Grey Weirdo's Retroflix Reviews

Movie Review: Der Schuh des Manitu

2011-11-03T22:20:00.001-07:00

Der Schuh des Manitu

Der Schuh des Manitu (2001/ Constantin Film/ Dir. Michael Herbig

Native Americans are a dicey subject in fiction, mainly because of the stereotyping. There is also the problem that the term Native Americans can rub a cheese grater over the nerves of their souls. But really, it’s the stereotype that bothers most of us, I think. I mean, think about it a moment. I said Native American, and what did you think of? Buck skin wearing, noble savages with long straight black hair and a rudimentary grasp of language at best? Well, shame on you! They also talk about the Great Spirit at the drop of a hat and want to sing you the song of their people. Them and the Orientals get that weird, condescending attribute of being strangely wise, or mystical while also insulting them with the old ‘but of course they’re like children’ refrain as well. I’m not going to go into a lengthy discussion on it, but I sort of am because I’m talking about a movie that is set in the old west and involves made up Apaches. But it’s made by Germans, so they have like no connection to the actual history of the Native Americans and the movie is actually pretty funny since its jokes rarely ever touch on the known stereotypes beyond basic visuals and the Apache characters are the heroes. The best way I can describe it is that it’s like watching a hilarious movie about slave conditions in the Antebellum South made by Italians in blackface. You know that there is something terribly wrong with what’s being done, but the people who are doing it can’t begin to understand, and they’re being genuinely funny anyway. Look, maybe its better if I explain from the beginning…

Yup! Nothing wrong here.

Okay, there is a German writer called Karl May and he wrote a series of books about Winnetou, who was the chief of the Mescalero tribe of the Apache people. Now these books were very popular, so popular that even the Nazis couldn’t actually ban them and as a result that’s the guy who gets name dropped during that one scene in Inglourious Basterds when the soldiers are playing that guessing game in the bar. Still with me? You need to be, because we need to go a little further. The Winnetou books remained popular in Germany and were made into movies and TV shows. I have no idea how popular they still are over there, but they’re well known enough that Germans got this movie, which is a parody not only of Karl May, but of Westerns in general and other things as well. I suppose here is a pretty good spot to mention that these started as sketches on a TV show and the audience asked for this movie, which is why they made it. Now, I’m watching the Extra Large version which is slightly different than the theatrical release and… this doesn’t matter. Let’s get started.

Who do we want to see pegged?

So the heroes of this movie are actually Abahachi, and his best friend Ranger. Ranger is a stand in for Old Shatterhand and Abahachi is… I think he’s supposed to be Winnetou, but as his twin brother is named Winnetouch, it’s hard to know for sure. Winnetouch is stereotypically gay by the way, which is one of those Really? In this day and age? jokes that sort of throws the movie off until you start to get the idea that actually he’s sort of poking fun at the idea of that stereotype while conforming to it. It can be hard to tell since several of the jokes have been retooled for English speaking audiences and as such the nuances get easily lost. Even if I spoke German, I don’t live in Germany and certain jokes are local references. So, much gets lost in translation and it gives you one of those “Should I be laughing?” feelings because while this guy is conforming to stereotypes (bad) he’s also an extremely sympathetic and useful character (good) but he also wears pink buck skin (very bad). The thing is, most of the jokes that survive to the English Language track that I’m using are more about having the juxtaposition of anachronisms. I mean, isn’t it silly to have an Indian Chief give an Elvis Style open air concert? Yes, yes it is. If you watch this, just beware that Herbig doesn’t sing any of his songs in English and as usual the songs aren’t translated. Everyone else sings their songs in English, but not Herbig, so those songs he sings are only in German. Oh, did I forget to mention this is a musical? Here, watch Grauer Star's Tomahawk Song, which is a pretty good indicator about how you’ll likely feel about this movie. It comes in the first five minutes and if this joke hasn’t grabbed you then the movie very well might not be your cup of tea.

Nope, nothing wrong with this either. How could anyone have a problem with… oh, right, yeah. I see it now.

Now, the character of Grauer Star (called Gall Stone in the English track) is sort of important. It’s GS who teaches Abahachi about how it’s important to share among all his people and be a decent person, making it more because he was taught by a wise old man rather than because of innate wisdom. Of course then GS dies because he invented the stage dive before is people were ready for it, but he’s mentioned from time to time as being the leading force for Abahachi’s personality. Not that this is important because really, this movie is just another adventure for Abahachi and Ranger. In fact, it’s so much another adventure that there are scenes where Ranger complains loudly and at length that this sort of thing seems to happen to them every other day. They kind of go against the wise old injun thing and go more for showing everyone as the kind of flawed human beings we have in comedies of these kinds. Except the villain, he’s awesome. He’s not flawed, he eats ice cream and hands out apples.

Might as well show you our heroes.

The plot, as it is, isn’t terribly important really. It has a story, a decent story, one that would work as a straightforward story, rather than a parody. A bad guy named Santa Maria (we’ll get to him later) decides to rip off Abahachi and Ranger, killing the son of the chief of the Shoshone people (because these stories are rife with chiefs) and getting our heroes blamed for it. In order to make things better, they decide to go find a treasure map that Abahachi divided among his friends, years before. To that end they go find Abahachi’s gay brother Winnetouch, who freaks Ranger right the hell out. It’s sort of funny, watching Ranger’s reaction because the only thing more stereotypical than Winnetouch’s sissiness is Ranger’s terrified reaction to it. He completely freezes up and sort of sits unmoving like a rabbit caught in a trap. That’s where the joke starts to become okay, because everyone is being made fun of to some degree, it spreads the silliness.

One visual joke, just to show you the mentality we’re dealing with.

Now let’s talk about the villain for a moment. Santa Maria is supposed to be a good old fashioned bad guy, but he isn’t. He’s a bad guy, don’t get me wrong, but he keeps having moments that allow him to steal the show. A perfect example comes when he demands the crew saddle up and ride. One guy announces they’re not going because they’re exhausted. Santa turns slowly and demands to know who spoke. When the rest of the crew tells him it was John, he asks John if he’s tired, been having trouble sleeping? John says that he is tired, that he has had trouble sleeping. Now, a bad guy is supposed to shoot the dissenter to show he don’t take no shit. Instead Santa smiles broadly and sends John to bed, telling everyone else to saddle up, but not before telling John good night. It’s a brilliant little moment that left me howling with laughter because of the unexpected nature of the delivery. Sky du Mont is beyond brilliant in this roll, he utterly and completely owns every scene he’s in.

Also, he loves ice cream.

Some bits of the movie don’t go over so well. The Greek character Dmitri doesn’t work so well, although his first scene does actually include a cameo by Karl May himself. Okay, it’s a reasonable facsimile, and he’s played up as a ridiculous drunk. I’m probably missing something, but I just don’t find the character of Dmitri particularly funny. However, the character of Gerti (called Ursula in the original German) is funny, so she makes up for it. She serves the dual purpose of person who knows that the hell is going on and love interest for Ranger. The love story is sort of perfunctory, but it works well enough for a screw ball semi-musical. Besides, they sort of fall in love before anything can actually happen and then they’re caught by the bad guys. Once everyone is caught the bad guys get the map, and leave our heroes in the ranch. Santa asks them if they have any last requests and Winnetouch asks for the song from the Superperforator Commercial. And Santa sings it, which is probably the single biggest laugh in the whole movie.

Damn Ikea instructions.

After that, it’s all find the gold and defeat the bad guy. They throw in some extremely broad slapstick just to make sure that every kind of comedy has been addressed. Then they throw in bromance and long term homoerotic relationship arguments because they kind of had to go there. We also have the standard think the guy is dead but not really scene. Another song is slipped in, which is completely and utterly ridiculous, but not as funny as the others. However, the movie works itself towards a conclusion and it’s all been pretty funny. Looking at it now, it doesn’t hold up as well from the first time I saw it, where it totally surprised me and made me laugh out loud. No, it’s not perfectly funny, not flawlessly funny, but it is still pretty funny. I could easily get why some people might not like it, since it relies pretty heavily on stereotypes that should have died out decades ago and for the most part did. Some of the slapstick gets a little too slap-sticky at times. However, it avoids some of the more annoying parts of dealing with natives. There is no Secret Wisdom of the Apaches, no Spirit Guides, none of that “Let me sing you the song of my people” crap. That being said, everyone wears buckskin, the hero’s best friend is a honkey, it seems to be set in a theme park ride version of the Indian Territories circa 1953, and it has an Indiana Jones style trap and mine ride scene. Not a great movie, but it has its moments and that should count for something.

Official Score:
31 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Comes a point, you don’t even ask questions anymore.

Movie Review: Shogun’s Ninja

2011-10-21T20:32:00.001-07:00

Ninja Bugeicho Momochi Sandayu (1980 Toei Company, Dir. Norifumi Suzuki)

You know, sometimes you can’t help but think that you’re watching porn even when you aren’t. That’s how I choose to start this review, because it’s the impression that at the forefront of my mind. It’s the music mostly, and the modern outfits. I mean it’s a movie that takes place in the 15th century and includes ninjas in clothes that look strikingly like modern camo. The music is so absurd that it hurts the movie, which is pretty absurd on its own. The music is early 80s rock-ish sort of J-Pop, and it make you fee like you’re watching a porn. I’m hardly in a position to bitch about rock music in a classic setting. I normally like that sort of thing. It worked in Ladyhawk and it worked in Legend so some degree. It can work, but it doesn’t work here. That’s hardly the movie’s only problem, I seem to remember lots of other problems, but the music always sticks in my head and I’m getting the intro written before we evens start the movie proper because I’m going to review this one in a way I haven’t reviewed in a while. Yeah, this movie is so screwy I’ve got to break down the plot and explain certain scenes in detail. We haven’t done this in a while, so put on your favorite Technicolor gi and let’s get ready to rumble!

Aren’t they neat? I had them installed on Tuesday.

The English title makes no sense, I just want to say that now. Right away, this thing starts funky with a guy telling his boss that he’s “created” two ninjas himself. He uses the word created, which could be a translation error but I don’t think so. The rest of this translation seems really good and not at all awkward, so I’m guessing that he did it in a lab or something. One has no ears, the other has no tongue and I’m guessing they had to split Abbey Normal’s brain. I guess they’re supposed to be the super baddies for this movie, but I don’t remember. Also… well… okay listen. I have a blind spot for Japanese names and they tend to slide right off my mind. It doesn’t help that we’re told who people are by subtitles that are themselves subtitled because I can read kanji like I can play the piccolo. So what I’m saying is that I won’t be using the character’s names because I can’t remember any of them. This isn’t like other times, when I refused, I simply cannot hold onto anyone’s names when I watch these. So I’ll call the ninja master Frankenstein.

Might as well JUMP!

So the conversation being Frankenstein and his boss ends and we cut to… what the hell is this? Samurai with windsocks on their backs? This doesn’t even begin to make sense. They’re only on screen for a second, while some voice over tries to give some historical context to the story that I feel will go the wayside once the plot kicks in. Actually, it doesn’t last that long, because insanity kicks in first. I’d like to describe it, but you’d think I was lying if I told you spears stick through the walls, but the guy jumps and stands on the spears until he’s on the ceiling and Frankenstein and his ninja monsters attack and kill him, BUT THAT JUST HAPPENED! By the way, did I mention we’re only four minutes into this thing? In four minutes we went from historical drama to batshit. Now here’s the funny bit, its only going to get worse from here.

Are they at the airport?

Okay, let’s talk about the plot really quick. There are a pair of daggers that everyone is going to be looking for. On the hilt of each dagger is half of a map to a gold mine, or a buried treasure or a stash of twinkies or whatever. It’s not really important, just that everyone wants the daggers. So to make a long story short (too late) that historical guy who got killed? Yeah they kill his whole clan except the son and a couple vassals. While the people are massacred, the porn music gets going in earnest and Syd came in to ask why IU was watching a Japanese snuff film. Sadly this required me to explain exactly what I was watching, which didn’t help even a little bit. Thing is, none of the historical BS matters because the movie has almost nothing to do with that.

For Japan, that’s pretty buff.

See, the son got away right? And he had one of the daggers, yeah? Okay, well 15 years later he comes back looking for vengeance or something. Thing is, Hong Kong Kung-Fu movies were VERY popular at the time, so he’s been hiding out in china, which necessitates him wearing Chinese clothes and using Chinese Kung-Fu because this flick is pandering on almost every level. The scenes of him doing kung-fu prove that only a minimal amount of research into what Chinese kung-fu looks like was done. Don’t get me wrong, the fights look pretty good, but it looks like someone who knows karate was told to try and approximate what Jackie Chan does. Also, the porn music is back, which doesn’t help anyone.

This isn’t the dancing part, he’ll dance later.

After running from the soldiers he just beat up, the son runs into his old friends who have created a resistance movement against Frankenstein and his masters. Here’s the interesting thing though, if not for the music and the kung-fu, this would be a pretty basic and probably fairly good historical piece. It wants to be, you can tell. It keeps introducing people with subtitles, giving them some historical context. The script was probably decent when it landed on the producer’s desk, but then he and the director just poured crazy sauce all over it and pages stuck together and the writing smeared and we go this… thing. The historical context is wasted, because we never really touch it in any significant way, and it only serves as a backdrop for the dagger plot. However, if not for the direction they took we’d never have Camo Ninja.

CAMO NINJA!

Camo ninja is the leader of a clan of Ninjas that are old friends of The Son’s slaughtered clan. He is also awesome. In the early days of retroflix, he was the unofficial mascot of the blog. Watching Camo Ninja turn up and give that strange, laugh, seemingly without context, always cheers me up. He’s a magical bit of insanity that lifts the movie above the level it sinks itself to. It’s still stupid, and the tone and inclusion of kung-fu elements greatly damage the revenge story the script wants to tell. This is uneven, dull in parts, insane in other parts, but hey, at least we get Camo Ninja, right? It’s actually really interesting to watch this movie again because my memory was balls to the wall insanity. The reality of the movie is a decent plot progression, ruined by moments of pure nuttiness, that are themselves ruined by long stretches of… like… story and stuff.

Nothing interesting happens here.

Anyway, back to the story. The Son and his band are ambushed by Frankenstein’s crew. Now remember, Frankenstein has the official backing o the shogun, or at least the local daimyo, so he has samurai in matching outfits and ninjas in gray pajamas. The Son only has Camo Ninja, a small band of friends and a porn soundtrack that kicks in whenever his side is winning. The action sequence of the ambush is pretty good, or would be if sound effects and music weren’t so damn goofy. After a little while a lot of the fighting of this scene turns into stuff we’ve already seen. Sadly, we only saw it a couple of minutes ago, the action here is a bit repetitive.

Oh look! A subplot that doesn’t go anywhere.

While Camo Ninja and company fight the crew, The Son fights Frankenstein and Abbey & Normal. His fight would be good if anyone told them that Kung-Fu involves more than rolling on the ground to evade your enemy’s strikes. This fight becomes a big cock tease anyway as the combatants are constantly interrupted by other fighters who are killed or run off having done their flow breaking job. This leaves the main fighters saying “Right, um, where were we?” right before another interruption comes in. The upshot is that Frankenstein captures The Son and a ridiculous torture scene ensues in which you nevedr quite get the idea he’s being beaten or harmed. This is one of those movies that should have gone further in one direction or another. If we’re making a goofy ninja flick, make it really goofy and stop with the historical context stuff. If a historical movie, make it actually historical and cut the porn soundtrack. You can still have the basic story, you can even have The Son fight a room full of girls armed with spears as he effects his escape, but go one way or the other. Having a tale in which people either are or are presented as historical figures when the hero survives a 90 foot drop, on his back, into a moat is foolish.

Gonna tickle you!

So anyway, The Son finds out his friends are going to be boiled in oil and decides to go save them. Now I know what you want to know, does he save them sensible or silly? Silly, very silly and of course not before two pointless suicides happen. Sadly, another flow breaking moment comes and the silly of the suicides is undercut by something that was probably in the script. Frankenstein and crew yell at the peasants after the two deaths and intimidates them for a while before The Son shows up. And boy, does he show up. He comes up, out of the river, like a shot from a Vietnam movie, complete with dagger held in his teeth, and charges the shore where the execution is supposed to take place. The thing is, it’s so clear that there is in no way enough water in that part of the river to conceal him. He’s maybe ankle deep as he runs forth from the spot he was laying down in. As he starts killing baddies, explosions just start bursting on the beach. I had to go back and watch again to discover that while I blinked or shook my head at the porn music, there was a shot of a guy throwing something that I think we’re supposed to believe was a grenade.

No really, it’s just six inches of water. Ninjas can hide in anything.

And then Camo Ninja explodes from the ground and saves The Son again. Why he came up from the ground? I have no idea, he just does. It doesn’t matter because a minute or two later he’s shot by rifle men who then turn their guns into the watching crowd to prove how evil they are, causing a full fledged riot. The thing is, people just keep showing up to help in the fight, all of the fights so far have been like this. Guys on horses just show up to help the rioters get at the samurai, Camo Ninja just shows up to help The Son fight, Jet Jaguar can surely be only a few moments away from turning up as well. During the riot, one of the guys The Son came to save gets killed anyway, and this leads to the apex of silliness. I’m not even going to try and describe the scene that happens at the funeral pyre, I’m just going to embed a video and hope it doesn’t vanish before you read this…

That's supposed to be a funeral pyre he's dancing in front of, he's supposed to be in emotional torment. Those are the names of his friends written on those planks of wood. This should be the moment where we know he’s about damn ready to kick ass and chew bubble gum. Instead it’s just Hiroyuki Sanada being impressive with his movements and silly with his tone. And then Japanese Moses shows up and gives him the standard “You can do it Sailor Moon” speech before a training montage starts. Oh, but this isn’t a proper training montage, gone are songs like No Easy Way Out, and instead is something that sounds like a love song. One of The Son’s friends falls, presumably to his death, but Japanese Moses won’t let them save him or go find his body because… leadership? We either never see him again, or his hair grows really long when he returns because it looks to me like some other guy has shown up to fill the roster. If I could remember the names better, I might know who is who.

I wasn’t joking about the Japanese Moses thing.

The Son gets the second dagger and told how the daggers lead to the big rock candy mountain that everyone wants, and he promptly lets the daggers get stolen by some girl they have hanging around with them. In a turn of events that makes my headache, Hattori Hanzo told her to steal the daggers. The girl doesn’t want to be pulled between to allegiances and asks to be killed. Japanese Moses says he’ll kill her, only The Son argues, because heroes are like that in these movies. They’re so used to disagreeing that they will fight their buddies if given no one else to fight with. As a result, The Son kills Japanese Moses and gets a “Well done lad” for his efforts. Thenc a tree explodes into flames and falls over. This movie is weird.

Tree. Explodes.

So the girl runs off, gets information about when and where The Son and his vanishingly small crew and get their own back. The Chinese girl The Son met in China comes to help him, and we’re more or less in for a long action sequence that begins with the worst archers on earth not being able to hit a guy who is spinning around on a rope. Yeah, he’s hanging on a rope, and spins around, and they fire arrows, and they can’t hit him. A man who’s rotating in place is one thousand times harder to hit than a man who is standing still. Well known fact, it was on Myth Busters and everything. There are points in the spinning that I’m not even sure it’s still a person up there, and not some kind of mannequin or doll or something.

Just… what the hell?

The ensuing fifteen minutes of action are okay, but not nearly as effective as they could have been. Again, mixing the Chinese style of kung-fu movies and the Japanese style of samurai movies would have been a hard task on the best of days, and this was nobody’s best day. The two styles don’t really meld well and they never actually gel here. I’m through bitching about the porn music, but it doesn’t help. The constant influx of fresh help also doesn’t help. After trying to steal the daggers, Hattori Hanzo shows up with a platoon of black pajama’d ninjas to help The Son and company. But The Son and friends looked like they were winning, there is no need of a cavalry, they were doing fine. Okay, a couple of the friends and the Chinese cutie got killed, but that just went to show that this was serious. The sudden extra help requires The Son and Frankenstein to ride of to another shooting location in order to finish the fight alone. Okay, they take Abbey and Normal with them, but that’s to be expected. Besides, The son dispatches them with one stroke anyway.

Hey guys, does this look awesome, or just silly?

So The Son kills Frankenstein and instead of using the two daggers to fun and army, or buy a summer home or even secure a 401k, he throws them into the ocean because… nobility? I don’t really know. There was a guy who was all, “Gimme the knives” and he was like “No! Ima throw ‘em in the ocean” and the guy’s like “Oh, well, okay then.” And that makes no sense. I guess since he’s seen the map, he remembers the place where Curly’s Gold is kept and can find it later when he wants it. And then the movie just sort of ends. Well, no it exactly just ends. He throws the daggers and he and the last girl left in the movie ride off on a horse at the sea shore and everything will be alright now I guess. I don’t know, I think this is just a screwy movie.

Now THAT is badass.

This isn’t a terrible movie, and I can see someone really liking it, but for me it falls short of the mark. The drama is undercut by the crazy and the crazy is put off by the long stretches of drama. Still, this isn’t exactly bad, it’s just not as good as it wanted to be. You can get the dvd and see how you feel. You probably won’t hate it if you’re into this kind of thing, but just remember that it is indeed this kind of thing and that it’s a bit goofy. Let’s see how it scores, let me watch a certain Prince movie again as a comparison. Hmm, yes I’d say…

Official Score:
15 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

What? You thought I just came up with those numbers? No, that’s how it compares to Graffiti Bridge. I have to watch every time to make sure I’m comparing properly. That’s why it can sometimes take a long time to get a new review out, it’s not the writing that’s the problem it’s re-watching that movie to recalibrate the scale. I’ve done 137 reviews (including this one) and scored each of those movies against Graffiti Bridge. And I’ve watched it more times than that, so I’ve seen Graffiti Bridge a lot and each time it weighs down my soul a little more. Le’t have one more shot of Camo Ninja.

Ah, that’s the stuff.

Movie Review: “Manos” The Hands of Fate

2011-10-15T21:35:00.001-07:00

“Manos” The Hands of Fate (1966/ Dir. Harold P. Warren) MST3K Episode 24, Season 4, January 30, 1993

When I do reviews of movies that were on MST3K, I get a copy of the movie on its own. No bots, no mads, not a single luxury. Now, I do that for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that I want to watch the movie on its own dubious merits. Once you watch the movie with the bots, you’re watching an episode of the TV show. Second, if you watch a TV broadcast, things may have to be cut for TV standards. Movies can be cut for both time and content, meaning that you might not get the whole movie on the show. Even if you have the whole movie, you’re still breaking up the flow for the commercial breaks and host segments. So I don’t review the episodes, I review the movie clean, or as clean as the DVDs I get will allow. I mention all of this because this movie is down right infamous, there are people who can’t even watch the MST3K episode, so this is heroic in the eyes of some.

I am TORGO! Bow to my Torgoy will!

It’s sort of interesting that the husband keeps insisting they stay at the… room? What the hell is this place supposed to be? It looks like a one room hovel from the outside, and from the inside as well come to that. Torgo wants them to leave, the wife wants them to leave, the little girl probably wants to leave, hell even the dog looks uncomfortable being there. And the husband keeps treating the place like it’s a hotel and Torgo is some kind of concierge. When they want to leave, Torgo wants them to stay, and then they can’t leave because the car doesn’t work. Almost nothing in the movie makes any sense though, so I’m not sure why I’m bothering to complain about that one thing. I mean, the movie isn’t good, there isn’t anything good about this movie, why try to complain? This isn’t even good to watch as a joke, its only value is to riffers and those who are curious as to what the original looked like.

She’s sort of cute really.

There isn’t much point in trying to parse out the plot, because even having seen the movie I can barely explain it. Even trying makes me look like an idiot, watch: Some people get lost in the desert, and then they meet Torgo and then the dog is killed, and then they meet The Master and his wives, and then chaos ensues and the husband replaces Torgo and his wife and daughter become wives of Manos… or is it just The Master? I’ve never quite worked out if they’re the same person. Again though, so much of this fails to make any kind of sense that I’m not sure why I’m complaining. It’s not mystery that this is an amateurish production, and that it was mainly made as the result of a bet, so to complain about its production values would be beyond pointless. You can bitch about the production, but it just sort of make you look like a dork. If you go around complaining that a movie made for virtually nothing has a worse production than something made for half a billion dollars, you’re just performing and exercise in hipsterism.

Yeah, we didn’t need to see that.

You know what’s interesting? This movie really is only about an hour and five minutes long, at least my copy is, and yet the MST3K crew still had to cut out some of the more pointless bits to fit the program. Shots of the sky, bits of Torgo tying Mike up, things like that. I mean, the film is already really short and yet it’s still been cut. That’s how bad it is, they found reasons to cut it down further. Also, while I’m on no particular subject, this copy of the DVD I got is pretty bad. The transfer is incredibly dark and it looks like it comes from a beta tape which is sort of disappointing. I’m not saying I need a perfect DVD mastering, or a newly cleaned up print or anything, but it would be nice if I could see the movie a little bit better. It’s a pretty dark movie to begin with and this is just making the movie close to impossible to watch. Not that you’d want to watch it, not really, but if you’re going to watch it, you want to be able to watch it, you know?

There has GOT to be a Freddie Mercury joke in here somewhere.

Okay, let’s fill out this review. I got this on the new MST3K DVD which is a two disc set that has the episode and the original movie as well as a bunch of extras like a quasi documentary on Jam Handy by the guy who made The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. The rest of the specials are more Manos centric, including a documentary about the making of the film. If you like the episode of the TV show, you could buy this DVD, but if you’re not too thrilled with it, there is no reason to get it. Really, this movie is only entertaining when watching it with Joel and The Bots, possibly with a group of friends. Either way, don’t watch it alone and certainly not sober on a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. This really is a bad movie, made by people who have no idea how to make one. Let’s get to the score…

Official Score:
-50 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

The man, the myth, the mustache.

Movie Review: Miller’s Crossing

2011-09-10T12:21:00.001-07:00

Miller’s Crossing (1990/ 20th Century Fox/ Dir. Joel Coen)

I’m going to open with a controversial statement, I’ve never been a huge Coen Brothers fan. They’re okay, but they always strike me as trying just a little too hard to be quirky, rather than just letting it happen. Even when they’re good, you can see this going on. The deliberate attempt to be quirky works so less well than tings that are just plain quirky. Miller’s Crossing has many an example of them trying to hard, but for the most part it works. I think it tends to work because the movie isn’t supposed to be funny, and as such, the quirky characters can be horrifying, rather than comedic. I’m going to tell you now, I almost never laugh as a Coen Brothers comedy. However, let us look at what is good and not so hot in this movie, shall we?

I like a shot of booze sometimes.

The movie begins with a little nod to the Godfather, were a person describes his problem to the local crime boss, only the situation is different. In this, a lower crime boss is asking permission to kill a bookie, rather than avenge his daughter. He doesn’t get an answer he likes, and he leaves angry. After that scene, we get the opening credits, which contains a genuinely beautiful image, a hat blowing through the air down a leaf covered street. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to have any sort of symbolic meaning, I suspect it might though.

Look, I’m just saying if you put on that color, you’ll look like a slut.

This is one of the problems with not just the Coen Brothers, but all of these smaller movies of the 90s. They were supposed to be independent, artsy movies, and they often had to present the strange & artsy front in everything they did. The thing is a lot of these movies had official or semi-official studio support and backing. Semi-official came in the form of independent divisions like Sony Pictures Classics or Fox Searchlight, which were supposed to get independent movies for distribution, but would also fund certain projects. As a result, several indie filmmakers started trying to fit a certain mold. I suspect, although I can’t prove this, that said studios pressured those filmmakers into putting the trademark things into their movies so that they could get their quirky merit badge and their artsy merit badge, because if you have enough merit badges, then you’ll get the Indie Stamp of Approval. This is how the minds of people who live in Hollywood think, they actually believe there is a formula to outsider art and that people who enjoy outsider art will appreciate the fact that you stuck to the formula. I think that artifice is part of what killed the Indie Film market and left us with Michael Bay. Now, I’ll admit that The Coen’s are probably not part of the pack on this because A) They’re not actually indie, this movie was made by Fox Studios, just Fox and B) They came early enough that they’re probably part of the template for the formula rather than followers of it. However, they do have certain hallmarks. For example, they do have what I like to call the Kitano Shot. What is the Kitano Shot? Yeah, I know you didn’t ask, but let’s pretend you did. This is a Kitano Shot…

The Kitano Shot

A character stares directly into the camera silently, remaining unmoving. It’s practically a still shot, only using a moving camera. I doubt anyone else calls that a Kitano Shot, but I do because it’s in every Kitano Takeshi movie I’ve ever seen. It’s one of those little things that gives these movies their quirky, indie edge. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it certainly prevents the Coen’s movies from looking like every other damn thing on the marquee. I understand the importance of that, but the feeling that this is contrived rather than occurring naturally hurts the effect and I can’t get into them as much as I probably should. Still, this is a pretty good looking movie, it’s shot well and the visual assembly is done well.

