"Even If You Were the Monkey King, Himself..."
Everybody was Monkey Fist Fighting...
(This one goes out to the KB. You know who you are.)

I know, I know. I said that previously thatl the only Shaw Bros. flicks that I was interested in these days were the Bond-like superspy knockoffs. Well, hey, when I said it, it was absolutely true; however, I just didn't enjoy Angel With Iron Fists nearly as much as I had hoped. I'll admit it, I'm fickle enough that one disappointment can put an end to my fascination with some newfound interest. You never know, though, I could rewatch Temptress of a Thousand Faces and get started all over again. Ultimately, it doesn't mean that I love the Shaws any less.

I'm about to prove that.

Recently, I was asked to mull over some of my favorites in terms of kung fu flicks. So I did. (I'm not just gonna cough up that list, we'll save it for another time.) In the end, it left me inspired to take in a new one, as I hadn't in some time. Where else was I gonna turn but to the original masters. After a stop off at my favorite Asian video store, I picked up a copy of today's subject.

What can I say but: Wow!

And to think, you don't even know what I'm talking about yet.

Well, let's get on with it.

Mad Monkey Kung Fu (1979, d. Lau Kar Leung)

The Story: A wily street scamp manages to convince a crippled kung fu master (with a dark past) to teaching him the Monkey Fist technique in order to rid themselves of the gangsters terrorizing the town.

The Review: Ok, I assume you just read the synopsized synopsis above, and you've seen how excited I was about this movie above that. I bet, however, that you can't figure out why. There is absolutely nothing in that synopsis that makes this sound like anything more than every other kung fu flick ever made: Loser learns kung fu and becomes champion of down trodden town. Ah, but trust me, this one was different.

First of all, I'm gonna admit to a prejudice that I have when it comes to kung fu flicks (which goes a long way to explain why I like this older stuff): I prefer to watch movies which feature actors who can perform incredible stunts and feats without the benefit of special effects. Let's be honest, most of Bruce Lee's movies aren't great, but Bruce himself was such an incredible physical presence that he keeps them impressive. Likewise, many of the actors in these older flicks could've kicked some serious ass in real life. Now, it's mostly wireworks and special efx that double for physical ability. I don't mind that these things are used, but I certainly like it better when they are used to enhance a performance rather than be the entire basis for it.

This movie features a trio of impressive physical actors. The first is actor/director Lau Kar Leung who plays the crippled teacher. Lau's speed and agility are impressive, but he also has a wonderful comic presence and movement. I wouldn't say that there was anything extraordinary in the direction, but Lau's presentation is quality meat and potatoes and provides a fluid look at the theatrics of the actors. The second example is the villain played by Lo Lieh whose role in the Shaws' production Five Fingers of Death was expected to shoot him to superstardom. Unfortunately, he was passed over by the rapid rising star of Bruce Lee, though he made numerous wonderful performances for martial arts films. Here, he is no different able to move with grace from his early hard edge style to the wily animalistic Monkey Fist style. Finally, the true star (non-ironically enough) is Hou Hsiao who plays the hero Little Monkey. I have never seen a more physical performer except maybe the director, Hou has it turned on throughout the film with constant movement and monkey mimicry. At the same time he embodies the likeable scamp and the cheerful prankster. In truth, all three of these performers were a joy to watch, but without Hou Hsiao, the movie wouldn't have been nearly as remarkable.

That isn't to say I don't have a few problems with this film, though they are very minor. First, the one limitation many Shaw Bros. films can't escape is their dated production value. This film was made in 1979, but doesn't look all that different from The One Armed Swordsman which was produced 12 years earlier. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it can be very limiting to a lot of these movies. (Side Note: I don't wanna attack the Shaws. Thank God they made the movies they did. Also, if not for them and Golden Harvest, we would've never had the Hong Kong film boom of the 90's.) Second, as the movie has a comedic element, there ends up being a lot of mugging to the screen, particularly from the villains. Most Hong Kong comedy has a tendency to play it over-the-top, and unfortunately, it doesn't always play. Finally, (and for once I don't want to ruin it,) the ending cuts off with a weird tone. I had a similar problem with Five Deadly Venoms, where the final fight was the most important thing, but it didn't resolve many of the subplots. This one doesn't have as major a hacked off feeling ending, but there were a few things that were more than a little "huh?".

As a final note, you don't have to know the plot of the famous Chinese folk tale Journey To The West, but it'll add some extra dimensions to the story. I'm not gonna rehash it for you for two reasons. One, I can't do everything for you, and some things are worth finding out for yourself. Two, I haven't read the whole thing...just chunks and pieces (and I've seen Stephen Chow's Chinese Odyssey if that counts for anything) though I know a lot of the story. All I'll say for now is that it recounts the story of the Monkey King which is where the kung fu style (Monkey Fist) this movie covers comes from. The other reason I mention it is because there are numerous references to it and the Monkey King in the film, and it would help you somewhat to know what they're talking about if you didnt' already. Finally, I might have mentioned it if only to show how damn smart and pretentious I am...or maybe not...

Unfortunately, once again, this movie isn't available domestically in the beautiful letterboxed original language edition that I watched (which was a region 3 disk). I think you can find it in some rinky-dink DVD copies taken from video masters....which might be letterboxed from a British edition...and is almost guaranteed to be dubbed. Now if you know my affection for dubbing for the Asian movies of my youth, know that I make an exception in this case, and that this film is better in the original Chinese.

Cheers.

They Came, They Saw, We Kicked Their @$$...Sort Of...
What else would Martians wanna do...other than invade us...?

No, it's not War of the Worlds that I'm going to be talking about today.

You see, I go through phases of genre cinema. It's not all Spaghetti Westerns all the time. That merely happens to be my favorite genre, and the one I default to most often. Also, keep in mind, that I don't mean genre as in Drama, Comedy, Sci-fi, etc. When I say genre it's more like: Blaxploitation, Shaw Bros. Kung Fu, Giant Monster movies, 50's Sci-Fi, etc. I look at movies kind of like zoologists break down animals into kingdom, phyla, class, order, family, genus, and species (Did I get them all?). Currently, I'm on a 50's alien invasion run (check out my last post on the Japanese film, The Mysterians).

Now the film I'm reviewing this time around sort of shames me into admitting that I had never seen it until now, especially considering all the garbage I have seen (like the Tracy Lords vehicle Shock 'Em Dead (1991) or Decampitated (1998) [which was low even for Troma]).

Nevertheless, I must forge ahead.

Hell, there's good odds you've never seen this "classic" either.

Invaders From Mars (1953, d. William Cameron Menzies)

The Plot: Junior Astronomer David Maclean spots a saucer land in the sand dunes across from his house, but no one believes him as the locals are snatched up one by one by the invaders. Finally with the help of the local observatory scientist and a local doctor, David is able to turn the tide and dispatch the aliens.

The Review: I had a momentary debate over whether to include the wry twist at the end of the movie as part of the plot. If you've never seen the movie, well I'm going to ruin it for you right now, but only because I don't feel I can review it without it. Fair enough? First though, I'm going to ramble for a bit.

Invaders clearly fits into the category of quasi-anti-Communist science fiction films such as The Thing From Another World (1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). All three of these films feature alien invaders who end up taking over or impersonating the forms of captured or killed humans. Much of the fear factor rested within the idea that one couldn't tell who the invaders were. Even if their secret identity were exposed, no one would believe that someone they knew and trusted could be evil. The end result being that a town would fall without anyone being able to know or stop it. Ahh, the plucky days of the RED MENACE...or was it THREAT...I don't remember, but a nation full of paranoids is so much more polite.

That's assuming you manage to not be ousted as a suspected Commie and have to face the rosy-cheeked terror of Roy Cohn.

Anyhow.

In many ways, what made Invaders more interesting to me than many of these films was the stress that it placed on the alienation (no pun) of the little boy David. His father and mother are some of the first victims of the aliens "re-programming." Within a matter of moments, David loses almost everyone he can turn to. For the most part, the first third of the movie is by far the most terrifying. Much of this can also be chalked up to director Menzies whose primary occupation was set design. Each space that David moves through looks at once familiar, but each contains little oddities. The world gets more and more skewed until we reach the police station which is nearly as stark and creepy as the alien craft at the end of the film. What's more is that it's a situation most of us can identify with: that first time in our lives when something happened and no one would believe our explanation of it.

The first third of this movie had me nearly completely hypnotized...which of course means that it couldn't hold it up exactly. As I mentioned in the plot summary, David does eventually find aid which leads to one of the most hilarious exposition scenes in movie history. David's astronomer buddy expounds at length about "commonly held" theories about life on Mars. Now the bits about their society being underground are passable, but when he gets into the stuff about them making humanoid mutants to serve them...I suppose you could say it gets far-fetched. I'm kidding. What it really feels like is the excuse is a cheap set up to have monsters later on. Also, there's some decidedly flimsy stuff that the Martians are after a new prototype spaceship. Why a race who can build interplanery ships that can phase though solid earth would be all that concerned with the fledgling outer space efforts of another race are beyond me? I'm probably thinking about it too hard. The attempt to expose the alien plot takes up much of the second third.

