Just Inside the Foul Pole: Kill the Umpire! (1950)

Director: Lloyd Bacon
Columbia, 1:17, b/w
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

I am constantly surprised by just how many small, hidden gems there are in the vaults of the major movie studios. They aren’t the films that will have nights devoted to or built around them, nor are many of these films, unless they develop a substantial cult following, likely to appear on DVD in the future. For the most part, they are forgotten except by the hardiest of film historians; for the most part, you will be lucky to run into a showing of one of these films unless you haunt the cable listings, scouring them hour by hour to see what strangeness one can encounter if you are just willing to take a little time and give an unloved, untamed thing a little attention. It also helps to check for these films in the wee, wee hours.

I found Kill the Umpire (which, as it turns out, is on DVD), a William Bendix baseball comedy released by Columbia Pictures in 1950, in just this manner. I’m not a huge Bendix fan, but I’ve found him pleasant comic relief in the right circumstances, and the prospect of seeing a sports film to which I had never been exposed seemed even more necessary once I read that it would only take me 77 minutes to complete the course. One could watch three sitcoms (sans commercials) of any quality (made even better sans commercials) in that time, or you could catch this knucklehead knuckleballer and get a lesson in how light assembly-line comedy used to be done back in the day, around the same era when the sitcom form was initially getting its legs.

I didn’t get far into the credits, adorned with some swell cartoon-style baseball drawings on the title cards, before I saw a name that provided great comfort to me. Frank Tashlin – “Tish-Tash” from the old Warner Bros. cartoon studios – wrote the screenplay for Kill the Umpire, and even if I hadn’t caught the name at first, I would have gotten the feeling while watching it that his hand was somewhere in the making of this film. The efficiency of the jokes in Kill the Umpire can only be described as “economical” – each joke is not only to the point and never belabored, but also serves to move the story ever forward, rolling the thin plot merrily down the first base line atop a wheelbarrow full of corny baseball gags. It’s a style that Tashlin surely honed in his days in cartoons, where short running times and tight schedules ensure that brevity truly reign as the soul of wit.

Fully aware that his script really doesn’t have a lot to say about even the umpire condition, let alone the human one, Tashlin allows the script to load up with cardboard bookies and tough guys, and some increasingly tired hokum involving some dastardly eye-drops. Director Lloyd Bacon plays through these gimmicks by surrendering the concentration to its lumpen leading man, played with a bulldog’s sad-eyed determination by Bendix. His “Two-Call” Johnson is a lifelong schlub whose home life is being threatened by his almost crippling baseball addiction. Absolutely unable to keep a steady job via a series of game-engendered screw-ups, Johnson is finally talked into attending an umpire school by his father-in-law, himself a retired game-caller. A dyed-in-the-wool baseball fanatic, Johnson hates umpires, and would rather die than even come close to becoming one. The potential loss of his wife and family, though, firms his resolve to prove himself behind the plate. It also turns out that he is pretty damn good at something for the first time in his life.

It’s a shocker, but the film actually gets a little frightening when the fans in the Texas League where Two-Call (his nickname is a result of those wayward eye-drops) eventually gets hired nearly take the title threat a little too much to heart. It’s not a shocker that Texas fans would act in this way, it’s just that the film turns a little more violent than I expected considering how frothy things had been until that particular game. (Of course, since Columbia recycles their Three Stooges' Three Blind Mice theme for this film’s opening credits, maybe I should have sensed how things would turn out from the start.) The resolution to all of these violent threats is also stunning and ridiculous -- using felonies to extract oneself from the implied felonies of others -- but for what is basically a live-action cartoon, short and silly at every turn, it simply had to build to a manic, barely controlled finish. This, too, is something at which Tashlin excelled, and which Bacon pulls off, even though nearly every character in the film should end up doing some form of prison time given their actions. Where the film truly succeeds is never letting the action get very far away from Bendix himself, an actor as committed to bringing a smile as his character is to getting the call right.

If you are looking for Pride of the Yankees here, go back to the Bronx. Kill the Umpire is comedy of the lightest variety, even with the dash of criminality in its plot. But it’s goofy quality is infectious, and I would happily put this on the shelf with some of my favorite black-and-white baseball comedies: Rhubarb, Roogie’s Bump, or my personal national pastime film obsession, another Bacon film called It Happens Every Spring. Or I would put it on the shelf with them, if those films ever did actually come out on DVD. This one comes double-packaged on disc with Safe at Home, notable mainly for some humorously stiff acting by that thespian trio of renown: Mickey, Whitey and Roger of the Yanks. A historical document Safe may be, but outside of this interest, it is exceedingly pedestrian.

For those other better baseball comedies films that have yet to join Kill the Umpire on the DVD racks, I guess I will just have to keep haunting the TV listings…

Psychotronic Ketchup: Sugar Hill (1974)

Director: Paul Maslansky
AIP, 1:31, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

You jive turkeys won't believe this, but I have been seeing a lot of "blaxploitation" films lately. True, ever since I started the Psychotronic Ketchup project, I have been watching films in many genres that I normally avoid, like that passel of generally cruddy biker films I bundled up into one weekend about a year ago. And I've never really avoided "blaxploitation" flicks anyway. I am fairly well-versed on Blacula, Slaughter and the Pam Grier epics -- and even a little Dolemite for good, stupid measure. But recently I have been -- I don't know if "treating" is the correct term, but what the hell -- treating myself to their like far more regularly than I used to do.

This course now brings me to Sugar Hill, a film which I probably would have watched anyway given that it involves zombies. Not the Romero type of living dead, mind you, but the original things -- VOODOO zombies. Not voudoun either, the real religion from which the popular notion of voodoo stumbled like a victim on fugu poison, but good ol' fashioned, silly movie voodoo. The filmmakers even take a character from the most recent James Bond flick at that time, Live and Let Die, and appropriates him for their own nefarious purposes. I am not sure if Baron Samedi is an actual popular character in voodoo myth, or if he was created wholesale for the Bond film, but here he is -- booming laugh, scary fashion sense and all -- making things miserable for those who would bring harm to his eager-for-revenge patrons.

But in Sugar Hill, Samedi isn't played by Live's marvelous Trinidadian 7-Up pusher, Geoffrey Holder, the multiple Tony Award winner. Instead, Don Pedro Colley gives an almost equally intriguing turn in the role, demolishing all who would usurp him on the screen with a lascivious sneer and burning eyes, as he summons his zombie corps to do his bidding. (He also apes Holder's version to a certain measure, approximating that basso laugh for all he's worth, which is about halfway there.) Colley seems to have acted in just about every memorably cheesy TV show from the sixties into the nineties, and just as those appearances probably didn't serve him to the extent which his talent probably deserved, neither does he have nearly enough screen time here. For the few scenes which he does have, I found him magnetic.

He's matched here in watchability by Marki Bey, as the titular character, though the impulse to seek out her performance should only be due to her general foxiness, and not her acting, which tends to waver here and there depending on the intensity of the scene. (There might be a very good reason why she only appeared in a handful of films.) "Sugar" is only a nickname, given to Diana Hill by her fiancé who, in order to give the movie some semblance of a plot, is murdered by Mafioso led by Count Yorga -- er, I mean the guy who played the Count -- Robert Quarry. Sugar seeks out a voodoo woman named Mama Maitresse, who magically hooks Sugar up with "voodoo god" (as she says) Baron Samedi... and all of this is merely so we can get a good solid 90 minutes of zombie action. Well, also so Sugar can get into a ridiculous catfight with a skeezy redhead mistress of Quarry's, which never goes as far as it should to keep our continued interest. But mainly, this film is about the zombies.

Let me enter into this paragraph speaking as someone who is still creeped out by Sleestaks. Zippers up the backs notwithstanding, as a kid growing up in Alaskan winters half-marked with darkness in any hour where I wasn't at school, having to walk home through the woods alone, I deeply believed in every monster that I saw. It didn't matter. This was mainly because I kept stupidly watching scary shows (on late night TV, nonetheless...), when I clearly couldn't handle them emotionally. And then I would have to go to the bathroom, but I would be too scared to make the short distance from my doorway to the toilet, and I would stand there staring into the darkness until I either passed out or convinced myself that the monsters were otherwise distracted. Once, I even peed in a cardboard box and flung it towards the front door, planning to take it out at morning's first light before my mother awoke; more than once I would pee in a glass and pour it down the sink later.