Another still shot

Now, how about the story? Well, the story is pretty flawless so long as you like this kind of story. Let’s assume that Film Noir and it’s cooler big brother, Hardboiled Fiction is your kind of thing. If you’ve read a bit of Hammett, you’ll recognize some of the storylines as being reminiscent of those from his books. I would say that they’re not actually lifted from his books, but they are obviously inspired by them. I hate to give away parts of the story, because the joy in a story like this is watching it unfold from square one. I will say that it’s one of those stories where a small thing leads to some very big things indeed. I have no idea if people would call this a complicated story or not, I never seem to know what they’re talking about when people call a story too complicated. You get a large political story with lots of characters and storylines to keep track of, I’ll admit those can get complicated, but a single storyline with single main character?

This wasn’t in the script. Someone brought Al Finney a ham on whole wheat instead of the pastrami on rye he ordered.

The writing is strong, the characters are interesting, and the story is complete from start to finish. There are moments and phrases that come back over and over again, like people asking “What’s the rumpus?” every time they see each other. The repetition doesn’t hurt the movie, if anything, it helps it. There isn’t a bad actor in this movie, which shouldn’t be something remarkable or worth mentioning when discussing a professionally made product, but sadly it is. Now, I’ll go further and say that there isn’t even a middle ground performance in this movie. One of the things that people like about the Coen Brothers, from what I’ve been told, is that they get a first rate performance from every movie. I’m not sure I can support that statement, because there are some movies of theirs that leave me cold and performances that leave me bored. This isn’t one of them, but they do exist.

Please don’t make me be in a sequel to Brain Donors Brain Donors!

As a final note, this is one of those movies I’ve often talked about. The early 90s had a profusion of movies with guys in hats, which lead to guys wearing hats out in the real world. I still have a couple of fedoras kicking around the place, even wear them from time to time and the only machine gun I really like is the Thompson. The thirties and forties were sort of popular during an important part of my personal development, but much like Grunge, they faded from popular thought too quickly. I’m still interested in them though, and this movie is a nice thing to sit and watch on a rainy night after having done some dirty deeds out in the streets. You can get it for a song on DVD and Blu-ray. I’d say this is worth watching, although you have to allow for a bit more quirk that you would if you were watching a straight forward gangster movie. Of course, since the only other things that comes close that was made at about the same time was Mobsters, you maybe should stick with this.

Official Score:
45 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Yes another still shot.

Cartoon Review: Wallace & Gromit - A Matter of Loaf and Death

2011-08-08T21:13:00.001-07:00

Wallace & Gromit - A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008/ Aardman Animations/ Dir. Nick Park)

I really hate doing this. I hate having to be the one to do this to a franchise I like so much, but there is nothing for it. I am not a hipster, I do not watch things “ironically” and not just because that’s not what ironic means. I don’t seek out things because I know they will be horrible, even though I will occasionally seek out things that I know won’t be very good. I don’t watch old Hercules movies so I can laugh at their lame production value or sneer at the lousy translations, but because I genuinely enjoy them. Even something like Hercules and the Captive Women, I decided to watch and review it with the hopes that it would be charming and fun. However, that movie wasn’t fun and this movie isn’t fun. That’s what I hate about this, I hate having to tell you that this is just really, really terrible.

It's not funny, but it looks nice.

Let’s start with the basics of what’s wrong with this production. It’s The Wrong Trousers all over again, and that’s not the only total lack of originality on display. It’s hard to go into this without a full and frank teardown of everything that’s wrong with this short. I don’t want to do a full tear down, because I don’t want to spend that much time on a thirty minute short. Also, it’s just not pleasant to watch and I didn’t have fun watching it. The only reason I decided to watch it again recently, and thus write a review to warn you (the people) was because I actually thought that maybe I’d judged it too harshly the first time I saw it. I wasn’t in the best mood, and I thought that maybe my negative reaction had more to do with me than the movie. Well, no, it wasn’t my mood, this is just a bad, unpleasant short.

Ducks. Just... you know... ducks. Trying to find a bright side here folks. Crappy ducks is all I got.

Saying that it lacks originality is an attack so broad, it almost lacks definition, so let’s try and tighten the attack up a little. The movie’s main plot resembles The Wrong Trousers in that Wallace shoves Gromit aside for another companion and that leads to his near downfall and death. There are also shades of A Close Shave in that there is a deadly mystery that must be solved. The problem is that the mystery is solved less than halfway through and nearly the last ten minutes are just a big action scene. An action scene that, instead of using broad genre defining references, uses direct references to things that happened in specific movies. I’m a fan of broad, or oblique references, not so much direct references to specific scenes. Having a poodle using a truck that looks exactly like the loader from Aliens and fighting a big fat woman (because fat=comedy donchano) just doesn’t work.

Yeah, not even sure what the point is here.

Then there is the fact that the story and storytelling aren’t very much fun to watch. The villain is really more psycho than I want in a lighthearted cartoon, and the comedy is… well it’s either not funny or really rather unpleasant. Fat jokes, naked bums, pointless and meaningless murder… a woman who goes psycho because she’s fat, which I know is just another fat joke but it’s so offensive that I want to have another stab at it. It’s not 1952 and fat women being mean and insane as a stereotype doesn’t fly with me anymore. The sad fact is, nothing really flies with this cartoon. It all falls flat, even the Batman gag about how you can’t get rid of a bomb doesn’t work here. This was not a fun cartoon to watch, it wasn’t interesting, and it was nothing we hadn’t seen before.

Because animal cruelty is HILARIOUS!

Let me just say it straight out, don’t watch this movie! You will not enjoy yourself, you will not have fun, you will not like it, you will hate yourself for wasting your time. It’s rare that I’m this direct in a review, because I believe in opinions being personal and subjective things, but this is objectively crap. I did science to it and the results that came out of my mega reviewing computer (The Reviewatron 900) was that it was the crappiest cartoon we’ve ever reviewed on this site. Yup, according to the Reviewatron 900, this is even worse than ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, which made me angry, but not actually depressed. This cartoon depressed me, it made me want Wallace and Gromit to end forever and never to return. The early stuff was so good, and this is so bad, that I’m left wondering what the hell happened. Leave me with my memories of good W&G cartoons, and allow me to simply fade away.

Official Score:
-99 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

It's rare that a bomb will declare itself so prominently.

TV Review: Nightmares & Dreamscapes – Battleground

2011-08-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

Nightmares & Dreamscapes - Battleground (2006/ TNT / Dir. Brian Henson)

Let’s be perfectly honest, this is not the best anthology series in the history of ever. I’m not going to do the run down of Stephen King’s career, or chronicle the ups and downs of his work here. Lately, I’ve found that no two people can really agree when exactly it was that they stopped loving the man’s work or when exactly things just plain stopped working for them. My particular view is that King has always been sort of lopsided and uneven. There are moments of brilliance and moments that don’t work and it’s up to each person to pick and choose what does and doesn’t work for them. However, for the most part, Nightmares & Dreamscapes didn’t much work for me. One problem was that it was greatly shot in Australia, but it’s trying to look like America (Or in one case, London) and it just doesn’t. That’s less of a problem here, as part of the show was shot in San Francisco (or someplace trying to look like it mixed with stock footage and matte shots) and the other part was just on a soundstage. None of that is very important though, the only really important question is “Does it work?” or possibly “Is it entertaining?” since I’ve admitted things that are complete train wrecks can be entertaining.

Well, the answer is “Yes.” A further answer might be, “It’s not the best Stephen King adaptation that’s ever been made, but it’s certainly the most fun.”

And that’s when he said goodbye to dignity and just wet himself.

Let’s get talk about the gimmick out of the way right now so it won’t distract us. I’m only mentioning it here at the beginning because if you’ve seen or heard of this episode, you already know about the gimmick. If you haven’t, then the word “gimmick” might put you off and that would be a shame because as gimmicks go, it’s actually more cool than annoying. There is no dialogue in this, not a single real word is spoken. That’s not really a problem though, as we’ll see when I describe the plot to you. It’s not a distraction, it’s not a problem. In fact you only realize that no one has talked about halfway through. After that, it becomes a special little secret you share with the production.

After a hard day’s fighting, they get right back up again.

The story isn’t from Nightmares & Dreamscapes, it’s actually from an earlier collection called Nightshift, and thus comes from an earlier part of King’s career. The story isn’t changed much at all in this production, beyond a few points so minor they scarcely require discussion. The basic set up is that a hit man kills a toy maker, and to get back at him, the toy maker’s mother sends a G.I. Joe footlocker full of soldiers to get him. That really is the whole tale, more or less. We see a little more of the whole in this production, spending the first fifteen minutes on the killing and returning home. While in the airport and on his way back to the place where he lives, he keeps seeing the toys from the toy maker’s office, looking as if they’re watching him. It’s sort of mildly paranoid, and probably would have built the story up more if I didn’t know what was coming.

What the hell did I do last night?

The big fun starts when the footlocker is delivered and the army men packed in the container start to exact vengeance on the hitman. At that point, the story just becomes a battle between the hitman and the soldiers, but one with entertainment value. It’s not just a fight after all, it’s a war between well armed Lilliputians and a Gulliver who is a professional assassin. It’s not an easy battle for either of them, and the end comes after you’d think it would, given the special surprise extra items included in the box. If you’ve read the story, then you know the special item, and it gives some extra fun to what was already a fun episode. I don’t want to ruin it, but it is pretty neat.

Yeah, my toys used to look the same when I was done with them.

This is, without a doubt, the best thing in the series that it comes from. The bad news is that this was the first episode on the first disc, so it’s all down hill from here. The good news is, this episode alone is worth the low price of the DVD set. The other episodes are at least watchable, at least once. In fact, some of them are actually quite good, even if some of them are seriously disappointing when you consider how good the story they were based on is. Yeah, let’s get it out of the way, don’t watch “Umney’s Last Case” if you liked the short story, this will just infuriate you. Some of the others are okay though, really. If nothing else, watch this one episode, you’ll dig it.

Official Score:
59 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

SPOILER!

Hey there

2011-07-30T19:34:00.001-07:00

Okay, so… I never announced that I was going to take a break from movie reviews, because I had no idea when I would be back. I’m back, but I have no idea what the schedule is going to be. Work has become something of a time sink and when not working I’ve been sleeping. In truth, just sitting down to watch a movie has been such a chore I haven’t been bothering. When the idea of doing something you used to enjoy fills you with dread, its best to leave it for a while and come back when you feel refreshed.

So I took the month of July off.

If nothing goes too horribly wrong, I’ll be back to posting once a week soon. For August, I’m going to aim for every other week like I did in May and June. We’ll see how that goes.

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

2011-06-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984/ Lucasfilm/ Dir. Steven Spielberg)

Oh yeah, the first Indy movie I’m going to review and it’s one of the most infamous sequels ever made. Let’s get a statement out of the way straight off, this is a flawed movie. It’s the weakest of the trilogy, and yes I know Crystal Skull exists. We’ll talk about that one some day. It doesn’t work like the others, it doesn’t seem to fit with the others, and there are parts that make even a strong man wince. There is also a woman who spends more time screaming than talking, which I’ll get to. However, there is a lot to defend, or at least understand here, so I won’t just smack it around with a leather strap and call it a day. Besides, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the Kill Bill of 1984 and most people don't even know it. Yes, I will explain that statement. Good movies deserve better than that, and while this might not be a great movie, it is a good one, no matter what those wankers on the internet might say.

Grab your cute sidekick! This movie is gonna be rough.

Okay, so right out the gate you’re giving me that look and justifiably so. If you’re like me, you popped in the movie as soon as you started reading and want to know why I think a film that starts with an old school MGM dance number (in Chinese no less) is worth anything but derision. Did you see my earlier statement about Kill Bill? Okay, now understand that instead of being a fan of 70s exploitation, George Lucas is a fan of all things 1930s Hollywood. He wanted a big musical number in Return of the Jedi with the band in Jaba’s Palace, but technical difficulties prevented what he wanted to do until the Special Edition. So he got a huge, unrealistic, dance number out into Temple. Does it fit? No. Does it work? Not really. However, this was both Lucas and Spielberg’s chance to impersonate Busby Berkeley for 170 seconds. Note that I blame them both here. Spielberg carries as much blame as anyone for what went wrong here as he does in Crystal Skull. However, it’s as much an attempt to recreate the big dance numbers of the 30s (which often had no basis in reality either,) as the fight with the Crazy 88s is an attempt to recreate the battle at the end of any given Lone Wolf and Cub movie. That doesn’t make it a good scene, but you can at least look and say, “Yeah, okay, I see what you were going for.” and that helps a little. There are actually a lot more influences in the Indiana Jones series than just serials. He’s based on a couple of adventure movies from the 50s and 60s, James Bond, Cowboys and yes serials.

How does a man who wears a bowtie get so much tail?

It is nice to see Indy is still kinda dumb. He’s the one who drinks the poison, just like he screwed up the weight of the idol in Raiders. There are nice things in the movie like this, although they’re few and far between. The nice touch everyone remembers being when faced with two swordsmen, Indy reaches into the empty holster and has a moment of panic before using his whip. These nice moments do exist though and prevent the movie from becoming completely valueless. However, there are these other moments. Or rather there’s this huge problem with tone. See, every time the movie gets exciting, or interesting, the movie suddenly tries to be a screwball comedy. Indy drinks the poison, they have the moment with Indy’s friend getting killed, and then suddenly he and Willie are on the floor trying to find the antidote and the diamond while a minor riot happens around them. While the crowd is rushing to try and get out, the band starts and dancing girls run on, just to make more trouble while Indy punches it out with gangsters. It’s screwball stuff that just doesn’t work and spoils the mood. Also, Indy punches a cigarette girl and that’s just not cool.

Nice family.

Let’s talk about some of what does work or at least what seems better. That’s the shorter of the two sections. Indy using a giant gong to hide from a machine gun is fun, and the room of spikes is fun. Some of the interplay between Indy and Willie is kind of good and Ford is probably at his most charming in the scene where he almost seduces Willie. Probably the best single moment is when Indy shows up to save the kids. He’s just never looked that genuinely badass before or since. As dark and angry as the movie is, it helps Indy look like a take-no-shit hero that we all want him to be. In fact, the whole section after that is quite fun. Even a bad Indiana Jones movie has some really good action scenes in it. And while there may be serious flaws, this movie probably does the best job of any of them at reproducing the feel of watching an old Saturday morning serial. It’s far more episodic, more cliff-hangy*, the death traps are far more obvious and contrived. That might not seem like a good thing, but if you want to remake a serial, it is. I mean, do you have idea what the logistics for a descending ceiling with spikes has to be? And hey, the movie has all the great hallmarks of a 30s serial like racism and ignorance about exotic cultures and religions. Wait, what?
*That’s not a real word btw, I checked.

Y halo thar moral panic that results in the PG-13 rating!

Yeah, there is almost nothing about India that’s real in this movie beyond a little backstory. Yeah, the Thuggee cult really existed, and there really are people living in India who speak with that accent, but that’s about it. And the Thugees didn’t rip people’s hearts out and dip them in lava, they strangled travelers and stole their stuff. Sure, there is also the divide between the haves and the have-nots, but even that seems a little extreme in the movie. The Chinese get off a little better, but even there you’ve got the basic yellow peril stereotype in that they’re clever and duplicitous even to the point of having someone say “Why bother?” when trying to work out their scheme and reactions to the situation. I’m not sure that Lucas and Spielberg are trying to be racist, just that they’re reproducing an artifact from a time where racism was the norm. It’s a tricky subject, and it’s best to say that no matter what their intentions might be, it is racist. However, those old serials were often fairly racist, and this movie sort of reflects that. Still makes it a negative though, there’s a reason who don’t make movies like that any more.

He just worked out that this was a bad idea.

So I’ve dragged this out far enough, and I haven’t mentioned the blonde screaming elephant in this particular room. There are two annoying side-kicks in this movie, one of whom is more annoying than the other. So here’s the thing. Syd had never seen Temple before, which is one of the reasons I decided to watch and review it. She didn’t find Short Round annoying, and I always did on previous viewings. He’s a pandering character, and it’s sort of insulting. However, I didn’t find him as annoying this time. Willie however, remains as bad as she was the first time. Her jokes are bad, she’s annoying, you can never see why Indy is interested in her and the screaming… oh the screaming. Is it any wonder that there was never another screaming woman in an Indy movie? Even the actor who played Willie hates the character. There’s only one moment with her screaming that I like, and that’s when she has the “I hate being outside” tantrum, because that feels genuine. That’s a good time, place and reason to start flipping out. Other than that though, no one really likes her… buuuut, again she is part of the pattern of those serials. There were a lot of screamers in those days. There were also a lot of kid side-kicks in those days. If anything, and I know I’ve said it already, Temple hold most strongly to the traditions of the classic serial. I know that will be a shock to lots of people who think they know all about the old serials, even though they never watched one, but it’s true. However, in many ways it shows why we don’t do that anymore. There’s a lot of annoying, stupid, tedious things in those movies. Believe me, I’ve watched a lot of them.

I love my new lamps from Ikea. This one is called NgǖKlǽagĉéü. I have no idea how you pronounce it.

I could talk about the mine ride, but what hasn’t already been said about that? I think what bothers me most is actually a small thing. Indy admits that he understands the power behind the stones at the end, but at the beginning of Raiders he says he doesn’t believe in all that hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. In fact, he never actually sees anything supernatural in Raiders, since he closes his eyes before the ghosts come out of the Ark. It’s sort of a big deal that Indy actually sort of believes in the power of the Ark when he does, and that’s severely undermined by having him believe a year or so before Raiders gets started. I don’t like it, don’t approve, don’t like the aliens being super intelligent pan dimensional beings that go back to the space between spaces or whatever.

All the best characters can be identified by their silhouette. Indy, Vader, Bugs Bunny…

Let’s talk for a moment about what I do approve of. Indy is pretty cool here, that’s good. The fights are interesting and well put together. If the whole underground cult just took place in some made up country, it would be viewed with much more affection I think. I do know people who mark this as their favorite, but those people have a specialized set of standards. This isn’t really a terrible movie, it’s just not as good at the other two in the trilogy. Yeah, there’s a fourth movie, but I honestly think that in 10 years time we’ll be calling that the start of the second trilogy. They’re going to go back to this well, I think it’s inevitable. Go get this one though and give it a go, it’s worth your time. I think there probably is more to say, I’m probably missing a bunch of points, which is why I should keep better notes, but that’s the way life is, this sentence is getting awfully long, maybe I should stop at some point.

Official Score:
55 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

It must be the hat, chicks dig the hat.

Movie Review: Brick

2011-06-08T22:27:00.000-07:00

Brick (2005/Focus Features/ Dir. Rian Johnson)

Okay, so when I first heard the concept of Brick, I was not a fan. Oh goodie, I thought, a Film Noir set in a high school. There will be teens in fedoras and talking fast like their trying to be Jimmy Cagney, despite the fact that Cagney never made a film noir because he was too big a star to be in those b movies. To be perfectly frank, I was expecting a high school version of Bugsy Malone, complete withy pie shooting machine guns. However, I heard some things and someone sent me the movie as a gift and I had to watch it then. So I watched it and was pleased to discover that my fears were misplaced. This wasn’t a bunch of teenagers playing at film noir, it was film noir playing with a bunch of teenagers. That probably sounds like I said the same thing, but it’s the difference of “I mean what I say is the same thing as I say what I mean.” If you get my drift. To put it in a short, declarative sentence: These guys got what film noir means rather than just trying to ape what it looks like.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

We’ll skip the ‘what works and what doesn’t work’ talk that I normally do here lately, because almost everything works like it’s supposed to. If you’re not digging the movie, then you probably don’t like detective stories much, because this is a private detective story just with the P.I. being a high school student. It’s pretty much kept in the realm of high school as well. Everything here is something that these people could realistically get into. We never have car chases, or gun fights with gangsters in Chinese restaurants. The scale of the story works in the context. As I say, this is a film that really works. I hope you aren’t tired of me saying that, because that phrase is going to come up again. So let’s talk about why I think it works…

A lot of lens flares here. Starting to look a bit too Star Trek for my tastes.

Adults: None. Interestingly, adults don’t really exist in this world. There are a few adults in it, but they’re rarely seen and don’t have a lot of impact beyond the sort of Charlie Brown muted trumpets. You could have almost eliminated them entirely and had no impact on the movie. There is one part that needs the adult and that’s Richard Roundtree's Assistant Vice Principal who serves as the single authority figure in the movie. True, he plays like an Assistant D.A. right out of TV Tropes or at least out of Film Noir Tropesif there is such a website, which I doubt. This won’t be the last trope, we get a lot of them, but not a narration. Narration is no where near as prevalent in Film Noir as parody and Neo-Noir would have you think. We also avoid a few of the other tropes, like the hard lighting and the constant smoking. Visually, only one character looks like what their character is supposed to be. The femme fatale looks like she wants to be in a movie from the late 40s or possibly the early 60s. Her looks bounces around, but it keeps being like a femme fatale from one of these movies and that’s sort of distracting because no one else looks like their counterparts, but rather like a real person who lives in this world. I suppose you could say that Laura is trying to make that her look, but it’s still distracting when no one else is leaning in that direction.

Huh… well, that’s not what I was expecting to see.

There are a couple of things that really bring a smile to my face, and one of them is how the main character (Brendan) deals with people who would normally be the main antagonist for a movie like this. The football player is quickly dispatched in a single fist fight, and the punk is made out to be a useless pothead before he’s even beat up. The football player particularly is interesting, since he constantly complains about not being put in the game, although it seems to me the coach isn’t putting him in the game because he’s a dope head and possibly a dealer. You have to work to that conclusion, because there are no adults in this world and like every good Hammett story, we keep with Brendan’s viewpoint for the entire tale. The pothead punk though, isn’t nearly as useless as he’s first portrayed as being, although he might be as stupid as he first appears. I really like how character archetypes from Hard Boiled fiction and Film Noir are easily slotted into the world of high school without any real twisting or deliberate mis-shaping. It all just fits, and no one has to fast talk like Jimmy Cagney.

I really just want someone to hold me.

This isn’t an action movie, it’s a murder mystery. There are a couple of bodies, but no big scenes of action with people getting killed. When you see a body, it’s a big deal here. The fist fights are small deals, at least for the most part and you never get the idea of anyone being really imperiled beyond getting their butts kicked. There is danger, but no one thinks that the danger is really going to be fatal. Until you get to the third act, but what kind of an asshole would I have to be to ruin the movie for you? Particularly a movie like this. No, I won’t give you even a hint of a run down of the movie, because almost anything but a bare bones explanation is a major dick move.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty.

Speaking of bodies, it’s no spoiler to give you at least an idea of what the movie is about. The movie opens with a body, like before you even get the title card there is a corpse. I think I’m justified in giving you that much. Brendan’s ex-girlfriend is killed, after calling him in a panic for help with something that she barely explains. Once he gets to talking to her though, she tells him it was a mistake to call and he should just drop it, just like everyone else in the movie does. That’s Film Noir Trope #4 by the way, just in case you were wondering. When Brendan finds the girl dead, he decides to work out who killed her. This sends him down a path looking for not just the killer, but the situation that got her killed. What makes it a great Hammett style story is that he does all this for a girl who dumped him months ago and who didn’t like him much. And he does all this for no profit and in fact, he looses quite a bit by the end.

Now that’s classy.

One interesting point though, and it comes across as part of the feel, you can sort of tell the movie was written in 1996 or so. Here are my reasons. There are no cell phones, there is no internet, and there are actually still phone booths in this world. That helps though, it gives credence to the feeling of this being a retrofied story. Of course if you just decide the story really takes place in 1996, well, that’s okay I suppose. There’s really not much that would say you’re wrong, not really. It doesn’t really matter when the movie takes place exactly. Either way, you should probably go get a copy on DVD. It’s a pretty good movie.

Official Score:
83 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

A scene from the up coming Harry Potter and the Killer In The Rain.

Movie Review: Ronin

2011-05-27T01:30:00.000-07:00

Ronin (1998 / United Artists / Dir. John Frankenheimer )

You k now what I think? I think they should make the whole plane out of the stuff they make the black box out of. You know what else I think? I think that Ronin is the last great action movie of the 70s. I say that for a few reasons, but the number one is that everything just feels like the 70s here. I should expand it to the late 60s as well, but you get my meaning perhaps. It would fit right in with a night of watching great action/thrillers like The Ipcress File, The Day of the Jackal and The French Connection. You could have made this movie in 1975 and only a few changes in technology would have to be downgraded. Of course, some of those downgrades would change plot points, so lets be glad things are as they are. The point is that this is an old fashioned action movie, the sort they just don’t seem to make anymore. Of course it was old fashioned at the time, which was part of the point, I suspect. Either way, let’s talk about a great action movie…

For an action movie, they sit around this table an awful lot

The outline of the plot is this… A group of mercenaries, mostly made up ex-military are hired to steal a mystery case. Once they steal the case, things fail to go as planned and they’re forced to try and steal it again. That’s a very broad outline for a movie full of twists and turns. You note that I don’t mention who is hiring this band of mercs, which is because it’s never quite clear beyond the principals being Irish. You’ll note I don’t mention what’s in the case, that’s because we never actually find out. And really, if you watch carefully, you’ll find that you don’t get a lot of superfluous information that a movie would normally hand you in the normal course of things. You’re never actually given any more than you absolutely need and you have to really pay attention to get it. You rarely get movies like this now, movies that hand you almost nothing but are also deeply detailed. We sort of lost that sort of thing in the 80s, I think people found that the heavily layered effect was difficult and didn’t net that much more acclaim than simple and explodey.

Negotiations for the office lunch have officially broken down.

So that’s the plot, or the basics of it. I’m not going to go into all the betrayal and chasing for former colleagues across France, because really you should watch this movie for yourself. However, if I haven’t made it clear yet, allow me now to state exactly what sort of movie you can expect to see here. This is a heist movie, where you see the planning, execution and then the chasing down the double-crossing so-and-so. The heist and double cross actually comes fairly early in the movie, so that’s not a spoiler. There are two major car chases in this movie, and a couple of other minor action scenes, but this isn’t actually a big action movie. There is a lot of good stunt work, and excellent stunt driving, but what really holds this movie together are the performances from a really first rate cast.

Little boxes with buttons, is there anything they can’t do?

However, since we’re here, and I’m watching the movie, we might as well talk about the action scenes. What you’ve got is a decent firefight under a bridge in Paris, which is short but you get to hear Sean Bean swearing. That’s useful if you want to re-edit the sound on Lord of The Rings. Then you’ve got the first car chase in Nice and the surrounding area. This is mostly a chase down rural freeways and a little bit of gun play. It’s a good primer for the main event which will come later. Then you’ve got some more gunplay in a Roman arena in Arles. These action scenes get a little more intense until the main event which is the big car chase through Paris. The Paris chase is what all other car chases are to be judged by and the only thing that comes even close in my view is the Moscow Chase in The Bourne Supremacy. However, that chase is a little too chaotic and in Ronin you can tell exactly where you are and what’s going on. In fact, if you go to Paris and look around, you can tell where scenes were shot and while you can’t follow the route on foot, you can follow the route. Not that I tired when I was in Paris or anything. There’s one more little gunfight after the big Paris chase, but it’s a minor point, almost a dénouement really. Still, action wise it’s worth watching.

Yup, they really go there.

Now as for philosophy, the movie actually has some, surprising as that might be. There is a section where the story of the 47 Ronin is explained and brought into context. The greater philosophy is that the spy games that ended in late 80s left us with a lot of spies and no master to serve, making these men like Ronin. It’s not like the whole movie is a meditation on this subject, its one scene that lays out the idea and the movie walks away and lets you have a nice car to take your mind off things. It is nice though, to have the movie admit that there might be more to think about than just what’s in the case.

Nope, no joke, just neat graffiti.

About the only reasons I can think that a person wouldn’t like this movie is if A) You don’t like action movies, B) You think it’s not an action movie unless things explode every four minutes or C) You thought this was going to be more quiet intrigue and less driving cars through Paris at 100 mph. I can honestly see how this might not be your cup of tea, because it is possible for some people to like John Woo more than John Frankenheimer. Otherwise, you should dig this flick. It’s pretty cheap on DVD or you can get it on Netflix. Totally worth your time.

Official Score:
79 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Would you believe this is what passes for serious detective work in this movie?

