My Lucky 13 -- Who Say Who?

What we were calling Messerschmitts looked nothing like the famous German fighter planes, but we called them by that name all the same. I was engaged in teaching my brother Mark a trio of paper airplane designs I had learned in school earlier in the year, not least of which was a snub-nosed model with wide wings and flaps torn into the back edges. This is the one I called a Messerschmitt, and while I probably knew the names of roughly a dozen other planes at that young age (I had a poster which portrayed planes and jets from around the world), I had actually picked the term up from a World War II-obsessed school buddy. The chief reason we called this particular design a Messerschmitt was the way this model would swoop for a short burst, and then flip over and over and over again until the plane would slam, usually ungracefully, into the ground. This made them perfect as the unfortunate victims of the other paper airplanes, most often long, sleek and pointed in the traditional way that even the most inept nebbish can build almost perfectly by accident, and most often identified by our youthful gang of brainwashed patriots as an American aircraft. Naturally, over a quarter century after a war which our tender minds could not even begin to comprehend, Germans (and not necessarily Nazis) were the imaginary evil of childhood's choice.

On that particular day, our paper-folding activities fell under the somewhat watchful eye of a middle-aged, chain-smoking daycare specialist (whom I recall as possessing the name of Nancy, though I have been called on this fact before -- I still believe I am right). We had a routine, Nancy and I, where I would do something bratty (for that is what I specialized in -- and still do) and she would tell me to knock it off. This would cause me to inquire in the biggest, booming voice my tiny lungs could muster, "Who say who?," to which she would reply in similar tone, "Me say me!!" Of course, I listened to her for the most part, but it wasn't for fear of reprisal against the evil I was undoubtedly perpetrating against her and the other children. It was because I knew what would happen if I did behave: while the other kids would eat their lunch at the kitchen table and then go off doing their little kid business, I was allowed to take part in the daily ritual at play upon the television from noon to two p.m.

This was the KIMO Lucky 13 Afternoon Movie, which seemed to the unwise to be nothing but a normal TV matinee show, but which beheld to me a secret wonderland of thrills and cinematic education. Hosted by the well-known (in Anchorage, at least) hostess, Beverly Michaels, Lucky 13 would often start with a short interview with a local celebrity or politico, but would then dive into whatever movie from whatever package the ABC affiliate could afford to run. This brought a great diversity of flicks to my attention over the few years that I devoured its contents, but naturally, I mainly remember the genre fare that was presented to me, and certainly not the generally boring romances that would pop up now and then.

And it was on this day, with the phony notebook-paper Messerschmitts crashing unloved into the stained and foul-smelling shag carpeting that was a hallmark of bad household decoration in that mostly horrendous-looking decade -- I can still bring its aroma to mind, though I certainly recall its like from many other homes and apartments of that era -- it was on this day that I paid attention to the Lucky 13 Afternoon Movie for the first time. Long before the monster movie shows that would carry me through my earliest double digit years, here was the springboard for my first movie feature show addiction.

The movie was the theatrical feature version of the Adam West Batman TV series, featuring his four greatest villains -- the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin and Catwoman - POW! WHAP! BAM! -- and I found myself ceasing altogether my normal frenetic behavior and sinking into that nasty carpet for the full two hours. I was already reading Batman comics by that time, and had seen nearly every episode of the series several times in its perpetual rerun loop late in the afternoon. But I had never seen the movie -- hell, I didn't even know it existed -- and here was the greatest thing I had ever seen with my barely formed peepers. The battles were so epic to my young mind, I could barely think straight for days, and spent weeks recreating the fight scenes with my brothers and my friends (some of whom, like my best friend Rusty Jackson, had lucked out and gotten to watch it, too). I had no idea how completely hokey it looked to adult eyes, and while I laughed a lot while watching it, I really did not realize it was all comedy. Then, as now, I felt Batman's adventures were meant to taken seriously, even if the hero had a serious paunch and a stilted acting style (neither of which I noticed either, but keep in mind, Batman was a real guy to me).

The chief revelation, though, was that I suddenly found a place where I could regularly see adventures like this. In a time before widespread cable systems and home video devices, I had the good fortune to briefly be in the care of a babysitter who liked to turn on the local movie show every single afternoon, and boy, did I reap the profits. Before long, I was seeing Jules Verne adventures like Five Weeks in a Balloon, traversing the African jungle with Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone, and diving in a nuclear-powered submarine in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis became regular pals, often with a different wacky movie in the series showing nearly every week, and Bob Hope and Danny Kaye comedies crossed my path every now and then.

