For Whom the Bull Trolls (Pt. 1)

A few weeks ago, my eyes rolled across a small item in Entertainment Weekly regarding a new documentary which was getting a tad bit of buzz at the SXSW (South by Southwest) Film Festival in Austin, Texas. The doc was called Best Worst Movie, and it was directed by Mike Stephenson, and if you were to say in response to that tidbit of info, “Who?,” well, so did I. Stephenson, back in 1990, was the child “star” of an incredibly low-budget film called Troll 2, which, in the intervening years, has grown into a minor cult phenomenon, even having a festival held in its honor last year in the tiny Utah hamlet named Morgan where it lurched to life. All of this attention – the festivals, the documentary – did not come about due to any substantial positive success on Troll 2's part, but rather due to its lack of it. Troll 2 is, purportedly, one of the worst films ever made. It even held, for a while, the lowest ranking on IMDB, though several films have since passed it in viewer disdain.

Once I read the EW piece, I knew that I had to see Best Worst Movie, if only because of my interest in both the full breadth of film history and documentaries regarding filmmaking in general. The problem that rises, though, with my wishing to see this film about the making of a legendarily crappy film is that I like to go into these things with some knowledge of the source material. And -- please sit down, those of you who believe that I have already seen every crappy film that has ever crawled from the sludge of low culture -- I had not seen Troll 2. Yet...

Somehow I had avoided it all these years, even while spending many of them watching every horror film that crossed my path, crappy or otherwise. Sure, I had heard intimations from a great variety of sources, some of them personal, of how terrible it was supposed to be, and while this is usually a driving factor into my seeing something (it’s a reaction not unlike being told to smell spoiled milk, and even though you know it’s going to suck to do it, you do it anyway), I have missed every opportunity I have had over the years to indulge myself in the waiting pleasures of this little film that couldn’t (but then kind of did in a reverse fashion).

Naturally, with this latest nudge from EW, I knew my time with Troll 2 had come at last. But I suddenly realized that there was another problem at hand. Even though I knew that Troll 2 had nothing whatsoever to do with the original Troll picture put out by Empire Pictures in 1986, I figured that in the interest of doing things in an orderly fashion, I needed to see that film also. In fact, not seeing Troll in the first place was exactly why I had been putting off Troll 2 for so long. Well, that and really not having any drive at all to actually want to watch Troll 2. As regards the older Troll, somehow, even though I had seen just about every film produced or directed by Charles Band throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s – whether with Empire, Full Moon or otherwise – I had only seen ten minutes here and there of Troll on cable in that time. I knew Sonny Bono was in it, but knew little enough to actually believe for several years that Debbie Harry was involved (I was clearly crossing my movie wires with the original Hairspray here, which features both pop stars-turned-lackadaisical actors). I even knew what the troll design in the film looked like, thanks to having multitudes of special effects magazines like Fangoria in my collection. I just had simply not seen the film.

For some strange reason, MGM, perhaps sensing that the public should never go deprived of troll-enhanced entertainment choices, had put both films out on a dual disc a few years back. This meant nothing to me at the point that they first did it, but proved exceedingly fruitful to my purposes today. I was able to Netflix the disc and cast myself semi-willingly into the pit of souls who have already lived through the seeming nightmare of watching the first two Troll movies.

Troll (1986)
Director: John Carl Buechler
Empire, 1:22, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Let's get this out of the way from the start: Troll features a teenage boy named Harry Potter (actually Harry Potter, Jr.) who finds himself awkwardly dumped into a world of magic, witches, wizards, trolls and monsters. Before anyone starts yelling "plagiarism" on J.K. Rowling's part, let me stress that upon actually watching the film, the similarities pretty much end with the statement I made above. There has been talk recently (over the past couple of years, actually) that Troll director Buechler was planning to sue, and this was all tied in with his announced intent to remake Troll as a much higher budget feature. Honestly, on the internet, rife with opinions from the left and right without a solid background of research, or even without letting readers know that what they have passed on is only rumor, it becomes hard to trust any source on this story. Yes, I just opened the drawer containing the dark spectre of plagiaristic litigiousness, and now I will slowly roll it shut with nary a sound. Because I really don't care how this one turns out. Rowling's series, no matter her varied inspirations for the material, is strong enough to stand on its own, and I doubt much can come of two pieces sharing a mere character's name and situations involving classical fantasy archetypes. Anyone hearing the Brothers Grimm knocking on the door?

Someone's knocking on several doors of the apartment building which forms the setting of Troll, and it is a little girl named Wendy Anne Potter who has been physically possessed by the titular troll of evil intent named Torok. Little Mr. Torok takes it upon himself to enter the apartments of the residents of the building in the guise of Wendy Anne, whose family has only just moved into the building the previous day, and where she was confronted by Torok in the basement, whereupon he kidnapped her. Torok's plan is to use a magical ring with a green-glowing spike to kill each resident, and then use their life energies to bring back the fantasy world of his younger days, which has disappeared due to the encroachment of mankind and the modern world. Upon their deaths, each apartment fills with new, forested life: trees and foliage and a variety of odd, fantastical creatures (most of them portrayed rather stiffly by all manner of puppetry), until the entire building starts to get taken over by the ancient world. Meanwhile, the only who knows, or cares to recognize, that something has happened to Wendy Anne is her brother, the aforementioned Harry Potter Jr., who senses that the newly maniacal posturings of his once adorable, little blond sister (she throws him across a room, for Pete's sake) cannot be normal. He finds himself entranced by the matronly woman who lives at the top of the building, whom we instantly recognize as the sort who will possess the power, or at least the knowledge, that will help Harry defeat the evil troll and rescue his sister.

