Movies

Damnation Alley (1977) There's this giant post-apocalyptic super-truck that people drive across the devastated planet looking for other people. They spent most of their money on the truck, and some on blowing up that gas station, so it makes the movie look like an extended pilot for a Damnation Alley TV show, not something that should be shown in theatres. I met Roger Zelazny, author of the novel on which this was "based," shortly after it was released and his feeling toward it was chagrin. Where lesser movies might fill the time with shots of people walking, this one does it with people driving. Some giant scorpions and killer cockroaches make terrible hissing sounds. 3/10

OH I FORGOT!!! The guys in the truck find this French woman in Las Vegas, and later on they stop at the gas station they later have to blow up because of the hillbillies with radioactive sores on their faces, but there is a piano in the cafe there and the French woman sits down at the piano and plays a tune from Mr. Hulot's Holiday.


I saw on the new spanish-language DTV station a few minutes of Noche de los mil gatos (Night of a Thousand Cats) which I would much rather have seen than Damnation Alley. A young millionaire in a helicopter picks up women, murders them, puts their heads in jars and throws their bodies into his cat pit full of a thousand cats. Utterly bizarre and incoherent.

IRRITATING!!!

I have the developed extremely irritating habit of unconsciously using an uncommon word twice in close succession - sometimes I go back and edit, sometimes I just say the hell with it.

Movies

Adanggaman (2000) Made in Africa by Africans, an excellently presented picture of life in the 17th century under continuous threat of captivity at the hands of the Amazon warriors of the titular chieftain. An excellent film in every way. 10/10

Movies

That Night in Rio (1941) Another episode in the U.S.'s war-era courtship of Latin America. Don Ameche plays identical strangers impersonating each other and themselves in the trivial plot to this intensely Technicolored musical. Alice Faye comes in a poor third to Ameche and Carmen Miranda, and it's the latter who has all the best musical numbers. Kudos to Travis Banton for the dozens of fabulous gowns (the feather skirts in the opening number are incredible), though Faye's form-fitting golden formal was a bit ill-advised. It always seems a bit pathetic to see these jokers acting like they can't resist Alice Faye's incredible charms - she was a cute kid once but never a great beauty - again it's Miranda who has all the pep here, despite her stereotypical jealous latina mood swings. 7/10

Movies

The Devil Wears Prada (2006) A movie about the fashion publishing industry, than which there is hardly a more alien thing to me in all the world. I chose this because it was very popular and I sometimes like to watch movies that normal people like. For the first half hour I was just seeing how much I could take, and how awful it would get. Then Stanley Tucci (one of the most reliable actors who ever lived) delivered his monologue which flipped everything over and it became slightly less intolerable. I then occupied myself with anticipating and analyzing formulaic plot developments. Then she runs into that guy again, then the boss shows she is human for two minutes, then she starts to wonder who she really is and what happened to the person she used to be as she walks alone in the night, then there is a big surprise, etc. Eventually, by the end of the movie, I guess it had killed enough of my brain cells that I actually started liking it. All the acting was good, even though it was just a cartoon with people instead of drawings. Strangely, I hardly saw any clothes I really liked. This would be a pretty demanding date movie, more of a ladies' night thing. Donna seemed to like it slightly less than I did. Lots of bright colors and moving shapes. 4.5/10

It should be noted for the record that I still do not know, or care, what "Prada" is.

Movies

Space Truckers (1996) Dennis Hopper is a trucker, but in space, stuck with a cargo of biomechanical super-soldiers. Creditable effort to consistently depict technological compensations for, and effects of, zero gravity. Extremely imaginative ideas and production design - they did not scrimp on props and sets. The plot, however, is an empty framework on which to hang fights and explosions, which I ultimately found rather tiresome. A tongue-in-cheek sci-fi action pic in the grand tradition of Ice Pirates and Galaxina, all form and no content, leaving little residue. 6/10