The final third of the film is a general mixed bag. On one end, there is a strong amount of menace as the remote-controlled humans (including David's parents) begin to carry out assasinations and general mayhem. The rest of the action involves the military trying to find and uproot the aliens. Naturally, David and his Lady Doctor friend get kidnapped by the aliens, excuse me, the mutant servants of the aliens. (Mutants who, I now feeled compelled to point out like every reviewer of this flick, have large obvious zippers running up their green costumes.) From there on out, it plays like nearly every alien or monster movie, until we get to the end and my point from the start of this review. (So if I haven't ruined enough already...here comes the rest.)

The alien ship is blown up sending David and the solidiers running for cover. The camera settles on David who begins to have hazy flashbacks of all the terrors he's experienced, and soon enough he wakes up in bed. It was all a dream. Now in some ways, that's been a hokey ending since the dawn of hokey endings. At the same time, when put into the perspective of a coming-of-age film instead of an alien invasion moive, it works for me. Like I said, I found the first third of the film the strongest, and much of that was because of the isolation and the education for an otherwise sheltered young boy (ie. sometimes you can't trust a police man, etc.). Taken from that angle, the movie makes an Alice in Wonderland-like commentary on moving from childhood to adulthood.

However, that isn't where the movie ends.

Granted, in 1953, this wasn't as cliché as it is now, but the movie ends with David, relieved that it was all a dream, getting out of bed only to see the alien ship arriving for real this time. I don't get it...as in, I don't get why this was the way the movied ended. I've thought of it a hundred different ways. After working in the movies myself, I've quickly realized that often putting any thought to these kind of questions is automatically too much thought by default. Maybe it was just that, a last minute: "Hey, wouldn't it be scary if we then....SHOW IT HAPPENING FOR REAL! That'd be great!" On the other hand, as meticulous about many things as Menzies seemed to be about his movie, I can't imagine that being his attitude. Ultimately I can't tell if it works or if it completely undermines all of the stuff I found really interesting about the movie.

I'm keeping in mind that most folks wouldn't have been able to take it seriously past the zippers on the mutants costumes.

All in all, this is still a movie with a lot of serious fun, and just enough kitsch to keep it interesting. A little too much armed forces stock footage, perhaps, but still a good time. I should also confess that I've got this itch to watch Tobe Hooper's version from the 80's again, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Cheers.

The Not So Friendly Visitors
The "wacky" quotient is riding high...

It's not easy to convince people that watching movies is research. I'll at least claim that it's half-and-half. It isn't as though I'm going to watch a movie that I won't enjoy as part of my research. Then again, that's beginning to encroach on the territory of what makes a good movie, a bad movie, and a good bad movie. I didn't come here to go over all that again. The movie I watched was supposed to be research of sorts...but, I confess, I had wanted to see it for a long time.

You see, I've sent my novel off to a friend of mine who's going to give it the old once-over. I'm hoping it takes him quite some time, as I have little interest in looking at it for a while to come. In the meantime, progress should march on. I'm particularly bent on trying to write a second one (without knowing whether the first is worth a crap) before the end of the year. Well, perhaps not finish it by then, but at least have something under way. So I've been attempting to study certain genre structures and devices.

Here's the part where we get to my review, but believe you me, you won't be able to figure out the story I want to tell based on this review.

The Mysterians (1957, d. Ishiro Honda)

The Plot: After a series of bizarre natural disasters, scientists discover that an alien race from a destroyed planet are attempting to settle on Earth. The aliens have two requests: a two mile radius tract of land, and the right to breed with Earth women. Needless to say, the human race won't stand for that and so war begins between the humans and the space age weapons of the invaders.

The Review: A few months ago, I went to see the re-release of the original Godzilla. It was a restored print with a Japanese language track and no Raymond Burr. Sure it had become more than just a little silly in places over time (like the photo of the Big G over the mountains that's obviously a painting), but it was still shocking how grim and serious it was. I doubt anyone on Earth understands how seriously to take atomic weaponry than the Japanese. Nowadays Godzilla, himself, is hard to take seriously, but early on he put an appropriate dragon face of horror on atomic nightmares that no mushroom cloud could.

I mention Godzilla for two reasons that are both connected. For one, The Mysterians and the first Godzilla film share the same director. Second, that first Godzilla film set up the formula for nearly every giant monster movie to follow as well as a lion's share of Japanese science fiction films. It breaks down like this: 1) the threat arrives and humanity's confused, 2) the first attempt is made to stop the threat which ends in humanity getting its collective @$$ handed to it, and 3) humanity figures out some new fangled kooky way of attacking and wins the day. Somewhere along the line there's a love story, and very often there's a misunderstood scientist or child who somehow figures in the finale. The formula doesn't vary much, although certainly in the chain of sequels, the title monster begins to have a hand in stopping the new threat.

Now, even though I've brought up the giant monsters and this film is often listed in that category, it only resembles them in terms of story line. Certainly, you see a couple of giant robots (who have a striking resemblance to Gonzo of Muppet fame), but not for very long. Most of the destructive attacks center around a large stationary globe that acts as the Mysterians base. A large glowing globe that doesn't move could hardly be mistaken for a giant monster like...say Guiron, who had a giant knife shaped head. Guiron is definitely a giant monster. Nonetheless, the plot of this film still does strongly resemble that of the giant monster film, except in one important area (other than the monster...sorry about that). It lacks the emotional core most of those films had.

In the original Godzilla, you got to know and care about the people trying to stop the monster's tirade. It had a hint of a love story, a love triangle in fact. In the midst of disaster, it wasn't merely a screaming faceless mob, but they took time to at least give you a touch of humanity in the crowd. For instance, in the original Gamera film, there's the moment amidst the destruction when Gamera stops and saves a boy's life. Sure it's hokey, but it puts a face to the destruction. The Mysterians, on the other hand, spends more time trying to wow it's audience. Unfortunately, that lets it down in more ways than one.

For one, if you didn't grow up with this kind of movie or haven't developed a taste for miniature efx extravaganzas, then you're likely to not care for this movie right off the bat. Then again, you may enjoy it, but likely that'll be because you'll spend the hour and a half laughing at it. To the trained eye or those who love this stuff however, the filmmakers did manage to pull off some amazing stuff. One matte shot in particular of a live action man leaping from a minature tank as it is sucked into the ground is impressively effective. Not only that, there is a lot of fun and priceless silliness to the design of the various ships and what have. The problem is that there is just too much of it all the time, but it's never fascinating enough to overshadow the fact that the story is paper thin. The eighteenth Godzilla movie can be paper thin, but not the first.

To be honest, and maybe it was just the subtitles, but I don't think I knew a single characters name by the end. Now when the one character makes the ultimate sacrifice to save everyone, it usually means more when you know what his name is. It wasn't so much the name in some ways as it was the fact that I spent more screen time with the exterior of the Mysterians base than I did with that character.

Don't get me wrong though. As usual, though I tear into the movie, I had a good time watching it. It was ok...and what bothered me is that it could've been great. It could've been the Citizen Kane of alien invasion movies. It had all the right elements. Giant Gonzo Robots. Melting Tanks. Damsels in distress. And a squadron of aliens dressed in capes and motorcycle helmets. Like I said, the miniature work was a lot of fun, and well done. I enjoyed watching it, but it got to the point where my trigger finger was getting ready to start fast forwarding through it.

This is the kind of movie I would like to remake. The problem is that most people would want to jazz it up too much and miss the point (ie. The Thunderbirds movie sans puppets), or you make it too kitschy and retro and it becomes utterly trite. So I think it's best to...I don't know...ummm...leave it alone. If only everyone would take that cue.

Cheers.

To Evolutionize Your Ideas
An unpopular word for an unpopular concept...

I saw a banner ad on a website a short while ago about saving the Roe v. Wade decision.

Now, it's not that I'm against a woman's right to choose. What I find ridiculous is that we even have to have this debate.

But, then again, I'm dealing with a society that has only recently begun to have a problem with violence, but is still petrified of sex while surrounded by a sea of pornography.

Anyone else see some of these inherent contradictions we got going here?

I should start with a declaration or two, so that you see where I'm going from.

1) I believe in God, and I believe in the teachings of Christ; however, if you were to talk to me long enough about them, you'd realize that the Inquistion would've burned me at the stake for what I believe. I came to my understanding and my beliefs in my own way...which, conincidentally, I believe is part of our development as human beings. Sadly, instead of aspiring to be spiritual beings (in a real sense, not some bullsh!t New Age enlightment sense) which requires little things like faith, we have instead chosen to become more and more carnal and animalistic. It's all about satisfying desires. Furthermore, I happen to love animals, but I find it disturbing that so many people have begun to make animals more important than humans. Finally, in a attempting be a human being, I think most people, including the religious right and animal activists due to their cause-ism, miss the bigger picture of respecting and honoring the world (ie. flora, fauna, mountain, stream, etc.). But that's just me.

2) I believe in birth control, planned parenting, and global population control. I don't think that 'be fruitful and multiply' meant fill up the planet with people and hoard all it's resources for your selfish consumption. I also don't think it meant meant use all those teeming often ignorant masses to line your coffers (Hello Catholic Church!). Again, it's all bigger picture stuff. For one, not everyone needs or is capable of raising children. Sorry. Two, there's only so much room and so many resources on Earth. My last point is by example (which is just that, I'm not picking on anyone). There are nearly 80 million people in the Phillipines, which are an archipelago of islands. They recently conducted a survey and found that only 30% of the population knew where babies come from. Now that to me is unimaginable, but I'll continue. At what point do land and resources run out, and how does one complete their plans economic reform to improve the country with a constant growing tax on the system? More importantly, what about little things like the tsunami earlier this year? The U.S. has been sued for not getting a warning out fast enough...but let me ask you: say we had to warn the Phillipines, where are you going to put 80 million people assuming you can get them off the islands fast enough?

