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.

New Movie, Old School Style
Cut 'em up, Chop 'em up, Wwaaayyy Up!

You know, you don't get a nickname like "The Human Butcher," for being a fun loving and easy going guy.

Think about it.

Genghis Khan was nicknamed by some of the peoples of the Middle East "The Scourge of God." Khan's atrocities won him this cool handle because many of those folks believed that he wasn't so much a man as a punishment sent down to "cleanse" their evil ways. You know, like the fire and brimstone type Old Testament Hand of God sort of thing. The point being you don't get that kind of reputation and title without having something to back it up.

Not only that, but I'm sure there was some heavy repenting going on around them parts at that time. Of course in this day and age of anti-bacterial everything and safety first, there are no physical retributions for misconduct. I mean, sure people still do stupid things....and get killed for it sometimes...but they're usually stupid people. I think at some point though, if you knew that acting a damn fool in public might result in having to cross swords with someone out in the street, well you might think twice before you acted a damn fool.

As for the rest, well, I got a couple of spankings when I was kid. Two things happened: 1) I learned my less and 2) I didn't end up all warped and crazy because of it.

Anyhow, "The Human Butcher." Great handle if you can get it, though I think generally you got a better chance of being called "Junior," "Sparky" or "Sissy" before you'll score that one. Good luck though.

Screw it. I'm moving on to the movie review. My concentration, which I would need to achieve any kind of depth, is worn thin at best. So let's move on to:

The Sword in the Moon (2003, d. Ui-Seok Kim)

The Story: A few months after a bloody revolution, an assassin is murdering various ranking officials, but the general assigned to stop the killing finds he has painful link to the killer.

The Review: For a guy anyhow, any movie that opens with a whoop @$$ round of slow motion sword slaughter promises to be a good time. Now the problem, in many cases, is that most fellas prefer that the @$$ whooping just go on and on for the next hour and a half. God forbid you should ever try to insert too much story in the way of the whooping of many @$$es. Well, the movie did a pretty good job of having enough of either one with neither getting in the way of the other.

That's tough to do.

In the other reviews I had seen of this movie before picking it up, a lot of people compared it to old school martial arts flicks. While I can't dispute something that's so obvious about the movie, I should say that this movie had to me more than just that going on it. One of the other commonly mentioned complaints is that you can't see the action (usually they say it's too dark or too blurred). Thing is, I don't think that the action was the point, which brings me to a question:

"Why the hell does everyone expect some super slick hyper-stylized entirely too drawn out round of fisticuffs?"

If the movie was called "Moon of the Sword Master," then yes, I would expect nothing but a string of incredibly slick and elaborately choreographed sword fights. This movie on the other hand was about a variety of other (though common) martial arts storylines: honor, loyalty to state vs. loyalty to friends, etc. In that respect, it was somewhat by the numbers, but it still went somewhere else.

Though the murder-mystery aspect of the movie was left aside after the first third of the movie, it served as a good grabber. Furthermore, it set up the first move in a series of good character transitions. At first, Yun (aka. The Human Butcher, see I had a point for bringing that up) appears to be our hero. In doesn't take long after he's assigned to protect the remaining officials, when he lets known his "let them die" attitude. Not terribly heroic. In fact, he seems to become a harder and harder man to like in some respects.

As the story goes on, and more of the past is revealed it appears that the assassin, Choi, could be our hero after the officials aren't exactly portrayed as the most likeable folks either. Then again, we're never quite given enough screen time with Choi for his character to overshadow Yun. That's important, but we'll get back to that.

Like many martial arts flicks of the past, in fact most 60's/70's genre flicks (ie. Spaghetti's), we're slowly given the story of the past until that final moment where we see the great transition that brought these characters to where they are now. Ok, nothing new there, but handled in the right way, it's still anything but stale. What sold me on this was again the character study. When the moment comes when that aforemention past transition comes, you suddenly understand Yun. Again, and I don't wanna give you all the details, it wasn't the newest plot point in the world...but it dragged me in. I've just rarely seen a character set up so intensely.

For instance, a similar thing is at work in Once Upon a Time in the West with Charles Bronson. Bronson, at first, doesn't act all that heroic, and he's often given ominous overtones (for that matter so is Robard's character, Cheyenne). Nonetheless, unlike Yun, Bronson is never as completely unlikeable. You can't quite figure him out, but he's never portrayed as a straight up @$$hole. This movie does set up it's main character in exactly that way, only to show you what made him the monster he became.

