Face Analysis Face-Off: Part the First

If you are like me at all, you have tried to ignore the ceaseless array of online personality tests that infest Facebook like bedbugs in a Motel 6 mattress pad. You have also, if you are like me at all, absolutely failed in avoiding taking any more of those tests. My one saving grace is that I rarely encounter or even seek out one of these tests on my own. And so I take them very infrequently.

But just how do I take (or even find) such tests on those "infrequent" occasions? Obviously, because one of my friends or acquaintances on Facebook had already taken the test first. Of course, for me to even stop and click the "Find Out Now" tab (or other such shiny, candy-coated buttons that entice you to disrupt whatever flow you had going), the quiz's subject matter has to be just interesting enough where I wouldn't mind finding out what an entirely robotic system has to say about some aspect of my personality derived solely by the spare (and often intentionally) misleading information I have posted on Facebook. 

My profile picture is rarely of my own face, so that either negates or at least perverts or stunts the results of any tests based on photo usage, and I am too self-conscious or defensive to actually post the straight results I might obtain from personality quizzes based on multiple choice selections. There is also the scary proposition of exactly what the quiz sites are gathering from your Facebook page, and/or how they are going to use that information ultimately. Most such sites are now upfront with precisely which info they will be gathering once you approve the link between their site and your page, but it is still a daunting thought as to what the nefarious ends are as to why they would ever want it. However reticent I might be to take part in such entertainment after weighing the pros and cons, I will admit that it can be completely fun to take such tests, if only to kill a few minutes of the day in completely trivial and mind-numbing brain-rot. And so, should the mood strike me, I engage readily with them at a moment's notice without hesitation. 

A couple of weeks back, my friend Amber – who just so happens to be the wife of my writing partner and erstwhile pal who most closely shares my cinematic madness, Aaron – had taken an online game called "Which Nationality Do You Resemble Most?" The simple text for the test reads, "Let us analyze your face and discover which country suits you best! Click here!" The test takes a look at your profile picture and in just a handful of seconds, spits out the result, and if you thought such results might be fairly accurate, then you have never taken one of these stupid things before.

For Amber's go at determining her possible nationality, the testing site grabbed her current profile photo, which was a recent family portrait she and Aaron had taken to include the most recent addition to their little family of four, their newborn daughter roughly six months in age. (I am a baby-hater by instinct, but even I admit the little goof is pretty damn adorable.) Yes, Amber was in her own photo on her own page, but the test did not take into account the name or sex of the owner of the participating Facebook page, and instead latched on to the most prominent visage in the quartet: that of her husband Aaron (while still retaining her name in the reply)...

This result brought great joy to his wife, who posted the result with the only text being the word "Ha" followed by triple exclamation points. While Amber and Aaron have a good deal in common (as some married couples do), they most definitely do not look like each other at all. Nor are the pair even relatable in terms of height, Aaron being taller than even 6-foot me, and Amber being far shorter. As to the results, the test took a look at Aaron's face and declared, "Amber, according to our face analysis, your nationality is: Canadian." And to back up its findings, the Nametests site added a graphic that gave an accuracy rate of 85%.

Amber and Aaron are, like myself and my own wife, former lifelong residents of Anchorage, Alaska, which is as the crow flies, about 300 miles away from the Canadian border, and 500 miles if you are actually driving from our hometown to Dawson in the Yukon Territory, the first Canadian city after crossing said border. (I will not get into flight specifics here of traveling to other places to reach the Great White North in shorter distances; just trying to set a standard. And I use the word "city" to describe a place that shows up on the majority of maps without needing to use an electron microscope to find your idiotic town with a population of 46.) So, while we exist at roughly the same latitudes as Canadians, pretty much experiencing the same seasons, etc., in Alaska, we are still Americans. Still, I can see a measure of the stereotypical Canadian openness and politeness in Aaron's picture, and so the result is not as far off as it could have been.

So, let's move on now to those "could-have-beens," shall we?

Naturally, I just had to take this test, and for one very good reason: my current profile pic was none other than King Kong from his most recent film, Kong: Skull Island. I was dying to find out what the result would be, and honestly, I was ready for a wide variety of possible outcomes from this, including wondering just how racist the creators of the quiz might be. That I was itching to immediately publish the results is an understatement. And the answer?

Wow... Had the creators of this quiz recently seen the 1961 British horror film, Konga? That's the most prominent English ape flick of comparable sizing. (This is not taking into account international co-productions of recent vintage.) For real 'Mercans (aka the real snowflakes), the notion that Kong is not considered 100% American here might upset them greatly and get them reaching for their AKs. But, of course, a great cross-section of them also deny the American Civil War was primarily fought over slavery, so what the fuck do they know? They would also miss out on the fact that Kong in the original 1933 (and 1976... and 2005) version was straight up attacked and then kidnapped from his island home, transported in the hold of a massive ship to America, made to perform onstage in bound slave-like fashion for the delight of human beings, attempted to escape, and then was paid back for this mistreatment by being shot up by human weaponry, and finally, we are shown the image of his bloody, broken body strewn across the streets of New York. I am pretty certain Kong never would have considered himself an American, because being an ape (even a gigantic one with a serious jonesing for hot blonde women), he doesn't know from nationality. So, being called English instead of American is not going to upset him in the least.