Everyone with me so far? In summation, my belief in God does not for me contradict my belief in birth control.

It's time to evolutionize ideas.

There's that word again: Evolution.

It's very simple: I don't want a child in this world that his or her parents didn't want.

We've already got more than enough unwanted ones, and scads more that people did actually want. While I don't like to compare and contrast what's more or less evil than something else, I will say that I think stopping something in that cell division phase is far less evil that ruining a person's life by never wanting them, caring for them, or loving them. But hey, that's all on your conscience, which is something that won't bother most people either way.

Part of the evolutionary process that I'm after is the return to the idea or ideal of taking responsibility for oneself. My first little ideal stop is for everyone to take a moment to stop blaming everyone else for what's happened to them in their lives, and taking the time to reflect on what they did to f*ck themselves up. How's that for an idea. After doing that once or twice, you may either off yourself, or figure out how to fix it. Sure, you're a product of your environment, but how many people have recognized the cycles of destruction in themselves, their families, and their communities and risen above it? Too many for me to believe anymore bullsh!t "It's not my fault...it's (blank's) fault." (Some people do need real external help, don't get me wrong...but too many need to figure out how to help themselves.)

Now, keeping in mind that everyone is very likely to have sex at some point in their life (this abstinence as the only birth control junk only sounds like bigger b.s. when one knows that all those conservatives likely had sex or at least fooled around in their own teenage years), and if you take responsibility for what you're doing (and there are many ways) then you won't have to worry about so large a decision as whether to proceed with your right to an abortion under Roe v. Wade.

After said self-responsibility ideal is conceivably achieved, we then move on to everyone taking a healthy dose of realism.

But first things first.

That's all the bile I can muster for the time being.

Cheers.

Nonesuch...and Nonesuch...

If there's anything you don't want to talk about, it's having nothing to talk about. I'm sure somewhere in here, I've also discussed writer's block. Well, that isn't my problem exactly. As a matter of fact, I wrote the first treatment for a new script idea today which pretty well confirms that I don't have writer's block. Being 'burnt out' isn't much of a topic either, and while the more likely culprit (at least for today) I don't have much to say on it either. The final, and what I think is representative of my true problem is simply not having a topic.

Well, that's seldom stopped me before. After all, here I am.

Isn't it curious that I watch more movie trailers than I actually see movies. I do. I watch them on a regular basis on-line either from Quicktime trailers or Movie-List.com. Between the two, one can gain a fairly good idea of what will be playing at the cinema. The sad fact is that not much of it catches my eye. Now some of you might attribute that to most of those trailers being for Hollywood films. That's not true. Take a look for yourself. While it's true that they aren't fully representative of the offerings of world cinema, they do give a fair amount of offerings for both world and independent films.

For instance, I've watched the various trailers emerge for the Fantastic Four. I mention is primarily because I've written a number of topics on comic books. Each trailer I saw made me less and less interested. I couldn't have said for certain why at the time, but now having discussed it with people who did see it I know that I was right for not wanting to. As I've been told, the story is weak, the characters unevenly established, and that even for a summer blockbuster, the effects are sub-par in spots. What's more, my new favorite phrase to come from a review came from one of the Four, "Hack du jour." That about sums up a great many of my feelings.

Now it isn't as though I've ever really talked about current films playing at the theater in this column of sorts. However, there's a reason for that. That reason is that I don't go to see many of them. Doesn't that seem strange when well over half of the articles I post on here are movie related? Seriously. I recall going to see the Life Aquatic with Steve Zizzou at Christmas time. Then I didn't see another movie until Sin City earlier in the Spring. Following that was the third Star Wars prequel, and most recently Batman Begins. While I enjoyed each and everyone of those, it's a pretty scant representation for six or seventh months of movie offerings. I have however, seen the trailer for just about all of them.

Similarly, I have the same problem with music lately. Now with music, there's been a nearly constant influx of new material. I buy stuff. People send me stuff. I hear new stuff all the time. In that sea of notes and beats, only a handful of it stands out. Now, on one hand, I at first thought that that was only because I was hearing so much, and sometimes only once. Then I realized that for the most part it was simply that it was mediocre. Little of the music was bad, but none of it was really great in and of itself. I've even gone back and spun some of this stuff a second and third time only to find that I was right to dismiss much of it in the first place.

Only for the sake of across the board consistency do I mention that I haven't been interested in reading much lately, but that I actually know has a lot to do with my mood, my taste at the moment, and the availability of the reading material I seek. However, I have noted that there hasn't been much new that I've wanted to read. I can't recall the last time I read a 'bestseller.'

What caused me to give this a mulling over was a conversation I had yesterday. The discussion was over the fact that in music there aren't really any superstars anymore. Even people like Britney Spears and so on are still flavors of the month only stretched out over a longer time. On a pop scale, few of them even register in comparison to Michael Jackson or Madonna. Don't even bother mentioning album sales numbers to me, I'm not convinced by the numbers. It's the psyche I'm after.

For example and by comparison in the movie world, Shrek 2 is in the top ten highest grossing films of all time. It's number three in fact, just after the original Star Wars. Quick question for you: In twenty years, which one do you think more people will still be watching? I'm gonna have to go with Luke, Han, and Leia. If anything, most of the people I know who saw the second Shrek were by and large let down by it. When I told them how it was doing at the box office, they were very genuinely surprised. Not all of these people were movie people either, many of them were joe average movie-goer. To me, the success of that film is more attributable to: a) the success of the first film giving it a highly anticipated appeal, and b) the fact that people of all ages could attend the movie. I don't think it made it to number three based on it's ability to stay in the hearts and eyes of true hardboiled fans the world over.

Just to be cantankerous, I feel the same way in many cases about bestsellers as faux numbers. People read them for two reasons generally: a) something fun and escapist to read, b) because they saw or heard about from someone else who gave it a mediocre or at least somewhat praising review, and c) they saw it was a bestseller. That by no means equates to it being great literature or even great story telling. Used bookstores are choked with past years 'bestsellers'. Sure they sold a lot of copies...and a lot of those were immediately resold. Similarly, I don't even recognize the names of any of the 'best-selling' authors any more...and hey, I still go to the grocery store on a regular basis. A few years ago it was Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Danielle Steele, Tom Clancy, and John Grisham. Sure there were more, but I could almost guarantee that each one of them would have an offering on that drug store shelf. I don't know who these new people are and haven't heard mention made of any of them.

So just like with my problem with the Hack du jour at the movies, it seems like there are no superstars at all in any entertainment medium. Now part of that is the absolute flood in nearly every form of entertainment. While I agree that the opening of them means to film/record/publish work to the general public may have allowed many otherwise silenced voices to speak...I think it also opened the floodgates for a whole lot crap. Some have argued with me that the cream will still rise to the top. I, on the other hand, argue that the gold is getting buried under the garbage. It's like panning for gold in a stream behind a nuclear power plant.

The end result, at least for today is that I don't have anything to talk about. I generally thrive on this stuff for topics. While this is an almost entirely negative past, I don't thrive on this kind of stuff. I just want something to be excited to talk about. Though it may seem it, I don't think I've become entirely too cynical about pop culture to enjoy it anymore. After all, I was talking to someone today about how much I enjoyed Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. If I can still think a comedy whose base is second rate Cheech and Chong jokes was fun and remarkably intelligent, doesn't that show that I'm still willing to let the good light back in?

We'll see.

Cheers.

No Mistaking the Original Mysteryman
A tribute to a true independent

In the late 70's, artist-writer Dave Sim began an interesting experiment in the realm of comics that I didn't come here to talk about. However, I can't get to what I am going to talk about without going through Sim. It's a personal story arc of sorts. In any event, that experiment was to produce a limited series of a mere 300 issues. It's name was Cerebus. I say 'was' because Sim recently reached issue 300, and now a few people (namely myself) do wonder what's next. Like I said, I'm not here to talk about Cerebus the Aardvark, though I've got the entire collected series sitting on my bookshelf. It was what I discovered in Sim's pages that spurred me to write this.

I've never exactly been one of those guys who had to always be onto the next and coolest thing. For instance, I own something like 1,500 CD's, and I'd still listen to nearly everyone. Sure, along the way, some of it's become dated, but I never said "That's so yesterday...you should be listening to (Insert Obscure Flavor-of-the-Month Here)." Still, I've often sought out quality and fun in the arena of pop culture arcana. So even as a mere fifth-grader scoping out the local comic book store, I wanted to find something beyond the Spider-Man and X-men titles. That's how I found Cerebus...and eventually the subject I came to discuss.

I don't recall where I saw Cerebus first, but I assume that it was in the advertising of some Marvel title I was reading. Most likely, he appeared in the advertisement for some comic book festival. Back in the early 80's, Cerebus was an underground comic fan favorite, long before Dave made some interesting choices that alienated a healthy portion of his readership (not me...I stuck in to the end). So Cerebus' image was occasionally used to grace the announcement of such events. If you've ever seen him, you may understand why I sought him out.