If anything was throwaway in the movie, it was the requisite love interest. It's a fast and cheap way to give some characters a little more dimensionality. Sword in the Moon tries to integrate the relationship into the plot, but you could still have the basic movie without it. At the very least, it doesn't drag on and on for no apparent reason (as compared to the middle third of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where I couldn't have cared less about our two young lovers).

My only other complaint has to do with the sort of Butch Cassidy nature of the ending. Granted I'm sort of giving something away by even saying that, but I think you'd still have to see it to know how it would get to that point. In any event, it's more a problem with pacing the ending so that there was a little more of a climax before it went out that way.

In the end, a lot of previous review gave the movie a mediocre to bum rap which I didn't think it deserved. It was similar to the reception of Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time (ie. a lot of the same complaints, particularly about the fight scenes), where again, I thought "But you're missing the point if that's what you thought it was about." Now if it's all because you were mislead by marketing or advertising, then I understand the problem (and I say "Damn them, for fooling you"). However, you can't go into any Asian flick without expecting a little melodrams, and with the Koreans, I will guarantee it. Even the comedies, half the time, someone dies. A pretty good rule of thumg to remember is: Samurai movies - sometimes movies filled with guys with swords had nothing to do with bad @$$ action scenes.

In the end, Sword in the Moon was a fine film. Not the next classic martial arts movie, but definitely one of the better if only because it went for character development in what is often and overworked and underdeveloped genre.

Human Butcher. How about that.

I realize that one day, I need to talk about comics again. I will. Promise.

Cheers.

Blood's Thicker than Plot
At least George Hilton wasn't in it...

Whoo, boy!

I still haven't gotten One Damned Day at Dawn (though I'm betting Fred over at Luminous) won't let me down, but I did get my other Spaghetti Western in the mail, Mille Dollari sul Nero (aka. Blood at Sundown).

To be honest, I wasn't really in the mood to watch anything, but I owed a guy on eBay a feedback for this thing so I fired it up. An hour and forty minutes later, I was ready to tell him that his product was fine. I did, however, have some different feelings about the movie.

Ahh the danger of buying stuff blind.

We'll head this off with the title that' s on the DVD box. I always think that's fair.

Blood at Sundown (Mille Dollari sul Nero, 1966, d. Alberto Cardone)

The Story (near as I can figure): Johnny Liston returns after a 12 year jail sentence for a murder he didn't commit only to find his brother Sartana in control of the town, Johnny's girlfriend, and an army of outlaws. Sartana's brutality with the locals doesn't sit well with Johnny who begins a crusade to get the townsfolk to overthrow his brother.

The Review: Where to begin?

Well, at roughly an hour and forty minutes, this was a pretty long spaghetti. Usually only the most operatic stories (most of those being directed by the genre masters) run over an hour and a half. Now this one did, and yet the story never seemed to get thicker than a piece of paper. Seriously, it's only because I've seen enough of these things that I could just string it along for myself. Otherwise, this one belongs well in the realm of head scratchers.

And yet, unlike most movies like that, it's somehow watchable. I just don't know why...

Now, Anthony Steffen (nee Antonio De Teffe), who plays Johnny Liston, has often been accused, at least in his Spaghetti Western career, of doing a bad Clint Eastwoon impression. It's easy to see. Steffen squints a lot. He has a similar hard angular face with about the same amount of stubble. And he's a fairly tall and slender fella. In this one, he seems to do a fair job in not just being a knockoff, but then any "performance" he might have given was generally ruined by the terrible English dialogue that was dubbed in for him (and all the characters for that matter). Still, all in all, not a wholly unlikeable hero....well, we'll get back to that.

If Steffen is doing his best Clint, then Gianni Garko, who plays Sartana, has to be doing his best Klaus Kinski. Garko spends the whole movie wild-eyed with furrowed brow, and is rarely anything less than crazed for a moment. Now of course, Garko is perhaps most famous for his role as a different Sartana in the popular Giuliano Carnimeo western series. I imagine that in much the same way as any movie with Franco Nero became a Django movie, Garko became Sartana with this movie's English dub. Anyhow, this moodswinging psychopath is almost the absolute antithesis of the too calm and cool Sartana that Garko made famous. (Of course the only one I didn't like was the one with Hilton as Sartana. Quel surprise...)

Now, as individual characters, Johnny and Sartana stand up ok. They've each got at least one dimension, and are almost bordering on a second. But most of the plot revolves around their being brothers, and the one element they keep returning to is how they won't kill one another because they're brothers. Nothing, however, is really done to cement the relationship between them. They never act overly brotherly to one another. At the very least, if I came home and found my woman married to my brother, and my brother killing everyone in my hometown...and the fact that it's kinda obvious that Sartana committed the murder that got Johnny sent up in the first place...I'd probably have to take him out. But....