This got me thinking, though, about how other monsters would come out nationality-wise via the same dopey test. To establish a base using a common image, I first jumped to Peter Jackson's version of King Kong from 2005. I thought the result might be roughly similar, but was told a very different origin story about this big guy:

Like any of these results, read into it what you will, but the 98% accuracy rating seems pretty definitive... doesn't it? It doesn't? Why a gorilla-like creature would be thought to have come from a continent entirely free from great apes is beyond me (though South America does possess a wide variety of what are termed New World monkeys), but then again, this test is not exactly giving us an actual biological analysis. In fact, I can't figure out what the hell it is using as a basis. The photo shows us three boxed points on each image as an example of how it determines the results, but the boxes are used in the images via a template, with said box trio configured in the same exact positions on each profile picture. If it is actually using those three points on each image, and if the selection is merely based on color points in the photo and not true physical characteristics, I do not know. (And, of course, this is all just very silly and never meant to be even mildly analyzed in reverse, like any test you might take on a social media platform...)

Aaron had seen his wife's post and taken the test himself, which he then posted on his own Facebook page. His profile pic, in contrast to mine, was of Godzilla. Aaron and I are both huge kaiju fans, so the fact that we were lined up with the two greatest figures of the genre at the same time in our profile pics is no real surprise. We often have header images of monster flicks and posters, or regularly post monster pictures for the heck of it on our Facebook pages. Myself, I was a bit jealous not having tried the Big G myself. While the 1933 Kong is my very favorite movie of all time, Godzilla is my absolute fave large-scale monster. (More on my fave human-sized "creature" is coming right up...) But Aaron had Godzilla in place already, and set down the comment point for the remainder of this exercise. Aaron's post had these words: "I am the only one this test has been accurate for."

So, why did Godzilla come out as Japanese? Is the coding for the test set to recognize certain pop cultures figures like Godzilla and know he is of Japanese origin? Or was there a more racial component to the result? One can't help but see one of the template red boxes in the image is directly over one of his eyes. And how is that portrayed? Is it reading his eyes as being slanted at a certain angle that certain citizens would not mistake for anything but of Asian origin? On which physical features does this test use to determine its results, if indeed it is doing so at all, and not just rolling the dice, so to speak? Whatever the algorithms are, the test seems more unsure of the Godzilla result than the last Kong one, giving it only 85% accuracy.

As I said, Aaron's post became ground zero for the rest of this discussion, especially since he had tagged me in the post itself so it appears on my own home page. I commented on his post with my first two Kong results back to back. Then, after a brief span, I switched out my profile pic once more. This required, it seemed, the deletion of the previous profile pic entirely, otherwise the Nametests site would continue to employ the old picture instead. After letting it stew for a while and cleaned out my cache as well, I finally got a result for my new profile pic, which just happened to be that more human-sized "creature" I mentioned a few paragraphs ago...

Once more, read into this what you will as far as how it determines the result. Or is it just swinging wildly, and letting the user read into the answer instead? It seems most likely. Here, I posted on my comment, "Boy, they are off across a whole ocean and a continent..." since the Creature from the Black Lagoon's lagoon is located deep down the Amazon river.

I next wanted to see what it would do with a completely non-humanoid face and figure, and so a few hours later (after clearing everything under the sun out of my browser again), I posted the result for another favorite monster of mine – this time of the prehistoric sea slug variety – a certain "Monster that Challenged the World". There was a small problem though...

The Nametests site could not make out the image I posted, even though I had been making all of my profile pics the same size. This time, it looks like they used a microscope to read the picture. For once and only once in this article, I have created a mockup of the result (though without wasting time in blending the images together in the middle). Here is the result for the "Monster"...

Since I am Swedish on my dad's side, this made me laugh uproariously, and especially because it is the most gratuitously creepy of the monster images I had used to that point. Later that evening, I ran into a bigger problem. The Nametests site was possibly getting tired of my shenanigans (though it is more likely to have been coincidence). Whatever happened, after I had switched my profile to an image of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s Wolfman character, the system kept recognizing the Creature from the Black Lagoon instead, even though I had deleted the image from Facebook and its history from my browser and cache. I even tried to get a Wolfman result on my phone, but wasn't able to until early the next day, after about 20 tries. And I was not displeased with the final version, though once the game let the Wolfman in, it was going to prove remarkably hard to keep him away...

Aaron, not to be outdone, went another route with his second picture. Being a dedicated fan of the Master, John Carpenter, he changed his profile pic to one of the aliens from They Live, after their hideous countenances have been revealed to Rowdy Roddy Piper with his special sunglasses. More possible tension is likewise revealed by the test result...

Aaron was worried what it said about the makers of the game and their possible contempt for Argentinians; I said it probably had something more to do with their contempt for aliens. I commented on Aaron's post that "I can see this is going to become a great, new way of life for us," but then the test kept doggedly hanging onto an old image after I deleted it. This time, it was the Wolfman, but instead of seeing the exact same picture, I started getting other nations as results. I had switched my profile to that of Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, but the Wolfman returned, this time as...

At this juncture, I knew the game was rigged. First off, there is no way that a Wolfman could get trapped in a mineshaft. It was becoming more clear gradually that this test was just hit or miss. There couldn't be any reason to it. After several hours of waiting, I was able to finally get a hit on the Dracula picture...