These zombies -- the Sugar Hill zombies -- would have made me crap my pants in those bygone childhood days. Covered in cobwebs, a shuffling gait, grasping hands or fingers gripping machetes, bulging eyes that betray no sense of a pupil, just ghostly, unrelenting whiteness... I would squarely not have been able to handle them. Nowadays, while I have certainly seen a thousand things more eerie or frightening by this point, I can still well up that feeling of my youth, and recognize the image of these zombies as being something quite cool and scary. I would suggest to anyone even partially interested in the history of zombies on film to at least check out the attack scenes in this film for some contrast. Their design is marvelous, and their gruesomeness in these scenes is carried off fairly well.

Would that the remainder of the running time excelled in even the smallest measure. Quarry seems highly bored by the filming, Bey, as said, is merely adequate but cute in a variety of far-out fashions, and the remainder of the actors (outside of steady Richard Lawson as police detective, and old Sugar flame, Valentine) are wholly unremarkable, sometimes even awful. The supernatural scenes have some decent mood, but outside of this, the film is stiff. Once the initial premise is set up, there are no surprises to be had at all. And in a genre like blaxploitation, which at least, even in the wildest of scenarios, could still makes the eyes spring out with crazy, left-field incidents, this is a shame. This one had some real potential, especially given that the zombie parts (which you'd think would be the hardest part to pull off) are so solid. Clearly, not everything is so sweet on Sugar Hill, and neither am I.

Psychotronic Ketchup: The Ups and Downs of Title-ation

Raw Meat [Death Line] (1972)
Director: Gary Sherman
Rank/AIP, 1:27, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

If you type the title Raw Meat into the Internet Movie Database, you get five immediate options, known otherwise as "exact matches," to your inquiry. The first, the entry for the actual movie for which I was at the site to gather information (I will get to in just a short moment). But the four following entries, three of which were appended by a (V) which generally stands for "straight to video," were for gay porn flicks. At first I considered the option that perhaps the movie I was looking up, without my being aware of it, had been remade at some point in the 35+ years following its release. But, after clicking on each of the next four entries, and scanning the all-male casts and the genre types, it didn't take long to surmise that if indeed the original Raw Meat had been remade, it surely only did so with a drastic change of plot, and also perhaps with an incredible amount of product placement from Astro-Glide.

Sometimes, despite how we are told ceaselessly since childhood not to judge things this way (even if your "betters" hardly ever practice it themselves), one cannot help but to occasionally let the title of a film influence your decision whether or not to watch it. And I am no stranger to this myself. You see, I put off watching this film for years, simply because of the title Raw Meat.

Anyone who knows me is well aware that there is little from which I shy away as regards the film industry. My circle of friends know full well that I will watch just about anything, from the sappiest romance to the clunkiest action film to the grossest of gross-out comedies, simply so I can have an opinion on it. This even extends to the book world, and before I wish to either discuss logically (or as more often happens, render insufficient) someone else's glorification of a certain author, I will dive into the writer's works for a brief period myself to educate myself on their style. Back to movies, I have always lived by the maxim that I will see any movie at least once, though naturally, due to personal preferences and much like any person, I do happen to prefer some genres over others.

One of these, almost absurdly, is the horror genre. As you might know already from reading this website, I will endure even the most vile piece of dreck as long as it falls into this category. And while I prefer mood, implication, and subtlety over more brazen effects such as a veritable rainstorm of arterial spray, outrageous gore can be a most handy weapon in the filmmaker's arsenal when employed judiciously, or if the film is designed to be brought to cartoonish levels of blood and guts. So, I am not a prude by even the loosest definition of that abhorrent term.

And yet, I have avoided Raw Meat for the past three decades, even while having numerous chances to view it. Perhaps it is merely what the name itself connotes in my mind, and I take the ever rougher style of that particular period of films into account -- the Texas Chainsaw-Last House on the Left and early (good) Argento era -- and even though I am well-versed in those films and know that gore is really not the endgame in any of them, my brain Frankenstein's together a film that I am not quite sure I can endure. I imagine a film featuring the worst sort of ravenous butchery. I picture a slaughterhouse setting or rendering plant, naturally there exists some hidden form of cannibalism, and I create a sordid range of scenarios in which a butcher of this type could place his fellow human beings/victims. Those two simple words themselves -- "raw" and "meat" -- (and this goes far back before the day I had ever considered their manipulation into sexual terms) denote a certain nausea to one that constantly struggles himself with even eating beef (and cannot cook it on his own because of this) -- and I know that I do not want to sit through ninety minutes of that on my even most melancholy and sociopathic day. Thus, owing to my own queasiness, and without having even an ounce of evidence to the contrary, I have passed up a series of chances to see the filmic Raw Meat.

But now my ongoing Psychotronic Ketchup project demands its viewing, and I also now have a compatriot in the office whom my fellows and I delight in calling "Raw Meat" as a pet name. Apparently, I can avoid it not a moment longer. I rented the film late last year from Netflix twice, only to have it arrive snapped in twain the first time, and cracked, and therefore unplayable, the second. I flirted with just buying it outright (it's a relatively cheap buy), but then decided I should go rent it at a local store instead. But then it showed up on Turner Classic Movies' Underground show this weekend, under its original UK title Death Line. My chance had arrived. The change of name, too, allowed me to quash those oddly nauseous images briefly out of my head and watch the film undeterred.

Yes, there is a horrible creature that lives in the London Underground, and yes, he is a cannibal. There are frequent gushings of blood, and some nasty closeups of the creature's cauliflowered ear, which gets punctured a couple of times and spews out some disgusting pus to good effect. Numerous body parts are scattered about the creature's lair, and there is an impaling here and a shovel into the head there. It's the stuff that normally draws me to these films in the first place, and here I was avoiding it all this time, simply because I found its American name unpalatable for obscure and deeply contentious personal reasons. If it had been released here in the States as merely Death Line, I would have looked at the box and said "Oh, lookie! Some horrible fiend or fiends are killing people in the train tunnels! I've have just got to check this out!" Instead, they release it as Raw Meat, and I lump it into the pile of flicks that may be entertaining in some aspect but for which I have yet to find time, like Luther the Geek or Street Trash, because the titles do nothing but evoke a mood of "Geez, I just do not want to deal with that right now..."

Let me be the first to say that while this film is no missing genre classic, it is such a near miss as to be devastating once you reach its climax. In fact, it's that rare near miss in which one can point out exactly what would have elevated it to classic status: about twenty more minutes involving Inspector Calhoun, portrayed delightfully by the often misused Donald Pleasance, and also including what appears to be his nemesis, an MI-5 agent played with a biting, mysterious air in one single scene by that other oft misused horror giant, the great Christopher Lee. Pleasance is such a joyful, rambling nuisance as an Inspector of Missing Persons in this film, flinging non sequiturs and sneaky logic alike at his foes, suspects and friends -- at times, there almost seems to be a bit of Clouseau lurking within him, and other times, Holmes himself -- that I felt Pleasance is wasted tremendously in the film's later sections, where he disappears nearly until its resolution.

Lee is so compelling in his lone scene, in which he springs unannounced upon Pleasance and sidelines the good inspector with some underhanded higher government interference in the case, that it's a shame of the first order that they don't meet up later in the film. Their scene is thick with the implication that this pair has many clashes ahead of them, and I wonder if perhaps another film was intended by the studio as a follow-up, building on this relationship. Of course, I also wonder if the director really didn't know what he had here, and the feeling only arrives due to some playful sparring between Lee and Pleasance that really isn't in the script at all.

All of the elements are there, but it never quite fully gels. Shot on location in London around the Russell Square Tube Station, the atmosphere with the locals and the pubs is cozy enough to make the desolation of the pitch black tunnel scenes seem a world away, even if it is only a hundred feet below the surface. Director Sherman and his camera crew were obviously in love with the perspective shots of the tunnel archways, though they use this effect perhaps once too often in the end. The idea of Victorian tunnel workers getting trapped below ground and having to resort to cannibalism, and then surviving to create new generations of underground murderers is arrived at a little too easily for my taste, even if the idea is really sort of tossed off as a side-note. I wish there had been more investigation into the idea, especially on Pleasance's part, but all he really does is torture the male protagonist over and over with ridiculous questions, instead of doing the detective work. It's a filmmaking cheat, and it damages the film as a result.

