This Week in Rixflix #9: May 5-11, 2017

With all honesty, for me there was really only one reason for living during this week, and that was seeing the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Perhaps I actually had a great many reasons for continuing to breathe in this span, but the anticipation I had surrounding the second volume of Guardians adventures clearly overrode everything else in my brain.

If you are already suffering Cinematic Superhero Burnout, I totally understand. It certainly seems like there is a new super-powered flick on the horizon every single week, and for the next few months, because we are entering the official Summer Movie Season, we will meet that horizon over and over again. Cinematic Superhero Burnout is how we weed out the posers. The second one of you goes, "Why doesn't Hollywood give us real stories with real characters anymore?," that's when we roll our eyes collectively and hear nothing but the whining of an overly spoiled baby. We are a long suffering lot, having to put up with subpar adaptations for eons (with the occasional decent flick), or even worse, having no hope at all of ever seeing certain heroes on the big or small screen. As a guy raised on the Marvel and DC comics of the 1970s and 1980s (and who still collected comics all the way up to April of 2005, and still possesses his entire collection), this is heaven for me. Well, it's heaven as long as the movies turn out good. (Rest assured, if I did actually believe in a heaven, that heaven would never include Suicide Squad.)

I could go on for weeks about the superhero genre, so I will save that conversation for elsewhere. Likewise, I will discuss the new Guardians film (which I felt equaled the first film in fun and excellence) at a later date. Our focus here today is on the entirety (or a solid chunk at least) of my film-viewing last week. Wresting my viewings of both Guardians films savagely out of the mix, the remainder of the week was as eclectic as any that I have had.

Even with my primary, lifelong focus on horror and science fiction, I am a restless genre jumper. Living by the twin mantras that I have developed over my lifetime of "Any movie, at any time" and "I will see any movie ONCE," I have taken mostly to simply following my instincts in determining what film to see next. Some days, knowing what is on my DVR, streaming watch-lists, or my DVD pile, I will compile short lists of the films that I should watch next, sometimes for that day and often beyond. Most often, about two hours later, that list has been blown apart, because I accidentally ran into a new release of a stupid monster movie on Amazon Prime or was flipping channels and saw that a showing of Chisum was coming on in ten minutes.

This week was no different. I have had Tortilla Flat, Look Back in Anger, The Desert Rats, and many other films sitting in my DVR queue for weeks now, but my attention kept shifting to other films. Other films of interest just popped up left and right, and so I went where my muse, sweet Cinema, led me. Still on my Jonathan Demme kick following my overload the previous week, I ended up watching two more features that he directed – Last Embrace and The Truth About Charlie – both of which were premieres for me. I also saw three other films on which Demme served in some other aspect besides directing, as well as a repeat viewing of the 1977 Howard Hughes mini-series (albeit in shortened feature form) that I mentioned had influenced me as a kid in my discussion of Melvin and Howard last week. After that, there was a wide variety of other films, including catching up to a couple of this year's Oscar contenders, one of which disappointed me for reasons I will explain below.

To close this out with a final nod within the general range of the superhero genre, I was also able to cram in the first episode of the new Starz series based on Neil Gaiman's work, American Gods. I read his excellent novel eons ago, and so the material is sort of stored inside my noggin but I don't have the freshest recollection of it. And after watching the first episode, it is still too early to know if I am going to enjoy this take on the story, even though the show is run by a man for whom I have immense respect, Bryan Fuller. His name is usually a mark of quality and intelligence, and I hope that mark continues here.

The main obstacle was in getting the wife to partake, since she has little knowledge of Gaiman's work overall (she knows who he is and has seen both Stardust and Coraline, as well as his Doctor Who episode). We have not discussed our reactions to the first episode, preferring instead to see how the second one plays for us. Generally, if she doesn't like something, she will bow out of the rest of the series around the 2-3 episode mark (like she did with Gotham, but she has serious Batman fatigue anyway). Time will have to tell with American Gods. I hope it works out, because with Feud and Legion done for now and Bates Motel gone for good, and with the end of the normal network season looming, I have a little bit of room on my TV schedule.

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 21; 15 first-time viewings and 6 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length films: Shield for Murder (1954), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Manchester by the Sea (2016) – all 8/9
Lowest rated feature film: The Hot Box (1972) – 4/9
Average films per day in May so far: 2.45
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.03

Before we get to the reviews below, I did up some numbers that I found pretty fascinating regarding the high number of films that I have been watching thus far in the year. As many of you know, I suffered a hip injury last October that eventually led to my curtailing my writing activities on all of my blogs until late in February. In the middle of that month, after a series of visits with my chiropractor until I could see my general practitioner and finally an orthopedic expert, I received a bursa injection, with the diagnosis that bursitis was the likely cause of about 80% of the problems that flared up due to the injury. It turns out that it was correct – the hip, legs, and foot junk cleared up after a few days – though I am now going through a prolonged series of physical therapy workouts to hopefully alleviate everything else.

Following the injury, the time that I had to spent laying in bed led, naturally, to a huge increase in the time I spent watching movies and television. Unable to sit for very long at a computer, I tried writing on my phone in bed, but found it tedious and really frustrating after very little time at all. The same thing occurred with the iPad. So, I simply kept careful notes and used the small sliver of writing time to be sure to collect any stray thoughts that might be of interest later for me. If there was one thing I discovered in being away from the computer, it was marvelous for planning ahead, and that was about it. Well, it was also marvelous for watching movies too, of course, and I definitely took advantage.

Here is a quick look at my movie-watching stats pre- and post-bursa injection on February 12, 2017. Since that opening period of the year consisted of 42 days, I chose only the 42 days that followed for comparison:

The numbers are completely telling of what happens when someone suddenly feels much better physically than they did just a mere few days before. As you can see, through Feb. 11, I was averaging close to four feature-length films a day. On days where I had doctor visits or when Jen was home, I might get in just one or two films, but on days where it was just me at home, sometimes seven, up to eight films might be watched.

