This Week in Rixflix #1: March 10-16, 2017

I watch a hell of a lot of feature-length films, not just daily (my average this year is still well over three a day), but in any way you can cut my viewing list: weekly, monthly, annually, etc. In my drive to get back to writing regularly about film, I often find myself struggling over what films I should review, especially when I would really like to write about all of them. But when you run two other regular blogs and share two others, time gets crunched and spit back out at you pretty fast.

In an effort to at least acknowledge the wide variety of films and genres I encounter on a weekly basis, I am starting this new regular series on the Pylon called This Week in Rixflix, the last word in the title being my personal term for the movies that get added to my film database as I watch them. Each week with present a recap of the films or other interesting entertainments seen by me in the preceding seven days – detailed in the graphic at the top of this article –  and after I have pulled out the titles for which I have greater plans on one of my websites, I will then select a handful of films from that week's list on which I will expound below.

Like anything on this website, This Week in Rixflix is an experiment. If this works out comfortably for me, I will continue to do it. But if it suddenly disappears for several weeks, it is very likely that I have given up on the cause. Let's hope that it works out for me...

This week's feature film count: 17; 16 first-time viewings and 1 replay (Nomads).
Highest rated films: The Enemy Below (1957) and The Lego Batman Movie (2017) – 8/9 each.
Lowest rated films: Ski Troop Attack (1960) and Here Come the Tigers (1978) – 3/9 each

For the Love of Spock (2016) Dir.: Adam Nimoy - I freely admit that my interest in science-fiction as a lad was more due directly to TV series like Star Trek, Lost in Space, and The Six Million Dollar Man than it was Star Wars. Yes, George Lucas' film immensely special to me, but I only got to see it in a theatre a few times in its initial and second releases. Those shows were on my television constantly, if not daily in the case of the first two, then weekly with the visits of Col. Steve Austin. On Star Trek, while Kirk and the rest were all terrific, Mr. Spock was the... well, not man – or human "man" – since he was half-Vulcan. He was, looking back, really more of a super-hero to us. He had powers no one else on the ship had; he could mind-meld, had a computer-like brain, and he had that nerve pinch thingie. Spock kicked major ass. In this love letter of a documentary from a doting son who misses his recently departed father, Adam Nimoy gives us a full bio of Leonard Nimoy, a hard-working actor who suddenly finds himself graced with the adoration of tens of millions of fans. But we also see behind the curtain as the elder Nimoy struggles with keeping his artistic sense even as his life seems to get swallowed by the cult popularity of a character he played to low ratings for three years in the late '60s. He releases records, keeps acting on other shows, and even writes a book titled I Am Not Spock to fight back against typecasting. But Mr. Spock would not leave him be, as the Star Trek cult exploded in the '70s and expanded to the movies, where Nimoy was able to leverage his fame for the chance to direct numerous movies. This film is for more than just the Trek completist, and is not solely a nerd paradise populated by geek references. For the Love of Spock allows even the casual movie fan the chance to enter into the life of an interesting and talented individual, and to see how his fame created complications in his relationships with his children, but also gave him the drive to reconcile with them later in his life. TC4P Rating: 7/9

I Am Your Father (2015) Dir.: Toni Bestard & Marcos Cabotá - More familial relationships, but of a far different stripe. And yes, this time, the focus is squarely on Star Wars, because in I Am Your Father, we get a deep profile of actor David Prowse, otherwise better known in America as the body that inhabited the costume in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. (Or, at least, parts of those films, because he was constantly at odds over scenes and screen time shared with his stunt doubles.) It is very interesting to see the full scope of Prowse's career (A Clockwork Orange, Doctor Who, Jabberwocky, and his many years as the popular Green Cross Code Man in England), but it is simply frustrating that the filmmakers were not able to get more response from Lucasfilm over Prowse's seemingly nasty removal from most official Star Wars functions and celebrations. Thanks to a few things that Prowse has or has not said or done over the years, debates rage over what really happened between the former Sith Lord and his one-time masters. This leaves the film a little too one-sided in its subject's favor, though this is not his fault or the directors, who from all accounts made a massive effort to get all sides of the story here. It is still an engaging story, and Prowse himself is a most appealing subject. TC4P Rating: 6/9

