Psychotronic Ketchup: The Fearmakers (1958)

The Fearmakers
Director: Jacques Tourneur // 1958 [TCM]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

"There are millions of people being lied to, taken for suckers! You know, it's a funny thing... they have pure food and drug laws to keep people from buying poison to put in their stomachs. And you're peddling poison to put in their minds!" - Alan Eaton (Dana Andrews)

Oh, how I wanted to make this one of my entries for my Slipped Discs column! I have always just missed watching The Fearmakers through the years, Knowing it was made not long after one of my favorite horror movies, Curse [Night] of the Demon, by that movie's same combination of director and star nonetheless, I was hoping that when I dove into it over the weekend (I recorded it off TCM on a day devoted to Dana Andrews), I would be looking at a lost classic. I would, at least, get a look at a Tourneur film I had not seen, and my hopes were, as usual after years of personal neglect, high for it. And for a stunning first few minutes, where the credits flash by rudely while Andrews is beaten to a bloody pulp as the Chinese attempt to brainwash him in a Korean prison camp, there was an earnestness and savage energy upon the screen, and it seemed as if I had indeed found a lost classic.

But, as with box office receipts, one cannot judge on a movie's opening alone. With Tourneaur's name bringing up the rear, there is a wipe that renders the screen black, and we find Andrews on a plane heading back to his home in Washington. What he is leaving behind in the east, apparently, is the slightest notion of dramatic plausibility, which is not really a necessity in a noirish thriller, but which would help bring things down a little bit when the lead character is speechifyin' at the drop of a hat about fifth columnists and fellow travelers. Andrews plays the former head of a public relations firm, who, after the aforementioned torture, returns to find his agency has been stolen mysteriously out from under him, via a very fishy, fatal "car accident" involving his former partner, and a signing over of the company assets has occurred, none of which he has been informed about until his return.

The agency is now run by Dick Foran, playing the most suspicious head of anything in the history of mankind. There might as well be punctuating organ blasts with each lie he spits back at Andrews' accusations, and since the devious Foran should also be shown wrapped in a flag bearing a hammer and sickle, he hires Andrews back, chiefly so he can get a crack at a senatorial friend of Andrews' who left the agency under the new regime. The senator gets Andrews to check deeper into the files at the agency, helped by a frying-pan-faced but voluptuous secretary played by Marilee Earle, where Andrews gets confirmation that the firm is backing up a series of false front groups. The film is shot so aridly and placid in most scenes, that when it gets to the big moments, such as one of the awesomely campy speeches to which Andrews is prone (and built for, with his self-righteous air) to deliver, it seems as if someone has switched on a light signaling the end of a mere dress rehearsal and the start of the real filming:

"Yes, I can see alright! I can see what you and your phony front groups are manufacturing. You're manufacturing FEAR, in order to sell your "Peace at Any Price" campaign! And it's not going to be very difficult for the senator to find out just WHO is paying the bills! I'm beginning to see how big the puppet is growing, and who is pulling the strings!"

These immensely pulp-ridden scenes, when coupled with Andrews' richly hammy habit of clutching his face every time he gets one of his brainwashing flashbacks, are just simply too much for the rest of the movie to play catch-up. Mel Torme, in a surprising supporting role as Foran's weaselly underling, is merely OK and even out of his league in a movie where one doesn't have to try all that hard to seem a decent actor. Perhaps intentionally, Foran lacks any sense of subtlety that might help us suspend our disbelief for even a second, and Miss Earle, whose head looks like Ann Miller swallowed two of her chorus girls, is quite possibly the blandest actress to ever grace a B-picture. Yet, she does say the key line that helps us realize in a modern sense that, despite how disappointing the film is overall, The Fearmakers might still be a movie that sports major relevance to today's world.

In response to one of Andrews' suppositions, Earle asks, "But, doesn't that give a few people a frightening amount of power?" While this movie spouts off, in the predictable way that filmmakers often had to in that McCarthy-stricken era, about commies and pinkos and everything scary and Red, the chief antagonists, led by Foran's McGinnis, are all recognizable carriers of a disease, while anyone in the world may partake of it, at which Americans, especially politicians, excel: greed. Not exactly the modus operandi of a socialist seeking to subvert citizens to their side; certainly the toxic by-product, though not exclusively, of capitalism. Here, in The Fearmakers, they have taken a stock character -- the greedy, power-hungry industrialist, politician, scientist, cop, businessman -- which could be used in any potboiler situation, tacked the word "communist" onto him without changing his actions in the least, and thrust it out to the audience in the hopes that a) the audience would be too dulled by the repetitions of common movies to even care they were being fed a bunch of pabulum yet again; or b) the real audience they were trying to reach would realize that the film is nothing but a lark, a cheesy con job shat out to appease a con job government breathing down Hollywood's neck.