Me? I'm in love with the leading lady. Sharon Gurney, an actress of little consequence overall in the film world, is extremely fetching, even if her period hairstyle makes her look like the guitarist from an all-female cover band of the Bay City Rollers. (Come to think of it, most of the actual Bay City Rollers looked like they belonged to an all-female cover band of the Bay City Rollers. Well, except for Derek...) Norman Rossington, as Pleasance's stolid sidekick Sergeant Rogers, does his best to get his job done under the onslaught of his boss' barbs, and still manages to convey some sense of amusement at the whole enterprise. I just wish David Ladd were in on the joke, as he seems stifled at times in his nothing role as Gurney's American boyfriend. I also wonder what the hell Hugh Armstrong, as the mutant underground cannibal, is yelling all the time. Armstrong is fine in the role, especially in the realm of physical menace, but because I didn't have subtitles with my viewing, I am left wondering if anything he screeches is actually meant to be of any importance to his character. (Perhaps it is for this reason that I will purchase the DVD, though I am sure the subtitle will read "unrecognizable yelling.")

Overall, the film is so close to being terrific, that I am tempted to give it a "good" rating (a "6" on my scale), but ultimately, it disappoints. Pleasance enthralls, and Lee is intriguing, but their limited presence only points out where this film went wrong in the production process. It breaks my heart to give it only a middle-of-the-pack "5", because I do want my friends that are horror fans to check it out. If you are a horror fan, even if you are not my friend, I do stress that you should see this, if only to know what might have been (or to see how these things were handled in the pre-CGI days, and especially before Hollywood does finally remake it). You will still have a good, basic scary time in what is such a near miss of a horror classic. But so much more could have been pounded out of Raw Meat.

Which brings me back to the title problem. Really, the surprise regarding the IMDB title search is that there aren't more videos on the list with Raw Meat in the phrasing. You'd think Raw Meat would be a natural for a whole series of gay porn flicks, and it really wouldn't shock me to discover that it was the case. After all, IMDB doesn't have every porn title on it, and really, I can't figure out why the other Raw Meat titles (and some other equally hardcore fare that came up as "near matches") are on IMDB in the first place. Deep Throat, The Erotic Adventures of Candy or Insatiable I understand... those "landmarks" of porn actually garnered theatrical releases, and I don't dispute the fact that on rare occasions, releases with hardcore content can be considered "films" in the same breath with, say, The Searchers. Certainly, there is a place for them in the discussion of the history of cinema, no matter if a certain close-minded proportion of our society would prefer not to see it that way. And it doesn't bother me in the least that they appear on IMDB.

But Ramon Is Packin' Meat 2?

So, what's in a title? Depends on how you're sitting, I guess...

An Indiana Jones Movie and Another One and Three-Quarters Hours of Sleep Later...

... And I am back from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Jen and I both realized that this was probably the first time for many years that we were attending a midnight (actually 11:59 pm, Wednesday, though the movie started about 12:15, so who's counting?) movie premiere. We did argue -- or rather, try to work out -- which movie was the last one for which we had bothered to stay up late and risk our jobs or schooling. She mentioned Episode I of Star Wars, which is the correct answer, though I did try to argue for Moulin Rouge!, which we did see at a midnight show on opening night. However, it was on the far ass-end of opening night, so Rouge! was not actually a premiere. (Why did I not go to such showings of the last two Star Wars films? Because of Episode I, I had given up all hope, even though it turned out I liked the last two far better than the first. Still mostly shiite, though...)

We were fortunate enough to have bought our tickets about two weeks ago, so we ended up with seats in the biggest of the theatres. Even so, since we only got there an hour and a half early, we ended up in the line as it was already wrapped around the first corner of the building. However, Cinema City, the independently run theatre where we have transferred much of our movie business due to their lower pricing and cleaner theatres, kept selling tickets for as many of their screens as they could fill, so we figured out that many of the people in line, depending on when they bought their tix, would not be crammed into the same screening as we. Regardless of this, when we entered Theatre 1, the place was already packed like mad, and the only two rows left with any open seats together were the first two. We started for the second, but then as I was eying the completely empty front row, Jen suggested, "You might as well go for it. This is your chance..." I figured out quickly she meant the seating, and not hers, and so we moved down. Which brought about another small, odd first: the first time since I saw Seven Samurai at the Bear Tooth, and since we moved here, that I sat purposefully in the front row at a movie. The screen was still about twenty feet from our seats, which at first seemed a decent enough distance. But I must say, with my eyes now betraying me as I get older, it was a bit of a strain keeping up with the action at times.

I'll not review the film at this time, since most of my friends back in Alaska have not seen the film yet, and won't until midway through the weekend. So, I will wait until next week to do so. Even if most of those people won't read these words, there are some that do, and I would rather keep certain things a secret until then. (Not that they couldn't read them elsewhere, but that's the sort of guy I am... sometimes...)

And I am soon to head to work this morning, after catching a tad bit more of sleep after the film, though not quite enough to shake away the wooziness I feel right now. Even the shower didn't really take. Perhaps a nice three-mile walk to work (my usual routine) will do the trick. If not, there are going to be some odd errors on our website at work throughout the afternoon. Some kid will load up our site, and there will be my review of Indiana Jones' latest adventure, and all courtesy of some automatic writing that was committed as my nose and fingers tripped over the keyboard as I snoozed deeper and deeper at work in dreamy dreamy dreamland.

The erroneously placed review this kid will read on the company website will be about Indiana Jones' more-than-mancrush on Shia LaBeouf's character Mutt, and the things he does to him with his whip (not to mention the hat), and it will go into great and terrible detail about various and sundry insertions of ancient Mayan idols and crystal skulls and even Indy's college bowtie, unstrung and beaded with six rings from the toe knuckles of an ancient Babylonian king. Because of all this action, LaBeouf's character's colon becomes prolapsed and drags behind him for the rest of the movie, but they are able to use it as a rope ladder later to escape some ravenous giant dung beetles.

The kid will read each horrid thing that I wrote in my stupor, and he will tell his soccer mom what he read on the way to their next tournament, and she will be justifiably shocked and drive off the road, slapping at him from the front seat because of his potty mouth. She will swerve off the road in her rage, and the mother will go through the glass and end up anally penetrated by a fire hydrant. She will live -- because she has a big fat ass -- but her six other brats won't, and the kid who read the review will go mental and will cry every time Transformers comes on TV for the rest of his life.

And then, because my bosses love to play up soccer tragedies, I will have to write about the accident that killed this soccer kid's family and left his mother with intense rectal bleeding. The accident that I caused with my dream-state writing fit because I decided I didn't need to have very much sleep because I wanted to stay up most of the night with an iconic movie figure whose keepers couldn't possibly repeat his earlier big-screen successes.

Which they don't, naturally, but I will tell you about that next week. For now, for the most part, "Mummy's" the word...

3 Hours of Sleep Later...

... and I am off to the 11:59 p.m. showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!

...talk at ya soon...

The Clash of One Titan and Some Also-Rans

Iron Man
Director: Jon Favreau
Marvel Studios/Paramount, 2:06, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

My pal Proty informed me a couple of weeks ago that Iron Man was “alright.” Actually, Proty said: “It was eye-ight,” with a more than slight upswing in his tone on the last word of the sentence that imparted to me that it was more than merely O.K. with him, and that Proty either likely enjoyed it or was at least pleasantly surprised, though not liked it quite nearly enough so that his statement could end with some form of emphatic punctuation such as an exclamation point. Of course, Proty just had to add the notion that “it was kinda like Transformers.”