In the period beginning on February 12, following four days of bedrest right after the injection occurred (boy, was I ever sore), my numbers dipped dramatically, gradually down to close to 2½ per day (though still averaging 3.21 for the year by the end of that second period). Suddenly able to stand comfortably and with a greater range of motion than I had felt in nearly four months, I was able to begin writing again at length, though because I was being careful to mix up my routine with stretching and exercises, I would only go an hour or so before leaving the desk for a break.

Keep in mind, too, that in that second run, I was really seeing only a single film per day much of the time, but would maintain the average with greater runs on a couple of days per week. (Example: if you watch four films each day on Saturday and Sunday, then you only need to see one film per day the rest of the week to have your average settle at just below two a day.) The trend has continued through the period following the time shown above, with my overall average for the year now (as of May 11) at 3.03 films per day. Hopefully, with some big (but, for now, unspecified) changes in my life coming up soon, that number could dip just as dramatically as the post-injection number. (Fingers crossed, you proponents of dumb luck...)

The Reviews:

Bloodsucking Bastards (2015) Dir.: Brian James O'Connell – A real spur of the moment watch for me late one afternoon, I expected nothing from this title but a generic vampire flick. Based on its title, I figured it must be a horror-comedy (which it is), but the true selling point for me was the casting of Fran Kranz, better known for his appealing performances in a trio of Joss Whedon productions: Dollhouse, Much Ado about Nothing, and especially The Cabin in the Woods, in the lead role. Kranz is his dependable, nervous self here as a corporate lackey who suddenly finds out that the management team at his office has been overrun by vampires of a different nature than the usually capitalist money-grubbing sort.

The film is without a doubt meant to cater to Office Space fans and the stoner crowd (not mutually exclusive), though its filmmakers mainly seems concerned (apart from soaking its actors relentlessly in gallons of blood) with griping about human resources, with loads of jokes centering around what you can and can't say or do in an office anymore. Those are easy jokes to do these days, and many of those jokes land, though some of them don't. But the film has some easy charm that stems mainly from Kranz's character's buddies-to-the-end relationship with Max (Pedro Pascal, better known from Narcos and as Oberyn Martell from Game of Thrones). It was also a pleasure to see Joel Murray show up to provide some solid support. The influence of famous horror-coms like Shaun of the Dead and even Cabin is, naturally, all over this thing, but I was sensing something else at work, and the film it brought to mind was Broken Lizard's underrated (I feel most deeply) Club Dread. Sure enough, Bloodsucking Bastards is the work of a comedy troupe called Dr. God, who apparently have a following out there, though I had not heard of them until after I saw this film. (I had been wondering what to make of the odd cameo involving Matthew Lillard, where he does little but show his face, but it turns out he is a buddy of some of the group's members.)

Bloodsucking Bastards eventually moves past its HR gags and settles into some fun vampire fighting action, which I was surprised to find actually captured my attention as it escalated. If you love actors completely drenched head to toe in gallon after gallon of fake blood, this is your film, as that drenching comes off (intentionally) as pretty ridiculous and just part of the goofy fun. The unspoken jealousies that pop up between office mates, who are all still angling to move ahead in the company even while fighting for their lives, is a darker component of the script, though it never undercuts the frivolity. I honestly thought this would be a simple, no-brainer of a watch, and halfway through I had sort of written it off already. I am now in the territory of the dreaded "S" word (which I usually don't warn people about using), but I reached a moment in the film where it all turned around for me, and I ended up ultimately enjoying Bloodsucking Bastards, if only in a light way. It kind of hit that extra gear that I look for in the bigger horror-coms. I am interested if this occurs to anyone else out there, and if the moment will be the same as mine, so I will leave it unsaid for now. – TC4P Rating: 6/9

I Was a Teenage Movie Maker: The Documentary (2006) Dir.: Don Glut – I will tell you at another time about a book that used to be in my possession for a good couple of decades called The Dinosaur Scrapbook. A compendium of information about prehistoric creatures and their impact on pop culture throughout the twentieth century, The Dinosaur Scrapbook set me off a fair bit because it was a little haphazard in its photo selection and overall editing. Despite this, I still thought the book was pretty swell. I had no idea, despite my penchant for perusing end credits, that the author also wrote a great number of episodes of the Saturday morning Hanna-Barbera shows that influenced me so heavily in the '70s. He also worked for nearly every comic book company in that time period, including writing a lot of stories for Marvel Comics, but I never connected his name with that of the guy who wrote the book in my hand. As I recall, at a couple of points in Scrapbook, Glut discusses his own films that he directed, but I was frustrated in trying to locate more information about them at the library. I finally gave up, and figured the guy was full of beans, and promptly forgot about Don Glut's films.

A few years later, I was watching a softcore horror flick on one of the premium cable channels (though it was definitely not Skinemax), called The Mummy's Kiss (2003). The film was pretty boring, and when I say that, I mean even the nudity was stunningly mediocre and couldn't save the flick. Stiff acting doesn't necessarily translate into being stiff elsewhere, and I watched the film with little interest except finishing the damned thing. Then I saw the name of the writer and director: Donald F. Glut. What? Could it be the same guy that wrote my dinosaur book? Or is it a son maybe? Well, the difference between the first time I attempted to find out more about Glut and that second time was that something had been created which made getting instant answers easier: the internet. Checking out IMDb, Glut was indeed the same guy, and I found out that he directed a great many pictures. They just happened to mostly be throughout '50s and '60s. And they were all short amateur films...

