Movies

Magadheera (2010) Enjoyed a movie geek night with my friend Jim, brainless spectacle and laconic abortive attempts at conversation. You ought to know by now that every Indian movie is a musical comedy romance - this is also an epic historical action spectacle, allegedly the most expensive film in Indian movie history. Three lives - boy, girl, and angry rival - are bound together until they complete the actions of their previous life 400 years earlier. Bounces back and forth between present and past, and includes something excessive and startling every few minutes. Like being beaten with a pillow full of entertainment for 2 hours and 45 minutes. You don't want any more afterward. I didn't like this as much as Endhiran the Robot, but it had lots of moments. Includes a quicksand pit. 6/10

Look - a jeep about to crash into a helicopter!

Movies

Wild River (1960) High-class big-budget Elia Kazan drama set in 1930s Tennessee. Montgomery Clift is the guy who has to get a stubborn old woman off her island before the dam is finished and she's flooded out, Lee Remick the widowed granddaughter/love interest. A well-presented story that carries you along with it at a steady pace, but it's not really compelling or stirring. My choice for Family Movie Night, and it was satisfactory. 6/10

I Was a Shoplifter (1950) A peppy little Universal Studios B-movie crime drama depicting the pursuit of a criminal gang which blackmails amateur department-store shoplifters into working for them under threat of public exposure. Scott Brady is the young handsome hero, Tony Curtis a minor ethnic hoodlum, with few familiar faces in the rest of the cast. Cracks right along and shows some interesting shoplifting techniques along the way. It's edutainment! 7/10

Movies

It's a good thing I make notes on my desk blotter or I would forget all this holiday indulgence:

Son of Ali Baba (1952) Tony Curtis is browned up for a glamor-boy turn in this cheesy costume potboiler. They couldn't drive an extra half hour to shoot the horse chase scenes in the desert, so this Bagdad is nestled amid rolling hills clad in sagebrush and scrub pine. Colorful filler, more fun than a bible movie. 3/10

Les Belles (1961) "Qian jiao bai mei" is the vernacular title of this Hong Kong romantic musical comedy from Shaw studios, focusing on the lives and loves of members of a modern dance troupe. It is notable mainly for the fact that it is presented in a very western style, with little distinctively Chinese culture intruding beyond a couple of historically themed dance numbers. I have become accustomed to the Hollywood treatment of the latin theme but it is jarring to see a latin dance number done with Chinese tonalities. It's clear they had little experience in staging western style dance numbers, which strive for exoticism but are rather flat and dull. Very brightly illuminated and colorful, with some peppy songs and bizarre dance settings, but rather long at two hours. Of interest mostly as an oddity and for cultural comparison. 5/10

Spiderweb number - in ShawScope. It's wide.

Sunset Murder Case (1938) Burlesque dancer Sally Rand stars in this poverty row B pic, and her bubble dance was the reason I watched it. It's pretty mild until the last moment, when she briefly, and heavily backlit, drops her filmy wrap to show her form. A fan dance number was apparently too revealing, so it's concealed behind palm frond silhouettes inserted over the frame, making me wonder if there might have been a "special" version of the film which lacked them. Otherwise it's another brief gunshots and gangsters story. 4/10

The famous Bubble Dance

Yes Sir, Mister Bones (1951) Hour-long cheapie about a retirement home where old Minstrels lurk, waiting for someone to come along and ask them what a "minstrel show" was. Does a fair job of conveying the spirit of the artform, if not the letter - the music is pretty swingified - with a couple of remarkable turns from Scatman Cruthers, some nostalgic Negro Spirituals, and some grating blackface "comedy." The black performers are uniformly superior, the blackfaces pretty hard to take. It does show the omnibus nature of the minstrel show, providing all varieties of entertainment in one grand spectacle, but a more realistic flavor can be gotten from 1952's Stephen Foster faux biopic I Dream of Jeanie, or Shirley Temple's 1936 film Dimples. Directed by Ron Ormond, and it's not the weirdest thing he did, not by a long shot. 5/10

Side note - Ron Ormond is perhaps least known for this contribution to popular culture - the line "christianity is stupid," from his christian commie-scare film If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do, which was put to use by Negativland.

The Hayseeds (1933) An Australian romantic musical comedy, as it proudly proclaims on the title card, and it makes quite a thing out of being Australian too, with monologizing on the Australian national character, and random insertion of wildlife footage. The romantic duet spends as much time showing the Sydney harbor bridge as the young lovers. This is the first film appearance of South African born Cecil Kellaway, who later found quite a bit of work in Hollywood. The quaint, countrified Hayseeds spend some time chasing trollleys in the bustling streets of Sydney, which looks as vast and towering as Chicago. The plot and songs are adequate, and this is an interesting novelty that doesn't tire you overmuch. 5/10

Forbidden (1953) An adequate exotic noir, placing Tony Curtis in a backlot Macau intrigue. Joanne Dru is the adequately angular and immaculate woman with a history. The story is convoluted without being indecipherable, the dialog is full of mild congenial phrases forced through gritted teeth, and it comes to an adequately active climax. The primary song in this universe is You Belong to Me (See the pyramids along the Nile etc.) and I suppose this is the film that made it popular - it's still rotating through my head today. It all looks good and stays interesting, but there is a wee bit too much standing around talking, and jumping into cars and dashing off somewhere for me to say it was great. Pretty good though. 7/10

I also watched quite a bit of Toomorrow (1970) - it seems the masterminds behind The Monkees wanted to do it again, this time with a movie in England. Extraterrestrial observers find that a pop band featuring Olivia Newton John is the only source for the healing vibrations they crave. Aimed at an older audience, with art-school protests and sit-ins a major plot element, it is peculiar without being interesting.

Japanese release. Also very wide.

Movies

The Driver's Seat (1974) One of the most unusual films of Elizabeth Taylor's career. Sort of an art film, kind of a mystery thriller, it's hard to know what to say about this. It's more like an unpleasant dream, with surreal and atmospheric scenes and broken-up time sequence. Taylor is a great actress because, though a natural beauty, she never hesitated to take roles which required her to be ugly and terrible in some way. Here she is a sort of madwoman in search of her death in an alienating and malicious world. Unsettling in concept and execution, it's no wonder this is one of the most misunderstood and underestimated movies of her career. A sort of masterpiece in a way. This was purchased at Target during the short golden age of the dollar DVD, and I had been wanting to show it to Donna for a couple of years but was afraid she would hate it - to my surprise she liked it quite a bit. So do I. I would be very happy to see a nice widescreen print of this some day. 9/10

Movies

Pepe (1960) An American-made Cantinflas movie. Even though they tried to make it a bloated monstrosity by jamming in cameos and performances by everyone they could get their hands on, it still comes out pretty well with his usual blend of comedy and pathos. All the powers of Hollywood could not conquer his natural magnetism and charm. If you can't find a real Cantinflas movie, this one is good enough. 6/10

Movies

El verdugo (The Executioner) 1963 - Spanish comedy in which a newlywed must take over his father-in-law's job as executioner to save their apartment. The means of execution in Spain at the time was the garrote. Might have been more entertaining if it had not been so verbose, and if the amateur subtitler had not been determined to capture every bit of crosschat and radio background, sometimes filling the screen with indecipherable text. Interesting to see the locales and culture, but wearisome. 2/10

Then I made it through half of Who Was That Lady? (1960) starring Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh and Dean Martin. Leigh and Curtis' chemistry is unmistakable, but Dean is the only one truly in his element in this feeble sitcom. Curtis, supposedly a chemistry professor, is caught kissing a student in his lab and turns to his chum Dean, a TV writer, to save his marriage. Which means pretending he is an FBI agent, with ensuing "hilarity." I'd hate to be stuck on a desert island with this thing. 1/10