I picked up a few issues here and there, and I will confess that my elementary school brain couldn't initially make heads or tails of it, though I attribute much of that to the true serial nature of Cerebus. The issues I had were rarely consecutive, and hence: made little sense to me. The art was beautiful, and I knew there was something great about it, so I stuck to it...randomly. Cerebus being a Canadian small-press product, he was much easier to find in Michigan than when I lived in Florida or Texas. So I recall ordering some issues, and in my Mile High Comics catalogue I saw three words that I couldn't shake: "(Flaming Carrot Appearance)."

Can you guess what today's subject really is, if it isn't Cerebus?

If you are familiar with the Flaming Carrot, then you wonder: if I was having trouble following the both literary and straightforward Aardvark, what would I make of the surreal stylings of Bob Burden's surreal creation? Well, I'll tell you: it was unfathomably cool, and then it was just plain unfathomable. Luckily, as I got older, Cerebus became clear, and I realized that the Carrot didn't have to.

The issue of Cerebus I had picked up was somewhere in the early 50's, during the High Society story line. I cracked open the book. Read the Cerebus story that I couldn't follow (High Society is a wicked satire on politics and such), and then turned to the separate (ie. not part of the Cerbus storyline) Flaming Carrot story that I couldn't follow. Perhaps, like the guy who studies something that he doesn't get until he does, I wanted more. I cracked open that Mile High Catalogue, did a scan, and found there was more Flaming Carrot material which was in his own book. There was only one problem.

I was in the mid-80's, and the indy comic phenomenon (ie. non-Marvel/DC publishers like Dark Horse, Image, etc.) hadn't really taken off yet. Independent comics have always been around, but they were often regional. Take The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When that title broke people were combing the world for those hard to find small press issues of which only a limited few existed. O'Barr's original run of The Crow is another fine example of that kind of comic. Fiercely popular, but few in number. Well, the Flaming Carrot never achieved that kind of fame, but it had those print numbers. Now that issue of Cerebus was years old when I picked it up, and so were those early Carrot issues. What I'm trying to say is that because of their age and scarcity, they cost a lot more than my soon-to-be-middle schoolin' @$$ could afford.

I didn't see the Carrot again until I picked up yet another random issue of Cerebus. This one I couldn't pass up. They were together on the cover, standing side-by-side. Emblazoned in big letters next to them it read: "This Flame. This Carrot." It was near the conclusion of Cerebus' Church and State Saga. I could explain to you what happened in the issue, but it would make about as much sense to you now as it did to me then. Needless to say, I was in the need of that indy explosion I mentioned before to fill my Carrot needs. There was one problem: just as that began to hit, I got fed up with comics and stopped reading them. (The reason behind that is an issue unto itself, so lets just move on.)

Lemme explain about the Carrot. I assume he looks like an ordinary guy of average atheletic build. I say assume, because we've never seen what he looks like. He wears a carrot mask that stretches a foot or so above his head down to his knees. Instead of the green at the top, he's got...well, flames. He wears a white button down shirt, slacks, and swimming flippers. He can travel on a hyper-powered pogo stick, isn't afraid to gun down his enemies if necessary, and makes great use of a giant sock in combat. Mentally...well, wouldn't you expect a man wearing a five foot long carrot mask to be a touch unstable? Is it getting through why I love this guy? I'm not sure that I can communicate it exactly.

There's one panel, that of all the comics I have ever read, I will likely never forget. A wounded man is laying on his side. The Carrot is trying to prop him up. In his hand, the Carrot holds a box of breakfast cereal. The Carrot is saying to the man, "You're hurt pretty bad, mister...Have some Wheaties!" I can't look at it without laughing...Hell, I can't think about it and not chuckle.

Durning my comics hiatus, Dark Horse picked up the title, and made the Flaming Carrot a little easier to come by. For those of you who don't know, the Flaming Carrot was also the birthing grounds for the Mysterymen, which eventually became a feature film. While I do find the movie entertaining, it's a far cry from properly translating Bob Burden's whimisical and hilarious sense of humor to the silver screen. I think the first and most noticeable deletion was the absence of the Carrot: the Original Man of Mystery. The more I think about it though, I must admit I'm glad that they didn't include him. I would hate to see him ruined.

I must also make mention of the fact that one of the primary draws to the Carrot is Burden's wonderful artwork. I've never seen anything like it in any other comic I've read. Realistic and surrealistic, but without ever getting overly cartoony. I would like to see a roomful of artists translate a character named Sponge Boy and not make him cartoony. Burden did it. The drawings also demonstrate that perfect message-relaying image shorthand that many of the comic artist's best can relate. If you have the chance, and can find a copy, you should also check out Burden's sketchbook that shows even more of his brilliant work. He uses an almost globby curved line to great effect, and an almost swirling quality of shadow. Great stuff.

Back to the story: I did end up with a few of those Dark Horse issues through various means, but it wasn't long after I returned to comics that I found a shop that had all four volumes of the Carrot's adventures (as well as the Mysterymen collected edition). I snapped them up one by one as paycheck would allow, and regaled at all those Carrot adventures that I had missed over the years. Unfortunately, not too long after I completed my collection came the great flood (ie. my apartment got flooded by a brokend watermain). I lost three of the four Carrot books, along with a rather valuable collection of Philip Dick novels (amongst other things).

Well, still having Flaming Carrot Comics Vol. 1 and the Mysterymen collection doesn't put me totally back at square one. Although Vol.2 has for some reason gone out of print. Yet, hope blooms eternal. Recently, much too my surpise, the Carrot returned to print as Burden began publishing new issues at Image comics. He's three issues in and has lost none of the pizzaz. I only hope that a new generation of readers will invest in this hilarious oddity of a comic book. After all, I equate the relationship between comic readers and the Carrot as I do American movie audiences to Godzilla. Just about everyone in America would recognize Godzilla if they saw a picture of him, but I doubt few over the age of say 15 have seen a Godzilla movie since they were below the age of 15. I think most comic readers recognize the characters (after all there are a few action figures, and Zippo lighters of all things), but I don't know how many have peeked inside the pages.

So after a lot of talk about Cerebus, whom I didn't intend to talk about, I hope that I've relayed my love of the wonderfully bizarre world of the Flaming Carrot. Each time I pick up an issue it brings a little joy and a smile to my face. After all, you're never gonna see Batman fight an 8 ft. tall chicken wing. (Well, maybe way back in the 60's. They did some weird stuff in them days.)

Cheers.

Less Than A Month
On like a light switch...

Something must be wrong, I'm actually posting again in less than a month's time.

Is there anything new to report? Not really. I'm filling some sort of writing quota.

In the months ahead, I'm planning a full on internet assault. It's something I've been meaning to do for some time...like writing on this thing. Seriously though, a website, a shop, and a whole bunch of other crap. Of course, this assumes that you: a) care, and b) would even be willing to buy something from me based on the meager offerings to be found here.

I suppose the primary thing that spurred this one was that feeling that I've been left behind somewhere by not having one. In this new professional world that I need to grow up into it, having a website seems to be the next thing after having a business card. Well, I still don't have any cards because I'm still not sure what to put on one. I'm at the bottom of the entertainment industry food chain, what do I have to advertise?

Thus far, I don't have anything to show for my other skills. I have this blog, but it isn't as though people have been knocking down my door to sign me up for something. You may not think that's such a big deal, but there have already been movies and books based on people's blogs. That's fairly amazing. Still it is, what it is...which is...something.

I've always considered the the biggest problem with my two primary talents (writing and drawing) to be that they aren't performance mediums. Actors and musicians can get attention immediately because they immediately have something to show for it. That something doesn't have to be an album or a movie role. You can plunk your @$$ on a street corner with a guitar and start playing a tune. Actors, it's a little tougher, but then again, most of then I know just say they are whether they 'act' or not. Come to think of it, in a way, it's already a performance: an actor acting like an actor. (D@mn, why didn't I ever think of that? Oh well, too late now.)

In the meantime, I'm opening up a page over at DeviantArt, which will feature my other attempts at creativity. I'd post the link, but there's nothing there yet to gander at. If you're really clever though, look at the address above, and I'll bet you could figure it out. At the very least, you'll get to see my smoking cool avatar. I'll probably come back with it when I'm having a grand opening or somesuch.

A website. It's on the horizon.

I hope that I do something worth while. After all, what dissuaded me for so long was looking at the deluge of terrible sites crop up as this internet stuff kept catching on. Now, I haven't been on here since the days of Usenet or anything (I think Prodigy was the first thing I began playing with way back when), but it seemed like it wasn't until college or so that it really started to take off. Within a few years it seemed like the whole web was made up of two essential groups: 1) Porn, and 2) Fansites for everything ever. Of course, those are both still around, but the porn's mostly pay, and the fansites had all their images and whatnot taken away by the copyright owners. In the wake of that, it's become the new business card...and well, personality card.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of it that way, but now that I do...

Obviously, there's internet dating. Then, I guess all the friendster's and myspace's started to come along. Now you could just make friends, re-establish friends, or set up some hive-like coporate conglomeration of your friends. All during this the free blog sites started to appear, quickly followed by the digital photo repositories. Now, I've noticed that instead of talking about friends or incidents or personal work, people just tell people to check out their website/profile/blog/photo site.

Ahh, modern communication.

