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...]

Taking Comfort in a Pilgrimage to Dracula (or Drácula... Take Your Choice)

My life of the past few months has been one of redefining the borders of my personal comfort zone. Since losing my job in February, still battling a depressive state even while being weaned from the medication that was helping me through the darkest portion of it, and with my ego taking a very confused beating in searching for new employment, that comfort zone has been decidedly compromised.

Not finding employment in the areas in which I have experience now has me kicking through the doors of that comfort zone and applying for positions at places I never thought I would. Embarrassment has been swallowed through absolute necessity, and the longer this drought continues, I will likely have to become even more used to the taste of it.

The outside perimeter of that bubble of personal comfort may have been battered by recent events. It might have fluctuated greatly as I adjusted to whatever was confronting me at the time. But it has also proven to be a little too stalwart from the opposite direction: from the inside out. I sometimes rely on it too much to protect me from the outside world. Moving into a new home in a new town and into a living situation that I do not like much of the time has me withdrawing more and more inside myself. As I stated a few posts back, diving back into writing -- on whatever subject -- has allowed me to decrease the pressure and get some of my mojo back. But writing does not get me outside. It does not get me out in public, where I can meet people, shake hands, find employment, or just get comfortable again with society away from the small office in my home where I spend 90% of my time now in an effort to be away from the rest of the household as much as possible.

When I moved to California a decade ago, on my third day here, and not being a driver (nor ever having a license), I took a nine-mile walk. I was in a strange new town (Anaheim -- not so strange, pretty generic for the area, but completely unknown to me apart from that Mouse Park), and I took it upon myself to immediately attempt to gain my bearings and figure out what was up and what was down in the place. Four and a half miles down the road from where we lived, and four and a half miles back. I noted street names, businesses, restaurants, and bus stops. From the start, I established some knowledge of the environs and then took short bus excursions over the next couple of weeks to broaden that geographical "comfort zone".

Until yesterday, I hadn't done that in Eastvale. I am in a different county, and while I had learned the names of the surrounding towns (Corona, Mira Loma, Ontario, etc.) and the major roadways about us, I had done nothing to establish a base for myself. Apart from the shopping center exactly a mile down the road from us where I have taken in numerous mainstream movies, I knew nothing about the area. While I had stared intently at one of the local transit authority buses and told myself that I really should get on one of those and head to parts unfamiliar to get a better feel for the place, after six months living here, I had yet to ride the bus. And a large part of this was because of how withdrawn I have become since the move.

Enter Dracula. It's funny how it takes the undead to prompt myself to get out amongst the living again, but I will have to attribute it to Count Dracula. Over the last few weeks, my eye kept catching commercials and online adverts for upcoming Fathom Events theatrical showings of the original 1931 Universal Studios production of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Even more enticing was the chance to watch the film in tandem with Universal's Spanish language version of the story, which used the same screenplay and was filmed on the same sets at night when the English version wrapped each day. I do like to take the opportunity to see older films on the big screen whenever I get a good chance, and here I could see one of my favorites. And right before Halloween.

There was one problem. How was I going to get there?

Jen had to work on both days on which the showings were to occur (the 25th and 28th), and even if she didn't, horror films (even fun, classic ones) are not in her wheelhouse. I couldn't go to the one on the 28th due to previous Halloween plans (which will be revealed later this week), and so the 25th was my one shot. It was showing locally at two relatively close theatrical complexes, but still 15-22 minute drives by car, and I don't enjoy asking others to drive me to places if there are alternate ways to get there, such as buses, trains, or walking. It had come to this... If I wanted to see Bela Lugosi on a big screen and disappear inside the Universal Monsters universe for a few hours (always a pleasurable experience for me), then I was going to have to kick the doors open on that comfort zone once more.

And so I caught a bus for the first time since moving to Riverside County. How weird it seemed to me, even though I have spent most of my life using public transport. My father even spent twenty-plus years driving buses around Anchorage, Alaska until his retirement, so they have been instrumental within our family as well. I have also employed them to great effect when visiting places such as Seattle, San Francisco, or Orlando. So, my six-month period of ignoring them here in Eastvale is definitely an aberration, especially considering I have been back in the Anaheim area several times since and just hopped onto buses without even thinking. Again, it is based on what and where you are comfortable, and how willing you are to push boundaries if you must.

I pushed those boundaries yesterday, that is for sure. I strode out from our house in the late morning air and marched straight to the bus stop, just down the street and around the corner, where I could have easily caught it many times before if I had only tried. My day-trip was going to take just under two hours to get from here to the Tyler Galleria in Riverside, with a transfer first to another route at the Corona Transit Center. I had previously seen the places to which I was traveling, but learning exactly which roads and side-streets to traverse in getting to them is a different matter. 

In the case of the smaller bus that was heading to the transfer point -- a very bouncy trip indeed -- while much of the trip went in linear fashion down the boulevard off of which our neighborhood lies, the route really uses that boulevard as a center point, and the bus veers off to the left and to the right for sideswipes into surrounding neighborhoods before finally settling back onto the boulevard for a final straight shot through Norco and into Corona. As I was intent on using the trip to get further accustomed to the area, I made mental notes of each street and the businesses upon them, and figured out which direction I would need to get home should I find myself stuck in each area. As I said before, I not only had seen my destination points before, but noticed a great many businesses along the way that we had frequented in the months in this area. Now, because of breaking free of the house, I figured out how I could easily access these places on my own with a simple bus trip.