Sure, there was a lot of genuine crap, too. Not good crap like I was watching (for the most part), but genuine crap. Anything with more than one female lead was sure to be given the coldest of shoulders. And if a romance showed up? Well, they were certainly icky beyond belief, but they posed no real problem. After all, there were plenty of paper airplanes left to build... and plenty of Messerschmitts dotting the skies of that smoke-filled battle arena, and every one of them doomed to perish ignobly in the hellish flames reserved especially for such villainy. Who say who?

Me say me...

Recently Rated Movies #57: To Be Counted As A Marvel, Doesn't Something Need To Be Marvelous?

Somewhere in my giant pile of lost tapes is the original 1978 made-for-television version of Dr. Strange. I have not watched it in many a moon, but as I am recently reunited with it, I shall take it for another spin here in a matter of weeks (or days, if I locate it any time soon). Also back in my possession are a pile of Dr. Strange comic books, both in his '70s run as a solo book and numerous issues of Strange Tales from the '60s, which I paid about $3 apiece for a flea market in the 1980s. To say that I have always been a great collector of the Sorcerer Supreme would be an overstatement, as I never really found the energy to complete any runs or keep up with later incarnations beyond buying the first issue or so. But I have always admired the character and have spent considerable time pondering the reasons why he wasn't one of the top characters in the Marvel stable, or at least far more popular than he seemed to be.

Or has this changed? As you may be aware, Marvel Studios has charged headlong into a full slate of varied projects, and part of this charge includes a series of DVDs (produced with Lions Gate) which has reached the shelves over the past couple years featuring Marvel characters not otherwise tied up in license with other studios, i.e. Spider-Man and the X-Men. The first couple of films featured a too cluttered amalgamation of the mighty Avengers, and since this bickering group -- with their constant breakups and announcements of new lineups -- have always served as one of my nearest and dearest, I was rather disappointed in the first DVD. Some decent action, but the convergence of limited animation and CGI sequences really didn't match up well for me, while the dramatic scenes served to just about grind the confused effort to a halt. When 75 minutes of a film featuring the no-doubt pulse-pounding likes of the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor seems instead something akin to a trio of nap-ready hours, then you know there are severe problems in the story department. Even though the sequel features the Black Panther in a prominent role, I have been reluctant to check it out for fear of being trapped within a jungle of ennui yet again.

Then, thankfully, Marvel skipped the clutter of the Avengers effort and started cranking out solo adventures for their characters. Slapping up a quickie adventure of the Invincible Iron Man seems a good bet, especially as an introduction for those unfamiliar to the character, since there is a lot of money at stake with the big-screen feature version next year with what appears right now to be a perfectly cast Robert Downey, Jr. (Skipping the passing of most of the profits onto a major studio, Marvel is producing this film itself, as it will the upcoming Ed Norton Hulk flick, though both will be distributed by Paramount.) The problem with this animated version comes in reconfiguring Tony Stark's origins yet again to fit a possible new series. While I grew up with the Vietnam-era Stark, he has had his tale time-shifted before to the Gulf War, and now here, in The Invincible Iron Man, his formation into a hero occurs in China while in battle against the minions of his eventual arch-nemesis, the Mandarin. While I am inured to the ridiculousness that has overtaken the comics world in recent years when trying to adapt existing properties to a third, fourth and sometimes fifth generation of readers, my roots with Iron Man go back to his beginnings, getting to read my cousin's collection of Tales of Suspense and The Avengers as a child. And I ask that you forgive my reticence when alternate versions of an already established mental history pop into my view and start muddying the waters. Besides, what I am actually calling into question is Marvel's decision to produce an Iron Man origin in one film, when the very next year, the feature film version will switch the locale of his emergence once more to Afghanistan.

What is important for the moment, though, is this DVD. Let's get the good out of the way: the battle sequences here are outstanding, and while I don't think the computer-animated bits jibe any better here than in the Avengers disc, they didn't bother me as much. The pleasant surprise in the series of films thus far is the PG-13 rating. I do not pay attention to ratings at all, as they play no purpose in my cinematic travels. But I was downright shocked when I saw Stark cavorting "el buffo" in a hot tub with a bimbo (though there is no nudity, there is clever concealment via angles and props of the "offending" parts, i.e. nipples); what's more, she is clearly just a one-night stand, and not even the slightest effort is made to explain her presence as anything different than implied. (This was the moment when I reached for the ratings description on the Netflix envelope.) It's nice that Marvel is not creating these directly for kids, nor making allowances to clean these up for our now too-sensitive youth. (See tomorrow's post for more commentary on this social dilemma.) It has long been known that the audience for comics is far older than originally presumed.