Well, this is threatening to become a rambling affair. If it already is, I'm ignoring that fact. And if it's any consolation, I'm ending it now.

Cheers.

Not Meant to Be
Thoughts on a beautiful review gone bye-bye...

So it's been a month since I proclaimed that I had not disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm a little tardy on getting back into it, but I've been busy. Not work busy. God forbid. I only wish I was that kind of busy.

Things have been slow going for jobs in the old entertainment industry. I assume they are because I've not reaped the benefits of any whirlwind of work. I've had a lot of false starts and a few short gigs. Some folks have the luxury of picking and choosing which projects they go onto. I'm not one of them.

I take them as they come.

I took one that involved my up close and personal dealings with cow sh!t..but that story is for another time.

I started off my return with a thoughtful looke at Walter Hill's 1978 movie, The Driver. I was proud of the fact that I had finally chosen something that someone could actually find at a video store, or that they might have caught on TNT in the middle of the night. I did a whole study of the car movie, the fascinating subgenre of the 70's and early 80's. I talk about the segway this film showed in the styles between the 70's grit and the 80's Miami Vice glam. I thought I did pretty well.

Sadly, Blogger ate it through some minor snafu. I didn't have it in me to chalk the same thing up again.

So I thought I'd post something if only post something. It's a writing thing.

See after two years, I accidentally wrote a novel. I didn't even know I was doing it. It just sort of happened. One day, I wrote a few lines, and two years later I wrote 'The End.' When I went back to see what I had done, I had actually produced 400 some odd pages of material. Then I read it to see what I had wrought. When it didn't completely makes sense, I had to comb back through and bring a little more cohesiveness to the table. Needless to say, accident or no, this took up a lot of my free time. When I got back to 'The End' again, I suddenly didn't have anything to do.

I don't do well with blatant amounts of free time on my hands.

So, I've had to start something new. Only this time, I'm doing it on purpose. For some reason, that's harder. It's more daunting.

Thing is, I'm not sure whether to go ahead with this novel thing. (It still feels so goofy and pretentious to say 'I wrote a novel.' That always seems like something someone else does. I read them. I don't write them...well, until now.) I could write another. It's that sensation of wanting to make sure you can do it. You keep thinking, 'Did I really do that? Can I do it again?' I wish I knew more writers so that I could ask them.

On the other hand, there's the screenplay thing. Now, I had largely given up on it for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't like the current atmosphere of Hollywood and have had little luck getting anything off the ground, and 2) I got tired of the format. See, I've got this thing about maybe wanting to make one of these things, but I've yet to produce my Clerks/Slacker (ie. something I could possibly scrape the money together for). My story ideas tend to be a little grandiose for the low budget indies.

I've been encouraged to go for either one, or both.

I decided to start back here.

You've got really low expectations from me.

Thanks for caring.

Cheers. (I'll be back. Promise.)

Here I Come...Back From the Dead...
It's been a hard two months, ladies and germs...

What to say? What to say?

Lemme put it this way: It's hard to write or publish an entry when the screen of your machine is what people where I come from call pitch black. Very hard.

Come to think of it: Logging on the internet, opening a browser, pulling up a page, and logging in to write said post is kinda rough going too.

Now granted, it didn't take me two months to get a new machine and get it up and running...but there were a lot of down things in between. For starters, there was this Hilary Duff movie I worked on...that was kind of a busy time. There's this novel I finished...writing...not reading (though I did some of that too). And a bunch of personal stuff, which I promised not to talk about on this thing.

Nyah.

Boy I miss the days of the puppets, then I got a good entry written nearly every day of every week. Now I have a lot more time and no time at all, all at the same time. It blows.

Tune in....later...when I have more fascinating things to talk about...like The Flaming Carrot...or something like that...or The Forgotten Pistolero....

One of these days...straight to the moon.

A Thousand Monkey on a Thousand Computers...
More of that Digital Age Thang

George Lucas made a great observation in his commentary on one of the original three Star Wars films (Do you really need to know which one?). He talked about how people complained about the fakeness of digital special effects, specifically in dealing with characters or creatures, to which he then asked "does a guy in a rubber suit look less fake"? I hadn't exactly thought of it that way. My feeling up until then had always been: If it's new technology shouldn't we work with it an hone it (ie. make it look real) before splashing every screen with it? In truth, many times it's no worse and a lot of times it's much better looking than rubber suit effects. For me personally, I just always liked having something real (ie. tangible, actually on set) more to having actors act against things that aren't there.

However, it isn't just 'to rubber suit or not to rubber suit,' now it's a decision on whether to build anything at all. On one hand, I understand it. Working on graphics and whatnot on a computer vs. hand drawing them definitely has it's advantages. It does create a certain speed (certainly in editing and refining), but opens up a whole other issues with just about everything else. Part of the problem is hacking away at a computer for hours on end. I noticed that guys in the model shops who worked with their hands showed little of the fatigue that guys working on computers all day in other departments showed.

The reason I bring it up though, goes back to my initial paragraph about what I said about what George said. Why is it that for all the improvements in the technology, the movies themselves haven't gotten much better apart from the visuals? No matter how much or how often people complain about it, still no one seems to realize, you gotta tell a story first. (Ironically, you can go even further and ask: Why with all the computer technology in the world haven't we seen any new Shakespeares? But I risk a digression.)

Which brings us to our case in point:

Casshern (2004, d. Kazuaki Kiriya)

The Story: With the world divided into two warring factions, a brilliant scientist, while trying to create replaceable body parts for dying soldiers, inadvertently creates a race of destructive supermen and resurrects his son into the only being that can stop them.

The Review (of sorts): In some ways I wanted to pose this against the American feature, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004, d. Kerry Conran). Even better, I wish I had seen the French feature, Immortel(2004, d. Enki Bilal), to also bring it into the discussion. All three used similar techniques of almost wholly digital worlds with filmed actors in them to tell their stories. Just comparing the two doesn't seem to work well enough with a third out there, and I've got too much to say on the one I started with.

Ok, it's sort of granted that one of the problems I have with Casshern is a convention that's often shows up in certain Japanese cinema, namely the anime-based stuff. I've seen it in a couple of other features, both animated and live-action. It's a kind of cinematic short hand. Having never looked into it far enough, I assume that there's an assumption that because the story already exists (either in novelized or in television series form), then there's no need for fully hashing out all the details. In the case of Casshern, the movie was based on a 70's animated series called Robot Hunter: Casshan (Shinzo Ningen: Casshan), though from what I can tell about the series (I know I've seen an episode or two at some point), the movie is fairly different. Still, this narrative style of sorts isn't quite enough for me to totally forgive some of the movie's faults.

For instance, we know that there's a war going on in the world, but we're never quite made to understand enough about the war, nor do we ever see enough of it to really understand how it's affecting this movie world (other than everything being dirty and industrial) because it's removed from the action. There is some explanatory exposition and some sporadic flashbacks, but it's never quite enough. Though this horrific reality molds and shapes everything about the story and it's characters, it's been left too far into the back ground. That's only for starters. The movie does move along pretty well for the first half hour, and the engagement does stem beyond just arresting visuals. Dr. Azuma, who we've gotten to know pretty well, appears close to completing his experiments when.....well, that's the problem, I'm not sure what to fill in the blank with.

The tubs that contain all the body parts are struck by some sort of metallic bolt of lightning. You know, the kind that comes out of nowhere with no explanation whatsoever. The kind that remains as some sort of symbol, not to mention the kind that turns mysterious body parts into a new kind of superhuman. Of course, by now, you realize that this is the same kind of that resurrects dead soldiers...well, only if they're the sons of the scientist whose tanks these are. From there it only gets clearer....(unfortunately there's not many ways to inject sarcasm into the printed page, however)...and boy does it look cool. (That actually wasn't sarcastic.)

Now like I said, a lot of this is by-the-books for animé stuff, but unlike some of the better written animé series or movies which take the time to at least hint at the mysterious goings-on (even if they never really explain it), this one just keeps sweeping by like a whirlwind. Additionally, things just keep happening to pop up to take care of the things that just happened to happen. For instance, for reasons unknown, our resurrected hero's body is going out of control because of the powers injected into when he was brought back to life. Not to worry though, because his girlfriend's dad just happens to have a cool body armor that will contain it...and...allow him to whoop @$$ at no extra cost. Ok, fine. Moving on. (There's a shot of the helmet Casshan/Casshern wore in the series which furthers my suspicions about this being plot-line shorthand since it's an obvious nod to the predecessor.)

Let's turn to our "villains." I put that in quotations because frankly...it's not really clear. What's funny is that in most of the reviews I've looked at for this film, everyone seems to think it's pretty obvious that the newly formed superhumans, "Neoroids" as they name themselves, are villains. This bothers me because I'm not sure that's what the movie was saying (not that I know what it was saying exactly). For one, when the Neoroids are slaughterd by soldiers as they escape Azuma's lab, it seems to be a pretty downbeat display. They're naked, dirty, frightened, and that's before they start getting mowed down. When they kidnap Azuma's wife (ok that's bad), there's a whole subplot about her bringing out their humanity. Oh, not to mention that our hero murdered the people who the regenerated body parts were made out of (who now reformed into the Neoroids, etc...see what I mean about this plot?). The weird part is that yes, in between this, they do perform some standardized villain-type bad stuff....hmmm...like attacking the "hero", and trying to wipe out most of humanity....Now wait a minute...