Movies

Camille (1921 & 1936) The Greta Garbo/Robert Taylor rendition of this story includes in an offhand manner the silent version starring Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino, and I found it to be by far the more enjoyable of the two. It is short, spare and clean, in a modern setting with a small cast, mostly on modernistic sets which could have been designed by Jim Woodring. The styles of the day are unfamiliar enough to me that I thought they might as well have set it on Mars rather than Paris. Valentino is not at his best here, rather antic, but his function is to make Nazimova look good. Clad in metallic gowns, with a huge head of curly hair, she sometimes resembles a splendid chrome radiator ornament. She was certainly up to the demands of silent film acting, with a vibrant and active countenance. I don't know how the original story goes, but her lonely demise with only her memories of love to comfort her was genuinely touching, and I wiped away more than one tear. Compared to the serpentine Nazimova, Garbo is a bit of a stick and half of her scenes are stolen by some secondary comedy relief character. I have not yet seen anything which helps me understand her popularity. Her version is a big money costume melodrama, full of tufted satin and gilt rococo woodwork which I have always found rather sickening, and plenty of expensive scenes and set-pieces which do nothing to advance the plot or dimensionalize the flat characters. Robert Taylor emotes manfully, but the finale with its formulaic reconciliation and gabby impassioned monologues only prompted the very slightest choking-up for just a moment. I was surprised they didn't figure out some way to let her live at the last moment. 1921 - 8/10; 1936 - 5/10

PROOF THAT I AM RIGHT

I got this message today from a friend who seems to have found the perfect way to prepare himself to watch one of my all-time favorite movies:

I finally had the time and energy to watch "The Second Coming of Suzanne." I did so after three intense days of helping a "friend" avoid eviction after he was cited by the Department of Health for extreme filthiness. I spent 12-hour days literally crawling through his piles of old newspapers and garbage, roaches running over my hands and feet. I was exhausted, had only gotten 4 hours of sleep on the last day, and it was midnight. So it was the PERFECT situation to watch a wacked-out 60s "3-in-the-morning-on-UHF" badfilm. It was, in a word, divine. From its first completely eerie but totally confused montages down to the no-bizarre casting to the dubious nature of the production (Gene Barry bankrolled his kid's pretentious art film?) I was thoroughly enchanted. BEST MOVIE EVER. Or at least within a long time. Thank you so much for this one!


I encourage you all to try this

Movies

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) I always enjoy an afterlife story. In this one, suicides get an afterlife that's pretty much like this one, but just the crummy, worn-out broken-down bits. Everything is dingy and slightly unpleasant, no-one can smile, and there are no stars in the sky. I feel like I'm already there. Appealing actors and good presentation make this a better than average Quirky Independent Film. I'm not totally thrilled with where the story went - the last quarter seems sort of pulled out of a hat, but there's plenty of interest to look at all through. 8/10

The House Where Evil Dwells (1982) This showed up late in the evening on broadcast TV. B-minus actors Doug McClure, Edward Albert and Susan George in a Japanese Haunted House story, filmed in Japan. Former inhabitants compel the living to act out their fatal drama. There are some unfrightening superimposed ghostly figures, a couple of tumbling severed heads, and an inexplicable crab attack. Selective blurring technology renders the occasional toplesness safe for broadcast and thus of no possible interest. 5/10

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Movies

Night Nurse (1931) Stanwyck, Blondell and Gable at their youngest. Joan Blondell is especially wide-eyed and full of pep - when I get my time machine working, I'm heading for 1931. There is a satisfactory amount of dress-removal and capering around in scanties, and Gable is an uncharacteristic violent lout. Of note is the forgotten Ben Lyon as Stanwyck's bootlegger pal. Not the greatest story ever, ending with a weird note of moral dubiousness, and there is one strange overlong scene in which an actress seems to be ad-libbing her excessive drunkenness (badly) while Stanwyck just stands there looking angry and impatient. Keeps your interest all the way through and lets you forget what a disaster everything is now. 8/10

Movies

Last night:
The Apple (1980) Written and directed by Menahem Golan. I really have to hand it to the guy, and his partner in Cannon Film Group, Yoram Globus - they didn't seem to know their limits. I don't know what Golan was thinking when he made this crazy futuristic pop musical. I only saw part of it on TV once long ago and have been wanting to see it in its entirety ever since. Definitely not so bad it's good, but not just bad either, it falls into an in-between category of semi-bulldada, a mistake but not a huge one. Ridiculous, irritating, colorful, with bad songs and dance numbers and a genuine Deus ex Machina. On the other hand, it confirms that in the future of 1994, people drive cars with plastic domes stuck on top, wear silver fabric and spray-on hair color, and never drink out of normally shaped glasses. 4/10