Now, if only they could produce a plot more accustomed to adults, rather than simply continuing the Yellow Peril affliction that has plagued comics (Yellow Claw; the Mandarin; Fu Manchu) and pulp fiction (Fu Manchu again) since they started, and western culture for even longer. To be sure, Marvel counterbalances this by providing an Asian heroine, Li Mei, even if she actually exists only as a vessel in which the Mandarin's spirit may return to haunt the earth yet again. The payoff of all this is so highly transparent it could be a spirit itself, and the sequences involving the Elementals searching for the rings which will eventually help the Mandarin return are monotonous after a while, apart from seeming jimmied in from another movie. Li Mei only seems to be there to portray the Noble Sacrifice, giving up her life for the White Man. And once again, even with my past Iron Man experience, I found myself not caring at all about the dramatics nor about any characters outside of Tony Stark, including Jim Rhodes and Pepper Potts, characters that I usually enjoy having around. Again, a disappointment, but I should be used to such disappointments when speaking of the history of Marvel's animated output. Admittedly, these new DVDs are better than anything that has preceded them, but they are still lacking in decent plotting and too jammed full to allow what good ideas are in there to breathe. One final quibble: you go all the way to China, and have Iron Man battle dragons, but no Fin Fang Foom? For shame...

So, all the more surprising to find how much I genuinely enjoyed the fourth movie in the series, Doctor Strange. In fact, I believe I have found the first in the series that I will probably purchase somewhere down the line. Sure, his costume is different than I am used to, but that cloak always did look a little silly. If Iron Man can constantly update the look of his armor, why can't a magician hire a fashion consultant? And when I first heard about this DVD's imminent release, I felt "Really?" pop into my brain. I expected a Hulk or Thor animated film first -- you know, one of the characters that I would presume would be far more popular than Doctor Strange. Then I found out that there is a proposed Strange film set to come out in 2009, and it all started to make sense. And, of course, on a personal level, I would actually much rather see a film about Doctor Strange than those other characters anyway.

Yet again feeling the need to start things off with an origin (and wildly divergent from the initial comics version, while still retaining the most important elements of Strange's nature and background), the film presents us with vast numbers of apprentices to the Sorcerer Supreme, otherwise known as The Ancient One of Strange lore. Battling creatures brought to the physical world by the dread Dormammu (Strange's traditional arch-nemesis), the feel is almost initially like a metaphysical version of the X-Men, with the powers of each apprentice manifesting themselves through different weaponry or media. This group includes Mordo, and even if you don't have any knowledge of Dr. Strange, you still just know Mordo is going to turn out to be a dickhead, let alone a turncoat.

Luckily, some asshole surgeon named Stephen Strange turns up and gets his tale of obsessive woe underway, and somehow, even with some weak voice acting in a couple of key roles, the whole affair actually becomes fairly intriguing and builds smoothly towards its inevitable superheroic finish. I mean, come on, it's an origin story. Is there any doubt what he will be by film's end? An entry like this is all about hitting the key points, but doing so in a far more involving way than the Iron Man film did. Even though its starting to seem like every superhero heads off to the Orient for some sort of spiritual awakening, Strange really did do this in the original comic (its one of the details they kept), so its pleasant to see these training parts in Nepal are so well-turned. (I like that they keep rebuilding the wall on him.) And the overall look of the animation throughout its length is far more cohesive than the previous Marvel efforts.

I was also pleased to see the more adult reflection of that PG-13 rating again, since there is much death (some of it slightly gruesome, with characters being reduced to mere skeletons in seconds) at play here. No niceties abound in this mystical world, with stakes this large, except where the good Doctor is concerned. Because the story is not just about a man learning to become a hero and world protector; it's about a man learning to heal his mind enough to become a decent human being again.

Let's see the Punisher try that without killing half a city block in the process...

Doctor Strange
Director: Frank Paur // Animated, 2007
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

The Invincible Iron Man
Director: Frank Paur // Animated, 2007
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Crawling From the Wreckage: The Prologue

Think you can do a better job?

Really, I invite you to come over and sift through 40-odd years of assorted fooferaw and folderol, all jammed into a one-bedroom and offset-den apartment -- keeping in mind the limited monetary range when planning such an epic trek through one person's lifetime of nonsensical ratpacking -- and work out a more efficient means of gaining some sort of control over the avalanche. By the second day, the two thousand CDs were already stacked and alphabetized (and yet, with no shelving on which to place them); a month later, all 200 boxes had been at least opened in some manner, half of them unpacked and obliterated, the contents sorted and placed on what shelving I did have going into the project. Now, three new cheapie bookcases from Ikea will cut us a decent swath in which to place our annual Xmas fetishism altar; the bookcases are the sort of things we can easily excise or take down should we ever find the extra bucks to gain the sort of furniture that actual adults tend to purchase.