It's not a bad set-up for a fantasy movie. So much fantasy takes place in awkward places, and if you think that the setting of the apartment complex is an odd one for such a story, then perhaps you are not aware that it is the very juxtaposition of our familiar, common, everyday world with the hidden magical one that provides the emotional impact behind such fantastical doings. Standing apart from the need that most have to shriek that this is merely a bad movie, and nothing more, I prefer to see in lesser films the remnants of what could have been. The truth should be told that Buechler and Band came remarkably close to producing a pretty decent fantasy film here, if only they had chosen to shy away from some of their baser instincts, and also if the budget truly allowed the bigger special effects and better puppetry for which the story cries.

The one element for which the film does not cry is that of an interesting cast, for it has that in spades. The series of actors is so odd that it really cries out for Kevin Bacon to appear to add another great connector for his namesake game. Harry Potter, Sr. is played by 4-time Emmy winner Michael Moriarty, who really has a nothing role here, but has some amusement doing a goofy dance to Blue Cheer's version of Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues (though it is telling that the story is sparse enough to make room for this unnecessary sequence). Harry Potter, Jr. is portrayed by Noah Hathaway, who was not just Boxey in the original Battlestar Galactica, but also the warrior prince Atreyu in The Neverending Story. (Another truth must be told: he is not very good here.) For pure "icks," Sonny Bono shows up as a swingin' neighbor, and he has his moments playing a misogynistic asshole, while Gary Sandy (Andy Travis from my beloved WKRP, but also not very good here) inhabits another apartment, though the scene where the little girl (possessed by Torok) wanders into his home, though not played this way, is more than a little creepy in tone.

Lost in Space and Lassie mom June Lockhart gets the juiciest role as the secret good witch Eunice St. Clair, and she is not in enough of the film for my tastes. Her scenes almost seem like they have wandered in from another film, which I suppose is what it is sort of like when the fantasy realm invades the real world. Phil Fondacaro not only makes a nice impression under a nice makeup design as Torok, but also shows up as Wendy Anne's "little friend" Malcolm Mallory, a college professor/neighbor she meets on the street, whom the possessing Torok finds fascinating. Fondacaro gets a nice scene reciting some of Spenser's "The Fairie Queene," and his Malcolm is actually the most fully rendered character in the film. On the opposite side, for sheer head-whipping, "What the hell?" casting, a pre-Elaine Julia Louis-Dreyfus makes her film debut in Troll as one of the neighbors, while her boyfriend is played by Brad Hall, her real-life husband of 22 years (married just after this film) and former SNL cast-mate. Finally, Shelly Hack, as always, is stiff and inconsequential as the mother -- but, by this point, why not throw a latter-day Charlie's Angel in the mix?

But an eclectic cast does not necessarily a successful film make -- many failed films, both "A" and "B," flaunt flamboyant casts -- and this one just doesn't have the scope that the material requires. To truly pull off the implied merging of the two worlds requires a good deal more budget, or even more imagination with what little budget they have, than this one does. I admire the chutzpah that leads the filmmakers to one of the later sequences (I won't give away the visual, but it takes place just outside of the building), because it feels like an ultimate conclusion to their build-up of events. But the film's last third rather sputters to that point, where it feels exhausted rather than explosive, and while I did appreciate some of the character work, thanks to the limits of the puppetry (and believe me, as a bad puppeteer myself, it doesn't take much to make me happy in that department), I never really got caught up in the fantasy world. It's like I was ready to commit to the story, despite various disappointments along the way, and then finally decided it wasn't worth it. The other sticking point is the question: Does it want to be a kids' film or a horror film? It is far too gruesome in some elements for the wee ones, but just not gruesome enough to really interest most adults.

The sad part about Troll is that, with a little more scrubbing, a little more detail and a little more love, it could have been worth it. It could have been the worthiest film in Charles Band's stable (which, admittedly, isn't saying much...) These are the films that gall me the most. Bad films are bad films, but there are films where you can see that they were so close to actually pulling even the wackiest idea off, that it hurts a little bit more. It is not hard for me to imagine an alternate 2009 where Entertainment Weekly is publishing an article with the title Troll in it, and it is not about "non-sequel" sequels that might be the Best Worst Movie ever, but rather about the top 25 fantasy films of the past three decades, and there is John Carl Buechler and Charles Band's Troll in the list. Kids adore it, grow up scared and fascinated by it, and it inspires future filmmakers to pursue fantasy filmmaking of their own.

Instead, we have the Troll of 1986 as it is in the 2009 that we inhabit today: just another mid-'80s Band production with lofty ambitions, but without any means possible to really pull them off successfully. But, at least it tries, and I can't begrudge it that.