The night before:
Logan's Run (1976) I didn't like this much when it came out, but ended up seeing four or five times because they kept doubling it up with other movies I wanted to see. An "escape from the domed city" story. In the 23rd century there is nothing to do but wander around a mall, dressed in a toga, and drink from abnormally shaped glasses. Then it turns out that the utopia is a DYStopia! Donna had never seen this, or The Apple, and she seemed to enjoy this. Peter Ustinov is good, nice model city. 6/10

Comics

You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! By Fletcher Hanks, edited by Paul Karasik. While many of the comic books of the period were being created by assembly-line studio processes, for a couple of years (1939 - 1942) Fletcher Hanks single-handedly created some of the damnedest stories ever drawn. His science-fantasy stories in particular are loaded with bizarre creations unique in all literature. His gelatinous semi-primitive style and unique conceptions, along with the brutal and garish coloring techniques of the time, make this the most artistically inspiring thing I have seen in ages. If I felt I could spare the few dollars, I would certainly buy a copy of my own. I am only reading one or two stories a day so I can keep this library copy as long as possible. The fact that he was personally a truly despicable character only adds to the mystique.

The Discworld Graphic Novels, based on the works of Terry Pratchett. Because his books are so popular I have made a couple of attempts to read one, but never got more than a few pages in before giving up. They seem to me to be Douglas Adams for Lord of the Rings Fans, only lamer. I might have liked it when I was fourteen, or maybe not. In contrast to the book just mentioned, this one was a real chore to get through - originally published in the mid-1990s, the art is slightly above mediocre at times, with lots of those "leering grin with a raised eyebrow" expressions inexplicably popular with young independent cartoonists. The stories and plot elements are a lot of cutesy tripe and "ain't I somethin?" wordplay that makes me want to kick the hell out of that Pratchett guy. I only read this out of a sense of social obligation so I could get some idea of what it is that so many people think is so darn great. It only confirms my feeling of not belonging in this world.

Movies

Last night:
Subway (1985) Directed by Luc Besson. A sort of a romantic comedy, mostly taking place in the subway. Numerous specific points of similarity to the later, and more adequately conceived, Czech subway movie Kontroll. This was moderately entertaining as subway movies go, but don't cross the street to see it. 6/10

This afternoon while taking occasional breaks from book repair and watercolor painting:
Female (1933) An examination of the role of the Modern Woman - meaning a high-powered corporate CEO learns she is "just a woman" after all. The term "new freedom" is used in the male lead's contemptuous monolog. Sociologically interesting role reversal with the protagonist (Ruth Chatterton - new to me and frankly lacking oomph) playing what would otherwise be called a "rake," seducing her employees and transferring them to Montreal if they become troublesome. Lots of big sets, especially the insanely gigantic foyer with a pipe organ on the wall and the ridiculously huge swimming-pool set. A couple of short location shots use Wright's Ennis-Brown house (House on Haunted Hill), and the molded concrete block motif is duplicated for the "exterior" of the house on the pool set. The interiors are pure Hollywood Millionaire Modern. Gee, it seems the sets were the most interesting part for me. That and the old fashioned uppah clahss accents you don't get much any more. 6/10

Movies

Le deuxieme souffle [Second Wind] (1966) Directed by Jean Pierre Melville. Calm, methodical and masterly crime story. Rather long at nearly 2.5 hours, but well-paced and presented. Classic French hard guys with hound dog faces who gun each other down without batting an eyelid. Probably less dialogue in this than any other talkie of its length - Melville was a master of just showing you what is happening without a lot of flash and fuss, or even background music, to try to make it "interesting." Step by step you follow the story to its inevitable end. 9/10

Movies

The Divorcee (1930) Flawless melodrama of marriage and morality. Norma Shearer's smooth soft face and lithe figure can fill a man's heart with yearning, especially when limp and clouded with overwhelming sorrow. Takes place in that crisp monochrome fantasy land where everyone is young and rich; nightclubs are filled with riotous revelry, streamers, and balloons; men are so sharply clad you could cut yourself on their edges; doors are huge, fireplaces white and empty, armchairs and bookshelves streamlined, ceilings nonexistent; every woman's overcoat is splendid, every gown spectacular, every hat absolutely darling, and the lounging attire and negligee... well! And love, at last, conquers all. 10/10

Movies

The Magic Sword and Jack the Giant Killer (both 1962) I didn't do a damn thing today, just sat on my butt and watched a fairy tale double feature on TV. Both quite colorful, and fairly enjoyable as such things go. Not Gorky Film Studio, but pretty good for American fairy tale films. The Magic Sword was more poverty-stricken, created by Bert I. Gordon, famous for other cheap movies featuring superimposed giant things and people. The second movie was more mainstream, budgetwise, with imaginative combinations of animated effects, camera tricks, and stop-motion characters. I immediately spotted props common to both movies - gargoyles, a distinctive door, and the titular sword of the first was used early on in the second to confer knighthood on Jack. I guess there are worse things to do with an afternoon. 6/10

And then I watched ANOTHER movie!