There is the mother character. Now it's established that part of why they won't just blow each other away is their mother. Now she pretends not care for Johnny, but she obviously does which we're shown in little hints. She does support Sartana because of his strength and power, but doesn't seem to exactly love him. Now she seems loony enough on her own, but eventually she recognizes Sartana's insanity and turns against him. This results in her existence as a roadblock between the brothers being eliminated, and the inevitable showdown is underway. Like so many things in the story, the mother appears to have a backstory that's never explored (we're never sure why she has such a huge chip on her shoulder against the town), and she's just not around enough to explain anymore as to why the brothers won't go after each other because of her.

The movie also has an array of subplots that again aren't explored. Johnny's tie to his girlfriend who is now Sartana's wife is never really explored. Jerry, Johnny's mute assistant, has a side story of sorts, but we learn the details too late...and they don't seem to make any sense. Oh...right, and it's never explained who this guy was that Johnny was accused of killing...and why so much of the story seems to revolve around it in one way or another.

Now the copy I got in the mail wasn't the clearest, but you could tell that the movie looked well shot. At the same time, though, particularly in fight scenes, there are all these strange close up jumpcuts. Many of the shots were well composed and quite moody. Of particular note is the dolly shot of the boy's mother stalking through the bullet strewn streets to stop Sartana's bloody rampage on the town. In fact the movie has a disjointed string of atmospheric moments, interesting aspects, or cool scenes. There just isn't anything to hold all of it together. Which results in an ending...that well...you just have to see it all to understand...

Very high on the WTF factor.

I would say that it was like watching a train wreck...but it worked better than most movies that seem like that. It was just another one of those where you just wish that it could have all come together better. With what it has going for it, you just wish it could've been a solid cohesive movie: a gothic tale of two brothers torn between their blood and their mutual hatred held off by a witchly matriarch. Beautiful...or at least it could've been.

Certainly the gothic angle was played up better in Margheriti's And God Said to Cain (1970) or in the Steffen vehicle The Stranger's Gundown (aka Django the Bastard, 1969).

Not the worst I've seen by any means...but man...I just wanted it to work...

Cheers.

Rain-glers
Weather as reflected in mood

Ok, so this one's gonna be a li'l more personal than most.

This morning, Los Angeles was hit by something ressembling a massive rainstorm. Not quite a tsunami, but enough to eff up an already well-effed up city. It's been the kind of day that you hope they'll cancel school...but you're just not that lucky.

What's funny is that it seems like this stuff is just following me around, and to be honest it just kinda feels like I feel lately.

A few years ago, I started what was going to be my first novel. For a long time it did hold the record for the longest thing I had written. Then I managed to start and finish a handful of screenplays, and more recently have started and am nearly finished with what probably will be my first novel. Though I can't really stand it the few times I've reread it, I still contemplate finishing it. (If that makes any sense...)

Anyhow, the point was that that's what it was all about: the connection between the weather and my main character. It's just that there was no way to keep the whole concept from coming off cartoony. I didn't want it to seem too much like a guy with a raincloud literally over his head.

That's...ummm, whatyacallit....stoopid.

Nevertheless, like so many things in life, sometimes that's just how it feels. Like when you're really annoyed or in a bad mood but you're trying not to be, and all these little annoyances keep cropping up all day all at once. Stuff like your pencil breaking, the heel falling off your shoe, a tire going flat, etc. I'm not talking about the times when you're in a bad or depressed mood and you're enjoying it (face it, we've all had those). I mean when your tired of being in a bad mood or you're really looking for a reason to be happy, and you just can't make it.

That's kind of where I am.

When I drove from LA to central Texas for X-mas, it began to snow on me just outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Snow. Southern New Mexico. Snow. The desert. Well, ok, it's not like all sand like-the-Sahara-desert desert, but it's close enough. It continued that way from Las Cruces through to the other side of El Paso, TX. I mean, it was beautiful. The contrast and all. But it was strange....though oddly fitting.

The whole time I was in Texas it was twenty degrees or below.

When I left, it got a whole lot warmer, but by the time I reached LA the rain was settling in. Yesterday, it sprinkled some. Last night came the gully washer. (Gully washer...that's from being in Texas. Frog Strangler is another favorite.) This morning, I guess the freeways and whatnot were all flooded out. LA is not known for having a good drainage system.

All of this somehow ties in to the heavy denim shirt I'm wearing today. It's a Wrangler shirt. Black. Has silver and black snap buttons. I wouldn't call it waterproof but it dried off pretty quick once I got to work. It's a real cowboy shirt.