Which is a hell of a lot more than anyone can say about Troll 2...

[To be continued...]

Coachella Updates, just not here... technically...

So, I am not going to blog about the events at Coachella. I have decided to go the route of the internet "tweet" to post my notes about my adventures at the show in Indio, CA on Friday. Once we returned to the abode early last night after a delirious day mucking about in Palm Desert and Palm Springs after getting about four hours of sleep, I began posting a series of notes on Twitter recalling everything that I saw at the show.

"Recall" is perhaps not the appropriate term, as most of the notes were written at the show as they happened, or just after, on both notepad and on my phone. I had been planning to Twitter from the show itself, but the phone service truly sucked. We had full bars on our phones the entire time, but most likely due to all of the electrical equipment at use, I couldn't even call Jen properly from ten feet away. She could text me, and I would get it... but then I would try to reply -- and she wouldn't get the message until... well, last night. I sent two tweets that never arrived on my Twitter page when I checked it the following morning, nor did Jen get voicemail from me until well after the show. So, I gave up early, and decided to go this route.

If you want to catch up, check out my Facebook page (if you are a designated "friend")... or you can check out the handy listing on the right side of the blog here, from which you may click to read the whole damn series on my Twitter page. I will likely be putting these up well into this evening, or even tomorrow morning (Monday).

And, as a footnote, Raw Meat should have been there. Didn't have my musical wingman... but I have disappointed him as well recently by not drunkenly seeing Suicidal Tendencies a couple weeks back in L.A. Turnabout is fair play, I guess...

Hope you join me for the tweets...

Coachella Festival Introduction: I learned the name of this place from Bugs Bunny...

OK, Raw Meat is going to murder me, because I just found out Mike Patton is appearing at Coachella tonight. Why is this a problem? Well, because I am going to be there. Raw Meat loves Mike Patton slightly more than he loves being pissed off that he is not watching Mike Patton. So, I am sure I am about to get an evil message on my phone telling me to "suck it," or something else in the vernacular, and this is most likely because I just sent him a message alerting him to this condition moments ago. Mine was couched in apologies, but still might contain some form of passive-aggressive jerkiness... or surely it will be taken that way.

But I truly did just find out, because they hid him under the name Patton & Rahzel, and I never thought to look up most of the bands with which I was not familiar until this morning before we take off for the Colorado Desert in Indio, CA. Jen's grandfather lives thereabouts, but we will be staying with her aunt, and it is her aunt's and mother's lifelong obsession with the Beatles that has me attending my first "major" music festival. Sande surprised us with tickets to this a couple of months back, all in the hopes of getting about a half mile away from the stage where Paul McCartney and -- various up-and-down rumors have it -- some drummer who might be a combination of Dave Grohl, Ringo Starr and Macca's tour drummer will appear.

Macca puts on a fine show, but we saw him two years ago, and I have found myself getting far more worked up over seeing Leonard Cohen and M. Ward than anything. Early on, my money was on the Black Keys, until I started to develop a definite taste for Ward, thanks to both my brother and my borderline obsession with Miss Zooey Deschanel, who performs with Ward under the moniker She & Him. Since Ward and the Keys cross over their sets, I finally settled on trying to see half of each, but naturally, crowds and distance will play a part in such decisions, since I have never been to the place, and do not know the logistics.

A quick walkabout (my walkabouts are always quick) should give me the lowdown on either the plausibility or futility of such plans or actions. But I need to figure things out pretty well, because Patton will be hitting the stage about 15 minutes before McCartney does. I am certain Sir Paul will play for about 2-3 hours, since he is headlining and closing that stage, and because he played for nearly 3 hours when we saw him in Staples Center two years ago.

I am keeping tenuous plans to grab a ticket for Saturday's show, solely because I adore TV on the Radio, though Drive-By Truckers, Calexico and Bob Mould would be pretty sweet to see as well, but this will depend on how today goes. I despise crowds of even minor size, which keeps me from seeing too many shows, and I am fairly certain that I will be sick of the situation within about thirty minutes. Also, don't really have the money to blow on another day. And if I did, Sunday would be a far better fit for me, what with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Murder City Devils and my beloved X all going 1,2,3 on the same stage in the afternoon. (Paul Weller would be a draw for me too.)

Looking at any day's lineup reveals a definite shock to me: even with all of my music magazine reading and time spent listening to new music broadcasts, I am still only definitely sure of who half to three-quarters of the bands are on any of the three days. Jen and her mom and aunt will know about four or five groups through the whole weekend, which will make things interesting as we are mucking about waiting for McCartney. Well, they will be. Me, I am going to be taking in everything I can. I might discover new bands that I think are pretty swell. I might learn that bands I like really suck in a live setting. I might even find out that I like new kinds of music. The one thing I will definitely solidify is how much I hate dirty hippies -- not the politics, because more often than not, I am simpatico with much of their drivel. I'm not mad at them... I just hate the dirt.

And we are off to Coachella...!