It could likely be neither, but however they achieved the final product, it plays today for a reason quite apparent in Earle's line above. I will refrain, though you might expect me to, to take another crack at the now-crumbling Bush coup d'état. Earle's line certainly could describe the Trinity of Terror in the White House, especially when coupled with the concept of spreading massive fear to attain "peace at any price." But the film itself, far ahead of it's time and almost definitely completely by accident, is more accurately describing the general way in which business is done nowadays in the Age of Spin. There has been what we now popularly call "spin" since time began, but no time in history has ever been so consumed with the concept as right now. (My own company just recently hired a PR firm, and I would be highly disgusted by the notion if it didn't mean that I never have to crank out a soul-crushing, maudlin, block-of-falsehoods press release ever again.) It might have seemed novel in a B-thriller in 1958, but in 2007, every politician uses it, fake polls and leading questions are de rigueur, and if there is a politician that doesn't employ these methods, Republican or Democrat, then they are simply not going to get very far in today's system. Andrews points at the Lincoln Memorial at one point late in the film and muses: "You know, he was right. You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but nowadays, you don't have to fool ALL the people, just enough to swing it for the Fletchers and the Jessups."

I would suggest that perhaps the time is ripe for a remake of this film, but what would be the point? Everyone knows the game; know one wants to dare change it for being left out in the cold. The light has switched on, people, and dress rehearsal is over. This is the real world now. We might as well give in. No movie is going to save us from the truth we have to face: We are, all of us, bought and paid for, and most of what we do has been predetermined by the corporations we refuse to say "No" to... Ow! Crap! I think I'm getting one of Andrews' headaches!

It looks like the brainwashing worked...

Spout Mavens Disc #2: You're Gonna Miss Me (2005)

You're Gonna Miss Me
Director: Keven McAlester // 2005 [Palm Pictures DVD Screener]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Why is it the traits that we would find repulsive in an everyday, common person if we passed them by or ran them over in the street -- lack of hygiene, shabby clothes, drug addiction, alcoholism, mad ravings, abusive language, foul temperament, outright insanity -- are perfectly fine if they are contained -- in any combination of column A or B -- in the body of a rock star? Behavior that most would find deplorable or from which most would at least attempt to shield the eyes of their children in public has now turned into a cottage industry on film and television, propping up any number -- hell, half the lineup -- on many stations like MTV, VH1 or their short attention-spanned and money-grubbing ilk. Sure, it makes a nice human interest story if Johnny Bollocks cleans up his act and goes back on the road for the first time in twenty years with the Sex Pickles, but it would be even more fun if he were to flame out halfway through the tour and rape a teenybopper groupie, wouldn't it, MTV? Certainly you would be among the first to wag your finger at the rotter -- he's been a baaaad boy, Abbott! -- but you'd never turn the camera off of him, would you? It's not the media's fault, really... after all, we, the doting audience, are lapping up this crap, absolutely unable to stop watching the bad behavior. Because we know, given the opportunity and given free license to act like a juvenile dickweed, we'd jump on it. We'd smoke that; we'd inhale this; we'd inject whatever you threw at us. And we would have hit that groupie, as well. We're all rock stars in our secret hearts these days, and if we happen to discover that Mr. Raving Lunatic in the park used to Mr. Somebody, well, then suddenly it's OK if he craps on the lawn. After all, he's a rock star.

In 2005, I saw a documentary about a mentally fragile individual who had achieved, by almost sheer force of underground celebrity, a legendary status as a sort of musical idiot savant. A man almost wholly trapped inside a childlike world known only to his inner eye, and he would occasionally grace the world with tender and none-too-revealing slices of his mad vision. Damaged, almost babyish, longing, crystalline pop, as delicate as the animals in the glass menagerie. The film was called The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and the film dealt with attempts to get Daniel to perform again after a long hiatus, and attempts by his family, friends, hangers on and fans to try and capture even a sliver of understanding regarding his vision of the world. There is a payoff of sorts in that film, however small, where it seems like something of a catharsis for the subject, his supporters and the viewers as well.

Take that film, replace the artist with a different cult hero living in his own drug-and-asylum wrought inner hell, take away the relatively feel good ending, and you have You're Gonna Miss Me. The difference in my preference between the two films, for me, is based on the fact that while I have been privy to Mr. Johnston's development and eventual regression as an artist since the mid-'80s in any number of rock magazines on which I have thrived since that time, Roky Erickson, the wildman subject of You're Gonna Miss Me, has been known to me since I was 16. I found a copy of Roky Erickson and the Aliens at my old haunt, Budget Tapes and Records, when I was 19, and at that time, I had already bought the seminal collection of psychedelic rock called Nuggets, which featured this film's titular song by his original band, the 13th Floor Elevators. Unlike Johnston -- a minimalist recluse who re-recorded his album material by himself over and over each time he wanted to give somebody a copy -- Erickson was actually a full-blown rock star, with a rough but soaring voice, an edgy way with rhythm on a guitar, a major record deal, a hit single, and a real band that toured and went on American Bandstand. Erickson was the shit. And his music -- jagged shards of Erickson's blues howl spitting out paranoid tales of vampirism, aliens and the walking haunted of the world -- appealed to me immensely in that latest of my teen years. It approached the same spot in my keening soul as when I found Here Are the Sonics! at a garage sale a couple of years later. It was the music I had been looking for; the music I needed to shoot me out of the Top 40 ghetto in which my ears were raised. Subsequently, I spent years, in the era before the internet made it simple to find anything, fruitlessly trying to locate more of his material.