I Was a Teenage Movie Maker attempts to tell Glut's story of his life before The Dinosaur Scrapbook, before the cartoon and comic writing, and waaaay before The Mummy's Kiss. In a film mostly comprised of interviews with the man himself, Glut recounts his life growing up on the streets of Chicago. He found out quickly that the locations and resources of the city were perfect for his youthful attempts at filmmaking, all shot on a small camera his mother gave him that once belonged to his father. After making his first exceedingly crude but lovable attempt at a dinosaur movie, Diplodocus at Large, he gave up for three years, but returned at 12 with a stop-motion film, The Earth Before Man, in which he pretty much just pushed static dinosaur figures around, and shook the camera when an earthquake was supposed to happen. Like many who get into youth filmmaking, he discovered and accepted that each succeeding film taught you a little bit more about what worked and what didn't. Before the end of the '60s, by the time he was in his twenties, he had gotten enough notice for his films that he appeared in Famous Monsters of Filmland, acted in a short student film by future Oscar-winner John Milius, and got uncredited bit roles in Von Ryan's Express and The Graduate. He got his foot in the door writing for the Shazam! series, and never looked back, as the phrase goes...

Except Glut does actually look back in this documentary and how you react to his survey of his childhood years will depend on your tolerance for the source material: Glut's amateur films. The documentary itself is of standard length, as Glut tells you about the behind the scenes details of nearly every film he created in breathless fashion. I would love to talk to the guy for days, so I found the doc engaging, and also found myself envious of the fact that he had a movie camera so young. (I never had the opportunity.) Sure, he didn't turn into Spielberg (who had a similar beginning), but damn he had fun. Clips from many of his films are shown during the doc so you can even see most of the silly costumes and props he describes. When you are done with the doc, though, there is a separate part that completes the experience: nearly 3½ hours of Glut's amateur films. I have only made my way through a rather small chunk of them so far (about a half hour in) and therein lies the problem with the entire project. Unless you are a psychotic grandmother or a glutton for punishment, home movies are tough to watch even if your own family and friends are in them. So, while Glut's short films are entered on IMDb and got him a message of fame/notoriety, you are still watching a kid's home movies, warts and all, and they do become a bit of a slog as you make your way through them. They are still cute enough and I am still envious, but they are tough to watch in one huge lump. I have convinced myself that a couple shorts a day is the way to proceed, so it will take me a little while to advance through the entire thing. But, as a standalone documentary, I Was a Teenage Moviemaker is great fun for a film enthusiast such as I am. And now I finally known just about everything that I could need about Donald F. Glut, author of The Dinosaur Scrapbook. Which I still need to replace... – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Shield for Murder (1954) Dir.: Howard W. Koch and Edmond O'Brien – Since Noir Alley, Eddie Muller's new show on TCM, has started, I have found myself prone to overdosing on film noir once more. (It helps that Muller, a crime novelist and noir historian himself, is a completely engaging host.) A longtime wish was to finally see Shield of Murder, which I had heard was the prime film to watch for sheer Edmond O'Brien madness. Boy, does this film deliver the goods. A tough story of a cop gone wrong (I am not really sure he ever started out good at all), O'Brien (who co-directed) gives a stunning performance as he attempts to cover up the links to a murder he committed while in the line of duty. The plot of the film is right in the title, as O'Brien's character gets away with awful behavior as he uses his badge to protect himself from scrutiny. John Agar, before all the monster and space movies, plays the former partner who is trying to determine whether O'Brien is as bad as the piling evidence is making him seem.

He is that bad... and even worse. I do not want to give away too much about the film, but there is a scene about halfway through that is just about as shocking and horrid than I have ever seen in a film noir, where O'Brien beats a gangster to death in a crowded restaurant, in plain sight of the rest of the patrons and staff. We see the first hit, and then the camera moves away to finally rest on the looks of horror on several faces in the room, but we keep hearing the sick thud of the victim's head being stove in completely. It is about a week since I watched the film, and that scene is still stuck in my head. I cannot shake it, and my stomach gets queasy just thinking about that sound. Like The Set-Up late last year, I am deeply gracious that I finally allowed myself the opportunity to finally see Shield for Murder. There is not a single doubt that I will revisit it, and hopefully own it, in the future. It is that good. I just wish that I didn't feel so sick about it.  – TC4P Rating: 8/9

La La Land (2016) Dir.: Damien Chazelle – Sure, it was up for a mess of Oscars, and yeah, we all thought it won at first but then had it snagged away at the less second. I had really wanted to see this film in theatres when it was released, but the injury and all the doctor visits made it difficult to get to a showing. (Surprisingly, it barely played in the theatre down the street – like, all of two weeks – but Kong: Skull Island was there for seven.)

So, guess what? I am glad that La La Land didn't win Best Picture, because also guess what? I didn't really enjoy the film. That would be fine if it were a heavy dramatic piece, where enjoyment is beside the point and raw human emotion is, but La La Land is a musical. Or it passes for a musical today. Me, I couldn't connect with it emotionally in even the slightest way. I have heard so much praise about the opening musical sequence with the cars and the overpass and the zillion people dancing around in the stalled traffic... and it nearly murders me to say that I didn't find it interesting or even particularly well-done. It seemed like the big street dance scene during Fame to me, another scene that audiences seem to really love that leaves me completely cold (though I do like that Alan Parker film). I hoped that I might connect once the love story starts between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, but I also could not connect to either of their characters, nor did I even like them.

What was my problem? I don't know. My friend mentioned the whole "white guy saving jazz" thing put him off when he heard about it, and I have seen that mentioned in a lot of other places. To me, I was actually able to buy that this guy really did think he could save an art form that he saw being crushed and forgotten by the rest of the world. We all have belief in our own talents, whether they be of the major or minor variety, and I don't find it inconceivable that his character could think such a thing. The question is whether the story allows him to ACTUALLY SAVE JAZZ. (Which it doesn't, thankfully.) My problem is, I have heard a lot of jazz, and I am pretty sure that whatever Ryan Gosling is playing in the film is not actually jazz. He is surrounded by jazz sounds, to be sure, but they aren't coming from his character's fingers, nor from his piano.