Movie Review: The Fearless Hyena

2011-05-13T20:26:00.001-07:00

The Fearless Hyena (1979/ Goodyear Movie Company/ Dir. Jackie Chan)

Really? All the movies I've reviewed and this is the first Jackie Chan movie? Huh, that’s odd. This is as good a place as any to start with Chan. As far as I’m able to tell, this is Chan’s first directorial effort, even though Kenneth Tsang helped out. The thing is, this is a really cheap movie. Really cheap. You know how Shaw Brothers movies tend to look like a poor man’s version of old Hollywood movies? No? Do we need a Shaw Brothers primer? Okay, note to self, review a Shaw Brothers classic sometime. Let me break it down quickly. A lot of the Shaw’s movies were studio bound in a way that soap operas would find embarrassing. I’ve seen Shaw films that have almost no exterior shots, despite the fact that much of the movie ostensibly takes place outside. One Armed Swordsman comes to mind. The Shaws did build a backlot, and used it to great effect, but many movies still have a great deal of indoor studio shooting. The reason I bring this up is that things like Fearless Hyena didn’t have as much money as a Shaw production. That’s my point. They’re not even as expensive as a poor man’s knock-off. However, along with more exterior shoots (the forest is CHEAP!) there is also a bit more soul here. Chan and company are working their butts off to produce a new kind of kung fu movie. It worked too, this movie even supplanted Chan’s break-out film Drunken Master as the highest grossing movie in Hong Kong.

So a little background to where Kung-Fu movies were at this time. While Bruce Lee had breathed life into the HK action scene for a while, after his death things more or less went back to the way they had been. That means a lot of historical settings, very stagey action, and acting that was more akin to the opera than anything even remotely approaching naturalistic. Yes, there were Brucesploitation movies, but even they tended to fall into the same pattern. One thing you almost never got in kung-fu movies was comedy. You’d get grim tough guys, fighting grim baddies in a set and standard story style. Jackie Chan wanted, very badly, to change all that. Now while Fearless Hyena doesn’t change everything, it does inject a few things that were new at the time. It’s not a perfect movie by any stretch, but it is pretty decent.

What’s wrong with the movie? Well, the three acts sort of fall into place with a loud and rather sickening thud. First Jackie’s character (Shing Lung, but we might as well just call him Jackie) is irresponsible and gets into fights a lot. His grandfather tries to train in him Kung Fu and teach him responsibility, but it sort of fails. During this early part of the movie Jackie’s supposed to find work, which leads to a fairly funny bit with a coffin seller. The second act opens when some gamblers he beat up ask him to teach kung-fu at a school they work at. After the second act starts, the events of the first act are more or less forgotten. Likewise, once the third act begins, with the death of Jackie’s grandfather and the eventual revenge. That’s not a spoiler, that’s a definition of Jackie Chan’s movies for the first seven or eight years of his career. The point is, the script is mechanical and perfunctory.

So what’s right about the movie? Well, let’s start with its great weakness. There doesn’t really need to be much of a script. Like a Charlie Chaplin movie, the story is just a framework on which comedy and fights can be laid out. The comedy, while broad, is pretty funny. Granted, it’s funny in a Chaplin/Three Stooges kind of way, but what exactly is wrong with that? The bits where Chan dresses up as an idiot and a girl to fight challengers to his school is still some of the funniest fighting I’ve ever seen. This is a really funny movie, even if it more or less drops the comedy in the third act. The comedy isn’t completely gone though. A sequence where two characters fight over a morsel of food with chopsticks is pretty good and sort of makes fun of the staged action of a Shaw Brothers movie.

How is the action then? Pretty good for the time, but not spectacular as action in and of itself. When the serious fighting at the end commences, the movie is just following a path to its forgone conclusion. It’s actually more impressive watching the training than the final fight. However, given that naturalistic fighting wasn’t really a thing at this time, and that you can almost hear the metronome counting off beats as they fight, it’s not bad. It is however obviously a swan song for this sort of Kung Fu movie. Chan soon after abandoned this style of film fighting, going for a more naturalistic and fast paced approach. Once he proved to be the leading star in Hong Kong, others followed his lead and the world of Kung Fu cinema changed forever.

So in the end, this is an interesting step towards a greater kind of movie, but it’s not much beyond that. It’s pretty good, but a long way from being great. You can watch it online for free if you look for it, I think it’s probably in the public domain at this point. You could also get it on get it on DVD. I would recommend watching it, but don’t go in thinking you’re going to see some groundbreaking wonder because you aren’t. However, you will see something funny and that’s worth your time.

Official Score:
15 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: Blade Runner

2011-04-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

Blade Runner (1982/ The Ladd Company/ Dir. Ridley Scott)

There isn’t much to say about the movie Blade Runner really. Well, there isn’t much new to say at any rate. It’s not a movie that has been ignored as a discussion point over the years, so why review it? Well, I’m going to go from the angle I went with for the recent review of Jurassic Park and compare it to the source material, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I’ll be honest now and say that I enjoy both the movie and the book, so I won’t attack one using the other as a bludgeon. I will say I enjoy them both in different ways, and I hope to explore that in this review. So let’s have a look at the two and hopefully get you to either read one or watch the other. As another note, there are several versions of this movie running around. Instead of picking this version or that version, I decided to review the two major versions. As well as the book, I’ve decided to review The International Cut and The Final Cut for this review. I could have done some of the others, but the review is already late as it is so let’s just go with that.

Let’s start with the heresy first. Would you believe I like the narration from the old theatrical versions? Most of it anyway, there are a couple of spots that I don’t think can be defended, but I think that the voice over adds a bit to the story that we miss otherwise. The problem is that there isn’t enough narration for the kind of movie that we’ve got. If you’re going to have a narration, particularly one that’s meant to explain some of the more out-there aspects of your movie, then it should have a stronger presence. I can point out several places in the movie were just a few sentences would have moved the story along a little or at least explain certain things. The problem is, the narration feels like what it is, a last minute half-assed studio mandated addition. However, there are bits of it that I like, although I think the commentary after Roy Batty dies is a bit redundant like the Grand Canyon is a bit of a hole in the ground. The movie still works without the narration, but I like it anyway.

So, with that in mind, how does the movie compare to the book? Hardly at all really. To be honest, the two are very different in terms of story. As often happens when a book is adapted, huge parts of the book are absent from the movie. The religious cult of Mercerism, and the greater importance of empathy and animal ownership that goes with it are absent from the movie entirely. While WWT isn’t actually stated to have been an event, there clearly has been some massive environmental damage done to this world. For one, it seems to rain all the time and for another the sun never shines. When I was a kid, I just thought the whole thing took place at night, like so many Film Noir that played on cable sometimes. This idea is intensified since the movie is basically making a Sci-Fi version of a Film Noir. It wasn’t until later that I clicked the idea that this was a world where the sun simply did not shine.

If one wanted to present a clear and concise explanation for how the book and the movie are different, it would be fairly simple to say the book has a richer story but the movie has more atmosphere. I’ll point out that the movie lacks narrative strength. The book sort of makes up for all the narrative that the movie lacks by having twice as much going on than most books its length, however that’s not really a condemnation of the film. The film has more going on in any one scene than most movies can pack into their whole runtime. It would be difficult to put all of the ideas from Dick’s novel into a film without loosing a great deal of the feeling that the current film evokes. If you had a slavishly accurate version of the book, I think it might end up feeling a bit dead. We’ve had a lot of slavish adaptations in the last few years and most of them have felt pretty light weight to me. I think I’m willing to loose some of the adherence to the book if it means having a good set of performances. So while it might be lacking in some areas, the movie is a great visual and emotional experience and that shouldn’t be discounted just because the movie doesn’t tell as coherent a story as you might like.

In the book, Deckard is a current bounty hunter, who is thinking of quitting. In the movie, Deckard is a former Blade Runner who quit after getting tired of killing. It’s not clear how Movie Deckard is paid, but in the book he’s got a small salary that’s supplemented with the bounties he gets from killing escaped Androids. I should also mention that Deckard’s wife from the book is also absent in the movie. These things greatly change the dynamic of each story. Instead of a man struggling with the day to day problems that everyone faces along with an increasingly unpleasant job, it’s a story where a guy hunts down some people in a world that he feels entirely cut off from. Actually, in many ways, it feels like the story of a robot and the man sent to hunt him. The story of Roy Batty is almost as important as Deckard, even though he gets less screen time. Of course, the book heavily involves a mostly unconnected character in the form of J.R. Isidore and eventually meets up with the androids before Deckard wipes them out… spoilers… for a forty-three year old book.

Let’s talk about another comparison from the book to the movie. In the movie, the replicants are given a four year life span to prevent them from developing emotions. In the book, the four year lifespan is merely an unsolved problem with making biomechanical androids. The movie claims that the replicants have no emotions, but that’s clearly not true as they desire freedom and freedom is an emotion. They talk about constantly living in fear, not developing fear, but living in it. That’s always a problem with claiming a lack of emotion, it crops up in ways you never expect. The androids simply lack empathy in the book, having no understanding of other beings beyond their solipsism. This makes them far more villainous and less sympathetic to anyone reading. The movie gives us far more sympathetic replicants, who are more powerful than their novelic counterparts. As I understand it, Ridley Scott identified far more with the idea of the replicants and wanted to idealize them. This makes for an interesting dynamic that we wouldn’t have gotten in a more slavish adaptation.

So let’s talk about a few things specific to the movie. I’m always amused now when I watch this and see Pan Am, Ma Bell and Atari so heavily product placed. Some day I want to produce a list of movies with product placement when the company went bankrupt before the time the movie is set in. The movie is a prime example of Neo-Noir, a term I find annoying but we’ll let that pass for the moment because it sort of works here. I am impressed by how the over all feel of the film remains consistent however I’m even more impressed by the little nod to Bogart’s undercover work in The Big Sleep. It’s not obvious, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about then you won’t even know what I’m referring to here. The movie is a Sci-Fi Film Noir though, make no doubt about that. It adheres to whatever definition of Film Noir you want to use and is a worthy successor to the films of the 40s and 50s rather than just a stylized copy. On another note I often wonder how much of the Asian style of the movie has to do with Executive Sir Run Run Shaw. Yes, Run Run Shaw of Shaw Brothers fame. You rarely think of something like Blade Runner when you consider the Shaw’s movies. There is a lot of Asian advertising, and writing all over this movie. I’ve never been able to decide if they thought it was cool, or exotic, or prophetic, or if Run Run Shaw thought it would be a good idea or all of the above or what.

Now, let us deal with the final controversy. Is Deckard a replicant? Ridley Scott says he is and always was. I say bullshit. I think all the little hints and clues are just so much retconning. If looked at in a certain way, they might lead to that, but they might lead somewhere else. There are several unicorns in the movie, not just in Deckard’s dream and let us remember that the next movie Scott did was Legend, which has unicorns in it as you might remember. Gaff leaving the origami unicorn, particularly when put with the remembered comment about how Rachel won’t live makes the unicorn a symbol for her. She’s the unicorn, in that she doesn’t really exist. We already had an origami figure for Deckard, the chicken he makes in Holden’s office. Also, consider that Ford has said that he never believed his character to be a replicant, and that the reason for his performance was because he didn’t get on with Ridley Scott. So, yeah, I don’t buy it. I think it was hoped to be a more interesting, but it doesn’t work for me and never has. Still, you can decide for yourself if you get the blu-ray and watch it.

Official Score:
81 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: The Great Train Robbery

2011-04-13T22:07:00.000-07:00

The Great Train Robbery (1903/Edison Studios/Dir. Edwin S. Porter)

Made in 1903, this is possibly the earliest western movie, although even the director of this movie would disagree with that statement. Not important, but he thought another movie was the first western, however I don’t think it was a proper narrative film like this is. See, before this time, most movies were just an event. Not even a series of events but a single scene with the camera simple pointed at whatever was happening. The earliest movies are quite frankly, dull. Unless you’re a movie nerd, or a history nerd, most of the “first” movies in history hold little to no interest because they were primarily just pointing a camera at a city street and capturing what was there. This was back in the day when simply seeing a picture move was enough to get riled up over. Now it’s true that there were movies with plot and editing and before this, but The Great Train Robbery was the first one to really bring everything together in a way that made it a big hit. One might say that this one proved there was something to this whole movie making thing. If you’re able, go out and buy Edison - The Invention of the Movies, which is where my copy of the movie comes from. If you get other versions, you may not get some of the brilliant use of colors that this one has.

Dude, the smoke is turning colors man…

At clocking in at about twelve minutes (the version I’m reviewing) you can’t really call this an epic film. Even by the most generous standards, this is a little short for a great and influential film. However, you can recognize things that would be done in movies for literally decades to come. The movie has three main parts, the robbery, the escape and the capture of the criminals. Movie makers today still use the basic structure of this film, only most times there is a bit more character development. It’s not so much that this movie influenced everyone who has ever made a heist picture, but that the basic outline was done right the first time and why fix what ain’t broke?

Dance Funkerella!

The movie opens with a station manager getting jumped and tied up in the station, then the robbers go on to rob the train. The robbery goes alright, although the robbers kill a couple of people in the process. The deaths are hugely over acted things, making me wonder if these were amateurs or if this was just the style of the time. Acting as a far less naturalistic thing before sound movies and the fact that people stand straight up and wave their arms when they get shot might be considered a subtle and praiseworthy performance. After robbing the mail car and picking the pockets of the passengers, the robbers get away. A little girl comes along and unties the station manager, who then alerts the posse, who set out after and gun down the robbers. That’s the plot of the whole movie, remember that it’s only 12 minutes long.

It’s like Thomas Edison’s Sin City.

Now, one of the reasons I mentioned the DVD set I did is that the movie is color tinted. Still having hand tinted film is quite a rarity, but an important one. The color used in the scenes that have them represent a way of drawing our eye to certain subjects as well as being a marvel by standards of the day. Of course, most the color is in the form of splotches because it was put on the tiny frame of film itself with a brush by hand. This makes the color uneven at best. However, simply having an explosion come in a wave of color instead of just being a grayish-white puff of smoke must have been stunning at the time.

Death Yoga!

This isn’t a riveting film, but it is a good film and you can give it a watch. I’ve found a copy on YouTube, so you can see it right now if you like. It’s even got the color bits so, that’s nice. If you’re wondering if you should get something like Edison - The Invention of the Movies, I have to ask how interested you are in history. If you’re not big on history, give it a pass. However, if you want to see some of the earliest works in cinema, this is a good place to start.

Official Score:
28 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: Desperado

2011-04-07T17:36:00.000-07:00

Desperado (1995/ Columbia Pictures/ Dir. Robert Rodriguez)

This is an interesting mixture of both varieties of movie that were popular during the mid nineties. Desperado straddles the line between two-fisted action and independent/foreign art house style films. I’m not joking about that second part either, there are a lot of shots and ideas that are far more familiar to the art house scene rather than the action movie of the time. In many ways it feels like it has more in common with the art house, particularly since there was a flavor for low-budget Latin movies at the time this came out. This movie was also like another kind of import, that being the Hong Kong Heroic bloodshed, however as this connection is more obvious I won’t dwell on it.

Back when Salma was young and hot. Unlike now, when she’s just hot and hot.

Now a lot of people have noted a connection to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 60s and 70s, but I feel the connection is really only in the music and the setting. A lot of Spaghetti Westerns took place in Mexico because Spain looks enough like it, and there was a lot of guitar music, but beyond that this movie doesn’t share much with that aesthetic. Desperado is too introspective, and the violence is extended and exciting rather than a few explosive punctuations. I think people looked at the surface and just saw Rodriguez as Sergio Leoni’s heir because of the surface similarities, when really he’s much more like John Woo’s Latino counterpart. The action sequences are paced like music, they contain a lot of quick cut editing flying stuntmen and an unflinching willingness to use squibs and blood. I’m not saying there is no connection to the Spaghetti Western, I’m just saying there are other connections that I think are more closely related. It seems that the Hong Kong style has fallen out of favor and now everyone is looking either to Film Noir or the Italian Western as an influence. Both those are in here though, along with things like the Lone Wolf and Cub movies, which also clearly have an influence.

He is displeased with the way things are going.

One thing I noticed, watching it this time, is that this strangely feels like the third or fourth El Mariachi movie, rather than the second. The story line mentions how Bucho is the last name on El’s list, and that Steve Buscemi’s character (cleverly called Buscemi in the credits) mentions that this whole thing has to end soon. It gives me a very strong feeling that we’ve missed an entire movie, or maybe a couple of movies. It makes me wonder what other adventures these two had, and if the other movies were as good as this one. I find this interesting because as a fan of foreign movies, I’ve ended up watching lots of sequels that I didn’t know were sequels until later, and thus have had to deal with missing sections. Interestingly enough, Rodriguez has mentioned that he envisioned another movie between this and its sequel, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, so there’s that. All in all, it really feels like there is much more to this movie, which gives it that foreign flare I was talking about. A lot of art house movies tend to add unexplained details that aren’t important to the story, but are there to add a feeling of realism to the characters. That’s one of the places where this movie has the feeling of a foreign or art house movie.

Artsy Shot #243

I haven’t mentioned the story yet, which is sort of basic. It’s a man looking for revenge against the people who killed the woman he loved and ruined his life. In the last movie, and in a recap in this movie, the baddies shot him through the left had and destroyed his ability to play guitar. This actually leads to a few scenes of him trying to play guitar and failing because the wound to his left hand makes it hard to form a cord. These are scenes that carry a bit more introspection than you normally got in these days. Also, El isn’t as cool, as calm, or nearly as collected at the grim badasses we get in action movies. He gets frustrated, he gets angry and shouts about things instead of internalizing everything like a lot of other characters do. In that respect, he’s a lot like Indiana Jones, showing off a vulnerability that is rarely seen in action movies. Mind you, everyone in the movie is like this, not just the main character. It’s full of people who screw things up, get frustrated about it, and throw minor tantrums. There isn’t anyone, besides perhaps Danny Trejo who is really calm and cool.

Did we really need to see that shooting a gun causes his “O Face” here?

Now let’s talk action, there is some really good action in here. A lot of gunplay, although most of it is fairly over the top, and even a fairly hot love scene between our two good looking leads. The only problem is, if you only came for the action, you might be slightly annoyed at some of the slower scenes and confused by the artsy editing. If you came thinking it was another interesting independent film about the human condition, you might be annoyed to find the story a little simplistic and so full of bloodshed. However, if you came for an action movie that has a little bit more going on than the average action flick, this probably is the movie for you. In some ways, this is a perfect movie. Maybe not in all ways, maybe not when compared to all the movies I’ve ever seen, but in its own way it is. It’s a perfect, small budget action movie anyway. It’s not trying to be something it’s not, and it’s good for being what it is. You can get this and the first movie on Blu-ray or you can buy it as a regular DVD if you like. I think this one is worth your effort to try and see, and maybe watch again with a different set of eyes.

Official Score:
82 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Probably a metaphor or something.

Movie Review: Jurassic Park

2011-03-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Jurassic Park (1993/Universal/Dir. Steven Spielberg)

I decided to re-read the book before watching the movie, which might be considered a mistake by some people. I know people who would have said I should have skipped one or the other of my experiences, but I had my reasons. I wanted to be able to compare the two products, movie and book and see what the differences were. My thoughts can be condensed, and then expanded upon. Jurassic Park: The Book is kind of a dumb diatribe against science, written by a profoundly stupid man. Jurassic Park: The Movie is a fun movie with a few weak spots. I’ll expand on those two statements, but that’s the gist of my feelings.

That’s how a raptor gives you the finger. I’ll show you a T-Rex later.

Jurassic Park, as a book, was first published in 1990. From what I understand, the rights were bought before it even hit the streets. Spielberg had an interest upon hearing the concept for the book when Crichton started writing it, and eventually got to make the movie. In 1993, the movie based on the book came out and a lot of people who had never read the book or heard of the author were suddenly grabbing it off the shelves. This really opened Crichton’s readership to a larger audience that perhaps didn’t know what they were getting into. See, Crichton was a right-leaning thriller writer and the book is a modern Frankenstein with some hugely anti-science rants included. I was very disappointed reading the book this time, because it’s flaws are hugely magnified with the passage of time and much of what’s in it is just plain wrong and I’m not just talking about the science. I’m not going to go into that whole thing because I already did here, but suffice to say the book and the movie have very different tones. While the book is a thriller the movie is an adventure. That’s an important distinction that informs every part of this review really. The book feels incredibly dated, while the movie has aged surprisingly well.

Now you wait and see, the 3-D presentation will totally be worth the extra $5.

Let’s start with the characters. There are none in the book. There are some barely sketched people, but there aren’t really any characters in the traditional sense. You can’t describe anyone in the book without saying what they look like or what their job is. These are archetypes, floating around this island. What’s worse, these are those “The Best at Everything” people that get put into Gear Porn books like this. Alan Grant is the greatest paleontologist that ever lived, Ian Malcolm is the greatest mathematician that ever lived, John Hammond is the greatest Andy Carnegie clone that ever lived, Tim Murphy is the greatest little kid that ever lived… and I goes on like this. Likewise, the baddies are the worst that ever lived. Nedry is the most duplicitous computer programmer that ever lived, the raptors are most dangerous animals that ever lived, and Lex Murphy is the most annoying little brat that ever lived… we’ll get back to her. Everyone is the most, the best, the worst, there are no normal people, not a single regular kind of guy. You get them in Jack Higgins' books too, but Jack gives you a bit of characterization from time to time. However, as most the Sean Dillon books have the same plot (Sean shoots some people then goes scuba diving for something) we can’t claim Higgins is free from criticism either. Hardly the point, because we’re talking about Crichton’s inability to write a single character in this book. It’s not just this book either, I’ve found that character is on of Crichton’s biggest weak points. In the movie however, Alan Grant is a complete person, who has an actual character arc. John Hammond also has an arc where he changes his point of view. Some of the other characters get minor arcs as well. The movie is a more complete story with an emotional journey that we take with these people. Also, Hammond is more like John Harvey Kellogg what with the white suit and all. Just throwing that in because Kellogg was a local boy.

They thought he was going to show them dinosaurs. Instead they got the “disappearing cucumber” trick.

So what about story. The story is often touted by people as the good thing about the book, which I can see. If you’re looking for broad strokes, the movie is the book. It more or less follows the actions of the book, with a few things here and there thrown in or out. For the most part though, the story and series of events are kept in tact. In cases such as these, it’s the things that a director decides to change that are more telling than the things they decide to keep. Since we’re going to have to talk about it at some time, let’s just go into the differences between Crichton and Spielberg’s sexual politics. Ellie Satler is just about useless in the book and Lex Murphy is an argument for culling and girl-child at birth. There are no actually positive female characters in the book. At best there are a couple of condescending nods towards the fact that women can be more than possessions or baby machines. Mostly though, females are a negative force within the pages of the book. Lex is actually dangerous in the book, serving only to get people noticed by the dinosaurs or act as a millstone around their neck. She’s so irritating by the end that you wonder why Tim and Grant don’t just drown her and then throw her body out for the T-Rex to distract it while they escape. Contrarywise, in the movie it’s Ellie that gets the power back on (instead of Alan) and it’s Lex that gets the computer system running (instead of Tim) giving them something to do and a reason to exist. Ellie isn’t handled very well, because she’s saddled with some very stupid speeches, but she has a considerable improvement over the book. I suspect that Spielberg changed Lex because if he hadn’t, he would have been accused of making Lex the Grandchild of Willie Scott. Because of all the screaming, Willie got him in a lot of trouble back in ’84. That’s not to say Lex has an easy time, but her reaction and the actual troubles she has serve to make her more sympathetic.

Loose weight? Do you know what kind of career I’m going to have by being the obnoxious fat guy in things? Without the fat, I'm just obnoxious!

One of the other big changes is that the park doesn’t just go haywire because it does, but because of human forces. In the book, we’re given an extremely bad explanation of chaos theory and why it says the park will fail. Actually, it’s never really explained how Malcolm knows the park will fail, just that he does. I suspect Crichton didn’t really understand chaos theory and was BSing his way along, because it’s never properly explained. Malcolm is pretty useless, since he never actually explains how he comes to his conclusions or tries to warn anyone in a way that might save any lives. He’s a character that exists solely to say “I was right” when the park falls down and never really explains how he knew it would happen. Even when he states he knew this or that would happen, it’s often things that he couldn’t possibly know and could have easily been accounted for if the writer wasn’t skewing things to make him correct. I was quite pleased when he died in the book, because that at least shut him the hell up for a while. In the movie, Malcolm is the guy who says “I got a bad feeling about this.” and is far less arrogant as a result. He’s just the guy who, in any classic sci-fi movie, just delivers what is supposed to be a pithy “We shouldn’t meddle in God’s domain!” style line before being eat by the giant ant or whatever. Also, the park doesn’t just collapse because math said so, the park collapses because Nedry kills the computer system. It’s very clear in the movie that the whole problem stems from Nedry, even if there are a few weird statements that don’t fit in any context. Ellie talking to John about the flea circus and how she didn’t respect the power and that was a huge mistake being a big one. I have yet to figure out how her not respecting the power of Jurassic Park made Nedry let the raptors out.

I don’t have a joke, I just like this shot.

The other main change between book and movie is the behavior of the dinosaurs. In the book, the T-Rex stalks Grant and the kids for about 200 pages in a complete disregard for expense vs. profit. If the Rex had eaten all three of them, that energy would have been nothing compared to the energy expelled in following and hunting them. Furthermore, the Rex follows them even though they injure it on several occasions, which is just ludicrous. Worst of all though is how the Rex continues to hunt them over hill and dale, through forest and field, when the T-Rex is literally dumber than my cat. It wouldn’t have the brain power to obsess over the three tiny mouthfuls, it couldn’t remember them later, it barely had the brain power to remember to roar after making a kill. That’s another problem that the book has that the movie lessens. In the book, there is a scene where the JP team think they’ve escaped, only to have a raptor turn in the chair behind the desk and reveal that it’s been sitting there stroking a white procompsognathus before explaining the Raptors plan all Jurassic Park 2 style. In the book, they are constantly referred to as beign more intelligent than Apes, with good language skills, art appreciation and an aptitude for Chinese/Mexican fusion cooking. The movie still has the raptors over the top, but for the most part, the animals act more or less like animals instead of some sort of directed monsters angry at humans for cloning them in the first place. The book is really weird on this point and all the dinosaurs seem to be exacting revenge, possibly because Ian Malcolm told them to. Perhaps Malcolm holds dark powers in the book and the destruction of the park was all his doing just so he could say he was right. It’s about as good a theory as any other.

Oh, hey! That’s right! Samuel L. Jackson is in the movie!

While a lot of the effects don’t hold up, most of them do. The story still stands and the performances are all top notch. The score is one of John Williams’ best, and the main theme is something I keep finding myself humming once in a while for no good reason. What I’d forgotten is how much banter and quipping is in this movie. There is a lot more than I remembered. I like the movie, I think it hold up admirably well after all this time. If you want a copy, you can get it pretty cheap. Should you watch it? Yeah, probably, once in a while you should pop it in. What about the sequels? Yeah, you should watch Jurassic Park. I like things about the sequels, but neither of them is a patch on the original.

Official Score:
81 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie review: Seven Swords

2011-03-17T18:40:00.000-07:00

Seven Swords (2005 Mandarin Films & Eng Wah Dir. Tsui Hark)

This is a movie that should have been awesome, but fell short of that lofty goal. The reasons it should have been awesome are easy to see just from the people involved. Tsui Hark reinvigorated the Wuxia genre in the 90s, Donnie Yen is one of the biggest stars in HK cinema, the other actors are hardly unknowns, and it’s based on one of those books that I’m told is a favorite in Chinese culture. Of course, that’s maybe where things start to go wrong. The movie bears little resemblance to the book in question. Much of the story telling is put on the shoulders of characters that weren’t written to hold such weight, and the action is underwhelming. However, all that said, there are things to like in this movie as we’ll see. This isn’t a movie without merit, and some might look beyond the weaknesses and really fall in love with this thing.

It’s like if Frank Miller made a kung-fu movie.

The movie has a fairly simple premise, at least to begin with. The Emperor has decided that martial arts are to be banned and anyone found practicing should be beheaded. Strong stuff perhaps, but this is the start of the Qing Dynasty which... was unstable. Let's leave it at that for the moment. I don’t want to get into a lengthy history lesson, which would side track us, but suffice to say the jianghu wasn’t with the new power and the new power wanted to get rid of them. This would actually be find and dandy, nothing to complain about. The Chinese understand that killing people who might possibly get in your way is part of the deal when setting up empires. The problem is that one general, named Fire-Wind, takes it too far. He and his nameless and mostly personality-less hench-people wipe out everybody they come across, because the bounty of three hundred silver a head is worth the effort. That’s the problem, Fire-Wind isn’t playing by the rules, he’s just slaughtering everyone and that’s not so okay. There will be heroes, and then the heroes will have something to say about this. We’re less than three minutes in and we understand that this is more or less the plot.