Freeway (1996) Reese Witherspoon gives the greatest performance of her career as an illiterate, conscienceless 16 year old with a history of theft, arson and prostitution who shoots Kiefer Sutherland multiple times, leaving him for dead, and mercilessly taunts him in court for being deformed and crippled as a result. And she's the good guy, who turns out to be quite admirable. A really twisted movie with lots of profanity (most of it screamed by Witherspoon while holding a gun to someone's head), violence and blood; kind of horrible and kind of brilliant. A feel-good movie in spite of its dreadfulness. 8.5/10

Movies

The Time Guardian (1987) Ambitious low-budget Australian Sci Fi action, pitting a time-traveling domed city of the future against red-eyed devil-robot suits with gurgling blobmen inside. The film is greatly enhanced early on by a bra-less blonde geologist, and Carrie Fisher in an anatomically correct molded breastplate that looks more like body paint. Fisher doesn't have much else to do in the film after that - most of the acting duties are handled by untalented amateurs. The soundtrack is a classic '80s one-man synth job, and a good piece of the budget must have gone into blowing up that gas station. I am puzzled that they gave the editor first credit after the four lead actors, since the editing was noticeably unskillful. Directed by the guy who wrote the second Mad Max film. 4/10

Movies

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959) Highly satisfactory B movie about an ancient Jivaro Indian shrunken head curse, with plenty of offbeat scenes and ideas. They didn't shy away from showing multiple severed heads, floating ghostly skulls, and the pouring of hot sand into the skin peeled off a skull. I am so happy to be able to enjoy something this crazy on broadcast TV once again - it's like old times. 8/10

Addendum - Research shows that director Edward L. Cahn has an impressive history, including numerous lurid crime, gang, teen and monster films such as The She Creature and Creature with the Atom Brain. He is also responsible for one of Kathleen Freeman's earliest appearances, and her only starring role, the short subject Annie was a Wonder, and the Our Gang weeper All About Hash, showcasing young Bobby Blake. Mr. Cahn has muddled his fingers in my brain for a good part of my life without my knowing it.

That same evening....
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) I chose this as a follow-up to Fallen Angel (see below) to compare a later Preminger film. A young mother's child is missing and she can't prove she even had a child in the first place. As I expected, it becomes progressively more deranged as the story becomes more and more absurd. The locations and cinematography are bizarre and interesting, and every secondary character has some weird kink to them. Donna said, "Somebody probably thinks it's a really great movie." It was kind of fun, but left us sighing and exclaiming in dismay for some time afterward over the nutty finale. 6/10

Movies

Les Enfants Terribles (1950) Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and written by Jean Cocteau. I have the benefit of seeing classic high-art films like this from a viewpoint of complete ignorance of the half-century of critical dissection they have enjoyed. Depicts two young people with no goals or standards, but unlimited resources, in a parasitic and self-destructive relationship. It really captured the closed world of the self-involved, which makes trivial events into huge dramas, and dramatic events trivial. If I had seen this when I was 19, I might have made it into some sort of twisted model for my life, but seeing it now it seems more a tragedy of a childhood excessively prolonged. Symbolic rather than realistic, an opera without the singing. Not the sort of thing you see for fun, but it seems to do one a certain amount of good. 9/10 for style and intellectualism.