B.F.'s Daughter (1948) Dir.: Robert Z. Leonard - Van Heflin is just one of those 1940s movie stars to whom I have never really warmed. He's not a bad actor, just a little hammy and, in my opinion, miscast in several roles in which I have seen him. (MGM's 1948 version of The Three Musketeers, for instance – but Gene Kelly makes for a great super-athletic D'Artagnan). B.F.'s Daughter is an example of how the preset excellence of the Hollywood studio system won this viewer over despite having zero actual interest in the film. Poor intellectual Heflin (who is obsessed with economic theory and how the Man is keeping the little guy down, i.e. a Commie in those days) marries rich glamour girl Barbara Stanwyck – who is always marrying guys not even worth half her salt – and then she and her family precede to sneakily advance Heflin's career without him knowing it. Lots of arguments over wanting to prove he can make it on his own terms and admissions of guilt and unrequited love commence. It's all blustery and phony, features yet another grand Charles Coburn performance, and Stanwyck is her usual strong self in yet another role where she still seriously needed to whoop her lover's ass but good. I just wish the film had a bit more oomph, but Heflin kind of keeps it down. TC4P Rating: 6/9

Party Girl (1958) Dir.: Nicholas Ray - The latest film in my drive to get closer to see all of cult director Ray's oeuvre, Party Girl is really fun as long as Cyd Charisse is onstage in one of her far too few dance routines, but then makes a mistake in relegating her to the role of scenery when she out of the spotlight. (For a film that features her boldly in its poster as the main attraction, Ray sure seems to want to hide her much of the time.) Quite literally a "party girl" who dances on the nightclub scene, Charisse finds romance with a semi-crooked lawyer played (well) by Robert Taylor, but they get mixed up with some of Taylor's mob clients, and eventually have to fight and think their way out of the jam. It's a gorgeous looking film, shot in  only the brightest of hues in Cinemascope, but the story has no room for the characters to breathe, and it really just becomes more mob business as usual. Charisse, as I said, is pretty much wasted once she is turned to simply a girlfriend who represents a better life for Taylor's character. However, it should be seen by film fanatics for the long-legged Charisse's dancing, and for the set decoration, costuming, and cinematography. TC4P Rating: 6/9

Whistling in Dixie (1942) Dir.: S. Sylvan Simon - The second of the "Whistling" mystery trilogy featuring star Red Skelton quite early in his film career, your appreciation of this film will depend on your tolerance for its hero. I was raised in my very early years on a diet of The Red Skelton Hour, where I caught early glimpses of the Muppets, and subsequently never developed a few of clowns because of Mr. Skelton, who frequently employed clown techniques and makeup in his squeaky clean comic routines. Would I enjoy that show today? Not sure. My liking of Skelton runs hot and cold, and I find it necessary to not watch several of his films in a row. This one is aided by the prescence of character actor Rags Ragland, who plays twin brothers at odds in the mystery within the film. Whistling in Dixie is only 74 minutes long, but the final chase/fight scene against the murderer seems to take place over the last 15 minutes. While that scene has a lot of relentlessly complicated (and increasingly stupid) slapstick, this means the film, as short as it is, needed to be trimmed by a few. Talk about wearing out your welcome. Still fun, though... TC4P Rating: 6/9