Iron Man is more than “eye-ight.” And no, my pal Proty, except for the heroes in both films sporting metallic armor of some variety, it wasn’t at all like Transformers. Transformers, despite some fairly competent action sequences, sucked beyond belief. Transformers sucked in exactly the same way that was meant by the acne-laden, mouth-breathing, hoodie-wearing teen that sat behind me at Cloverfield, as he defiantly stood up midway through that film's credits and shouted "That fuckin' sucked!," even though he nearly shat his pants twice during the film. (Gee... so the payback for a purportedly scary film actually turning out to be scary is that you will tell your friends it isn't scary, all because you have to play tough?) In fact, I am pretty certain that this same teen absolutely loved Transformers, and then when he did go to Iron Man, he probably told all of his friends that it "ripped off" Transformers. But that is the way of Generation Oops: the idiot, uninformed youth.

But outside of that minor comparison of individual armories, otherwise -- in the realm of things on which the true quality of a film should depend: characterizations, storyline, dialogue – Iron Man is lights years past wherever Transformers barely dipped a toe. Even using characters and a plotline rehashed from comic books twenty years before the point that the Transformers flickered crudely animated onto American television screens, Iron Man still soundly quashes that latest example of Michael Bay’s general ineptitude at anything beyond flashy effects sequences.

And then there is the acting. Don't get me started on actor-by-actor comparisons, because that is truly an unnecessary undertaking in cases like these. These films draw big-time talent like flies. Especially with big-budget blockbuster films, where many actors don't really care about the potential quality of the piece, but rather about the CA$H and blockbuster exposure (which leads to even more CA$H). While there are those actors who will take a part in a comic book-style (or children's) flick because a) their kids love it, or b) they loved it as a kid, for the most part, actors take these parts because they can smell the green when the initial call from the producer gets left with their service.

Assuredly, like many of these films no matter the quality, Transformers has some wonderful actors in it, but they are mainly just there to catch a piece of the residuals. For the most part, outside of that LaBeouf twink, they have done far better work in at least more entertaining projects, if not more important or better made ones. John Turturro, Julie White, Jon Voight, Bernie Mac, Anthony Anderson -- they've all done or will do far better things. They simply collect their checks and move on...

Shia LaBeouf won't -- he's already linked to Transformers sequels for however long audiences will put up with soulless dreck -- and he has already convinced several big-name directors, in much the same way that Cruise and Keanu Reeves did before him, that he is the heir apparent to Hollywood star status. This has to be solely through the sheer power of his box office take, because acting-wise, he has done nothing in the way of convincing me that he can play anyone but himself. Such a centrally-based talent is fine for someone like Carrot Top, who really has no other choice but to be his teeth-grinding self, but LaBeouf the Grating will now be inescapable for the near future. At least Chris O'Donnell had the common decency to just be flat-out bland and kindly bored casting directors into all but killing his career. But LaBeouf actually seems to represent his dead-eyed, self-possessed generation in such a way that he shines out like a beacon in an otherwise starless night to people like Spielberg and Bay, who like anyone, are anxious to capture that core demographic, no matter the cost in credibility. And so now I have to put up with the weaselly, little snivelshit tomorrow night in the new Indiana Jones flick. If only there had been a horrible accident on the set of Disturbia, I would have been spared everything he's done since. Wait -- let's move that accident bar back to Constantine.

But back to Iron Man, where if the actors did indeed sign up only for the bucks, they at least were signed to parts practically perfect for each one. Downey has certainly climbed back fully from the abyss in which he mired himself (there's no one else to blame, really), but then, I thought that when I saw him in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. (Really, people. Avail yourself of this film already. It's a riot.) Unlike Kiss though, Iron Man is putting yourself out in front of people on one of the most grandiose levels that one can. It takes balls to possibly destroy your career further by taking on the lead role of a superhero, especially in a film that potentially could have destroyed an upcoming studio should it have failed on any level at all. But it doesn't fail anywhere, and while the entire cast is terrific, this is Downey's film to carry and the true responsibility for its success should lie upon him.

Now, a word to reviewers who love to describe Jeff Bridges' acting in this film as "over-the-top" or "hammy" or "scenery-chewing." Honestly, I felt he underplayed the role. In fact, he is so far in the background until a pair of huge scenes, I thought the scenery was chewing him instead. Yes, in those big scenes he elevates his emotions to almost shocking levels. But what the hell do you want in a movie which is derived from a comic book? (And this is no knock on comic books -- I am a lifelong collector.) Look, I just reread the original Iron Man story once again last week, and do you realize that the only word balloons that don't end in exclamation points are the ones that end in question marks. And those are fairly rare. Comic books -- and comic book heroes and villains -- are supposed to be accompanied by exclamation points! And while I am at it: !!!!!!!!!!!

Sure, you could point out that this would then give an excuse for that thankfully rare Batman & Robin fan out there to claim this is the proof that Ah-nuld or Uma were actually dead-on in their portrayals of Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy. I say thee "Nay!" There is a monstrous difference between "good" over-the-top acting and the "bad" variety. Of the examples given above, only Mr. Bridges represents the former.

To this point, even after the first two Spideys, the original two Reeve Supermans and the Burton and Nolan Batman flicks, Iron Man could turn out to be the saving grace for modern superhero films. It’s the one where the ratio of regular guy audience connection to super-powered alter-ego action is finally mixed perfectly. Seriously, I am a Batman-aholic, but the Caped Crusader as envisioned currently can be a tough nut to crack for even the hardiest of fans. Iron Man, mainly due to Downey's completely infectious performance, may be the specimen that allows hoity-toity film reviewers from even far-flung lands – who will spend a good portion of their review explaining how normally they find all that super-hero action to be greasy kid's stuff and far below their notice – to finally recognize that these types of films can have their benefits.

The best of superhero stories can possess what the best of any genre should have, and they can have ideas beyond simple good vs. evil. They can weigh in on far more serious matters beyond "I'm lonely and misunderstood... boo-hoo! -- Hey, I have superpowers!" Iron Man touches on the military-industrial complex, war profiteering and terrorism. Tony Stark himself will even likely have a fall from grace in the movie sequels due to his rampant alcoholism, and if it sounds old hat today, when I was first reading those stories in the seventies, I was absolutely shocked with how I suddenly had to deal with such an adult issue. (The mind reels with how Downey will play this aspect of the role.) Soon, we will have the Watchmen onscreen with their ever-present nuclear clock, and while the answer to the question of "Who Watches the Watchmen?" will likely be answered, "Not huge audiences..." (it is a cult concept at best, and the film must be rated a very hard "R" to be pulled off properly), it will show once more that superhero comics are not just greasy kid's stuff after all anymore.

True, the use of these powers can often right the world for the character in a simplistic fashion, and it's also true that often the use of these powers can be seen as being ironically fascistic. But those that condemn the genre automatically -- and those that assume that this attitude is the only prevalent standard within comics -- have clearly never been fully exposed to the genre. They don't understand that the genre, especially in the past thirty years, has grown up enormously, and that it is far beyond the donning of some colorful tights. Or a shiny metallic suit.

All of these concepts are far beyond those to be found in Transformers. Yeah, it too has shiny metal heroes. What it doesn't have, and what it's director will never have, is any concept of a soul. Sorry, Proty. It's a surface-to-airhead missile that the likes of Tony Stark would never have designed on his worst day.

Does Fry's Come with That Flying Turtle?

In the past few months, Raw Meat and I have instituted a semi-regular special holiday at work. It only happens on the last day of the work week, and it usually coincides with a paycheck upon which the immediate rendering of the rent money for that month is not a major issue, i.e. it happens in the middle of the month.

We call these days "Fry's Days," because we take off for a slightly elongated lunchtime and go to Fry's Electronics down the road a piece.

I am going to avoid any controversial issues regarding their business practices, and just say this: if you are unlucky enough to not have a Fry's Electronics in your neck of the woods, I feel sorry for you. Fry's can be best described as a sloppier, less corporate-looking version of Best Buy. The place is not what you would call "well-scrubbed," many of the fixtures need serious repair, and the owners are prone to placing some ridiculously out-of-date promotional materials out on the floor, most likely just because they can. Also, if you are looking for a particular new title or even a regularly stocked one, good luck. Things are placed as haphazardly upon the shelves as possible, and even if they are in the right place at one point, it won't be for long.