The transit center in Corona was also not unknown to me. We had passed it numerous times when we were first in the area looking at homes. What I was not prepared for was just how uninhabited it could be on a Sunday morning. Just two other people were on the platform with me while I was there waiting for my connection, and one of those two came off the same bus as me. I only had to wait ten minutes before my next bus came, which turned out to be the normal size of bus to which I was accustomed, and good thing too because it was nearly two-thirds full when it arrived. The more crowded second route went through some much skeevier areas than the first, and I was certain I had never seen any of it before, and really had no intent of stopping anywhere else along the way but for my ultimate destination. After roughly 35 minutes we pulled up to the Tyler Galleria, and one of the first things I could see were the giant AMC letters atop the highest point of the complex, directing me to the movie theatres where I would be watching Dracula.

Pushing boundaries doesn't just include getting out where you have never been, but also learning to get accustomed to those places. Because I was unsure of the efficiency of the bus system in this area, or if I would make my connection in the first place, I left earlier than I normally would have for such an event. As a result, I had two hours to kill before my movies started. After picking up my movie ticket which I had bought in advance from the box office, I made to get acquainted with the mall, figure out if there were any stores worth revisiting in the future, and get the general lay of things in the area. The movie theatres are actually across the parking lot from the rest of the Galleria, and are connected to several other restaurants and a parking garage instead. So I took the opportunity to figure out where things were (with one major exception, which I shall get to later), and took a walk around the mall itself.

A Sunday morning farmer's market was just starting to close down in the parking area in front of the Barnes & Noble on one end of the lot. I strolled through to look over the produce for the tables that were still set up, though it looked like about 75% of the participants had already or were in the process of breaking down for the day. I then made a short visit to the bookstore to pick up the latest issue of Fangoria (with Elvira on the cover) and a couple of small Moleskine notebooks for future outings. Then I headed to the mall itself. While malls fascinated me in my youth (as they tend to do), I no longer get much out of being inside one. This one was pretty generic by today's standard, with the requisite mix of jewelry, fashion, children's, and shoe stores. The internet has pretty much killed my reasons for ever going to a mall, which were movies, music, and books. That the one store that contains all of these items existed in its own box-store outside and across the lot pretty much lessened my chances to ever step inside the actual mall itself again.

But I did stop by the food court long enough to convince the Philly cheesesteak place to lettuce-wrap one of their sandwiches for me. This proved to be a difficult accomplishment for them, and if I ever ate there again (the sandwich was serviceable enough), I would ask instead for a pile of their steak, peppers, onions, and cheese component along with a couple of leaves of lettuce so I could just make my own wraps. It would probably have worked a little better, and might have been a little less messy, not that I minded. Once you commit to the fact that most of your burgers and sandwiches in public places will likely be wrapped in lettuce from here on out, then you get used to making a mess of things. I hated being that messy at first, but have grown to accept and even sometimes enjoy it.

Finally, the time arrived for me to go to the theatre and get my seat (middle seat, row with the bar where you can rest your feet). I sat down (with a Lime Coke... yay, AMC, for those machines with a thousand choices) with twenty minutes to go before the film, and I was the only one in the theatre. Thirty seconds later, in walk two couples -- they were together in a group, so I could have said quartet, but they were definitely coupled off -- who proceeded to sit in the row directly behind me. I said to them, "And here I was wondering if I would be the only here for this," to which one of the ladies replied, "Oh no... you're not the only one with good taste." This said to me that if I wasn't in the presence of horror movie fans, they were at least classic movie ones. 

Eleven more people, including a family of five with a prodigiously oversized child (had to be a teenager) wearing half pajamas and carrying a very large, well-worn Pooh bear, took seats before the show began. So, while the theatre was not necessarily all that full, it was far more than I expected, and gave the viewing a cozy feeling. Though no separate entity talked to another group through the course of the showing, everyone was there outside of the normal bounds of moviegoing, and so it was like an unspoken bond of shared love of classic cinema (at least for the adults who made up the majority of the patrons).

This was my first experience with a theatrical Fathom Event produced in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies, and I must remark on how it appeared to me. I was anticipating an introduction from either Robert Osborne or Ben Mankiewicz (though holding out hope it would be Alec Baldwin), and we ended up with Ben (which is not a bad thing). His introduction was fine if not generic, but it was clear to me that the introduction seemed to have been filmed with television in mind, and came out somewhat fuzzy on the bigger screen. I don't know if this were the actual case, but when matched against the sharpness of the first image of the Lugosi Dracula soon to follow, the difference in quality is remarkable.

However, while I was thrilled to see both of these movies on a bigger screen, I knew that I was really just paying to watch TCM inside a theatre, a network for which we are already paying through the nose on our cable bill at home. Knowing also that there was not a marvelous old print (or even a newly struck and remastered one) spinning its way through a projector back and above our heads took some of the thrill out of the endeavor. Even worse, knowing that a pimply teenager was probably just selecting the film with a remote control off a computer screen took some more off the cool factor. But it was still Dracula on a big screen, the remastered image was brilliant, and Lugosi was fantastic to watch as large as possible in front of our eyes.

