Bah Humbug... What The Hell Is A Humbug, Anyway?

Christmas movies suck.  I said this in my first Halloween movie post and it's still true.  When you have a movie centered around one day of the year it's kind of hard to have it be relevant the other 364 days, right?  Only Halloween and Valentine's Day have movies from two preexisting genres and don't need films dedicated solely to them.

So is there any hope for movies with a Christmasy theme?  Sure, I guess.  For one, Jesus Movies, since Christmas was originally a holiday celebrating his birthday some two thousand odd years ago (it has since mutated into something almost unrecognizable from it's original intent).  But Biblical Epics can be watched year round so I guess they don't count as Christmas movies per se.

The other option is a film connected only vaguely with Christmas, say with the whole holiday season as nothing more than a setting and backdrop.  A film like the one I'm going to do a really tiny movie review on today.  Why tiny?  'Cause I'm full of turkey and cookies and feeling bombed out.  So brace yourself for a mini mini review of

This just might be my favorite holiday movie – even though it's not even that great of a flick – because it's not really a "holiday movie" at all.  It's really a comedy movie that just happens to take place around Christmas.  Oh, and we do get to see Dan Aykroyd in a sleazy Santa outfit but that's about it.  It's about two men – one rich, one poor – played by the aforementioned Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy who involuntarily switch social places due to a bet by two malevolent millionaires over nature vs nurture.

   
The setup is intriguing, the story is good and the comedy when it works is gold.  Eddie Murphy makes a great early impression with some great delivery ("Motherfucker? Moi?") and some great chemistry with Aykroyd who is also great here (I have always held that Dan Aykroyd was the greatest actor of the original SNL cast if not the greatest comedian, more on that below).  Jamie Lee Curtis and Denholm Elliot also make good turns in supporting roles and the villains are also played very ably by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy.

The film succeeds in spite of, and not because of director John Landis, whose direction is merely competant but never compelling.  There are a few moments in the movie that I admit would be better with some better editing or pacing.  It's strange that Landis is famous for being a comedy director (in addition to, you know, being an irresponsible, homicidal fuckhead) when his movies are funny because of the efforts of other people, not him.  Animal House, his one true gift to cinema succeeds solely because of the manic energy and awesome performance of John Belushi (who was the pure funniest of the original SNL cast even if he was not as nuanced and agile a comedian as Aykroyd).  His other good (but not great) movies The Blues Brothers, Coming To America and this one succeed only because of the talents of the writers and the three performers already mentioned – Aykroyd, Belushi and Murphy.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this mini mini review.  Sleep beckons and it's been the end of an eventful day.  Don't let the preceding paragraph fool you... Trading Places is a pretty good, funny comedy flick and I recommend it highly.  I will try to post something next week for New Year's but I make no promises.


Nighty night.

I Am Such A Liar

I said at the end of my Diebuster review in early November that I would be doing an Adventure in the Desert post next.  Then Ken Russel died, and I said that I would do a "quick detour" with Altered States but said that a Desert Adventure post was imminent because I just needed time to expand and revise my original intended post.  Well, at the end of November I got another retail job (yay!) working at a bookstore for the holiday season (and hopefully beyond... let's go, steady paycheck!) and I have thus been very busy.  Hopefully it should taper off a bit after today and I can have some time to post to this blog but I make no promises to my nonexistent readership.  The Adventure in the Desert post may be postponed for a while or longer or perhaps indefinitely.  I am doing a quick holiday post today but it is very short as I have had no time to prepare... it's very off the cuff.

Well, anyways, enough update.  Enjoy your day.