Movies

Tarkan vs. the Vikings (1971) Turkish movies seem to be popular among badfilm nuts these days so I thought I should see a few. Based on a popular Turkish comic book character, this presents a very imaginative (i.e. absurd) view of Viking life and culture. Primitive in concept and technique, meant to provide cheap thrills only. Good giant octopus though. I saw a short documentary on the Turkish pop film industry of the '60s and '70s and it seems to me that its failure was in catering to the lowest common denominator consistently and exclusively, without attempting to improve the product or the audience. It was doomed to eventual failure because it was content to crank out nothing but cheap crap like this, and lacked a visionary producer or director who strove for something higher. 2/10

10 Rillington Place (1971) could not be more different. A calm, methodical, meticulously accurate depiction of the criminal life of British serial murderer John Christie. Richard Attenborough, Judy Geeson and John Hurt star, and locations were filmed on the actual site shortly before it was obliterated from the face of the earth. Extremely well-produced, perhaps its only weakness being the emotional distance it maintains, which left me entirely unmoved even by the terrible situation of Hurt's pathetic character Timothy Evans, hanged for Christie's murder of Evans' wife and child. Maybe director Richard Fleischer was too versatile to make this as strong a film as it might have been. It left me thinking, "Now I know about that," and nothing more. 6/10 for historical accuracy and general viewability.

Movies

Lifeforce (1985) Expedition to Halley's Comet finds huge spacecraft full of dead monsters and takes home the three perfectly preserved humans also aboard, not thinking they might be soul-sucking alien parasites. High concept psycho-erotic horror from the Colin Wilson novel on which it is based is genuinely disturbing, but the effect is diluted by over-reliance on shouting, flashing lights, explosions and snarling zombies - all of which merely tire me. Much of it is done extremely well, but all the noise and schlock were unfortunate and irritating. 5/10

Movies

Susan Slade (1961) Judging by the trailer I saw a while back, I expected this three-hankie technicolor weeper to be laughably atrocious - instead it pounded me into a teary-eyed jelly with its sweeping violins, grand crane shots and soft-focus close-ups. Connie Stevens' shipboard romance ends in a fate worse than death - for 1961 - and her family must conspire to pretend her child is only her brother to avoid total disaster. It's hard to believe I lived in a time when this was normal, and an unwed pregnancy meant such fear and tragedy. Rather a daring handling of the subject for that time. This is a spectacular big-budget production, with foreign and domestic locations, and the vast indoor/outdoor soundstage setting of the family home is a beautiful piece of design. Even the mailbox is great. The cinematography is breathtaking, the acting is earnest and touching, as expected from Lloyd Nolan as the most wonderful father ever, and surprisingly from Connie Stevens whom I had never seen in anything so demanding. No heartstring is left unplucked. Written and directed by Delmer Daves, who is on my radar now. An outstanding melodrama for the discriminating viewer. 8/10

Ten from 2010

I recommend these ten movies as some of the best I saw this year.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) When I read the novel Perfume by Patrick Suskind some years ago I felt it was a purely literary experience which could never be adequately filmed. I am happy to find myself mistaken. Critical response at the time of its release gave me the impression that it weirded them out, that the concept was too bizarre for them to like it. Not me because I like stuff weird - not just "look how zany or gross I can be" but "how did they even think of this" type of weird . I was as pleased with the unique conception of the book as I was the beautiful execution of the film. It's about a lot of things - a man who is in a sense an innocent in that he doesn't know the crimes he commits are wrong, the folly of trying to recapture First Love, and the underesteemed power of scent to affect our thoughts and emotions.

Sleep Dealer (2008) Mexican cyberpunk? Yes, and one of the few genuinely intelligent and well-made Science Fiction movies I have seen in recent years. Takes the migrant worker phenomenon into the near future where people with bootleg neural nodes go to labor factories and plug in to operate work robots somewhere else in the world, or upload their memories to a youtube-like website which offers them up for sale. Actually has enough ideas in it for a full movie, rather than becoming an extended chase scene half-way through. The situations are complex and compelling, the characters are appealing, and the details are handled with brains and wit. Highly recommended.

Mafioso (1962) Italian black comedy. Meticulous factory supervisor revisits his folksy home town in Sicily and learns the true meaning of family. Sicilian family. Even though you know from the beginning that he is sure to end up in a terrible situation before the end of the story, it is relentlessly amusing throughout. Convincingly detailed with sunscorched cobbled streets and huge platters of amazing food. Extremely entertaining, surprising in its developments and highly rewarding overall.

Mister 880 (1950) Just about the most heartwarming story of crime and counterfeiting you will ever see. Based on a true story, about an old man in New York City who supplemented his income by passing one or two crudely designed counterfeit one dollar bills every day. His systematic and offbeat approach kept him from being captured for some ten years. Young, wavy-haired Burt Lancaster won't give in until he captures lovable kindly Edmund Gwenn. Dorothy McGuire plays The Girl but for some reason she has always passed instantly from my memory. You can have Miracle on 34th Street, this is better and you don't have to wait until December to watch it. All-around good fun for everyone.

Horrors of Malformed Men (1969) Japanese film based on the writings of Edogawa Rampo. (I continue to believe that the unavailability of his work in English translation is a global conspiracy against me personally.) This is completely indescribable and one of the strangest things I have ever seen - and you know I am no dilettante when it comes to strange.

Match Factory Girl (1990) Finnish film, directed by Kaurismaaki, in which a young woman's every attempt to find a little happiness in life is mercilessly crushed. Not as much of a downer as it sounds though, as Kaurismaaki's films, however bleak and sparse, always leave a strange feeling of calm satisfaction. His aesthetics and ideals seem to match mine precisely - I never say "I didn't like that part," or "I wouldn't have done it that way," and he obviously loves machines and industrial spaces as I do. There is no filler, and every shot is a beautiful composition, no matter what is happening. His influence on the modern Quirky Independent Film is obvious, just as obvious as the fact that they are trying to do what he does and not succeeding. The characters sit silent and immobile in a state of perpetual discomfort with life, but they are thinking and feeling beings with human souls, not goofy cartoon characters being weird for weirdness' sake. Probably only about a hundred words are spoken in this too-short, hour-long film and it makes me long for that imaginary Finland, where people aren't always yapping at you or each other or themselves.

Puzzlehead (2005) Small, quiet, intelligent SF story exploring what it means to be human. Man builds his android replica and programs it by scanning his own brain - the creation must learn to overcome the weaknesses and failings of its creator. No huge surprises, just a thoughtful, well-made character study.

Petulia (1968) Richard Lester at his peak as a creative director. One of those nutty stories about a poor schmuck whose life is knocked akilter by a crazy person. Perfectly reflects the spirit of the times in its style, technique and subject matter. Excellent casting in every role, especially the supporting work of Shirley Knight and Joseph Cotten. Howard Hesseman also appears as a dope smoking hippie. Certainly the best Lester film I have ever seen, probably the best he ever made. There is something bizarre and unexpected in every single scene.

Ghost Story of the Snow Woman [Kaidan Yuki Jorou] (1968) Chilling Japanese costume folk-tale beautifully presented. A beautiful Snow Woman kills everyone who sees her, until she falls in love with one of her prospective victims whom she spares if he vows never to speak of his experience. She takes human form and he marries her, not knowing her true nature. Very slow and formal without a lot of cheap shock, which makes her icy silent threat all the more wonderful. A lovely, sad and beautiful romantic ghost story.