Coachella lineup: Friday, April 17 (links to Wikipedia pages)

The Aggrolites, The Airborne Toxic Event, A Place To Bury Strangers, Alberta Cross, Bajofondo, Beirut, The Black Keys, Buraka Som Sistema, Cage the Elephant, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Crystal Castles, Dear and the Headlights, El Gran Silencio, Felix da Housecat, Franz Ferdinand, Genghis Tron, Ghostland Observatory, Girl Talk, Gui Boratto, Leonard Cohen, Los Campesinos!, M. Ward, Molotov, Morrissey, N.A.S.A., Noah and the Whale, Patton & Rahzel, Paul McCartney, Peanut Butter Wolf, People Under the Stairs, Ryan Bingham, Silversun Pickups, Steve Aoki, Switch, The Bug, The Courteeners, The Crystal Method (Live), The Hold Steady, The Knux, The Presets, The Ting Tings, We Are Scientists, White Lies

Turn and Face the Strange...

Any frequent blogfly of this site has probably noticed, far down on the sidebar (where blogflies are apt to wander uncontrolled) for the past couple of years, a list of about 250 to 300 films in alphabetical order. It was a list called Leave Me Alone! I Have to Watch These Again… and Again…

The list was basically a picture-window view onto my DVD collection, in at least 75% of the cases, representing to some degree a list of my very favorite films. Once I constructed my first version of it, I discovered that there were very few films from about 1990 onward, so subconsciously intent was I to make it a true glimpse into my influences that I negated the impact that current film was having. So then I would sometimes add recent films that had made a particular impression upon me, and I would sporadically survey the list and wonder why such-and-such wasn’t on there and such-and-such was. It became tiring. By and large, though, it was pretty much the sum total of what I would consider my "canon." All genres, all periods, all styles... just my favorite films. It was intended as an easy way for the wayward traveler to get to know me. (How convenient of me, I know… that’s the kind of guy I actually am not...)

And now that list is gone, a victim of my need to futz about with everything on the Pylon. Recent events at work have allowed me to experiment with a new template not of my own vested interest, and with it, I have become emboldened to try out new features that have popped up on Blogger in recent months which had left me personally fearful for my own site’s life. Trying them out on a new, barely considered site is apparently no problem for me, and with each small success grew the desire to begin mixing things up for myself on the Pylon.

Honestly, the film list had to go. It was hard to keep up, hard to add to the way it was set up, and so far out of the way to do no good at all. Especially because no one ever saw it or cared about it. The chief reason, though, was that it was time, for my own purposes, to begin properly using the Labels function in Blogger. I had added the little demons to posts rather infrequently through the years on here, but was always confused as to why I was using them, since they never showed up properly on the site. I swear – though I am sure someone will tell me I am dead wrong – that the sidebar gadget I ran into the other day which allows their use openly on the sites was not there the last time I looked into it a year or so back. Or maybe I just wasn’t looking in the right place.

The latter is probably the case (or was it guitar?), and it is all academic now: the labels are finally live and in place of where the film list once oozed. The problem is that I now have to go back through four years of posting and start adding appropriate labels to everything. This is going to take almost as much time as it did to write and post the damn pieces in the first place. I guess we create our own hells – I'm sorry, we call that “fun” around here.

Also finally added is a subscription service, now that I have actually opened up a live feed through Feedburner. Along with that, a box featuring all two – count ‘em – TWO, GODDAMNIT!!! – of my faithful followers. Brothers and sisters, lend me those “follow” fingers of yours! Look, I’m your pal here. It’s not like I have added a ridiculous, unwarranted “donate” button to the page, and it’s not like I cram any ads onto the page (because what would I earn? Six cents a month?) All I ask is for the same amount of loyalty I would pay in return. Occasionally comment on my blogs and I will occasionally comment on yours. Follow my Twitter page, and I follow you in return (oh, yeah… another feature I enabled on here). Subscribe to me, and I you. That’s all I ask.

Not a lot of changes, actually, but enough to make the place seem different somehow. It's one of those "did you move the sofa?" moments. Yes, I did, and hopefully getting a better view of the rug will help tie the whole place together better. At least until someone decides to wizz on it...

Was Gelatinous Ooze Clean-Up In Aisle Three Taken? [Part 3]

And so, Alien Raiders, the film with the sleep-inducing title which was recommended lightly to me by my erstwhile cinematic doppelganger, The Working Dead, turned out to be… merely "good."

Merely good, with parts that verged on, as The Working Dead put it, "interesting," and then I would add that a handful of those parts were “pretty good.” By my qualifying it as "good" is no call for the average American zombie to rush out and partake of it, because it is likely that your mind will only flash on the words "low-budget" and "B Movie" and shuffle it straight away to the nearest video internment camp. Agreed, and sad to report, Alien Raiders is no instant genre classic on the level of that which I spoke earlier, and nothing even to write home about (but, apparently, there is still plenty about which some random blogger may gush thousands of squishy words on his ill-visited site, if only tangentially speaking of the film for the bulk of it).