Through the '80s, the happy purchase of Don't Slander Me and Gremlins Have Pictures on cassette kept the Erickson train moving for me, but through reviews in Rolling Stone and other magazines, I was starting to hear tales about Erickson that went far beyond what I knew about him through the songs alone. Tales of madness, tales of woe; his wild appearance and his life of relative squalor; that he was another Syd Barrett, another tragic figure of the drug-fueled rock industry, barely hanging onto whatever sanity electroshock therapy hadn't buzzed out of him. Then, Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, an Erickson tribute album featuring R.E.M. (amongst others), came out, and since I was an adherent of that band as well, it was a must buy for me. I remember reading about Erickson's proclivity for turning on every appliance in the house to the loudest level possible to create a wall of white noise to which he might fall asleep, and I adapted it into an only-slightly effective means by which to write for a handful of months in the mid-'90s. There I was, a slightly well-adjusted job-holding member of society, and I was seeking to duplicate in my own home the ravings of a man whom I only knew through a couple record covers and a handful of photos in a magazine, of a man whom I would cross the street to avoid based on his appearance alone. And how was I to know whether all of this reportage on Roky was bullshit or not?

Hence the film. The most ironic thing in You're Gonna Miss Me is the title, because truly, how can you miss someone that you don't really know at all? I certainly knew little about the man directly through those albums, record reviews and scant photographic evidence. And much of the film merely corroborates what I knew before, hitting all of the usual touchstones upon his road to paranoid schizophrenia: his old band, the LSD, the electroshock, the marijuana bust that sent him eventually to a maximum-security insane asylum, his release and eventual solo career, and then his virtual seclusion alongside his tree-mother, from which apple-Erickson clearly fell in relatively close proximity. And through the entire film, outside of too-little footage of the man in his true element - the stage - Erickson is practically a cipher, lost deep within his head, blankly staring at everything with a slight smirk, watching far too much television at sound levels that the Who never approached, or merely mumbling a few non-sequiturs to his mother or brother. The brief sound and film clips of his previous life do nothing to convey to us who he really is. We only know what he was at one time, and where he ended up. Unlike Johnston, who may be as trapped in his illness as much as Erickson but who nonetheless still conveys a certain sense of creative activity underneath it all, Roky is all but unknowable.

We are given glimpses of a possible opening up, though, and after he is, via court action, given over to his brother for caretaking, Roky starts attending therapy. It gives us (and his family) hope, but the film leaves us dangling, unlike the Johnston film. Perhaps, in the cliche, it's more like life that way, but for someone who has never had enough of Erickson, the film's ambiguous finish is not enough for me. Maybe the film came out just a little too soon. Erickson is currently performing once more, on his first tour in two decades and even playing at huge festivals like Bumbershoot, but the film gives us no mention of this, not even in a postscript. Perhaps the DVD has some extra mention of his successful therapeutic sessions, but on the screener I saw, we are only left with the possibility that some good may come out of them, even if in the last session they show, he cannot remember what he was told in the previous session. Am I to derive some sense of change from this? Because that is not what I get from it. And the saddest part, for the video company, is that they have lost some money by my receiving this screener. This film was a no-brainer purchase for me -- I am the target audience for this doc -- but now, after seeing it, even if I had to give the screener back, I still wouldn't buy the film for my collection. There is not enough performance in it for me to return (I know the full DVD has a series of them on it, but why couldn't they be in the regular film?). It's just Roky on the rocks, and no real sense that anything has been lost by his absence.

This is the real crime, because the best moments in the film are two instances where he is persuaded -- actually, goaded -- to pick up a guitar and sing. Stunningly, this shambling recluse somehow has it in him to start strumming again like he had never stopped, and then out of his dilapidated three-toothed maw comes that weathered but oddly beautiful voice. And the songs really sting, because we then see the artist inside the wreckage. The man we would otherwise never allow near us. The man we're gonna really miss...

Shakin' All Over...

Hairspray
Director: Adam Shankman // 2007 [Century Promenade 25, Anaheim]
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

I will not lie, and say outright that I was wholly unprepared for how much I shook while watching Hairspray the other night. I don't mean with fear or anger, but from outright dancing in my seat. I don't friggin' dance... and I spent nearly two full hours wiggling in my seat... in a movie theatre... with Jen next to me, who was enjoying the film equally as much as I was, but whose cool resolve hardly allowed her to move while she did so. Going home, with snippets of numerous songs bouncing about the interior of my skull, I continued to tap my feet and fingers. Falling asleep, I was still shaking from the music, rocking myself into slumber. And then, waking up at 3 a.m. to cease the aching of a full bladder, my stumble-bum journey to our room of rest found the blessed wail of Elijah Kelly continuing to resound in my ears.