It’s like a shot out of Ridley Scott’s fever dream.

The opening action scene is actually pretty cool. It’s a mindless slaughter, but there is some emotion installed before it begins. We’re given to understand the baddies are corrupt, that they’re screwing the system and the people and in the second half of the opening scene, we even get a good guy doing some good guy stuff. The visuals in the opening scene are striking and the action is well choreographed. The problem is that this situation will not be maintained. Some of the later action scenes are sloppy, less interesting to look at and executed with something of a lazy demeanor. However, that’s for later, for now we’ve got a good action scene and an old man as a hero. You’re going to have to forgive me if I’m a bit slapdash with people’s names. Chinese names are always a bit hard for me to keep straight, so I might just use descriptions like ‘The Old Man’ instead. The old man comes to a place called The Martial Village, having been injured and brought by a young girl. Some people recognize him as a killer from the old dynasty, who is now trying to make good for his old crimes. Instead of letting him die at the hands of the elders, the young girl and another villager sneak the old man away.

He learned that look from his cat.

While on their way, the girl, the old man and the man from the village go to Mount Heaven to ask for help. They reason, as far as I can understand, that if they offer a bowl of rice a day, they can get some badasses to come help the village. They also reason that I they only get six, then one will probably stick to the group and come anyway… no, wait, that’s a different movie with seven swordsmen defending a small village in Asia against raiders. Actually, to be honest, that’s more or less where the similarities end. Well, there is a similar run time, but never mind that right now. Fire-Wind is a much more rounded out character and complete villain than anything in that other seven guys and a town movie. Sadly though the seven swordsmen don’t all have the character detail from the other movie. We’ll get into that later though, for now let’s get back to the story.

CRAP! The armor’s too heavy, I’m gonna fall over!

Our girl from the village, named Wu, the boy named Han and the old man manage to make contact with the badasses from Mt. Heaven. After a bit of cajoling, they convince the four guys from the mountain to help them. Now I know whatr you’re thinking, that’s only four swords, well the old man of the mountain who has trained the four swords men gives Han, Wu and the old man each a sword of their own to make seven. Each sword has it’s own special power, and strength and probably is meant to have a character of it’s own. The problem is that no matter how interesting each sword might be, they’re just tools in the movie. The swords are neat, and pretty interesting, but only three of them, maybe four, carry any narrative weight.

He didn’t like doing it, but he had drawn the short straw and it was time someone talked to the boss about how out of control his walking sticks had become.

While the swords are being handed out, we take time to watch Fire-Wind’s forces attack the village, and this is where the action starts to feel lazy. The action is not interesting or particularly well shot. There is no emotional weight as there was a little while before. When the slaughter is interrupted by the entry of the seven heroes, it feels less like a fight and more like an exhibition in the art of showing off how many flips people can do. Again, it’s not interesting, it’s just trying to show who can be the biggest badass. Without emotional weight this doesn’t do much. The action is meaningless because we don’t care all that much about the characters yet. It’s one of those places where you can start feeling the missteps. The action scene should have been a big deal and it’s just not. It’s not even much to look at, which is a shame because much of the movie is very well shot.

Oh man, I just stepped in something over here.

Donnie Yen’s character is actually a badass and he acts enough like one that you can really believe it. He’s a strong silent type and he has the best sword, so he makes a good bad ass. The problem is that the rest of the crew is almost without personality and the one with a personality seems to be grooming a young boy to be his… um… well I’m guessing he’s Catholic is the point. It’s not stated, but it feels like that’s where things are leading. There’s just not enough character development in this movie, and that’s a big problem. A lot of time feels wasted, just watching people ride around on horses while stirring music plays. Then we get another decent, but not great action scene. This one is at least shot during the day but it’s still sort of dull and doesn’t do much for the movie as a whole. The one on one fights are okay, but the group battles are just pointless. Some soldiers are killed, and a couple of hench-people axed, but there are always more where they came from. Added to the problem is that some of the weapons look rubbery and like they’d be more comfortable on Xena. The only thing of consequence that happens is that Donnie Yen’s badass character saves a slave girl who will become important to him and thus will move the plot along later in the story.

This is going to make an awesome album cover guys!

Now with the movie an hour over and the characters all aware of each other, it’s time to stop the narrative dead and try to make some attempt to develop the characters. It’s a weak attempt though, and there isn’t a lot of characterization to be had. For a two and a half hour movie, that was originally four hours long, there isn’t much here. Or rather, there seems to be a mix between being over loaded and under loaded at the same time. Because so much was cut away, the pacing is totally thrown off and it makes everything seem longer than it is. Anyhow, the way we’ve chosen to waste time is by deciding to abandon the village and go into hiding. The trip from the village to the caves behind Helms Deep (or wherever) takes way more time than it should and possibly causes the movie to rush at the speed of light. Because not much time passes for the movie, only about half an hour, but for the observer time crawls along and you grow old and die waiting for something interesting to happen while your twin thumbs his nose at you from a comfortable red shifted position.

Does the stasche distract from the hat, or does the hat distract from the stache?

About the only thing that makes the half hour worth sitting through is that the guy playing Fire-Wind hasn’t been fed in six months and now able to survive purely on the scenery which he chews like a starving monkey. Some of the scenes are lovely, but in that way that it’s easy to ignore because it’s the sort of beauty that you can find in almost any wuxia movie made from about 1999 up ‘til today. There’s a couple of story lines I’ve failed to mention thus far because they don’t really amount to much in the grand scheme of things. They don’t have much resonance to the story, or they’re just distractions to the tale or OH GODS! I DON’T CARE! Why are there so many scenes of them riding horses? So much time is wasted in pointless diversion and what is probably set up for the sequel that will never be made that it seriously hurts this movie. This is a major problem with planned franchises. They try to set up the next movie and leave threads dangling, but fail to remember people have to be interested enough in the story they’re actually watching to want to get into the next one. As it stands, we’re very much in a place during the second half of the movie that I just don’t care what happens next.

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea.”
“The outfit or the gate?”
“Both!”

So let’s skip ahead to the next interesting thing that happens. Donnie Yen’s bad ass get’s caught in a trap y Fire-Wind and the heroes have to go and rescue him. When they get to fire wind’s place, they find him holding Donnie’s badass sword in his hand and hold Donnie’s badass character in chains. That’s when the big fight comes and its equal measures awesome and lame. Lame because all the group battles in this movie have been lame, awesome because all the one on one battles have been awesome and this one is the probably the best thus far. Actually, the way the fight starts is pretty cool, seeing as which member it is who decides that the group is going to fight instead of just giving up. The group fight is till sort of lazy and lacking though. You never really get time to see how each of the seven works with their sword. It’s not until the main fight between Donnie Yen’s badass and Fire-Wind gets going.

Suddenly they put their differences behind them and attacked the fire brazier.

Fire-Wind uses Donnie Yen’s badass sword (which is the best of the bunch) while Donnie Yen’s Badass character uses the second best sword to combat him. The two swords seem to have magnetic properties and thus work off each other and the scenery while the fight goes on. This is probably one of my favorite sword fights, at least in HK cinema because there is actually a lot going on in the fight besides just the fighting. It even contains a hallway fight, which is a Donnie Yen specialty as far as I can tell. This fight is so well choreographed, shot and edited, that it really annoys me how dull some of the other fights are. It also annoys me how badly they end this fight. In the end, instead of trusting Donnie Yen to be awesome, which he is, they fall back on bad CGI, which sort of kills the moment. Once they’ve killed the moment, and Fire-Wind (OMG! SPOILERS!) the movie sort of ends with the promise of more movies to come. However, since this movie fails to deliver on the screen it sort of failed to deliver at the box office. With that failure, there probably isn’t going to be a sequel. That’s sort of sad because the reason for some of the failures was trying too hard to set up the next five movies that Hark wanted to make after this.

Here we see Donnie Yen, in his natural habitat… awesomeness.

In the end, this movie wanted to be better, but things just kept getting in the way. The movie was cut almost in half, and a lot of things may have gone to the wayside when that happened. A lot of story is missing, a lot of development is missing, and some of the action just isn’t very good. It looks nice, but what doesn’t when this much is spent? I wouldn’t say don’t buy it, you can buy this movie and really enjoy watching it. If you want the story to be fully filled in, there is a TV Show that runs about 40 episodes. I can’t fully recommend this, because it’s not very good, but I won’t tell you not to buy it or anything. Some people have really loved this movie, others not so much. At this point there is only one thing you’re looking for, so I’ll give it to you…

Official Score:
32 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: Bandidas

2011-03-11T01:40:00.000-08:00

Bandidas (2006 Dir. Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg)

This is not a bad movie, it’s just not a very good one. That’s sort of sad, because there are the makings of a great movie here and you can see glimmers of that great movie from time to time. A few small problems snowball into huge problems for the movie, but not to an extent that it actually becomes bad. This is a watchable film, but how much enjoyment you might get is greatly dependent on your personal feelings. I liked parts of the movie, but the movie as a whole product never quite comes together for me. Let’s break down the movie and see what works and what doesn’t.

I'm the cute one, oh yes I am!

The movie doesn’t even start with our stars, although this isn’t a problem. The movie starts with a young man who wishes to prove that scientific investigation has a place in police work. This is Quentin, who will play a part much later in the movie. Sadly, it takes a long time for Quentin to become part of the story, too long in fact. The movie is half way over before Quentin actually enters the story in any significant fashion. I’ll come back to that problem in a moment. When he is part of the story, his interaction with the girls is really quite spectacular. If the girls had met him earlier in the movie, and thus spent more time with him, it could have been a cheeky romp. Instead it’s a scatter shot… and I’ll get back to that.

I'm the firey sexy one!

Our actual heroes are Sarah (played by Salma Hayek) Maria (Penélope Cruz), who are respectavily a rich daughter and a farm girl. When their fathers are killed (Okay, Maria’s father is just almost killed) by a villain representing an American bank, they decide to rob banks to get their own back. It’s a little more complicated than that of course, there’s a land grab and a mystery and a training montage and a lot of chest beating anachronistic anti-Americanism that become rather tiresome very quickly. Here is one of the big problems, what should be a comedy about Latina bank robbers becomes an attempt to be something bigger, but it never earns the grand sentiment and just makes you roll your eyes at the naive stupidity. It wants to have grave themes, but it has no actual gravity. Had it just been a cheeky comedy, it would have been a lot better. I only really enjoyed the movie when they were just being kind of silly. I’ll get back to the cause of that a bit later.

Every movie like this needs a scene like this.

The plot is a fairly cut and paste, paint by numbers, comedy western trying to follow the lead of Shanghi Noon without ever managing to understand why that movie worked. The narrative isn’t particularly strong, each part of the movie is more or less slotted into place with an audible thud. The girls are introduced, and I swear you can hear gears working, the fathers are killed and the land grabbed and you can just see tab A of learning the villagers are all loosing their land as tab B of deciding to rob banks slots in. Then they go learn how to rob banks in a training montage that sadly doesn’t have any rock music. The old back robber teaching them is cut and pasted from any of three dozen movies… and it goes on like this. The movie has not a single ounce of invention until Maria and Sara meet up with Quentin. The reasons for this are… well let’s get to that shall we?

Welp, my ten minutes are up, I'll just collect my check and leave the movie now.

I’ve been mentioning that I’d get back to the chief problem, and here it is. Luc Besson wrote the movie (with help from Robert Mark Kamen) and Luc Besson is… a writer with specific skills. I don’t want to say that he’s not a good writer, because no one can have the career he has had without being good. I’ve seen several movies that were either scripted by him or directed by him and he’s good in some circumstances. The problem is that he repeats himself a lot and some of his humor has never worked for me. The baddie in this is a guy named Jackson. Now Jackson is played by Dwight Yoakam, but it might as well be Gary Oldman and may have been written for him. I say that because this is roughly the same character Oldman played in The Fifth Element and The Professional. That over the top, completely unrealistic bad guy. In fact, except for some really good actors playing them in different ways, Besson tends to only really write one villain. Besson has clearly seen a lot of American movies, but no one ever told him that those are already exaggerated. A lot of the elements in this movie can be directly traced back to things that worked in other movies Besson has written and sadly it makes the film as a whole not work. Well, save for a few scenes of true invention.

Well... um… yeah.

I’m going to describe one of the bits of truly amusing invention. There is a… well, no other way to say it but to say it. There is a near three-way in this movie that takes place during an interrogation. The way the girls get Quentin into their story is that they grab him as he’s drying from a bath and tie him naked to the bed. As they’re demanding information, they get distracted by a conversation about experience and kissing. Sara decides to teach Maria about kissing and the two of them use Quentin as a proving ground. It’s a fairly amusing and sort of cute scene with a dash of wickedness. After that, it’s only the scenes where the girls are interacting with him that the movie becomes really fun. It’s interesting because normally love triangles bore me rigid, but it really worked here. If they’d been together longer, the movie would have been better.

Mexico always makes me sneeze.

So is the movie funny? Yeah, I laughed. Someone once said the mark of a good comedy is if you laugh out loud more than seven times during the movie. I actually laughed audibly six or seven times. Not hard, not guffaws, but I laughed and that makes it work. Sadly though, it only just works as a comedy and the whole time I was thinking that there was a much better movie hidden in here. I know, I know, I shouldn’t judge a movie on what it isn’t, but rather what it is. The problem is that it’s kind of a clichéd mess. If I go by what this could have been, I feel more warmly toward it, so this once we’ll let it slide because it improves the score. Go a head and get a copy for yourself and give it a try.

Official Score:
28 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: Mean Guns

2011-03-01T23:37:00.000-08:00

Movie Review: Mean Guns

Mean Guns (1997/ Dir. Albert Pyun)

We haven’t talked about a good old fashioned bad movie in a while, and this is close to as bad as they come while still being enjoyable. Oh yes, this movie is enjoyable, but it’s terrible. You don’t watch it for the fine performances or the sparkling dialogue, you watch it because you’re fascinated that this sort of thing got made despite the fact that clearly no one much cared about the end product. It’s also interesting to see how far some people have fallen. This was shown as an HBO original movie, and it’s not even a very good one, but it has some names that people would recognize like Ice T and Christopher Lambert. They’re okay in this movie, but they cover the range of performances for actors who are just picking up a paycheck. Ice is chewing the scenery and Lambert is half asleep. Still, the movie is fun, but for all the wrong reasons.

I’m strangely disapproving of you.

The movie wants to be deep and insightful, but it’s not. There is a lot of talking around the gun play, talking which tries to ape the sort of style that some of the indie films of the time were playing. You can tell that this wants to try and make some sort of statement, but it doesn’t really know what kind of statement it wants to make. There are a lot of references to religious themes, but they’re so ham fisted and clumsy that it only serves to annoy. As an action movie, it also fails to work. Most the time, you never actually see a gun fire, just someone pointing a gun out of frame and their arm jerk. The rest of the action isn’t much better. The editing makes it pretty clear that they’re covering up for poorly staged and minimally choreographed fight scenes. So it fails as a thought provoking pulp movie, and it fails on the dumb action movie front as well. However, it’s one of those interesting failures that’s actually sort of fun to watch.

This is my first time I’ve done video dating and I’m a little nervous.

It occurs to me that I’ve gone two paragraphs and I still haven’t actually described the movie to you. This isn’t because I feel the movie is so well known, it’s because there isn’t much of a plot here. Ice T plays Vincent Moon, a man who works for something called The Syndicate. I’m guessing The Syndicate is some sort of organized crime outfit, but they never really say to be honest. It could just be that we’re talking about another name for Apple Computers here. In fact, let’s go with that, Ice T plays Steve Jobs. Anyway, for various reasons Apple has decided that it needs to get rid of everyone who ever crossed them. Because this is Apple, you can’t just shoot everyone and put them in a pit somewhere. Simple and user friendly aren’t part of the game plan, so Jobs decides instead to host a game at their new headquarters or a prison or something. The location is a real prison that was built in LA, but hadn’t opened when they filmed this. Everyone involved is part of the Apple Crime Syndicate, some of them are responsible for the Lisa, others for the hockey puck mouse, some helped Microsoft copy OSX Ocelot for Windows Longhorn or whatever. The point is, each of them has committed a sin and must be removed. So, Jobs has this game. The rules are simple, kill or be killed. The last three left alive at the end of the day get to split $10 million in cash and run away. That is the plot, and it doesn’t take too long for them to get to explain it. Once explained, they throw in a bunch of guns, bullets and baseball bats and allow the party to rock itself.

Soooo, yeah. At one point a guy wear’s a mustache made of black construction paper. Mark of quality, that is.

We follow two groups through the movie, even though they don’t start that way. You’ve got Christopher Lambert, who manages not to say “There can be only one” through a force of will that can move mountains and his group. In his group is a female assassin named D, an accountant named Kim and a mystery hitman named Marcus. We don’t really know much about these four, and we won’t find out much as we go along. We’ll learn a little about Lambert’s character, but not enough to care if he lives or dies. Lambert’s character, named Lou, is a complete lunatic. He also happens to be one of the touches of real fun. It’s like Lambert knew no one would ever watch this so he might as well see if he could combine a low key performance with the character who was clearly written to be manic and excitable. Strangely, it almost works. Almost.

For a moment, he saw his future, and it was Highlander Endgame... CRAP!

Then you’ve got to guys who call each other Hoss and Crow after the characters in The Tooth of Crime, which only seems pretentious because it is. We don’t learn much about them, but the two actors manage to bring at least a little humanity and believability to their characters. About half way through the movie, they meet up with the main bit of eye candy in the form of Barbie. Again, she’s far more interesting than anyone in Lou’s group. Barbie plays Hoss against Crow by exploiting his attraction to him. All in all, Hoss and Crow’s team is more interesting, but you know from the start that they’re not gonna make it. The whole movie has a sense of inevitability from the start. You know who the baddest are going to turn out to be before the opening credits. Oh yeah, spoiler, as bunch of characters you don’t know and will forget the moment they’re off screen die in this movie.

Okay baby! Roll play night has gotten a little out of hand. I’m gonna go ahead and say “starfish” now.

The movie wants to cast allusions towards Spaghetti Westerns, Film Noir, Religious Symbolism, and the quirkiness of the 90s. Sadly, it doesn’t really work that well. While there are guitars playing western style strains, and people sitting around talking about.. you know… stuff, it just falls flat. While the mambo music is good as music, it doesn’t do much for this movie and makes it feel like a cynical attempt to be quirky. The religious aspects of the story really stick out like a badly contrived sore thumb. There are constant references to sin, redemption and other such things. The place is called Purgatory and is protected by the Cerberus security system. To cap it, the whole thing is being watched by the Lucifer Command Center. I think the seven characters we see are supposed to represent each of the seven sins, but the performances along with some really sloppy directing and choppy editing scuttle that idea.

I love this show. I tell ya, that Beiber kid has got something there.

A bit that just doesn’t make any sense at all is the little girl. Lou brings his daughter and leaves her in the car while he plays the game. Just about everyone seems to male their way out to Lou’s car to conclave with the little girl at one point or another. It doesn’t even make much sense when Steve Jobs comes out and talks to Lucy about his platinum teeth. The girls is supposed to be the single innocent, or a messenger from God, or possibly God. I’m not sure, she’s totally lacking of any kind of personality and never says much of anything in context besides asking Marcus to kill Lou because he’s a creep. She’s right, but asking him to “Kill that creep for me” is outside the bounds of this character’s set up.

She had never seen a man do that with a watermelon before.

Finally, the movie is just sort of ugly. I’m not sure they used any lights besides the fluorescents in the building, because the whole thing has a disgusting blue tint and everyone looks horribly pallid. They all look sick really, which just adds to the ugliness of this movie. The cinematography is artless, the action scenes are sort of languid and the whole thing looks like it’s trying to imitate something better without understanding why those better things were good. This is a movie that gives you every reason to turn away in disgust and watch something else.

So, that’s the beginning and ending of my film career, isn’t it?

AND YET! And yet, I find myself watching this thing about once a year or so. I know it’s terrible, and I know all the reasons it’s terrible, but I come back every once in a while and watch it again. There’s something wonderful in this pretentious, uninteresting, senseless garbage. It’s like a McDonald’s Hamburger, you know you shouldn’t and you probably avoid it most the time, but every once in a while you just can’t help it and need to subject your system to some junk food. That’s this movie, it’s a bit of junk food, and while I know all the reasons that it’s bad, it still tastes so good. You can buy Mean Guns on Amazon, or you can watch the whole thing on YouTube because Lionsgate posted the whole movie as one file there.

Official Score:
39 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: New Jack City

2011-02-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

New Jack City (1991/Warner Bros./Dir. Mario Van Peebles)

Made in the early nineties, when the crack epidemic was still a thing the media talked about on occasion, this is the story of one inner city drug lord’s rise and fall. So how does this early 90s gangster movie hold up when trying to watch it today? Surprisingly well actually. While some might want to compare this movie to gangster epics like Scarface, The Godfather or Goodfellas, I think there are a few points that separate them. For one thing, this is way shorter, it clocks in at just under two hours while the other films I mentioned hover around three. For another, there is a completely different flavor to this film and for a third… well, let’s talk about the movie, shall we?

Ooo, a little bottle of broken bits of sea shells. Thanks!

Let’s talk about the major thing that I think keeps this from being thought of as one of the great Mob Epics. Primarily, it’s not really a Mob film. It has more in common with the gangster flicks from the thirties than any of the great mafia stories. The pace is much faster, the story is told from both sides of the law, and there is a roughness that is seldom matched. Another thing that makes New Jack City like the old gangster movies, and one of the things that hurts the movie slightly, is the regular moralizing. There are moments, like in those movies back in the day, where characters explicitly state the greater meaning of the movie.

Chris Rock is not dealing with the reception to “I Think I Love My Wife” very well.

The short run-time of the movie leaves a little bit to be desired, or perhaps not. While I’m left thinking that the over all film could have afforded to tell just a little bit more story and fill in a few of the gaps, I also keep thinking that anytime you think a movie could go another half hour it means they did something right. There is very little fat in this film, which is always a good thing, even if that sometimes means it feels a little too lean. The over leanness is something of a problem, because you feel like there are parts of the story that are missing. In the end though, the main story is still complete and full, which is always a good thing. It just feels like it could have gone a little longer and developed things a little deeper.

Frank Miller’s New Jack City

So how else is this unlike an average gangster movie? Well, along with the old school gangster movie feel, it’s also like a European film of the 60s in some ways. It’s shot on location in a way that was already becoming vanishingly rare at the time. New York serves for New York rather than asking Cincinnati, Ohio; Toronto, Canada; or the Lower East Side of Sydney, Australia to fill in. The realism of the urban landscape is shown with both its beauty and its ugliness. The movie has a strong ring of truth and honesty, even though several pieces are heightened for effect. The Dutch angles and color schemes sometimes give the movie a dreamlike quality.

See guys, if you wear a suit, you get to be the director.

I was actually sort of surprised, when watching this movie to find how well it held up. The weaknesses are obvious. It expects that you’re at least familiar with the violence of the crack epidemic, and that you have at least a working idea of what the inner city might be like, even if you were unaware it was that bad. You might also be expected to have seen a gangster movie or two, since it leans on the idea that you know how these things work. If you don’t know these things, then a lot of the movie seems to rip past leaving you wondering what the hell just happened. However, the movie has so many strengths, that these few weaknesses are easily thrown aside. A lean story, an interesting visual style, realistic characters and actors who are working their asses off to give the movie a verisimilitude rarely seen in drug movies. I still like this one and I think you should maybe get a copy and watch it.

Must have at least one muzzle flash cap every action movie.

Official Score:
65 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Short Film Fest

2011-02-14T22:59:00.000-08:00

Today I want to do something a little different. Today I want to talk about some short films that I really like.

Me and the Big Guy

What happens when Big Brother takes over and some idiot loves the idea? That’s sort of the question posed by this short movie. Citizen 43275-B talks to his view screen constantly, babbling the most inane garbage until Big Brother finally has enough and starts talking back. That’s not even the best part, the best part is the last few seconds of the film. I won’t spoil it, but the movie gets better as it goes along until the final punch line.

The Second Comeback

What starts as a comment on how the message of Jesus gets lost through all the marketing and BS gets turned into a pretty hilarious comedy. It’s only about ten minutes long, so there isn’t time for the one joke to wear thin. Some of the jokes are a little too obvious, but as the whole thing is so short it’s eminently forgivable. You can watch this on youtube, it’ll take you a couple of minutes and you probably won’t regret it.

Battle of the Sexes

What really happens in women’s bathrooms? Well, this movie tries to answer that question in humorous fashion. Yes, most the shorts are comedy, but shorts are easier to do as comedies. Anyway, a woman goes into the bathroom and gets a report on a man, deciding on whether or not to continue the date with him. Yeah, similar shorts have been done before, but this one is really fun.

Well, that’s if for now. I know this was short, but if you watched all the movies it should have taken about half an hour, and that’s not a bad slice of entertainment. Maybe later I’ll get you some more shorts to enjoy. For now though, this is all I’d planned on.

Movie Review: Horatio’s Drive

2011-02-07T23:22:00.000-08:00

Haven’t done a documentary in a little while here, so let’s watch this one. This Ken Burns movie is the tale of the first cross country automobile journey undertaken by a rich Vermont Doctor. In one way, you might like the character of Horatio Nelson Jackson, in another way you might despise him and everything he purports to stand for. Strangely, this is also a movie where only men are interviewed save for two of Nelson’s granddaughters. So it’s guys, talking about a long car ride undertaken by a couple of guys. In a way, we could say that these are rich yuppies who have an adventure talking about another rich yuppie who once had an adventure. The story is pretty good, but there are drawbacks. Is it good or bad? Let’s have a look…

What’s good about the movie? The story is interesting, and it’s a good example of what that period of time was like. Even if you don’t care about a guy driving across country, you might care about what 1903 America was like and this movie gives you something of an idea through the medium of this car ride. As I said before, you might also really admire Jackson for his honest optimism and his belief in the automobile. We’re often told that everyone had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age, that everyone before WWII despised technology. Well, no, Jackson loved the car and thought it could be a great tool for personal freedom. He’s also endlessly optimistic, although a cynic like myself might refer to him as “One who lacks pattern recognition skills” since he believes that the adventure will be successful no matter what befalls him. It’s a good story and like most of Burns’ movies, it’s fairly well told. The problem is, it’s still a Ken Burns movie.

What’s the problem with a Ken Burns movie? Well, Burns is nothing if not partisan. When it’s revealed that another team was trying to cross the country in an automobile, you can almost hear Burns screaming “How dare they?” It’s at this point that the movie becomes an 80s teen movie. These guys are treated like the rich kids who bully the heroes. The second team was funded by the Packard company, which made them jerks. Jackson was going alone, which made him awesome. They had a plan, while Jackson had none. They had maps, supplies, and knew what the hell they were doing… I think you can see where this is going. Because they were supposed to know that some guy decided to go on this trip a few days before they’re trip, which was being planned for months in advance, they were supposed to abandon it, right? It’s that sort of thing that makes you tilt your head and make a face. It’s a big problem with Burns, the creation of bad guys. That and steadfastly deciding to ignore huge parts of the history he’s covering because he didn’t want to be bothered.

Another mild bad, there is never a negative word said about the main character, for want of a better word. This is the Horatio Nelson Jackson Appreciation Society being interviewed to here. Never is it mentioned that deciding to just up and buy a car, hire a driver and set out across the country without so much as a decent map was possibly the stupidest thing ever done in human history. It’s only talked about as being heroic and optimistic. If you’re tired of me using that word (optimistic) right now, imagine how I feel. They only say some version of optimism about every ten seconds or so. Granted, it seems to be Jackson’s primary character trait, but you could find another word. Not that I need ever person she spoke with to say the guy was a moron who had the pattern recognition of a goldfish, but it would have been nice for even one person to acknowledge that this was sort of a stupid idea. The fact that it’s so very one sided leaves a lot of room to hurl comments at the screen.

HOWEVER! The movie is still good. It’s worth a look, for the history of the country alone. The problem is when people start editorializing on the story. They are so interested in telling us why this story is important, that we end up scoffing. Not because they story isn’t worth telling, but because why it’s important seems self evident. Burns really needs to trust his audience more. But, Tom Hanks is good as the voice of Jackson and the story is well told and compelling. I would say you should maybe get a copy.

Official Score:
41 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

GO FSTR!
Vienna thinks if there is a rushing back ground, that she\'s actually in a car and rushing through the world.