Everything worked for this small audience and I: the hypnotic style employed by old Bela; the bat-on-a-string special effects; the cinematic sleight of hand in the scene when Dwight Frye's not yet crazed Renfield finds his path blocked by massive cobwebs where the Count walked just moments before; the humorous asides of sanitarium attendant Martin; Edward Van Sloan's committed explanations of vampirism and how to combat the dread disease ... everything. The film moved so swiftly and deftly on the screen that it was over just as we seemed to be settling in to it. And maybe there actually was one part that didn't sit well, but I only noticed it because someone made note of it out loud, and that was the sudden ending with the offscreen staking of Dracula. "Well, that was over quick," someone remarked behind me, and I had been thinking it too. I wasn't sure if their disapproval was over how suddenly everything gets righted in the film's world, or if they, like myself, were just disappointed that the fun of seeing that particular film onscreen was over too soon.

We shed half of our audience when the lights came up, which I didn't understand since the cost of the ticket was for both films. This happened when Grindhouse came out, and loads of people missed the Tarantino half. I think it is a combination of people not reading the fine print and of no longer being used to double features. (They were the standard when I was a kid.) After a merciful ten-minute intermission (with intermittent counter) for a much-needed bathroom break -- during which two ladies from the family unit in the audience were doing an impression of Dwight Frye's affected, maniacal laugh as they plopped their way down the stairs -- at last, TCM Ben came back to introduce the Spanish language version. He mentioned that some people consider this version to be more atmospheric and often better than the Tod Browning one we just saw. For me, it is debatable, but no contest. Yes, the Spanish one has some interesting camera placements that run parallel to what Browning did, and there are many moments where it does have more atmosphere.

But it is also laden with a less-than-Lugosi performance as Conde Drácula by Carlos Villarías, which means he is good, but has none of the menacing flair that Lugosi perfected on the stage for several years. For some of the audience, some of Villarías' campier mannerisms and movements made them laugh out loud; for me, some of the looks he gave reminded me of Jim Nabors playing Gomer Pyle, and while I restrained myself from chuckling openly, I couldn't help but imagine Nabors playing the role on the dinner theatre circuit in Florida somewhere. The performance I really liked in the Spanish version was that of Pablo Álvarez Rubio as Renfield. I thought his turn in the role was marked by a greater ease with the arc of the character, and a little more subtlety and range on the "crazy" end of the scale, where his Renfield seems to go from zero to sixty and back again in some scenes, as he reacts to the chaos around him. I had seen this version of the film on DVD three times previously, but this is the first time I really noticed how much I enjoyed his take on everyone's favorite madman.

One of the remaining audience members did create some open laughter from the rest of us, as a big guy with a trucker cap and a huge red beard fell asleep not long into the Spanish version (reading makes him tired, I guess). Tucked into his corner of the theatre, Big Guy snored long and loudly through about 45 minutes in the middle of the film. I treat movie snoozers like sleepwalkers. I feel it is more dangerous for them and us if you awakened, especially in the middle of a movie-wrought dream. And so no one shushed or bothered him through his nap time, and at a certain point, he quite noticeably snored himself awake, and when some of us turned to look at him, he acted very embarrassed and quickly took a slug on his soda, and cleared his throat. 

With both films over, it was time for the return trip to the transit center. I mentioned that I had made a big error when surveying this new playground when I arrived, and it almost saw me getting abandoned in the place. I forgot to ascertain where the bus stop for the return would be, and when I got out of the movies (I will admit that I worried about it through much of the second film), I panicked a bit. I assumed the bus would return down Magnolia across the street from where I jumped off at the mall, but when I went over there, there wasn't a bus stop in sight. 

Rather than being caught staring at my phone whilst the next bus that I needed came whipping by, I opted for the "just walk to the next bus stop you find" rule. For me, this is an exceedingly easy plan due to the speed at which I walk, and it wasn't long, near the end of the Galleria area, before I found that next bus stop. But it was covered by a bag on top of the pole, with a green sign reading "This bus stop closed until further notice." So, I flew to the next stop, where I was greeted by yet another bag and yet another sign. Finally, a third stop appeared, about three-quarters of a mile down from where I started, and it seemed to be live, a suspicion confirmed when another lady strode up to wait for the bus as well. I found it just in time, as the #1 bus pulled up to us about two minutes later, and we were on our way.

GoogleMaps may have its benefits, but I'll be damned if I recognized that on this return trip, because it failed me utterly. Sitting on the bus, I consulted the application because I wanted to find out the next #3 bus from the transit center in Corona to my home. The app told me 6:14, and so another panic grew inside me over whether we would make it in time. During a normal weekday, this would not have been a worry, as buses run much later. But this was a Sunday, with the buses cutting off in the 7:00-8:00 range, and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss the last one. Jen's mom texted me all along to see if she could pick me up instead, but I was determined to finish my crawl the trip the way I started it, or else all confidence would be lost. As we neared the transit center at 6:06 p.m., I was excited because clearly we were going to make it in time for me to transfer. Then we arrived, and I was disheartened to find out that there was no 6:14 #3 bus. The time didn't appear on the giant schedule mounted at the terminal, and in fact, it disappeared from my GoogleMaps app as well. Now it was telling me the same time that the bus schedule was: 6:53, more than 40 minutes away at that point.