This does not happen often, even with films that I enjoy greatly, but when the film's credits finished that evening, as we stood up, I told Jen that, "I wouldn't mind one bit if we watched it again RIGHT NOW!" She agreed, saying she just did not want to leave that mood she was feeling: that sincerely buoyant joyousness that one finds so rarely in films these days, or really, ever. It is an elusive thing, this craving to crawl into a movie screen to join the party; so many scenes of this nature seem like, well, so much acting -- they seem to be what they actually are: a put-on. Purely business. In Hairspray, you have a film that actually feels like it is as much of a release for the actors as it is for the characters whom they are portraying. This feeling doesn't come purely from the music. It's about mood and its entirely viral passing from screen to participant.

Yes, I had heard the Broadway cast recording for Hairspray a couple of times, so I knew most of the songs as passing acquaintances, but while the music then seemed fun and some of the lyrics struck me as archly humorous, there is something to be said for actually seeing the show from whence the music came. As much as I love Monty Python, I know that listening to Spam-A-Lot is an entirely different experience from actually taking it in via all of one's senses. Half of the fun is in seeing it performed. Owning the soundtrack to Rocky Horror as a teenager may have prepared me lyrically for when I would eventually first see it onscreen, but it was only part of the experience. Unless you are actually involved in theatre, I imagine it's kind of hard to be a fan of the genre, given that these shows tend to hang out in places like London and Broadway (and now, Vegas) before hitting the road in slightly inferior but usually still worthwhile productions. Until that opportunity presents itself, one has no choice but to take in these shows purely aurally, and often, that is simply not enough to get me to commit to a show. Jen is different from me in that aspect, but she is actually an actress, and like my friends Leif and Ali, she will often memorize entire scores long before she even gets near the show. Of course, they are often doing this with the hopes that eventually they will get the chance to audition for a local production of said show, but there is also flat-out admiration for the music at play here as well. (They ain't memorizin' crap for a show they don't love...) I don't have that need. I have thousands of regular albums to which I may listen; I don't need Broadway as a musical outlet.

Besides, with Hairspray, I was still somewhat skeptical, due to my love for the original earthy John Waters film from 1988. You know, the one that made Ricki Lake a star and turned out to be Divine's last starring role with Waters before his/her death? Yeah, sometimes people forget this stuff. So, here it is, 20 years later, and I am watching Hairspray in a theatre again. But while the earlier film shared this film's yearning soul and earnestness, the 2007 model, outfitted with the shiny girl-group strut of Marc Shaiman's remarkable score, does something that Waters' first try didn't. We have had a couple of graphic designers at my job who both hated it when our boss would tell them that their work "popped." (Apparently, graphic designers hate popping...) Well, to be true to the point and for lack of a better term, this one truly POPS! For all of our advancements in special effects and filmmaking techniques over the years, who would have thought that the way to truly suck an audience into a scene would be to properly stage and film a dance sequence so that the screen rocked with all of the passion of the performers within it.

It was at the tail end of the film that I saw the name Adam Shankman leap onto the screen, first as Director of Choreography and then as the actual director of the film itself. Since then, not really knowing who he was, I have read much in the way of online rips upon Mr. Shankman's personage. As it turns out, he has a rather undistinguished career as a Hollywood helmer, making the likes of The Pacifier, Bringing Down the House, The Wedding Planner, A Walk to Remember and Cheaper By the Dozen 2, none of which I have even come close to seeing. Not being able to comment on his past work, I will ask this: Is it possible, Shankman haters of the internet, that perhaps, as a filmmaker, he simply had not found his niche yet, or had yet to get the chance to direct a film in which he used his chief professional strength: that of a dance choreographer? Not that being a choreographer who directs is always a good thing for a movie musical (though in the cases of Bob Fosse and Stanley Donen, it paid off overall), but I am going to have to admit that Shankman's eye and background in stage dance is probably the chief cause for the success of this film, outside of the already present lyrics and score.

But what about the cast? Strangely, for a film in which there is such a large amount (no pun intended) of publicity over the drag casting of John Travolta, and even though most of the "name" performers acquit themselves admirably in their roles, with the roll of the credits unspooling before me at the film's close, I found these performances figured into my sense of immense pleasure only tangentially. For the most part, this film belongs to the young, and the aforementioned Mr. Kelly, Zac Efron and Nikki Blonsky ruled the school for me. Their pure joy at just being alive within the film was all that I needed to win me over. The film makes me feel, through the haze of satiric nostalgia, that for two hours, this cynically optimistic pessimist is actually in league with the generally culturally misguided youth of this country.