That said, I have continued to like City of Stars (it is certainly catchy), though the music in the film just doesn't do it for me. I figured that I might have one or two other songs catch in my ear for a few days afterward, but... no. Nothing, and in fact, I cannot even recall any other songs right now except for the faux fusion tune that John Legend's band plays in the film. Speaking of Legend, I think he does some nice work in his supporting role (he has an engaging personality wherever you seem him), and I will state outright that I thought both Stone and Gosling do fine in their roles. However, and this may just be me, but in their tap duet, both of them look like they started dancing last week. It is still too early to tell if I thought Stone should have won the Oscar, though, as I have not seen the other four nominees' performances yet. What I do know is that there is considerable chemistry between the two actors, but whether just having chemistry is worthy of Oscar praise is highly debatable. Where this film succeeds is on a technical level, from sets and production design to cinematography and direction. The film is gorgeous-looking in every frame, and it was probably justifiable in awarding Oscars for those aspects. I do not dispute that at all. The film is certainly eye candy. But I wanted to feel more from it. As it is, my rating reflects the technical excellence and the performances, but La La Land didn't capture my heart.

Am I sorry about not really liking a thing that everyone else seems to like right now? Of course not... the world and I are mostly divided on a great many things today. This will just have to be yet another one on the pile. Still, my overall rating is 7/9. I can't bring myself to drop it lower, because I do believe the film is still worth watching. Hopefully, I might figure out how to connect in a second showing.

Peace out,

I Got the Jubilation Lee Post X-Men: Apocalypse Blues

I saw the new X-Men: Apocalypse yesterday afternoon. While I enjoyed the film overall (good, but not even close to great), I was disappointed in the use of Jubilee (Jubilation Lee) in the film. After hearing that the character finally had an expanded role in this film -- you know, something beyond just being seen in a classroom at the school and/or standing around -- my hopes were dashed when she pretty much was just seen in a classroom and/or standing around.

I guess it really was an expanded role because we did get a little bit more of Jubilee being seen in a classroom and/or standing around, and we get her napping (actually passed out) through a chunk of the film as well. She does get a line to say, but since her name is never said at all and she never uses her powers, how would a novice ever get to know her and love her the way comic fans got to do? She also gets to go to the mall with Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Nightcrawler, but the mall scene itself (complete with a Dazzler reference) got cut from the theatrical release. (Supposedly it and a brief moment where Jubilation uses her powers will be included in the DVD release.)

I know there are a lot of characters in these films already and it is hard to find the screen time to introduce or give quality time to even more, but Jubilee has been in four X-Men films now and has done NOTHING. Why include her at all? (But, please, DO include her from here on out...) Lana Condor, the actress who plays Jubilation Lee, did a fair amount of press and interviews for the film, so it is very surprising that she has been treated so shoddily. Fox also had a chance to spotlight two Asian-American actresses in this film, and totally dropped the ball. (No surprise there.) And I guess it is way too much to hope that Jubilee might eventually team up with Wolverine like they did in the comics for a long run.

Don't even get me started on Psylocke...

Why I Couldn't Miss Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice... Pt. 1

[I began this piece a couple of days before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hit theatres on the evening of Thursday, May 24th, and finished it well after seeing the film twice already. When I began writing this, the film was already hitting crazy lows on critical mass sites like Rotten Tomatoes due to the accumulation of generally poor to middling reviews from movie critics, and even before the film was going to be seen for the first time by the public, the so-called "fan"-boys and the appropriately named trolls had already pretty much taken the film apart without seeing a frame outside of the trailers. While none of this was going to sway me from my impulse to see the film at my earliest possible convenience -- the reasons why are the thrust of this piece -- seeing that a couple of my long-time friends were not only proclaiming in advance they were not going to see the film, but were ferociously adamant about it, set me to muse upon the situation.]

There is a viral video going about lately that you can find by searching for "The Avengers 1978," though I have seen several different variations under alternate titles. In this video, we are presented with many clips of Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby from their portrayals of The Incredible Hulk and David (not specifically Bruce) Banner from the popular TV show on the late '70s and early '80s. We also see Reb Brown in his star-spangled garb and ridiculous motorcycle helmet as Captain America, featured in a pair of television movies (also from the late '70s). All well and good up to this point.

The year "1978" in the title gets thrown off the track greatly then by the appearance of a fur-laden but still mighty Thor; while he does come straight from an appearance with the Ferrigno/Bixby Incredible Hulk, the clips are from the 1988 TV movie titled The Incredible Hulk Returns (a full decade after 1978). The Iron Man used in The Avengers 1978 gets us closer to the stated year, although it is nowhere close to being the Marvel Comics hero. It is actually David Ackroyd as Exo-Man, the titular hero of a 1977 NBC television movie about a paralyzed scientist who builds an armored suit that allows him to walk again and eventually fight the mob on the streets of his city.

As for the rest of the "Avengers" in this comedic trailer, we get:

• The Black Widow: short clips of a red-haired female in a red outfit (hardly the real Natasha Romanova's fashion choice) doing some clumsy martial arts combat against an assailant. Origin unknown to me at the moment.
• Loki: various shots of Paul Lynde doing his trademark "sneer and snicker" schtick, sadly without audio of one of his usual catty comments. (Great casting idea though...)
• Hawkeye: Alan Alda from M*A*S*H (who else could it possibly be?)
• Tony Stark: a large mustachioed gentlemen of '70s vintage fills in for Iron Man's alter ego and woos women at a cocktail party (or two).
• The Destroyer: Not sure if they are meant to imply Drax the Destroyer of Guardians of the Galaxy fame, but what we get here is Gene Simmons of KISS fame playing his fire-breathing Demon character from KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park. We also get a couple of quick shots of KISS with Paul Lynde himself on Lynde's amazing 1976 Halloween special.
• Nick Fury: In at least one version of this video meme, clips of David Hasselhoff playing Fury in an early '90s television movie have been inserted.