But beyond that, Fry's is gorgeous. It's a geek paradise, especially for geeks who are constantly looking for out-of-the-blue deals on computer and audio/video software and hardware. And the place is constantly busy, almost a mini-city of its own right here in Anaheim. It's no wonder the place has its own deli right smack in the middle of its massive structure, and also no wonder the place is stocked to the brim with about a half-mile of refrigerated soda and energy drinks. And there are so many bags and packages of high-carb snacks, Fry's may actually have to create their own zombies to mine the extra salt. There is also an area with massage chairs, which is usually laden with at least a dozen customers at any given time. If you think the people checking them out are seriously considering purchasing one of those chairs, then there's a refurbished Commodore 64 in Aisle 12 I think you should slap some money down. It's the coming thing...

Me? I come for the video. Not the hardcore porno variety, which they do carry. The amazing thing is that the section is right next to the regular video software, each row shrouded by black cards, but still readily available for perusing. Fry's has a massive amount of videos, possibly tripling Best Buy's output (don't quote me on it; it's just a guess). Raw Meat and I show up, and he takes off for the computer peripherals and perhaps a demo game of Guitar Hero or this and that. Me? I hit the DVD racks.

For several months now, I have been eyeing on the shelves at Fry's, with the view of trying to slowly complete my kaiju collection, the box set of late '90s Gamera films. This set -- containing Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), Gamera: Attack of Legion (1996) and Gamera: Revenge of Iris (1999) -- has constantly been hidden behind a copy of what I call the "fake "Gamera box set. This particular box set is the same case for the full set, but with only a copy of Guardian of the Universe inside, along with a chunk of styrofoam holding the place where the purchaser would eventually place the other two movies once they were bought. I don't know how long Fry's has had this particular "fake" set, since the other two movies came out long, long ago on DVD, but there it is.

Once upon a time -- and here's the twist, and the set-up for what some kaiju fan somewhere might call a miracle -- these two box sets did not sit, one in front of the other. Once, they sat slightly apart from each other, with a couple of public domain copies of other older Gamera films betwixt them. And then one day, a fair-haired former Alaskan blundered into the place and saw the full Gamera box set, and not having the means to purchase it at exactly that moment, hid the full Gamera box set behind the "fake" one. The Alaskan had seen the haphazard manner in which the movies where kept, and realized that, with just a wee bit of luck, he could possibly come back in the near future and still manage to get this item.

That "near future" time was supposed to be two weeks. It turned into three months. Other trips were taken to Fry's in that span, and though the Alaskan checked to make sure the full Gamera box set was still there on each trip, he somehow always managed to have his attention (and his pocket money) diverted by some other cause. Not the hardcore porno videos, but some other cause.

And then the Alaskan checked on Amazon a couple of weeks ago, thinking perhaps he would purchase the full Gamera box set that way, and discovered to his immediate shock that the full Gamera box set was now out-of-print. Even recently, it was still considered a "new" item on Amazon, but there it was, with the usual horde of out-of-print specialists offering up even the cheapest copies at a mere $49.99, where once it sold new at $35. Sensing that soon this price would go up ever higher to a point where it would be Bedlam-worthy ridiculous to pay $200 for a set of three great-to-OK films about a giant flying turtle, the Alaskan knew what he had to do: make one more attempt at a trip to Fry's, and see if the full Gamera box set was still hidden behind the "fake" one.

And thus came last "Fry's Day," where the attempt for what could perhaps be the final ascent was made, and caught between the burning hot sunlight of the day and the tempestuous moods of his fellows, the Alaskan managed to traverse the vast expanses of the Fry's show floor, clawed his way through hordes of incidental shoppers and brain-dead teenagers, and reach the "Science Fiction G" rack in the DVD section. The Alaskan reached out and struggled to move the "fake" Gamera set forward with a strenuous but simple flick of his forefinger. With a mighty crash, the imposter set fell slightly towards him, and there it was -- still shining slightly in the place where it was abandoned formerly, lo those many moons ago -- the full Gamera box set!

And now it is in the Alaskan's pale, sunlight-sensitive hands. He has defied the odds -- that someone would come along in those three months and simply move or buy the DVD set -- and he has at last completed his epic quest. [It is also possible that he vastly overrated the needs of the Anaheim public to purchase cheesy flying turtle videos.]

And now, at last, the Alaskan finally has time to peruse the hardcore porno videos at Fry's. No raincoat required, except possibly the customers surrounding him might be warned to wear theirs. Methinks there's a storm on the horizon...

Head-Crushed and Proud: The Kids in the Hall @ the L.A. Orpheum, May 9, 2008, 8:00 pm

Let's get this straight. I don't miss the beginnings of shows. I don't miss the ends of shows. I don't go to the bathroom in the middle of a show, and I certainly don't go off to the snack counter to refresh my soda halfway through the proceedings either. This applies mainly to movies, but I don't do any of this nonsense at concerts, speeches, political rallies or plays either.

When I buy a ticket, I am there for the show, not any of the peripherals, and I plot my behavior at that show according to how that show has been planned. If there is an intermission, as at most plays or Lawrence of Arabia, then I use the opportunity should I have need to perform my ablutions. Because of this, I have developed remarkable, shall we say, hold. I sat squirming for the last two hours and ten minutes of Empire of the Sun, needing desperately to use the facilities, but determined to not miss a second of the film. Even if the film, in retrospect, was only so-so (not the case for Sun though), I cannot tear apart my personal mantra for a mere piss.

But at the L.A. Orpheum last Friday night, Jen and I had just suffered through some odd circumstances (please read Monday's post here) just trying to get ten dollars for parking, and the extra time we had figured in for getting a pre-show snack had dissolved like so much candy-floss. We were thirsty, we were starving, and we were faced with the fact that The Kids in the Hall were due to take the stage any moment. But, on the list of plus factors, we were in the back row on the aisle, I had a pocket of newly gained cash, and there was a bar serving drinks and snacks just down the stairs behind us. We were perfectly positioned to relieve both our hunger and thirst, and all I had to do was play the gentleman and go and pay up. And possibly miss the opening of the show.

Which I did. My foot speed allowed me to not only fly down the steps in short order, but also zip past several couples on their way to the bar, all of them mostly oblivious to the notion that I had just taken cuts, though it was before we were even close to the line. It's my one super-power and I am proud of it, the fact that I am basically the pedestrian version of the Flash, albeit sans costume or six-pack abs. And there I was, ready to get even further from capturing that six-pack by loading up on some soda and Hershey bars, which were our only choices since we didn't want to drink (and then potentially get lost on the way home).

And then it happened. Fourth in line from the front, the lights flickered in that way which informs the stragglers to take their seats quickly. Third from the front, my ears caught (how could they miss it?) the rise of the crowd's overt joy as quite clearly the show was underway. The screaming masses took over the building as I imagined each of The Kids making their way on stage (not quite, as it turned out, but close), and as I waited patiently in line for my turn. Now second in line, I could hear some very unclear lines being spoken from the stage, miked of course, but too distorted to make out. All I could understand was the raucous laughter of the crowd, and all I could imagine was that I was missing something awesome. And I was waiting behind a punk poser chick and her boyfriend, who would apparently rather ask the bartender, in ridiculously exaggerated slowness, like a goddamn retarded turtle, for a series of drinks the bartender couldn't possibly create with his limited range of beverages, garnishes and hardware. Finally, perusing his acceptable list, the punk poser chick decides on Long Island Ice Teas, and as the bartender attempts to move her order along, she regales him with the history of her fake-looking I.D. and her troubles with cops thinking she is always underage. And as he punches up her order, she just keeps talking, but never thinks, "Oh, I've been holding up the line a good seven minutes. Maybe I will pull my cash out while he is ringing it up to at least cut the wait down for these good people behind me by at least a few seconds." Which she didn't bother to do. And then, after scuffling through her wallet for money, she tries to pay with a hundred. Thanks for considering those about you. I hope you die soon, you pink-haired, nose-ringed fake, and I hope you die horribly.

My own purchase took a whole twenty seconds -- TOTAL -- two Cokes and a Hershey's with Almonds, and I tipped the bartender the extra three bucks on my ten to save even more time. Hooray for me, but really, I was just in a massive hurry to get back to my seat. As it turned out, I only missed the opening bit, mostly film, wherein the Kids were threatening to rape Kevin McDonald, who appeared in his tighty whities, skinny, hairy legs and all. I was devastated when Jen told me, but the show proper was starting.