Wow, I Spent Way Too Much Time Writing About This Movie

I know that I said last time that I would be doing some high adventure in the desert next, but I’m taking a quick detour this week for two reasons: a) I’m actually expanding my intended desert adventure post into something beyond a simple review and that’s going to take time and b) Ken Russell died at the beginning of this week and I thought I’d review one of his movies. Now you might think that I’m doing this as a special tribute; that I revere Russell and want to exalt his praises now that he’s dead. Actually, that thought couldn’t be further from the truth: I think that Ken Russell was a talentless hack and loathe and despise his movies. Okay, I take that back: I should not and will not just use this post to slag on the dead.  Besides I was being rather unreasonable with that last statement because prior to today I had only seen one of his films: the execrable Tommy (although to be fair to him all of that blame for that cinematic abortion cannot be assigned to Russell seeing as The Who themselves participated in its creation and could have stopped the project at any time). Tommy is one of my most hated movies of all time, ranking up (down?) there with Armageddon and Die Another Day – it is one of the few films that inspires actual rage and revulsion in me. Anywho, I thought on the occasion of Ken Russell’s death that I would be fair to the dude and watch another one of his films and see if Tommy was just an aberration in his film catalogue, to see if I can actually enjoy a Ken Russell movie. So I looked around for one of his movies that might be interesting to me and finally settled on

Film, 1980

Director: Ken Russell

Story

Psychologist, professor and all-around nutcase Doctor Edward Jessup is experimenting with different states of consciousness and their effect on the physical self. After a trip to Mexico where he picks up some potent Native Ritual Drugs he starts ingesting the strange substance and spending time in a sensory deprivation tank where he starts to exhibit startling signs of physical transformation….

Review

Altered States is better than Tommy but that’s kind of like saying that being punched in the gut is better than being kicked in the nuts. Alright, that’s not true, I’m being unnecessarily nasty. This isn’t a bad movie but it’s not good, either. Altered States is…

…watchable?

Yeah, that’s it. It’s an interesting enough experience and not a *hideous* way to spend an hour and forty minutes but it is by no means a classic film or even a good one. It’s not a spectacular shit storm like Tommy was though so it’s not a total loss. I actually enjoyed parts of it and saw some potential in it, potential that could have been drawn out by another, more talented director – someone like John Boorman or David Cronenberg. The good points here are the intriguing (if flawed and completely non-believable) premise of mind over matter and the character study of the main character, played here by William Hurt (even though the acting by Hurt himself is not quite up to the task – more on that below). The main character arc of Jessup finding out what’s really important to him and why is probably the best part of the movie (well, besides seeing Blair Brown naked at a few points).

Or William Hurt, for those of you so inclined.

The special effects are pretty good and compared to Tommy (again, the only other Russell movie I have seen although I am informed that other Russell movies suffer from the very problem I am about to mention) Altered States is positively subdued in its gratuitous over-the-top “shocking” imagery.

What this means though (and where the negatives begin) is that the aforementioned gratuitous imagery of Altered States is here in large abundance compared to just about every other movie on the planet. Also in abundance is the usual Ken Russell overly pretentious bullshit. I actually had some hopes for the movie after a rather subdued opening sequence and few quiet scenes but my optimism was quickly dashed and splattered to the ground after the scene where Jessup and his newly acquainted (no, really, it only takes about two minutes of screen time) paramour Emily have sex and afterwards he says that during it he was thinking about Jesus and the Crucifixion the whole time. At that point I laughed involuntarily; I think my brains came out my nose. Then a few minutes later this came on the screen

and I stated to suspect that Blair Brown was going to start rolling around in baked beans at some point. And this brings me to my biggest beef with Ken Russell making movies, and that is that he was not any good at it. Just throwing bizarre imagery up on the screen (even in a movie about psychedelic drugs) is not good filmmaking. Doing things just to be “shocking” is not good filmmaking. Ken Russell had all of the visual subtlety of a sledgehammer, and he didn’t even know how to wield that hammer. Later on in the film (SPOILER ALERT) Jessup partially regresses into a subhuman ape-creature and I found myself watching a completely different movie. I mean, a wild primitive ape-man escaping a lab and running around a modern city would make for an entertaining movie but here the sequence is silly and just plain unnecessary.
(END SPOILER)

Cue Toots and the Maytals.

That’s why I said before that Cronenberg or Boorman would have made a better director for this project: both have portrayed disturbing, outlandish stuff on screen but in a more understated and intelligent way. Videodrome, like Altered States deals with differing perceptions of reality brought on by external stimuli but Cronenberg is much more subtle with it.

Pictured: subtlety.