Crimen ferpecto (Ferpect Crime) 2004 - Extremely witty and original Spanish murder farce. Rafael is a department-store super-salesman and ladies' man who accidentally kills his boss and is blackmailed into marriage by the only witness - the only girl on the floor who wasn't attractive enough for him to notice. Very lively and imaginative cinematography, excellent characterizations and acting, with lots of laughs. Good distraction for when you feel like you want to murder someone yourself. Outrageous colorful fun that goes places you won't expect.

Movies

Mad Love (1935) This was my choice for family movie night. Another classic I have read about all my life but never seen until now. We were astonished at how much was packed into this short film, a masterpiece of expressionist qrotesquerie. It just snaps right along with one thing after another. Lorre as the deranged hand-transplanting surgeon is amazing, and I especially enjoyed the visual contrast between the Caligariesque setting of his private clinic and the gleaming and elaborate modern medical devices. A superior effort in every way 10/10

Then back to work:

The Satan Bug (1965) Expensive biological warfare thriller, with the deadliest virus ever created stolen from a secret desert lab. Nicely filmed in Panavision, which made good use of the horizontal desert setting. Proceeds at an orderly pace without getting too exciting. 5/10

Maidens of Fetish Street (1966) Dreadful exploitation flick that I sat through to see the kind of crap a guy had to endure just to see some footage of gals with no shirts on. These crappy nudies seem to fall back on having a narrator of some sort, faking up a near-plot to provide the "redeeming social value" required to keep it from being classified as obscene. One really long hour. 1/10

Movies

I have a big backlog to plow through so I am trying to get as much done as possible.

Night World (1932) I watched this mainly because the dance numbers are by Busby Berkeley - small nightclub chorus numbers, nothing really spectacular, but it opens with a really nice 3 minute Night Life montage, and it features Boris Karloff as the heavy. Depicts the events of one night in a night club. Doorman Clarence Muse was the most sensitive and thoughtful character. It's really hard to grasp Karloff in a role that doesn't have some sort of horror angle attached, but he's pretty scary anyway. 5/10

Over-Exposed (1956) Shapely Cleo Moore plays a b-girl who learns there is no gender barrier to advancement in the world of professional photography. Gangly young Richard Crenna is the peevish and embittered would-be love interest. This is an "anything for money" story, and her blackmailing ways eventually turn around and bite her. Might have been a good vehicle for a better actress like Ida Lupino or Susan Hayward, but Moore does okay - it's a good story with some sharp and witty writing. 6/10

Viy (1967) Based on a story by Gogol, a young priest must read prayers for three nights over the body of a witch. The demonic manifestations become more intense and bizarre each night, with the beautiful young witch corpse coffin-surfing around the chapel and startling gruesome ogres pouring out of the walls. The atmosphere is wonderful, with a fascinating depiction of life on a medieval Russian farmstead. A very nice thing to see. 8/10

Night of the Big Heat (1967) Also known as Night of the Burning Damned, this is based on one of John Lymington's novels. I own, and have repeatedly read, more of his novels than anyone you know. In most of them there is a small group of people trapped somewhere - on an island, inside an inexplicable barrier, in a pocket in time or space. A vague, world-destroying threat is on its way - from space, or the earth's core, or another vibrational level, or a possible future; which manifests itself as a sound, a vibration, fog, heat - that causes them to become agitated and lose their inhibitions and judgement, and causes the appearance of ghostly or other-dimensional entities. The source or cause of it all is a manor-house or scientific installation where high-frequency radio broadcasts or scientific experiments are taking place. I have read most of them two or three times, and I think this is the third time I have seen this, and I couldn't tell you why. I guess I am trying to figure out why he would write the same novel so many times. This is a pretty good film of one of his stories; insular, paranoid, discomforting and a bit tedious. Not really exciting or interesting, just strange. Everybody gets real hot and sweaty and some of them go crazy. Phones stop working and televisions explode, and there is something crawling around that burns people up. 3/10

The Girl Hunters (1963) Mickey Spillane plays his famous character Mike Hammer in this slightly odd thriller. Locations shot in New York, but the studio work was done in England. Kind of bad in the same way as his novels - in a sort of good way. This is a One Song Universe, where the same background melody they play when he walks down the street comes on when someone turns on the radio. Fun to see but there's a lot of better stuff out there. 4/10

Movies

Mahabali Hanuman (1981) I have always loved fantasy, religious and fairy tale movies and this combines the best of them all. This bright colorful and elaborate fantasy movie is every bit as remarkable as the European and Russian fairy tale films I love, while being a tale of devotion and the moral development of the protagonist. Hanuman is born as a boon granted to his barren mother through her unceasing prayers, he is granted great powers by all the gods, and he becomes the most dedicated of devotees. This is the Hindu movie I have always wanted to see - I grew up wishing that the dreary religious movies about people wandering through the desert in robes had something more fantastical and inspiring to them. If I had seen something like this as a child I would have become a sincere Hindu at that moment, and it certainly restored my love for Hinduism's wonderful pantheon. Bright colors and moving shapes, song and dance numbers, magical transformations, elaborate yet slightly cheesy spectacle, and edifying moral lessons all in one. 10/10

Shiva grants Anjana the boon of a son.

The gods bestow upon Hanuman many powers.

Hanuman manifests the Vishnu Avatars.

Rama and Sita are always in his heart.

Movies

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929) Norma Shearer and Basil Rathbone in a stiff and stodgy drawing-room comedy of the sort Wodehouse lovingly satirized; country house, stolen pearls and all. This is a very archaic form of entertainment, but once the mind is slowed to its glacial pace, and it is accepted that one is really viewing a stage play, it eventually becomes rather entertaining. Rathbone is a dashing young scoundrel, and Shearer in deco pyjamas by Adrian is good for the eyes, though after half a dozen movies I am beginning to see that her acting is more in the silent film style; exaggerated rapidly changing facial expression with less natural line readings than a stage actress would have delivered. Supporting characters round out the story with some charm and laughs. Good for a trip back in time to a simpler age. Remade in 1937 with William Powell and Joan Crawford, which the latter must have seen as a feather in her cap, taking away some glory from one of her earliest rivals. 6/10

Movies

Endhiran the Robot (2010) Indian scifi action musical romantic comedy in which I Robot becomes a Matrix of Terminators. He can cook, dance, beat up a whole gang of thugs, help you cheat on your exams, talk to mosquitos, and fall in love with his creator's girlfriend, and is transformed by the Bad Guy into the insane dictator of an army of his replicas. Fantastically colorful and elaborate musical numbers, including one filmed at Machu Picchu. Not some digital greenscreen Machu Picchu - they actually filmed it there. One minute they're laughing on the beach and the next they are dancing and singing in the Andes with dozens of dancers in pseudo-inca garb. Indian movies are intended to be fun and make you feel good. There were some really imaginative sequences throughout, and it was entertaining as it could possibly be. I like fun. I like seeing a giant robot made of robots give a "thumbs up" where the thumb is a robot giving a "thumbs up." For over 2 1/2 hours of pure crazy stupid fun, 10/10

Look! A giant snake made of robots, biting a helicopter!