I've talked about the villains, but what about the "good" guys, or at the very least, every other character in the movie. Well there's the general and council who are shown as nothing but self-serving war-mongering old men. Then there's the general's son, who overthrows the council, but also turns out to be an immature and petty war-mongerer. There's Doctor Azuma who is really only trying to save his wife's eyesight with the cloned body parts which is kinda selfish and in this way is also feeding the war effort. Our hero, Casshern, ran off to fight in the war against his father's wishes, committed war atrocities, but who did get himself killed trying to save someone else. Only, upon his return, he basically just whoops @$$ against our too sympathetic villains, and the general's son's army whom we don't really care about anyway. In other words, nothing all that heroic. You could say "Well, he's trying to save the human race," but the only problem is that this dirty war-filled selfish nasty world doesn't seem worth saving. To be honest, I found the lead "villain" comparable to Roy Baty in Blade Runner...and in this case, it almost seeme like he would win. I would've cheered for him, except I knew that Casshern would inevitably still save the day.

But boy, it looked prety darn cool! And I'm absolutely serious. It did.

So the point seems to be something about man's inhumanity to man (or super-man) and something about scientific irresponsibility. In this case, I know a lot of this stems from philosophical strains that have filtered down through the generations and into the Japanese cinema as a result of events in World War II that the Japanese were responsible for (experimental atrocities against war prisoners) and that they were attacked by (nuclear weapons). Granted the series has wandered away quite a bit from it, but it's the same breeding ground that the original Godzilla was born in. The problem is that nothing about this movie is clear...and no, I don't think that was the point. The point seemed to be: Make it look cool. The rest seemed to be an attempt or a failed attempt to fit in all the other stuff.

Having confused themes, and grey area issues are not wrong in and of itself...but an adventure movie is not the place for them. Take Apocalypse Now. As a dramatic piece, it contemplates the horrors of war, the confusion of morality, and it's "hero" isn't much of a hero in the same way as say Hercules or James Bond is a hero. Imagine a Bond movie where the lines were all confused and bizzare, and you found Ernst Blofeld to be a more sympathetic character than Bond. Sure, you might appreciate the originality of it, but I doubt it'd be the entry that you liked the best. Even having a well rounded villain isn't a bad thing, in fact I appreciate it, but it doesn't work very well if your hero doesn't get the same consideration. What really does it here is that our "hero" has the look and would-be feel of a superhero, and we all know there's nothing grey area about Superman or Spiderman (at least not like this movie). Not that you can't do it, but it's got to be developed far better than this, if you're going to try. (If they were trying here, they didn't try hard enough.)

Thing is, for all the money, time, and effort that had to be poured into this movie, it almost seems a total waste because it only seemed to work in little pretty moments. However, pretty moments don't make me want to watch it again, nor would I recommend it to anyone (except as a curiosity. Bear in mind I love Fellini's Satyricon which I still can't satisfactorily explain, which I would recommend, but it was an artsy movie.). It needed a story first. A really good story. I think that there were the elements for one in there, but they needed to either be cleaned up or expanded upon to make them work better. Having said all this, I don't want to make it sound like artless trash. After all, if it was totally artless, I would have never finished watching it, or I would have only I would've been more annoyed. (Of course the flipside of that is if it was really really artless and artfully trashy, I would have enjoyed it more, but for all the wrong reasons.

So back to the point we started with: Visuals and special effects, particularly in this new breed of all digital movie, are still supposed to be tools of the story. No matter how realistic they may get, they don't take the place of a well-told story. The stop motion monsters in a Harryhausen movie may now look hokey as all heck, but as long as the stories are better, then I'll stick with the goofy monsters. Hopefully more people feel the same way about it...and eventually maybe the movies will begin to reflect that. Hopefully.

Cheers.

(P.S. I did like Sky Captain quite a bit. It was a little light on substance, but it made for an entertaining and cohesive story which was all it was trying for.)

Feeling the Temptation
Where are you when we need you now, Run Me and Run Run?

Ok. Does everyone in class today know where noodles came from and who we have to thank for spaghetti? (There's an opposite end of that with rice, but for the sake of where I'm going with this, we're gonna leave it out.) That's right, from China to Italy with that pool-game Polo fellow. So that's a weak premise for switching coasts from the Italians to the Chinese, for some much needed relief.

Now, the great SB studios have of course come back to light here again in recent years. For the uninitiated, that SB stands for the Shaw Brothers. You didn't think Quentin Tarantino slapped that logo onto the front of Kill Bill for no reason did you? However, I don't write these things to give you the total rundown on film history. Fire up your favorite search engine and you can find likely all you'd ever want to know about the Shaw Brothers. (Ok, ok, here's a good place to start: http://www.kungfucinema.com/)

The reason I bring them up is not for their well-known contribution to the cinema world of some of the finest martial arts films ever committed to celluloid. Let's face it, most anyone who knows the Shaws knows that fact and knows it well. So no need to enter the 36th Chamber on this go around, nor do we need to sample each of the five deadliest venoms. No my friend, that is another day.

Fact is, the Shaw's made all kinds of stuff. Much like the Italians, they would follow world trends in genre pictures. Granted they never made westerns (though martial arts films are often traced to American westerns), but they did follow other popular cinematic genres. One such was the spy/criminal mastermind film which is an odd blend in a way, but let's face it: James Bond didn't do much in terms of what the CIA would consider intelligence or counter-intelligence. The idea may have come from the Cold War, but most of these films didn't deal with it very directly at all. Over the top villains, unbelievable heists, meglomaniacal threats, and a hoard of gadgetry tended to be the order of the day. Most of these films have been forgotten in time which is largely understandable as they often paled in comparison to their Majesty's Secret Service predecessor. They're kitschy as all get out, but for me, that gives them that certain special....something. (I gotta soft spot a mile wide for Coburn's two Flint vehicles.)

I don't know if they made any others, but the Shaw's took at least one crack at the genre.

I'm proud to say, I watched it.

The Temptress of a Thousand Faces (1968, d. Chung Chang Wha)

The Story: After a series of baffling crimes, Hong Kong police become determined to bring to justice the criminal mastermind the Temptress of a Thousand Faces; however, the young female police officer hot on her trail finds that the Temptress may not only want the riches of the world but also her boyfriend...and her life.

The Review: Whoa, did I just write that? Now that's a plot and half...and all in 76 minutes (that's what the case said, I timed it out to 80 minutes and some change)....which means it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense, but damn it's a fun hour and a quarter.

The sets for the temptress are garish and ridiculous. The costumes are garish...well, if you've seen pictures of your relatives in the 60's, the costumes might have just been normal. There's a goofy (by that I mean bad) comic relief guy. The ending, like the very ending just pre-credits, makes no sense. Most of all, if you can't figure out who the Temptress really is in the first 10 to 15 minutes...well, you need help (or to watch a whole lot more movies, Sparky).

Yet, it's infinitely loveable. That's the part that's hard to explain.

For one thing, it's a certain innocent charm that movies of this type and era have. They've aged into a sort of quaintness despite all their would-be hip swagger. After all, the direction isn't inept, in fact it's quite good despite the li'l gaps in logic. The acting is good. There's plenty of action, a little silly romance, and well...yeah, the comic relief which only works because it's hokey. Not to mention that Hong Kong is filled with scenic places for exciting and exotic locales. (It's sort of disappointing that later HK flicks didn't make more use of the scenery rather than just the city.)

Part of the seling point certainly is Tina Chin Fei, our intrepid policewoman, who again has that sort of charm and beauty of the era. She's beautiful. She's sexy. And she can believably whoop a whole lot of @$$ (I can't be sure, but for nearly every fight seen she appears to do her own stunts, excepting of course when she's fighting with the Temptress who's disquised as her). Admitedly, half of this has to do with the fact that she spends a lot of her onscreen time running around and throwing down in her underwear. Think about that for a minute though. Again it harkens to the innocence. It's not sexy lingerie, it's just underwear, and she's never in less than that. Yet, it was enough to make me mention it...sadly we can't go back to that more engaging tease. (Of course, you have to wonder why the Temptress keeps stripping her down each of the three times she kidnaps her.)

Whether you enjoy this movie or kind of movie also depends on how you approach it: watching it for what it is, as opposed to endlessly comparing it to everything since it came out. Take the fact that the Temptress's hundreds of henchmen and henchwomen fire hails of bullets on our heroes, and yet never hit a one (not even one of those "awww, c'mon" shoulder wounds). Now for me, that's part of the fun. For others, it'd be the beginning of the derision (ie. "This sucks...that's so unrealistic."). That's without even going into the whole "that guy's taken 400 shots and hasn't reloaded yet" thing into consideration. (I was tempted to really count the bullets but was caught up in the fun.)

The Temptress of a Thousand Faces is good, clean (well marginally smutty in the same way as a classic pinup), goofy fun of a type I hope to one day rediscover in some new way on the silver screen. (You know, once this golden age of constant porno is over.)

Cheers.

Let's Do it Different...Just Like Them....
Believe it or not, I'm gonna talk comics.

I wait until Thursday to pick up my new books. As I'm only regularly reading two titles, I don't go to the shop much. Of course, that isn't the only reason that I don't go.