I will point out one exception, and it is purely because numerous reviewers have wringly sought to single him out as a possible miscasting, and that is Christopher Walken. It seems to be felt that because he have grown inured to Mr. Walken's "odd" inflections and line readings, that perhaps he is a detriment to the role. I say that the opposite is the case: I will state that Walken's role of Mr. Turnblad actually becomes the soulful center of the film, and it is partially due to Walken's mannered eccentricities that the role strikes one to be as moving as it is. Walken seems to have grown into this crazy-haired tumbleweed of verbal tics in the collective movie-going consciousness (and some of this is his own fault), but Hairspray is sweet revenge indeed for those who remember how effective he can be in the right role. (Please don't dismiss the fact that he has a background as a dancer, too. Much of the current audience is probably too young to have seen him in the Steve Martin version of Pennies from Heaven, where he did a hilariously threatening striptease.) This is the right role for him.

And this is, for now, the right movie for me. Yes, it has a weak middle section, but so did the original film, and if there was something Waters' first take was missing, it was even more musical sequences, which this version happily supplies. And, yes, its politics are fairly empty and predictable when thrown under a too-closely focused instrument, but for a musical filled with horny teenagers, its remarkable that the show has any deeper thoughts than "Will she get together with him?" Take it as a good time, and be thankful it tries to say anything at all. No one is going to The Sound of Music for an accurate portrayal of life under the Nazi regime. Sing along with the token songs of protest, hit the streets to march with the kids, and then make sure to get to the studio in time for the big dance show. I made it, and I am still shakin' all over...

Recently Rated Movies #54: A Truly Mind-Boggling Capacity for Dreck...

Is that what I have, O' Friend of Mine, who accuses me of such? A capacity for dreck that is truly mind-boggling? By what standard are we gauging the level of artfulness here? Is it by a merely standard James Garner comedy from the '60s or do you have a secret stash of Truffaut, Godard and Melville hidden somewhere, and thus, all other movies are instantly cursed to become suffused and laid low by the unearthly glow emanating from this golden treasure of cinematic holiness?

I ask because you have looked over my posts from the past year and somehow determined that I am trapped within a hell of my own making, watching an endless array of terrible films, and having no way out of the situation. You have said you wish to come here and "slap some class back into" me, but who is making the determination of class? And if there is a word that truly offends me in the English language, and a word and variety of definitions that I find to be the source of much of mankind's woes, it is "class." Or perhaps the definition of the word that is truly meant is "taste," and again, I would remind you that it is a purely subjective thing.

You are also forgetting (and you should know this well through regular perusals of this blog) that when I do choose to watch crap (and also don't forget that I do recognize most of this "crap" as exactly that), I do so with purpose. The Psychotronic project is as important to me as breathing, and even the worst piece of, er, dreck, can still have major importance to me research-wise. I will also point out that the one thing I do not do is determine a film's worth before I have seen it. It is only through watching the fucking thing that one can decide whether it is good or not, and oftentimes, one can truly be surprised. It's the only reason I watch films at all: the hope that I will be surprised by something I haven't seen or didn't expect to be any good.

Lastly, if you really look at the lists of the films I have watched over the past two years of this blog, one thing should be abundantly clear: I actually am one of the more well-rounded film viewers out here in the blogosphere. The films I catalog are from everywhere on earth, from every decade in film history, from every genre known to exist, and of many varied lengths, from shorts to features to silents to animation to film noir to... well, everything. I am only watching dreck if EVERYTHING is dreck. And if everything outside of a shortly defined period of time is dreck, well then, I say, let your mind be boggled! Because I am not going to stop...

The List:

Let's Go to Prison
Dir: Bob Odenkirk // 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Les Anges Exterminateurs [Exterminating Angels]
Dir: Jean-Claude Brisseau // France, 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Accepted
Dir: Steve Pink // 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Zodiac
Dir: David Fincher // 2007 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

Neptune's Daughter
Dir: Edward Buzzell // 1949 [TCM]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Fast Food Nation
Dir: Richard Linklater // 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Recently Rated Movies #53: A Brief Pause to Refresh...

Please, longtime readers of this site, bear with me for this post. It's mainly going to be a list, and it's going to be long. Efforts to write about every movie that I see, inside a time construct roughly approximating the order in which I saw those films, have proven fruitless as of late. I see far too many movies, and have far too little personal writing time, given the evil brain-draining demands of my day job and the fact that I wish to have a continuance of my relationship with my significant other (in addition to actually watching these films), and thus, with this post, I am going to play a little catch up.

Significant changes have occurred in my life to get me to this point, not the least of which is a renewed interest in my personal health. I have put on over twenty pounds since I moved to Anaheim almost 2-1/2 years ago, and a heightened cholesterol level, breathing problems at night, and a general sense of ickiness left me flustered and sick with myself. Then, the Orange County Transit Authority bus strike hit, and I was left with one option only: walk 3 miles to and 3 miles home from work each day. I had already done 3 miles total each day from my old job in Anchorage, so I was merely doubling my old routine. As of today, I haven't caught a bus on a workday for five full weeks, walking a total of 129 miles in that time, not counting mileage on my walks with the pups or going places on the weekend. Additionally, I cut out my regular soda routine at work two full months ago (I do not keep it at home either, but I haven't done that for four months). What's more, I am eating smaller amounts at meals, eating only half of anything I order when out and about, and upping the frequency of these small meals. And, eating a lot more in the way of fruits and veggies.