Now this was cool... I was very accepting of the result (speaking for my own partial peeps), even though Romania is a good distance away from Sweden. (Lugosi was Hungarian, but was actually born quite near Transylvania in an area that was then part of the Kingdom of Hungary but is now part of Romania) They at least got the continent correct. I switched to yet another image, going the alien route this time, by using the crazy big-eyed and big-headed costumes from Invasion of the Saucer Men. However, while Dracula is most renowned for coming back from the dead over and over again, it was the Wolfman who was still getting in my way. And wouldn't you know it, he has now been revealed to be totally in it with Trump's cohorts...

In fact, he may have rigged the election for Cheeto the Toddler. I kept trying to get the Saucer Men to show up, but it wasn't until three days later that I finally got the Wolfman to disappear when I took the test. To my delight, I was to discover that my pal Aaron (in his human guise) and the Saucer Men were probably one and the same...

I rather gave up on the Monster Nationality sport at that time, mostly due to being distracted by health appointments and family activities. I did try the test once more on my phone a couple of days later to see if the result was the same, but the Wolfman reappeared yet again. He had gone back to his Italian roots for some reason (or no reason at all). Finally, this morning, I decided to give the game one last try, still using the Saucer Men profile pic. This time, the little buggers shifted across the Pacific and were now apparently related to Aaron's Godzilla...

This time, the test's algorithms were far more sure about the Saucer Men being from Japan than it was about Godzilla (96% to 85%), but truly, it was just all silliness down the line. It's really what you want from one of these games, especially when you are just killing time. But I would still really love to learn what the creators of this particular quiz did to get these results.

Meanwhile, something else happened when the Wolfman mysteriously returned for the fourth time...

[To be continued soon...]

This Week in Rixflix #6: April 14-20, 2017

So, the big Mystery Science Theater 3000 reveal happened to the public, and by the time Easter weekend finished, I had watched the remaining episodes via Netflix. Using my iPad at night, I even watched a couple of them a second time (not counting the first episode that I saw again and again and yet again the previous Sunday).

I will write more about the show in a separate series I am planning to start soon, and despite MST3K basically stealing my brain and attention for the past fortnight, I will mention that I still managed to see a fair amount of feature films throughout the remainder of the week. Most notably of that bunch, I finally watched Kubo and the Two Strings. As a stop-motion aficionado (né nut), I have once again had to kick myself over and over mentally for not having seen Kubo on a big screen in a theatre in the first place. Likewise, for also not having seen it multiple times in such a setting. The film is genuinely one of the coolest, most engrossing films I have viewed in a very long time, and its arrival on Blu-ray at my household will be immediate following my next spurt of employment.

I will post a couple of articles on Cinema 4: Cel Bloc in the very near future that recap and review the two dozen or so National Film Board of Canada animated shorts that were aired by TCM the previous weekend, all of which I watched while juggling MST3K episodes on release weekend. Please keep your eyes peeled for that at http://cinema4celbloc.blogspot.com/, but just in case it takes a little longer to make those articles live than I am planning, also please keep those eyes on ice after you peel them.

This week's feature-length film count: 17; 14 first-time viewings and 3 repeats.
Animated shorts seen: 27
Highest rated feature-length film: Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature films: Crossroads (2002) and The Colony (2014) – 4/9
Average films per day in April thus far: 2.3
Average films per day in 2017 thus far: 3.02

Kismet (1955) Dir.: Vincente Minnelli – In the past couple of years, I have repeatedly confused the different filmed versions of Kismet. I have recorded the 1944 Marlene Dietrich version at least thrice when the one that I needed to check off my watchlist was the Howard Keel musical version from MGM in 1955. Finally, I trapped the little bugger and quickly dove into the proper Kismet at last. This film does fall into my "put off for too long" category, though I will say that having now seen it, I merely thought it was a good film but not nearly as engaging as I had hoped. The sets and costuming are, assuredly, quite wonderful to behold, and I truly did enjoy Keel's lead role as a poet known as the "King of the Beggars" who uses his wits and his skill with words to position his daughter for a better life as the wife of the Caliph. Keel is quite fun and able in the role, as is a pre-Family Affair and Jungle Book Sebastian Cabot as a grumbly wazir (who, fortunately, does not try to sing). There is a chance that if I manage to record this version of Kismet properly a couple more times in the future that I may grow to like it even more, possibly even to loving it. As it stands right now, my TC4P rating is a solid 6/9.

Bright Road (1953) Dir.: Gerald Mayer – I have recorded this film a couple of times before, but have deleted the recording each time either out of need for DVR space or disinterest at that particular moment. Well, I finally got interested enough to watch it, and now I regret not having visited Bright Road earlier. An early '50s attempt to engage a broader segment of the population beyond the white audience, with the lovely Dorothy Dandridge as a schoolteacher (at a segregated schoolhouse, of course) who has a sweet but troubled student in her class who doesn't quite connect with learning in the normal way. (Gee, I wonder why I connected to this material so quickly? Hmmm...) The always marvelous Harry Belafonte is the principal of the school who allows Dandridge some room (eventually) in trying to figure out the utter puzzle sitting at the little desk before her. It's a quietly paced, often sad tale, but the lead actors do wonders in working with their young cast to make the film a rewarding experience. Surprisingly for a film that is not a musical, Belafonte sings a haunting ballad during one scene that once more reminded me that he had some range beyond his more familiar calypso hits. TC4P rating: 7/9