Movies

I've been plowing through some stuff that isn't really worth examining in depth but just because I know you care so much about what kind of crazy crap I like to view, here is a brief overview. The Women may be the best pure melodrama made in America because it is top quality in every respect. So they took that and made it into a widescreen color spectacle with a few songs jammed in for good measure and called it The Opposite Sex (1956). June Allyson, with her wasplike face and impervious cast bronze hairstyle has always creeped me out, and she is the hero. This was a very bad period for women's hats, and they range from early salad bowl to speedy alkaseltzer, but the gowns by Helen Rose add a dreamlike touch. I got a bunch of offbeat '60s movies including utterly unwatchable exploitation crap with names like The Curse of Her Flesh, and among them was 99 Women (1969), the first movie I have seen by Spanish shock hack Jess Franco. It's a cheap women's prison story made interesting primarily by warden Mercedes McCambridge's seething fury. Le monacle noir (1961) is a lite espionage story starring one of the Frenchest guys who ever lived, Paul Meurisse. It's harmless. The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960) is a heist story based on an historic turn of the century attempt by Irish nationalists to do what the title says. It's a HEIST. Will they succeed? I'd like to see a heist flick where they do. Is that all? I guess it is.

NO! I forgot Treno Popolare (1933), a pleasant slice of Italian life, following a disparate group of urbanites on a day trip from Rome to Orvieto on a working-class excursion train. Music by Nino Rota shows a trace of his future style. Pleasant, nice to see and not challenging in any way.

Movies

Synecdoche, New York (2008) Apparently a lot of people really like this and think it's good. Donna wanted to see it. I made it all the way through it, though it took a long time to end. One thing I did like was the tiny paintings. I have been thinking off and on for a couple of years about doing pictures the size of a nickel, because I have a box of individual transparent cases for coin collectors to put their collectible nickels in and I thought they would make a good frame for a picture the size of a nickel. So I may do that sometime. Otherwise this didn't do a hell of a lot for me, and was a real chore to sit through. At least there was nudity. 2/10

Movies

A Very Private Affair (1962) Bardot and Mastroianni in Malle's melodrama about how terrible it is to be famous. At times I wasn't sure whether it was supposed to be a satire or not. I still don't see any depth of character in Bardot at all. Slightly interesting cinematic technique, but kind of a stupid story. 3/10

Movies

Search for Beauty (1934) Robert Armstrong, James Gleason and Gertrude Michael are two bit hustlers trying to make it big in the Health Racket; Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino are the Olympic athletes they hire as a front, who queer the pitch by forcing them to play it straight. Lupino is here a bleached blonde with pencilled eyebrows and a bit of a British accent and it took me half an hour to figure out which one was her. Strangely, the movie does the same thing the hustlers want to do - sell cheesecake and beefcake under the guise of health and exercise. Lots of healthy young people in bathing suits leaping and stretching. I've never seen anything quite like it. Odd but not great. 5/10

Xica da Silva (1976) Brazilian costume fantasy very loosely inspired by the true story of the title character's rise from slavery to the pinnacle of wealth and power in colonial Brazil, as mistress of the controller of the nation's diamond mines. An extremely colorful story in every way, with fascinating costume, architecture, landscape and characters. Xica is vibrantly portrayed by the charismatic Zeze' Motta, who seems to have had an extensive career in Brazilian film and television. Maybe not strictly educational, as it varies widely from historic fact, but quite entertaining. 8/10

Zeze' Motta as slave...

...and as queen.

Movies

Let Us Be Gay (1930) Norma Shearer is nearly unrecognizable as a dowdy housewife humiliated by her husband's infidelity. Three years after their divorce she is an Independent Modern Woman and they encounter each other again. Hence the gaiety of the title - heavily forced to show she "doesn't care" and it got so every time she giggled I just wanted to slap her. This is my least favorite Norma Shearer movie so far and I just want to see one where she doesn't get divorced at the beginning and then get back with her husband again in the final shot of the film. 4/10

Before divorce.

After.

RRRrrr!!! (2004) French caveman comedy. Has its moments, with more laughs than the Ringo one. It's a comedy, about cavemen. I like how all the animals have tusks, even the ducklings. Donna slept through part of it, and rightly so. 5/10

Movies

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) This is the way to make a brainless action spectacle. Get the narration over with in less than a minute. Don't do anything twice. Make your whirling wireframe computer models absurdly vast, and make them move the story forward, not be some little gimmick that two guys stand next to talking. Include an army of Milla Jovovich clones in skintight vinyl. Provide a gigantic zombie-crushing supertruck, BUT DON'T ACTUALLY USE IT. Remember that audiences don't want to see more than one minute of people standing around talking at a time. Use special effects to actually do something, not to interrupt the story with a "look what I can do" moment over and over again. For what it is, 10/10

This is the way to do it.

Movies

El espejo de la bruja (The Witch's Mirror) 1962 - This Mexican horror fantasy starts off as a tale of Supernatural Vengeance, with a devil-worshipping housekeeper punishing the master of the house for his wife's murder, but it veers off into corpse-stealing and grave-robbing, and transplantation of faces and hands from corpses after the new wife is horribly burned. Includes the unique concept of transplantation of ghost hands, which are not under the control of their unknowing new owner. Jaw-droppingly and imaginatively grotesque without being gory, this is the craziest, most satisfying horror fantasy I can recall seeing in years. Most of these things pretty much take one topic and run it through a full cycle, but this throws in everything they could think of, transformations, apparitions, vengeful spectre rising from the grave and stepping through the mirror, right up to the crawling hand stabbing people with a big pair of scissors. Would make a great double feature with the Japanese film Ghosts of Kasane Swamp. 10/10

Roman Scandals (1933) Eddie Cantor dreams of ancient Rome. I haven't seen much of him and am still trying to figure out what the basis of his popularity is. He's got a good voice and an interesting delivery of comic comments and retorts, and the movie is entertaining with a couple of good songs and a few good laughs. My main reason for seeing this, though, is my acquisition of a Busby Berkeley book, so I have a complete illustrated list of his work at hand. The production numbers in this one are not gigantic mind-blowing spectacles so it is perhaps easier to see what they are made of. It's not just film of people dancing - it's the use of the camera in motion and at unique angles, and the intercutting of close-ups of hands, feet and faces accentuating the action which make these so fun. Sometimes people aren't dancing at all - the set and camera do the work. The slave market fantasy, with tragic song by Ruth Etting, is spicy and kinky with scantily clad maidens dancing, chained and whipped. The baths number with the catchy tune Keep Young and Beautiful makes use of black and white contrast, with Cantor blacked up, and interplay between beautiful blonde bathers in white and beautiful black servants mirroring and complementing each other. Moderately entertaining overall, with an extended chariot race if you are a quadriga fan. 7/10

Movies

Spirits of the Dead (1968) Compilation film of Poe stories by three European directors. Vadim's is artsy, vague and tedious with lots of scanty costumes; Malle's is intimate and precise and it makes Bardot look like an actress; Fellini's is more intensely hallucinogenic than usual but is about his common topic of the torments of fame. Malle's is the most grounded, least trippy and mod of the three, and convinces me that I am going to have to break down and see some of his stuff. As a movie, it's not so hot but it is educational. 5/10

Note: it appears I have already seen Malle's Elevator to the Gallows and The Fire Within. I liked the former as an exceptionally well-balanced thriller, didn't care much for the latter since the protagonist is self-centered and unappealing and you just want him to kill himself like he says he is going to.