The result? The happy loss of a handful of pounds thus far, the lessening of the ol' love handles, and a severe boost to my already rather robust (ask anyone who has ever been in a room with me) energy level. Dr. Pepper, or any soda, which I will still have when at a restaurant, now tastes almost foreign and far too sweet to me. My headaches, for the most part, which used to be several times a week, have almost totally dissipated into an awful memory (I now get my caffeine from tea, and have come to believe the bulk of my brainache problems stemmed from the massive amounts of sugar I was intaking). I have also discovered that regular exercise is much like any type of addiction; I have merely shifted from a bad to a good one. Personally, I feel better now than I have felt for several years, and I look forward to getting back to my fightin' weight...

The other big recent change is that I have been spending undue amounts of time on a website called Spout, which I have written about a couple of times before, and where I am now part of a review group where we receive promotional screeners for films and then are obligated to review them for the site. The best part is that I get to keep the DVDs that they send me -- gratis. All of the reviews will appear here as well (and, vice versa, most other posts here will appear there eventually); you may have noticed my post last week for my first Spout Mavens review, Familia, which completely surprised me as I let myself slip into pre-judgment over its cover, something I am fighting to control. I am currently working on getting my film lists matching up with my similar personal lists on IMDB, and have currently rated over 6,400 movies there, also finding out in the process that I have spent well over 15 months of my existence watching the movies on that list once. I don't even want to think about how much time that is when weighing those films I have seen over 20 times, like Kane or Falcon, or Kong, which I have seen probably around 40 to 50 times (I have watched it yearly since I was about 13, and then some...) Oy!

So, if I seem distracted and not posting a lot on here lately, well, it's because I've been exactly that. II meant, at one point, to write about most of the films that appear below, and I likely will for most of them at some point. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am seeing new films in the theatre, something which I don't often write about, and I am now making strides to start getting back to where I was: a constant, buzzing annoyance. Bzzz...

The List (in no particular order):
Papurika
Dir: Satoshi Kon // 2007 [Edwards Irvine, Irvine CA]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Umberto D.
Dir: Vittorio de Sica // 1952 [Critertion Collection DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

Shrek the Third
Dir: Chris Miller // 2007 [Century Stadium Promenade, Orange CA]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

28 Weeks Later
Dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo // 2007 [AMC Downtown Disney 12, Anaheim CA]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Dir: Gore Verbinski // 2007 [AMC Downtown Disney 12, Anaheim CA]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Ed Gein
Dir: Chuck Parello // 2000 [Showtime]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Marebito [The Stranger From Afar]
Dir: Takashi Shimizu// Japanese, 2004 [Showtime Beyond]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

A Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus
Dir: Randy Olson // 2006 [IFC]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

The Barefoot Executive
Dir: Robert Butler // 1971 [TCM]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Buddha's Palm and Dragon Fist
Dir: ?? // 197? [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Gaau ji [Dumplings]
Dir: Fruit Chan // [Sundance]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Namu, the Killer Whale
Dir: László Benedek // 1966 [TCM]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Hot Fuzz
Dir: Edgar Wright // 2007 [Edwards Brea Stadium West 10]
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu
Dir: Takashi Miike // Japanese, 2003 [Showtime Beyond]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Kibakichi: Bakko-yokaiden
Dir: Tomoo Haraguchi // Japanese, 2004 [Showtime Beyond]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Jingi no hakaba [Graveyard of Honor]
Dir: Kinji Fukasaku // Japanese, 1975 [IFC]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Il mio nome è Nessuno [My Name is Nobody]
Dir: Tonino Valerii // Italian, 1973 [TCM]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Spider-Man 3
Dir: Sam Raimi // 2007 [Century Stadium Promenade 25, Orange CA]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Blades of Glory
Dir: Josh Gordon & Will Speck // 2007 [Century Stadium Promenade 25, Orange CA]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Croupier
Dir: Mike Hodges // 1998 [Showtime]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Creature Unknown
Dir: Michael Burnett // 2004 [Showtime]
Cinema 4 Rating: 3

Octopus
Dir: John Eyres // 2000 [Sci-Fi]
Cinema 4 Rating: 3

Calvaire
Dir: Fabrice Du Welz // 2004 [Showtime]
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Rokugatsu no hebi [A Snake of June]
Dir: Shinya Tsukamoto // Japanese, 2002 [Sundance]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Romasanta [Werewolf Hunter: Romasanta]
Dir: Paco Plaza // Spanish, 2004 [Showtime]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Whisky Galore!
Dir: Alexander Mackendrick // British, 1949 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