Fort Dobbs (1958) Dir.: Gordon Douglas – The other tall, western-prone Clint. Someday, I will write more about actor Clint Walker's influence on my youth. He is somewhat of a forgotten man these days, but as a kid in my earliest years, he loomed like a 6-foot, 6-inch god before me on the TV screen. I saw old episodes of his series, Cheyenne, in syndication, and I also remember watching his extremely short-lived series, Kodiak (which lasted all of 4 episodes). I recall the show pretty clearly as we were very excited because the lead character was an Alaskan State Trooper. (For newbies to this site, I was born and partially raised in Anchorage, Alaska.) I also saw Walker in numerous films and TV movies in the '70s, the most memorable of which (for me) were Night of the Grizzly, The White Buffalo, Snowbeast, and the murderous construction equipment epic, Killdozer! (Yes, yes, more on that last one at a later date; I've been itching to talk about that absurd flick – though based on a sci-fi short story classic – for quite a while now.) 

Walker is now long retired from acting and a shocking 89 years old, so I will have to rely on his back catalogue. I have been able to see a couple of his earlier films recently, including Fort Dobbs, a small but gritty western from 1958, one of three in a row that he did with director Gordon Douglas. Walker is a man on the run from the law for shooting down a man (though it was in self-defense) but despite this, he comes to the aid of an entire town fleeing from renegade Comanches (as opposed to regular Comanches). He also has to forge a relationship with the wife (Virginia Mayo) and son (Richard Eyre, the annoying kid genie from 7th Voyage of Sinbad) of the man he shot. Walker is his usual, physically daunting heroic self, but speaking of A Family Affair earlier, that show's dad, Brian Keith, shows up in Fort Dobbs as a truly despicable and obnoxious cad who runs up against Walker when he plans to sell some newfangled repeating rifles to the very Indians that are attacking the town. While at first the film makes it seem they will be friends, their eventual rivalry is quite welcome as everything livens up each time Keith grits his teeth and says something mildly threatening. It's a darker turn from another favorite actor of my youth. The film overall is no great shakes, merely just more western product, but its cast makes it enjoyable enough. Sometimes, mere western product is what the town doc ordered. And if anything, Fort Dobbs once more reinforces my faith in my solo cult of Clint Walker. TC4P Rating: 6/9

The Mind Benders (1963) Dir.: Basil Dearden – When Ben Mankiewicz listed off similar films to The Mind Benders that dealt with brainwashing, he hit the usual suspects, such as The Manchurian Candidate (from the year before this one), A Clockwork Orange, and The Parallax View. And yes, The Mind Benders (especially owing to its name) does deal directly with influencing someone's actions using sophisticated scientific techniques. Lead actor Dirk Bogarde's character is indeed brainwashed to believe that he no longer loves his wife, in an effort (requested by Bogarde) to not only prove that one's mind can be turned completely away from his most strongly held beliefs. But he is also doing it to clear the name of his mentor, who committed suicide after using sensory deprivation therapy but whom the police believe did himself in to escape being caught as a Communist double agent. (Got all that?) 

It's a very twisty, absolute odd experience, but in going back to my opening sentence about the films that Mankiewicz reeled off, the one film he did not mention was Ken Russell's 1981 science fiction opus Altered States (which was penned by the great Paddy Chayefsky). While Altered States was not about brainwashing, but more about the de-evolution of man back to a primordial form – hence its not being cited by Ben M. – it is the film that bears the most resemblance to that which we encounter in The Mind Benders. The use of sensory deprivation equipment is completely the same, and the results of Bogarde's trip also reduces him to a proto-Jekyll and Hyde state, only without the elaborate makeup effects or the appearance of a recognizable monster as in Altered States. But the emotions that his torture bring about in his dealings with his wife are nearly as raw and almost unbearable to watch in moments as any I have seen onscreen, and they made this film truly shocking and memorable. A must-see again for me. TC4P Rating: 8/9

Sandy Wexler (2017) Dir.: Steven Brill – Man, I am reluctant to give this film a good rating, simply because it is Adam Sandler, and it is so hard to recognize when he is being completely shitty or when he is merely decent anymore. In a Netflix Original that premiered that weekend, Sandler plays the title role, a talent manager in the early 1990s who is completely inept at keeping his small stable of talent employed but whose utter sweetness and naiveté keeps them coming back to him. Sandler falls for a songstress played by Jennifer Hudson, and if you are thinking this is a romantic pair that could never, ever happen, well... yeah, I was thinking that too. And the romance part is downplayed through most of the film, but you can never doubt that something will probably bring them together by the end. Sandy Wexler features about a zillion cameos by celebs, and I guess their inclusion is what brings the film to a full two hours in length, where it really should have been a nice 1:35 or 1:40 instead. 