Magicians: Life in the Impossible (2014) Dir.: Christopher Baaden and Marcie Hume - A really intriguing documentary that follows the lives of a quartet of magicians at varying points in their careers. We see how their loving attention to their craft has affected their personal lives (few of these talents seem truly happy with their lot, whether coming up or going down), and each of the story has key moments that make watching this film worthwhile. Even though I have decent familiarity with sleight of hand techniques and the standard stage tricks of magic trade, I was still overcome with joy watching how smoothly these guys work. Every time that a card turned out to be "your card," I loved it. But that does not mean that everything is coming up fake, pop-up roses hidden up a sleeve. The most intriguing of the four is German-born Jan Rouven, who lived (at the time of filming) in Las Vegas with his "manager," an older former magician named Frank Alfter. For a good chunk of the film, we watch Rouven attempt to prove that fellow Vegas magician Criss Angel swiped one of his tricks, which is eventually summed up with the line, "We decided not to sue," but the details are never given as to why not by the filmmakers, when they show quite clearly it was Rouven's established trick (and across the street no less). We spend even more time waiting for Rouven and Alfter, who live in the same Vegas mansion but supposedly in separate wings, to finally admit they are not just lovers, but married to each other. That would be a nice conclusion, but the film started playing festivals in April of 2016, too early for the next development in Rouven's story, in which he was busted by the FBI later in the year for possession and distribution of child pornography. (Alfter has since gone home to Germany.) There is no tag to Magicians, obviously, noting this event, so unless you did further research on the subjects of the movie, you would not know the real ending. A solid doc, but in several ways, it flubs the trick. My card was a 7, but this film gets a 6/9.

Amy Schumer: The Leather Special (2017) - Just throwing this one in here because it is new and it is likely to get talked about at length, as things involving the comedienne often are. She might be on a career apex, but if this special is any indication, I am not sure she is going to be long for it. While her many detractors love to claim she rips off most of her punchlines, I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt, as I don't sit and slavishly go over ever comedy routine ever and try to find examples of it just so I can get hits on YouTube with a shitty video. I will say simply that this is sloppily written material, and honestly, Amy seems quite off her game in regards to her performance. Not her shining moment. It has put into doubts any consideration of my attending any of her standup appearances live. This Netflix-produced special is currently pulling a 4.2 on IMDb, but I am going to be generous and give her a middling 5/9.

Nothing the Public Enjoys More Than a Little Iron Fisting...

Yes, Marvel's quickly upcoming Iron Fist series is getting an early critical drubbing from pop culture and nerd sites all over the interwebs (the reviews are based on the first six episodes), but that in no way is going to keep me from hitting Netflix as early as possible this Friday to see the show for myself.

On a personal level, if they were going to concentrate on a pure martial arts series (though it is hard to say that Daredevil isn't really already such a creation), I would have preferred that Marvel do an adaptation of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu (with or without the Sax Rohmer characters from the Fu Manchu books, part of the original Shang Chi series). Who knows? Shang-Chi has been shown to be a friend of Danny Rand's in recent years, so maybe he will pop up in a cameo in the future.

But, I also recognize that as goes Luke Cage, so goes Danny Rand (as well as Misty Knight and Colleen Wing). Since Luke has his own series, it is a natural to have Power Man and Iron Fist together eventually (even if it is in The Defenders, where Iron Fist was only a member for a day in the '70s comic, while both were members of the Secret Defenders in briefly in the mid-'90s.)

If we must go through a new series that is not quite as good as the other Marvel Netflix series that preceded it, then so be it. The bar has already been set so high with the preceding series that it was only going to be a matter of time before something that was still pretty excellent was going to get a thrashing from the public for not being totally excellent. Though I am hoping that it turns out that I end up personally enjoying Iron Fist, and thus will be able to tell the rest of the critical world to screw off...

The Villeneuve List: A Tour of Cosmos

"Move and I shave her!"

Upon posting on Facebook that I was stunned to my senses by the film Incendies the other day, my friend Kenda recommended that I see director Denis Villeneuve's earlier work in a film called Cosmos (1996). After finding it Cosmos is not readily available on DVD or streaming (not even on Amazon.ca), I managed to locate a quality full copy that someone posted on YouTube. Even better, since the film is in Québécois French, the copy turned out to be subtitled in English.