Not a problem, except the bus stop on a Sunday evening was as devoid of life as it was that morning. And it was getting dark. Fast. Next to railroad tracks and overpasses. Gully cats and queen snakes were sure to be on the rise next. There was me and one other guy who got off my bus, and he left in five minutes on another route. And it was getting darker, and the transit center seemed more and more desolate with every passing minute. A speeding train came whipping by and would have made me jump out of my socks had I been wearing them. As I checked the schedule one more time (with a half hour to go), the sudden appearance of human voice sent a chill up my spine.

"What bus are you catching?" I backed up from the sign and hurriedly looked around it. It was a security officer making his rounds. He seemed bored but genuine in his attempt to make small talk as he told me at which bay I needed to wait for the #3 bus (which I knew, but I was the only one there and had been pacing relentlessly, so he probably was sincerely wondering). We chatted for a few minutes before he shoved off to the other end of the center, but it was good to know there was someone else down here in a very secluded area off the road, surrounded by shadows. As I said, I am not generally afraid of the dark, but in someplace where you have little knowledge, it can rev up the adrenaline to ridiculous levels.

The time passed as time does; a little slower if you pay too much attention to it, and a little quicker the more you ignore it. I found a happy medium that saw the #3 bus arriving on schedule and speeding me off on my way home. Then I found out the kicker from the bus driver: the bus would not return me all the way to the bus stop where I picked it up down the street from our house. The route officially ended for the driver at a stop about a mile from that point, at the same shopping area that we frequent. But it worked out perfectly, because Jen was off work and home by then, and was able to meet me at the last stop. Then we picked up Chipotle there for dinner as well. Win-win.

And so ended my pilgrimage to unknown lands to see an ancient undead friend of mine (and his not so carbon copy). I had broken out of my comfort zone just enough to get me out of the house and traveling someplace new, to try and figure out this new county in which I live, and to gain some measure of confidence moving about on my own once more. And except for a slight hiccup in returning, I came back none the worse for wear, and definitely wiser. 

Now, I just have to return from one of these trips with a new job in tow, and everyone will be happy.

Finally Meeting the Final Girls of My Dreams...

The Final Girls (2015)
Dir: Todd Strauss-Schulson
TC4P Rating: 7/9

Getting exactly what you want from a movie is both infectious and dangerous. Infectious, because it brightens the rest of your day (and even week), you get so excited because you want to share that feeling with everyone you meet, and you now can't imagine life without that film being a part of it. (How did I ever cope beforehand?) And dangerous, because you now want every film you see in the same genre to meet those same expectations. This would all be very nice, but unless you are someone who is either daft or just too easy to please about everything, it is a truly Herculean task.

The Final Girls is not a great work of art. It won't win or even get nominated for any major awards (not even a leg lamp). It will not change mankind or bring about world peace. But The Final Girls did give me precisely what I was looking for in an presumed horror-comedy based around the increasingly popular and ironic notion of the "final girl," the last, would-be distaff victim of a slasher film who rises above everything to come out victorious (in most cases) against the film's monstrous killer.

Last week, I posted a review of another film (the first originally announced for production as it were) that was released this year (after being shelved for a while) called Final Girl. That film was an absolute disappointment in relation to the excitement I felt when I first heard a film with that title was being made. Underneath that frosting of eagerness, Final Girl turned out to taste of nothing but regret. [You can read my review here.] Worst of all, it had essentially purloined that phrase to have it rejigged into something that had nothing to do with the style of film from which the term sprang to ironic life.

But enough about the lesser film. Here we have The Final Girls, from director Todd Strauss-Schulson, whose resume, when first surveyed, doesn't appear to hold much promise. The biggest film (or mark against him, depending on your opinion of it) to date was A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas, which I enjoyed far more than the second film in the series, though not even close to as much as the first. Other than that, while Strauss-Schulson has many shorts, videos and TV episodes listed in his filmography, I have not seen a single one of them. So, I really didn't have a solid grasp of his capabilities going into this film.

As for the screenwriters, Joshua John Miller and M.A. Fortin, there was only one other writing credit on their collective resume, and that was a short film from last year called Dawn. Nominated at the Sundance Film Festival for the Short Film Grand Jury Prize, Dawn is a decent first effort by novice director Rose McGowan (yes, that Rose McGowan, who is now set to helm her feature film debut, The Pines), but its screenplay is fairly obvious and doesn't betray the sense of humor at large throughout The Final Girls.

In settling down for a viewing, what I was hoping for, after seeing the other film, was a project that embraced the concept of "the final girl" properly. Beyond that were faint wishes that the makers would have some fun with the concept, and not churn out just another sour slasher film that only winked mildly at its audience. As it turns out, The Final Girls doesn't even know how to wink mildly. It walks up, sticks its eye as close to yours as it can, tilts its head as it winks its eye as blatantly as possible, opens its eye up again, smiles a broad, shit-eating grin, and then jabs you in the ribs with a sharp elbow to make sure you received the joke efficiently.

This is not to say the film doesn't have its subtleties. It actually thrives on them. The story is set up sweetly but tragically as we meet Max (played by Taissa Farmiga, Vera's half-as-young little sister) and her mother, Amanda Cartwright (a radiantly wistful Malin Akerman). Amanda is a former scream queen from the late '80s who has never been able to shake the typecasting wrought by her appearance in Camp Bloodbath, a very Friday the 13th-type slasher that has gone on to cult status. Rejected at yet another audition because of her past, a frantic Amanda doesn't pay attention to the road as she goads Max into lip-syncing to her favorite song, Bette Davis Eyes, and when Max accidentally drops coffee on Amanda's 8x10s, the car is sideswiped and sent rolling to Amanda's death.