Surprisingly, as much as I wish Sandler would break away from his nebbishy sad sack with a goofy, stuttering voice character, he actually gives Sandy more depth than I was expecting, and there are enough good lines and jokes to just about balance out the film's faults (and it has plenty of those too). I kind of saw the film as existing somewhat in the same world as Judd Apatow's Funny People (which was also quite overlong, had Sandler in the lead, and was possibly the last thing I actually liked him in as well). I am certain there is a lot of Jerry Lewis in Sandler's conception of his main character, and since I was a Lewis nut as a kid, I am able sometimes to see past the whiny stuff that drives other people to distraction, and lie in wait for the hero to emerge from underneath the nerd outfit. I kind of did that here, as enough of the film's other characters give a serious bullying, both physically and verbally, to the poor guy that I couldn't help but root for Wexler to succeed. Surprisingly, I thought the film was good enough for me to actually give a Sandler joint (and not one done for a big league director like Apatow or P.T. Anderson) a positive rating. Miracles do happen. TC4P Rating: 6/9

Crossroads (2002) Dir.: Tamra Davis – Because I am looking out for you guys, I sometimes have to perform the impossible. This time around, I tackled a multiple Razzie-awarded flick that just happen to drift across my path early one morning. I saw Crossroads sitting before me on the channel guide screen, and after checking to see if it was actually the swell Walter Hill blues guitar flick featuring Ralph Macchio and Stevie Vai, I instead saw it was the flop Britney Spears flick from the early part of this century. A lesser man would have wimped out at the prospect of sitting through what must be a total "chick flick," but not this guy. I knew it was on my watchlist, as all films that have been nominated for Razzies are, and so I found myself adopting a "now or never" stance. Later that afternoon, I dug right into what must be the far lesser Crossroads and found out... that I was completely right.

Even with Zoe Saldana as one of the three leads, Crossroads is a dull, utterly predictable mess. It's a road picture where three former childhood besties who have fallen out long before high school graduation find themselves drawn back together by the absolutely most boring things ever placed in a time capsule and then buried for ten years. The one played by Taryn Manning wants to throw caution to the winds and drive from Georgia to California with a hunky guy (a much younger Anson Mount) that she has heard may have killed someone. The reason? To attend an open audition at a recording studio in L.A., though they never really show Manning having any real chops as a singer, despite the girls being involved in a couple of musical sequences (of which Britney is the centerpiece anyway, of course). Somehow, Manning convinces Spears (who wants to find her long-lost mom in Arizona) and Saldana (who is engaged to a guy who is supposedly doing some work in L.A. but is stupidly cheating on her – c'mon, douchebag, it's Zoe Saldana – instead) to travel together to renew their friendship. 

I never knew just how badly someone could fuck up I Love Rock 'n' Roll until you have heard Britney robotically mumble her way through the song in an absolutely unbelievable karaoke number. For a film that is really meant to push Britney product including more albums, the music is so shoddily produced as to make it hard to believe she was ever a major pop star. Most unfortunately, one has to hear the inane lyrics to her semi-hit, I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman, both spoken as poetry and then sung at least twice in the film and credits. This fluff came from the laptop of Shonda Rhimes, a few years before Grey's Anatomy started. I do not watch anything that Rhimes currently produces or writes, and so I am not going to criticize her writing beyond this film, which is pretty much generic pabulum and completely forgettable apart from its most ridiculous, jaw-dropping moments. Still, I have seen far, far worse films, and I will cut director Tamra Davis a little slack for helming CB4 way back in the day and Dirk Gently episodes most recently. Thus, this one gets a below average rating of 4/9.

This Week in Rixflix #5: April 7-13, 2017

I will admit that I was a bit distracted from watching other films last week, what with the new, eleventh season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 lurking in wait for me by week's end on Netflix.

Actually, I didn't have to wait that long to watch most of it because I was one of the 48,270 people who took part in the Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $5 million total to bring MST3K back as a show. As a result, I got my name in the end credits (there are so many names they split them up between shows; mine shows up in Episode 11), got a whole bunch of goodies like a T-shirt, keychain, soundtrack, and coffee mug (some items still pending), and got to download the entire season in DRM-free files 24 hours before the season premiered on Netflix. (Creator Joel Hodgson made us promise to watch the show on Netflix as much as possible, though, and to save watching the files for a rainy day in the future when we are without internet.)

Best of all, though, we backers got to see the pilot on the Sunday before the Friday, April 14 premiere, as it streamed for us for 24 straight hours, during which I watched the pilot three full times, took part in an exclusive live viewing Q&A chat with Joel and Jonah Ray on YouTube, and then did a side-by-side comparison of the episode next to my DVD copy of Reptilicus, the film torn to shreds by the riffing in the pilot. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we got 48 hours to stream the entire season exclusively, followed by the early downloads on Thursday. Having been a hardcore MSTie ever since the show's first Comedy Channel season in 1989-1990 – unfortunately, I have never lived in Minneapolis, so I didn't see any of the original season's episodes until later –  the events of this week have almost been a dream come true (apart from actually being on the show).

But I did cram in a bunch of films in the two days before that Sunday (7 in all), and then in the brief moments between MST3K showings (I did need a few breaks... didn't want to totally burn out, you know), Jen and I finally watched the Carrie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds doc that was far to painful to view when we recorded it in late December a week after their deaths (which I will write about at a later date), and a few other palate cleansers (and some Canadian cartoons, but more on that next week) that happened across my path. But the overriding theme was the buildup to MST3K, and I can tell you, writing this a few days into the following week, that theme has not let up for me at all. Each day, there has been a little bit of MST3K for me.