It's amazing how sharp, nasty satire can reflect one's personal ire over the injustice and craziness of the world at large, but also serve to calm one down simultaneously simply through creating laughter. The "Hateful Baby" sketch caused this reaction to me, and made me instantly forget the evil pink-haired bitch and settle into what I loved most: the skewering of the remainder of the world's sacred cows. No religion left untouched, no suburban banality unravaged. Holding another couple's newborn infant, Dave Foley reacts with unconcealed disgust once the couple leaves the room. "It's like Auschwitz wrapped in swaddling!" Eventually, it is agreed that holding the abhorrent brat is like "hearing that Coldplay song Yellow on the radio." A terrible fate indeed.

The new material is as sharp and topical as ever, even when old favorite characters adorn the stage. Scott Thompson's grande dame Buddy Cole, atop his signature stool, dished on the secret gay life of Jesus Christ, and took potshots at just about every figure surrounding the savior. Thompson and Bruce McCulloch's weight-obsessed secretaries Kathy and Cathy partook of crystal meth via Cathy's unicorn-shaped pipe. And while many comedians go to great lengths in their routines to portray a fear-slash-respect for Mohammed and his followers, tiptoeing around the subject of Islam, the Kids twice flaunted a disregard for Mohammed by name, albeit wrapped within the obviously inane Ugly American characters they were portraying on stage. (If there were any Muslims in the crowd, they certainly betrayed no adverse reaction).

One of these sketches, "Superdrunk" was a supreme display for McCulloch's physical humor as his character only gains superpowers through the drinks plied to him by his sidekick, "The Bartender," stopping to take the occasional piss on the way to thwarting crimes. Naturally, the clever, very broad sketch concludes with Superdrunk confronting a terrorist (Mark McKinney, dressed in stereotypical criminal fashion with a striped shirt and bearing a round cartoon-style bomb) who is threatening the Statue of Liberty (Thompson, once more in drag).

Amid some excellent new, concept-driven pieces (a three-part time travel sketch, a surreal short film called "Carfuckers," and another sketch where Foley and McDonald fight over Dave's imaginary girlfriend), several favorites of mine (and most of the audience) made appearances. McKinney's amazingly horny Chicken Lady shows up to perform phone sex with trucker Thompson, and McCulloch's obscure-trivia-obsessed child Gavin once more invites a pair of unsuspecting Jehovah's Witnesses into his home, tormenting the duo with the most insipid and mostly incorrect facts ever spouted. While I could have done with a new visit from the "evil" Sir Simon Milligan and his manservant Hecubus -- perhaps my two favorite characters from the old Kids show -- and maybe even one from Mississippi Gary, the fact that so many of the old favorites showed up made the show a great delight for me.

And then there was the head-crushing. You don't know how alternately beautiful and weird it is for someone to stand on a stage with a video camera, point it at your section -- and then crush the heads of every person contained within between his thumb and forefinger. McKinney's Mr. Tyzik not only takes out the balcony, but each of the Kids to close the show, even himself. It's a whole new way of dying on stage, and by doing it this way, the Kids don't.

There were some down aspects. The sound was uniformly terrible, and many lines got dropped or were obscured by distortion because of the mikes. The screen projecting the film material was perfectly suited height-wise for the crowd on the main floor, but for we poor souls in the balcony, the top quarter of the screen was cut off by the hanging lighting rig in front of the stage, and so most of the heads of the characters were lopped away. A decided lack of props outside of chairs actually hurt some of the sketches, even if the use of the video screen helped make up for this aspect. And in the Chicken Lady sketch, is it just me, or was that chair she sat on supposed to explode a mass of feathers out of it? Whatever it was supposed to be, that sketch ended on an anti-climax, basically playing against the purpose of the whole premise by having nothing happen. (The Chicken Lady famously explodes in orgasm.)

But these are just minor things compared to the massive amount of energy and panache with which these veterans brought their material to their audience -- almost like they were ready to stun the comedy world with a new television version? Or maybe a new movie? One can only hope, and I will definitely be there if they are.

This time, though, I will buy my snacks well ahead of time. I can't miss out on Kevin McDonald getting raped a second time.

Having A Less-Than-Average Parking Experience: The Kids in the Hall Preshow Debacle

...And so, we went to see The Kids in the Hall.

Here's the lesson, and it's one that we almost learned the hard way. We knew enough when to leave Anaheim to go into L.A. to see a show on a Friday night. We figured on enough time to allow to arrive at our destination properly. Even with the more than likely appearance of the Evil Traffic Wizard, we would get to the show with plenty of time to spare.

What we didn't do was have even a small amount of cash on us for parking.

My friend, if you are going to travel to the far-distant land of Downtown L.A. to see a show at the Orpheum, make sure to at least have a couple of tenners on you. Or a handful of fives. If you are a guy who has a shameful need for a larger wad in your pocket to compensate for a small sense of purpose, a roll of ones. Something, so at least when you pull up to the Orpheum parking lot, you are able to plunk some bills into the attendant's hand so as to enable you to take a parking space.

Otherwise, you will have to do what we had to do: find an ATM machine after 7 p.m. in an area not exactly known for its financial health or area security.

We had each considered getting cash beforehand. Myself, I had thought about doing it thrice while at work. But we didn't. Trying to help, the attendant reeled off a couple of locations to us. The only one we even halfway heard was "9th and Figueroa". We were on 7th, so one would assume that 9th and Fig would be easy to find. Perhaps for someone used to driving in Downtown L.A. -- but we weren't. My time in the area had been spent around the L.A. Wilshire Grand Hotel, and except for venturing to the mall area across the street, I was hopeless in my knowledge of the surrounding avenues and their cousins. Besides, I don't drive at all, so I usually pay little attention to street names. Jen had spent zero time in the area, and so the question, once we reached 9th, of which way Figueroa lay was a 50-50 choice. And we chose wrong, since we never found the road, though we may have passed it.

The second problem was traffic patterns. Every time that we thought we were on the right track -- with the clock clicking slowly down to show time, now only 35 minutes away -- there would be a rush of turners in the lane where we ourselves needed to turn, or we would find a street, but it was one-way, and we were on the wrong side. On and on this went, with our frustrations mounting to a fever pitch. We each had one eye on the clock and one on the road, and we began worrying about even seeing the show, figuring that by the time we actually found a magical supply of cash, we would end up parking miles from the venue.

On one of these passes where we were on the wrong side of the street, we saw a Union Bank of California with a pair of handy ATMs in front, right next to a bus stop. But we were forced to turn, and as we attempted a loop to the rather safe-looking area (also another problem on some very suspect streets), I saw a Rite-Aid on a corner. Because I had one of those behind-the-eyes headaches that often spring up in these situations and we were ibuprofen-free, I thought "well, I can go in, buy some medicinals, get cash back on my card, and we will be scot-free instead." A fine plan, except for three hitches: 1) there were no parking spaces, so Jen dropped me off and then tried to loop the several blocks to get back around to pick me up, 2) the store had closed at 7, but the lights were on and people were moving about inside so one could not tell that easily from the street (there was no CLOSED sign either), and 3) I didn't have my phone on me so I could call Jen and tell her that.

And then I attempted what could have been a foolhardy move. I had seen an ATM sign at a jewelry store at the other end of the block, so because I move faster walking than many people run, I figured I could hit it and get back before Jen had circled. The store, of course, had also just closed, mere minutes before from the looks of the clerks inside, and I zipped back to the agreed upon pickup spot. Suddenly, I became the fast-walking white guy in a neighborhood of unfamiliar social status, and to anyone not familiar with my speed of movement, I perhaps seemed outwardly a bit nervous and anxious to exit the terrain. Naturally, I will admit that I was noticed by just about everyone, including a group of teenagers in a pickup, who decided to mess with me and yell a series of harmless epithets regarding my lack of skin color in my direction as they sped past. Finally, as I reached the corner, Jen had to pull out of the spot she had just found as there were people wishing to park, and she is a generous soul. I watched her fly off as my feet found the corner, and I had to wait another five minutes for her to circle around again.