What the hell am I doing wearing a black cowboy shirt?

I'm originally from Texas. Though I love the state (and I do), though I think it's responsible for my gentlemanly behavior and my can-do attitude, and though my family and my roots are there, I've sort of done everything in my power to run away from the cultural marks of it.

For instance, I've always shied away from country music. For the first eight years of my life, I heard almost nothing but country music. It took years before I could even really be in the same room with it, and then a few more before I could actually listen to it. Even now, the only stuff I can really take are the classics: Hank Sr., Patsy Cline, Willie, Johnny, and Merle to name a few. I absolutely can't do any of the hillbilly/redneck celebration music, and I sure can't listen to any of that modern country pop. About the only direct offshoot from country that I do like is rockabilly (or in some cases psychobilly).

In terms of fashion, I've always gone down a fairly conservatively casual line. Some people of course can pull off a southwestern or cowboy look and still be cool. Some people just look like hicks. Some people are hicks. I don't want to look like a hick, but something in this shirt called to me.

Now, already once today, I've been told that this is a cool shirt. Now, that's good.

I still can't reach in and figure out what pushed me to want it in the first place. With the bad mood I've been in nearly all year and all the bad weather that's accompanied it, I'm not sure why I'd make an out there choice like buying this Wrangler brand cowboy shirt. I guess it just makes some sort of sense. I've been wanting a change in order to improve my mood, and maybe this is a subconscious part of that change coming to fruition.

It's black. The shirt. And the sky is...well, dark.

It goes together.

I'm giving up before I get too far behind.

Cheers.

What was that? Oh...Sorry, I Forgot.
It's all about being neglectful

If you study human behavior long enough, you'll realize that there are certain behaviors are undeniable. Now of course, you can never generalize about people as a whole. After all, that's that nasty stereotyping stuff people are always telling you about (though much of that is rooted in the way your mind processes information). Any human reaction can be the result of thousands of factors over time and space coming together. Still, there are those things that you just...you know...notice.

I don't remember if I ever went into my rant about communism and anarchy in here. It's possible I might have glazed over it before (like I'm about to do), or I might have gone full blown nuts on it at some point. I'm not sure. So here goes: There are many basic reasons why it won't work, at least not on a global scale. With communism, all it takes is one person to not go along or cheat a little bit or establish some sort of power structure outside the system, and the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Anarchy is a little different. Anarchy is rooted in self-rule, right? You make you're decisions, you set up your own rules to follow, you think entirely for yourself. So essentially, if there were only a few hundred people on earth, and they never encountered each other...then it would work...maybe. But why?

That sort of self rule requires you to think for yourself.

How many of you (show of hands) know someone who refuses, more or less, to think for themselves? To make their own decisions? How many would rather just have someone tell them what to do, where to go, etc.?

Man...that's a lot of hands.

It's how things work.

If everyone in ancient Macedonia had been a born leader, well, let's just say that Alexander the Great wouldn't have been all that impressive. And of course, had they all set out to conquer the known world at the same time, I'm not sure we'd even be here now. Although, it's something of the problem with so many things today: "Too many chefs in the kitchen."

Now that I sound all high-falutin', I must confess that that isn't what I wanted to talk about at all...but in a weird way, it's connected.

Why is it that in any relationship, in this case friends, why is it always incumbent on one person to really hold up the communication?

Seriously.

Like, if you don't write or call or set up the dinner or whatever else...it doesn't get done.

Months could go by before you hear from that person or persons (and sometimes it's everyone you know practically and you've got to be the social coordinator with all of them).

The real test is to just not contact any of them...and see what happens.

The problem is that once it's been established as a pattern, it's more or less impossible to break.

I just wish I knew why that is.

If you wake up to realize that's how things are sometimes. It can be a sore surprise. If you do get tired of being the system operator, it can be a lonely place. And people can get well...neglectful.

Cheers.

A Bunch of Jive Suckas
I didn't know what else to call it...

Unfortunately, no more Demofilo Fidani for today, if you'd like you can all raise a fist and exclaim: a) "Damn you, U.S. Postal Service!" or b) "Thank you, U.S. Postal Service!" It all depends on how you feel. Go with what feels natural.

So moving along.

What I'm wanting to understand here lately is why I'm occasionally being accused of being bitter. Well, granted if you read this, you might think I'm already hella bitter. Not true. Not true in the least. It's kind of one of those things in a comic book: sure, there can be a lot of anger or rage in there, but I keep it in check.

It's not even when I'm ranting that this comes up either.

Usually it's when I'm being calm, collected, thoughtful...and above all HONEST.