The rest of my life might be shit right now, but at least I have the Satellite of Love again...

This week's feature-length film count: 14; 12 first-time viewings and 2 repeats.
Animated shorts seen: 6
Highest rated feature-length films: The Winding Stream (2014), Night Will Fall (2014), and Bright Lights: Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (2016) – 8/9
Lowest rated film: Reptilicus (1961) – 3/9
Average films per day in April thus far: 2.23
Average films per day in 2017 thus far: 3.08
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen: 121

Dead West (2016) Dir.: Jeff Ferrell – The poster of this movie offers up a glaring example of how one (i.e. me) should pay a little more attention to even the most generic artwork when browsing for a movie to watch on Netflix. My eye caught the title, Dead West, the cowboy hat, the gun, and the ominous posing of the figure, and immediately thought the film might be a dark horror western. What I didn't pay enough attention to in the poster was the modern gun in the figure's hand, for Dead West is indeed a dark horror western, but a current one that could even happen in your neighborhood. The low budget, overlong (seriously, two hours) and quite often ponderous story of a serial killer practicing his grim trade in the bars and hotels of the American West, searching for true love but always ending up disappointed in the women he meets, the filmmakers seem to wish they could emulate Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in style, but have no idea (or the resources) to pull off such a feat off satisfactorily.

I like that the lead actor, Jeffrey Arrington, is basically an everyman schmo in the looks department (the actor may not feel that way, but hey, he's the one who let the camera film him), but I find his character, Tony, more creepy than charming as he sweet-talks his future victims into making the last mistake of their lives. (In much of the promotion and reviews for the film, his character is described as "charming".) And he does it all with dialogue that fails to convince much of the time. The classic "western" tone of the story comes into play in the form of the brother of one of Tony's former girlfriend/victims, who longs for revenge and hits the road to track down the ladykiller and end his reign of terror. I won't say what happens, but rest assured, it will be handled in an unsatisfying fashion, and if you are coming to this film for gore effects, you will not have that great a time either. Though there are a couple of twists that I did find interesting before the end, overall, I felt the film was a disappointment, even if I had no pre-conceived notions going in, apart from the mistaken thinking about it being a dark horror western. With some judicious pruning of about 20 minutes or so, this might have ended up becoming a semi-decent feature, but in its current released form, it is not charming at all, and the only form of danger it conveys it that of being deadly dull. – TC4P Rating: 4/9

Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul (2017) Dir.: John Edginton – Joe Cocker has been in the mix of the music of my life since I was a kid. You Are So Beautiful was known to me before I was a teenager, but it wasn't until I saw John Belushi pull off his amazing impersonation of Cocker's idiosyncratic stage style on Saturday Night Live (on an episode on which Joe Cocker sang) that I really knew who he was. When I saw Woodstock on network television, I got to see Joe in one of his most famous performances, and around that time, he was making a comeback that went through the 1980s. Best of all, though, I had the pleasure to see him live in concert in Anchorage, Alaska, in a fantastic July 24, 1990 show that Joe co-headlined with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. (The opening act was Nicolette Larsen, who was adorable and delightful, and who sang with both headliners later in their respective parts of the show.) The concert took place a month and two days before Vaughan, one of my main guitar heroes at the time (as he still is now), was killed in a helicopter accident in Michigan. But this is about Joe Cocker, who only died relatively recently (in Dec. 2014), and while I had several Cocker albums in my collection over the years, I never really thought much about who he was a person. I knew he had troubles and battled the bottle for many years, but I just kind of accepted that he was this cool musical presence in my life, and never dug into it very much.

Along comes Mad Dog with Soul, a pretty comprehensive documentary about his life, with a pretty even focus across all the various periods of his career. Especially fun was learning about his pre-Woodstock years as a young man growing up in Sheffield, England. I guess that I always figured Joe was this being from outer space who came down with this amazing voice and style intact, but it was eye-opening to see his early years of struggle with his own teenage band, his off-kilter approach to everything not necessarily making things smooth for him in society, and his daytime job as a gasfitter while he worked the clubs in a variety of bands, which resulted in an unsatisfying recording contract that eventually withered. When he formed the Grease Band in 1966, he seemed to find the musicians he needed to propel him to stardom. His first 1969 album, With a Little Help from My Friends (and its Beatles-covering, massive hit single of the same name) set him up for his appearance at Woodstock and then his famously crazed Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which also brought great notice to his bandleader, Leon Russell. He had several big hits along the way, but by the mid-'70s, the cracks began to show. Alcohol and heroin addiction took over his life. While he cleaned himself up and launched his comeback that led to Up Where We Belong winning Grammys and an Oscar, he also wrestled with his demons for many years afterward. Continuing to perform and record to the end, when he died in 2014, Cocker's iconic stature was such that it is almost disgusting he is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I felt that before I saw Mad Dog with Soul, but thanks to how deeply the film digs into his roots and helped me to understand the artist so fully, his eventual inclusion is now a cause with me. Joe must be honored... – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) Dir.: Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook – Over a decade ago when I still lived up in Alaska, my best friend was dating another friend of mine who had a young daughter named Grace. Little Grace was awfully fond of an animated movie about wild horses called Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and at a series of parties over the period of a year or so, Grace would pretend that I was Spirit the Stallion, and would feed me hay and lead me around with invisible reins. (Grace would actually call me, "Spiwit: Stallion offa Cimmawon" but we adults would further garble the language to insist she was saying "Scallion offa Cinnamon".) It wasn't horsey of the sort that many kids play; I never got my back broken by having to ride some little kid around on it. The play was more respectful and gentle, and I remember being told when I didn't show up for one party that Grace asked if Spirit was going to show up that night. That kind of thing just about broke my heart hearing it.