The trailer is displayed to the viewer as a "CBS Late Movie" complete with the attendant fanfare music and graphics expected in such a presentation. The joke is obvious, and admittedly, humorous on a first glance. Of course, my geekiness gets the better of me, and I can't but help to point out where they have erred in their attempt, a futile effort on my part that nevertheless becomes emboldened when reading too many comments on Youtube for the different visions of this meme where it becomes clear that the bulk of the millennials viewing these clips are mainly taking the videos at face value, and thinking that The Avengers 1978 was a real show. My guess is that even the Hawkeye Pierce joke is also totally lost on the majority of them. Le sigh...

But The Avengers 1978 fake trailer is not why I am here today. It certainly makes up a small portion of the kindling for this fire o' mine, but it is not the real reason. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the reason. Or, specifically, the perception of the critical lambasting of the film in advance of the film even coming out is the real reason.

I get that everyone has their take on why or why not they want to see a film. While I might believe that someone's particular stance is grounded in obstinacy or sheer bullshit, I also cannot denounce any opinion they may hold as invalid (at least not publicly). Conversely, I don't want someone to discount my opinion in the same manner. We all have our likes and dislikes, and we use them to color our decisions throughout our existences, both in matters important and trivial. And so I am not going to pick out a particular instance or two that might have riled me recently, nor am I going to do battle against the critical establishment, for in stating what I already have thus far, I must by all means consider each of their opinions in this matter as equally valid in viewpoint and execution.

What I am going to tell you is why there is not a chance in any imaginary hellscape that I would even think of missing out on seeing Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice in a movie theatre.

And The Avengers 1978 fake trailer is one of the reasons why.

The silly little fake trailer is nothing more than simple fluff, meant to entertain while gathering pageviews and comments on whatever social media page chooses to host or post it. But for certain members of its audience -- namely, me -- The Avengers 1978 hit home in an unexpected way.

An actual Avengers comic from 1978

During the year of 1978, I jumped from thirteen to fourteen years of age, and I was a big comic book geek. While I read comics for much of my young life at that point, I didn't really start collecting them until early in 1977. From the start, my favorite Marvel comic was The Avengers and my favorite DC books, naturally, were the Batman titles. Throughout 1978, not only was I beginning to amass what would turn out to be a huge comic collection, but I was also fully immersed in Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, Ray Harryhausen stop-motion, Hammer horror films (but monster films of all stripes really), Topps baseball cards for all of the major sports (and even the non-sport varieties), and reruns of older TV shows such as Star Trek, The Wild Wild West, Dr. Who, Get Smart, Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and my all-time fave and obsession since I was a toddler (quite literally), the Adam West version of Batman. And then there was the prime time television of the day...

As a tried and true comic and also science-fiction fan, my TV obsessions that year definitely included such fare as The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Mork and Mindy, The Amazing Spider-Man, Battlestar Galactica, Logan's Run, The Bionic Woman, and especially The Six Million Dollar Man (which ended its run early in that year). I also partook of non-genre shows like Fantasy Island, Starsky and Hutch, Baretta, The Love Boat, WKRP in Cincinnati, M*A*S*H, Family, Eight is Enough, Soap, Three's Company, and Charlie's Angels. There were also Saturday morning cartoon shows like The All-New Super Friends Hour/Challenge of the Super Friends, The Krofft Supershow, The Fantastic Four, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour, Jason of Star Command, Space Sentinels, The Godzilla Power Hour, Space Academy, and The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour/Tarzan and the Super 7 (amongst far too many others). 

What it comes down to is... I watched a lot of damn television as a kid. And scraping away the non-genre junk (from all the other junk), it became clear that wherever super-heroes, super-villains, monsters, or aliens of all stripes might appear -- and no matter which format or time of day or night -- I would find them. Sure, even at that tender age, I wished that some of the animation in the cartoon shows was better. I was always angry that none of the animated shows had a design half as good as the much older (but still often in reruns) Jonny Quest, then and now one of my fave shows of all time. And I was always frustrated that the live-action shows were always so stunted in showing off the powers of its heroes and villains, or in the rather limited scope of special effects (at least until Battlestar came along).

But we took what we could get. When a TV movie featuring Dr. Strange came on, my fellow comic buddies and I jumped on it like it was made of solid gold, no matter the actual quality of the film. It just didn't matter. The aforementioned Exo-Man was a big deal to us when it came on (though once it was on, it was no longer a big deal; it was a pretty shabby affair, as you can tell from the clips in The Avengers 1978 trailer). Short-lived shows like the very silly Holmes and Yoyo and the more serious Future Cop came and went, but we watched them all in the hopes of see something new, something different, something cool... and something heroic.

In 1978, we got Superman on the big screen, and man, was it a big deal. I still have promotional magazines for the film's release in my collection (included an over-sized jumbo magazine that DC itself put out and the requisite set of Topps trading cards). And when we sat in the theatre and saw the new, charming Man of Steel portrayed perfectly by Christopher Reeve (still the standard) fly for the first time, well, even without being told that we would believe he could do so by the advertising, we really did believe it for a short time. Or at least we were willing to suspend our disbelief long enough to enjoy the experience, even though we were already too touched by Star Wars and the new media concentration on how special effects were created in that day to not see the men behind the curtain. The magazines told us everything, but the effect did still work on us -- because we wished it so -- and it was bigger and better than any superhero effort to that point. We loved it.