Granted, usually in these conversations it's all about opinion. Now hopefully some of that opinion is backed up by knowledge, fact, and experience. I try to stay as far away from left field as possible but sometimes one simply can't help. On average though, it's very level playing field speak.

Oh, another important detail: most every time, my side is without emotion or burning passion.

Let's face it: There never any sense in arguing with a person who is on a high horse, foaming at the mouth, or just plain hellbent on believing something however asinine it is. They aren't going to listen because frankly they don't want to hear. With some of these folks you can't even broach these subjects without them going from calm to rabid animals in a split second. In some cases it could be anything, not merely the commonplace issues of religion or politics.

Then there's the who hear what you're saying but will just bend over backwards to try and refute or defend their position. When the walls begin to crumble, they usually revert to most common method of arguing: bringing in total irrelevancies. Ex.: "Whoa, did someone do this to you? You sound really bitter."

Hmmmm. The last time this happened, I had someone who backed me up by saying I sounded anything but bitter.

I love the fact that people who are pro-anything these days are nearly as bad as everyone who is anti-anything. The most hilarious part is that no one is willing to discuss anything. Both sides will not abide anything that doesn't absolutely agree with whatever they are for or against. If someone in the middle brings up something that is a either pro to an anti or anti to a pro, they are immediately dismissed or the defensive walls come up on high.

(Of course the other thing people like this will often bring up is "You're not looking at the big picture." Well, big is a relative term. Personally I try to look at things globally and historically. Though the word "global" gets thrown around a lot these days, many folks are more and more isolationist to their immediate world though they'd like to force their view upon the world.)

I'm sure part of my problem, and one of the reasons I get labelled "bitter" when I'm just trying to be realistic or honest is because I'm a white male. White males have of course been placed into this group where either all idiotic or bitter or both...well, and any of a laundry list of other adjectives. The one phrase I refuse to use in this instance in terms of the looking down upon of white males is "reverse racism." How f*cking much more stupid can you get than "reverse racism"? Ummm, golly gee, there's no such thing: Racism is Racism no matter who it's directed at. I've been to quite a few parts of the country and dealt with lots of folks and I'm here to tell you: white males ain't the only racists out there by a damn long shot.

Now as a white male in this day and age I'm more subject to my next issue than most other folks, but it still gets around. Going back to my "pro-" and "anti-" groups ideology of "we're absolutely 110% right" (110% is another favorite stupid cliche.), if you say anything negative, with harmful intent or not, about any minority group, homosexual, or woman....--**POOF!!!**--...you are immediately the most racist, homophobic mysoginist on earth. Unless you're with friendly's...then you're just bitter.

Even treated with humor these days, you can walk a real thin line between being ok, and being pure evil (whether you are pure evil or not). Perhaps the worst example is the reaction against Bill Cosby for his remarks at the NAACP. Now I won't say how much I agree or disagree with him...cause let's face it, you're all waiting with baited breath to see if I'll say something really stupid or offensive...but, here's one of America's most beloved icons being lambasted for speaking his honest opinion. Considering who it is, I'm willing to bet he gave it a lot of thought before he said it too. I don't think of the Cos as a hothead.

Another favorite was The Onion article on a Gay Pride parade that set back gay rights fifteen years. It was something that the more middle of the road gays I've met and talked to about gay issues have agreed with: "Middle America won't be won over by @$$less chaps." On the flipside though, I've found the whole gay marriage debate ridiculous. No one on the conservate or religious side wants to acknowledge that gays and lesbians aren't going anywhere. If they were here before Christ and they're still here 2,ooo years later...hmmm...shouldn't that be a hint and a half that they won't magically disappear. More importantly, one of the primary complaints, about gays in particular, is their promiscuity....but, you want to stop them from trying to make a formal bond as life partners to one another? Oh. Gee. That makes a whole lot of sense.

The funny thing is I'm supposed to be bitter right? But it takes me all of a nanosecond to objectively step outside of all of it and look at the issue with different eyes. Hopefully honest and fair eyes. Eyes that people in the issue can't seem to try on.

Now, women's issues (as I've all too briefly dealt with a dab of race issues, and a touch of homosexual issues), I don't have the time nor the energy to get into. At least when it comes to confronting these issues, I've got a larger brotherhood: all men. Trust me too, I get the "bitter" thing from this group more than any other. But I don't hate women or generally have any major beer with them. I think their greatest hurdle is trying to find a common thread that speaks for half of the world's population.

One thing, I'd like to leave you with as I walk away from here: TV fathers.