Three years later, Max hasn't recovered emotionally from her mother's demise, but she is still susceptible to other people getting her to take part in things she really shouldn't. Her friends, the hippieish Gertie (Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat) and the purposefully bitchy Vicki (of The Vampire Diaries and DeGrassi, neither of which I have ever seen), meet her at a midnight movie showing of Camp Bloodbath, for which he has been talked into making an appearance in honor of her late mother by hipster geek Duncan (Thomas Middleditch). Max also meets the super hunky Chris (Alexander Ludwig, who coincidentally happened to play the main fratboy villain in Final Girl), with whom Max will sort of bond on their adventure (their certain romance is an underplayed aspect of the screenplay).

Via the interference of some utter jerks smoking and drinking during the screening, a fire breaks out in the movie theatre. With the exits blocked by screaming Camp Bloodbath fans, Max picks up a machete, the primary weapon of the film's villain, Billy, which has been dropped by an erstwhile fan in the audience. She uses the machete to cut open the movie screen to make an escape, and her friends follow her...

...into Camp Bloodbath the film. What we have in The Final Girls is a variation of what many will say is The Purple Rose of Cairo, but I would prefer to point out Buster Keaton's seminal Sherlock Jr. (1924), one of my favorite films where Buster is a projectionist who falls asleep in his booth and dreams himself not just into the movie, but also in entering the film through the screen from the stage in the movie theatre, where he has to deal initially with the scenery changing constantly around him. Soon enough, he becomes the main character in the film.

Time is not the same inside the film Camp Bloodbath, and the five real life people now have to learn how to play by the rules of the slasher movie they are in, where even the hint of sexual contact gets you killed, and scenes play in a loop if you don't go along with the plot correctly. There are plenty of jokes made at the expense of (and big laughs pulled from) the stereotypical characters found in your average slasher film, and the characters act largely in the preprogrammed manner in which you expect. They do stupid things, and there are terrifying results for that stupid behavior. 

The movie gets a lot of mileage out of scenes where the lost group continually meets the same VW bus every 92 minutes exactly (the running time of the film) or where teen vixen Tina (portrayed to a perky T [and A] by Angela Trimbur) needs to be tied up in a life preserver and oven mitts to keep her from popping her top off and thus invite serial killer Billy to attack again. Comedian Adam Devine does his intentionally annoying best as the would-be hunk of the film within the film, who is made up almost entirely of testosterone, and who can't even breathe without making a sexual reference (even though he doesn't really need to breathe at all). Especially effective is the use of how a flashback works inside the film within the film, which may come in handy later for the protagonists (or maybe not sometimes).

Behind the laughs though, something else pulses at the center of The Final Girls. The appearance of these five "other counsellors" in Camp Bloodbath (the actual camp, not the film, as the characters within are at first unaware they exist only inside a movie) has flustered them somewhat, and has at least one of them -- Nancy (also Akerman), the "sweet but shy girl with a guitar" who is Max's mother's character in Camp Bloodbath -- pondering her fate. Doomed to sleep with Kurt, and thereby die at the hand of Billy, over and over again, Nancy begins to bond with Max, who -- as she was in real life -- is still fiercely protective of her mother.

While the more jaded of you out there might see this component as unnecessary sappiness, the scenes between Max and the film version of her mother are what gives real heart to The Final Girls. Without this vital element, the film could just come off as another heartless spoof of horror films. In a film set up as a parody of low art, Farmiga and Akerman impart their characters with enough real feeling, that ultimately makes The Final Girls a comic meditation on loss and how to move forward from it. There are just a lot of broad laughs along the way to cushion you.

Cinema 4: Further into the Future!

Happy New Year, everybody!!! And a Happy Bastille Day to my brother Chris!! (I need not explain...)

I am beginning this new year by not going to the movies, a statement that many of you who have known me forever will find most shocking. I normally try to attend anywhere from three to four films on New Year's Day, with my all-time record in one day being an amazingly well planned-out five several years ago. But this year is different. The weather, my girlfriend's undue illness, and my desire to remain untouched by said illness are forcing a cancellation of my normal day of cinematic lounging. My planned third viewing of Peter Jackson's King Kong and also of Memoirs of a Geisha were cancelled by the rainy, rainy, rainy weather (Pooh would call it "blustery"), and a talked-about evening showing of Rumor Has It became exactly that: a rumor, due to the aforementioned illness.

But I did not pass the time at home in a completely idle fashion. I spent much of the afternoon setting up a second blog site, which is, instead of the focused concentration on all types of movies here at the Pylon, entirely dedicated to stuffing the internet to the gills with my musings on every animated film that I see in the next year. The site is called Cinema 4: Cel Bloc and can be checked out by clicking here. (Or click on the actual title, too. I like to cover my bases.)