Most of the time, however, it was me and my comics alone. Lacking a live-action source for most superheroes (or even an animated one), I read and reread each issue devotedly. In my mind's eye, I treated each comic as it were the latest episode of that hero's television show. The next step was a tad insane. Obsessed with TV listings at that age (even memorizing the times and stations of every prime time program and many of the daytime ones), on paper I constructed my own networks that were to be rivals to television's (then) Big Three. There was a DC and a Marvel network, and I delighted in plotting out prime-time schedules, pitting particular comics against one another in the same time slots. I even had a network for the non-Marvel and DC titles, where Richie Rich, Casper, Archie, and Charlton Comics got their fair shake as well. Whatever I was reading at the time, they got a "show".

In this dream comic television universe, Batman almost always ran concurrently against Captain America and the Falcon, and of course, the Justice League of America always faced off against the Avengers, and so on... Studying the TV ratings announced in the local paper, I was already attuned to which nights were the most popular ones, and tried to adjust my "hero" networks in the same way, putting what I perceived to be stronger shows on the nights that drew the bigger ratings to do battle against the most popular "real" shows.

In this way, when I actually read the comics, they came to life even more for me, since I was now perceiving each one as an actual live entertainment. I would even write out brief synopses for each issue to put in my bogus TV Guide to entice the would-be viewer into watching that "show". And this alternate television universe in my mind also extended to the movie world. Multi-issue arcs, of the time the Avengers were often prone to, were feature films to me. 

My superhero network world collapsed after a year or so, mostly due to maturation (albeit slight) on my part. We grow up and get distracted by other things. Comics were still a major component of my lifeblood; the extra time in my late teens was spent in building fake TV schedules was put into more worthy projects like writing, music, going to actual movies, obsessing over girls (and all of its attendant weirdness), and drawing my own comics. But even though I was growing up, there was one aspect of childhood that I never outgrew: I still felt the world was seriously lacking comic book entertainment beyond the printed page.

I never fell out of love with the fantastical onscreen. Straight through the rest of the 20th century, every major science-fiction, superhero, fantasy, and horror project was treated with equal fervor and excitement before it either came out to theatres or arrived on the television screen. And then, once it was released and viewed, likewise treated with either the acclaim or disdain appropriate to its result. This leads to situations where The Last Starfighter, Krull, and Megaforce all seemed equally interesting in concept in advance of their release in the 1980s, but then I discovered that -- in my opinion at the time (and now), and in order -- that one was a thoroughly marvelous entertainment, one was dull and too derivative in conception, and the last was an insipid pile of horseshit. But I chose to go see each one on the same neutral grounds, and if I didn't come out with the same positive opinion of each one, well, that's mostly on me.

No matter how I felt about them afterward, I was happy to go see all three in the theatre. It doesn't come down to idiotic statements like "I want my money back" or "I wasted two hours of my life that I'll never get back"; you know, the rote things that people who don't take ownership of their actions say when they are upset about the consequences of a simple night out at the movies. No, I chose to spend my own money and see all three films, and it wasn't the excellence of the films in which I was investing those few precious dollars... it was the experience.

Buying a movie ticket doesn't guarantee that you will enjoy the film that is showing on the movie screen that day. It is a contract between you and the theatre owner that you have rented space in one of their seats, gives you access to their refreshment counter (where you will encounter further, sometimes ridiculous fees for usually mediocre food), and allows you the chance to see the featured film at the specific time printed on your ticket. It doesn't say anything about actually enjoying the film; you are basically purchasing a night out at the movies, and whether you end up enjoying the experience or not is up to you.

No one gets refunds on a ticket to the baseball game when the home team doesn't win the game. You are going to the game to see two teams play each other. You are going for the experience. Just like with a movie, your happiness over the few hours you have spent there may depend on the outcome of the game, but that is merely your perception of the event. The doofus next to you in the stands -- or in the same theatre row -- may have had a wonderful time overall.

For me, even seeing a crappy film in the theatre is still an experience worth having. Seeing what you believe to be nothing but top-notch films all the time may sound great, but what it does is whitewash the results of what you are seeing. You have to have a little bit of the bad with the good on occasion to make what is good seem even better. You have to mix it up. Megaforce is a truly terrible film, but we actually had a terrific time making fun of every horrid moment on the screen -- in a pre-MST3K way, since it was only 1982 -- and every stupid line delivered by a truly out of his element Barry Bostwick and company. Once an audience is unified in its belief that what they are seeing is beyond even the help of the most proficient editor in the world, the results can be a ball. 

But the biggest thing for me is that when I went to a film in those days, it was more about the communal experience of seeing a film -- any film -- with my friends. The film really didn't matter; it was about sitting in the dark with my best pals and having a good time. Popcorn, soda, red vines... if the movie turned out to be fantastic, all the better. Beyond this, then and now, the movie theatre has become my church. It is where I go to work things out for myself, to perhaps catch a few minutes of quiet in the dark, and just let a movie wash over me while my mind clicks away in the background. (Sorry, unlike many people who prefer that a movie let's them "not think" for a while, I cannot do that.) Sure, I prefer to go see a film of which I might be anxious to check out, but when I need to escape to the theatre, it can be any film. As a result, I do often see movies that are considered subpar on a critical level.

So I learned how to deal with those potential disappointments when encountered on the big screen. Beyond becoming simpatico with a crowd and firing back at the screen (something which totally violates my movie-going code of the past 25 years and which I would never do these days), I learned that the best way to combat ill feelings towards a film was to write them about them; to put these experiences down on paper, and learn to cast a critical eye towards anything that I was watching. Whether or not anyone else was going to read what I had just spilled out on paper (and in those early days, nobody was reading anything that I wrote, even myself), the point was to get it out of my system.