With all the stacking and unpacking and sorting and contorting came the realization that, even with the massive selling, swapping and trashing of a couple thousand videotapes (supposedly to signify my complete transition into a DVD-aholic), I still had several boxes of the things taking up valuable floorspace. The first step was easy: sort through them and eliminate any tapes which have been released onto DVD in the two-and-a-half years subsequent to my packing these tapes into boxes. This actually cut the amount of tapes down to half, but please, close and personal friends of Rik who became beneficiaries of my last Great Tape Upheaval -- please, please don't get excited about numerous tapes showing up under Christmas trees. The tapes to which I am referring are of the personally recorded ilk, and many of them are not of the greatest quality. They just happened to have items on them with which I simply could not part at the time.

And if you wonder why I would take such pains to transport hundreds of videotapes thousands of miles, then you just don't know me very well. It is the obscurity of some of the films in my collection that provides my very interest in them. I would no sooner get rid of my ancient and well-loved WTBS showing of John Astin's Evil Roy Slade than I would my own immediate family. Of course, for a while now, this tape was just as far away as some of that immediate family, but now it is here, and it is most decidedly not being trashed. But its reappearance into my life did pose this question to myself internally: just why am I hanging onto some of these films?

Thus begins a new regular feature on the Pylon -- Crawling From the Wreckage -- as I scour these long-lost tapes and find out exactly what is on each one that makes me not wish to depart with them. You might not care, but that is not the point. Really, it's just another blazingly transparent excuse for me to write about a bunch of obscure movies. (Not that I ever truly need an excuse to do this...)

So, come on over and get cranking on your new and better plan to sort through all of my crap. I will welcome your presence with much appreciation... and the key to the city... and fireworks... and a parade... and a laurel... and hardy handshake... and whatnot. After the celebration, dive right into doing "that better job." After all, I've got writing to do...

Psychotronic Ketchup: Stakeout on Dope Street (1958)

Stakeout on Dope Street
Director: Irvin Kershner // Warner Bros., 1958
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Given the opportunity in a very public forum to program an entire evening of classic movies, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Clark went with the obvious: The Awful Truth, The Philadelphia Story, Casablanca and North by Northwest. There was nothing wrong with his choosing any of these four films. They are all excellent, and not coincidentally, some of my favorite films as well. That three of them are Cary Grant films only speaks to Mr. Clark's good taste. But one problem is that these are films which appear on Turner Classic Movies with stunning regularity, and another is that all of them are readily available in the home market as well. The biggest problem is that these are exactly the sort of films that anybody would choose given this chance. Did Mr. Clark win first dibs? If there are people who haven't taken the time to view these particular films at this point, I would guess the majority of them probably aren't watching Turner Classic Movies anyway. Given the time as a November Guest Programmer, Mr. Clark merely gave the tried and true, rather than actually challenging the audience, or surprising viewers with choices clearly far from their public image, or at least shuffling through the stiflingly huge TCM Archives to throw up a rare film or two of special consequence. For the chief of a magazine with vast cultural and often political impact, Clark deleted the possibility of true discovery or revelation, and simply went with the usual suspects.

Food Network genius Alton Brown's selections last Sunday were quite adventurous and revealing: What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Closely Watched Trains, Point Blank and Blow-Up. Who knew he was such an Antonioni freak? Who knew he embraced the avant-garde so thoroughly? I never even knew he started out as a cameraman. His choices were slightly more left-of-field, and not only possibly opened some new doors of interest to Turner viewers (or closed them), but also was able to illuminate viewers on numerous facets of his personality.

Did I really expect this to be the case when author James Ellroy (a long-time favorite of mine), threw in his lot as Guest Programmer last week? Of course not. Don't be silly. I expected his movie choices to be just as hard-boiled as the man himself, let alone as tough as his writing. But Ellroy didn't go for the tried and true. Avoiding the numerous Spillanes and Bogarts or other noir warhorses that would have made for another easy night of watching on the ol' TCM, Ellroy concentrated (as he detailed in his opening remarks for this film) on movies that evoked the 1950's where he was born and raised, and where he tragically lost his mother young to a grisly, unsolved-for-decades murder. Her death forged the man, however, and if it continues to inform his writing to this day, it also locked in his lifelong obsessions with that period. No surprise then that he chose a movie from the year of her death, 1958; actually, three of the movies he chose were produced in that year, and all of them represent the L.A. underground of that period.