For one, I don't need to read nor collect the umpteen billion Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, or X-men titles. That's half the reason I had initially dumped comics oh so long ago. It was about the time of Inferno, when you had to buy all this crap you don't normally read just to follow a story. No dice. I don't mind the occasional spin-off or limited series. In fact, sometimes I really like them. But I'm not buying Speedball #5 just to keep up a story. (Someone out there reading this is so nodding his/her head right now.)

Now when it was just Batman and Detective Comics, I could dig that (much like Superman and Action Comics...though I never liked Supes' books). Amazing Spiderman and Spectacular Spiderman, I read them both. Web of... was a bit much. Once the McFarlane solo-line came out, they were pushing it, really pushing it. And as for the X-books...(This needs a new paragraph.)

When it was X-men, X-factor, and the New Mutants, I could follow along. It was essentially three different generations. X-factor was mostly the original team. X-men was sort of a blend of the second generation and whoever they picked up along the way. New Mutants were the students, the newbies. That was all fine and good. They croseed over fairly regularly, but you didn't have to read more than you wanted to. Then that damned X-force came along. Then Jim Lee gets his own X-book. The story line of X-men went all over the place, and never has recovered. Now it seems like every character, team, villain, and alternate time-line gets its own book. Well, I, for one (who used to like it), couldn't care less now.

(Part of that is the fact that of those half-billion characters new and old that litter the series...they all talk like Wolverine now, who is, in and of himself, way overexposed as it is.)

Much of the rest of the titles, I just don't generally care for. As for the indies and such, well, every once in a while there's a good 'un. Thing is, I've just got this thing for the classics (ie. Marvel and DC). So sue me. Problem is, the characters I like have either mostly vanished, or get their own books only to be canceled within the year. (I'm still lamenting the death of the last Captain Marvel comic...good work Peter David...I did what I could to keep it going every month.)

Sure I just ranted on that for half a page, but that isn't what I came for.

Truth is, there's one overlying reason why I won't pick up most stuff, why I hate even flipping through, why I'm disgusted with comics in general....

(Drumroll, please.)

It's the artwork. The most important part.

Now, obviously, I'm writing this, and it ain't some namby-pamby "Me and Jessica went to the mall today. I'm so bored. I want a fudgesicle," kind of blog. I write it like an article or essay...albeit a half-ass one...but still something of an investment. I also write on the side, and I've always been a big reader. I like stories. I like good writing. With a comic book...it doesn't always have to be the best, and even if it is....it's still only half the job.

It's like that Derek Jarman flick, Blue. Basically it's a blue screen for an hour and a half (and I mean that literally...not in a Matrix/Star Wars blue screen way) while you hear a story go on. Now that's an interesting experiment, but not much of a movie. It's visuals. You gotta see something. Imagine if the Godfather had been made on a Troma scale instead of Francis Ford at Paramount. Sure the story might've been good, but I don't think you'd remember it as well or as fondly.

Hold on though, I'm not saying that the art is cheap or necessarily bad. Certainly it is in some cases (Is it just me or does Rob Liefield's stuff still look like the sh!t wannabe artists scribble in the corners of their notebooks with heavy metal logos around it?), but not in all. No, the problem I have with it is that it's generic...but in a very specific way.

You're waiting for me to elaborate, right?

Jumping back to when I was a kid buying comics in the 80's, me and a bunch of my friends were wowed and impressed when we got our first look at an issue of Lone Wolf and Cub. Sure we had seen Robotech on TV and what have you, but that wasn't the same as the artwork on the printed page. Lone Wolf was our first exposure to the manga style, and being something different and totally stylish it stood out. Then Marvels' Epic arm put out Otomo's Akira and we saw a newer and sci-fi version of that art. We didn't have the internet yet, and animé hadn't taken off, so we got it in slow doses.

Well, what happened since then?

We got flooded with it. Japanese-style comics are all over the place. Funny thing is, just like American comics of say the 80's, if you see enough of them, you realize how similar it all looks. There are always a few standouts, but most of it can get pretty pedestrian. As popular as it is, it's not surprising that the American companies might pick up a similar look for some of their titles. However, you wouldn't think it would spread over into nearly all of them.

What's more there's a whole mess of indy titles that are the exact same way.

I can understand why people like it. It's simple and often direct. The more cartoony it gets, the more it becomes like a visual arts shorthand. In that sense it's like an abstraction of sorts...well, boys and girls...do you know what the problem with that is?

If you don't know how to get to the really simple abstracted form from the complex form...if you just skip ahead to the simplified version...well, chances are you don't do it right...and chances are it looks either a) blandly generic or b) like crap.

Take a moment to surf the net, and you'll find hundreds if not thousands of examples of what I'm talking about. Lots of folks who don't understand things like anatomy doing crappy drawings of would-be animated forms. It's a copy of a copy. They're copying some manga they like while that original manga artist is bringing together years of a specific Asian drawing style onto his page.

Not to mention that any general anglicizing of things is bad. For instance, do you like Jackie Chan's Hong Kong efforts or his more Hollywood efforts? (And I assume you know which are which...Operation Condor was not a Hollywood project.) Ever seen The Big Brawl (aka. Battle Creek Brawl)? I still shudder. It's not that Hollywood can't do it...It's more that they shouldn't.

For me, it's the same with the comics. Sure some of them don't look half-bad...but they all look the same. I like diversity. I like being able to turn to something new. You don't get that if the two biggest comic producing countries in the world look more or less the same. Right?

Maybe, it's all just another sign that it's all on its way out the door, or while I wasn't looking it got away from me somehow.

Like that realization you get when you realize that MTV isn't aiming at you as a demographic anymore because you're too old for them.

That kind of thing.

In some ways, maybe it's good.

Cheers.

The Best Laid Titles
Most of my Romance language skills are all about snuffin' people...I wonder why?

Now, I made a decision I may live to regret, and put my e-mail up in my profile for this thing, but I guess if you wanna talk shop about the stuff I write on here (when I write on here), then be my guest. If you wanna pay me to write the kind of stuff I write on here...well, even better. (I'm sure the letters are gonna come pourin' in on that one.) Just make sure it don't look like...oh, I don't know...ads for Viagra or cheap Rolexs or mortgages or...you know...Spam.

Moving on.

You guessed it. If I've surfaced for however long it takes me to pound one of these out on the old keyboard, it has to be a Spaghetti Western.

So let's get to it...shall we?

MATALO! (1970, Cesare Caneveri)

The Plot: Nasty bandits settle into a ghost town where they torture some young people and an old woman while deciding how to double cross each other and make off with the gold they stole. (Don't get much thicker than that does it? In this case, it doesn't need do.)

The Review: I'm not going to lie to you, this movie doesn't fit into the standard definition of what you would call good or bad. Take anything at the local cineplex today and each one of those features is probably either good, bad or somewhere in between in very simple standard terms. Matalo!? Well, it's just something else. Most would call it bad, but I thought it was nearly genius (for the first half anyway).

Much of my love for Spaghetti Westerns stems from the fact that I consider them pure cinema. (I'm bound to have mentioned this before). Primarily, they use the iconography and plot of American Westerns with little of the cultural or historical ties. In Matalo!'s case, as with others, they also don't make much use of dialogue: the movie is told in moving pictures. Although...

Yes, if you find mention of this movie anywhere, the number one aspect of it that comes up is Mario Migliardi's blistering Jimi Hendrix's death rattle style guitar score. If it were more well known, this movie could be pointed to again as one of the precursors to music videos. The score ties the movie together more than the scant dialogue. It sets the mood. It explains what we're seeing which is often as brutal and mean as the music is ear peircing. (Now I watched a DVD dub from an old VHS...It would now be a wet dream for me to get a nice print of this film and do it up in 5.1. THX style.)

This isn't much of a review is it? That's the trouble with this movie...I can't only give it to you in impressions and broad strokes.

For instance, the acting. Well, since everyone is dubbed (and not a top notch job), that's always tough to say. The bad guys are repulsively bad, so that's good. The bad girl is hot enough, vampish enough, and slut enough for her part. The old lady is visibly disturbed. The good guy does a good job of getting his @$$ handed to him for 2/3's of the movie, but is believable when he finally comes around. Nonetheless, they're simply icons plugged into the whirlwind. Lemme try to explain:

The movie's is well photographed. Whether it's the usual Spanish vistas, the dilapidated town, or our nasty unshaven villains, the camera captures it well. The camera moves with a sweep and a distance. Like the music, it's another character of sorts. Sometimes, it just stands back and watches. Sometimes, it joins in the action. Sometimes it jumps behind one of the character's eyes. Mostly the characters are just out in front of it, moving and dancing to the score and what there is of a plot.

In between, there are jarring cuts and flashes of images. Artsy stuff, which again only works because of how everything else works. The editing in some sense seems almost out of control, but in that good way that could only come from good editing.

For about an hour, it was perfect in a way. (I actually had to turn it off at one point about twenty minutes in because I was too much in love.) So here's the part, where I sort of review it a little more critically.

Everything was beautiful and maniacal until the boomerangs showed up. Boomerangs. In a western. Hmmm. Now I risk being hypocritical, because glancing above to my line about 'pure cinema', it doesn't appear as though I have room to complain. Not to mention that I already said the movie was full of artsy stuff. However, I counter that there's a thing called unity of vision. For instance: If Eraserhead had had go-go dancers show up in it, it wouldn't have worked. Some could argue that anything could've gone in that movie. I disagree, it had a singular vision and even it could've gotten too weird. Even in the strangest world, you can't have a free-for-all.