And then there was the GPS. Our Global Positioning System works just fine, and we have used it on several trips now. Of course, we knew how to get to LA, but finding the Orpheum Theatre was another matter for us. The GPS allowed us to find it without a problem, but once we took off on our ATM quest, the machine all but put a gun to its head as it became completely confused as to why we didn't stop after it had told us we had arrived at our destination. We were looking for 9th and Figueroa, of course, and the problem with the GPS is that it is designed for exact locations, not corners. I could only punch in one of the streets, but it kept asking me for a street number, which I could not provide in the least. I finally faked one and then tried to expand the map to see the surrounding streets, but that method really was a dead end, since most of the street names do not show up on the GPS. The streets just kept more and more orange as its trail kept tracking over itself, and I finally threw the device to the ground.

Just as we were approaching exhaustion over our frustration in locating a machine, we stumbled, with about ten minutes left until the show, on the Union Bank that we had passed earlier. And then we almost got sucked into a traffic vortex once more, but Jen pulled a quick move to shoot us across the lane and then to a rest in front of what appeared to me as ATM Paradise. Two banks, several machines -- choices, glorious choices at last. I sped to the nearest and least populated machine and finally made my withdrawal. We then moved as quickly as possible back to the theatre, and ending up at the third lot a couple of streets behind the Orpheum just before 8 o'clock. I have never been so happy to hand ten dollars over to a parking attendant.

And in a bubbly, chirping mass of fellow Kids in the Hall fans, all in pleasant moods despite also being exactly as late to the show as ourselves, we made our way to the Orpheum. Only, when we got there, we found our tardiness didn't matter. A line of ticketholders stretched about a hundred yards down the street as we discovered that the Orpheum may be a beautiful, old theatre inside, but it is really poorly designed for letting crowds into shows (or letting them out, for that matter.) The next ten minutes became a nervously slow crawl into and through the Orpheum, up several series of stairs, all completely packed with and pushing against people I really had no outward desire to rub body parts with (well, some of them were just fine for that purpose, but I digress...)

But it wasn't as bad as we had just had it. Sure, it may have been sweaty bedlam inside the Orpheum, but after practically being lost on the streets of LA for over an hour, searching for the proverbial needle in the stack of heroin addicts, a little pansexual, preshow frottage was absolutely no problem at all. After all, it was the motherfuckin' Kids in the Hall...

Ends, Means, Justification: All In A Row In Some Semblance of Order...

After three days of desperation, Jen said to me, "You realize we are actually counting on the Bush administration to do something right for a change."

Things have been tight for us lately. Mounting doctor bills for both of us, rent going up, time missed from work... we've had to live relatively low. Not that we are crazy spendaholics. But we have had to take a few more nights in at home lately, and shop more for value than taste as regards the grocery bill, which is something into which one should never be forced. And I had just taken a small vacation -- hotel room, concert ticket, personal shopping -- up in the Monterey Bay area a couple of weeks ago. Right now, things are tight.

So, we had to really justify doling out some more green to see the reunion tour for The Kids in the Hall last Friday. We didn't have to justify it artistically, though. "It's The Kids in the Hall!," Jen practically shrieked. "We have to go!" Jen doesn't shriek a lot -- really, at all -- so this was a pretty emotional state for her. Myself, I could easily have made the same statement, only I would have colored it with a carefully chosen expletive to prove my point -- mainly because I loves me some expletives -- but, for once, I was straining to remain rational even as my heart was breaking at the prospect of missing one of my favorite comedy troupes live on stage.

Economically, we justified it by turning to the Bush Administration and their impending stimulus package. I had been calling it a "stimulant" package for weeks, mainly because I figured most of the people receiving it would simply have to buy $600 worth of stimulants of one sort or another to drink oneself into the belief that this ridiculous move would actually help the economy, outside of in an extremely minor way. But I have one of those lower-numbered SSNs which would cause me to receive my stimulus package well ahead of most of America, and the happy news was that my payment was supposed to be landing by the night of the show we wished to see. It was nearly perfect timing -- perfect enough for our purposes -- but just before we made the decision, Jen dropped the bomb regarding that political burr in our side.

And now we are hypocrites, because, for just a couple of days, we actually became dependent on W. We hated the notion, but there it is. I am a whore. Bought and sold like the rest of America. (I say this like I wasn't already. Please, allow me this delusion.) As soon as I found out the drop date for my payment, I slapped down my credit card and purchased a couple of tickets for the show. Luckily, they were still available, though we did end up in the last row of the balcony. The plus side was that they were on the aisle, and in the center of the theatre. (We found out later the other plus to these seats: that they made access to the bathrooms, exits and bar area exceedingly simple, far more so than for most of the rest of the audience.)

And now, thanks to Bush and his oil-sucking cronies, we were going to the show. It was a bitter pill to have to swallow --- but it's the motherfucking Kids in the Hall, for gay baby Jesus' sake!

See? I told you I would have said it with a little bit more in the way of color. And it's totally justified...

Recently Rated Movies #62: Extry! Extry! (Just Don't Read Below the Headlines...)

Be warned, movie makers! I am the one (and probably the only one) reading the newspapers within your films.

One of the strangest and exceedingly dumb fetishes that I have picked up in the course of watching movies obsessively for most of my existence is a fondness for reading beyond the headlines anytime there is a frantically spinning blur onscreen that finally settles into an image of a newspaper announcing something of particular importance to the plot of the film. I don’t know when I started doing this. I only know that I have done it for a while now, but only recently did I recognize that it was more than just an accidental thing.

Frankly, it angers me when the filmmakers don’t go beyond merely slapping up some giant letters in a headline to give us the news. In this age of the DVD and the DVR (following the age of the VCR – three media which home audiences are fully capable of pausing and reviewing), it would seem to be a natural thing to give the viewer a little something extra and attach some actual text to the story touted by the headlines. After all, Jon Stewart often throws up lightning quick text in the middle of some of his skits, which he knows full well will have his loyal viewers backtracking to catch every hidden joke and often horrid pun.

George Clooney and his cohorts should have caught on to this in Leatherheads. At numerous points in the film, newspapers splat against the screen featuring updates on the various storylines in the film. And yet, if you focus not so much on the headlines and try to read a couple of the lines in the stories below, especially in the columns directly attached to the sub-headlines, you will only be endlessly disappointed. Not that there would be much to gain from reading these lines, but it would help to sell the illusion that one is reading a real newspaper. But, no… the text is only that from the most generic of news stories, and ones most likely on the front of the real newspaper onto which the fake headlines were dropped.

Of course, George – whom I admire greatly, and perhaps far more than most modern film personalities – probably had nothing to do with the creation of these sections of the film, and probably doesn’t give half a squat what anyone thinks about newspaper headlines at any point in the production of Leatherheads. He probably cared more about, you know, creating and completing the film. It’s one of those "director-y" things that directors do. What he probably should have cared more about was whether his noble attempt at updating the ‘30s style screwball comedy actually worked or not. Sometimes, though, when dealing with such stylized material, it is hard to tell whether it plays well to the audience, even if you are hitting all of your marks properly. Screwball is exceedingly tough to pull off. That’s why it is rarely done anymore. Sadly, while there are flashes of brilliance where one feels it is just about to blow open in a huge way, transcendence never quite occurs. While there is much to recommend in Leatherheads, it is only an average attempt.

In fact, as an extra on the DVD release, someone should insert a headline for the film that reads “LEATHERHEADS ACTUALLY MADE OF PLEATHER!” You would read this headline, and say, “Hey, that sounds interesting. Obviously, the film disappointed this reviewer. You know, I’ve been thinking about seeing that film. I should read the review and check out what he has to say!" And so, you drop your eyesight to the story below. But instead of finding out just where the film goes slightly askew, you read instead a story about, say, movie headlines that do not lead to actual stories pertaining to the headlines. You will be disappointed just like I was. You will say, “Hey! I went out of my way, thinking that perhaps the filmmakers went the extra mile to make this seem like the real deal, and all I got was superficiality and the feeling that I have been gypped!”

