Nothing brings me greater joy than attending the films. And none of that feeling has to do with the overrated popcorn...

We've gotten out to three films in the past week, and both of us were astonished when this fact popped up while we were driving to the last one. Jen's weekends are not my weekends, and we actually get very little time together, and it is only on her weekends that we have late afternoon/evening time to go out (she works mostly through the afternoon and evenings). So, if you ever wondered how I happen to have so much time to write these days, that is your answer in a nutshell.

I would like to briefly mention that the screening of The Notorious Bettie Page, which surpassed all conceivable expectations on my part, was graced with the prescence of a young man who was caught wholly unprepared at the sight of Gretchen Mol's disrobing in the title role. There is a scene where a naive photographer, who is just fine and happy taking modest, cutesy bikini shots in the woods with Ms. Page, when she playfully offers to remove her top for the novice shutterbug. (Nudity had been avoided to that point, not just in the nerdish lad's life, obviously, but to the audience watching the film, as well.) To see not just the tasty and physically perfect Ms. Mol, who clearly relishes the actually deep role, disrobe in the altogether in the scene, but to hear the breathy, astonished and slightly understated "Holy crap..." emit from the audience member's lips was enough to warrant the visit to the theatre. This was outside of the fact that the film itself was very good; it is honest moments like this that make a trip to the theatre memorable and worthwhile.

A moment like this can all be unbalanced in the next film by a rude asshole talking while ceaselessly crinkling a candy wrapper in the row directly behind you, but... well, that is part of the game. You can't win. If you can't handle it, you might as well stay home in your living room.

What's that? Oh, that's right...

Movie theatres are the new living rooms. Better get used to that talking...

The List:
Bubble (DVD) (2005) - 6; The Squid and the Whale (DVD) (2005) - 7; American Dreamz (2006) - 6; Friends with Money (2005) - 5; The Notorious Bettie Page (2006) - 7; The Station Agent (IFC) (2003) - 7.

Five Discs of Death #2

Invaders from Mars (1953)
Director: William Cameron Menzies
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
Apart from scaring the crap out of me as a child when I saw it on a Saturday afternoon TV matinee, what does this film have to offer me as a supposedly far-more-knowledgable adult? Isn't this the film that infamously has the alien soldier wandering about with a very clear zipper up his back? Isn't there a point where one has to grow up and get past cheesy films like this? Well, the sets are limited in scope, the costumes are cheesy, the acting is sometimes wooden... and it is all designed this way on purpose. This is the fever dream of an innocent child, and the movie reflects his vision of the big, bad scary world (some have written McCarthyist scares are woven into its lining, but I don't necessarily see it that way), the movie is seen from his perspective (in some extraordinary shots, especially in the police station), and his imagining of that worst of all childhood fears: the loss of the love of his parents. But, if it is all in his imagination, why can't the kid seem to wake up from this fever dream? Why do I still freak out everytime someone walks up the forest path? Why do I yell, "Keep away from the sand!" at the screen to this day? Why does this film still scare the crap out of me now? Now you know why I own it...

Taxi Driver (1976)
Director: Martin Scorcese
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
Let's face it: I got over saying "You talkin' to me?" when I was about, oh, well... forever. My De Niro is not that great, so I don't really try. Plus, except for the basic sociopathic tendencies that we all try to rake over, I really do not identify with Travis Bickle that closely. I'm more of a misanthrope. So, the scene about which everyone makes so much ado, which I take as evidence of man's furthering disconnection, countless misguided others take it as a supreme moment of macho coolness. Bickle is a cipher in this film, and he bounces from experience to experience like a puppy, barely taking any recognition of anything happening to him, but he does see everything happening around him, and takes the smallest slight as a personal affront. He builds up his rage step by step, but he is always disconnected emotionally from the situations in which he finds himself mired. There is a grain of good in the man, but he is rough, highly unhinged, and far too easily budged by events in his peripheral vision. He is mankind fighting against its own natural evolution... he is why unthinking violence persists in a civilization advancing far too quickly for everyone involved. (Bonus: Bernhard Herrmann's score is staggeringly brilliant...)