Another feature that I added today, which many of you will realize because you are probably looking at this because you received an email today pertaining to it, is a mailing list for the Pylon. Until today, while I had spoken of the site to a handful of people and shown it to a few at work, I had not sent out the location of the site to most of my friends and family. That has all changed as of today. I have also added a mailing list subscription box at the bottom of the page to facilitate this process. (Much thanks to Lindsay of La La Lamarland for helping me set all of this up today.) Now, all members of my mailing list will receive an email informing them anytime that I put up a new post to this page. However, as there should be about 86,000 posts in the next year to the Cel Bloc, I will not send update emails for that new site to the mailing list. I didn't want to bother everyone each and every time that I decided to watch a Porky Pig cartoon. Of course, it could very well have turned out to be a lot of fu-fu-f-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-f-f-fu-fu-uh--a g-g-good time!

And for Pete's sake, people, start up your own blogs! It's so easy, I can do it! Let's go, Bohemians!

Some Gigantic, Turned-On Ape... [The Ballad of Kong Pt. 3]

[Before traipsing deeper into the jungle, read Pt. 1 and Pt. 2...]

A side-trip to another Kong: As I hinted at briefly before, something else happened in the summer of '77 that didn't start out as having anything to do with King Kong, but ended up furthering my giant ape obsession regardless. Star Wars fever had slammed into the earth like a meteor, and my brothers and I were no exceptions to the rest of humanity that year. I had already read the paperback novelization (with the original, purplish Ralph McQuarrie-painted cover released the winter before, not the gold-colored movie poster-draped cover that was in circulation that summer) five times, I had the first couple issues of the comics, and was already buying the trading cards. I was a primed and raring-to-go convert to the Lucas cult before I had even stepped into the theatre.

Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for our parent's pocketbooks, we lived in a town without a movie theatre. In fact, we lived a good fifteen or so miles from the nearest movie theatre, and thus our sojourns into the big city were far and few between; we only saw new movies maybe four or five times a year, if we were lucky. So, when we went, we made sure that we were seeing something we really wanted to see. Usually, it would be, due to our tender ages, the newest Disney flick (like the Witch Mountain movies) or the latest in the Pink Panther or James Bond series (thankfully, my mother was a fan of both). I had started to push things a little more as I reached my teen years, and was able to convince them to see new science-fiction or fantasy movies like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. So, it was not even a light certainty that we would get the opportunity to see this movie that well-timed mass merchandising had already brainwashed us into believing that we had some sort of moral imperative to go see.

This story would have no purpose if we hadn't gone to see it, and yes, after a small amount of pleading and begging, my brother Mark and I eventually wore down my mother's resolve. Meanwhile, my best friend Rusty and his little brother Rodney worked a similar magic on their mom, and thus, we found ourselves crammed into one vehicle one Saturday afternoon, heading into the "big city" of Anchorage, Alaska to make our acquaintance with R2-D2 and the rest of that motley crew of rebel heroes. It would have been a sad situation if the movie had sucked, but even if it did, we did not possess the critical faculties to say so, inexperienced in the ways of movies as we were at that time, and really, we were kids. If someone in the media had convinced us watching paint dry was the hottest and greatest new fad, we would have adopted the consumer lock-step and marched to the nearest house, staring at freshly-brushed walls all summer. So, whether Star Wars was actually any good was beside the point. It's just a happy coincidence that it actually was good.

So, where do you take five sugared-up, buzzing kids who have just spent the late afternoon and early evening watching droids, aliens, lightsaber fights, spaceships, and laser blaster battles? To the local ice cream parlor to get them even more sugared up and buzzing! The parlor, in this instance, was a local establishment (and failed attempt at franchising) called Soapy Smith's, named after the ever so-popular Gold Rush gangster and conman Jefferson "Soapy" Smith. (Because, if there is anything that goes perfect with a banana split, it is extortion and murder. "Would you like a cold case of murder with your strawberry parfait?") But, sugared-up and buzzing Star Wars fanatic kids aren't worried about such ironies; we just wanted more candy and ice cream. As I recall, the plan was actually to get us to eat some actual food, and I do remember having a hot dog, followed by the previously mentioned and murderously intentioned banana split. But I also had five dollars to spend on candy, and because I was deep in the early throes of a both a burgeoning card collecting habit and movie fandom, I bought a couple packets of Topps King Kong trading cards from the candy counter.

These cards were not for the 1933 version that had somewhat recently begun not just my Kong obsession, but also my jonesing for Fay Wray, a woman 57 years my senior. No, these were for the 1976 Dino de Laurentiis version, a film which I had not been given the chance to see (though in a couple years I would get a chance to see it and regret it highly). But standards of quality were not a factor that evening, instead it was the simple fact that I had the opportunity to purchase an item that had a snarling, roaring Kong on the wrapper, and the hope that inside of that wrapper, I would see numerous cards featuring dinosaurs galore. This hope reared its head only because I was unaware that Mr. De Laurentiis did not see fit to loading his Skull Island up with prehistoric beasts, but rather merely with a giant python. (And the man's name is Dino? Talk about not living up to your billing. Tsk tsk...)

So, I bought the cards, but did not open them until we were in the darkness of the car ride home, where Rusty and I began flipping through the cards, the only illumination provided by our pocket flashlights and intermittently glowing streetlights that our vehicle passed. What we discovered, to the complete opposite reaction of horror, was that we had in our hands little cardboard pieces of what to our parents' eyes would have been damn near pornography: a progression of images of a young and scantily clad Jessica Lange being drenched with a waterfall and in various other states of undress that seem like nothing now, but were certainly provocative enough for a couple of young boys at the time. Especially of interest to me was the "waterfall" card, where Kong douses Dwan to wash the mud off of her. Dwan sits with her legs under her on the palm of the giant gorilla's hand and takes her shower. On the card, while it is clear that she is wearing garments, it was easy enough to trick one's mind just enough to convince oneself that she was completely nude. While I have never been that into the Jessica Lange type, at the time, she worked for me just fine.