Movies

Le main du diable (1943) Painter buys demonic talisman which replaces his hand with a possessed occult hand, fulfilling his dreams of greatness. The catch is, he must sell it before he dies for less than he paid or be eternally damned, plus the devil is ruining his life just for fun. No big surprises, but a pretty nice deal with the devil movie in general. 6/10

Riptide (1934) Ponderous depression-era melodrama with Norma Shearer the vivacious victim of stuffy husband Herbert Marshall's suspicions, and Robert Montgomery the boozing nitwit into whose arms she flees. Not a speck of reality intrudes into this tale of the desperate problems of fantastically wealthy and beautiful people scampering gaily around the mediterranean or weeping in lavish chambers. Though it is ferociously romantic for the first fifteen minutes, this is really the same story as 1930's wonderful The Divorcee, with slower pace and less appeal. Gowns by Adrian are fantastical and fabulous, angular and asymmetrical with huge contrasting lapels, or slim glittering sheaths with miles of train, but the characters are all a bit much, the dialog is heavy and repetitious, the action is slow and the abrupt ending seems like a quick fix to what might have been more satisfying as a tragedy. 4/10

Movies

Panique (1947) An unpleasant, but perfectly innocent and relatively harmless, man becomes the target of intentionally malicious gossip and mob violence. A resounding condemnation of then-recent historical events, and overall a well-presented story. Michel Simon is always both repellent and attractive in all his roles and is perfect for this one. 8/10

Paycheck (2003) A nice little twenty-minute short story by P. K. Dick is padded out to a numbing action movie with car chases, explosions, people constantly crashing through windows while running and shooting, as well as lots of running and shooting, shooting while running, running while being shot at, and shooting at people who are running. You get beeping letters and whirling wireframe computer models before the credits are over!! That is a warning right there. Luckily someone would pop in every twenty minutes or so to explain the concept to us dumb schmucks who find anything other than running and shooting real tough to figure out - at one point using an apple in the explanation - I am beginning to take note of the "apple explanation" as a hallmark of quality filmmaking. Ben Affleck is the guy trying to understand the message he left for himself from the future, and he looks really good running. Rarely has anyone had such talent for the role of shallow hunk. The disparity between concept and presentation in this movie is amazing -I am sure Dick never could have imagined so many people crashing through windows in one of his stories. Kind of a chore to sit through all that crap. 2/10

Movies

Sometimes educating yourself can be hard work with little reward. Alien Vs. Predator is where the predators from Predator fight the aliens from Alien. Which is to say dickfaces versus pussyfaces. First thing on the screen - BEEPING GREEN LETTERS! Not old school bippety boop beeping, but a kind of half windchime, half dot-matrix printer kind of noise as they pop onscreen one by one, but it still counts. It also appears that, however advanced the alien race, their whirling wireframe computer models and red numerical time-bomb countdowns closely resemble our own. I have said that I enjoy a really atrocious insult to my intelligence, but this was nothing but a rude gesture. Every scene and every bit of dialog is a cliche set-piece: here is where we do this bit of business, here is where we establish this person's character. It's a mouse skeleton of concept wrapped in a whale's blubber of cliche drivel, driven by a soundtrack that drives a hammer of trite derivation into your skull every few seconds. Then for some stupid reason I thought I would go from the "THE END????" finale of this piece of lame-assed crap to its sequel which I knew would probably suck even more, but I couldn't have imagined how much it actually did suck. The half-alien half-predator created so idiotically at the end of the other movie becomes a sewer monster in the middle of a suburban soap opera in Gunnison Colorado. Not the redneck mountain town I remember, but some kind of upscale multi-ethnic suburban soap opera fantasy that was so lame and stupid it wasn't worth wading through a full twenty minutes of the pukey filler to see if anything interesting ever happened to equal the constant garbage-can pounding that was supposed to make it seem like something scary or exciting might one day occur. Alien versus predator, YOU SUCK. 1/10

Movies

I completely forgot that I also watched La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemon (2003) yesterday - a Spanish spy farce in which two goofy "super-agents" must recover a stolen secret weapon from a nearby dictator. It's as deliberately cartoonish and absurd as possible, with people being hit by speeding cars and leaving a pair of smoking shoes behind, or smashed down by a blow on the head and waddling off one foot high. A less developed audience might find this one continuous howl from start to finish, and hurt themselves screaming with laughter, but I found myself admiring the effects yet never laughing once through the whole movie. Then it passed from my mind like a dissipating mist. I have to write this quickly before I forget about it again. ?/10

Movies

Celebrated Thanksgiving by staying home alone, eating a small lentil and brown rice burrito with spinach in it, and some cake, and watched these movies:

The Creeping Flesh (1973) Peter Cushing and Cristopher Lee are fraternal competitors for the big science prize - both want to cure insanity, but Cushing's technique involves making a serum from the blood of an ancient New Guinean devil skeleton which regenerates its flesh when dampened. Doesn't work out as well as he had hoped. DEVIL SKELETON, I said. Fairly good Victorian Pseudo-Science movie, not a real rip-snorter though and you have to wait quite a while for the devil skeleton to get rained on enough for it to amble about, but it does have the craziest POV shot I have ever seen. 6/10

How the world looks to a partially regenerated devil skeleton.

Puzzlehead (2005) Small, quiet, intelligent SF story exploring what it means to be human. Man builds his android replica and programs it by scanning his own brain - the creation must learn to overcome the weaknesses and failings of its creator. No huge surprises, just a thoughtful, well-made character study. 9/10

Love on the Run (1936) Joan Crawford is the rich girl who hates reporters, Clark Gable is a reporter. Pretty much like a jillion other movies where the girl finds out the guy wasn't being honest and never wants to see him again. Lots of "follow that cab" kind of stuff, competition with fellow-reporter Franchot Tone (who overacts horrifically), and there is a spy subplot tossed in. Some sequences are irrelevant to the story and are dragged on way too long, and at one point Gable suddenly has a black eye for no apparent reason. Kind of a mess, though Crawford seems very human, fresh and almost innocent at certain points. Best part of the movie is Donald Meek's role as an eccentric night watchman at the palace of Fontainebleu. Won't kill or thrill. 4/10

The day before Thanksgiving I watched Fangs of the Cobra (1977), a Chinese lite contemporary romance adventure from Shaw Brothers studio, not the usual costume martial arts for which they are best known. Young man returns from studying abroad to take over management of the large family farm, and falls for the daughter of a tenant farmer. The unique twist is that her pet, best friend, confidante and protector is a cobra - but he hates snakes because his mother was bitten by one when he was a child, and died. The scheming cousin who wants to marry his money ends up naked quite a lot more than I expected, though without sufficient attributes for me to find it anything but surprising. Eventually the hero cobra protects the infant son from being bitten by the evil mongoose and pretty much saves the day all around. Unique and surprising while still being quite mediocre. 5/10

Movies

Mary and Max (2009) This was on Donna's list of movies she wanted to see, but she couldn't remember why it was on there. Australian stop-motion animation, well executed, of the variety that is called "edgy" because it is occasionally tasteless and repulsive, and attempts to balance it out by being maudlin. "Adult" without being mature. Not what either of us really care for. 3/10

Movies

Cat Girl (1957) Multigenerational curse of unknown origin causes mental bond between woman and leopard. Not quite a transformation film - she thinks she turns into a cat and there is a vague blurry sort of a transformation scene at one point, but mostly it is gloom, atmosphere and stiff British dialogue. Not very exciting or interesting. 4/10

Konga (1961) Michael Gough, one of the great overactors of the cinema, is the mad scientist whose plant serum transforms a tiny chimp into a gigantic gorilla suit. Takes a very long time for the gorilla suit to become gigantic so for the most part it is a conventional gorilla suit movie, with the requisite stranglings, and lab apparatus being swept off tables. When the gorilla suit finally becomes gigantic it bumbles feebly about, or stands immobile, roaring at the hundreds of rounds of gunfire zipping past it because something that large is so difficult to hit. The moral of it all is that those who use science to justify their sociopathy are destroyed by their own creation, but I heard that before. It's all pretty flat, leaving lots of time to admire the way the lighting on the sets doesn't appear to come from any of the visible light fixtures. 3/10