Alice In Wonderland (1951)
Directors: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
You might think my rating too high for what is generally considered to be mid-tier Disney, and it is certainly not the most faithful of Lewis Carroll adaptations. But, it is the wild design, the disjointed editing, and a neat snottiness at large in the film that makes it so intriguing. Other film versions of the books end up being, frankly, boring, even with all-star casts; the books are far better read personally than acted, and when actors do tackle Carroll's wordplay, they often talk down to their audience, which is something Carroll would never stand for a second. Disney took the two books, threw away half the chapters from each, shuffled the deck, and gave us a bouncy romp through Alice's greatest hits. Since it is well-known that it is a dream from the beginning, the film never lets us think that she is not dreaming; she is clearly in her own head at all times, and she should be scared. Sadly, the Jabberwock never does show up (I think Disney slipped on that count, especially after the build-up), but we are given memorable scenes (some would say definitive) with numerous Carroll creations. My favorite? Of course, it's the Mad Hatter and his crazed cronies at the tea party. "Mustard? Don't let's be silly!"

Pink Floyd the Wall (1982)
Director: Alan Parker
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
My stock in this film has fallen in recent years, though I still think that it is... uh, watchable. I remember that I dragged half of my friends to this at a showing at the University in 1983, and many of them despised it. The handful that were Floyd fans, however, did not. I was -- am -- one of those Floyd fans, but now not to the same degree that I was at that time, and certainly, I have no regard for anything done after the departure of Roger Waters. The film itself is still creepily effective, with some dazzling animated sequences and nightmare imagery; it's just that I see the cracks in Waters' structure more than ever now. Even if I still love the album, and even though I jumped jaguar-like on the film on its DVD release, I have to admit that it is really in my collection as a memento of a misspent youth more than anything. It's not a world that I need to return to that often, and when I do, I'd rather do it with the album, where my head creates images in conjunction with the nightmare story even more frightening than any film can hope to produce. Still quite the experience, though, for first-timers; there's really nothing like it...

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
Director: Roy William Neill
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
House of Frankenstein (1944)
Director: Erle C. Kenton
Cinema 4 Rating: 5
Neither one of these films, released on a dual disc before Universal tried to screw its monster fans again by packaging all of its star monsters in full sets just a couple years later (at least the rerelease was relatively cheap, but I had already spent around eighty dollars to get these films on the original four discs), is what you would call "good"; but they are entertaining. And, hell... these are monster mashes! Who cares about quality? Well, Frankenstein Meets... still has a certain clinging to the former level of the films to it; Lugosi is OK as the monster; and Chaney is still classy in his second turn in the Wolf Man role. As for House... well, the title is better than the movie itself, but then again, the name of the director is better than the film itself. But, as said, quality is not the point. The all-star mashing together of various and sundry monsters and mad scientists is the point. And I can think of far worse ways to waste an hour of one's life these days (I did not say one thing about the idiotic American Idol... but, I was getting to it...)

THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON... #2

Most of the past week on my other blog, the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc, was spent going over another section on the first disc of the Max Fleischer Color Classics collection, Somewhere In Dreamland. Frankly, the cartoons are starting to get cuter and cuter, and I'm becoming a little disconnected from the series. I'm hoping for a couple of good wolf attacks in the near future on upcoming shorts; just a little bit of antagonism can do wonders for a cartoon, and this week there were two Fleischers', The Cobweb Hotel and Greedy Humpty Dumpty, that had some nice dark edges to them. Of course, there was also that avian suicide attempt (I kid you not) in Hawaiian Birds, but outside of that, the film is basically forgettable.

Because of the gradually increasing cuteness, and the fact that I have been reviewing a lot of Fleischer cartoons over the last month (including some Superman episodes), by Saturday, I took a jump over into another studio at large in the 1930's: Terrytoons, with the Farmer Al Falfa biblical flood tale, Noah's Outing. Weird, disjointed, not-quite-the-gospel, but entertaining in its rough fashion: you'll come for the flood, but you'll stay for the giraffe elevator.

Coming up this week are some reviews of Tom and Jerry, and by that, I don't mean the cat and mouse team. The Van Beuren Studios had their own Tom and Jerry on the loose in the early '30's, and for the most part, the films are simple but a good deal of fun, and sometimes, naughtily so.

The past week on Cinema 4: Cel Bloc:
Sunday, 4/23/06: The Cobweb Hotel (1936) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Monday, 4/24/06: Humpty Dumpty (1935) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Tuesday, 4/25/06: Greedy Humpty Dumpty (1936) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Wednesday, 4/26/06: Hawaiian Birds (1936) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Thursday, 4/27/06: Play Safe (1936) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Friday, 4/28/06: Bunny Mooning (1937) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Saturday, 4/29/06: Noah's Outing (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6