Cosmos is not a full Villeneuve film. It is an anthology film of short films by six directors including Villeneuve, each taking place on and around the streets of Montreal. The short films are tied together by the presence of a partly Greek cab driver named Cosmos (played most appealingly by Igor Ovadis), who stays mostly at the edges as the six vignettes are played out before us, though he is fully involved in one of the stories (Cosmos et agriculture, probably the funniest section of the film).

The short films are edited together so that they weave in and out of each other's stories occasionally in a mostly organic way, aided by the fact that co-director André Turpin also serves as the cinematographer for the whole affair. His stellar camerawork aids immeasurably to keeping a consistent look to Cosmos, even if there are vast changes in tone and style between the six directors.

Villeneuve's extremely odd section (Le Technétium, about a film director who is highly nervous about appearing on an MTV-style channel where the only real concern is how incredible the guests' hair looks once in-house star stylist Tekno has his way with it) was my favorite (and most imaginative) of the individual sections.

Cosmos is somewhat reminiscent of the higher profile Night on Earth (1991), the difference being that the Jim Jarmusch film is in color, and tells the stories of five different cab drivers in five cities around the globe in one night, whereas Cosmos is in black and white, and has one cabdriver involved in six stories in one city in Canada. But it was hard for me not to think of Night on Earth constantly while watching Cosmos. Still, while at least one of the stories didn't really work at all for me (Marie-Julie Dallaire's L'Individu), I enjoyed the film overall.

Recommended for the adventurous of spirit and for those who don't cringe at the thought of either subtitles or French (or both).

For anyone interested, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7AtYfdsyV4.

Psychotronic Ketchup: The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976)

The Witch Who Came from the Sea is not an easy watch. In climbing deep into the recesses of a mind wracked by a childhood full of sexual abuse – which culminates in an adulthood full of swinging sex and drug addiction – director Matt Cimber made quite the interesting counterpart to his later film, Butterfly… you know, the one that got Pia Zadora a Golden Globe award (and a couple of Golden Raspberries) but is generally considered to be one of the worst films ever made.

This is not the case for the far more interesting The Witch Who Came from the Sea, which is sparked by a frankly astonishing performance by Millie Perkins (an actress to whom I have paid little attention over the years), along with sharp, evocative cinematography, some of it provided by Dean Cundey, who worked on this film before performing the same duties on several of John Carpenter’s biggest films (Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China), as well as filming the Back to the Future trilogy, Rock ’n’ Roll High School, Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Apollo 13, and Jurassic Park.

Honestly, I would not have watched the film today except that my pal Aaron and I were discussing it early this morning, and he mentioned that he found the film streaming on Amazon, along with a couple of other titles which recently had gotten the Blu-ray treatment in something called The American Horror Project Vol. 1. The purpose of The American Horror Project is to recognize lost classics of the horror genre from the 1970s and then give those long-neglected films (some never even had decent VHS releases) restoration and high-end release to the public. The film’s selection for this honor instantly made us both realize we need to see it, but the cost of the Blu-ray set (well over $60, even with a discount on Amazon.com) is more than slightly prohibitive for both of us right now, with a new baby in his household and me without steady employment. Luckily enough, he found all of the three titles (the others being Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood and The Premonition) on Amazon’s site, and lucky me as well, I have a Shudder subscription on there so that I too can now watch and (hopefully) enjoy those films.

In the end, The Witch Who Came from the Sea is more of a psychological drama (its not, even with its murders and resulting police investigation, even really all that much in the thriller genre) than it is an actual horror film. Don’t get me wrong… there is violence within the film and it might indeed be troubling to some (it was one of the 72 films declared to be a “Video Nasty” and banned from England in the 1980s), and when you add in the nudity and sexual scenes, this is not a film for the kiddies or truly weak of stomach (and especially mind). Even though most of the more graphic violence is merely suggested and occurs offscreen (and the razor cutting scenes that are shown aren’t done all that believably), when the lead character gets around to murdering, her fallback move is that of castrating her victims. So if you are a guy and overly sensitive about your manhood, just repeat to yourself… no, never mind. You are just a big baby. It’s a movie and the violence is faked. Get over it.