Movie Review: Clue

2011-02-01T01:31:00.000-08:00

Clue (1985/Paramount/Jonathan Lynn)

A couple of weeks ago, I got the urge to watch Clue for what would be the first time since I was maybe fourteen. That’s twenty years of deep-seated nostalgia for this movie to combat. I really liked this movie when I was about twelve or so and that should make it an instant sell for me, right? Wrong. Sadly, nostalgia actually makes the trip harder, since I seem to be immune to the effect and far more critical of my old loves. So as an adult, how did Clue hold up? Surprisingly well, actually. Having spent the last 20 years reading mystery stories and watching mystery movies and TV shows, I now have a greater appreciation for the movie than I did when twelve. Let us discuss some of the better points (as well as some things that just didn’t work) over the next few paragraphs. Oh, and I’m going to spoil the hell out of this thing, but if you haven’t actually seen Clue yet then I’m not sure what you’ve been doing with your life.

Champagne Bucocktail!

The setting is quite brilliant really. By setting the movie knee deep in the era of McCarthyism, the movie makers are able to produce a sense of paranoia required for such a story of blackmail and murder. I know it’s the era of McCarthy because one of his hearings is being shown on the TV in the kitchen. Since the conceit is to give the board game of Clue a reason to exist, this does nicely. Each character has an assigned alias, which accounts for the strange names, each of them is being blackmailed by Mr. Boddy, which accounts for one of them killing him, the rest of the party tries to work out who the killer is, which gives you the mystery aspect. The time frame also allows for a sense of the… shall we call it the golden age of mystery? While not all great mysteries are set before 1958, a great number are and if you want to tell a really classic story you sort of need this time period or something before it. Besides, the outfits, cars and other trappings give you a great sense of being somewhere else and seeing something special.

Don't look at me, I'm as lost as you are.

I’m sort of amazed at the range of comedy held within this movie. Low things like slapstick, and jokes about stepping in dog shit are mingled with satire, hyperbole, political humor, word play, sexual humor, and all the other things that make us laugh. There is a fairly staggering wide net cast in the comedic sense, which very likely one of the reasons that I still find it funny. I don’t find the dog shit joke very funny any more, but I am more able to appreciate the pace of the dénouement, which has to be the most manic in history. I also get more jokes now than I did when young. While my sense of humor has changed over the years, so Clue has reveled to me more comedic moments than it did in the past. The jokes are also fairly rapid fire if you get all of them, often several styles of comedy will land one on top of the other, it’s a scattershot effect that works for me. While I won’t go over all the jokes I like, I will point out how endlessly amused that none of the characters are wearing the color that their character is associated with. The closest that anyone comes is that Mrs. Peacock wears a lot of turkey feathers, which I suppose is at least a bird.

Stay classy Hollywood

A large part of the comedy is in the casting. All the suspects, save one, were played by people who were well known in comedy at this time. Each of them are playing to their strengths, and they all shine, save that one. Since each of them was fairly well known, they’re all able to play in a way that was known both to them and the public watching. Tim Curry as Wadsworth plays brilliantly as well, which is interesting considering the same year he played the Lord of Darkness in Legend. I’m just amazed because I thought that roll was played far earlier. Leslie Ann Warren is the only one of the main suspects who I’ve never seen regarded as much of a comedian. She plays the part fine, she’s never lacking in her performance, but her jokes don’t work as well as everyone else’s. As ensemble casts go though, this is one of the better ones you’re ever going to see in a comedy.

I am NOT a sweet transvestite in this movie!

So how does this movie stack up as an adaptation of what the credits call Parker Brothers World Famous Game? Well, everything from the game is introduced and is done so in a reasonable fashion. Mr. Boddy introduces the six weapons, the house has all the requisite rooms and even contains the two secret passages that take characters across the house. The blackmail story allows the motive and opportunity. To raise the bar on the comedy, more characters are introduced for the purpose of killing them. The best killing is probably the last when a singing telegram girl is shot mere seconds after she’s first seen on the screen. This allows for the final ending of the movie. Did I mention the three endings?

Soooo, okay. No more “That’s what she said” jokes. Gotcha!

Okay, so this movie has three endings. As I understand it, the first two are false, but they work with the given evidence. It’s really only the third ending that really works. In the third ending, of course, they all did it. Oh, yeah, spoilers for a twenty six year old movie are in this review. When recreating the events of the evening, Wadsworth turns off the electricity, which creates a cut for the three endings. In ending #1 Miss Scarlett did it, with the help of Yvette, the maid. In #2 Mrs. Peacock did it, all by herself. In the third ending though, everyone but Mr. Green kills someone, which goes with a joke of Green constantly stating he didn’t do it. Wadsworth, The Butler, explains that actually, he is Mr. Boddy. At that moment, Mr. Green shoots him, which means he killed Mr. Boddy, in the hall, with the revolver. Now! Mr. Green is supposed to be a homosexual who would loose his job if his proclivities became known. Now the last line is him telling his FBI boss “I’m going to go home and sleep with my wife.” which I’d always interpreted as meaning he wasn’t actually gay, that he was a plant in the situation. However, Syd has a different idea. At the end, she looked at me and proudly announced “The queer wins!” and went on to explain that in her interpretation, Mr. Green actually is a homosexual, and in killing Mr. Boddy, he is now able to keep his secret life a secret. That is why Green killed Mr. Boddy, instead of arresting or simply injuring him. It’s an interesting idea and leaves me with a new level for jokes to be landed on.

Group Shot

I conclusion, I found that Clue still works quite well, just in a different way than it did when I was a kid. If you’ve been wondering if it’s still worth watching, yeah, you could maybe watch it. If you’ve never seen it, go ahead and grab it and give it a viewing, you should be pleasantly surprised. Either way, you can watch this and know that it has my seal of approval. Go ahead and pick up a copy for yourself.

Official Score:
81 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: Real Genius

2011-01-24T20:46:00.000-08:00

Real Genius (1985/Tri Star Pictures/Dir. Martha Coolidge)

What can be said about Real Genius that hasn’t been said before? Well, quite a lot really. I almost never hear anyone talk about this movie, or hold it up as a favorite, or anything really. It’s strange because considering how favorable the depiction of geeks is in this movie, and how archetypal the characters are, it should be a cornerstone of Geek Culture. It’s not a perfect movie, but there is a lot to love here.

Some days you just know the day’s going to end with you squealing like a pig.

Let’s start with what the movie got right, and give it a few whacks as we go. For starters, I have known all of these people. From the shy Mitch to the extroverted Chris Knight, I have known these geeks. You’ve pretty much got all of them here, even an adorably hyperactive genius. Hyperactive geniuses are the cutest, but it helps that Jordan is played by a pretty cute girl. Mysterious and quiet Lazlo isn’t a complete unknown. The excited and helpful Ick is interesting since he’s an Asian character that displays no stereotypes unless you follow that Asians are supposed to be smart. Even the villain Kent is pretty much a known type in the geek world, as the jealous and socially retarded dweeb.

They’re not cute, they’re eating my brain through my ears. HELP!

The movie is at its best when it’s just being a “Smart people in Academia” story. While it needs the laser storyline to give these guys a reason to do what they’re doing, it sort of dies whenever it gets into the CIA/Corrupt Professor story. Sorry, if you don’t know, the kids are building a laser that their professor is going to give to the military for a new weapon. While that’s sort of central to the story and you couldn’t have the house full of popcorn without it, (did I mention the house full of popcorn?) it kills the movie because it feels terribly artificial. With all the money that was being thrown around indiscriminately during the 80s, I find the pressure being exerted a little unrealistic. It’s a workable storyline, but it feels forced. The movie is on much stronger ground when it sticks to smart young people being quirky. Also, is this work undergrad work? It seems more like PhD work to me. Fortunately, for most the movie’s run time it does stick to the smart people being smart thing.

I’ll be your Jesus in this film.

There is a good and a bad thing about Val Kilmer’s character of Chris Knight, who is a fairly classic clever screwball type. He’s always got a funny thing to say, always has a crack to start every conversation. He’s funny and amusing, but it’s the sort of thing that gets sort of tedious in real life. Whenever I’ve known someone like this, they get tiresome fairly quickly because every encounter has to start with 2 minutes of non-connected bullshit. You’ve just got to sort of wait while looking at your watch, waiting for them to stop being amusing so you can talk to them. Still, on the screen he’s funny so it doesn’t matter how I’d feel about him in real life. I also notice that he’s an early version of a 90s kid with ironic t-shirts and things.

My god, it’s full of corn.

The music is good, even if it sounds like it’s trying to be a “Best of the 80s” collection. There are either three or four musical montages in the movie, depending on how you judge a montage. The point is that there is a fairly good amount of music in this is you have a taste for that sort of music. The movie does rather live in the 80s, even though the best parts would still work today. Everything about this movie screams its date like a banshee wailing. The fashions, the music, it’s all very 1985 except for Chris, who would be the template for fashions ten years later. This paragraph is a little short so I’m going to mention my annoyance at how some characters are introduced, given nothing to do and then dismissed only to turn up for one scene which resolves them later. These characters that are so abused are mostly women, which only makes it worse.

Yeah, a house destroyed by popcorn.

For all the things that don’t work, the many things that do work make up for it. The Good drastically outweighs the bad in this movie and if you’re at all interested in geek culture you owe it to yourself to watch this. If for nothing else, seeing a house destroyed from the inside with popcorn is worth the price of admission. I know, it’s a spoiler, but I’m spoiling a 25 year old movie. Seriously, are you people going to bitch if I mention that a train is robbed in The Great Train Robbery? Hell, that’s only a hundred and ten years old or so, maybe I’m spoiling it by saying they get caught. You people, I tell ya!

Official Score:
75 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: The Tale of Despereaux

2011-01-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

The Tale of Despereaux (2008/ Universal/ Rob Stevenhagen & Sam Fell)

Let’s get the first things out of the way first. I cannot recommend this movie, because it’s not a good movie. That’s just for starters, but we can get that out of the way right now. The reason we’re talking about it though, and the reason I’m reviewing it, is that it could have been a good movie. There is a good movie hiding in this film, however the movie keeps getting in its own way and prevents it from being good. The book it’s based on was a Newberry Award winner (which should make you worry right there) and the movie wants to be worthy of that to the extent that it keeps trying way too hard to be worthy and can’t manage to be good. It’s a shame because on the technical side, the movie is very good in many places. The style and visual flair of the movie is wonderful, but the movie itself is so pretentious and overly serious that you can’t really enjoy watching it. Instead of a point by point review, let’s talk about a few of the problems…

It was then that he realized his version of The Aristocrats didn’t go over terribly well.

Problem #1: The Narration.
Sigourney Weaver provides a narration for this movie that is instantly my go-to example for why you should never, ever include a narration in a movie. There is nothing wrong with her performance, but the writing tears you out of the story every time she starts talking. Instead of allowing you to see where the story is going by the actions of the characters and the general flow of the narrative (more on that later) we’re told what the characters are thinking and beaten over the head with how exactly we’re meant to interpret the characters. Those might all be lines taken straight from the book, but in a book they would work differently. In a book you can take time for an aside like that, and in the book those lines could have been pages or even chapters apart. When they are all thrown at you all at once, they become less a flavoring and more an assault. It feels like the film makers have no confidence in us or our ability to understand what’s going on in the story. It’s really a shame because if they had more confidence in us, and dropped the narration, this would have been a much better movie.

Once upon a time, there was a dog… and then it died. BANG! Now gimme my Newberry Award!

Problem #2: Muddled Story
For a movie called The Tale of Despereaux, the main character takes an awfully long time to show up on screen. A full nineteen minutes passes before we ever see or hear of our titular character. This was a huge problem when watching the movie because the advertising for the movie had it that this was a movie about a fearless little mouse who went on an adventure. It isn’t. It’s four different stories, sort of running together with the main character being a very weak lynchpin attempting to hold the whole thing together. I’m not saying that a kid’s movie can’t have a b or c plot, but the side plots end up taking over the movie. Despereaux’s story is actually the least interesting and least explored of all the stories in the movie. It doesn’t feel like he has any actual motivation or reason to be in the movie except for the fact that he’s the main character. The story itself it terribly muddled and unfocused, and doesn’t take time to develop any of the multitude of characters they introduce to the tale. The story doesn’t flow well, there isn’t a strong narrative to this thing.

No idea who this guy is.

Problem #3: Who is that now?
I have no idea what the name of the evil villain rat in this movie is. The one that looks like Max Shrek in Nosferatu. I don’t think they ever give him a name and I have no idea who he is supposed to be besides the leader of the rats. He’s not the only one like this in this movie. Almost no one has any real definition to them, they’re barely one dimensional stock characters. I didn’t really care about a single person in this movie, which is a shame because it wouldn’t have taken much to endear me to any of them. As a result we don’t really care about the story because we don’t care about anyone in it.

Seriously, what the hell is up with this guy?

Problem #4: What The… ?
There are so many things in this story that just refuse to make any kind of sense. The king decides to outlaw soup, which has an explanation but really. If you outlawed something like soup, you wouldn’t be king for very long. He also outlaws rats, and the rats seem to take their banishment rather well. While the narration mentions that you might as well try to outlaw flies, or Monday morning, the rats seem to understand that they are verboten and hide away from humans. Instead of just being rats, they follow the law for some reason. With soup outlawed, it stops raining and the sun stops shining and all manner of things go wrong in the kingdom. Again, if this were a result of the king outlawing soup, he would stop being king pretty quickly. The local barons would rise up and tip the balance. Then you’ve got the man made of vegetables, who I think is supposed to be the spirit of the soup, but he’s got so little screen time and so little point that it’s hard to tell. He shows up once vanishes for an hour, then shows up again for three minutes before vanishing again never to be seen again. Let’s not even talk about the fact that this kingdom’s answer to pest control seems to be twenty fully armored knights, instead of say… a cat. There are so many things here that just make no damn sense that it ruins what enjoyment you might get from this movie. There are also a lot of pointless scenes that come to nothing, but lots of movies have those and we don’t complain too much. I’m not excusing that, but I’m not going to go on about it.

And now, a moment of awesome.

Problem #5: Celebrities
Did Dustin Hoffman really need to be in this movie? What about Mathew Broderick? Emma Watson? These people only serve to distract from the tale because you’re too busy trying to remember why that voice sounds familiar. I’ve never understood the need to put known names in cartoon movies. There are very few cartoons where having a known celebrity voice has actually helped at all, and that was more because they were the right actor for the part rather than being a known name. This sort of stunt casting just gets in the way of enjoying what should be a good movie. I will say that Mathew Broderick does a pretty good job and I actually believe his voice with that drawing.

See that dog? This being a Newberry Award book. That dog probably dies by the end.

Problem #6: Pretension
I mentioned in the introduction that this movie wants very badly to be worthy. In fact I said that it wants so badly to be worthy that it gets in the way of anyone actually enjoying it. There is a terrible pretension running through this thing. It’s so full of its own sense of being an important movie that has something really Important to say that it makes any viewer over the age of five shift in their seat with irritation. All the things that they want to get across could have been done with more grace and less banging over the head. The narration is a big part of the problem, but the rest of the movie is far from blameless in this department. It’s such a pretentious film that it ends up being sort of humorless and annoying.

Flower! No joke, just a flower.

So I’ve beaten on the main six problems, are there any things the movie did right? Well, it looks quite nice. That’s damning with faint praise, but it is a lovely looking film with an interesting and individual artistic style to it. The main story isn’t horrible, and with a little better grasp of what they were doing it might have been really good. A little more focus, a little more work and it might have been a new classic. This is a missed opportunity and wasted effort as it stands. Instead of being a beloved classic, it’s just gone down as another half-effort kid’s movie that no one saw.

Official Score:
-2 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: Incident at Blood Pass

2011-01-11T09:02:00.000-08:00

Incident at Blood Pass (1970/Toho/Dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)

Hey look, another Sanjuro movie that doesn’t actually have Sanjuro in it. Okay, I’ll make the history lesson quick to explain that statement. First things first though, this movie is actually titled “Ambush” and was changed to “Incident at Blood Pass” somewhere along the line. Now back to the history lesson that you don’t really care about. After Yojimbo, Toshirō Mifune spent more than a few years playing more or less that character in several movies. It wasn’t so much that he was being Sanjuro, as much as he had made that a stock style of character. A stock style that still exists to this day, and is portrayed by many an actor. This would basically be like Sean Connery playing a well dressed, suave spy after he ended his run on James Bond. So yeah, it’s a samurai movie where Mifune plays a strong, mysterious tough guy type.

Japanese newspapers were a lot more minimalistic back in the day.

So our movie starts with… what do we call him? That’s always a problem with these movies, they rely heavily on the Man With No Name aesthetic. The internet only calls him The Yojimbo, which bugs the hell out of me. Why not call him The Body Guard? If you’re going to put and English word in front of the Japanese one, why not just translate it? I know I’m being a bit of a pain, but I’ve never understood why people who write about Japanese things insist on always putting every noun in Japanese if they know the word for it. Even if it’s just things like “cup” and “pillow” they’ll still say “kappu” and “makura” as if anyone thinks this is clever. What it actually happens to be, is extremely annoying. It’s one thing to say ronin, because that’s easier than saying “masterless samurai” all the time, but it’s another to continually say “tanto” no matter what kind of “knife” is being discussed. Bunch of bakas. All that said, I’m going to call him Not-Sanjuro, because he isn’t Sanjuro in this. By the way, if you had any questions about when this movie was made, the opening credits will tell you. This is SOOO an early 70s score.

You know I had to give up the guitar when I hurt my elbow! The band was really going places.

Where was I? Oh, right, the start of the movie. Our hero, Not-Sanjuro, is sent to a town to wait for a message. If he gets one note he goes one way, if he gets a different not he goes in another direction. I’m not sure why we go through that rigmarole exactly, because he gets the note telling him his direction right after the opening credits end. He heads off to a little back road area. After that, we leave him waiting at a particular spot and follow seven other characters for what feels like an hour but probably isn’t more than ten minutes. In that time we get to know everyone, learning as much back story as we’re likely to get. We’ve got a samurai, a former doctor, a police officer, a robber he’s been chasing, an old man who runs the inn, his granddaughter and a girl Not-Sanjuro found and dropped off there.

All it needs is some synth and it could be an 80s video.

In an interesting turn, the first action scene is a fist fight between Not-Sanjuro and another samurai over and insult to one of the girls in the hotel where most the movie’s story takes place. It’s not a major scene, being more of an average world punch-up rather than some expert fighting. However, it’s a pretty good fight, and makes for a moment of relief from the mild tedium of people talking. People sit around talking a lot, mostly without actually saying much. Sadly, if you’re expecting a Yojimbo style action movie, you’re going to be disappointed. That isn’t to say this movie is boring, but this isn’t the action film I was expecting from the blurbs I’d read. Instead, this seems to be a study of several characters, each of whom is covering up something from the others.

C’mon guys! Put your backs into it!

While it’s clear the makers of this movie understood the character of Sanjuro, they’ve not really tried to recreate the original movies. Rather this is a character very similar placed in a completely different circumstance. The oddness is, as I said, most of this movie seems to revolve more around the occupants of the inn than Not-Sanjuro. It sort reminds me of The Petrified Forest, but not in any specific aspect. It’s the group in the inn talking about “things” that’s doing it for me, but I’m going to go ahead and guess independent developments. However, as Sanjuro is sort of inspired by The Continental Op in the first place, it’s interesting to note that the character is never far from his hardboiled roots.

The famous walk away shot.

The movie actually has one of those classic Film Noir endings that leave you feeling sort of blah. It’s not a downer, not exactly, but you do sort of feel that half the characters were given a really raw deal. It’s that sort of odd ground for Samurai movies, when the makers were trying to see if they couldn’t do something new and interesting with the genre. Partially that meant deconstruction, partly that meant navel gazing, partly it meant movies like this. It’s not a bad movie, not by far, but it wasn’t what I had been expecting and I think that’s colored by views a little. I think it was also a bit simplistic for all the extra characters and drama that they slotted into the story. It would have been a bit tighter, or a bit more expansive, but as it stands it’s just right to be wrong.

Official Score:
15 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Movie Review: Dumbo

2011-01-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

Dumbo (1941/RKO Pictures/Dir. Ben Sharpsteen)

In 1941, Walt Disney was in South America, doing a good will tour and collecting materials for the movie Saludos Amigos, which would come out the next year. While he was away, he left the studio to make a small quick-buck movie, that would hopefully help restore the studio’s fortunes after the finacial disappointments of Pinocchio and Fantasia. The result was the fairly short and sweet movie about an elephant with big ears. Dumbo is the sort of story anybody who wasn’t part of the popular kid’s crowd can enjoy. In fact, instead of looking at Dumbo in the traditional manner, I’m going to examine it as a metaphor for a person’s freshman year in college.

Florida looks a little different than how I pictured it.

The movie is actually pretty evocative of the old circus feel, or at least it feels like the experience of going to see the circus. The opening music is very much like an overture you might hear back in the days when a circus would have a live band playing and the title cards are all on promotion posters. What I find interesting is that I don’t regard this as a musical, despite the fact that there are actually a lot of songs in this thing. I think the reason I don’t think of it in musical terms is that the narrative is rarely ever halted for the musical number. The songs are just back ground flavoring and don’t have an impact on the story, with two notable exceptions. We’ll get to that later though, right now let’s talk about the name. The name of the main character is not actually Dumbo, that’s a nickname that everyone decides to call him. His mother named him Jumbo Jr., which means that he is either the son or descendant of the original Jumbo. It would be quite a feat for him to be the son, since Jumbo died in 1885 and that would make this the longest gestation on record. However, as Jumbo was the most famous elephant in the world and probably still is, we’ll let it slide for the moment. Now, I know, you’re still waiting for me to justify the whole college freshman thing, and I’m about to.

I am the littlest and cutest Buddha.

A young elephant is delivered to a strange and exciting world, where it’s clear he’s going to have trouble fitting in. He’s a quiet kid, mostly because he’s young and unsure of himself. The problem is that our boy has a mild physical… extra. If it’s true what they say about an elephant’s ears, then he should also be sporting what looks like a fifth leg as well, but this is a Disney movie. Of course, the first people he runs into besides his mother are a catty bunch of sorority types who tease him about his ears and dub him “Dumbo” which will sadly be his name from here on out. Then of course move in week for new students gets started. The move in week is metaphorical of course, coming in the form of the Roustabouts song. Dumbo is expected to help out like everyone else, which is a bit odd. I’m not sure, but I doubt the animals were made to assist in putting up the big top. Still, the song is strangely dark and sad if you actually listen to the lyrics, while the animation in this segment is lovely and minimalistic. Watching carefully, the roustabouts themselves are not actually humans, but vague blob shapes. The whole thing looks sort of like colored chalk drawn onto black paper.

Just strange, featureless, potato men.

After the move in, you get the parade, which is orientation all over the place. The only thing that doesn’t fit in my college motif is that Dumbo is still with his mother, because after the parade we get the adorable bath scene. The bath scene is mega cute and should only be viewed when one has a stomach full of whiskey. Either that, or remembers that the next scene is coming. Kids enter the tent, yanks on Dumbo’s tail and pull on his ears. Mrs. Jumbo has the predictable reaction and sadly the roustabouts rush in and subdue her. After this scene, Dumbos’s mother is no longer much of a figure in the movie. So, as we see, mother can no longer help you. Sadly, he’s left with the gossiping sorority bitches, who proceed to blame him for everything. However! It’s all going to be alright because Dumbo’s RA (a mouse named… Tim?) takes a shine to the kid. He tells off the other elephants, or at least scares the hell out of them, and goes to make pals with Dumbo. You’ve gotta like Timothy, since he is the only character besides Mrs. Jumbo to be decent to the kid. Timothy takes the time to become Dumbo’s Agent, talking the circus boss into making Dumbo a star.

Sort of a mood killer, but this doesn’t so much look “sad” as “stoned out of his ever lovin’ mind” to me.

Sadly Dumbo, being just a kid, muffs his first big chance. It’s not a little event either, the entire big top is brought down. After that, he’s transferred to the clown division, which is sort of humiliating. To put it simply, Dumbo falls in with the drunken frat boys. They tease him a lot, use him in their ridiculous routines and aren’t interested in him as a person. Timothy does his best to make Dumbo feel good about the current situation, but can’t do much. You’ve got to feel used after a round with the clowns/frat boys, so Tim does the one thing that’ll cheer Dumbo up. He takes Dumbo to see his (Dumbo’s) mother. They’re only allowed to touch slightly between the bars of the cage they’ve got Mrs. Jumbo in. She can get her truck through the window, and they use that for comfort . This equates with one of those late night calls to mother, or possibly a first trip home. This scene is done to the song Baby of Mine, which is my personal meter for judging if someone is a cyborg. If that song doesn’t move you, then you are a Kill-Bot 9000 and I’ll stuff dynamite in your pants, then let nature do its work.

Not freaky, artistic!

When we get back to the clowns/frat boys, they’re still drinking and deciding to put Dumbo into more danger. They decide to make the platform 30, then 40, then 80 then 180 feet higher before deciding to make the platform 1000 feet. One clown says it might hurt Dumbo, but the others announce that elephants have no feelings. See? Frat boys for you, uncaring bastards. So they tip one of their bottles into a bucket of water and take off, oblivious of their error. This leads to Dumbo and Timothy to accidently getting really drunk. What would college be if you didn’t get drunk and have terrible hallucinations in the form of pink elephants? We won’t go into the song, suffice to say that for 1941, this was the most avant-garde animation ever got. This scene, while arguably nightmare fuel, is also the most artistically interesting a mainstream animated movie would be for sometime. There are several techniques that while known in art styles were completely unheard of in animated works and would make for a pretty unusual movie today. Yes, it’s a little intense, but it should be, it’s a liquor fueled nightmare! Again though, this is exactly how college should be. There are always a few nights like this, even for a computer science student. Besides this is culture, so it’s okay if we scare the crap out of you.

You can take back what you just said about Mickey, or we can take this outside!

Now we get to the big revel that Dumbo managed to get up into a tree while drunk. He’s found by the crows, all voiced by Black actors who were members of The Hall Johnson Choir. There have been complaints about the racial stereotyping of the characters, but I’m not going to allow the complaint. Two reasons for this… 1) If you changed the voices to Mexicans, people would complain the characters were negative Mexican stereotypes, if they were Irish voices, they’d be negative Irish stereotypes. There is very little in these crows, outside of the voices that is specific to one race or another. 2) These are some of the only decent people in this movie! The crows are the good guys! How can you complain about the five good guys in a movie with no good guys in the movie? The crows are instrumental in giving Dumbo the confidence to fly. In fact, the idea of him flying is initially one of the crows’ suggestions. The crows are helpful and happy for Dumbo when he discovers this whole flying thing isn’t a joke. Also, it’s an important part of college to make friends with people from different backgrounds and races.

You’re right guys, this stuff is AMAZING! It's like I can fly or something.

Like all good college movies, our hero makes good and discovers his place in the world. He walks out of the movie a confident and fulfilled person. Dumbo holds back the information that he can fly until the moment is right. There is a tense moment when Dumbo looses the “Magic Feather” but he believes in his ability to fly and soars through the air. As one always should, he then smites the evil doers! He humiliates those who wronged him, elevates himself, gets his mother freed, becomes a celebrity and does everyone proud. How long does this take in movie time? About a minute, but then this thing is short. The movie is 63 minutes and 40 seconds in total. Even when shown on commercial TV, they have to strap a couple of extra commercials on just to make up the runtime. The fact that this was short helped the movie become as profitable as it did. Dumbo was regularly re-released, because of its short runtime and beloved status, which meant a lot of packed houses every time. This is still one of my favorite Disney movies, it’s short, it’s sweet and I can use it to judge if you’re a cyborg.

Considering how big horse flies are, elephant flies must be able to lift small children.

Official Score:
95 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Anyone else sort of freaked out by this dead-eyed clown?

Year in Review

2010-12-28T00:39:00.000-08:00

Well, year end is here and I… don’t have a final review ready. Huh, it just sort of happened. I’d meant to write one, but then I didn’t. I blame the whole ninja/pirate thing… and hipsters. Because hipsters ruin everything, don’t they?

So instead I’m closing the year out with a retrospective list of the reviews I liked the best. Not the best movies, oh sweet waffles, no. Just the reviews that I personally found amusing or that I’m particularly fond of. Yes, I know it’s useless, but it’s been an interesting year and truth be told I’m a little exhausted. So, let’s knock this one out quick and then go for drinks, what’d ya say?