But for those prone to delve in these things, Alien Raiders is mildly satisfying, though ultimately disappointing for the areas in which it pulls back, most likely due to budgetary reasons. It has a slam-bang opening section, and the set-up would point to this film, properly plotted and designed, to just missing out on a potential Michael Mann-style version of From Dusk Till Dawn, only with alien invaders instead of vampire grotesques. A crime-horror mash-up in much the same mode. But it doesn't, and it probably plays its hand far too early on the revelation front. Regardless, I found myself settling into the story, and the premise (a group pulls an armed robbery on a supermarket in the middle of nowhere, but is clearly not there to actually rob the place – they are searching into everyone’s eyes to seek out something possibly otherworldly) is well-presented and believable through much of the film. Perhaps because of the minuscule budget, excellent use is (and had to be) made of the limited locale of a single supermarket and its parking lot, and the largely unknown cast seems committed to the material, though they are, in line with the film itself, merely good. No standouts, just solid, even if a couple were a little too much the amateur for my tastes.

The truth is, for certain small sections of the film, I was truly wrapped up in what was happening. But then, just as swiftly, things would fall apart. Logical, or even inventively illogical, follow-ups would not happen, and there are times everyone is sitting around waiting for the next idea to pop up in the script, as if the filmmakers had only three decent ideas, and then they slammed a bunch of filler pages in-between each actual idea to round out the running time. I have not said very much in the way of characters or so-called spoilers (which is unusual, because I really don’t give a rat’s ass if I spoil a film for you), but it will come as no surprise that there are (please sit down if you aren’t already)… here, let me whisper it… aliens… in this film.

And here lies problem the first: they are nothing interesting. Just blindly raging monsters once exposed, completely at odds with the fact that they can hide, thrive and survive so long, so cunningly and as so convincingly human when not pitching a bitch through the aisles of a supermarket. Once the film reached the point where they were rampaging off and on in the latter parts of the film, I began to peel away from the film. And I began to consider where they could have gone with this film; the depths to which they should have sunk.

There are moments about 2/3 of the way through many of my favorite genre offerings where the train leaves the tracks. It doesn't matter how great the beginning of the film, or how much I have already invested in the characters or the scenario. At the 2/3 point, you are already sold (for the most part) on the film, and enjoying it. But then that moment comes -- I believe Harlan Ellison would use the phrase "wild-eyed bugfuck crazy" to describe such a situation -- where your bowels evacuate in disbelief. The filmmakers do something that just astounds you -- it might be gory or absurdly sexual, it can be low-key and creepy, or it just might be that they amp the action up to a level with which you were just not ready to deal or believe -- and a feeling overtakes you that tells you "this one is a keeper... THIS is why I watch movies... THIS is why I watch THESE movies."

Any rolling off of the great horror/sci-fi titles will bring to the minds of most fans the sort of moments of which I am speaking. It's not necessarily what happens when the monsters are revealed, or when a particularly gruesome moment occurs- -- it's what happens on top of that; the next step. Chainsaw, Night of the Living Dead, Cronenberg's version of The Fly, Halloween, Re-Animator, Dawn of the Dead, The Evil Dead -- all of these genre classics have these moments, and true, we may be in the hands of the masters of the genre, but they all had to start somewhere. They all have early films that touch on moments like these (sometimes these movies are those early films). Even Night of the Hunter, which I consider a genre effort even if some others don't, captures the mood of which I speak once the kids climb into the boat in their attempt to escape down the river. The film, along with the boat, drifts into a dream-like state, and also drifted into my list of favorite films, all because it managed to capture this feeling for me, this sense of the "next level" that encapsulates and summarizes the whole purpose of the film in the first place. For the most part, though, where horror and sci-fi are concerned,these moments are a catalog of "I can't believe they did that!" moments that are so astounding that you know you will never part with the film for life.

It is perhaps too much pressure to put on a mild little sci-fi thriller like Alien Raiders, to expect a young filmmaker to be able to pull off a trick that very few young filmmakers can do, but I truly feel that the opportunity was missed here. The moment arrives where director Ben Rock can shake the excrement out of us, and it passes with our pants unscathed. Yes, the film is a little truncated, and they try to settle for a "shock" ending, but the less said about that astoundingly obvious attempt the better. The problem is that the filmmakers had a moment in their hands where they could hit us with yet another reveal, perhaps a major twist in the storyline, or perhaps the next step in the evolution of these creatures, whatever they are... but they don't. It becomes "rampage, rampage, shoot, shoot" and then an ending we are fully expecting because the film doesn't do a very good job of disguising their set-up for that ending.

But while I found myself disappointed in the end -- meant both ways -- I still enjoyed watching those first two-thirds. Future viewings, though, are likely to reveal nothing more to me but a large gash through that spot in the film, where the film could have truly taken off -- and taken me with it. As I said, it is a lot to expect of a young director, just as it is a lot to expect that every recommendation that someone gives you is actually going to suit your tastes. Pick and choose those from whom you formulate your interests and opinions. Not every "critic" criticizes -- most of the ones that get quoted on TV ads and posters are posers of the Nth degree. As for your friends, you know best. You know who knows you best, and whose opinion to discount. If I am so lucky to be counted amongst those whose opinions you cherish, then so be it.