The film has gained some controversy in the horror nerd realm for its appropriation of some Frank Frazetta artwork from the cover of an old issue of Vampirella. The face of the artwork was changed to that of Millie Perkins and she is holding a man’s severed head in the movie poster. The fact that such an image (or even a severed head) does not occur within the film itself seems to really set a lot of people who encounter this film on edge. And sometimes their reaction is such that they savage the film entirely without taking into account that The Witch Who Came from the Sea is a very sincere look at child abuse and the sexual politics of the 1970s. Since the film is most decidedly not a book, I guess the armchair critics feel justified in judging the film solely by its poster (i.e., cover) and its ability to deliver those goods promised by the image. But then, they aren’t taking into account that the elements within the image all are either discussed or implied within the film (seriously, the poster image makes perfect sense fairly early on in the film), whether an actual supernatural witch bearing a scythe manifests herself or not.

I had thought for a good while that I had seen the film before this morning, but discovered just a scene or three into the film that I had not. The Witch Who Came from the Sea bears slight thematic and title similarities to another 1976 film of greater note, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which I have seen a couple of times (and which came into my life at the age of 12 when I saw a particular picture of a naked Sarah Miles (and that Kristofferson guy) getting it on in one of those “Sex in Film” annual recaps in the pages of Playboy). So a film with a similar title has been kicking around my head for a good while (though it would be about a decade more before I first saw it). When you take into account just how many horror films (and films in general) that I have seen in my life, I find it quite reasonable that I sometimes get confused when confronted with certain titles.

But now I have actually seen The Witch Who Came from the Sea on its own, and while it wasn’t really the horror film suggested by its garish, gaudy (but intriguing) poster artwork, it turns out that found the film a very worthwhile watch and one that is quite worthy of further discussion and study.

Out of Bounds is Always Out of Bounds...

I have been on pain meds lately to help me deal with a constant hip pain issue (it's the reason that I have not been writing very much the last two months), and as per the instructions given by my doctor, I am supposed to take my pill once a day... AT BEDTIME. Unofficial bedtime – as in "lights out" (though not "TV off" or "phones off") for Jen and I is usually around ten at night, but this does not quite jibe with my ability to withstand the pain in my hip. The meds I have been given help me sleep, though in a pretty light way (which is a nice bonus), but the chief benefit of their use for the past couple of weeks is to reduce my level of pain (and the resulting annoyance with that pain) from anywhere to 50-75%, depending on the night. My mornings are relatively comfortable, but by noon the meds have usually started to wear off incrementally. Each day varies, but most often by around two in the afternoon, the onslaught of discomfort and leg spasms begins.

For the remainder of the afternoon and into the early evening, the pain gradually increases. I started out taking my pain medication each evening – after determining a certain amount of time for the pill to start kicking in to at least allow me to settle into sleep – around nine p.m. But I found quickly that I was getting more and more impatient each day to get that pill inside my system, and thus, the time has moved up every couple of days to 8:45, 8:30, 8:20, and so on to the point where I am throwing it down the ol' gullet around 7:45 p.m. So, as I have shifted my pill-taking time, so to has that "AT BEDTIME" time. Last night, this allowed me to seek the downy softness of my pillow just after nine o'clock, where I crashed pretty deeply for nearly nine hours.

The point of this? Well, each evening, I generally stop checking Facebook and other social media sites somewhat early in prime time. I also cannot get onto any news sites at all. The main reason is so that I don't get riled up about something in the news or by something stupid someone says (more often than not lately, the same goddamned thing). If I decide to pick a fight with someone online around 8:30 in the evening, I will go ballistic for about four hours, Jen will never hear the end of it, and my brain will never shut off at all in order for me to get some sleep. Add in another reason being the one-hour time difference between where I am located (California) and where the vast majority of my longtime friends and family are (Alaska), and then mix in yet another reason that so many of my friends seem to get on social media (owing to various family and/or theatre-related concerns) much, much later in the evening – long after I go to bed (and add in that extra hour) and sometimes early in the morning – that it becomes completely futile for me to check Facebook before I go to bed. There just won't be very much there to see until later, so I tend to wait until the morning.