Stakeout on Dope Street might have a similar jazz score to (and a couple familiar faces from) numerous Roger Corman quickies of that time, and assuredly, Corman was an executive producer on the film. But this is actually the directing and screenwriting debut of a completely different low-budget auteur, Irvin Kershner. (A quarter of a century later, George Lucas would hire him to helm a little project known as The Empire Strikes Back. You may have heard of it.) And in its Poverty Row way, Stakeout is as solid a freshman effort as you are going to find from that decade. Only you couldn't put it past the lazy editors of the annual Maltin Guide, who clearly haven't updated the opinion from the unimpressed review (possibly written by Maltin himself; hard to know for sure) which found its way into its pages all those years ago. Their review concludes: "Good premise; poorly executed." This is highly odd, since Stakeout grabs the viewer from the opening seconds onward, and hardly gives one an uninteresting scene that might make good on Maltin's conclusion.

Grim, tough as nails, and unrelenting in its inexorable wind towards despair, Stakeout wallows in a surprisingly graphic account of a heroin deal gone bad. Movies of this type often seem Squaresville, Daddy-O, when discussing drug or teenage matters (or both), and too often, they can sink into empty, silly hyperbole, which can sometimes have the opposite effect from the filmmakers' intentions. This one avoids these pitfalls by not showing the drug trip of the film's resident junkie -- which can often be so surreal it makes it seem funny or cool to an impressionable audience -- but instead merely throws us into his struggle through withdrawal in a cold, barren jail and then an equally imposing hospital room. And this isn't Stakeout on Sesame Street, either. Quite surprisingly, the junkie rolls up his sleeve to display a gruesome series of track marks to the trio of teens who have found the missing two pounds of horse from the drug deal gone bad.

The camera work in these setbound scenes is as tight and nerve-wracked as the actors in front of it. And for once in a low-budget neo-noir, movie gangsters don't seem so much like actors playing as being tough guys, as they seem just genuinely frightening men of unpredictably murderous intent. And if you think everything is going to come out in the wash in this one, you've got another thing coming. Sure, it might not be as pulse-pounding as it could have been: it meanders a bit in subplots that are not quite as necessary as Kershner might have believed, and a little too much time is spent by the boys arguing about what to do with their accidentally gained stash. Because of this, it might be about ten minutes too long. But the film seems as genuinely Skid Row as the world it portrays, and as tough as anyone else trying to survive in that world. Just the opening few minutes demonstrates immediately the exact appeal it must have had on the young Ellroy, but you don't have to watch this as an annotation on a popular author. Watch it to discover that not every Hollywood drug movie of that era was a Reefer Madness-style roadshow potboiler. This one can genuinely shock. And still does.

I Tolerate Short Shorts: Once Over Lightly (1938)

Once Over Lightly
Director: Will Jason // MGM, 1938
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Today is that day: the day when I will finally stroll over to the hairstylist and get my locks chopped. Well, not completely shorn off, but they will certainly be reduced in length and thickness to a large degree. This should make it a little cooler on my daily exercise sojourns; it will also serve to make me look slightly more professional at work. I've became a tad shaggy in recent days, and this look is exacerbated (much to the consternation of Jen, who hates facial hair) by the fact that I have decided to grow out my beard over the last week or so until the time came when I could hit the barber. Of course, having to make that time to get one's hair cut can be a hassle, especially if you have to get an appointment, or if you don't, you at least have to wait in line for far too long. (Pause for dramatic effect...) IF ONLY there were some sort of speed competition held between barber colleges, much like a normal collegiate sporting event and complete with marching bands, fight songs and overeager cheerleaders, where one could avoid the line and get this haircutting and shaving business over with quickly. Hmmmm.... Barber College is about to go into its big shaving match against its hated rival Beardsley (yes, it is just that sort of humor at work here), and poor Coach As it turns out, Once Over Lightly, a brashly silly MGM short subject from 1938, poses just such a scenario. CliptonKapouris (also a professor at the college, and mired in a losing season) is about to lose his job if he doesn't pull off the victory. Add to this pressure the loss of his star pupil, Bob Bradley, from the team, owing to the secret machinations of Bob's nemesis Joe Stevens, who has hidden Bob's final exam in his shaving kit when collecting the tests in class. Prof./Coach Kapouris and Bob are also in the middle of special lab experiments where they are trying to develop "a lather that tastes good," even if the results are seemingly fruitless. And, did I forget to mention that Once Over Lightly is also a musical? And all of this nonsense is crammed into a frantic 19 minutes?