Precisely…

Leatherheads (2008)
Director: George Clooney
Universal, 1:54, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)
Director: Rob Minkoff
The Weinstein Co., 1:53, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Baby Mama (2008)
Director: Michael McCullers
Universal, 1:39, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who!
(2008) Directors: Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino
Twentieth Century Fox, 1:28, color, animated
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Cinema 4 Cel Bloc: Poultry Pirates (1938)

Director: Isadore [Friz] Freleng | MGM, 0:09, b/w
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Is it all that pent-up frustration over having two highly prolific brats within his household that causes der Captain to go all hellfire crazy on the behinds of a quintet of garden-rustling chickens?

Released from his torturous home life for at least this entry in MGM’s not entirely successful (but not entirely unworthy or uninteresting) series of adventures featuring The Captain and the Kids (also known as the Katzenjammers in their complicated history), 1938’s Poultry Pirates sees der Captain in a solo adventure wherein he must deal with a passel of ornery birds who are trying to overrun his immaculately kept vegetable garden. Naturally, the extremely short-fused Captain will blow his top with every single transgression upon his property or person, and much in the way regarding slapstick inanity will occur.

Directed by Friz Freleng during a brief respite from his Warner Bros. work (and credited here as “Isadore”), Poultry Pirates could just as easily be an adventure for any short-tempered cartoon blowhard, and never really separates itself from other similarly-styled scenarios, except for a couple of lines featuring der Captain’s usual mangled dialogue shtick. One could easily take Donald Duck or Porky Pig and drop them into this storyline (in fact, they pretty much had), and you would never tell the difference, apart from the different voices and looks of the characters themselves.

Basically, the film is a series of gags featuring chickens stealing der Captain’s vegetables, and with der Captain going nuts trying to stop them. At the beginning of the film, der Captain is almost instantly revealed as a chicken-beater of the first order. Five hens stick their scrawny little necks through a horizontal line of holes in a fence, but every time they reach out to grab something, der Captain peers around the corner to make them backtrack through the holes. After a couple of attempts, the hens are left to themselves as der Captain takes a new tack: sneak up behind them with a large board. He smacks all five hens across their bottoms, and they scatter out of the yard. In the vaudevillian-style, German immigrant shtick that served der Captain so well over the course of a century (and, oddly, in two opposing comic strips), he bellows, “Dat will teach you to keep from the garden out!”

Worn out from his battle, der Captain sits down to continue his garden guarding. At the point that he falls asleep, a heretofore unseen duck (it’s hard not to think of Daffy upon first seeing him, though there is nothing really Daffy-like about him except for his pesky attitude) sneaks past der Captain and steals a huge tomato from the garden. Slurping out the insides of the fruit, the duck then spits them out, acting very disgusted in the process. He marches up to der Captain and wakes him up. “Hey!,” he quacks in a semi-wiseguy voice, “Did you raise this to-mat-uh?” The duck wings the open tomato straight into the eyes of der Captain, splatting him messily. As the duck strides off, he mutters lowly, “What are you trying to do? Poison people?” Smacking the bird with the board fails several times, and then the duck zips inside der Captain's sleeve. There then occurs a chase through der Captain’s clothing, with the duck darting in and out of numerous articles, before zipping away towards an open shed. Der Captain follows the bird, but once inside, the duck sneaks through a hole and locks der Captain inside.

The duck lets all of the other fowl into the garden, and the mass of birds begin to level the place. Rows of plants are devoured in nearly perfect unison, except for one sloppy hen who is reprimanded by her cohorts. One hen eats corn with the usual typewriter-return gag (is there really any better way to eat corn on the cob in a cartoon?) Another hen is seen pecking away at a gigantic pumpkin, and she backs away to reveal a marvelous example of a jack-‘o-lantern. Oops! Not quite marvelous enough apparently for her, so she goes back in to peck perfect the smile, as any true artist would do. Tiny little chicks stack up on one another precariously to wrest far larger tomatoes from their stems, each orb dangerously being schlepped down the pile of chicks to be carried away awkwardly.

Der Captain, who has been trying to escape by pounding on the door, inadvertently succeeds in knocking down all of the walls around him – only he isn’t aware of it. He pulls furiously at the doorknob, yelling the entire time. Finally, he rears up several feet, beyond where the back wall had lain just moments before, and never noticing the damage peripherally, he charges forward to knock down the still standing doorway. He rumbles to his home, and comes back outside with a shotgun in his arms. Seeing the rampaging brood in front of him, he levels the gun at the lot, fires a shot over their heads, and orders them to return their stolen goods. They oblige, but the duck is holding out on der Captain. The duck pulls a tomato out from under his wing and hands it back under further orders from der Captain. Instantly, all of the chickens charge the unsuspecting oaf, and in a great flurry of activity and dust, they make off with the vegetables again. Except for the tomato. That remains with der Captain – until the duck zips back in and snags it anew. But he isn’t here to eat it. Oh, no... he merely takes the opportunity to steal it so he may splat der Captain once more in the face!

Meanwhile, one of the tiny chicks is shown laboriously attempting to carry off one of the far bigger tomatoes. Der Captain stands over the little bird and glares at him shamefully. The chick puts the tomato back, but is then picked up by der Captain and placed over – rather, atop – his enormous knee. Der Captain spanks him lightly a couple of times, and then gently places him back on the ground. The chick marches off with a sore, throbbin rear, and immediately tells the nearest rooster of the attack upon his personage, being very careful to demonstrate through singsong chirping and exaggerated pantomime the horrid actions of the hostile man, as well as imparting what an angel the little chick has been throughout the incident. (A halo magically appears over his noggin in the telling.) The rooster then tattles to another slightly bigger rooster… and so on… and so on… until the news has reached the ear of the largest rooster of them all. A rooster who stands head to head with der Captain when they eventually meet to do battle.

The rooster is more than a match for the der Captain, but many of the short gags fall flat in what should be a more dynamic sequence, and the fight is tragically ordinary. It is amusing when der Captain removes his coat, only to have the rooster remove his entire draft of feathers, revealing a naval tattoo. Der Captain meekly tries to stop the whole affair there by putting his coat back on, but the rooster will have none of it, and removes it every time der Captain attempts it again. The pair circle each other, with der Captain adopting the stance of his fowl opponent, acting for all the world like another chicken. And then der Captain is satisfactorily whupped in the course of the melee, including a series of clever shots where his face basically becomes Silly Putty, contorting with each blow from the bird's fists. Just at the most dire moment for the big blowhard (der Captain, I mean), he awakens from the dream he has been engaged in since he fell asleep on the watch -- and hopping madly on his chest is a normal-sized (though still relatively huge) rooster!

Der Captain gets outraged and goes after the bird, but with a mighty leap, he only succeeds in knocking down one of the boards in his garden fence... and then the adjacent board falls, and like so many dominoes, his entire garden fence lies in ruins. The birds converge on the now unguarded domain, and while der Captain lies defeated amongst the pile of boards, the little chick with the wounded rear marches up and kicks dirt in der Captain's face. Even without Hans und Fritz around to annoy him, children still get the best of him.

The solo adventures of der Captain really don't work that well, and one wishes that the remainder of the regulars (perhaps minus Mama) made an appearance here, if only fleetingly. Der Captain just really isn't strong or interesting enough a character to carry a film himself, and perhaps it was wise on Freleng's part to let the animals lead half of the film, even if the action is merely pedestrian. The most interesting part -- the duck -- is never used again after the second "Splat!," and so the viewer is left hanging waiting for the needed third part of the joke.

And still, there is the question of all that residual anger in der Captain. The film starts mid-theft, and our boy is already armed and ready to attack. Did he go into the garden ready to take out his frustrations on whatever crossed his path? What have those boys led him to? Was he keeping the garden to help soothe his nerves outside of his often tempestuous home setting? So many unanswered questions, and ones that are really unnecessary to watching the film itself. One thing's for sure: der Captain doesn't hesitate for a second to level violence upon the garden robbers. Even his most gentle act of the short is considered an act of child abuse in most circles. This might get looked at askance in this day and age, considering that it is basically man vs. animals, and rather defenseless ones at that.

I must point out that I did eat a chicken sandwich while writing this, so I guess I am just as bad as der Captain...