Here's the catch: while I am a huge animation fan, I had not actually seen Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron at that time. Nor had I seen it until last week, when it popped up in an early morning Saturday showing on HBO. Now's the time, I said. Grace and her parents were down here at Disneyland in late February, and I revealed to the now-teenage Grace that I had never seen the film. She was shocked by this, and last week, I decided to make things right. Now, while I knew it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, I was still not expecting myself to actually enjoy the film. I was also dreading having to listen to anthropomorphized horses talking to each other through 90 minutes of film; yes, much of the animation I watch does have anthropomorphized animals discussing all manner of things, but I was worried about the tone of the film. To my surprise, Spirit mostly keeps the horses as they normally behave, except for a few facial expressions that I have never seen on a real horse, and with a greater understanding of the human world around them as well.

Otherwise, this is a remarkably natural film in regards to the basic behavior of the wild horses, and the more than slightly preachy tone of the narrative luckily falls into my general worldview (white man mostly horrid, Native Americans murdered and robbed of their lands and cultures, animals and natural resources ravaged and abused). I thought the color palette was lovely, and the combination of hand-drawn and computer animation to be lovingly mixed and thoroughly engaging. A bit overlong considering its target audience, though that was not much of a problem for me, with the only things that really bothered me being the Bryan Adams' song score (which had to have felt dated already in 2002, the year of its release) and the narration by Matt Damon as Spirit telling his tale (without actually speaking directly in front of the camera), which I felt was fairly unnecessary, though again, not enough to stop me enjoying the film. There you go, Grace... I have finally caught up to you. – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Now, back to MST3K...

This Week in Rixflix #4: March 31-April 6, 2017

A much smaller week in film watching than the previous week (10 less films), much of it directly responsible for the upswing in my hours spent writing now that the hip is doing even better than before. Having regular physical therapy also ate into the film watching time as well. Oh, yeah, and some old pal reunion time at Disney California Adventure Park on April Fools' Day with my pals Mattman and Leandro, where April Fools' was never even mentioned once. Hard for even me to think about film for long when hanging with my buddies at Disneyland Resort. (Unless we are talking about film, of course. But we only did a little bit...)

This week's feature film count: 15; 13 first-time viewings and 2 repeats.
Highest rated film: Little Fugitive (1953) – 8/9.
Lowest rated film: Frankenstein Island (1981) – 2/9.

The Arnelo Affair (1947) Dir.: Arch Oboler – A deadly dull affair without a single surprise in it, The Arnelo Affair is a waste of a pretty decent cast including Frances Gifford, George Murphy, John Hodiak, a very young Dean Stockwell, and a devastatingly underused Eve Arden, who brings the only life (and intentional comedy) to the picture. The lovely Gifford is a wife who is absolutely bored with her life with Murphy, who shows her no affection or attention at all. Her attention is turned momentarily by cad about town Hodiak (who might as well twirl his mustache if only it were longer) but when push comes to shove, she refuses to destroy her marriage with an affair. But Hodiak sets her up as the prime suspect when he decides to murder his previous flame. Since we know everything going on, and barring an incredible twist ending that never comes, all one can do for the last 40 minutes is wait for Hodiak to have a change of heart. Want to take bets that he does, but in such a way that Hodiak pays for his murdering ways violently so that the censors are appeased? Rating: 5/9

Rosalie (1937) Dir.: W.S. Van Dyke – A rather strange film that I would refer to as a "trifle" if it weren't overlong at 123 minutes, Rosalie boasts Nelson Eddy in his first role away from Jeanette McDonald, Cole Porter songs, John Philip Sousa marches, collegiate football, West Point antics, European court intrigue, and Eleanor Powell dancing her heart out at usual in the leading lady role (including the famous scene where she taps across the tops of a series of giant drums). It's an odd amalgam of ingredients, and though it has a cast filled with terrific character actors, some of them – such as Edna May Oliver, Jerry Colonna, and William Demarest – are absolutely trapped in nothing roles. I guess this was so they could give Eddy more time to bore us with molasses-slow ballads.