Every once in a while, however, I miss out on something. Last night, people on both sides of the political divide within my group of friends seem to come to agreement over something someone had tweeted about Barron Trump, the ten-year-old son of... eh, you know. The tweet was by Katie Rich, a writer with Saturday Night Live  (who has apparently been suspended since this blew up) and the joke was along the lines of "Barron will be this country's first homeschool shooter." Ms. Rich was not the only one to go after the youngest Trumpster, as it seems to have become a bit of a pile-on to come up with cruel things to say about the lad. Even my hero Patton Oswalt's younger brother Matt got into the swing of things.

Of course, the Facebook thread merely discussed that it was not alright to do something like pick on a kid, but they did not elaborate on who it was about (not by name anyway) or what was said. The thread began last evening, right around the time where the news becomes a "Forbidden Zone If You Want to Get Sleep" for me. They mentioned "Trump's son," and I never even thought about the youngest one. I immediately thought Eric or Donald, Jr., and my reaction was, "Fuck those douchebags. Hell, Junior posed with a severed elephant's tail on safari. Fuck him in the ass and mouth with it. The ass first." Nor was the content of the tweet revealed so I had no idea what was said. I know "vaguebooking" was not meant (for once) with this thread and that the people involved were discussing the issue fully engaged and aware of the story's details already. But for someone just dropping onto Facebook early in the a.m. and finding that thread was the first thing in their feed, and then finding no information within the thread that actually revealed who the hell the victim actually was and who the hell the perpetrator was, it was maddening to me.

Luckily, I am great at research, and had the answer in seconds. And yes, I agree with all of my friends on that thread, both on the left and the alt-right (sorry, had to get a dig of some sort in there), Barron Trump is out of bounds. He is a ten-year-old boy. He is not an adult, and he has not put himself in the public eye on purpose. Someone did mention in the thread that the president's wife, children, etc. [I am paraphrasing] should be untouchable, and I do not for a second agree with that, however. Trump's adult children – at least the three who have determined (or are allowed) to take this ride along with him – are legal adults who have placed themselves in both the celebrity and the political world of their own free will. The same goes for the First Lady, who was already in the public eye (in rather revealing ways) before she joined the Trump Circus Train.

I am not saying that people should go after them or have a right to go after them just because they are celebrities, but when your face is constantly in the public eye, it is going to happen more often than not. Every actor, actress, comedian, musician, director, etc. out there has fans and haters alike, and the only real way to make any of that go away is to simply not be in one of those professions. And politics? Half the people are going to hate you no matter who you are, and in Trump's case... well, let's leave that stew for a good while. People should not automatically go after celebrities or politicians just "because". But if that celebrity or politician does or says something stupid or terrible... well, by all means. Tweet away. Fire your barbs if you must.

But his ten-year-old son? Leave him alone. Off limits. He is out of bounds. Let him have his childhood, even if his dad seems to be modeling him in his own image, suit, red tie, and everything. What dad doesn't want their kid to be like them? My dad wanted me to love fishing as much as he did, and I wasn't having it at all. I love my dad, but I had a different agenda, even as a kid. Barron might even be a horrid little brat behind the scenes, but that is not for us to muse upon in public forums. Barron Trump is to be left alone, people. 

But there's more to this...

I am saying all of this as a person who has openly and actively despised Mr. Trump for well over thirty years to the point where even seeing his orange-crusted image has me reacting much like Kramer did to Mary Hart's voice on Seinfeld. I do not like the man. I do not want him in the highest office in this country, and I do not want him in charge of anything other than his own worthless businesses. I would rather we built a wall around him more than anything. (And in some ways, he kind of has done that...)

But there is another trend I have been noticing lately – in fact, have been noticing for quite some time – and that has been the calls for extreme violence in response to whoever is sitting in the White House. I don't mean by terrorist groups... I mean by ordinary people on social media or that one encounters in public.