All I know is that The Working Dead is one of the few on my list. Sure, the film only turned out "good," but he never led me to believe it would be anything beyond that. That, and "interesting," which it certainly was. But his sense of whether or not to recommend a film to me, and how to phrase it, was dead on. You can't get that from just anyone.

There Are So Many Obvious Twitter Puns Available, It Just Becomes Useless to Try...

So, here's the scoop: we are starting to populate the various social networking sites on the internet at work, and I am sort of the point man on this. As such, I suddenly get to do what we had been told just a couple of months ago not to do at work: go on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Plaxo, etc.

It's definitely a sign of the times in which we found ourselves that business has begun to turn from staid traditionalism and begun to embrace the places where the people actually are. It makes a tremendous amount of sense to do this from a marketing standpoint, even if some see all of this as rather silly. Silly or not, the way you get your name out there is promotion, and these sites provide a genuinely immediate means of doing so.

I am already somewhat well-versed in Facebook and Blogger, but really only knew about Twitter because of all the recent scandal about members of Congress tweeting during an Obama speech recently. I knew what it did, and the purpose behind it. But before I attempted to use it at work, I decided to check it out for myself. Hence: https://twitter.com/TheCinema4Pylon

I'm not sure it's worthwhile on a personal level, and I doubt it will bring much more attention to this blog. But it is rather fun to use, and I understood its appeal to the masses instantly upon using it. Jen has taken to calling me a "girl" for getting sucked into yet another popular culture internet device, much as she did when I started Facebook and MySpace pages, but then again, Jen enjoys calling me a "girl" on many levels. Besides, she's the Kindle nut in the house, so she's got her own techno-addiction on her hands. Literally.

And now I am tweeting constantly. For what reason, I do not know yet. I have only a handful of followers, mostly friends I am connected to elsewhere. I have Twitter connected here at the Pylon and the Facebook page so that all of my updates end up tormenting everyone that I know. I finally got my cell phone to properly connect to Twitter this morning, but I already thought I had done that, so the trio of messages I tried to send from Disneyland yesterday didn't land on my page (technically, with connections, pages) until this morning. Everything seems to be go now, and since it all ties in to the job eventually, everything seems to be worthwhile on the educational front.

One thing I will endeavor not to become: someone who posts what they ate, when they got up, saying "goodnight," etc. Weird dreams are OK, off-guard moments... oddball occurrences; so are updates on movies and plays seen or albums or songs that are impressing a certain mood upon me on my iPod on my morning and afternoon walks to and from work (40 minutes, a good length of time for most albums) -- but not just any album or song at any time. The point, I feel, is to have a point, not just to rotely dole out day-to-day details ad nauseum. It might be its initial purpose, but I am hoping that the form will serve to reveal a new art in the process.

Following a handful of comedians and celebs, I am finding that some of them are delighting in having another stage for their wackiness or their pithy comments; others are just sucked straight into the "got up and took a giant crap" arena. I mentioned to The Working Dead the other day that this could become a new form of haiku -- 140 characters, harsh in parameters, but flush with possibilities. I have thus far found some intrigue in the idea of saying what I have to say in exactly that amount of characters and spaces, sometimes going to great lengths to contort the words properly. Not every post, but several of them, and this may become my m.o. for the future.

Adapting this philosophy to my new Twittering at work will mean nada. It will be chiefly organizational news and updates... blah... But it is all experience in the end, and the more diverse one's means in the trends of the present, the more it can ultimately help you through the world to come. I hope all the platforms in which I will have to become proficient quickly will be as intriguing or fun as Twitter has been so far, though I strongly doubt it. The appeal of Twitter to me is its strictness, a brevity I am unable to attain on my own.

You might appreciate it as well for this reason alone.

Was Gelatinous Ooze Clean-Up In Aisle Three Taken? [Part 2]

Something that I have not touched on in this whole recommendation debate is the level of the recommendation. In the vast majority of cases where one person recommends or rips apart a movie, TV show, book or band directly to another person, there is most often an easily recognizable dose of either unfettered love or hatred for the subject. This includes most of the people we run into day to day, and even usually ourselves. In the case of an “it was alright” response, most listeners to that opinion are likely not to rush right out and find out why it only met with a medium response; besides, most of the recommendations that people are likely to meet in their daily lives are those of close friends or co-workers (not that they can't be both), and there comes a point where we have the people closest to us pretty much figured out in all levels of their responses to things, even when their responses seem askew to what they normally spew out as their opinions.

But we are all the terrorizers of opinion. No matter what we say in our more rational moments, we only care about our own takes on things. By and large, and probably much to the chagrin of certain GOP leaders who do not recognize that they are ultimately the same as those over whom they built up both our fears for the last several years and the sweetly karmic result of their current reputations, we are all extremists at heart. And those hearts have sleeves, and we wear our loves and hates on them proudly like we were strutting them across a catwalk in Paris. And so our pronouncements about our opinions -- and The Working Dead and I are as prone to this as anyone -- tend to be irrational and dramatic. We scream them, and we even sometimes argue them: "I loved it!" "Yeah, well, I friggin' hated it!" "Are you screwy? It was the best movie that I have ever seen!" Somewhere, and not so deep inside, Comic Book Guy lives within all of us. We are all prone at times towards proclaiming nearly anything the best or worst... EVER.