Kongo (1932) There is also a chimp in this movie but everything else is different. Walter Huston is a scar-faced wheelchair-bound white witch doctor who controls his lackeys with drugs and violence, and the natives with simple stage magic, while nursing a grudge against the man who stole his wife and broke his spine. The natives are props and plot devices, the whites uniformly filthy and degraded, though bearing a tiny spark of humanity. Lupe Velez is oiled up and lustful, always on the brink of losing her top. A truly perverse production of a lurid and deranged melodrama. 8/10

Movies

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) Space aliens want to save the earth by exterminating humanity, but change their minds when they see people hugging. Wasn't as bad as I expected. Personal note to soundtrack composer Tyler Bates: You have used your quota of thundering drums for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. Try to come up with something else. 5/10

Movies

The Earth Dies Screaming (1965) A very small end of the world movie, with half a dozen baffled survivors in a British village facing enigmatic alien robots and blank-eyed remote-controlled corpses. It's full of slow-moving threats from which people are unable to escape, since they hide by running into a room and leaving the door open. This is one of a number of similar British films at that time, such as Night of the Big Heat, based on the novel by John Lymington, who made a career of writing novels about a small group of people trapped in a village by a mysterious force. Doesn't live up to its title. 4/10

Wonder Bar (1934) One evening's events in a high-class nightclub in Paris. I had read that this film contains some of Busby Berkeley's most spectacular work but I didn't know why it wasn't readily available. Now I know. It must have been incredibly expensive to produce, with huge numbers of dancers, costumes, forty-foot moving pillars and other props, and some scenes are shot in a closed room walled with gigantic mirrors, creating a vast space filled with moving forms. Al Jolson stars, and he gives an amazing performance of songs, offhand gags and vaudeville routines. Dolores Del Rio is resplendent in a backless lame' gown and metallic satin jacket with mink sleeves. Every dress is completely nuts - even the dowagers were wearing eye-popping attire. Dick Powell sings, Guy Kibbee and Hugh Herbert drink and try to evade their wives. The plot is mere filler between insanely elaborate spectacles. What killed the film for television is not the gay joke or the sadistic gaucho dance, but the astounding production number in which Jolson rides to blackface heaven on a mule. I don't think any other movie contains so many blacked up white folks as this, not to mention the relentless depiction of the most painfully obvious stereotypes. Blackface heaven contains Lincoln worship, porkchop trees, an automatic chicken roasting machine, and of course free watermelons in the blackface heaven version of Harlem. Even his dog and mule end up with tinfoil wings in blackface heaven. I think everyone ought to see this, just so they can see what kind of bizarre and deranged stuff was once considered perfectly normal and acceptable entertainment. This is the sort of screwed up thing I pick for Family Movie Night. 10/10 for being one of the damnedest things I ever did see.

THIS IS BAD. DON'T DO THIS:

Marse Linkum is patron saint of Blackface Heaven

Blackfaces love watermelon.

Movies

Danger: Diabolik (1968) John Phillip Law is fantastically attractive as the masked super-criminal Diabolik. Directed by Mario Bava, based on a comic strip, this is the perfect venue for Bava's wild talents. Diabolik's subterranean lair is a vast hallucination, and the Night Club Scene is the most bizarre and amazing I have ever seen. The theft of a twenty-ton giant ingot of solid gold was fantastic in every sense of the word. The super-criminal, such as Diabolik, Fantomas, Mabuse, Lupin or The Black Lizard, as a character and genre has been shamefully neglected in these decadent times, while idiotic allegiance to primitive ideas of law and justice are spoon-fed to the masses as virtues to prevent their rising up against their evil masters. The world awaits its deliverer. Until then, this fantasy will have to do. 8/10

Adaptation (2002) This is the kind of movie Donna chooses, and I end up watching them just because I like to learn about things. I would never have picked it myself, but ended up enjoying it quite a bit. This movie shows how helpful it can be to listen to your stupid half - one of the best things I ever learned. I don't understand how Nicholas Cage can be such a good actor and still end up in so many brain-dead action spectaculars. Chris Cooper gets the toothless redneck genius thing down with deadly precision. Pretty good stuff if you like quality. 8/10 for completely different reasons from the above.

Movies

White Noise (2005) The EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) movie. Michael Keaton is the bereaved yuppie everyman seeking contact with his late wife by watching hours of blank videotapes. There is quite a lot of that very sad music of a lonely piano and soft violins. They manage to make a pretty good scare story out of a guy turning himself into an obsessive crank watching static on five screens at once, and it's well produced and directed but overall forgettable. 5/10

Gigantes Planetarios (1965) From the perpetrators of El Planeta de las mujeres invasoras, using some of the same actors, props, sets and locations, as well as some sets and costumes from what must have been a Jesus movie. Also involves earthpeople going to another planet to depose a dictator, but not as good because it isn't a planet of scantily clad women. Made me sleepy. 3/10

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) Considering that I hate zombie movies it is rather surprising that I like the Resident Evil movies. What I don't like is just taking the NOTLD format of a bunch of people trapped somewhere shooting zombies in the head, and trying to "up the annie" on it with more and bigger everything. Resident Evil adds a layer of sci fi concept to it, as well as the natural charm of Milla Jovovich kicking raw-meat zombie dogs to pieces. She looked like they were doing a lot of digital smoothing on her face in this one though, as she had a pretty unreal look at times. While the second movie was pretty weak, this had quite a few moments of imaginative grotesqueness, like the protagonist encountering a trench full of the hundreds of rotting corpses of her clones. Good for when you don't want to have to think much and just watch stuff. 6/10

Movies

Disney High School Musical China (2010) I liked High School Musical a lot because it is a pure, non-ironic reversion to the basics of the artform. I liked this even more because it takes that and puts it into a different culture, reflecting a different set of mores and ideals. It is blindingly colorful, intensely choreographed, with a harder rocking beat and less (or at least different) melodramatic formula. I was soothed into a state of vegetable delight. I suppose there is no way to see it legally in the U.S. and it seems to be actively suppressed online. As a lover of the artform, I found this to be the best modern musical I have seen since the original. 10/10

Match Factory Girl (1990) Finnish film, directed by Kaurismaaki, in which a young woman's every attempt to find a little happiness in life is mercilessly crushed. Not as much of a downer as it sounds though, as Kaurismaaki's films, however bleak and sparse, always leave a strange feeling of calm satisfaction. His aesthetics and ideals seem to match mine precisely - I never say "I didn't like that part," or "I wouldn't have done it that way," and he obviously loves machines and industrial spaces as I do. There is no filler, and every shot is a beautiful composition, no matter what is happening. His influence on the modern Quirky Independent Film is obvious, just as obvious as the fact that they are trying to do what he does and not succeeding. The characters sit silent and immobile in a state of perpetual discomfort with life, but they are thinking and feeling beings with human souls, not goofy cartoon characters being weird for weirdness' sake. Probably only about a hundred words are spoken in this too-short, hour-long film and it makes me long for that imaginary Finland, where people aren't always yapping at you or each other or themselves. This was Donna's viewing choice for the evening. 10/10