I said that our parents (or at least one of mine; my mom would have been fine with it) "would have" considered those cards nearly porn, but they never hard the opportunity. We never let our parents see the more intriguing cards, and we managed to keep our cards to the same level of secrecy that our little neighborhood gang eventually managed to keep our fairly well-stocked Playboy collection, which we obtained through means of having sharp little eyes always on the lookout for displays of female pulchritude. Playboy, Penthouse, Oui, Gallery, Genesis, Nugget, High Society, Hustler... we had them all. Never to be discovered by the elders of the village, our "comic book" collection was revered by the neighborhood boys. If you heard us say to one another, "Hey, you want to read some comics?," three out of five times we were heading off to look at titty mags.

But that was in the very near future; that collection would come about in the next year or so. For this moment, all that we had were these, for all purposes, completely innocent trading cards in our pervy little hands. I managed to keep my set of those cards -- completely innocuous by even the standards of that day, but that didn't matter to me then -- hidden from my parents. And I still have each of those cards today. [The images on this page are from my collection.]

It is always astounding to me the moments that stick with you as you shuffle through life. Embarrassing moments, squandered opportunities, and early small perversions all seem to exist in the same file cabinet in my head, while what most people would consider the larger, more important events in a life, like weddings and such, seem to have filtered out of my brain almost as soon as they happened. Somehow, this whole Kong card thing, along with most other movie-related "trivia," has convinced my gray matter that it is of far more revelatory importance to me than those other mislaid events. Somehow, this reveals more of my eventual character than I would realize at the time. And it is probably right.

[To be continued in Pt. 4 here...]

Recently Rated Movies #9: Birthday Drums but a Non-Drumstick Thanksgiving in Santa Rosa

"This is exactly the sort of music that could get me pregnant!" - J-Men Forever (1979)

Every time that I travel somewhere, whether a new city or a town which I have visited numerous times (such as Santa Rosa), and no matter what I am doing and how much I am enjoying it, my eye is always automatically drawn towards every movie theatre that I pass. We could be passing through the schlumpiest village, with no intentions on ever stopping in the accursed hole, and if I see even the most bedraggled movie-house, invariably trapped in between some antique store and some Mom and Pop Hardware Stop, my heart will immediately yearn to stop for a look-see at the joint and, if time permits, a movie. But my love for the movies doesn't merely end at viewing a film. 

I enjoy collecting visits to movie theatres nearly as much as I enjoy going to museums and zoos and the other touristy things that I tend to do on vacations. Especially older theatres from the early or middle part of the 20th century, but I even find a thrill in hitting modern cineplexes, if only to gather extra fuel on how much I continue to despise the postage stamping of the cinema (though I fully acknowledge the upsides of cineplexes, too, minor though they may be). In any hobby, collectors set their own standards: philatelists may prefer to only gather materials from a certain area or era of stamp collecting, or they can try out stamps from any and all eras, countries and types. Such is the way it is for myself and movie theatres. I wish to check out any theatre, and by proxy, any movie, anywhere that I can find one.

Unfortunately, we were so busy that we were unable to hit any theatres on this past weekend's trip up to my brother's house, especially with most of the time taken up with preparing and pulling off my nephew Aerin's (also known as Rupert or the Rupe) awesome fifth birthday party. There was talk of a visit to the Rialto in Santa Rosa to see a midnight show revival of Young Frankenstein, talk which only served to drive me mad: happily insane at first at the possibility of such an occurrence, which then switched to despondency once we discovered that the Brooks-Wilder classic had actually shown two weeks earlier. Drat... and double drat.

Despite this horrid setback, I did manage to view a near handful of DVDs while happily ensconced at The M'Otis Arms (and pick up two interesting discs on our travels into San Francisco). An inaugural viewing of The Princess Bride for the Rupe was nearly as much of an adventure as the film itself. Armed with shield and wooden sword, the self-proclaimed "fearless" five year-old found himself much tested on the field of battle. My brother Otis and I spent the majority of the film calming his anxieties regarding bad guys that start out looking like good guys, good guys that start out looking like bad guys, a hero who dresses in the garb of a masked pirate, the torture machine in the Pit of Despaiiiirrrrr, and especially, the R.O.U.S.'s in the Fire-Swamp.

Refreshingly, though not for the Rupe, the scene that was most upsetting was the savage bit of violence involving Count Rugan's throwing of the dagger into Inigo Montoya's stomach. I recalled my bad dreams after I saw Flynn's Captain Blood at an early (though slightly older) age, even though the film led me to a love for swashbucklers. Of course, despite his fears, the Rupe wouldn't let us turn off the film. And, of course, I spent the majority of the rest of the weekend being lassoed and dispatched in my new role as an avuncular R.O.U.S., though I was often joined in my monstrous service by my Brother Rodent of Unusual Size. As for the film itself, seeing it alongside a much younger pair of eyes that thrilled to its every turn of plot, reminded me of just how nearly perfect Rob Reiner got the original book's tone, and also of what a grand adventure The Princess Bride remains to this day.