Now, one could say that there is little difference between what I taught myself to do over the years in writing about my movie experiences, and what people were doing in advance of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Weren't they also getting out their disappointment onto, if not paper, then on the internet, and probably on Twitter or Facebook, for the world to see? Well, yes, they were, but there is a critical difference between what I do and what they were doing...

... I wait until I have actually seen a film before I start deciding if it is the worst thing I have ever seen or not.

[To be continued...]

Thor’s Day Flashback: The Avengers #239

There is no trace of the Mighty Thor (or Tony Stark or the good Captain) in Avengers #239 from January 1984. But, who is that on the front cover surrounded by Hawkeye, Black Widow, Wonder Man, the Black Panther, and an upside-down Beast? Why, none other than your pal and mine, Mr. David Letterman, early on in his original late night run on NBC.

Letterman made several cameo appearances in Marvel Comics over the past thirty years, but this one was the first, and the only appearance where he was actively involved fully in the plot of the comic. In 1984, Marvel held an event called “Assistant Editors’ Month,” in which many, if not all, of their regularly published monthly titles had a certain amount of weirdness going on in the pages due, supposedly, to the fact that Stan Lee, Jim Shooter and Mark Gruenwald (Marvel’s normal editors in those days) were off at some comic convention on the West Coast, and thus unable to oversee the people working for them at Marvel’s offices in New York.

Thus, presumed chaos ensued. We see the backs of the Avengers heads in the corner box instead of their faces (and since none of these characters -- bonus points if you can name all six of them -- appear in this issue, it seems appropriate). In the opposite upper corner, there is a circular Marvel Comics logo that bears an "MC," which is meant to be reminiscent of the old DC logo from the Silver Age. And there is a rubber-stamped box stating "Beware: It's Assistant Editors' Month! Don't say we didn't warn you!" Oh, horrors...

David Letterman ends up accidentally teaming up with the Avengers to stop some nebbish named Fabian Stankowicz, one of the lamest characters ever perpetrated upon the comic buying public. Early on, he was known as the Mechano-Marauder, and had already annoyed the Avengers twice before in the preceding two years. A mechanical genius and a lottery winner, he is obsessed with getting famous by testing his creations against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and uses his winnings to support this goal.

Wonder Man is trying to get his foot in the door in Hollywood, and scores an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. Not confident enough to appear on the show by himself, he convinces the Vision (who has “shut down” and only appears in holographic form -- I won’t explain) to contact several reserve members to appear with him, as the regular team are all away for a variety of reasons. The only active Avenger in the book -- Hawkeye -- opens the story with a nice splash page by carrying his new bride, Bobbi “Mockingbird” Morse (whom you might know from the S.H.I.E.L.D. tv show, though her character dates back to 1971), across the threshold of Avengers Mansion, having been married recently in the Hawkeye 4-issue limited series that Marvel released. Hawkeye’s hearing has become impaired during his recent adventures, and this provides some very clumsy comedy during the Letterman show after Hawkeye secures the list of questions Dave will ask the team so he can prepare his answers.

Marvel does a fairly decent job of detailing the stage atmosphere of the show, and Letterman gets to come across as clever and heroic but still remains a smart-ass, staying true to his basic character. While the Avengers battle Fabian's machines, Dave figures out Fabian’s game, tricks him into revealing a key weakness, and then bashes Fabian over the head with the giant doorknob Dave famously used to keep on his desk back in the day.

But, the aforementioned clumsiness defines the rest of the book. Fabian is exceedingly grating (oh, the voice I put on him in my head while reading his lines) and his motivations are pouty and ridiculous (nowadays, he would just trick someone into giving him a reality show). A series of Fabian’s poorly conceived contraptions attack the Avengers during the show and give them barely any trouble at all (as they should, given that they are created by such a clod). Paul Shaffer, wearing a Captain America jersey, gets to say the word “nutty” while he tries to divert the audience’s attention with music. Don’t even get me started on the Black Widow sunbathing scene. And the artwork by Al Milgrom, apart from that splash page, has that “Marvel in the mid-’80s rush job” feel, that proved especially disappointing to me back in the day when I got suckered into the Avengers with back-to-back runs by George Perez and John Byrne, and then was stuck with lesser lights on pencils for a long, long time (with occasional highlights from the likes of Don Newton and Michael Golden, for example). (Luckily, “Big” John Buscema was on his way back not far down the road.)

The worst part? Through 1999, Fabian Stankowicz made somewhere around 50 appearances in Marvel Comics titles, mostly The Avengers and Captain America. He keeps kicking around, sometimes being villainous, then appearing to reform, trying out for but getting turned down by the Avengers, then getting a serious drug problem, cleaning up his act again, etc., etc. To be sure, I have not read some of these issues, as I no longer collect comics, so I cannot speak to their overall quality. But, based solely on his early appearances in the Avengers (and another couple dozen issues I do own which feature him), please, please, please, Marvel: do let me know if you plan to do a 35th anniversary "The Death of Fabian Stankowicz" issue (2017 by my estimate). Because I not only want to buy 300 copies of that issue and read each and every one of those copies, one after the other. I want to write that fucker into his grave.

Thor's Day Flashback: The Avengers #1

This is the big one. This is the best present I have ever received from anyone. Period. Stop trying!! (Well, don't stop trying to give me presents... but you simply can't, within the bounds of natural, earthbound processes, possibly top this...)

This is the front cover of my copy of The Avengers #1 from September 1963, which basically means the comic is just over one year older than I am (please recall that the dates on the front cover of most comics are projected by a couple of months, sometimes several).

Sure, it isn't the prettiest cover. As you can see, the back of the cover can be seen lightly through the front, which is how it has looked since it was bestowed upon me by the wonderful Mr. Tony D. Batres over 30 years ago or so.