Mark of the Vampire (1935) A deliberate cartoonish mockery of a vampire movie, with Barrymore as the vampire expert, Atwill as the angry policeman, Donald Meek as the local doctor, and you know who as The Count. An incoherent script makes it seem as if production was halted before they were through shooting everything and they just stuck together what they had. There are a few effective, but almost laughably stereotypical, scenes and sequences, but it's not sure if it wants to be a satire or not. Leila Bennett does the same comedy-relief maid she did in Doctor X, though she is not given as much to do here, and Carroll Borland carves in stone the Vampire Woman cliches for all time to come. If you are really into vampires, see it. As a movie it kind of stinks. 4/10

Movies

Mechte Navstrechu [A Dream Come True] (1965) A Soviet SF film from Odessa Studios. An alien spacecraft on the way to Earth crashes on Mars, prompting a complicated series of rescue attempts. Numerous colorful, elaborate and often surrealistic sets and models depict the alien planet and spacecraft as well as landings and walks upon the surface of the Moon, Mars and Phobos. Not much of a plot, and a cop-out ending, but really wonderful to see, as demonstrated below. 8/10

Event Horizon (1997) Another rescue mission, this time to an experimental FTL drive ship orbiting Neptune. I had given up on SF films around this time so I missed this one, and I don't know if I am sorry or not. The parallels between this and Disney's The Black Hole are numerous and obvious, not just in concept but in visual design and in the vast absurdity of execution. This is so excessive, even the sound design stands out as simply going too far. The only thing it didn't have was a comedy relief robot, or a comedy relief anything for that matter. Nevertheless it is delightfully ridiculous from the very first beeping letters that pop onto the screen. Beeping letters are always the sign of things to come, not necessarily good things, from a skewed conception of how a movie ought to be done. Sadly, they were not beeping green letters, the acme of the form. Anyhow, the long-lost spaceship eventually transforms into an Old Dark House from which None Shall Escape, and the SF movie becomes a grisly supernatural horror story. Why would anyone design a faster than light drive to look like a mechanical device for summoning demons? Because THAT'S WHAT IT IS! Why would anyone design a spaceship to look like a Haunted Mansion, with gothic wall panels, arched colonnades and coffin-shaped doorways? Because THAT'S WHAT IT IS. Though it becomes outright ghoulish at the end, with actual cascading rivers of blood, it is primarily an excessively, absurdly over-the-top gadgetporn space opera that had me laughing with glee. Except for the horrifically mutilated corpses, which I hate. Stupidly great in certain ways. 8/10

Movies

Donna and I both enjoyed Scott Prendergast's short film The Delicious so much when we saw it a while back, we thought we would try his feature film Kabluey (2007) for Family Movie Night. Luckily I had a backup ready because after a seeming eternity of SCREAMING HORRIBLE CHILDREN scenes we just couldn't take any more and will never get to see whether it is really any good or not. The backup was Caveman (1981), which I wasn't able to easily obtain when we were going through caveman movies a couple of years ago. The animated dinosaurs are the real stars of this not entirely funny comedy, but at least nobody was SHRIEKING continuously in it. 5/10

Addendum: Donna says she is going to try to watch the rest of Kabluey, after reading more about it online. I have wished her luck.

I got back to work after that and watched Beast of the City (1932), a hard-edged prohibition drama. Walter Huston is the police chief dedicated to cleaning up his gangster-infested town. A clear backlash against the gangster movies of the day, and it doesn't pull any punches. The Hollywood Ending was not mandatory at that time and it gets pretty rough at the end. Includes Jean Harlow as a scheming gun moll and Mickey Rooney, a tiny speck of a kid. 7/10

Movies

I'm accumulating an uncomfortable backlog of things I need to get watched so I am really buckling down and getting the work done. Recently I have seen Murders in the Zoo (1933) and Doctor X (1932), both starring icily villainous Lionel Atwill, neither of which were worthy of note except for the latter's failure to make full use of its primitive Technicolor. Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973) I watched because of the sort of praise Ebert has given it, and found that although there are quite a few naked women in it, and it stars the charismatic William Smith, it didn't get much of a rise out of me. Yesterday I stuck my nose to the grindstone and got four movies watched, starting at 6 pm and ending at 1 am.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (2010) Directed by Bresson, from the comics by Tardi. Globe-trotting adventuress rides pterodactyl through the Paris skies to snatch from the guillotine the only man who can revive the ancient Egyptian mummy who might cure her sister, catatonic with a hatpin through her skull. The re-creation of early 20th century Paris was splendid, and it is a fairly entertaining lite adventure movie that passes the time painlessly. What it cannot capture from the comics is Tardi's heavy line and simple yet dense composition which adds a different kind of intensity from any live action rendition. 6/10

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) Lushly produced Yellow Peril spectacular - one of the most completely ridiculous things I have ever seen. It must have seemed amazing at the time to see every bit of orientalia they had in the warehouse dragged out and jammed higgledy-piggledy into every scene regardless of race or national origin, along with Turbaned Nubians, atrocious sparking and clattering pseudotechnology, and Karloff and Myrna Loy faking deranged Asianity, bellowing such catchphrases as "Kill the White Men and STEAL THEIR WOMEN!." Most dreadful of all is the final scene in which we are shown what a "Good Chinaman" is - a smirking dimwitted ignoramus in a white jacket. Stupidly and horribly amusing. 6/10

The Girl on the Boat (1962) Starring Norman Wisdom, this is one of the far-too-rare films of a P.G. Wodehouse novel. As such it maintains a certain level of urbanity and wit. Wisdom's more working-class mugging lowers the tone a bit at times but on the whole it is mild and pleasant without being outright hilarious. A really good Wodehouse movie has yet to be made, though the BBC's various treatments have been uniformly charming. 6/10

The Devil-Doll (1936) The hit of the evening, yet another gem I have managed to miss for decades. Lionel Barrymore makes use of a mad scientist's invention to get revenge on the men who destroyed his life. Rafaela Ottiano as the scientist's wife and heir to his madness is outstandingly bizarre as she carries on the dream of one day reducing all living creatures on earth to ONE SIXTH THEIR SIZE. With no will of their own, miniature humans are controlled by Barrymore, by remote mental influence, to carry out his vengeance. The effects, inserting small humans and animals into the scene, are extremely well done considering the technical constraints of the day. Also notable is Barrymore's convincing disguise through most of the film as an old woman. Bizarre in conception and execution, it's exactly why I plow through all that other crap - for a transcendent experience like this. 10/10

We can make the WHOLE WORLD small!!!

Movies

Petlya Oriona [Orion's Loop] (1980) Soviet science fiction of the Metaphysical school. A shipful of cosmonauts and their android replicas investigate an apparently deadly ring of energy approaching earth and encounter difficulty in communicating with an advanced non-human race. Co-written by cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov. Kind of interesting at times but not very exciting. This was the first film I have ever seen from the Odessa Film Studio. 5/10

Movies

Byleth, el demone dell'incesto (1972) Costume psychodrama of a 19th century noble seemingly possessed by a murderous and incestuous spirit. Really just a skin flick and an excuse to indulge the passion of that era and nation, of depicting a mysterious figure in black stabbing naked women to death. Even that is muddled and vaguely executed, like everything else in the film. Apparently seeing an actor and actress supposed to be brother and sister making out was intended to be startling. 5/10

Movies

Woman Chases Man (1937) Miriam Hopkins is the poor girl, Joel McCrea is the rich boy in this screwball comedy. Lots of fast talking, scheming, and absurdly complicated situations. Gets to be a lot of shouting and fighting at the end which I find wearisome, but overall it was pretty cute despite its lack of a negligee scene. 7/10

Movies

I'm a Cyborg, but That's Okay (2006) Eccentric and imaginative Korean romantic comedic fantasy. A young woman believes she is a cyborg and wears her grandmother's false teeth when she talks to other machines, and she finds understanding and love in the mental hospital. That is just the skeleton on which a very entertaining and well-executed film is built. Bright, colorful, inventive and fun, with fantastic and realistic elements seamlessly blended. 8/10

Addendum: Re-watched it with Donna, and it was well-received. Not as light as it first appears, and unconventional in every way.