The best parts, and the main reasons this film slinks up to "good" territory for me, belong to sidekick Ray Bolger as Eddy's best pal who has to jump through hoops (not literally) to win his own fickle girlfriend's heart back, and his future co-star from The Wizard of Oz, Frank Morgan – the Wizard himself – as the king of Romanza, a fictitious country that doesn't seem to be all that happy to have a befuddled monarch who takes his orders from his own ventriloquist dummy. (That's right... you did not read that wrong. Ventriloquist dummy...) I did wonder for a while if perhaps this film was actually meant for Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, but it turns out that the film version of Rosalie (it was a Broadway show originally with a non-Porter score; Frank Morgan played the king on stage as well) was started in 1928 as a vehicle for Marion Davies until the production fell to pieces. A decade later in the sound era, the film was completed with only a few shots from the 1928 attempt incorporated into the final product. Regardless of its history, what made Rosalie work for me, apart from Powell's luminous dancing talent, were the scenes between Bolger (who never really gets to let loose with his incredible dance skills, though he teases them) and Morgan, who form an odd friendship amongst all the dull romantic stuff around them. They are great fun, but unless you have over two hours to spare, don't bother. Rating: 6/9

Honeysuckle Rose (1980) Dir.: Jerry Schatzberg –  One of a pair of films that I watched this week where I had seen portions of each previously but had never sat down to go through them in their entirety (Min and Bill being the other), Honeysuckle Rose was the first starring feature for Willie Nelson, and he came out of it with an Oscar nomination for One the Road Again, the monster crossover hit that was introduced in this picture. It had once astounded me that this film also received a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Supporting Actress (for Amy Irving, in the very first year of the Razzies), but when you actually look the truly shocking facts up, 70 films overall have received either nominations or awards at both the Oscars and Razzies (including Suicide Squad, which won an Oscar – sadly – this year). While Irving is pretty unpolished and young in this film, nothing about her performance reads "year's worst" to me, so obviously someone just had a beef with her in the nomination process (probably John Wilson, founder of the Razzies, whom I take exception with on a great many things he does with his awards). This movie is merely OK dramatically; in a film mostly about infidelity and the threat of divorce, everything gets tidied up far too neatly to be satisfying on that front. But the musical sequences onstage with Nelson and his band are wholly entertaining, and I also have to give a nod to a fine supporting role from the great cowboy actor Slim Pickens in a non-comedic performance. Rating: 6/9

The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened (2016) Dir.: Lonny Price – I love several Stephen Sondheim musicals, but Merrily We Roll Along is not one of them. This is mainly because I have barely heard of it, though I have heard a couple of songs from the show before (Good Thing Going, Not a Day Goes By). The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, directed by show alumnus Lonny Price, gets into exactly why most people don't know Merrily better, which opened and closed after 16 official performances (not counting previews) in 1981 (though it has been revived more successfully since). We see modern day interviews with many of the original cast, including Jason Alexander, long before his fame-making days on Seinfeld, and with Sondheim and producer Harold Prince. Luckily for this documentary, extensive filming of rehearsals had taken place at the time in conjunction with a planned television doc, which gives viewers more of a inside look at the development of the production than we might normally have gotten. But there was a little too much "inside baseball" going on here to keep my full interest through its running time. Nicely done, and essential for Sondheim and/or musical theatre fanatics only. Rating: 6/9

Easy to Love (1934) Dir.: William Keighley – The first of two 1934 comedies with which I quite unexpectedly had great fun during the week. Easy to Love is a romantic farce that features the always elegant Adolphe Menjou as a philandering husband who has the tables turned on him by his wife, played by an angered but mischievous Genevieve Tobin. She finds out the location of the love nest he shares with his would-be next wife, Mary Astor, and then precedes to make him jealous in return by affecting an affair with his best friend, a millionaire played hilariously by Edward Everett Horton, a personal favorite since my youth. Door-slamming silliness abounds, all very lightly done and coated with some terrific lines by a game cast. ("Well, I've had a lot of shotgun weddings, but this is the first fire ax wedding I've ever officiated at," says the Justice of the Peace, essayed by the terrific character actor, Guy Kibbee, and yes... someone is indeed holding a fire ax in the chapel.) Hugh Herbert shows up as a very confused detective, and that was all I needed to sell this film to me for good. A nice surprise. Rating: 7/9

Sing and Like It (1934) Dir.: William A. Seiter – And here's that other 1934 comedy, that has gangster Nat Pendleton and his grouchy, cigar-chomping (as always) sidekick Ned Sparks wander into a community theatre and encounter ZaSu Pitts, where she awkwardly and awfully squawks her way though a terrible song about mothers. Unluckily for everyone, Pendleton is a full-on mama's boy who tears up at the song, and decides then and there (and especially after everyone says openly that it stinks) that he is going to make Pitts a big Broadway star. Soon, he and his thugs are not just taking over the upcoming show belonging to a big-time producer played (once again) by Edward Everett Horton, but he even has a couple of his guys rewrite the script by adding incredibly sophomoric jokes to it. If this sounds reminiscent at all of Bullets Over Broadway, then you win a cigar, because that is basically what it is, only the would-be star is just gawky ol' ZaSu Pitts and not the gangster's girlfriend, played here by a fiery Pert Kelton, who then plans to have Pitts kidnapped. Just so remarkably silly and goofy, in which Sparks gets the best showcase, throwing off remarks about everything going on around them, which mostly fall on the deaf ears of Pendleton, who just keeps crying every time he hears the "Mama" song. Sing and Like It gets a couple of big demerits though for having a repeated punchline being each time Kelton ends up with a black eye from her man. (Easy to Love doesn't go that far, but yes, the threat of a wife-beating lurks there as well, as it does in many a 1930s comedy.) Sure, it was the times, and one cannot judge ancient relics by the acceptable societal measures of today and ever hope to be entertained. But that doesn't mean one has to like them either, and such scenes come off completely cold today for anyone that is not a white male in the House or Congress. Still, my rating is a 7/9.