FUCK
Dir: Steve Anderson // 2005 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Mimic: Sentinel
Dir: J.T. Petty // 2003 [Showtime]
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

When A Stranger Calls
Dir: Simon West // 2006 (Showtime]
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Bulletproof Monk
Dir: Paul Hunter // 2003 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Sora-te baka ichidai [Karate for Life]
Dir: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi // Japanese, 1977 [IFC]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Gendai yakuza: hito-kiri yota [Street Mobster]
Dir: Kinji Fukasaku // Japanese, 1972 [IFC]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Three Days of the Condor
Dir: Sydney Pollack // 1975 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Vanishing Point
Dir: Richard C. Sarafian // 1971 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Spout Mavens Disc #1: Familia (2005)

Familia
Director: Louise Archambault // 2005, Canadian [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

What I had been fearing most upon joining the Spout Mavens group happened the moment the package holding my first group screener DVD arrived in the mail. Though I try not to be a cover-judger, as I ripped apart the envelope, my heart sank as my eyes were greeted by the image of two mothers and their respective daughters, posing and smiling in a manner that would no doubt be undermined by their actions within the film itself. It was exactly the sort of cover to which, if I ever set foot in a video store again, I would not even give a full first glance, let alone a second one, on the assumption that there was no way I could ever relate personally to the idiots gracing it. This is not snobbishness on my part (though some drama-ridden idiots of the same ilk and manner would likely maintain it is), but merely personal choice.

I tend to avoid drama. I don't mean totally: I love the device itself, and you can't have suspense or mystery without it; it's not like I only like comedy in my films. What I don't embrace, both in my personal life and in most forms of media and genre (outside of Shakespeare, which is so stylized as to be its own identifiable genre), is blankly human drama. You might find a four-hour study of O'Neill-type alcoholism fascinating; I couldn't care less. I might enjoy the acting and production details, but after about twenty minutes of some douche complaining about how Daddy didn't love them enough and that's why they took up the bottle and smacked the wife around and touched their daughter and so on and so on and so on, ad nauseum ... well, I just want to reach through the screen and crack that bottle over their skull and rid the Earth of a blight upon its surface. Of all the things in which I hold the least interest in this world, tops would have to be The Human Condition, that group-ego construct that tries to make us believe the inane falsity that we are all connected together by some undeniable force of cosmic will specific to the human race only. Well, if there really were such a thing as that, we wouldn't have the need for places like MySpace or Facebook or Match.com or even Spout; you could just imagine the person to whom we most wish to connect and, somewhere across the Atlantic, a French schoolgirl would magically feel her skirt fly up...

Speaking of French schoolgirls, or rather, Canadian ones who speak French in Québec, Familia centers itself around two mothers who have a parental attentiveness range from radically different ends of the spectrum, but who have similar results regardless of what skills they employ: they are both shitty at raising their daughters. Michèle is a gambling addict on the run from her steroid-selling boyfriend, to whom she owes a hell of a lot of money due to her propensity for bleeding cash at late-night poker games or pouring coins into cold-hearted slot machines. After being spurned for help by her own mother (her stepfather is more than willing to part with some bills -- for a price, of course), Michèle and her teenage daughter end up crashing at her old pal Janine's place, herself afflicted with her own pair of crushing addictions: a sheltering attitude toward her own daughter, whom she treats like a living baby doll (and who calls her "Hitler" behind her back), and a growing obsessiveness over the whereabouts of her wayward husband, whom she believes has taken a mistress while purportedly off on constant business trips.

It's hard to speak about most of the film without giving away some of the more shocking plot points, but it would not give away anything to say that the placid chick-flick surface embraced on the DVD cover is broken quickly and rudely by the nasty streak within the film. Incest, prostitution, adultery, internet porn, abortion, etc., etc. -- is there nothing these seemingly nice, normal people won't do to prove my initial point about the cover wrong? And while she looks like Melanie Griffith and Billy Idol had a baby that toppled over into a weed-whacker, I wouldn't mind living next door to Michele, because, really, there's almost nothing she won't do to ante up in that night's poker game. Desperation makes for content neighbors...

This is not a film about coming clean about one's addictions and then making a concentrated stab at rehabilitating oneself; the question is about what effect the sins of each mother will have on their respective daughters. (From the glimpse we get of the grandmothers of these characters, it could well be a sad future tale indeed, as it has clearly gone a couple generations already.) While there is a cursory attempt on one character's part to amend her behavior, and certain personal faults and ties are recognized and strengthened, the film seems far more interested in the other mother's slow, crippling descent into a whirlpool of madness that will leave everyone, both the characters involved and the viewer, reeling with a sort of nauseous disbelief at the woman's cruel (but somewhat understandable) machinations. I was confused, actually, by the intentions of the director in the set-up of this plotline; there is a point where I felt a crucial bit of information is given up too early, but it didn't really matter: with the reveal at the end came the dropping of my jaw at the character's temerity.