Tony can correct the details in the comments, but I believe he purchased it -- the price of $100 springs to my mind -- from a real pain-in-the-ass dive called Comic Book Cosmos, which served as the first comic book shop in Anchorage, Alaska (or at least the first one of which we were aware at the time). Cosmos had really odd hours, and half the time we went all the way across the city to Mountain View, it would be closed even if you went according to the posted schedule. My recollection of the place was that you pretty much had to deal with what they had at hand (I was never successful at having the owner order anything for me that I wanted), but when Marvel went "direct market" with some of their titles in 1981-1982 (thereby skipping newsstand circulation), Cosmos briefly became the only game in town for us (at least until the still-thriving Bosco's Comics & Cards opened up in mid-1984 in Spenard).

The comic itself? I have only read it by hand thrice: once when I first got it, once when I first bagged and boarded it a couple of years later, and the third time just the other day, when I switched it to new mylar and a protective case. Surprisingly, for a cover that has always looked like it was hand-dipped in Wesson oil personally by Florence Henderson, the inside pages and the color on them are still holding up quite well.

What is it worth now? Why haven't I graded it? How did I get so lucky to have a lifelong pal like Tony? The answers: 1) Don't care, because I will never sell it; 2) Because of the answer to the first question; and 3) Don't know. I guess you had to be there.

Thor's Day Flashback: The Avengers #67

Another Thursday, another Avengers cover from my collection. This one is from August 1967, when I was not yet three years old (technically, the comic actually came out a couple of months before that, so I was even younger).

The issue has the team in combat with that Ultron guy. Some of you may have now heard of him, or at least the version from the movies. The one in the comics was actually created initially by Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym (the original Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, etc.)

Of course, I did not own or even read this issue until many, many years later when I picked it up at the regular flea markets that were held in the old Anchorage Sports Arena. Got this comic for $3, which seemed exorbitant at that time (but only because I was buying about 50 other comics off the guy for the same price). I would really like to go back in time with about a thousand bucks and clean that booth out. The person who owned that booth would probably like it too.

Thor's Day Flashback: The Avengers #44

As Jen and I head to our new local theatre cluster to take in one of a number of advance screenings of Age of Ultron, here's an Avengers cover from my collection, Issue #44, September 1967.

Not only do you get Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch in early action with the team, but in the upper right hand corner (near Hercules) you have the Black Widow in a version of her earlier get-up, which plays more like lingerie than anything else.

And, for what it's worth, please don't go messing with the Para-Sonic Thermo-Ray...

Son o' the Return o' the Comic o' the Jack-O'-Lantern Undead...

My beloved and I attended the Disney Halloween Party (with awesome fireworks) last night, but a massive headache and a serious lack of sleep the last couple of days have eaten away at my time to put up a decent post about it this evening.

In lieu of such a post, I am cheating a bit for the second night in a row in this Countdown to Halloween (last night was a mere picture of a slice of my dining table full of monster toy sets, with only text in the title, so it was a real cheat). This is a comic page that was drawn on a camping trip last August by my brothers Mark and Chris, for which I provided the dialogue.

The twist here is that the comic page is absolutely improvisational, a massive derivation of the surrealist drawing game called Exquisite Corpse, where artists draw unconnected and unseen images on their own half (or quarters if there are more than two artists participating) of a folded piece of paper, and when it is revealed, the two separate images forge what is hoped to be a rather remarkable single image. We adapted it to where either I would write the dialogue (being currently uncomfortable with my art skills, unlike the olden days) in the first panel, and then one of the brothers would draw the first and then the next panel, and then I would fill in the dialogue for the art in the second panel and then start the third, and so on... or it could start with art in the first panel, dialogue in the first and second, and so it goes forward until completion. Get it? Got it. Good.

The reason I am rerunning this particular comic page is that it is entirely Halloween-based, being all pumpkin riddled and whatnot. Murderous Jack-O'-Lanterns make for delicious fun as far as I am concerned. If you want to see what I originally wrote about this comic, visit my post about it at http://cinema4pylon.blogspot.com/2009/08/comics-on-road-to-nowhere-pt-4-of-11.html. 

Enjoy!

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 11 of 11: "Exquisite Corpse" Drawings 3 & 4

Here's the final post of this series, featuring the other pair of "Exquisite Corpse" drawings done by my brothers Mark and Chris:


I remember my brother Chris was quite amused by the fact that with the Monster Dance Party he had drawn his image going off the page rather than into it. As a result, the drawings are going in opposite directions. Usually the practice is to carry the action towards the next possible drawing.

You will note that this final picture is different from the rest in that, instead of the paper being halved and then drawn on each opposite side, this time it was folded twice, so that there are four separate drawings, two each by my brothers:


Again, I will leave it to Br'er Mark to add his notes in the comment section. All I know is that I love these.

Thanks for the very few comments we have received on these. I hope that while most of you were not reading these posts you were out having a shitty time. We had a ball playing these games, and we were only hoping to share in the experience, and perhaps even get a couple of people to pass the game on or play with us. At least a couple of you got it.

The Cinema 4 Pylon now returns to its regularly scheduled programming...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 10 of 11: "Exquisite Corpse" Drawings 1 & 2

For the last two posts of this series, I am going to say very little, and let these combined drawings by my brothers Mark and Chris do most of the talking:

Pretty sweet. I love the randomness of their imagery, and how the two separate pieces play off each other in unexpected ways. I am uncertain of the order in which my brothers created all four of these pieces, so please check the comments below. I am fairly certain Mark will provide some notes on their process, and his continued memories of the experience.

Also, if you want to do your own experimenting, please see my first post in this series for instructions on how to do it, or look up "Exquisite Corpse" on Wikipedia. (You can even learn why the game is called by that name, or even how there is a reference to the game in Hedwig and the Angry Inch...)

[The final post will appear in a couple of days, and then the Cinema 4 Pylon will close the art gallery and begin its regularly scheduled movie griping again...]