Here are my 10 Favorite Reviews of 2010…

#10 You Think That Movie’s Bad?
Okay, not a review so much as a complaint. Having watched as many different movies as I have, it really sticks in my craw when someone labels a perfectly watchable movie as “One of the Worst Films Ever Made” or even gives something that I think is a good movie the distinction of “Unwatchable Garbage” for several reasons. My first reason is that I hate inaccurate use of language. Unwatchable means that it cannot be viewed as a coherent narrative or be enjoyed on any level. The things (hesitate to call them movies) in Shinobi: Complete Collection are, to my mind, unwatchable. It takes a lot for me to call something valueless and chuck the disc. Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t make it the worst movie ever made. Seriously, Maximum Overdrive is a hell of a movie and I will always defend it. It’s a drive through throwback and it’s stupid, giggly, MST3K worthy FUN! The point is that while I don’t write many non-reviews for the site, I do find some of them important. I’m going to try and write some more non-review content in the New Year, but no promises.

#9 Omaha (the movie)
The one just surprised me. I have sort of started to watch it and skipped through it over the years, but I’d never actually given it a full chance. I sat down ready to tear it to shreds and make fun of the whole thing, but I ended up actually sort of liking it. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a pretty good one. Tell you a secret, I was thinking of shutting down the Retroflix blog and deleting the whole stupid thing. Then I watched this movie and BAM(!) we could go on. This movie changed everything, I think because it’s just the sort of perfect movie for this blog. It’s obscure, but actually pretty worth looking for and worth watching with some friends. I felt re-energized after watching this, I felt like we could go on. I was so confident, that I held back review to post the Alice in Wonderland and Black Dynamite reviews since those were written as soon as I’d seen each movie. So yeah, this movie saved the blog, and as a movie it’s… just okay.

#8 The Spirit
If I got even one person to re-watch this movie because of this review, then I have aimed my sights way too low. I don’t expect everyone to love this deconstruction of the modern comic book movie, but I felt like defending it. It’s no where near as bad as a lot of people claimed it was, and in many ways it’s awesome. I guess because it’s pretty high satire a lot of people didn’t get it. That’s a phrase I hate using, but I think it’s that simple. As much as I despise people claiming it as a defense, I think this time people just didn’t understand the joke that was The Spirit. Maybe you guys and should give it another try.

#7 The Two Jakes
Again, this is everything I like in a Retroflix review. An obscure movie that almost no one saw when it was out, and no one has ever really watched since. The best reviews come from the blankest of slates, because then I can just go off into tangents and foolish ideas. If no one has seen the movie, does it matter if I make up an alien invasion plot line? Maaaybe, but then again, maybe not. Either way, I like sparking the interest of whatever readers happen to come by and many have come by for this review.

#6 This is America, Charlie Brown “The Mayflower Voyagers”
This one is pretty much a declaration of war against bad history cartoons for kids. This thing is pretty unforgivable, committing every sin that bad educational cartoons can commit. Also, I only just noticed now, all the screen caps of Lucy show her being seriously pissed off and Charlie Brown is shoeless the whole time, even in the snow when realistically he would have at least wrapped his feet in cloth or animal fur. This is a bad cartoon and you shouldn’t watch it, just read the review.

#5 Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye
I really like Stephen King, and I really like anthology movies, so this year was a delightful opportunity to mix the two of them together. Normally I reserves September and October for horror movies, seeing it as a good run up to Halloween. This was my favorite of the reviews, at least I like it best right now. Maybe the Creepshow review was stronger, but I had more fun with this one.

#4 10 Classics Movies That I Don’t Love
I had this in mind for a long time before I wrote it and then quite a while went past before I actually posted it. I don’t like being negative in my reviews, and this was all negative. I tried to be fair, but since we were just talking about things I didn’t like, it was hard. However, I am sort of proud of myself for not deleting this one and going ahead with it. Now we just have to wait and see if I write the follow up “10 Things Geeks Love That I Hate” which would be an experiment in flame bating if ever you saw one.

#3 Hamlet
I had great fun compairing one of the greatest plays in the English language to some of the scummiest crap ever to "grace" our screens. I would rather do more analisis of film rather than telling you what goes on in the story and makign jokes when people do some really stupid things. If I were doing video reviews, snarking on the movies would go over better, but this is print. This is really a template for how I want to do more reviews in the future. The problem is that these are a bit more work than just explaining a movie and making some jokes about it. However, the jokes on the screen caps are really good in this one, even if I do say so myself.

#2 Victory Through Air Power
An obscure and obsolete movie that many people didn't even know existed on a subject that has almost no relevance to the modern age, but was actually a hugely important step for the company that made it? Sign me up! You’ve probably noticed that my favorites are the obscure and the odd, which don’t get the hits like the He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special does. Still, if I’m going to go down to the land of no hits and even less money, let me go down with review like this one. I was able to be informative and fairly entertaining through this review, which I like.

And of course the top prize goes to…
#1 Graffiti Bridge
What else could it be? This review changed everything for this place. It's from this review that we have The Graffiti Bridge Scale after all. This movie is ineptly scripted, badly performed, and the editor needs to be questioned for several hours about who made him put his stamp of approval on the finished product, but I can’t help it. It's such a glorious train wreck of a movie that I had to use it as a baseline. It is the perfect standard under which all other movies can be judged.

Cartoon Review: Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales

2010-12-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales (1979 Warner Bros. / DePatie-Freleng Enterprises Dir. Friz Freleng & Chuck Jones)

Ah sweet, sweet freedom. I don’t have to do anymore commercials if I don’t want to! Shall we talk about harmless but enjoyable cartoon entertainment for a moment? Let’s talk about what is really the last gasps of the Looney Tunes, the time of the mid-80s when all the guys who had worked on cartoons their whole lives were dying off and studios were shutting down animated production left and right. During those days, just before the nostalgia wave that hit in the 90s, it was hard to produce new Looney Tunes. This was one of the compromises. Partially made by Friz Freleng’s company and partly made by the powerhouse that was Chuck Jones, this holiday special is one of the last times that the old team would produce and entirely new show instead of just making bumpers for compilation movies. Even if it were bad, which it isn’t, it would still have Chuck and Friz and Mel working on it. Actually though, I find it sort of charming, if not anyone’s best work.

Is it just me, or is Elmer tripping balls?

The animation is well drawn, clean and relatively smooth, but I can’t help but notice that this isn’t as many frames per second as I’m used to. In TV, the animation is often 15 frames a second instead of 24 for film. Sometimes, it’s even less than that. These are cost cutting measures though and not the fault of the artists. We open with Bugs trying to get an assortment of Looney Tunes characters to sing Deck The Halls for him. That kills about a minute and we’re given just a title card before dropping right into our first cartoon, which is a Christmas Carol knock-off staring Yosemite Sam as Scrooge.

Rattle, rattle, rattle!

Porky is the poor Cratchit analogue who wants more coal and Sam is just mean, not miserly. Bugs doesn’t follow the story though, he just decides to screw with Scrooge. First by stealing hot coals and giving them to Cratchit, then bringing in a group to sing to him. After his shenanigans get Cratchit fired, Bugs decides to deal with Scrooge. After throwing ice into his hot bath, Bugs gets dressed in a sheet for the big game. He rattles chains and beats a drum to wake Scrooge. After that, he scares the crap out of Scrooge and makes him be a decent human being for a change. It would have been funnier if they’d been able to spend more time on it, letting Bugs screw with Sam more. As it is, it’s sort of amusing but not very good. It won’t hurt you, but it doesn’t have a lot of nutritional value.

An important book!

When that’s over, we transition to a Road Runner & Coyote cartoon. The conceit for this cartoon is that The Coyote reads that Road Runners hate snow and ice. This leads him to get a snow machine that dumps huge piles of snow on him. Once he discards Plan A he goes to Plan B, which is to chase him up into the mountains. Sadly, at this point, we hit a series of cold weather jokes that I’m almost positive we’ve seen in other places. This doesn’t mean they’re not funny, it means that I’ve seen way too many Looney Tunes cartoons. Still, it’s okay. Again, sort of empty calories for the brain, but not too fatty. This is probably the best of the bunch.

“I’m stirring, and I’m a mouse.”

The last cartoon begins with Bugs walking off with his nephew. It involves The Tasmanian Devil accidentally impersonating Santa. Bugs then spends the next eight minutes screwing with Taz. Taz eats everything, including the decorations and lights off the tree. It’s not pure genius or anything, but it’s got some funny visual gags. At the end, Bugs and his nephew end up flying Santa’s sleigh into the night. It’s still not a magnificently awesome cartoon, but it won’t hurt you.

Later Fools! We’re off to Vegas!

Nothing in this special is all that great, but it’s but it’s okay. It’s sort of a nostalgic trip rather than a great one. I suppose I should have been harder on this, but I like the talent behind it too much to really complain. I won’t hold it up and say you should all go buy Looney Tunes: Golden Collection, Vol. 5 or anything so you can watch it. However, if you already own it, there’s no harm in slipping in disc four and giving this a spin.

Oooooh! Won’t you take us home tonight?

Official Score:
20 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

That’s being extremely generous because of the season and my newly found freedom.

TV Review: Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hercule Poirot's Christmas

2010-12-23T21:22:00.000-08:00

Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1 January, 1995 Carnival Films Dir. Edward Bennett)

David Suchet has been playing the Belgium Detective Hercule Poirot for about a million years on England’s ITV, which is different from the BBC in several ways that are important to them, but not to us. Mostly, they have commercials. In the 1995-96 series of episodes, they stopped doing hour-long episodes and just stuck to feature length (for TV) movies. This is the first of those movies and hey, it’s a Christmas episode! That’s so convenient, you’d think I grabbed this episode out of a stack just to review it! This is based on the 1938 novel of the same name and as far as I remember the book, it follows pretty faithfully. I haven’t read it in years and years, so I could be mistaken. I’ve looked it up and some sources claim a few characters are deleted from the book, but that tends to happen when one must condense a book for the screen anyway. I’ll mention glaring issues as I notice them.

Wait, WHAT?

So we open in South Africa in 1896, which right away should give the viewer pause. Poirot takes place in 1930s England, not 1890s Africa! Not one minute thirty seconds in and they’ve already screwed up! I’m not watching anymore, I refuse! No! NO! I can’t abide when they destroy a story like this. It’s as bad as having Batman need Katie Holmes to encourage him to out on his tights and go out to fight crime. I’M DONE! … Oh alright, if it’ll help the review go along I’ll give it five minutes to right this ship and get us back on course. If by the 6:30 mark we’re not in England looking at a Belgium, I’m leaving. Anyway, we’ve got a couple of guys prospecting for diamonds, discussing the how best to exploit their claim, and one of them kills the other in a fit of being English and wanting it all for himself. He then wanders through what’s supposed to be the desert, but what looks like an English beach until he collapses and is found by some nice people who he presumably decides to also kill when their backs are turned. Instead through, he seems to take the woman as a lover for a brief period before vanishing into the Welsh background… or possibly Africa. Might be Africa, might not be Africa, this is the least African, Africa has ever looked. Also…Detroit, Detroit, Detroit, Detroit!

Ah… that’s better.

Fifteen seconds after my five-minute cut-off point, we find ourselves forty years later, five thousand miles north and sixty degrees cooler. It’s London on December 21st, or 21 December as people who are WRONG say it. We know it’s the 21st because a graphic appears to inform us of the date. It’s that sort of December weather that I strongly suspect only exists in the world of entertainment. Inspector Japp and Poirot have just had a meal together and are about to celebrate the season in the way tradition demands. Japp is going to Wales, ostensibly to visit his wife’s relatives but really to burn away his sins for the last year. Poirot plans to sit with the radio, reading a book and drinking all the cooking sherry in the world. Of course, the music suddenly turns sinister and we know his plans will be undone. We suddenly cut to the exterior of Chilham Castle, which seems to be the house for about every third show in England. It’s not really Chilham in the movie, it’s something else, but then it always is. Here we find the guy who killed his partner earlier, now an old man and still crazy for diamonds.

I keep finding big chunks of sugar in my breakfast cereal!

We then cut to Poirot, who has found his radiator is broken, evidently because the boiler in his building is kaput. Right after getting off the phone with the building super, who says it won’t be fixed until after Christmas, he gets another call. This call is from the rich old man who wants him to come and stay in his house for a few days. Because Mr. Lee (The old man) has central heating in his massive house, Poirot agrees to the suggestion that he come and investigate the fact that the old bat thinks his life is in danger. Now, I’m going to make a bet here. I’ll be that this is where a commercial originally was placed. It’s just about the right time for one and even if there wasn’t a cut here on ITV, it’s probably where A&E put a break for the American broadcast. The point is, we’re going to have a commercial break now!

Please, don’t eat us!

What am I doing with my life? Honestly, I’m reviewing a Raisin Bran commercial from the 1970s. Allow me to explain what you're looking at. You are looking at some guys dressed like the thugs in The Spirit, only their shirts all say "Raisin" and they've got little berets on. These “Raisins” are standing in a “bowl” of “flakes” and “singing” what can only charitably be called a “song” about how it's the raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so wonderful. In fact, it's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny. More raisins than you have ever seen before, according to the lyrics. I doubt this, I've seen a lot of raisins in my time. I mean it’s fine to claim that there are much more raisins and that if I like fat juicy raisins than I’ll like Raisin Bran more… but is it true? And has the word raisin hit semantic satiation yet? Raisins, raisins, raisins, raisins. What were people on at that time anyway? Next time my mother starts up on “kids today” I'm going to just tear into her with “Look! don't start any of that shit. In you're day, close harmony singing raisins was an acceptable ad campaign for cereal!” They weren't even singing an old motown hit or anything. I don’t expect you to take my word for this, watch the commercial for yourself by clicking this link. I’ve now watched this thing like 10 times, just to make sure I’ve fully understood the thrust and symbolic meaning behind the story, and I wish to see it no more. Back to the show.

I think the cameraman has a different idea as to what kind of movie this is.

When we come back it’s the next day, December 22 as the superimposed calendar graphic tells us. Poirot is on the train to Chilham Castle, with the rest of the cast as it turns out. He doesn’t know that he’s with them of course, they just all happen to be on the same train. Some other relatives are already at the house, every one discussing the old man and what an evil such and such he is. This is how these things go, you get a bunch of bastards that you would want to line up against a wall on any decent day. One might suggest that this is another fistful of suspects, like most of old Agatha’s stories. Or it might be a few suspects more. I can’t think of a pun for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, so we’ll just end this line of commentary right here.

Hello, we’re the only decent people here and we’re sort of horrible too.

Most the suspects are pretty horrible people, like Agatha likes to write about. All the English in her stories (at least those in the upper classes) are bigoted, greedy, stupid, and self-obsessed, while the servants are saintly and foreigners are about the only people you can rely on. Mr. Lee seems to have asked Poirot to be on the grounds and keep his eyes and ears open. Mostly though he just pops between standing at a radiator and warming his butt at the fire while the plot happens around him. There isn’t much at all going on really the old cuts off half the family, a police officer shows up to talk to the old man for a moment, some people come, others go… and then suddenly *BAM!* murder. A hideous sound comes from the old man’s room, everyone rushes in and they find the old man murdered upstairs along with a lot of over turned furniture and broken cups. The police officer from a moment ago comes back, claiming he forgot a book just as all hell breaks loose. They investigate the room, finding the diamonds stolen from the safe. Annnd that’s where we cut to commercial!

For the love of Waffles! Call an ambulance!

Oh good, banjo music. So we’ve got two old fashioned trucks driving around right? One with a load of cherries and one with a load of Shasta cola. While these two trucks are driving we’ve got some guy giving us a faux country accent talking about how they wanted to get the flavor of cherry and cola together. Watching the two trucks almost collide several times, it gives us real insight into what red necks think mixing flavors entails. I’m not even joking. Not only do they almost crash, but after a while the guy says “And then one day, it happened” and BAM the cars crash into each other. So after that some kids come running and instead of looking in on the drivers to make sure they’re okay, they rush to the spilled cans of cola. They tear the tops off, because pop tops hadn’t been introduced yet, and start drinking while the drivers presumably bleed out on the dust dirt road, understanding that their lives aren’t as important and sugary cherry flavored cola drink. Because that’s what Shasta thinks of American children, that they care nothing for injured human beings and only delight in drinking free pop while poking the dying to see how long they’ll groan. Here, have a look at it. See if it doesn’t horrify you.

I like old newspapers. Hey, screw you! It can’t be a joke a second!

When we come back from commercial, it’s December 23rd, and we’re in with Inspector Japp’s wife’s relations, who are all… singing. You can tell Japp is just counting the minutes until he can escape, watching his sins melt away in this purgatory where “Ding-Dong Merrily on High” is repeated ad nauseam. Sadly, all his sins cannot be burned away, because he is soon rescued by Poirot and taken to the scene of the crime. This is breaking with the book a bit, since Japp isn’t in that, but we’ll let it slide for the moment. They show up and get told things we already know, and then tell us the reason the police officer was actually asked to come. The cop claims that he was asked to come because Mr. Lee thought the diamonds he was playing with earlier had been stolen. The cop was to come back a short while after and when he had, he found the man was dead. They then discuss some of the evidence, and how it might have been done and how it probably wasn’t done and so on and so forth.

In the big screen movie version they’re played by Justin Bieber and Robert Pattinson with a lot of gay undertones.

Poirot notices a gift that Inspector Japp gave him as they parted at the beginning and goes to a local shop, looking for a gift for Japp. It’s in this scene that we actually see an important clue, only you don’t know it at the time. He then starts to talk to the suspects, asking them questions and all around investigating. He and Japp talk to the suspects, trying to work out their stories. Most of what you get in a Poirot episode is them talking to suspects and watching them get indignant. Everyone wants to know why the old man was killed (roll a dice, one of the reasons will be valid) and who stole the diamonds. They think that they might have part of an answer when we find the empty diamond case found in one of the son’s rooms! In fact, it’s the one who’s a PM that has the case in his luggage! OMG! A member of parliament not being 100% trustworthy? SHOCK! Cut to commercial!

I will take you away from all this.

This advertisement for Cheer Detergent chronicles one woman’s decent into madness. Our protagonist, let’s call her Suzy Jenkins, is seeing her kids out the door. She examines her children as they leave, not to see that the children themselves are alright, but to examine their clothes. She grabs each child by their shoulders and turns them to look at their shirts. A Dune like internal monologue informs us that the little girl’s white clothes were cleaned with a hot water wash. This is regarded as being just “okay” while the boy, dressed in a red shirt is different. His red shirt was given a cold-water wash, which we’re told is “pretty clean” as she barely even recognizes the fact that he tries to kiss her. His kiss instead lands unrewarded and unrecognized on her cheek, despite the fact that he just wanted to get a moment of love from this cold beast. As the door closes, she stands and declares “Aww, they didn’t look that good!” and then walks to the middle of the room and asks “When can I stop kidding myself?” While one presumes she’s about to go on and say “I don’t love them, I hate their father, my life is a lie!” she’s instead interrupted by a Mr. Spock knock off who beams in and introduces her to All Temperature Cheer. At least, that’s what she sees, we know this to be madness though, since Spok is hardly going to show up just to give her a box of laundry soap available at any Piggly Wiggly. No, she’s imagined this to break her day up, if only a little. He then explains how Cheer cleans in all temperatures. Instead of begging him to take her with him, which is what a younger her would have wanted, her madness demands she stay here and marvel over the clean clothes. One presumes that, having spent so much energy on the clothes she’ll slaughter the family the next time they so much as get their clothes dusty. If you look here, you can see the murderous look of madness. The world isn’t perfect, and she’ll make them pay. Watch the ad and see if I’m wrong.

Don’t leave her alone with the children!

AND NOW BACK TO THE SHOW!

And they said my face would freeze like this.

So we come back and now it’s December 24th, Christmas Eve. A veiled woman, who is so obviously the woman from the beginning of the show, comes to look at the body. Then the investigators get back to the job, talking to everyone and trying theories out of each other. Poirot and Japp go to a pub, where Poirot can only get a glass of cider, which he doesn’t like. They interrogate another suspect and blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t really matter the little inconsistencies and lies, because we all know they won’t actually come to anything. When the local cop showed up, when the footman went out, who actually made the phone call and so on, these aren’t really important. What’s important, what’s always important is the bits and pieces that are barely mentioned or only given a momentary comment. Then there’s a commercial, but we’re not going to break for it. I’m as fond as the commercial breaks as you are, but now that we’re skipping bits of story because relating every time someone lies or runs off would become interminable. Hopefully I won’t get tazed for not talking about a commercial.

Do you see the snake too? Please, god, tell me you see the snake.

The veiled woman is seen in the church, listening to the choir singing. This is sort of red herringish, because as far as I remember she isn’t in the book at all. Poirot gets approached by the wife of the PM, which is shocking. A PM involved with an affair? SHOCK! Turns out the wife has a history too, and another husband, and a dark secret. Blah, blah, blah, they find the missing diamonds in a miniature rock garden. So they go to talk to the OTHER wife, the wife of the OTHER brother. There are a lot of brothers you see, a lot of brothers, more brothers than you actually need. That statement will become significant.

I hate this stupid collar, I wish there was no god so I wouldn’t have to wear it.

There is a reading of the will, which leaves the old man’s granddaughter out. Half the brothers want to be human, but the PM wants to keep all the money for himself. Did I mention the Spanish Granddaughter? There’s a granddaughter, and she grew up in Spain. Her mother died a year ago and now half the family wants to cut her in on the loot. This causes a fracture among the family, but it doesn’t matter because someone smacks her with a stick soon after. They might have intended to kill her, but when Poirot checks her neck in the usual Hollywood way, he announces that she’s doing science and that she’s still alive. And then, you guessed it, COMMERCIAL TIME! You don’t need the tazers again, I’m doing it, see? Right now.

Grain Belt Beer. I can't think of a joke.

Grain Belt Beer has a different idea as to how to advertise. Instead of singing food, insanity, or death on the highway, they want you to eat pizza. Yup, Pizza will sell their beer for them. See, you can’t just eat the pepperoni, the cheese, the peppers, and so on, you have to do them justice. See Grain Belt does justice to all the ingredients… whatever the hell that means. I think it’s because they want to end on the pun “It’sa justice of the pizza” Like Justice of the Peace, only pizza. It’s a pun, and it’s not funny. I was about to suggest you all go out and buy Grain Belt Beer, but now I’m not so sure. Also, why is it that beer commercials always have the suds spilling over? Every ad on this disc for beer has the suds spilling over and getting everywhere. Here, watch the advert for Grain Belt Beer.

This is insufficient to my needs.

Do you feel like buying things now? I certainly hope so. Maybe you’ll feel like buying this episode from the good people at Amazon.com WHO ARE fine people and aren’t HOLDING ME HOSTAGE anywhere like a WINDOWLESS BASEMENT so you don’t need to GET HELP or anything. Please, they send the rats in at night. Not Amazon, these people who are holding me. I think it’s the Singh Brotherhood, but surely they were all destroyed in the 30s. Shhh, I think I hear them coming, pretend like we’ve been talking about the show this whole time. *ahem* So anyway, we come back and it’s December 25th, so sayth the graphic on screen. Poirot opens his gift from Japp, and finds a pair of knitted gloves. He does not love them and wraps the gift up in it’s paper for later disposal. To make himself feel better about the lousy gloves, he sneaks into the Spanish Granddaughter’s room and goes through her purse and drawers. This is less for a cheap thrill and more to find her passport. Japp comes around and of course Poirot hands it over.

You can tell they’ve got secrets, can’t you? Dirty secrets, sexy secrets. Like mid-70s European porn type secrets. I need to get out more.

This leads, as always, to the denouement scene. Poirot leads everyone into the Spanish Granddaughter’s room, and she admits that she isn’t. She’s a fraud, but she was only being a fraud for the fun of hanging around the rich English family. The PM has a flip out, but Poirot tells him that the old man was killed by his own flesh and blood. He starts off by digging into the PM, telling him what a douche he is and how he might be the killer. The wife pops up, starts being indignant, but of course, he explains how she might have done it. He then goes in and accuses the other two brothers, or says how they could have done it. Then the other wife explains what happened and how she got to the door. It’s then that Poirot springs his trap and lets everyone know how it was really done and who done it. Okay, what the hell, I’m going to spoil the whole thing now. If you don’t want to know anymore, stop now.

It was the pig the whole time!

You see, the killer murdered the old man about an hour before the old man was discovered. He then assembled a tower of furniture with a cord around it. He tossed the cord out the window so that the window would only be slightly open, bolted into position, and he could get the cord from the ground floor. At the appropriate time, he pulls the cord and the tower comes crashing down. The scream of course was a noisemaker called a screaming pig. So who did it? Well, without drawing out the reasons and such, I’ll just tell you that it was the local cop. See, he was the son of the old Mr. Lee and killed him out of revenge for what Lee did to his mother in the first five minutes. Poirot explains how it all works out, and how everything fits together.

Remember, Justin Bieber. Robert Pattinson. Highly gay overtones.

We get a few little scenes closing up the last few loose ends. The PM and his wife will continue hating each other. The black sheep and the Spanish Granddaughter are going to “travel together” for a while and the other brother and the other wife will be fine. Poirot gives Japp a box of cigars and claims that he will only wear the knitted gloves for special occasions, like church. I’m not sure I’ve ever see Poirot go to church, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t go to church, like ever. This was a pretty good episode even if you do rather end up going, “Yes, yes Agatha. The rich are all bastards and the English are all bigots. We know.” She does seem to be down on her fellow English people quite a lot and this is quintessential of her feelings. Still, it’s a pretty good episode and reminds you about it being Christmas just enough that you can tell people you ARE watching a Christmas Special and that they should leave you alone. Time for the score…

Official Score:
52 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Hey! Can you hear that? Sounds like Machine guns. Wait! Was that General Lasalle who just ran past? I think it was. I do believe The Inquisition is in the hands of its enemies. Well, thanks kids, looks like I’m rescued! Funny General Lasalle is wearing a big red coat and has midgets helping him. Strange. Whatever though, so long as they get me out of here. Ah, the door has opened and someone is beckoning me out. See you on the other side kids.

TV Review: Jack Benny Program (Pain Box)

2010-12-20T22:23:00.000-08:00

Last year, I almost wrote this review. Several things got in the way and I crapped out. However, this year I did actually write the review, so all is well.

The Jack Benny Program (1960 CBS dir. James V. Kern)

There is something to be said about a man who could remake the same episode a dozen times and have it called “tradition” rather than “pointless repetition.” What it mostly says is that the guy was some kind of genius. So here is the lowdown on the traditional Jack Benny shopping episode: Jack has trouble deciding on a gift for Don Wilson and proceeds to drive the clerk (played by Mel Blanc) out of his skull with his alterations to that gift. Normally he buys an expensive present and changes his mind about this aspect or that aspect and then goes a head and decides to get the cheap gift by the end of the episode. Is that what happens here? No idea, to be honest I still haven’t watched it. Let’s lay down a fiver right now though. If Jack buys a gift, changes his mind several times and drives Mel Blanc insane, you owe me five bucks. Six if it’s a gift for Don Wilson. If it’s any conciliation, this probably won’t hurt much. I might be a little painful, but most likely it’ll just come off as dated.

I can’t believe this.

Guess where this comes from! That's right the same Holiday Pain Box that we got the Burns & Allen episode from! Same apologies for the caps, but they're slightly better here. Let’s begin. We start with a normal day for Jack Benny, on his hands and knees surrounded by angry women. He’s not the focus of their attention though, which is also typical for Benny. Rather it seems he was caught in a crush when someone discovered something on sale and the ladies came to grab all the bargains. Because, you know, women and shopping! Am I right fellas? There is a bit of laughter, he mentions how Christmas shopping gets worse every year and then we immediately cut to a commercial, which I’m not going to do. It’s a little early and I haven’t seen the screws for a while so I’m probably safe skipping this commercial opportunity. Hopefully we won’t see a return of the water canon that featured so prominently in day three, or that flashlight nausea educing device from a few nights ago. Anyway, the show proper begins after the break and Rochester approaches Benny to have a bit of comedy. Most of the comedy is about Benny being cheap, since Benny himself is almost always the butt of the jokes. I’m not sure we have comedians this brave anymore, that will allow themselves to be constantly insulted in this way. Benny must have had an ego of pure titanium.

He’ll be seeing that for week.

He starts to discuss people he needs to get a present for and AH-HA! The first person on his list is Don Wilson! And AH-HA! He approaches Mel Blanc who tells him that there are two kinds of wallet. One wallet costs $1.98 and the only costs $40. You might as well just mail me the six bucks now. Rochester reminds Benny that Don has been with him an awfully long time and Benny agrees. He decides to have the wallet gift wrapped and sent to Don. However, Benny decides that he wants to write a note, and thus the problems begin. You just know that he’s going to want to change that note later.

What’s that little hammer? Murder you say? Kill them all? Okay!