Movies

Fallen Angel (1945) Alice Faye and Dana Andrews in a turgid noir melodrama that becomes more and more ridiculous as it nears its emotional climax, until we were just about busting a gut laughing. An incoherent story made worse by bad studio decisions that ended Faye's film career. I didn't expect it to be very good but never thought it would be as hilariously awful as it was. Poor Percy Kilbride delivers the biggest, albeit unintended, laugh of his career. 3/10

Addendum: Being in more of a mood to elaborate on this, I shall. Though the story itself is pretty incoherent, and it was obviously made more so by deleting anything that would show Faye's motivation for marrying a rather rude and peevish acquaintance of a few days, much of the basic atrociousness of it comes from being directed by Otto Preminger. He was at his best when directing pure melodrama like Laura, where people can suddenly go off into hysteria and neurosis with little cause, but he was occasionally brilliant with more gritty material, such as the outstanding Dana Andrews vehicle Where the Sidewalk Ends. Fallen Angel is a good example of the sort of badness at which Preminger was so good, never better/worse than in his two astounding treatments of the Nelson Algren novels The Man with the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side.

Movies

Le Corbeau (1943) Entertaining French who-dunnit with a unique premise; small-town life is brought to chaos by hundreds of vile poison-pen letters signed by The Raven. The mark of a good mystery story is that it keeps you distracted enough that you don't ask all the why and how questions which would show the plot to be absurd and impossible, and this is a fairly good mystery story. Interesting characters and settings, well-presented. 8/10

Movies

My Man Godfrey (1936) A classic, and beyond criticism. Set a standard to which many aspired, and which has rarely been attained. Makes that Capra crap look like a pail of puke. Watch every three or four years, until death. 10/10

Movies

The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) Doris Day in an idiotic espionage farce. In hindsight, it is clear that American culture was on the brink of revolution and this is a perfect example of the type of decadence that spurred it on. There is hardly a scene which is not irritating or stupid in some way. Worse, the eponymous boat barely appears and is irrelevant to the plot so if you are a big glass bottom boat fan and are looking forward to seeing a movie about one, this is not it. You are going to be saying for the rest of the night, "I thought there would be more of the boat." There are only two redeeming features to this film: First, Day's next-door neighbors are played by George Tobias and Alice Pearce, who appeared as Gladys and Abner Kravitz on Bewitched, providing a sort of TV Land merging of universes effect. Second, Paul Lynde in drag. Ellen Corby also appears, but not significantly. 2/10

Comics

These are some of the comics I have recently enjoyed.

Worst by Hiroshi Takahashi (vol 1-3) A weird fantasy world of male posturing, inspiration for the even weirder satire Cromartie High School. In an all-boys' high school in Japan, every student is a huge hulking lout, and there is nothing else in the world but a baroque feudalism based on who is tougher than whom. The emphasis is on facial expression, poses, hairdos and clothing - a true Boys' Romance comic - romance meaning fighting. In three volumes there only appears one female figure, in a street scene and partially obscured by a speech balloon. In fact there is hardly anyone in this universe except the characters in the story.

Jet Lag, five stories written by Etgar Keret and drawn by members of the Actus group, including Rutu Modan, one of my favorites and an inspiration to me in cleaning up and simplifying my recent drawing style. A good example of some of the superior work being done in Israel. Anything by any of these people is worth looking up.

Golgo 13 by Takao Saito. 13 volumes of these intensely detailed and contrived stories are available in English. Golgo 13, a.k.a. Duke Togo, is the ultimate hit man, doing the impossible in every story, traveling to exotic locales to shoot people. I might call this a guilty pleasure, if I could ever feel guilty about reading comics.

Aqua, vol. 1 & 2, and Aria, by Kozue Amano. Pretty much the opposite of Golgo 13. The attempt to terraform Mars melted its polar cap and left the planet covered with water, and the planet's name has been changed to Aqua. Tourists in the city of Neo Venezia are transported by gondolas rowed by teenage girls known as Undines, and these stories are about the trials and trivias of a novice Undine. All very cute, sweet, inspiring and heartwarming.

Melvin Monster by John Stanley. Stories of a monster kid who can't help being good instead of bad, written and drawn by the genius behind Little Lulu, originally published in 1963. Splendidly revived by Drawn & Quarterly in hardback with foilstamped cover. Fun to read and full of eccentric invention.

Run, Bong-Gu, Run! by Byun Byung-Jun. A quiet Korean story of a little boy and his mother in search of the father who went to make money in the city. Beautifully drawn and painted in a way that made me stop reading and just sit looking at the picture. Expressive and a genuine work of art.

Movies

The Fire Within (1963) Directed by Louis Malle. After four months in rehab, an aimless and alienated man looks up his old pals one last time before killing himself. This is the first Louis Malle film I have seen. It kept my interest but I was glad when it was over. 6/10