It was the final nail in my cover-judging coffin; I will now consider this fault to be recognized and trounced. (There are many, many others to go.) With slow-boiling nastiness and some persuasive acting from both mothers and at least one of the daughters (the leads are apparently household names above the 49th Parallel, but who knew this below it? Not me...), Familia slowly won me over despite my preconceptions over the sort of "drama" I was expecting to confront. It does make me wonder, though, if my Dad had similar problems with judging video covers that I never knew about it. Hmmm... Now I just feel so... so... betrayed. It's enough to lead one to drink...

Slipped Discs: Cast A Deadly Spell (1991)

Cast A Deadly Spell
Director: Martin Campbell // 1991, HBO [VHS]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

There came a point in my youthful exuberance for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where simply memorizing the lyrics to the thing became less of a sticking point, and owning all of the movies either referenced in or inspirational to the film became far more important to me. As time wore on, as others sang about me or tossed toast over my head at the screen, I would sit there, increasingly annoyed at the people who would jump the gun on lines or were just assholes in general, and think about the visual and lyrical references scattered throughout the show, and remind myself, "Oh, I've got to find a copy of that!"

I think that I eventually did it -- collected all of the tagged flicks within that film -- though I haven't checked for an awfully long time. If I didn't own all of them, I had, at least, seen all of the films mentioned. And, I believe that I reached a certain immersion point within my collection where it didn't matter whether or not I owned all of them; I had seen and read enough where just knowing the reference was enough. Simply knowing about The Day of the Triffids (actually a favorite film and book since childhood, with an odd history within my family) became more important in the long run than actually seeing or reading it, though I would never want one to miss out on seeing "Janette Scott fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills." Some things are better experienced, but simply "getting" references can take you a long way in enjoying something along the lines of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Yes, I know people who have told me they could not get into it because they didn't get the jokes, but I know other people who love the show even if I have to explain an obscure nod to a mid-'70s television commercial or Nabokov pun to them. Besides, and it kills me that people don't do more of this in real life, but I take the opportunity when confronted with something I don't know or understand to find out more about the subject. If I don't get a joke or reference, I try to figure out why I didn't get it.

This leads to both my reverence for a delightful film that HBO aired endlessly throughout the '90s (and even made a sequel to it due to its popularity), Cast A Deadly Spell, and my disgust with why this Emmy-winning cable-original film is not available on DVD (as of yet). Top-loaded with references to -- what? everything? -- movies, books, short stories, the occult, film directors, writers, film noir, Cast is led by a gruff and charming performance by Fred Ward as Harry Phillip Lovecraft, a washed-up P.I. who just happens to be the only person in a fantasy 1940's L.A. that refuses to jump onto the bandwagon and use magic to advance his career or seemingly better his life. Everyone uses magic in the same manner that everyone in our world does something as mundane as watching television or eating cereal. It is simply a fact of life, but Lovecraft, for various personal reasons, refuses to join the trend. This, of course, makes him the perfect choice for David Warner's sketchy millionaire (who has a hot daughter who hunts unicorns with a bow and arrow in her spare time when she is not flirting with every man who comes into view) to hire Lovecraft to track down the accursed volume known as the Necronomicon. Lovecraft has to battle his way through numerous encounters with monsters, zombies, gremlins and rune-wielding gangster wizards, all the while juggling a renewed affair with his old flame, played with lip-quivering smokiness by Julianne Moore. What do you do when you are stuck in a town where the unreal is an everyday occurrence and no one is ever what they seem to be? Throw back a slug of whiskey, keep your wits about you, and hit 'em hard where they least expect it.

But, all of the clever references in the world don't necessarily measure up to true wit -- example: The Lost Boys, a film I loved when it first came out, but now can't stand at all, except as a ham-and-cheese festival -- but Cast has a sharp tongue beyond the name-dropping and cartoon-like makeup and special effects. There are a multitude of throwaway lines in nearly every scene, and everyone, even his friends, takes a verbal crack at Lovecraft. But, Ward's character has soul, too, and while the film doesn't let us take it too seriously, we do get a strong sense for the deep, abiding betrayal and hurt that Lovecraft feels. (The noir atmosphere helps immeasurably in this area, as well.) Add genre favorite Clancy Brown to the mix, and early and able direction from the now well-known Bond director, Martin Campbell, and what more could you wish for?

Well, had I magic resources at my fingertips, I would wish for this to come out on DVD. My long-out-of-print VHS copy is getting rather worn and jumpy, and sincerely, I don't remember the color scheme of the film as it was shown on cable being as suffused with red as the copy I have been checking out every year or so for the past decade. They can release it on a dual disc with the inferior sequel, Witch Hunt (with a miscast Dennis Hopper in the Ward role), and I wouldn't care. As long as it comes out on disc. Much like my worn-to-the-nubs Rocky Horror VHS, which eventually found sweet release thanks to the advent of DVD, this one needs to arrive in the nick of time. I'm afraid that the VCR is going to eventually tire of my searching out each and every last reference in the film...