Or by celebrities. The one getting attention right now is Madonna's thoughts about "blowing up the White House," which she says, in the usual half-apologetic, public relations-laden turnaround, was "taken out of context." No, Madge, I think it was pretty clear what you were saying. I don't like Trump any more than you do, but I didn't leave America for years to pretend I had a British accent, and I certainly don't want our political system to become a free-for-all target range for whatever yahoo wants to shoot or blow up the place. We have checks and balances in place for a reason, and Trump has many millions of miles of work to go to actually earn the trust of the American public for real. I'm an atheist, but no one steps on a church in my town. Likewise, no one gets away with saying they would like to blow up the friggin' White House. I don't care if you once had some decent songs...

The same goes for random people commenting on posts on Facebook. I have seen several threads in recent months, some as recently as yesterday, where someone has posted a comment about something political (generally something anti-Trump), and people have most often replied in kind. There is the occasional person from the other side who will provide a counterpoint, and that's fine (as long as it is not obvious trolling). But then, someone will agree with the original poster's point, but then throw in something along the lines of "I think someone needs to shoot him." Wait, what? NO!!! That's not how we do things here in America. OK, yes... that's how most of America operates day to day in the streets, but not in the political arena. Violent upheaval is not how you run a government.

Am I wrong, or isn't it rather illegal (or at least didn't it used to be) to say such things? Or are there just so many people doing it nowadays that our federal agencies have just given up trying to track each instance down? I am pretty certain most of the people who randomly throw such comments out (the most recent instance I noticed was someone who is a housewife day to day, and is probably a pretty nice lady otherwise) are just releasing hot air, and don't really mean such sentiments. Do you really want someone to get physically shot? I mean, shot with a gun, possibly killed by a bullet through their head or decimating their innards. I suppose they could have meant "with a camera," but then why didn't they just say "Hey, I think that person should have some 8x10s taken!" and not sound so violent with their ultimatum?

I think this instance upset me most because it was someone who seemed to have generally the same take as me on the discussion but then they decided to throw in that nasty little tag to their response. No wonder those on the right like to often point out how "violent" liberals are lately when such things are tossed off at random. I am not trying to create an equivalency here in conjunction with this statement, but I am reminded of one of my innumerable doctor appointments about six months ago. 

I was waiting to see my allergist in a room shared by a variety of doctors. There was a couple sitting almost directly across from me in the room, and they were watching the news on a television hanging down from the ceiling that was tuned to CNN. The couple – both caucasian – were in their forties, perhaps early fifties, seemingly in the same general age range as me, though they were two different patches of much rougher road. It was a Jack Sprat situation: the lady was obese enough to require a cane and was eating a sandwich from a Tupperware container in the waiting room; the man was pencil thin, wore a ratty T-shirt and trucker cap, and noticeably had what just had to be "meth mouth". They were eyeing the news with suspicion, as it aired an interview with Barack Obama. The TV sound was low enough, and I was far enough way, so that I could not make out most of what the then-president was saying, but I could hear what the couple was saying in reaction to the fact that he dared to be on the television in front of their faces.

The lady said, "Oh, I hate that man so much" and the man replied, "Yeah, that motherfuckin' n----- should be shot! If I don't do it, somebody should!"

Beside myself, there were about a half-dozen other people in the waiting room when this was said. (My mother-in-law was in the restroom.) It was said loud enough that no one could mistake the words, and in fact, the man's voice raised slightly – puffing himself up in about as macho a pose as he could – as he said it. I was the only other white person in the room, and his speech made me feel filthy just by proxy. Everyone else in the room clearly heard what he said, including the three receptionists at the counter about fifteen feet away, and there was noticeable agitation in the room. But no one said anything in response. I glared straight ahead at the couple, and I caught the man's eye, and when he saw I was staring hard at him (I easily had a hundred pounds and six inches on him), he actually kind of withered and lost his resolve. When my mother-in-law returned, I whispered to her what had been said, and she was shocked.