Later on Thanksgiving evening came time for the adults (ha!) to watch Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Un long dimanche de fiancailles (A Very Long Engagement), which I missed in the theatres because I was too deeply involved in my move to So Cal, and which I was really pissed off about missing because I adore Audrey Tautou. Marci (my sister-in-law) said that she had heard that Ms. Tautou wasn't really the sweet thing that she portrayed in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (also Jeunet), and that she was supposedly a twat. I answered "Precisely..." 

I enjoyed A Very Long Engagement, as much as I can enjoy a film that immerses itself in the human misery that was World War I so deeply and savagely. I get upset by war pictures (as any sane human should) in much the same way that the Rupe was upset by the dagger scene mentioned above, so much so that much of the film was extremely rough going for me. But I enjoyed the mystery in the film, there were some gorgeously filmed set pieces, and there was some well-played dark humor, as well. As with other Jeunet joints, I will definitely get my own copy at a later date.

Friday night was spent putting together an awesome drum set for the Rupe (and seeing the Keith Moonisms erupt at the party the next day -- by which I mean on the drums -- was the high point of the trip, though the music jam that took hold of the party was pretty sweet, too), but I had spent two nights swearing that Mark and I were going to stay up late some night and watch his copy of J-Men Forever, a spoof of Republic serials and conservative mores that two members of the Firesign Theatre contrived in the late '70s. It says quite proudly on the case that it was a staple of USA's Night Flight lineup throughout the '80s and, sure enough, that is exactly the last place that I saw it myself, around 20 years ago, and I was not going to leave Santa Rosa without watching the goddamn thing. So, our path was clear and, tired as we were from the day's travels and travails, we set ourselves down to view it. 

Luckily, for our sleep-deprived heads, J-Men Forever is only 75 minutes long, though Otis zonked for the last 20 minutes of it. Of course, he had already seen it several times recently. I am most happy to report that J-Men Forever holds up beautifully. Only a few of the jokes are truly dated, and most of the film had me howling with nostalgic delight. It also spawned a small civil skirmish in my brain, with one side laughing uproariously at the screen antics and the other side seeking to heroically defend the '40s serials that were being mocked. But merriment reigned supreme in this battle, and I set aside my outrage and simply enjoyed the experience.

Late Saturday night, my brother Chris, flung down from the boondocks of some wilderness village known as Seattle, joined us for a small reunion which we ended with an early a.m. viewing of a DVD from an issue of The Believer, a literary magazine much in vogue at this point in time. 6 short films of varying genre, style, attitude and length, ranging from less than a couple of minutes to over 20, all joined together at the hip in brother/sisterhood due to the fact that they are merely different from the mainstream mindset. 

Chief amongst these films for me was a hilarious short by Guy Maddin (he of The Saddest Music in the World fame) called Sombra Dolorosa, in which Mexican wrestling, voodoo and cannibalism are combined in an odd-tasting but satisfying stew (much like most of the Maddin that I have seen). The longest short, and equally satisfying as a film, was Squash, where the cutthroat business world finds its way onto a racquetball court, and everything is on the line for a much put-upon employee and his hissable villain of a superior. Ethics schmethics! The briefest film, and the one that I have been thinking about most since I viewed the disc, was Sweeter As the Years Roll By (Pt. 3). It consists of a single static shot of an escalator (it could even be from a surveillance camera), and while the escalator continues to roll ceaselessly, a hand holds a white marker down over the safety grip of the device, drawing one long white line that eventually connects once the track is played out completely. I, for one, have never considered just how much track there was in an escalator, and really have never given escalators much thought in general. That has changed.

On our trip into San Francisco to see the De Young Museum, we did take a side trip over to Haight-Ashbury, where we not only ate our fill of neo-Cuban cuisine at Cha Cha Cha's, but I also managed to hit the Giant Robot store across the street. As much as I would have liked to purchase nearly everything in the joint, I only walked out with a box which could have held any number of figures from Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai), but which turned out, happily for me, to contain Kurosawa-san himself (or, rather, a tiny plastic molded figurine of the director). He even has a change of swell hats! 

At Amoeba Records, I made off (legally) with a copy of The Archers' The Tales of Hoffman, a film which I have never seen but has consistently remained on my "To See" list for much of my life. Additionally, while at the gift shop at the De Young, I purchased, at the passionate behest of Otis, a DVD of In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger. Henry Darger was an artist of whom I have read a several retrospective articles, though I have only seen his art in those same magazines. I was even inspired enough by the little that I had seen and by his story to construct a brief poem in which he is a central figure. I am looking forward to viewing the disc given just how ecstatic both of my brothers are about it.

So, to sum up, while I didn't get to any new (or rather, old) movie theatres, I did manage to see or collect a few things on my travels.

And I am still mad about the Young Frankenstein debacle, though...

The List:

The Princess Bride (1987) DVD - 8
A Very Long Engagement (2004) DVD - 7
J-Men Forever (1979) DVD - 6
Deformer (2000) Believer DVD - 5
Is A Woman (unknown) Believer DVD - n/r
Tortured By Joy (unknown) Believer DVD - n/r
Sombra Dolorosa (2004) Believer DVD - 7
Sweeter As the Years Roll By (Pt. 3) (unknown) Believer DVD - n/r
Squash (2002) Believer DVD - 7