TV by and large is a reflection of the status quo of America. At one time Ward Cleaver and Fred MacMurray were the almost sagelike gods of the household. I'm not saying all fathers are, but that was their representation. Then came the generation of Al Bundy and Tim Allen. Suddenly, all fathers on TV are raving idiots. I think the 80's Cosby show was one of the last fair representation of fathers. So my question is: what happened? Aren't there men out there who a little smarter and better human beings than their idiotic TV counterparts? And why is that no longer strongly represented?

Then again, TV has never been a benchmark of raising the bar. It's goal is the lowest common denominator. Hasnt' that ever made you wonder where were headed as much as TV has become such a huge part of so many people's lives?

Cheers. Probably won't see you until after X-mas.

One Name: Miles Deem, (Ok, Two) aka. Demofilo Fidani
Just when you thought the budget couldn't get any lower... (yeah, it's spaghetti stuff...but it's gonna get artsy)

I was going to save this up, having just come back to my li'l corner of heaven here, but I then I couldn't think of what I was saving it up for.

Oh that's right, it's because it wasn't how I wanted to introduce him.

See I ordered a movie with the unbelievable title of Quel maledetto giorno d'inverno...Django e Sartana all'ultimo. (I'll let that sink in...and if you really wanna know what it means...you're gonna have to go translate it yourself.) Unfortunately, though the box had that title and the disc inside had that title, when I popped it into the old DVD player what I got was Arrivano Django e Sartana...è la fine. An honest mistake. Could've happened to anyone.

Thing is, it all works out in the end, as both of these movies were created by the highly questionable and oddly fascinating Demofilo Fidani who, though he had many aliases, is somewhat more commonly known as Miles Deem. At least that was how I met him...well, met...in the video store kind of way.

Back in the day when I couldn't find any known spaghetti westerns in a video store (beyond Leone) to save my life, I discovered that those cheap cheap cheap video companies would occasionally release them under a veritable tableaux of titles. Part of the trick was knowing the anglicized pseudonyms for the Italian directors and international stars. One of the first I found, which I never watched, was a Fistful of Death (aka. Giù la testa... hombre, 1971). Despite the listing of director 'Miles Deem' I never doubted for a moment what it was.

Thing was, in those days, though the internet existed, many specialty sites for movies were still often fledgling at best. Yes kids, once upon a time, the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) was not the massive digital tome it is today. (Then again, they still don't have all my credits listed.) Nor was there the plethora of B-movie review sites that dot the digital landscape. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure where I did eventually find "Miles'" real name (it might have been in Thomas Weisser's The Good, The Bad, and The Violent: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Filmography of 558 Eurowesterns and Their Personnel a book I could only find at the University of Texas Grad Library).

In any event, when I finally did come across the information I had so desperately been searching for (that's what we call poetic license, I probably periodically forgot while I was searching for those last couple of Jodorowsky's I hadn't seen or something like 'em), I found out that Fidani could be my kind of guy. Spaghetti Westerns were often anything but big budget. Most of that came from the creative instincts of the director, and an art department that could make a whole lot out of nothing. Add to that meager amount a sweeping Morricone or Bacalov score, and you started to have something. Fidani, however, was amazingly enough was a low budget filmmaker in a largely low budget genre. Well, let's just say....maybe....he got creative.

Unfortunately, so far, Sartana and Django's Showdown in the West (1970. Ok, I translated one for you) is the only Fidani I've gotten to see, but I have the feeling...I'm gonna watch 'em all. Now if any of you have seen one of his movies you may be asking yourself, "Good God man! Why?!" Well, I'll tell you.

First of all, it isn't just some geeked out obsession to see every Spaghetti Western, no matter how much I give that appearance. No, from everything I've read, Fidani seems to have one of those elusive "bad" movie qualities that I'm drawn to like a moth to flames. Lemme explain:

Now when you watch a Hitchcock or a Fellini or a Bergman, etc., you know who you're watching without fail. It's a stamp. When it's really great, you can make no mistake about the author and often anyone else is merely doing something "in the style of..." (but you'll never mistake it for the real thing). Style, setting, genre, certain actors all point to who it is. Sometimes it's more artsy, like a David Lynch, and sometimes it's more or a feeling or atmosphere, like a Stanley Kubrick.

Am I saying that Fidani belongs on this pantheon? No. But lemme continue:

On the flipside from the classic directors listed above are the low budget, from B to Z movies. There are generally three things that distinguish these movies or give them life beyond what you would think. The first is a well-crafted or memorable story told on a shoestring, and sometimes memorable because it had no money. The second are the movies that are just so far out there that they can be ahead of their time, drug-addled, extra creepy, have giant rubber monsters, or all of the above it. Even years later, people still tel you that they have to be seen to be believed. The third is the directorial stamp...but not in the good way necessarily above. I call it the Ed Wood effect (not because Ed is a favorite of mine, just that he's one of the better known).