Of course the boomerangs go to work in the final shootout, where a lot of it fell apart for me. At this point, there were a few weak attempts at humor. One character reappears out of nowhere, and for no good reason. Oh, and when they use the boomerangs, they don't quite get it right. As I understand, the ones aboriginies use for hunting don't come back, they're meant to go in one direction. Anyhow, the final shootout, though way over-the-top, wasn't nearly as fulfilling as I was hoping based on the first twenty minutes. (C'mon, it's a spaghetti, of course there's gonna be a final shootout.)

All in all, I have to say that this movie gets a new warm place in my heart. You'd certainly never get it made in today's film market. Even if you could, it wouldn't come out the same. The few crazed genre flicks that do come out are either too low budget, too pretentious, or lack any real artistic vision or merit. It takes a really ripe and industrious movie market to end up with these flicks (which the Italian's had for a good long time).

Maybe a Matalo! style video game might be the way to go?

Cheers.

Revenge is a Dish Best Served Again and Again and Again...
The latest in the Euro-Western...well at least at my place

Ok. I gotta make this somewhat quick. Let's get down to brass tacks.

Cemetery Without Crosses (aka. Une Corde, Un Colt, 1969, d. Robert Hossein)

Synopsis: Maria Caine hires reluctant gunslinger Manuel, an old flame, to exact revenge on the Rogers family who led to the death of her husband and who are hounding her brothers out of the territory.

Review: Hmmm. I literally just turned this off, so I'm trying to put my thoughts together.

I had been waiting for some time to finally take this one in, though I must confess that much of my obssession with this movie revolved around the title. It was kind of like One Damned Day at Dawn...Django met Sartana. The title alone gave it some pull. Over time of course, I'd catch a bit about it here and there, and it was always positive (about Cemetery not One Damned Day... Miles Deem movies almost never truly favorable comments).

Finally, I was kindly provided with a copy...and well, here we are.

I enjoyed the movie on the whole. I'll start there.

It had a wonderfully melancholy to it that I enjoy in these types of story. It's the air of Roman tragedy that many Italian Westerns manage to pull into them. Of course, this one was directed by and starred a Frenchman, Robert Hossein. I'm not going to compare him to Jean Pierre Melville, but there's a distinct French cinema feel that's very much a part of that era (sort of latter Nouvelle Vague).

At the same time, it's a spaghetti western, and that demands more action. At least a little more. If not action, then something to speed things along a little. That's what it lacked: something to keep things moving along. Melancholy does not a rousing story make...well unless you're going for a sort of total introspective mental study like an Ingmar Bergman film. This is a movie with lots of men with guns. So, it doesn't work here. At the same time, I must admit that Castellari's Keoma does a pretty solid job of combining the two.

Cast-wise, Hossein does have the look and provides the necessary emotion for the lonely gunfighter. Perhaps the best combination of performance and direction came in surrouding our hero in a dilapidated town. When Manuel is first introduced, he provides a wonderful speech about the never-ending cycle of revenge. Michele Mercier likewise provides a good balanced performance of the grief-stricken woman on the edge of madness. Much of the rest of cast is filled out with many of the usual stock Spaghetti baddies.

My final comment where the performances fail is tied into failure in the direction. There's an inordinate amount of glance exchanging spread throughout various scenes. It's an almost amateurish method of trying to communicate depth or understanding. Once or twice is fine. This movie eventually began to remind me of the scene in the gangster parody Johnny Dangerously where Peter Boyle has to yell at his guys, "Alright, no more nodding!"

The movie is well shot. Though it's not in the usual cinemascope, it makes great use of the various desert-like mountain vistas. As usual, the score is a fun and well-written piece that could be both rousing and downbeat. The editing works well enough, but is ultimately failed by the languid pacing.

All the same, I'm going to place this one towards the top of the heap of the Spaghetti Westerns that I've seen.

I've still got two more new ones to go (Thanks again Franco.). So I'll be back with more.

Cheers.

Fantastically Insane...
The occasional disappearing act.

So, another show ended and I'm out of a job again. Hence, I don't post to often, which blows.

Funny enough, in unemployment, I find I have less time to actually write these things. Go figure.

What stinks is that I do watch quite a few movies in the meantime, which I would love to comment on. I can't quite recall if I did Temptress of a Thousand Faces from the Shaw Brothers, or Journey to the Seventh Planet with John Agar. Come to think about it....what about Invisible Invaders with John Agar?

All I can say is: If John Carradine told me that invisible aliens were going to invade...by God, I would've believed him.

I guess I should mention that for B-List comic books, I would happily announce for those who don't already know: Bob Burden has started up a new round of the Flaming Carrot.

Rejoice. Rejoice.

And I'm proud to say that Bob's still got it. That's for sure.

Pity to say, I never got any of them kooky Flaming Carrot action figures that were out for a while. Not that I need them.

The only other comic book news I can think to mention is that I was happy to see the return of Melvin Potter, better known as The Gladiator, to Daredevil. He was always a B-level villain back in my early days of reading comics. He was right up there with the original Eel and probably my all time favorite B-villain of that era, The Enforcer.

Unfortunately the Enforcer was offed by that dude who killed a whole hella bunch of B-level villains in one issue of Captain America.

I found that out (at the time) all thanks to my old Marvel Universe: Books of the Dead.

Some call me morbid, but those were my favorite books. I'd find a cool character and then find his first appearance and his last. And of course, if I liked them enough, I try and find everything in between. Like with the Enforcer or the Torpedo. (The Torpedo, I must mention had a long run in one of my favorite B-level comic book series, ROM: Spaceknight. ROM was probably one of the only really well written toy tie-in comics ever.)

Moving along, I've also got me a host of new Spaghetti Westerns that I really should go over. I've got something like 45 of them now, I believe. There's no stopping me. I don't want them all, but there are quite a few more that I would like.

Okay.

I risk babbling.

I'll be back. I swear. Stick with me.

Cheers.

"Got a Light, Friend?"
Garko...without all the plot holes...

(This review was started some time ago...I'm just getting the chance to finish it up....Sorry bout that. I think this'll ultimately be a short one. Read on, there's another one beneath this one.)

So after night before last's "huh?" experience with Blood at Sundown (see yesterday's post), I decided it was time to finally watch the Spaghetti that's been sitting on my shelf for the past three months now. So with the next few minutes, let's discuss the Spaghetti Western known as:

Have a Good Funeral, Amigos!...Sartana is Paying (1970, d. Giuliano Carnimeo)

The Story: Sartana comes between a crooked banker, a Chinese gambler, and the niece of a dead man to settle accounts on a piece of land that might contain vast underground riches or merely sand.

The Review: Well, this one had a whole lot headscratching than yesterday's movie.

This is the third Sartana movie I've seen, this one being the fourth of five. The other two were the final film, Light the Fuse, Sartana is Coming! (1971) and the terrible mid-season replacement George Hilton as Sartana vehicle, It's Sartana! Sell Your Pistols and Buy Your Coffins (1970). For those of you keeping count: I still have to see the original If You Encounter Sartana, Pray for Your Death (1968, d. Gianfranco Parolini) and I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death (1969, d. G. Carnimeo).

Now how about them Sartana titles. And yes, I am wathching them sort of bass ackwards...but nothing has led me to believe that was a mistake of any sort.

Essentially, Gianni Garko just radiates cool in a good way as Sartana just like George Hilton exudes smiley-ness in a bad way as....well, in anything essentially. (Maybe I should change this whole thing into a stop George Hilton campaign...but seeing as how these movies are all 30-40 years old, it seems a touch tardy.) Impressively, the Chinese casino owner, Lee Tse Tung, was a whole lot less offensive than I was expecting. That's not to say his character wasn't stereotypically offensive, just not as bad as it could have been. He did after all dish up all kinds of "Confucius say..." type hocky. M ost of the rest of the cast was pretty stock spaghetti (ie. the crooked banker, the crooked sheriff, etc.). But that's not all together bad.

Sartana is essentially the Spaghetti fan's Columbo...only with that archetypal avenging angel thing working for him. He always shows up in the right place at the wrong time for the bad guys. He can always sense a trap. He plays everyone against everyone else. And he's always asking those pesky questions that inevitably start getting people killed left and right.

The mystery in this one wasn't quite as strong as Light the Fuse... You can pretty well figure out who orchestrated the crime occuring here right from the get-go. I won't try to ascribe a Hitchcock-like way of showing you the villain to heighten the suspense theory simply because...well, it isn't there. Still, the fun in the story is mostly generated by watching how it all falls out, and trying to figure out when and how Sartana will solve it all (although he has that Columbo-like quality of already seeming to know everything all the time.)

The action is crisp and fun. There's some decent slight of hand in some of the gun fights. The movie maintains a fun sense of humor that borders on nodding and winking, but never goes full blown. The pace moves at a fairly brisk clip with only a few slower moments.

Overall, I'd have to say that while this isn't my favorite spaghetti, it is, nonetheless, a solid and well made example of the genre. If anything, it should be appreciated for the sense of fun and adventure that it maintains, a facet so obviously missing from so much cinema today. Finally, it provided further encouragement to track down and take a gander at the other two Sartana films.

Garko is beyond a reasonable doubt The Man.

Cheers.