But, please, calm down everybody. Sure, in all of our travels through life, some stuff we encounter is truly sublime and some is vilely noxious. Maybe not to everyone, but we recognize it, and we shout about it. But this is only a miniscule amount of what passes through our lives. Most of our life encounters do not necessarily need to turn towards the hyperbolic. And with a little practice, a rational filmgoer can develop critical reflexes that allow himself to check the immediate impulse towards overreaction, sit back, watch the film on its own terms, and then, if one has determined to create such a system, weigh one's reaction to the film against the bulk of films they have already cataloged in their personal viewing collection. Which is one of the things I really enjoy about knowing The Working Dead, because he tends to approach things from roughly the same angle as I. Hence, the general trust between us on these things.

Back to the movie at hand, The Working Dead did not type anything to me on the level of “OMG, U have got 2 C Alien Raiders!!,” because, well, he is not a teenage girl texting cute boy news to some other idiot of like mind and technology. There was no whiff of urgency in his words, nor did he ever say it was anything like “really good.” “Good” showed up on its lonesome, and “interesting” did pop up, I believe, as well, and that was enough for me.

When someone becomes as -- hmm, "mired" is appropriate, I suppose -- in specific genres as we are, sometimes merely “good” is enough. Sure, you might point out, in a snobby manner, that we are working the horror and sci-fi veins here, so naturally, we have to get used to utter crap. But I work by a rule that I call “The 95% Rule." I have mentioned it before, and I stand by it. It works for all genres, it works for all art forms, it works for anything that mankind touches: 95% of everything is crap. And there is no genre of film that is immune to it. You! That person who loves chick flicks! Don’t come at us with your preconceived notions of horror films when you are dwelling in an equally, generally noxious genre. Sure, its prettier and cuter and the shoes are incredible, but the stories are just as vapid, the stereotypes being fed to the masses are just as dopey and, in some cases, just as offensive and possibly even more damaging than anything you will find in a slasher film. And yes, the bulk of slasher films are complete wastes of my time, and I would rather not watch any of them. Except that every once in a while -- and this is where a lifetime of fandom comes to the fore -- someone comes along and does something actually... interesting... with staid material and abused clichés. Someone behind the camera of this generally junk-filled subset of moviedom brings in some real ideas beyond the norm or has figured out how to actually make the damn thing scary, an amazingly missing ingredient in most modern horror films, I will grant you. We have traded squishiness and unease for subtlety and chills. Not that I don't enjoy a little gore in my movies, but torture, and the unwittingly homoerotic sexualizing of that torture, should be left to the professionals: the Republicans.

And even when all subtlety has been blown out the door, someone can still come along and perform a reset. Someone along the lines of a Cronenberg, whose works are simultaneously icky and disturbing but still thought-provoking. When one considers that he spent the late '70s and the whole of the '80s being considered one of the kings of gore, while still wrapping those over-the-top films with an air of clinical precision and disarming sophistication, the fact that he now vies for Oscars without ever having truly changed his habits is downright amazing. Until you consider that the reason he took his success to the next level was because he knew that the best way to continue working in essentially the same areas, but in the broad daylight, was to convince the world he is making straight dramas. I believe "thrillers" is the acceptable term. His films are still loaded with horrific imagery, savage violence and "shape of rage" philosophy, but he has brought back something that other horror technicians have traded away: subtlety. His films bubble along on a cushion of it, and he knows the right moments to reveal the shock, and the right moments to hold that shock back. He has begun to look like a newly evolved form of Hitchcock, who could be charming and suave, but also liked cat-and-mousing his audience to death and when exactly to shake them to their core.

Cronenberg, Lynch, Raimi, Cameron... these are the types you can discover inside these genres. They might move on to other, some would say, "greener" pastures, some will regress into bad habits, and some I really won't care for them once they move on from where I personally met them all those years ago. But I grew to love them digging through piles of videos in sleazy rental stores. And as I said, there is nothing better movie-wise than finding an instant classic or an undiscovered one in a genre that you love. For this particular movie-lover, who will always carry a torch for horror and science-fiction no matter how bad things seem to be, this is supreme. But the place gets so cluttered with recycled ideas, quick-buck profiteers and bimbo spoofs, that it becomes rough to even make a half-hearted attempt to carry on queuing them on Netflix. You can’t find the worthwhile without looking, but sometimes just looking really gives you a headache.

And so, the idea that there is a new science-fiction/horror film out there that one of my fellow acolytes considers, at the base level, “good” is an instant call to arms. I queued up the lamely titled Alien Raiders, and it arrived at my home two days later. It did not glow with an aura of increased expectations. It just slid out of its slipcover and into my DVD player one day after work, and I watched the film.

A film that turned out to be…

[To be concluded next time... yeah, we'll see about that...]