Only a rarefied few, myself included amongst their ranks, go out of their way for short subjects these days. I will watch anything that seems interesting -- not exclusively in the realm of being entertaining, for historical perspective plays a large part in my interest as well -- but I would imagine that most who stumble upon this film were probably doing so either at the end or beginning of a film they were actually intending to watch. Leaving out the sheer chance of channel surfing into this oddball item (and if you do, cherish the moment, because running into precisely this sort of weirdness is the only reason why I channel surf at all), this leaves little audience meaning to watch these things. I do, though -- I actually recorded it, ignoring the films surrounding it -- but I truly wish to be inside the mind of someone who has stumbled upon Once Over Lightly, if only to take in their immediate impressions upon first seeing the character actor and comic playing Coach Kapouris: Billy Gilbert.

To modern eyes, Gilbert's blustery, crazily accented performance might seem unbelievably hammy, and there is no doubt that such acting is regularly served up with poi at luaus in Hawaii. He is over the top in nearly every scene in this showcase clearly designed around his talents, and while some scenes may fall flat (mainly due to editing and sloppy scripting), Gilbert is brilliant beyond the call for a program filler such as this. In the off chance you have heard of Gilbert, it is no doubt for the fame of his exquisite sneezing routine -- check out Disney's Snow White for his uncredited bit as, duh, that dwarf with the nasal explosion syndrome -- but he appeared in countless films in the '30s and '40s, in parts large and small, starting with Hal Roach shorts and moving into many notable roles in features, including His Girl Friday, Destry Rides Again and The Great Dictator. But, since he was hardly the leading man type, his main starring turns came via short subjects, some of which he directed and wrote.

A co-writer here, Gilbert affords himself one of those sneezing scenes, and also works in bits where his attempts at wisdom and coherence are undone when tangled up in his character's thick accent and general impatience. It is easy to see, even in such a small platform as this, why he was so valued by filmmakers of that time, and his comic timing is impeccable. He also brings real star quality to the film, infusing it with his manic energy, which is important given that he is basically surrounded by the usual assortment of bland, dime-a-dozen studio brats waiting for their bit break while appearing in projects like this. (That said, Johnny Downs as Bob and Dixie Dunbar as Kapouris' daughter do show some verve here, almost as if they believed this one was their big break.)

Unexpectedly, it is the direction here by studio yeoman Will Jason that helps Gilbert's hard work pay off. Collegiate comedies and musicals were common in those days, and the intent here is to satirize that style by placing it in the most ridiculous context possible. (Well, perhaps not quite as ridiculous as the Marxes' sublime Horse Feathers.) While hitting all of the marks of its exceedingly simple-minded plot, the film zings us with numerous throwaway gags, some of which really do seem thrown away. The film opens with a nighttime bonfire rally of the Clipton faithful singing their support for their team, while waving boxed signs reading such epithets as "Trim Beardsley!," and we are then shown the statue of school founder Howe E. Clipton, a bronze figure with his hand gracing the top of a barber chair. At the meeting where Kapouris learns of his possible loss of tenure, the dean finishes his ultimatum as he gently clips away at the hairs on the back of his hand. Then there is a verbal bit from the stadium announcer, who actually finishes an observation with "...and in the history of intercollegiate barberin', it has never been done!"

And if you can make out some of the lyrics sung by the dozen astoundingly hirsute hobos as they enter the stadium and march across the field, you will find yourself wishing that someone had gone the distance and made this into a feature instead. As they romanticize the impending "Clipton-Beardsley Match of '39" in classic fight-song style, the explain in illuminated language far beyond their looks, the reasons why they "crave a free shave," having grown their hair out since the last major intercollegiate shaving match for this very purpose. And where most musicals lose my interest, the love ballad, there comes a scene so wacky you'll wish Fred Astaire had though of it, if only to add tap-dancing to it. Downs and Dunbar enter "Barber's Arbor" (apparently, the Lover's Lane of Clipton College) and sit beside a fountain. As he starts to croon "May We Always Be In Love" to his intended, Dunbar picks up a nail file and nonchalantly begins to give Downs a manicure, as if this were the most natural thing for two barber college students in love to do on a date. Downs then dunks Dunbar's head into the fountain, never missing a beat, and starts to shampoo her hair. With suds bedecking her brunette mane, Dunbar joins in the song, followed by a quick rinse, which causes her voice to warble. Her hair toweled as the pair sit beneath a tree, Dunbar gives Downs a face massage as he finishes the last verse, and Dunbar modulates his voice in return by shaking his head.