I thought hard about contacting the FBI or Secret Service about the situation, but then let it go. I knew it was just a couple of bona fide assholes letting off some steam, and knew there was nothing behind their stupid threats besides ignorance. And that's how I feel about most of the people, on either side, who throw out such words. There's nothing to it. So why do you have to say it? Do you really want to see someone shot? Or raped? Or blown up? Wouldn't you rather live in an America where no one gets shot, raped, or blown up?

People on both sides are equally capable of saying terrible things about anyone. I am not going to say one side is more guilty of it than the other, because such numbers are unquantifiable and not really worthy of discussion. And I don't care if you are "on my side" or not, talking seriously about killing someone for any reason is not OK. It doesn't matter who they are, what you perceive they have done, and most certainly what position they hold in government. Even if you hate that person beyond all reason, it is not OK. Not one bit.

And if you are an adult, don't pick on ten-year-olds. No matter whose kid they are.

Out of bounds is always out of bounds...

RTJ

Hidden Underground (in Plain Sight)

I have owned a copy of The Hidden, Jack Sholder's sci-fi action classic (yes, I said it), since it first came out on VHS not long after its theatrical release in 1987. Watched that tape dozens of times, leading to a need to replace it eventually, and then I did an upgrade to the film when it came out on DVD years ago.

As much as I have seen The Hidden though, and even though I still own a copy, I feel that when a channel like Turner Classic Movies decides to show such a film on their TCM Underground slot late on Saturday nights, that I should do my part to support their decision to air it. So, even though I own The Hidden, I recorded it last night (they paired it with director Mike Hodges' 1974 take on Michael Crichton's novel, The Terminal Man) and watched it this afternoon, to give its showing whatever minute smidgen of ratings percentage that I can to tell TCM that I love it when they show films like this.

It's for the same reason that I watch the Universal classics on Svengoolie’s show as frequently as possible, even if he does chop the films up with commercial breaks. It's why I have followed Elvira through her various show incarnations over the last 35 years. Or the same reason I threw in my small support for MST3K's eventual return this year. And every once in a while, I will even scout the public access channels and find locals who have produced their own variations on horror host shows. Most are terrible What can I say? I have a lifelong fondness for sci-fi, horror, and exploitation films, and I especially love when airtime is committed to showcasing them on television (and now online).

Sadly, TCM Underground has not been hosted for quite some time. Rob Zombie was the original host, but that apparently went over like a lead balloon, and so TCM just shows a couple of genre films back to back with a neat lead-in sequence. The natural fit for TCM Underground would be somebody like Joe Bob Briggs, though I doubt they have any plans to bring a host back to the show. But, as long as TCM takes a small break every weekend from its normal fare (believe me, I watch an awful lot of that as well) and shows films like The Hidden, I will be there. Even if I do own the film already...

RTJ

Ignoring the Ignoramus...

I have watched one presidential inauguration in my life, and that was Obama's in 2008. It doesn't matter who I voted for in previous elections nor their outcome, public ceremonies and rituals doused in tradition generally fill me with a combination of ennui and coldness. I don't care whether we agree or not on his record, or how you feel about him as a person, I was onboard with Obama in a way that I hadn't been in years and I genuinely felt that for the first time in my reachable memory that mankind was finally figuring a way out of the dark ages.

So, the fact that I will not be watching one second – nor even a multitude of seconds – of the inauguration today is unremarkable in itself. I don't normally watch or even care about these rituals. I understand they seem to be important to show all Americans "the peaceful transition of power" and the strength of our Constitutional grounds and all that. I know they are happening and I don't need to bear witness to the event in a live aspect.

The only thing that I will do today to mark the inauguration in my mind is to watch Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. You can take that however you would like, but partly it's because watching Idiocracy again at this particular moment is a little bit too on the nose for me. With Dr. Strangelove, what appeared like a worst case scenario once upon a time may now at least look a little bit like blessed relief.

And remember the immortal words of President Merkin Muffley: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"