Now we get to what is either the padding, or the meat of the episode. It depends on how you feel about these things. See, most of what made Jack Benny’s show a hit for years was that he would interact with a large number of returning characters. Half the people Benny bumps into in this episode are a returning favorite of one kind or another. The other half are clerks and what not. Most of the humor isn’t the sort of thing that moves the plot along, it’s people standing around and having little moments. He has a problem buying a watch and then decides to change the card in the wallet. I did say this would happen. Mel doesn’t take it as well as he might, but it’s understandable because he’s dealing with Jack Benny.

No. Pants.

After that, we get a bit with… wait a second. I've got to rewind and watch this again. Um, yeah, that happened. The guy talking to Dennis Day just said the most amazing thing. He said “I’m standing behind this counter because in a moment of wild enthusiasm, I sold my pants.” I mean… I just… I… HUH? I’ve been too flabbergasted to talk about what else is going on. Dennis Day probably does a bit of comedy before singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, but all I’m hearing is, “I’m standing behind this counter because in a moment of wild enthusiasm, I sold my pants.” I could talk about Dennis Day’s career, or the place he filled in the show, but really, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think either of us care. All either of us are thinking about is “I’m standing behind this counter because in a moment of wild enthusiasm, I sold my pants.”

YOU BASTARD!

So Benny gets told he’s not the only man in the world named Jack, a fact we can attest to, and he realizes he only signed his first name and Don Wilson might be so dumb as to not know which “Jack” sent the wallet. Mel Blanc takes this badly, and has a traditional fit over it. Seriously, you could replace a couple of nouns and this would be the cufflinks show from 20 years earlier. He complains about each step that this process has taken and ends with telling Benny he can’t change the card because he sent the package to the delivery department. Benny demands he go get it and we melt into another bit of comedy from a supporting player, again using a gag from 20 years ago. It was a very different time, before video and internet. Then Benny and Blanc talk about the package before the break for commercial comes and YES, YES. I’M DOING THE COMMERCIAL SEE? Did they just pass by? No, better actually do a commercial then. Don’t want the tazers to come back.

We raise a glass to the Dark One.

You ever heard of Iron City Beer? It’s a Pennsylvania brand, it was local to Pittsburg and is now somewhere else. Well, people who ski clearly love Iron City beer and that sort of formless jazz that was popular in the mid-60s. That sort of single drum and flute combination that makes you want to claw your eyes out and shove ice picks in your ears. And I say that as someone who likes west coast jazz. While our skiers have stopped to build a snowman, an announcer tells us that great times and great beer go together. I’m guessing lousy beer and domestic abuse also go together, but never mind that now. We’re then told that there is no better beer for great times than Iron City, which must be a distinct disappointment to most the world as I’m pretty sure Iron City isn’t a national brand. It seems that Iron City has thick foam that holds and holds. In fact, they even insert a miniature ski poll into the beer to demonstrate its holding power. Interestingly, this is the only beer commercial I can think of where the foam isn’t shown sloshing down the side of the mug, almost every other beer commercial makes it part of the package. I guess that’s how well the foam holds. It seems you’re ahead with Iron City, because it’s the beer drinker’s beers. Again, sadly, not available in my area. Also, I can’t find this particular commercial online. I make sad face now. :(

A poor broken man.

The DVD has a long blank spot here. Ten full seconds go by before we fade back in and find Benny looking for the card. Blanc shouts at him, and freaks out when Benny tells him that he forgot to sign the card. We’re then treated to another bit that’s from 20 years ago. A lingerie sales man who needs gloves because “touching that stuff with me bare hands makes me a nervous wreck” and explains that the black ones are the worst. It’s sort of a strange joke that just doesn’t work today. Benny comes back and finds Blanc a broken wreck of a man. Now, Benny should be recalcitrant and guilty, but Blanc is playing up his part so well that Benny is actually having trouble keeping it together. It sort of adds to the horror of the situation that Benny is doing his damnest not to bust out laughing. He then, of course, decides to change out the $40 wallet for the one that costs $1.98 which breaks the poor clerk. Blanc pulls out a revolver, checks it for loads and then wanders off to commit suicide. It’s not just implied, we hear the shot and people come running and Benny comments that he was a nice young man before raiding the till. That’s pretty frickin’ dark for a Christmas show. I’ve made jokes, but they actually did it! Then it cuts to commercial, but as I know they’re not around right now… I think. Did you hear that? No, it’s nothing. I think I got away with it… OH FUDGE! NO! NO! NOOOOO!!!!! C’mon! The show is over already!

He seems to be enjoying this, actually.

Whew, that got ‘em! All there is left is Benny walking on, telling us to have a Merry Christmas and walking back off. Then there are some closing credits that get cut off so I don’t know exactly what year this was. I’m going with 1960 because an internet source says that’s when this was broadcast, but who knows if that’s right? It’s not a bad show, it’s just lifted from the radio show and as such, I know all the jokes before they come. That wasn’t a problem back when this was first made and no one remembered one gag from 20 years ago. I can’t rate this very highly, but it’s not actually bad.

Official Score:
10 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Cartoon Review: The Year Without a Santa Claus

2010-12-17T22:51:00.000-08:00

The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974 Rankin/Bass Productions Dir. Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin Jr.)

Oh goodie, Rankin & Bass! Because that’s always worked out well for us in the past, huh kids? You remember Rudolph? You remember ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas? Yeah, maybe now you know why I hesitate. The thing is, I remember this one being particularly painful, mainly because it’s the ultimate Rankin/Bass Christmas Story. One where Santa, tired of requests for Red Ryder’s Peacemaker, decides to quit. I know, you’re so shocked by this I can hear you gasping now. I mean, what are the odds, right? I mean he only cancels the trip just about every special he shows up in. Now, in some ways, this is a sequel to Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, which I haven’t reviewed. You ever notice that most the time when I review a sequel I haven’t reviewed the original? I’ve noticed that if I don’t review the original first, it doesn’t get reviewed. Probably in the fullness of time, I’ll get around to it.

Why such a filthy dress? Let’s just say a lot of men have handled me with their dirty hands.

The story is told by Mrs. Claus, who is first seen hanging up washing on an outdoor line… at the North Pole! Why? The washing will not dry, it will freeze. If the snow isn’t melting than evaporation isn’t taking place, or at least it isn’t taking place at anything like a speed that will make hanging it outside a viable option for drying. She then introduces herself in a ham-fisted way which is both awkward and stupid. However, since she’s hanging her clothes up in the midst of winter I suppose the solution could be that she’s a few bulbs short of a light strand. I mean, she’s the only old woman at the North Pole, but she asks “How do I know so much about Santa? Well, I’m Mrs. Claus.” Well, duh! I didn’t think you were Mrs. Jernofski, the wife of the janitor. Also, I think maybe English isn’t her first language, because she garbles her syntax a bit in this introduction. “It was a long time ago before you were living.” I suppose I know what that means, but why say it like that? Was this translated from the original Mandarin without the help of a native English speaker? And why is her smock so dirty? You can see the dirt and grime on her dress.

Guess where this one is going!

So they start a flash back and now they seem to be talking in a strange rhyming couplet style of speech. To make matters worse, it’s really sort of clumsy, requiring Mrs. C to break the forth wall and narrate when they really need a rhyme. All this clumsy talk and translated speech brings us to the point that Santa isn’t feeling too well. I can understand, I’m not a minute thirty into this thing and I’m feeling a bit ill myself. So the doctor comes in and berates Santa for traveling around the world to give toys and candy to a bunch of people who don’t care. So nice of the doctor to editorialize on the single point of Santa’s raison d'être. If this turns out badly, I’m blaming him! The Doctor goes on to rant that no one cares about Christmas and that he wouldn’t be surprised to find out that no one believes anymore. He then proves that he watches Fox News by going on to blame liberals for the lack of good cookies and proper milk being left out lately. After a few race bating comments and a suggestion that gay elves like Hermey shouldn’t be allowed at the North Poll, he leaves screaming that birth certificates can be faked and lets the door slam behind him. The whole time Mrs. Claus tries to talk him down, but being a typical gutless liberal just sort of mumbles that he’s probably not right or he’s making up figures and doesn’t just kick his ass out the door like she should. Stupid Gutless Liberals.

The saddest elf of all.

Santa, being Santa, takes all the ranting and raving to heart. He calls everyone together and tells them that he’s canceling Christmas. I’m wondering if it was the lies about no one caring, or if he was just looking for an excuse. I mean he does rather cancel Christmas every single year, and every time I ask how HE got to be in charge of that. Never have got an answer. Anyway! We’re then given the first song of the special, where it seems Santa can declare no Christmas. Lights are switched off, decorations are carted away, children are sobbing, congress is holding a special session to see if they can order that doctor shot, it’s pretty sad really. Why doesn’t the Santa Corporation have an alternate delivery set up to deal with these issues? It's not like this is the first time this has come up after all. The opening credits end and we’re given our first commercial break.

Yeah, it’s a bottle of beer. What’dya want from me?

Our first ad is another beer ad. Hey, don’t look at me, this is what I was given to review. A guy runs into a bar and screams that Big Jim is coming. This clears the bar out pretty quickly and in walks a big man up to the bar and asks for a Schmidt’s beer, stating he doesn’t have much time. The bartender, assuming that this is Big Jim, says that it was a great choice. See this particular advertisement is for the Big Mouth Barrel, which is a wide mouthed bottle of beer. He then tries a weak pun by saying that the man doesn’t need a glass since “Schmidt’s Big Mouth is in a glass all by itself.” and that the bottle contains the same great beer every time. He then tries to entice the fellow by asking if he wants another beer on the house. The man looks at the bartender and says “Are you crazy? Big Jim’s coming!” and leaves the bartender to look quizzically after him. See it here.

Uuuum…

Anyway, they tell all the elves to put the gifts away and they each pad their parts out by asking if he also means the stuff they’re working on. Mrs. Claus decides that she’s had enough of these melon-farming snakes on this melon-farming plane and puts Santa’s hat on herself. Then she breaks into song, a full minute and a half after the last one ended. Well, if you’re not counting commercials. The song then gets sort of disturbing, what with Mrs. Claus admitting that she’s often fantasized about being her husband. Is this not weird to everyone else? She fantasies about being her own husband! She wants not only to be a man, but a man she has been… well… intimate with. Now, don’t start giving me that whole “Don’t make me think of Santa having sex.” thing because Santa has been having sex in Playboy comics for years and years. It seems going to the homes of young urban women for booty calls is the only reason he leaves the house. She goes on to sing about how she could be Santa and take over for him, despite the fact that the boots, costume, beard, and hair are all wrong. Sadly, as soon as the elves realize it’s her in the costume (what with her telling them it’s her) she decides it won’t work. So what the hell were the last three minutes for?

And she told him to stick it in! Shocking! I know, right?

So anyway! Mrs. C send a couple of elves (Jingle and Jangle) with Vixen to go find some Christmas cheer in order to change Santa’s mind. So Santa and Mrs. Claus talk about how he’s feeling and he thinks she’s up to something because she doesn’t look like she’s up to anything and at times like that, she’s up to something. I’ve made it a lot less convoluted than they did, because I was able to get a hold of the original scrolls this tale was based on and it seems they aren’t in Mandarin, but in Sanskrit. Well, Mrs. C tells him about how the elves and Vixen went out to find goodness in the world. Santa however, being another paranoid Fox viewer, knows the world is just full of darkness and evil and that those three are on their way to being raped and murdered by vegan hippies who will probably eat them after they're done. He slips on his shoes and gets ready to go.

They’re actually quite happy to be falling to their deaths. It’ll get them out of the rest of this special.

He mentions that the group won’t even get past the Miser Brothers, and Mrs. C mentions that she forgot all about those guys. However, she says it in such an unconcerned tone that I have no idea if she’s actually worried or just putting on an act. I certainly hope there’s a song explaining who the Misers are. Nope, Mrs. C just gives us a short narration. That’s sort of sad really. It’s been almost four minutes without a stupid song and my hands are starting to shake. No reason given why a flying reindeer can’t just go around these two warring brothers. Mrs. C does mention she never thought Vixen would be dumb enough to fly into Heat Miser’s territory, so that’s something. Not much though, because Jingle and Jangle are blasted by a heat ray and knocked off Vixen. As they plummet to their deaths, we cut to commercial. Allow yourself to savor the idea of Jingle and Jangle’s bodies smashing into the ground. Their bones splintering and their bells flattening on impact, never to ring again. Their deaths won’t really be sad, because we don’t know them at all, but it will provide you with a momentary distraction while you read about this advertisement.

Eat Quisp or he’ll end you.

In our second advert, we see a cartoon of a massive ball of yarn that has blocked all space travel. They call an alien that wants to deliver Quisp cereal, so he knits the massive ball of yarn into a giant necktie 87 miles long. It’s a really short feeling commercial, even though it’s a full minute long. For some reason there’s a cowboy who interrupts before getting jabbed with the needles by the alien. Don’t know why. See it here.

VixensBlog.Com She’ll be complaining a lot.

As could have been predicated by anyone save for a moron or a mother watching with her child*, the elves did not in fact die. They are saved almost instantly by Vixen who high tails it out of there and goes to Southtown U.S.A. Really? Southtown? Well, clearly it is a town in the south because they are immediately pulled over and given a ticket for looking funny. Also for riding a reindeer, even though the cop doesn’t know what a reindeer is. Jingle and Jangle prove to be about as smart as anyone else in these things by deciding they don’t like reindeer around here. Instead of taking the fact that they were given a ticket ten seconds after arrival, they decide to stick around Southtown (really? Southtown?) after putting socks on Vixens head to make her look like a dog. Vixen is about as pleased about this as you’d expect, but doesn’t grumble about it. Oh, but her blog will be full of vitriol tonight, I can promise you that! The humiliation continues when they demand her to bark for a woman who is holding her cat like a muff. Why? I have no idea. Vixen’s Blog… look it up. She’s really quite angry about the whole thing.
*Mom’s are over dramatic and always act like the first thing we’ll see coming back from commercial is a dead body.

Well, this isn’t creepy or anything.

Santa, it seems, is right behind the two elves. He’s got right to Southtown and talked to the cop already. However, Buford turns out to be almost as nasty to Santa as he was to the elves. The elves by the way, just need to be shot. Noting how hot it is, they leave Vixen by a tree while going to talk to some kids, and in the one minute they’re away, the dogcatcher snatches her. Southtown is not doing a lot to dispel prejudices about the south, I can tell you that. Did I mention the kids don’t care about Santa? Did I also mention that after talking to the elves, Santa jumps out from behind a tree like some sort of child molester? He’s not helped by… well… I hate to repeat a prejudice, but he’s wearing a pink suit and purple shirt and looks like a dandy old queer. I mean, I think he’s going to seduce this kid and then later pay for his dancing lessons.

Yeah, not getting creepier, is it?

Allow me to again be baffled. Santa sneezes and the kid’s hovering mother suddenly throws open the window and asks if it was him sneezing. She must be stalking the poor kid, or her apron strings are only about seven inches long. Throwing open a window to ask if it was him sneezing? Instead of asking why an old dandy in striped pants is trying to pick up their kid, they ask him in for some tea and hope beyond hope that he might sing them a song. Well, their hopes are realized and he does sing them a song about how he believes in Santa Claus. Then the father starts singing along and he talks about the time Santa snuck into his room and touched him. HOW IS SANTA NOT ON A WATCHLIST? Yeah, he touched him with the power of song, but he crept into a kid’s room and touched him! EW! And this is a family show? They sing and the kid (not the father the kid) sheds a tear.

Rankin & Bass’s Sin City

So the kid explains about the dog pound, and Santa has one of those OMG moments. He then determines to break Vixen out of the big house and gets a crew of rough necks together. Well actually, we break for commercial after seeing poor Vixen cry a little. I’m not going to break for commercial, I think I can get away with it. I think they need me right now, the guards have looked worried all day since that broken bottle incident. I’ll skip this and go on with the story. Santa hops onto whatever reindeer it is that he brought with him and takes off into the air. At this moment, the kid and his father work out that he might be Santa. The kid wants to help and the father suggests the kid go to the Mayor’s office and tell him the whole story. Because that’s going to work! The kid won’t just get kicked out of the mayor’s office or anything. Well, the mayor laughs his ass off at them and then explains that it hasn’t snowed in Southtown in 100 years. He then tells them that if he can make it snow, he’ll release Vixen.

What the hell is Chaplin doing here?

He cackles with laughter as they leave and instead of thinking them insane, sings a song about how it’s going to snow. He runs out of his office and tells everyone that “It’s going to snow, right here in Dixie” and… is that Charlie Chaplin? Yes. Charlie Chaplin is in this thing. But it’s pointless because Santa came and paid her bail already. Since Vixen isn’t in the clink anymore, they don’t need to make it snow anymore I guess. Of course, since no one has cell phones in this show, they don’t know about how Vixen is doing. Well, instead of trying to kill the mayor and the dogcatcher, (Also known as the sensible option) they decide to call Mrs. C for backup. One assumes she left before Santa showed up, because she just comes to them with a plan to go see Snow Miser and ask him to make it snow in Southtown.

I won’t see anything more nightmare fueling this whole day.

Well, Snow Miser shows up and sings a song introducing himself. He tells them all about himself. This sort of thing wastes a lot of time and fits nowhere in the narrative, but since Mrs. C calls him a big ham I should allow it. So they talk about making it snow, but he tells them that Heat Miser screws up his snow every time he tries to send it to Southtown. So they go to talk to Heat Miser and on the way out Snowy says “Bring your husband next time and we’ll have a blizzard! Woooo!” and what the hell does that mean? Is this some kind of freaky swingers code? Is he talking about something kinky? We already know Mrs. Claus fantasies about being a man and her husband to boot. Is this going to turn into some kind of fetish porn before we’re done?

I would like to amend my previous caption.

Well, anyway, they go to see Heat Miser, who has a different song but the same tune. It’s so obvious that they wrote the Snow Miser song first and then tried to filk it to the other side of the spectrum. Now Heat Miser is annoyed by Santa’s connection with winter and cold. Mrs. C asks if he could make it snow in the south, which he rejects. He then says it might if there was “Something in it for me.” and at this point I can only guess that their Mrs. C or Jingle is going to have to offer their body up while Jangle take photos for the internet. Well, actually he wants The North Pole. Mrs. C calls up Snowy and lets the two brothers talk it out a bit before deciding she’ll just go to their mother. So the last ten minutes have been entirely pointless padding. Well, the group is going to go see someone Mother Nature, announcing that what with the snakes, the planes, and the melon-farming, that enough is enough and that she’s had it. Before she can for all Samuel L. Jackson though, there is a commercial break and I can’t avoid it this time.

He’s waiting until the tuba blasts to let off his farts.

Tony the Tiger has come back to the jungle with Frosted Flakes. See, it's the year of the tiger and he wants everyone to know about it. I guess that and the 8 essential vitamins and iron that have fortified the ceral are enough to advertise it to the world. They really don't do much else. Still, watch it and see if it makes you hungry. Sorry these aren’t longer, but there isn’t much insanity to this bunch.

Look at those giant nickels. Batman probably wants one.

And we’re back! Everyone is really nervous about going to see Mother Nature, which means she’ll be a delightful lady. Guess what? She’s a delightful lady, cheerful and smiling. She tells the brothers to work together, and is all smiles about it. The brothers give her a little trouble, but she smiles through it and remind everyone that she doesn’t have to be nice. I sort of wonder if the moment the guests leave, if she isn’t wailing on those two with a belt or something. There does seem to be a little something crazy in her eye. Anyway, Santa gets back and puts Vixen to bed before falling asleep in his chair. It snowed in Southtown and everyone is really happy. All the mayors in the country got together to declare a holiday for Santa… despite the fact that one already exists! Now he plans to take a vacation, even though he could have taken one in July! I just… I… ARG!

She’s so sad, she now lives in a crayon drawing of a house.

So, because Santa has a day off, the children of the world bring gifts to Santa. Why they’re all going to the north pole, where they might freeze to death, I have no idea. After his day off, Santa wanders around the place mumbling to himself like a drunk. And then… Oh Great Waffle… it’s horrible. A child sends him a letter and sings Blue Christmas. It seems the children of the world aren’t going to have a very nice Christmas without Santa. Wait a second, you mean the canceling of Christmas might have an adverse reaction on children who mark it as their favorite day of the year? I had no idea! How long has this been going on? THIS! CHANGES! EVERYTHING!

He looks drunk.

So Santa changes his mind about taking a break and demands to know why everyone is sitting around not working. Everyone reminds him of his symptoms and he tells them to shut up before they feel the back of his hand. And then everyone sings Here Comes Santa Claus, because The Gods hate me. No one seems to notice that he didn’t actually stop, they’re thrilled about the whole thing. And yet, all I can think is, go find that stupid doctor and set his feet on fire. All of this, every last stupid moment of it, is his fault. This isn’t as offensive as some of the Rankin/Bass stuff has been, but it sure could be a bit squicky if you think about it for more than five seconds. It was a colossal waste of time though, massive. Still it could have been worse and they don’t seem to have actually murdered anyone like they did in Rudolph. Still, if you want, you could buy your own own copy and tell me I’m wrong. Maybe you’ll love it.

So how do you feel about this special, Santa?

Official Score:
2 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

TV Review: The Burns and Allen Show (Pain Box)

2010-12-13T22:43:00.000-08:00

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show: Company for Christmas (1955 CBS Dir. Ralph Levy)

I can barely read that. This is going to be an easy one to watch, I can tell.

Well! The commercial will be easy with this one. The very first thing on screen is a Carnation Evaporated Milk can. We’re then told that Carnation Evaporated Milk brings us The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. Before we get the show logo, we get an ad saying that Carnation comes from contented cows, which raises the question… How do they know? It’s been a long time since I was last on a farm, but I don’t remember the cows being contended or annoyed. They were just cows, i.e. big, stupid, lumbering, steaks on legs. That’s really all a cow is, and I say that as someone who has looked into the eyes of a cow and seen nothing looking back but void. At any rate, this is pretty good for me as all I need do now is sit back and watch the madness unfold.

Listen, you can’t get me out of this can you? For old times sake?

So the main premise of this show is like the premise of a lot of shows at the time. George and Gracie act as themselves in these shows. They live in Hollywood and their friends and relations drop in. A lot of humor is based around what a screwball Gracie is and how George puts up with her. It’s a fairly classic straight man/screwball relationship and it worked for about 40 years or so until Gracie retired. The show is fairly funny, although a lot of classic radio and TV shows these days play as painfully simple. The lack of a B Plot or anyone saying cocksucker is what separates this from Deadwood. Okay, there are other things as well, but you get the idea. This one comes on my favorite Holiday Pain Box, which means the video is pretty bad. You’ll have to forgive the cap quality.

If I were a rich man. La-da-de-da-da-da-dah!

The show itself has an interesting format. We start with Gracie talking to some neighbors about how her sister is coming to visit for Christmas. After that plot set up happens, we then get George doing what amounts to a stand-up routine for two minutes. No plot, no story, just George standing there telling jokes, which is sort of amazing really. That a TV show would just grind to a halt for a great star to tell a couple of jokes at a what was considered a fairly leisurely pace even at the time, is something to behold. He stops telling gags when the Gracie returns with the guests. This then quickly descends into gags and jokes again without much story. There’s not much Christmas going on here though, besides a few mentions here and there.

I don’t just love you, I want to be you. What’d ya say? Can I kill you and wear your skin as a suit?

And while they tell jokes, they actually insert their product into the show. When the coffee comes out they talk about Carnation milk for a moment, telling a couple of jokes and then getting on with life. A bit of chaos goes on for a while, and then we go back to George standing in place and telling jokes stand-up style again. He doesn’t do it for as long as he did the first time, but it’s strange to see a show stop dead for someone to just stand there and tell jokes. Anyway, the story comes back and the children are loud and the neighbors are doing comedy bits with Gracie. Then it’s back to George telling jokes on the side again. It’s sort of hokey and lame, but the painful bit is there is a screaming sound coming from the soundtrack on this copy.

This is your God.

Then a guy named Harry shows up with a Santa suit for George. Harry shows up and within twelve seconds of his first word, mentions Carnation, and then five seconds later mentions it again. Harry then tells George how to be Santa by having a pretty young woman sit on his lap and kiss him. Harry then launches into an advertisement for Carnation Evaporated Milk. It’s done sort of humorously, but it’s still a commercial sitting in the middle of a comedy show. I must tell you kids, I’m beginning to think that it’s possible that Carnation Evaporated Milk sponsored this show. When other characters launch into the commercial as well, you sort of get the impression that you live in a mad world or possibly that you’ve spent your life wrong by not telling people about the advantages of whatever product you happen to be holding.

REMEMBER THE COWS!

I’m sort of at a loss really. There isn’t really a story here, just things happening. No rise or fall, not conflict, no resolution, just stuff happening. It’s just a lot of nuttiness and talk about Carnation Evaporated Milk. Amazingly, at the end of the show Gracie actually says “We mustn’t forget our sponsors” despite the fact that they’ve hardly stopped talking about them the entire half hour. I’m sort of flabbergasted. I’ve seen old TV and I’ve listened to old radio and I’ve never seen so many insertions of the sponsor into the program as I have just now. I’m kind of at a loss as to what to say about this. I’m not even sure I can rate this. It’s not even a show, it’s just five jokes to string together the commercials. It’s almost like Graffiti Bridge itself, only with more Carnation Evaporated Milk.

Official Score:
0.2 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Cartoon Review: A Garfield Christmas

2010-12-09T21:13:00.000-08:00

A Garfield Christmas Special (1987 Dir. Phil Roman)

Some of you may remember back in November I ran a review for the Garfield Thanksgiving Special. In that review, I called it the most hateful thing ever connected to Thanksgiving. I meant it then and I mean it now. It was evil, hateful, lacking in any kind of morality and not funny. It told us that deceit and lies were great things that should be rewarded. Well now it's December, and now we're looking at a Christmas Special. Will it be as bad? Who can say? I’m pretty sure that it will be though, I mean it is Garfield after all. I’m guessing it will be self-serving, cynical, and will try ham-fisted emotional manipulation. There will probably be some songs that make you want to pour Clorox right into your ear to try and cleanse your brain of their memory. Let’s see if I’m right!

Think of all the widows and orphans those jewels could feed. Now think of them starving to death because Big G would rather eat the jewels than help another living being.

The show starts off innocently enough, if a bit strangely. Jon wakes Garfield up and gives him half a dozen platters of lasagna in order to build up enough strength to get to the tree. Jon is dressed like and elf, in green tights with bells that jingle and stuff. Garfield is then given his present, which turns out to be a mind reading, gift-giving machine that pops out any present you think of. Garfield gets a pile of jewels, announces that this is what Christmas is all about, and a song about ‘how great greed is’ starts. It was 1987 folks, greed was good and sex was still cool so long as you wore a condom. As the song (and the opening credits) end, so does Garfield's dream. It's only Christmas Eve, and instead of getting a gift-giving machine, Big G is being taken to the farm. Jon is way too enthusiastic about this trip, like disturbingly so. I must say that for once I agree with Big G. He complains a little about having to go to the farm to see Jon's relatives. I can’t help but wonder why Jon has decorated his house, complete with a tree that has gifts deposited below it, if he’s just going to the farm? Sadly, we’ll never know because it’s at this moment that a commercial break totally rips us from the story, shattering narrative flow.

The Crying Indian… couldn’t have been a Crisco ad, could it?

Oh dear lord it’s the Crying Italian Indian Commercial! Yeah, little know fact, Iron Eyes Cody wasn’t an Indian at all. He played them a lot, which is like me playing a Mexican, but he was a second generation Italian American. Anyway, the idea is that this spirit of the land or whatever is tryuing to get somewhere and finds litter and pollution at every stage of his journey. Frankly, I feel bad about putting this stereotyped thing in here, but it’s what I was given. Watch it here, if you've never seen it.

All I can think is that there is a girl under the dash and we're seeing Big G's “O face”.

When we come back, a song has begun. Jon works his way into the song by being the sort of dork you just want to hit with a 1985 Sears Wishbook to make him come to his senses. There were songs in all of these shows of varying quality. This one is actually kind of clever though. Jon talks about how much fun he had getting ready for the holiday and Garfield attributes each kind of set up as a kind of job. Decorating the tree = Gardening. Putting up the lights = Electrical contracting. It's kind of clever, and they don't draw it out so it doesn't get too annoying. Some of the songs are too long and annoying, but this one song is okay. Just remember though, I’m not saying this one song redeems this in anyway. It’s a nice song is all, nothing special. Once we arrive at the farm though, things go down hill very quickly.

If only Jon had given the cord one good hard yank at the right time, we never would have had to endure Dock Boy.