The other 11 people whose votes earned this sweet little trifle a 3.8 on IMDB clearly didn't know what they ran into. Me, I won't be happy until MGM slaps it as an extra on one of their discs.

Fight, Clipton! Fight! Trim Beardsley... and how!

The Shark Film Office: L'avventura (1960)

L'avventura
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni // Italian, 1960
Cinema 4 Rating: 9
Shark: unseen species of Mediterranean frequency
Appearance: dialogue only

In the traditional and monstrous fashion of most fictional sharks, the appearance of this "pescecane" (as it is referred to in the Italian of what is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest films of all time, L'avventura) comes out of nowhere to rupture the plot violently and infuse images of its "horrid" self into the thoughts of the film's idle rich. An idyllic summer voyage to the islands in the Aeolian Sea off Sicily, in which a boat full of the emotionally empty languish in their own ennui and the lies they tell themselves and others, all under the pretense of having a good time, turns tragic when the most conflicted of the lot, Anna, completely disappears, both from the island they are visiting, and from the movie altogether.

Before she disappears, however (and just before they decide to dock at the island) she tells a small lie. A lie about a shark swimming beneath her feet after her selfish and pouting dive off the craft and into the water. She screams and yells at the beast, but no one (including the audience) never gets a glimpse of it; later, back on the ship, she reveals her attention-getting ruse to her best friend Claudia. For the rest of the film following her disappearance, this small detail of her lie about the shark forces both the audience and Claudia to always wonder about her. Is Anna only hiding out playfully? We (and Claudia) also have the inside track on her tortured emotional state over her stagnant relationship with her boyfriend Sandro, and Antonio's teasing placement of boats in the near distance without a clearly defined passenger leave us pondering whether she has run off. The film, and its director, are not the least bit worried about where she is, nor about how her loss affects her friends. Rather, the concern is with their eventual lack of concern. Claudia and Sandro will have a fling almost immediately upon Anna's dispatch, and while they play at searching for her off and on, they almost blithely forget she ever existed for large portions of the film's remainder.

I have had this film on my "must see" lists for years now. The Criterion Collection disc of L'avventura does make pains to point out its inclusion as the #2 greatest film of all time just two years after its release on a Sight and Sound poll. To this day, I have only ever read one issue of Sight and Sound (and that, just a few years ago), but I had encountered their polls for years in various bookish sources since I was a teenager. My memory of this film's title stems directly from encountering that list from 1962, and partly from my teenaged incredulity at the inclusion of any film that hadn't already entered my admittedly narrow world view at that time. A handful of years away from allowing Kurosawa's swords and arrows to open my eyes to World Cinema, I was immersed only in American pop culture. Even the Hitchcock films I had seen and fallen in love with were the product of Hollywood. I would actually get visibly angry at the inclusion of films like this one or Bicycle Thieves appearing on such lists, believing falsely that only Americans knew how to make great films. After all, those were the films that I had seen. If these foreign films were so great, I then mused, how come they were not shown on television, instead of Bob Hope's The Cat and the Canary or all of those Jerry Lewis films I saw every Saturday afternoon?

I would learn eventually how wrong I was on this count, but when I saw that 1962 list, only two films were Hollywood productions -- Citizen Kane at #1, and Greed at #4 -- and while I had seen Kane and already loved it, Greed was unknown to me, and the fact that its director, Erich von Stroheim, was not American held little sway in its favor either way. Since I hadn't seen it, whatever its origin, it was just as foreign as the rest. My xenophobia at the age of 15 would not be deterred, but by 17, it was already doomed for the grave. That was when I went back to those Sight and Sound lists and took the stance of making them guidelines towards a film education. And yet, there are still films on those lists a quarter of a century later that I still haven't seen. Criterion is making it easier all the time, though, to do so, and it was with a reminder of those polls that I queued up L'avventura on Netflix.

What I was not expecting (as these things often go) was the appearance of Mr. "Pescacane." I was merely catching up with a film I had longed wished to see, and already somewhat bored with the film, when the shark scene perked me up. Perhaps this is Antonioni's intent, perhaps not. Whatever the reason for its inclusion, I was suddenly caught up in the storyline for the remaining two hours of the film. Not because I thought it was suddenly going to turn into Jaws -- I'm quite sure that I would have heard more about this film in my usual circles if it was that sort of movie -- but because it was the first moment in the film that truly whipped up my interest. My eye had already been caught by some of the film's amazingly structured shots, but the purposefully bland dialogue had dulled my interest until the shark lie brought me back into caring about the plot.