There's no way not to know an Ed Wood movie when you see it. It isn't just that it's bad, or even that it's so bad. There's just something to it that screams "Ed!" Similarily, you know a Russ Meyer movie when you see one, and it isn't just that all the actresses have big boobs either. Russ's movies have a style and a feel to them. It's unmistakable (but the boobs are certainly a clue). Just like Doris Wishman: It's not all the naked girls that give it away as much as Doris's odd affection for jumpcuts and pointless shots of people's feet.

Are these movies bad? Well, yeah. Most are terrible. (Russ is probably the best as a director, and of course being a cameraman, his movies are well shot.) Nevertheless, they often feature such a signature style and often creative zeal for filmmaking that they can't merely be brushed aside.

From what little I've seen and most of what I've read, Fidani fits that description. They're terrible Spaghetti Westerns, but that doesn't mean there isn't something to them. For instance, in Showdown in the West, why does one gang consisting of all joe average white guy cowboys all go after Sartana and a gang consisting of all Mexican bandidos go after Django (I might have that backwards), even though they're all in the same gang. Then they recruit more gangs to help them: the white guys get more white guys, and the bandidos get more bandidos. Why the even split? It's just weird. Then the final showdown between Sartana and Black Burt Keller is a pretty well shot and choreographed fight scene...until you realize, where the hell is Django? He was fighting alongside Sartana all the way in....until he disappears just before the shootout.

That was the funny thing about it: a scene would go by and you don't think anything...then it ends, and you can't help but go, "Huh?"

Part of it seemed haphazard. Some of it seemed unintentional (unintentional in the sense of having no idea what he was doing). Then some of it seemed intentional, but was completely inexplicable.

Now, I've come across some material on Fidani on-line that the browser translated really badly, but it mentioned something about his being a medium and involved in some otherworldly studies. Assuming I'm reading that right, it would explain the somewhat oddly mystical quality of the piece. In some ways you could see these movies (or at least Showdown) as a poor man's El Topo...umm...with little or none of the depth. Better yet, it's like someone was filming a sort of dream sequence and a western was happening in front of it.

I'm still trying to figure out the weird but pointless Peckinpah-like scenes of people dying violent deaths in slow motion. It's not a stylistic choice throughout the film, it just happens a lot at the end...with faceless characters...It's like a high school level painting where a kid seems to have promise and good ideas but just doesn't have the conceptual or technical facilities to carry it off. And I guess he never did exactly cultivate those skills, but that didn't stop him from making quite a few more films.

The point ultimately is that I'll have to at least see the rest of his westerns to put a complete image together. This is just one I pulled off of one. Imagine the kind of goofy garbage I can generate if I've seen them all. Ultimately the allure is: what made these guys work? why did they do what they did? why was it so bad? could it have been better? is it at leas interesting?

Tough to tell. Tough to tell.

Spooky. Very spooky.

Ok. I've dilly-dallied for way too long. I'm out.

Cheers.

"Animals are Beasts, But Men....are Monsters..."
For the first time in too long...I'm talking movies...

It's been a stretch but I think I've got a second to say something. I was gonna continue kevitching about the holidays, but you know what? It's pointless. If you've got your holiday cheer, great. If you see it for the careless insanity that is, great. I've just had a crappy year in some ways...and this ain't helpin'.

But, let's talk cinema shall we?

I finally saw something I really enjoyed. For those of you who've read this garbage for some time, it'll come as no surprise. For those of you just joining us...well, sink or swim...you'll pick it up as you go along.

So, I've yet to get to see Alex De La Iglesia's tribute to the spaghetti western, 800 Balas, but I have caught Jan Kounen's adaptation of Moebius's western comic, Blueberry.

Blueberry (2004, d. Jan Kounen)

Plot: Marshal Mike Blueberry's been harboring some strong inner demons since an accident in his youth, but when mystical shootist Wally Blount emerges from a cabal attempting to get gold off of Indian land, Blueberry will have to face his own demons as well as those in the next world.

Review: I'm having a tough time figuring out where to start on this one.