Movies

Hiroku Kaibyoden [The Haunted Castle] (1969) Another version of the story filmed in 1958 as Mansion of the Ghost Cat. This version is from a classier studio and is a straight-ahead costume spook story of samurai days. The beloved pet of an unjustly slain vassal becomes a vengeful demon to punish the murderous lord of the castle. While it builds quite a bit of tension by keeping almost all of the action in claustrophobic night-dark hallways, with characters floating in isolated spheres of dim light, it really doesn't compare to the earlier version for imagination and sensation. Has its moments but you definitely want to go with the earlier one. 5/10

Echappement Libre [Backfire] (1964) Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and a Triumph Spitfire convertible made of gold wandering around the mediterranean. Sort of a heist movie so you can figure how it's going to end up. Never really makes a whole lot of sense, builds chemistry between the characters, or becomes very interesting. Passes the time painlessly, and is not challenging. 5/10

Movies

Horror Island (1941) Factory-made back lot b-picture, specifically designed not to outshine the film at the top of the bill. Doughy all-purpose good guy Dick Foran, exotic foreigner Leo Carillo and a mixed bag of characters (including Iris Adrian) in a haunted castle looking for pirate treasure. Groping hands, secret panels, cobwebs and screams in the night. Harmless. 5/10

Movies

Il gatto a nove code (1971) Also known as The Cat O' Nine Tails, this is Dario Argento's second film, and the first I have gotten Donna to watch. Strangely, it is also the first of his films I ever saw, unknowingly viewing it in Buena Vista Colorado while on vacation with my mother. I don't recall what we thought of it at the time, but half a dozen scenes have stuck with me ever since, when many other movies have passed from my memory. Rather an over-elaborate muddle but filled with promise. Though his films came to indulge in far too much blatant stabbing and raping than I care for, one feature common to them all is that you can never, ever guess what will happen next. This one featured a baffling burglary at a genetics lab (and a completely off-the-wall "explanation" of the XYY chromosome idea) which leads to one murder after another, to be solved by blind puzzle-enthusiast Karl Malden and reporter James Franciscus. Argento movies often seem to be drawn out way too long, leaving one quite weary at the end, especially with the soundtrack (Morricone in this case) devolving into grating shrieks at tense moments, and there are plenty of tense moments. None of his movies are truly great, but all have a touch of greatness to them, being genuinely imaginative and innovative in both story and film technique. 7/10

Addendum: It should be noted that there is one scene shot in the composing room of a large newspaper, featuring dozens and dozens of linotypes. I always like to see linotypes in a movie.

Movies

The Time Travelers (1964) Directed by Ib Melchior, whose contribution to fantastic film ranges from Reptilicus to Deathrace 2000. This is another one I can't believe I missed out on for all these years. An experiment strands three scientists and their comedy relief assistant in the post-apocalyptic future of 2071, when the last unmutated humans, aided by their android robots, are desperately building a spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Standing the dictum, "a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," on its head, stage magic and sleight of hand tricks are used to depict advanced technology, like the removal and replacement of an android head in one unedited shot. I always enjoyed similar films, like Beyond the Time Barrier and World Without End, though they left me vaguely unsatisfied in their conclusion, but The Time Travelers extends its unique and extremely imaginative ideas to an amazing finale. Low-budget and deliberately silly at times it is also very colorful, and I cannot stress how important that is to me, especially in this modern age when advanced cinematic technology is used to make mediocre films look "serious" by dulling them down to muddy browns and greens, or creating "futuristic" effects (as in the soon-to-be-released Tron movie) which closely resemble archaic two-strip technicolor. For me this was an entirely enjoyable 10/10.

Movies

Mysterious Planet (1982) Ambitious amateur SF made in New Hampshire USA - it's Verne's Mysterious Island, only it's a planet instead. What it lacks in budget and finish it makes up in enthusiasm, with space models, stop motion monsters and full-size monster heads, matte paintings and every variety of old-school special effect. Director Brett Piper apparently went into the direct-to-video kitschy monster movie field after this, the kind of movie that has to pretend it's a joke because it knows it kind of sucks. This one is still naive enough to take itself seriously, even though they can't always keep things in frame or set the aperture right, and the final dubbing was never done properly in some sequences. Not entirely watchable, but interesting as an artifact and admirable for its audacity. 4/10

The Great and Terrible

UPSIDE DOWN CHIN WITH EYES DRAWN ON,

talking to a little model person.

Movies

Sei Donne Per L'assassino (1964) Directed by Mario Bava, also known as Blood and Black Lace. Masked leather-clad fiend murders beautiful women. A Bava movie is never truly great, but this is as good as they come - hallucinogenically colorful, with densely layered scenes and a forced shocker ending. If you need to see one, you might as well see this one. 6/10

Movies

The She-Creature (1956) Hypnotic-regression monster movie inspired by the Bridey Murphy craze. I expected more of a direct girl-to-monster transformation like that one where the woman turned into a gorilla, but this is some kind of manifestation of a soul, kind of thing. Directed by Edward L. Cahn, and written by Lou Rusoff, its badfilm pedigree is impeccable. Not extremely compelling or surprising except for how the ancient fishlike sea monster has long hair and big irrelevant boobs to show it is a female. Entertaining dialog at some points. Harmless. 5/10

Movies

Le beau Serge (1958) Claude Chabrol's accomplished first film. A young man returns to his hometown to find his old friend a cruel bitter drunk, and makes everything worse by trying to help. A movie of character, with the protagonist's errors encapsulated in the parish priest who blames the villagers for not letting him help them, instead of trying to find out what they really need. Has a fine nostalgic feel throughout, like a movie you have seen before but entirely forgotten. Just the thing for when you need to see a French semi-classic. 9/10

The Vulture (1967) Absurd British multigenerational-curse monster mystery, one of the few such set in Cornwall. After a vehemently unsuperstitious schoolmarm sees a human-headed vulture bursting out of an 18th century grave, brilliantined B-actor Robert Hutton, a visiting American Nuclear Scientist, comes to startling conclusions based on the scantiest physical evidence, bafflingly tying together teleportation by nuclear transmutation, and the bird-man worship of Easter Island. Broderick Crawford and Akim Tamiroff are the aging name actors dragged into this jaw-dropping, head-smacking absurdity. The script and dialog creep into the fringes of Ed Wood territory with their nonsensical non-sequiturs and bizarre leaps, as well as the dreadful acting from some tertiary characters. Tamiroff is one of my favorite unappreciated actors, and he certainly doesn't get much to work with here. They made the very wise choice of never providing a beauty shot of the idiotically conceived monster, but the attack sequences, when people get shoulder-grabbed by two big bird legs from above, are quite sufficient. Really quite astonishing at times, for all the wrong reasons, right up to the very last moment. Not a huge bulldada classic but definitely marbled with strong veins of it. Most normal people would not find it very watchable. 7/10 for screwiness.

HOW TO BUILD A PORCH

In case you are interested, you can see how a NON-DUMBASS builds a porch here. It's obvious from the first picture how different it is from the COMPLETELY STUPID way of building a porch.