Was Gelatinous Ooze Clean-Up In Aisle Three Taken? [Part 1]

I can do the high and low as well as anyone. I can do the High and Low as in Kurosawa, I can do the Alexander Nevsky, and I can do La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc. There are no limits in my interest in seeking out the very best of cinematic history, and I rejoice, in this golden information age, in having more avenues than ever in finding films about which I have only read previously. Call it arty, call if pretentiousness, but I am sincerely and deeply interested in the “painters” of cinema, those people who seek to expand the horizons of what film can do and stories can be told.

But, with amazing frequency and especially delight, I will put down the Eisenstein, Dreyer and Kurosawa, and seek release elsewhere. More often than not, I also crave the low. I am an inveterate denizen of what are generally (and sometimes wrongly) regarded as the video slums. I love low-budget horror and science fiction like any properly video store-raised geek; I love sleazy, half-brained action flicks like a second cousin who leads you to a secret stash of nudie books in his treehouse. I eat Godzilla flicks as earnestly as Godzilla himself stomps the citizenry of Japanese cities. Of course, what I am looking for -- or what I say I am looking for -- within these genres are the true hidden gems: the Evil Deads, the Bad Tastes… the Hiddens, if you will, that stay truly hidden to most of society. While you and I know that the best of the horror and science fiction genres, even the ones considered classics, will always seem that way to the high-hat set, there is no better feeling in the world for me, at least on a movie front, than a seemingly lowbrow film breaking or at least slightly bulging the barrier between high and low. Let’s make that pressed-hamming the window between those two worlds, because that somehow seems far more appropriate an analogy. I spent this past Saturday morning getting reacquainted with Maniac Cop 2 and Maniac Cop 3, and having a delightful time of it. Wallowing in their earnest silliness for three-plus hours that morning suddenly seemed far more important than writing or watching something considered worthwhile and enlightening. Sometimes you just have to eat comfort food. Or watch comfort movies, however bloody and silly.

And still, I have my standards. I don’t want to just watch just any crappy horror or science-fiction film. I still have my sensors on “high” hoping to avoid what I consider to be the worst offense of a B-movie: not badness, but banality. I also hope that inside any random viewing that I am going to locate for myself another Sam Raimi in waiting, and not an Uwe Boll. And so, like anyone, I pick and choose. I read plots, I check pocket guide quickie reviews, I collect books on just about any movie genre and try to filter out the dross, I read up on directorial biographies and I look on Wikipedia, IMDB and on other sites for the widest possible variety of opinions. Sometimes I run into something unexpectedly on Netflix and just go for it. But, and I know this goes against that moldy “book by its cover” aphorism (the general incorrectness of which I might get into at another date), sometimes a movie title hits you in such a way that you just go, “Nah…”

Even I didn’t want to watch a movie titled Alien Raiders.

Not that I actually ran into it on my own, or if I did, I passed right by it for the very reasons I am about to outline. Reading the title Alien Raiders, it just oozes with the slime of a cynical attempt by a video company to cash in on obvious influences, and if I ran into this in a video store (if I ever actually went into a rental store again… which I don’t), I would barely glance at it after scanning the name of the flick. There is the possibility that if anyone were in earshot, I would probably snicker openly and mock the title for all to hear. After years of Raiders and Alien rip-off titles, why would a production company even think for a second that this was a good idea? I am not saying this about the content of the film; this is purely about marketing. Of course, this is just my personal take on this, and both I and the people who came up with this turd of a title (a turd-tle?) know full that the basic audience for this these days are the types who will watch any Grade-Z Sci-Fi Channel flick while hittin’ the bong. They are going to get their rentals regardless of title; in fact, probably more. They are not concerned about those few remaining of us who actually care about finding some quality within the junk pile.

My friend The Working Dead is one of those few remaining.

He does care, as do I, and I must say that while the two of us, like any friends, have differences in some small areas of film viewing, by and large, he is the person to whom I have come closest in my life to having a mirrored interest in all areas of film. Like me, he is completely devout in the areas of horror and sci-fi, and is a steadfast student of the genres. Like me, he has his higher-brow interests as well, and works to broaden those interests when time and expense allow him to do so. Reflecting back on the big “recommendation” controversy which started my battle of the last few months (recounted here recently), there are three people in this world from whom I will take recommendations instantly and without flinching. Two of them are my brothers (we seem to have a triplet-like mind-link in areas of artistic interest, even though we are all born four years apart). The other one is The Working Dead, the only living-flesh, non-internet friend I have made in the past twenty years that didn’t come into my life through either work, the theatre world or from knowing a relative of mine. Our friendship was forged at the Suncoast store where he worked at the time (and where I had mired myself as one of its most frequent browsers and semi-frequent spenders... at least until the Best Buy went in at the end of the Dimond Center mall), and our common movie interests made us fast friends. Friendship is something I do not take lightly, and where movie geeks are concerned, I am even more hesitant; reluctant to mix with my own kind, I guess. The Working Dead was, and is, a different breed of cat, and even when I left Alaska, we have remained in constant touch, even more so than with my cadre of lifelong pals. Lifelong pals they may be, but I do not necessarily hear many of the recommendations that they send my way, nor they, mine. The Working Dead, though, can convince me to watch anything.

The Working Dead recommended Alien Raiders to me a couple weeks ago...

(To be continued...)