And this is what confuses me about the film, because I have read numerous short plot summaries of the film over the years, but I have to admit I can scarcely recall one that mentions anything about Anna's false encounter with her "pescecane." Seeing the film twice this week (a second viewing with commentary followed a couple nights later) forces me to consider the importance of the scene, and whether it is being discounted by those who are viewing the film. Just because the shark is a fabrication, doesn't mean it isn't there within the film. At first, because no one knows it is a lie, it becomes a figure, albeit brief, of terror to the other tourists; later, it becomes almost a mocking though still worrisome memory for certain members of the party. Soon, like Anna, the shark will be forgotten by them; Anna will disappear and become myth, whether by her own making or not. Unfortunately, the shark seems to be forgotten by many who see this film too, though I am glad its appearance (or lack of one) caught me aware.

That's why The Shark Film Office exists: to capture even the most elusive of the species.

[Note: Ironically enough, the most recent Sight and Sound poll in 1962 is more American than ever, with six Hollywood productions on the poll -- seven, really, since the first two Godfather installments are counted as one. Weird how this turned around me; I now dispute their results because it is too American.]

He's Crazy If He Thinks We're Coming Back Again (He's Crazy Anyway)

Ten days in Disney World. A small bout with possible food poisoning from a local fast food eatery. A flight to Idaho. A road trip back from there via Oregon, Nevada and half the length of California. The unpacking and sorting of an initial grouping of one hundred boxes in our cramped apartment. Numerous trips back and forth from a rented storage area containing the other hundred boxes, which are now also squirreled away in our even more cramped apartment. A small, furry death in the family. The non-stop frenzied pace of my job, not to mention extra weekends worked to make up for some of the time spent on my pair of vacations.

Any wonder why I have been such a bad blogger, Abbott?

The truth is I have been meaning for the last week or so to dive back into the Pylon. It's been nearly three weeks since I last posted, but that doesn't mean I have not written anything at all. A couple of goofy poems, three songs, reworked a chapter on my novel, and numerous false starts on blog entries. Not really false starts, though... most of them will be used at some point. I just found little time to finish what I started, and when time found itself free and in my hands to direct again, I had little compulsion to carry on from where I left off with those posts.

I guess we all need breaks, but I find it is so much easier to write if I just keep going, day after day. If I don't -- if I stop for any length of time more than a week, especially when things pile up, as they did for me in September and October -- then I find it very easy, and ever easier with each passing day, to slough off the whole enterprise. So, breaks are bad for me. The temptation to just couch potato my evenings away after a rough day at work is too great, and I find that the more I keep writing or working on my various little projects, the more my mind keeps locked on target, even when distracted by real-life things like work and fuck-all. The good thing is that I am well aware of this problem, and I usually go to some pains to prevent it from occurring; the bad part is that a good share of my writing involves the watching of various videos and television shows, which leads me back into the very tempting path of simply sitting on my duff and not removing myself from the sofa for anything.

Today was a good example: awake at 6:30am, I had all day, with Jen off at work, to sit down and work on the blog, and perhaps knock out a few reviews. But I also had a backlog of movies recorded on the DVR, and once I watched the first one, instead of dragging myself to the Mac and writing about it -- or writing about goddamned anything -- I found it more comfortable to flip to the Packers game. [Note -- while I no longer really follow anything but baseball, I was raised a Packer fan, and I cherish the calls either to or from my Dad following each game, win or lose. Win in this case, in a major way; 34-0 over the hated Vikings.] After the game, I watched another movie, and then, though I did open Blogger on my browser, I then started listening to The Who Sell Out, and decided to sing along as I cleaned up around the house. The album over, instead of writing, I decided to listen to the awesome Petra Haden a cappella version of The Who Sell Out, and did the dishes. Sure, it's great that I'm doing some much-needed housework -- and it was fun to listen (and sing) loudly to music, since I normally now only hear tunes on my iPod or at work -- but it really defeated my initial purpose for the day. And what did I do once all this cleaning-and-singing nonsense was over? I watched another movie. Another one of which I probably won't find the time to write.

And this garbage? This whining about my lack of blogging. Only started writing it an hour ago -- took a short break to listen to the first side of Tommy (I'm my own worst enemy, you know) -- and if you think I began it with any certainty of where it was going or what I was going to write about, then I believe by this point you should know it is a misnomer. The point was simply to write. The point was to get anything down -- something... anything... -- something down on this post, just to jump start myself back into my process.

And so it is done.

And now I really want to listen to some Rundgren. I'm sure I don't have the slightest idea why...