Jon is greeted by his mother, who seems to have no eyes. She just has these little slits that rest above her nose. I wonder what kind of farm accident robbed her of her sight, and if she now has radar sense like Daredevil. She takes his gifts from him and he just stares at his hand for like five seconds while wondering what he’s supposed to do next. I don’t know what the joke here is supposed to be. The accident that took mom’s eyes, is it supposed to have crippled her as well? Dad looks okay, but when Jon greets his brother things go hideously wrong. He calls him Dock Boy and asks "How's my favorite brother?" to which Dock Boy snaps ”Don't call me Dock Boy, and you've probably forgotten I'm you're only brother.” Now everyone calls the guy Dock Boy, so why can't Jon? And why does Jon actually look kind of nervous and embarrassed when he admits that yes, Dock Boy is his only brother. Was there another child? Did Jon have an older brother that was killed in the same accident that took Mom's sight? Did that older brother only “die” in as much as they no longer talk about him? Is he actually wandering the Canadian wilderness wondering how he got these metal claws that pop out of his knuckles? So many questions. Like, you know, seriously, Zeist? Who came up with that one? It's worse when they later tried to claim they come from the future. Or was it the past? See? Took a bad idea and made it worse.

WHERE ARE HER EYES?

After this terse greeting is exchanged, we get the bit that makes Syd cringe whenever this special is on. A voice from off screen announces that they shouldn't mind her and that can visit until their lips fall off for all she cares. She'll just sit in the dark alone until someone comes over to see grandma. She then goes on to claim no one gives a hoot about an old woman anyway. Syd cringes because she looks at me every time and says “How did they get my grandmother to be in their show?” After Jon comes over to play into her passive aggressive bullshit, she shows how in shape she is by offering to take a sucker punch to the gut. She then mentions how many sit-ups she does and all that. I hate grandma. She's such a hideously annoying cliché. What make her annoying is we’re supposed to be surprised, but all grandmothers act like this on TV. I keep expecting for her to ride up on her Harley and yell, “I’m gonna haul ass to Lollapalooza!” Worse yet, she’s a hateful passive aggressive monster to boot. She;s also really mean to Jon’s mom. In like a “Let’s just take the old bat outside and give her both barrels in the back of the head.” sort of way. She clearly thinks she knows best, but as everyone hates her, clearly she don’t. It’s things like this that make me reevaluate my views on genocide.

When someone said they were going out for Kevorkian machines, she asked for them to get her one. Anything to get out of this special.

Anyway… the dinner is prepared, and while this goes on Odie acts decidedly weird. He gathers supplies through out the show, which will have a pay off at the end. Dock Boy is asked to say grace and won't say it until grandma hits him in the head with a gravy ladle. In the long shots you can see that Dock Boy is so into being on the dinner table he's leaning his elbow into the gravy and Jon has already got his hand around the turkey. Either this family fights for every morsel of food, or there is some crappy animation work being done here. Me? I vote for a fistfight over the dinner rolls. So Dock Boy prays right? He then won't shut up again until hit with the same ladle by grandma, which proves to me that he's been beaten, whipped and humiliated for years until this point where he needs to be physically abused for him to start or stop any task. While it might look sort of amusing, really this is a hateful family of rednecks who have poor sanitation, beat their kids and even worse… waste and abuse food.

The deplorable sanitation at the Arbuckle house.

Dinner is eaten, and there are some jokes which aren't very funny about how Mom makes too much food despite having no eyes. She made 4 kinds of potato and 6 different pies, you see. Instead of just saying there’s too much, they have to mention every item of food that was made. It’s like reading one of those old books were they felt compelled to list everything on offer at a buffet. It’s a wonder any one at this table isn’t as huge as a blimp. I wonder if the food is just hideously bad, and they avoid eating most of it, or if they just get overwhelmed and stuff napkins in their ears. There are some bits about Big G and Odie being fed at the table, which adds in a hideous joke about Grandma eating for two. You can tell how bad the joke it, even the drawing of the person she talks to recoils in horror at the idea of her getting her groove on and becoming with child. This goes on for a while longer, maybe a minute, maybe a month. It’s hard to tell with all the screaming of my fellow viewers. The pain is bad, but I can withstand this. My captors seem unaware that I survived Hercules and the Captive Women. I can hear the plaintive cries from other cells though, maybe the others aren’t as strong. Maybe they’re going to subject us to some kind of face off. Anyway, Odie does some more acting weird and then they start to trim the tree.

I mean look! Jon is stroking that turkey, Dock Boy and Grandma have their arms in that bowl, Mom's trying to elbow the bread rolls off the table... wft?

The trimming of the tree hits the same old stupid joke about them putting the start on the tree last and how it wouldn't be Christmas if they put the star on first before putting the tree up. Why won’t it be Christmas? Who decided this crap? You ever notice it’s never the person who has to do the hard work on the holiday who insists this horseshit be done in the hardest way possible? Jon gets the brilliant idea of asking Big G to clime the tree and put the tree on the top. Garfield agrees, gets the star to the top, but it proves to be a pyrrhic victory at best. Garfield gets vertigo, falls out of the tree and half the decorations come crashing down around him. So, they have to redecorate anyway. Brilliant plan Napoleon! After a four hour cut scene of them re doing the tree, the get things in order. They light the tree, everyone says “oooo” and for the third time on this DVD Garfield turns to the audience, shattering the fourth wall and says “Nice Touch” as if it's the first time he's said it. In a startling break of tradition, instead of happening at the 20-minute mark it happens at the 12 minute 40 second mark. Not much of consolation though, as I still have to sit here and watch this thing.

Do these people not own a stepladder? Or even a chair?

Another song starts, after a couple of false starts. Dock Boy tries to play O Christmas Tree, but he's no good at it. Then Grandma starts playing and in a hilarious turn she plays it as a jazzy number. See, it's funny because old people are supposed to be slow and not like noise and generally sit quiet while waiting for death and grandma doesn't do this. It would be funny, if that were true about old people and if every damn show on TV in the 80s didn't pull this same character of a kick-ass old person. Anyway, Jon's mom starts playing, using sheet music despite the fact that she clearly has no eyes. I'm not exaggerating. Look at the character model for every other person on this cartoon and then look at mom. Everyone else has large globular eyes, while mom has slits where her eyes used to be. The song goes on too long, but Big G walks off to sit with Grandma.

And the walls of Jericho came a'tumblin' down

About the only scene that doesn't make me want to stab my eyes out with an old pair of chopsticks I've been sharpening for the purpose starts now. Grandma has a moment with Garfield where she reminisces about her great love for Grandpa, his love for Christmas and how much she misses him now that he's gone. It might strike some as a little schmaltzy, but I feel it's the only piece of the cartoon that carries even the tiniest bit of emotional weight. It’s the only time in the show that anyone shows even the tiniest it of humanity, the one time that a hand is held out to us, asking us to understand. Sadly, it’s a character I hate, but since I hate them all, maybe I can hate her a little less. She made me feel human for 10 seconds, she gets a pass. But then the song comes back in and I want to commit mass murder. I hate this song, but we go to commercial before I can get a good rage on.

One single scene in the whole thing that doesn't make you want to kill yourself.

Drink this or we’ll kill you!

Jim Henson did a series of very short ads for Wilkins Coffee, which boarder on the edge of threats. I mean, these commercials all but say that if you don't buy Wilkins Coffee, they'll send some guys to your house. Here's another set which just comes down hard on the guy who doesn't like Wilkins Coffee. Cannons, handguns, bombs, every sort of murder and pain is thrown at the guy who doesn't like Wilkins Coffee. They're sort of horrifying really, but then everything has been lately. Someone is sobbing in G4, he’s been screaming about a Bat credit card, but now he’s just crying.

Same joke different show. Ah, what the hell... Pimping! It just ain't easy.

Retuning from the commercial break we're jarringly brought back to the so-called comedy. I can hear those sharpened chopsticks, they're calling to me. They want to pierce my corneas, they say they love my retinas and must dig deep into them. I'll be with you soon my lovelies! They can’t hold me forever, I’ll find freedom one way or another. Anyway, we're asked to endure more forced comedy when Dad reads Jon and Dock Boy a book that evidently he's been reading every year for decades. It's a stupid kid's story, and he clearly hates it. He's tired of reading this story to his kids, who are clearly in their thirties. He would much rather run off to Vegas with that hot new waitress at the diner. His ambitions for a better life have been squashed though and all he can do is sigh and accept his lot. When his two kids, both in their 30s, get excited, you watch his soul die a little. I can sympathize. All day long I hear the sobs of the prisoner in the next cell over in B12. I’ve tried reaching out, but he keeps crying about Gamera and that he wants his bots. I don’t know what they’ve been doing to him, probably forcing him to write reviews as well.

The Japanese animators, out of boredom, put in a tentacle rape scene. This understandably shocked and horrified the American cartoon actors.

Odie then acts strange some more, putting together some kind of torture device he intends to use on his captors before putting into effect his plan to take over the world. Then Garfield finds some letters that seem to be 50 years old. This will cause me some trouble later, but I'll talk about that when it comes. There is a not even in the slightest bit funny about Jon and Dock Boy waking up their parents at 1:30 in the morning asking if they can open their gifts because it's technically Christmas Morning. I nearly got myself with the chopsticks at this point but the guards noticed, grabbed my arm and deflected the tip. I can still see, but that is no relief because this cartoon is still on. It's not as offensive or hateful as the Thanksgiving special, it's just amazingly stupid. It makes you want to do horrible things to yourself, but they’ve taken my chopsticks from me.

It's like Night of the Living Dead, only they're after presents instead of the flesh of the living.

Presents are then opened in a single shot that doesn't do anything for me. Mom announces that it was a nice Christmas and Garfield announces that it's not over yet. I thought at first he was pointing out that they hadn't been to church, or that the day wouldn't be over for many hours, but instead he goes and grabs those letters he found. It turns out that those are letters that Grandpa sent to Grandma when they was courtin' a long, long time ago. 50 years isn't actually that long ago really. Not when you consider that they would had to have gotten hitched almost immediately after the receipt of those letters so Grandma could get knocked up so that either mom or dad (it's never clear whose parent she is) can have Jon at 20 so that he could now be just 30. I've always had Jon pegged at 35 though. It's almost not long enough really. Grandma then announces that these letters are the nicest present she ever received, totally blowing away that bowling ball sitting next to her. Someone went to a lot of trouble to get the bowling ball, and the cat gets all the credit for stumbling over a pack of letters with no effort at all. Grandma doesn’t even take a moment to stop being hateful to Jon’s blind mom either. I’ve changed my mind, I want to jam Grandma’s eyes out with the chopsticks.

Um... does any one else feel just a little creepped out by this?

So then Odie finally shows the present he's been working on. It turns out to be a butt scratcher. Garfield then announced the present to be the best ever, pushing aside the catnip mouse. Odie at least put some thought and effort into the gift, unlike some people we could mention. Big G then makes a gesture towards not being totally self-serving, which comes off as fake and hollow as a Platinum Dunes remake. I hate the emotional manipulation, I hate the cynicism, and I hate Christmas. Odie scratches some, to a beat no less, and that starts up a song that makes me think that perhaps my eyes were the wrong place for these lovely sharpened chopsticks. Clearly, I should have been aiming at my ears. If I jam them in just right I won't have to hear the rest of this song. I'm slightly hesitant because it would mean this song would be the last thing I'd hear though. I really hate how they say things like “A little over-eatin’ never did you any harm despite the lie of that statement. I think the last 20 years or so has shown the huge harm over eating does. It’s so stupid. While reeling from the stupidity, the show just suddenly up and ends.

No, really, WHERE ARE HER EYES?

This was still pretty bad. Not as bad as some, but bad and hateful. I'm not sure what I was expecting exactly, but maybe it would have been nice to have mom's blindness explained or something. Maybe she was forced to read the script for this and had her own pair of chopsticks or something. It’s pretty useless really, and seems to avoid the idea of having any charm until it suddenly changes gears and tries for humanity. It’s pretty bad and makes me want to retch. Why are these people forcing me to watch these things? Why won’t they release me? Zeist… the hell? I can’t answer these questions, but at least I'm done with Garfield for this year.

Official Score:
-25 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Holiday Review List

2010-12-07T19:06:00.001-08:00

Here are all the holiday reviews I've done for Retroflix along with their score on The Graffiti Bridge Scale...

The Avengers: Too Many Christmas Trees 10 Degrees
Blackadder’s Christmas Carol 5 Degrees
A Charlie Brown Christmas -10 Degrees
Chef! A Bird in the Hand 43 Degrees
A Christmas Carol (1938) -31 Degrees
A Christmas Carol (1984) 68 Degrees
A Christmas Carol (1999) 25 Degrees
He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special 10 Degrees
The History of Christmas 45 Degrees
How the Grinch Stole Christmas -1 Degree
Merry Christmas Mr. Bean 7 Degrees
Mickey’s Christmas Carol -10 Degrees
Miracle on 34th Street 60 Degrees
Morozko (Jack Frost) 73 Degrees
The Muppet Christmas Carol 69 Degrees
A Nero Wolfe Mystery: Christmas Party 45 Degrees
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer -5 Degrees
The Rugrats Chanukah Special 10 Degrees
Rugrats: The Santa Experience 10 Degrees
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians -18 Degrees
Scrooge (1935) -5 Degrees
Scrooge (1951) 87 Degrees
The Simpsons Christmas Special 42 Degrees
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas -87 Degrees
Tales from the Darkside “Seasons of Belief” 80 Degrees
The Vicar of Dibley: The Christmas Lunch Incident 5 Degrees
Will Vinton’s A Claymation Christmas Celebration 21 Degrees
Yes Minister: Party Games 15 Degrees
10 best things about A Christmas Story

TV Review: Tales from the Darkside “Seasons of Belief”

2010-12-06T21:24:00.000-08:00

TV Review: Tales from the Darkside “Seasons of Belief”

Tales from the Darkside: Seasons of Belief (Season 3, Episode 11; First Broadcast December 29, 1986; Laurel Productions; Dir. Michael Mc Dowell)

What say we get this VEWPRF season started off right? What better way to get a season started than with an episode of my favorite TV show? That’s right, I’ve got a holiday episode of Tales from the Darkside and I’m not afraid to review it! Like so many other Darkside episodes, this one is based on a short story. This time it’s based on a short story by Michael Bishop a Locus and Nebula Award winning writer. The screen play was written by Michael McDowell who also directed the episode. McDowell is also the man who created Beetlejuice as well as wrote some two dozen books. So what I’m saying is, in this episode, we’re in good hands. Unlike some holiday episodes, this will be a joy to watch. And with that, I just guaranteed you won’t even read past the opening paragraph, didn’t I? Look, I like some things, okay? I try to review things I think I’ll enjoy. Of course, since my program is being handed to me by forces I don’t really understand, it might be crap. I can’t see that happening since at worst a Darkside episode is just dull, but it might. C’mon! Read on and see what happens!

This R SRS story, I R SRS momma.

We begin with what looks like the most conventional Christmas episode sets that the team was able to produce. It still holds the requisite cheapness demanded by a Darkside episode, which is nice. While it may look dingy or dark to some, I appreciate that the houses in Darkside often look like houses of real people I’ve seen. A family is getting ready for Christmas. One complaint, E.G. Marshall seems a little old to be the father of these two small children. He actually looks like he should be Margaret Klenck’s father, instead of her husband. It’s a strange little bit of miscasting, but Marshall pulls it off in the end. He’s not bad, but he looks old for the family. Not really important, but I thought I’d comment as that’s what I’m being forced to do here.

Don’t they look baffled?

The kids reveal that they don’t believe in Santa Claus. The parents mention some of the old “But you really should” standbys like Santa hitting a switch to break gifts. A toy train then breaks as soon as she mentions this, which gives the kids a moment of pause. The Parents then let them open a gift each, which turns out to be an atlas and a box of crayons. This gets their minds off the evils of Santa for a moment or two and they settle in to listening to Good King Wenceslas for a while before the children announce that they are bored and demand a story. The Mother claims they don’t know any stories, but the boy claims they make up stories all the time.

Ooooh, these really are my kids, aren’t they? I’d always hoped she had an affair and they were the milkman’s or something.

The little girl is sort of cute, but the boy is practically gnawing on the tree in his desire to chew up the scenery. The father makes a suggestion to the mother behind her hand, but she says that story is too scary. The little girl’s eyes light up and she declares that a scary story is the only thing she could possibly want. The Father starts to tell the story by writing the name of the monster out on a pad of paper. The kids read the name and he claims that they’ve done a dangerous thing, the most awful thing in the world, by saying the name out loud. With that mystifying statement hanging between them, we cut to commercial.

Fangled huh?

Did you know Pringles used to call their product “New Fangled Potato Chips”? Yeah, I didn’t either. Evidently though, they rock. A father brings home the wrong bag of chips for the picnic. However, it seems that the family knew dad was a complete and total screw up, because they went and got a thing of Pringles ahead of time. So they can explain that Pringles are made a new way, and packaged in an air tight tube. This must be when they were first released, because I seem to remember that quite quickly a cabal of potato chip makers got the food laws changed to bump Pringles off the market. Watch the ad and feel the illegality. Actually, Pringles came back by using the word “crisps” instead. That showed ‘em! I’m still sort of enamored of “New Fangled Potato Chips” and plan to use it in everyday speech.

Don’t pull that crap on me. I’m not some idiot, I’m six already.

Instead of explaining the cliffhanger we ended on, the father launches into a story explaining that there are a great many sights at the North Pole. He then mentions the smell of Mrs. Claus’s cooking, which leads the mother to interject that Mrs. C’s specialty is lasagna and goes on to claim that Eleanor Roosevelt gave her the recipe. Pointing out The North Pole and mentioning that there is a cave on the other side of the mountain that protects the workshop. That is the place where the… Grither lives. I hesitate, because the father does. He never actually says the name, allowing the children to say it. Evidently, The Grither doesn’t like hearing people talk about him.

Soon, I’m going to eat those sweet brains of yours.

It seems that The Grither’s ear grow every time someone says his name. The boy laughs, rolls on his back, chews up whole sections of the floor and shouts “GRITHER! GRITHER!” Leading the mother to explain that his ears are now twice as large as they were just five minutes ago. Not only that, but now The Grither knows where they are. At that moment, a light behind the mother goes out and this starts to freak the daughter out. The daughter begs them to stop telling the story, while the parents claim that they might have enough time to finish the story before he gets there. The son says “Grither” over and over again because he wants to make sure that The Grither doesn’t get lost and go home to the North Pole. The son is sort of a little bastard and I’m surprised he’s lived this long. He very much comes off like the sort of kid who sticks his hand in a blender because someone once told him not to. Also, the kid is a lousy and obnoxious actor. We should cut him some slack, because he’s a child, but children annoy me and I hate him.

File Photo. Proving we need better files… and to learn what “Photo” means.

Now we begin to describe the Grither and he has big hands and huge arms, meant for grithering. He also sings a song, which the children challenge the adults to sing. The parents do, to the tune of “O Come All Ye Faithful” which seems to affect the kids a bit. Even the boy is taken aback to find that the song has actual words. The Parents are accused of making the song up, the daughter noting that it doesn’t rhyme. But as the mother tells us, monster songs never rhyme. While explaining that The Grither can fly, the father namedrops Bangor, Maine which is the then home of Stephen King.

I’ve done it again. Time for Depends.

The Daughter gets freaked and begs them not to finish. However, the parents point out that if they don’t finish, then the Grither will come all the faster. They never actually explain what will happen if they do finish, or anything else really. While the kids are getting really scared, the phone rings and the kids beg them not to even pause for a moment. They do though, and the kids freak out even more. I should point out here that the performances of the parents are really excellent. They play like they’re just winding the kids up, teasing them gently for fun, but with an air that suggests this might all be real. It’s sort of cute really, because while you know this is a Darkside episode, you sort of wonder if it won’t end with The Gither being Uncle Mike in a mask or something. It doesn’t help that when the father answers the phone, all he says into it is “We’re all here.” before we cut to commercial.

You fap to that?!

Huh, I was just shown the shortest Coca Cola commercial in history. Ten seconds, and no more. Someone is pouring coke from a bottle into a glass. While that’s going on a choir sings that it’s the real thing and then shouts COCA COOLLA! And then we’re done. I can’t find it online so, watch this one instead.

Pictured: Fake Grither

So when we come back, the kids are waiting and inquire where The Grither might be in his progress towards the house. The Mother claims that he’s in NYC or possibly Philly if the wind is with him. The Father comes back in and just says that someone wanted to know if they were all going to be home tonight. The daughter asks if it could have been The Grither, to which he says he’s not sure. They wind the kids up a bit more, telling The Grither’s origin story. It seems he was born out of rage and sorrow, but no one knows why he does what he does. The kids are getting wound up, demanding that they finish the sorry, when someone starts banging on the door. The kids then loose their shit when the person at the door starts singing The Grither song. The daughter hides behind the tree and shrieks while throwing presents to defend herself. Except it turns out to have been Uncle Mike at the door.

Got your head!

Now, we get the explanation. See, Father told Uncle Mike the song over the phone and then tells the children that The Grither is no more real than Santa Claus. See, Santa is just a nice story and The Grither is just a nasty story. If one doesn’t exist, than neither exists. You can’t have one if you don’t have the other. The daughter demands that they didn’t finish the story, and before the mother can admonish her for not getting the idea that the whole thing is a sham… a massive wind blows the door open and throws everyone back. The wind is so strong it knocks over the tree, but the son manages to close the door acting quite heroic really. And then awesomeness happens! After the mother claims that it wasn’t The Grither, but just the wind, THE GRITHER ATTACKS! Huge foam rubber hands smash through the windows, grab the parents by the head and breaks their necks! So you see kids, if you don’t believe in Santa, The Grither will come and kill your ass!

Happy Holidays kid.

Personally, I love this episode. I love that they assert the reality of Santa by claiming that The Grither exists. This is way more fun than just saying you should believe in Santa or saying that faith is important because… well… it is. NO! Old Pagan Rules my lovelies! The monster kills people who call on him and punish the unbeliever. If these kids had believed in Santa, they wouldn’t all be living in Uncle Mike’s bachelor apartment now. So kids, my darlings, my sweet ones, believe in Santa or I’ll send a monster to kill you. Sweet dreams and Happy Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festival. As for what became of the children… the girl (Jenna von Oÿ) went on to play Six in Blossom. The Boy (Sky Berdahl) went on to be a dentist. Not joking. He’s probably a good dentist, and I hope he’s happy with his life.

Official Score:
80 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.

Cartoon Review: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

2010-12-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966 MGM Television Dir. Chuck Jones)

Well, here we are. One of the biggies. I mean, after Charlie Brown, this is THE cartoon classic for my generation, isn’t it? The story of the meanest guy in the Christmas special stable. How does one get their hate on for The Grinch? Oh sure, there is a logical inconsistency at the end, but it’s a small one. Sure the Whos down in Whoville make one rethink the idea of ethnic cleansing, but how do you hate The Grinch? He’s like the best character for people who are, at best, ambivalent about Christmas. Can I hate The Grinch? I doubt it. Can I hate this special? Only time will tell my darlings…

This makes him 87% more likely to develop heart disease as well.

The special gets off to a bad start, with incomprehensible singing. I had to turn on the closed captioning to get what the hell the Whos were saying. And even then, it’s not worth reading really. This is the first big problem with old Dr. Suess, he just makes up gibberish if he can’t think of anything intelligent to write. This opening song is made up of equal parts gobbledygook and actual words. This will be the defining characteristic of the Whos for the rest of the show. The problem with the people of Whoville is that their antics and songs aren’t in the book. You can tell exactly what’s in the book, because those lines (with a single exception) are all spoken by the Big Daddy himself Boris Karloff. Karloff is, without a word of exaggeration, awesome here.

Noisy!

So after the song, The Grinch goes on to explain why he doesn’t like Christmas. They are fairly sensible reasons, because noise if noisy. The visual gags involved in The Grinch listing off all the things that the Who Children are going to play with are okay. The model drawings match Suess’s original style, but that’s not too hard to pull off. The animation is good if a little cheap. We’re dealing with 15 frames per second here, which is half the frame rate of video. You get a lot of reused drawings as well, loops of animation and such. There are also a few errors that they weren’t able to fix, which speaks for the low amount of money that went into this project. None of this actually distracts from the program, but I notice it. Also, there are too many damn songs. Less than five minutes after the whole “Welcome Christmas” song, it pops up again. This particular song is bad enough as it is, why do we need it twice in six minutes?

In frame one, the little guy’s hat is white. In frame two, blue hat. Frame 3-15(ish) white. This goes on for as long as this bit of animation loops.

Okay, so he decides to do something, and he forms a plan. Now, I have a problem with The Grinch making the hat and coat. He only cuts one side out of the curtains. He doesn’t make cuts for a full jacket. He’d need to cut twice as much as he does, and he’d need to measure as well. You can’t just take a pair of scissors to a curtain and expect it to be that easy! That coat won’t fit his dog Max for trying out loud! As a side note, I know too many people who sew as a hobby. This section is where you get the “Mr. Grinch” song that was sung by Thurl Ravenscroft, who is bafflingly left out of the credits. The preparation is sort of cute, because his dog Max is such a playful spirit. The Grinch ties him to the sled and we get our commercial break. Now, I’d like to skip the break, but they’ve been getting kind of glad handed with the cattle prod the last couple of days so I’m going to let the baby have its bottle and do the damn commercial.

Coffee!

So today we’ve got an ad for Butter-Nut Ground Coffee, which we’re told is made upside down. Seems most coffee makers blend their beans and then roast them. This is bad because different beans roast at different temperatures. So first they roast, and then they blend. And for some reason the guy is telling this to what sounds like a Scandinavian couple. Why them? I have no idea. But then, I’m not sure why he spends the whole commercial up-side down either. Check it out. She even tells him he would make a good salesman.

Um… yeah!

The trip to Whoville is almost two minutes of pure padding. Not complaining, because it’s amusing, but it doesn’t add much to the story. Of course the story has to be padded a little, because other wise the show is too short. That’s one of the reasons we have so many songs, to pad the running time out. Pretty much all of The Grinch’s criminal activity is also padding, and we get more reused and looped animation. When you know what you’re looking for, TV animation is a wonderland of cheapness. Animation reshot with different back grounds, reused rough drawings that have had slightly different characters drawn on the cells to copy the movement work, looped drawings, entire animated segments reused because who will notice or care, child laborers imported from Singapore… there’s a lot of cost saving going on.

We told you to watch out, we told you not to cry…

Now when we get to little Cindy Lou Who (No More Than 2 Years Old*), which is the only other voice in the production. The Great June Foray provides the voice here. Remarkable vocabulary for a 2 year old though, I must say. She's also really mastered speech to make herself intelligible at age 2. What gets me about The Grinch is that he’s not just taking Christmas, he’s taking everything. Seems like a lot of criminals really. Claiming some kind of noble cause, but really they’re just stealing everything not nailed down. Also, for someone who hate toys and noise, he seems to be playing with the toys while getting them into the bags. So what am I to believe? Maybe this whole Christmas thing was just a front from the start. Maybe he just made the whole thing up to justify stealing the light bulbs from the houses. Think about it, won’t you?
*Yes, yes, thank you Frank Miller.

Protip: Who Hash is not meat and potatoes. Ya dig?

Now comes the logical inconstancy I complained about earlier. The Grinch takes all the stuff to the edge of Mt Crumpet, with an eye to dumping Christmas over the side. He pauses to hear the sobs of the people of Whoville, but it turns out to be singing. See, Christmas came to Whoville anyway and the Whos didn’t need a bunch of stuff from a store. However, one might think they’d notice their ENTIRE town had been ransacked. I don’t know how much you hold Christmas in your heart, if you’d just had everything you owned stolen, maybe you’d go after The Grinch, yeah? That’s not the problem. The problem is that once he realizes that Christmas is more than presents, what does he do? Returns the gifts. And does he suddenly like noise? He brings back all the noisemakers. What about Roast Beast? He claimed he hated it before and now he’s carving it himself. You don’t just suddenly change your eating habits because you’ve gained an understanding of what Christmas really means. Above all that is the hypocrisy. I’m always bugged by this. Once you prove you don’t need something, you get rewarded with it anyway. This doesn’t teach children the value of Christmas, it teaches them to lie about their feelings. If you pretend Christmas is really, like, important and junk, and that presents are like, not so important or whatever, then we’ll give you lots of stuff. It teaches them to be hypocrites, who pretend that something is important in order to get the stuff they really want. That leads to hipsters! This special is directly to blame for hipsters! For that reason, I can’t give this a positive. I won’t go far into the negative though, so let that mollify you.

Official Score:
-1 Degrees on the Graffiti Bridge Scale.