For one thing, this movie has casting going for it. I've got this thing agains pretty boys in action movies, and I'll tell you Vincent Cassel doesn't fall in that category by a long shot. Cassel has a distinctive look. You know him when you see him, and you're not going to mistake him for anyone else. Added bonus...the guy can act (I recommend Kassovitz's La Haine or Gans' Le Pacte Des Loups.) Second up is Blueberry's nemeis, Wally played by Michael Madsen. Madsen to me is like Lee Van Cleef: sure he's almost always typecast as a villain...but he's just so damned good at it. Juliette Lewis, whom I've never felt one way or the other towards, put in a fairly strong performance as the love interest. Round it off with quality character actors like Colm Meany, Geoffrey Lewis, and Ernest Borgnine and you're set to go. However, this film also features a very different role for Eddie Izzard who's quite enjoyable as the double-crossing gold-hungering Prussian prospector. My only disappointment was Djimon Honsou...not because he was bad, but that we lose him far too quickly. I like Djimon's screen presence a lot, so I just wanted more.

The story rolls in an out like a dream or a series of memories. Like a good spaghetti western, it's got that moment you don't get to see and that'll be strung out until the last reel. All of this leads up to our confrontation on the astral plane. The film holds a very Native American philosophy at it's heart, and a primitive ideology that what happens in this life can continue to haunt us in the next. The traditional western shootout is instead traded for a metaphorical battle. Blueberry has to defeat Wally, but just shooting him won't stop the damage he can still bring about as part of a greater spiritual evil.

Kounen does make an interesting choice in having the camera almost constantly moving. It's fluid and smooth work, not handheld make-you-puke-after-an-hour cinema verite style. In any event, I felt it worked far more than in a handful of other movies that were shot that way. Also of course, it was great way of illustrating the dream-like nature of the story. Furthermore, it fed into the alsmost seamless transition to the CGI worlds that were created for the film. This movie featured CG the way I like CG. It's part of the story. It can have the wow of a special effect, but isn't constantly screaming "LOOK! We're being COOL!" The CG world's in this film have both an incredibly organic feel as well as finding reference in Native American artwork. Though the ending did run a little long, for me at least, it didn't disappoint.

(WARNING: If you're watching this alone in the middle of the night, you do risk the chance of bringing on that way spaced out feeling that 2001: A Space Odyssey induces.)

Now if that's enough to get you to rush out and see this movie, I should warn you: Columbia Home Video in their infinite wisdom released this in the U.S. under the title Renegade. I've yet to figure out what if anything it has to do with this movie. Why not just call it Western? At least that has something to do with the movie in a way.

Alright. I've done my duty. It's been a while, but it felt good.

Depending on what's in my mailbox today...there could be some spaghetti tomorrow.

I'm out.

Cheers.

The End to Another Great Day
The occasional value of unemployment reconsidered...

It's official. Today, I got a little bit older...and I started working again.

So I started blogging again. At least I'm going to try.

I've also figured out that most likely, my new job will eliminate my going home for the holidays. And no, I'm not a Santa's elf in some mall or something....In fact, wipe all trace of the phrase "holiday help" from your minds. I couldn't do it if I wanted to.

The truth is, I could never work in any real capacity in the service industry. Let's face it, if I were hawking java, the urine content of my coffee would be off the chart.

Then again, be honest: You may think that the people serving you in restaurants, bars, shops or what have you are rude, but have you really ever stepped back and looked at the other customers around you?

I spent years working in music stores, and after initially having to climb over the hurdle of how universally bad most people's taste is, I then had to work my around everything from common stupidity to belligerent rudeness. Working a X-mas was no exception. In fact it might be overdone to say it, but the more X-mas spirit gets in the air, the greater the @$$hole factor goes up worldwide.

Some might say: Well, why is that?

Simple: X-mas doesn't mean anything that it used to or that it was supposed to.

I won't even bother saying it's commercialized (other than the fact that I inadvertently said just that), because honestly, what holiday isn't? Valentine's Day used to mean getting some flowers, some chocolate, and a touching card. Now it's all ads for jumbo sized jewelry and camcorders and crap. Stuff you don't need. Stuff that doesn't mean anything.

In that respect, I'm not sorry to be missing X-mas.

But it's a thought I'll have to finish later.

Cheers.

I Ain't Dead, Just Awful Sleepy
To my adoring public...assuming there is or was one:

Anyone still listening/reading?

After my stint on Team America (anyone see it? I've seen more puppet sex than you did.), I've not felt much like delving onto this thing. But I'm starting to feel like coming back to it....just not yet. C'mon it's Thanksgiving. I gotta hang with the folks.

When I get back however: more comics, more spaghettis, and more of that b.s. that you must love. Again I assume...but hey you read it, not me.

So whattya think? Welcome me back with open arms? Or at least wait until I make good on my promise right?

Good for you. It's good to have expectations.

Let's see if I can live up to them.

Cheers.