He also makes us question throughout the movie just how much of what we’re seeing is real and how much is in the main character’s head. And there is a sense of growing dread and horror that Russell’s movie doesn’t have at all. John Boorman would have also been a good choice to direct this: he comes from the same cinematic tradition as Ken Russell but has much more talent than Russell ever had. Yes, he has made some bad movies, but at least Zardoz was so supremely bad that it was entertaining. Russell’s bad movies are just painful.

Instead of something painful I thought I'd insert a picture of this. 

Much nicer, no?

Painful is also a word I can use to describe some of the acting here. Too much of the dialogue is screamed by the actors, in particular the actor playing the medical doctor opposed to Jessup’s self-experiments. This role could have been a good, intelligent foil to the protagonist and raised legitimate questions about his intentions and whether what he was doing was right. Instead the character just comes off as shrill and unlikable, and the audience is crudely manipulated into disliking him and rooting unconditionally for the hero. See what I said earlier about Russell’s lack of subtlety? Also, the acting by William Hurt (told you I’d get to it) is… not that great. And it’s weird because it could have been. When I was watching this with the sound turned off to capture screenshots, I noticed how animated and excited Hurt’s face was in certain scenes, but with the sound turned on his delivery seemed dull and wooden. This is because Hurt constantly speaks with the same level monotone, even when raising his voice (strangely enough). He’s done this in other roles too – I remember him being this dull and monotonous in the TV miniseries version of Dune. All of this just goes to show how important voice and inflection is in acting – I think William Hurt could do with some acting lessons from William Shatner.

Now, you stay in there and recite the "Risk is our business" speech 

a hundred times, young man, and maybe we'll let you out. 

Well, that’s Altered States. Does it change my opinion of (the now deceased) Ken Russell? Not really, but at least it wasn’t a complete waste of my time and a piece of putrid, pestilent pus like Tommy was. It is actually worth checking out if you like old and/or esoteric science fiction movies even if it’s not in the same league as 2001 (or even Logan’s Run). So, um… good job, Mr. Russell?  Rest in peace.

Hopefully there's a big party waiting for you on the other side.

This Week - Topless Girls... No, Not *That* Kind, You Pervert

Remember back in August when I said I was burned out on anime and that I just wasn’t interested in animated entertainment made for Japanese teenagers anymore? Remember how I said that it was watching FLCL that basically made me realize that almost nothing was going to live up to its sublime magnificence? Well, leave it to the company (Gainax) and director (Kazua Tsurumaki) of that masterpiece to smack me in the face once again with anime awesomeness. Oh, and make it the sequel to one of the greatest anime ever made. Ahhhhh. Ladies, gentlemen and space monsters, I give you

OVA, 2004-2005

Director: Kazua Tsurumaki

Story

Nono is a robot girl who desperately wants to be a Buster Machine (!GIANT ROBOT!) pilot and go into space (sound familiar?), but she ends up instead working as a waitress in a bar near the local Martian spaceport. One day she is saved from the attentions of some lecherous robot pilots by Lal’c, a member of the Topless, the elite teenaged Buster Machine pilots with psychic powers. Pledging her eternal devotion to her new “onē-sama” (sound familiar?) Nono goes into space to help fight the space monsters (sound familiar?) and aim for the top(less)!

Review

If I made the story of Diebuster sound a lot like the story of Gunbuster, that’s because, well, it sort of is. *However*, there are enough twists and turns to this OVA that make this a unique experience – for example, Nono being a robot (and I won't spoil any more...) – both recalling and expanding the original story. And since this was made sixteen years after Gunbuster a new generation of anime and giant robot tropes have to be parodied, played straight and turned up to eleven (although some of the older ones are taken on too, so don’t despair). And turn it up to eleven Gainax does, going even beyond the original in some areas (although it is kinda hard to beat destroying the center of the galaxy). Everything in Diebuster is *more.* MORE space battles! MORE cute girls! MORE cool giant robots! MORE awesome animation! MORE fanservice! Yes, for your pleasure there is generous helping of fanservice from the studio that revolutionized it in the first place (how many other companies can you think of have the bouncing motion of animated breasts named after them? I didn’t think so).

The animation in Diebuster is superb too, although by this point I expect no less from Gainax. It does look and act a lot like FLCL – which isn’t shocking – but I also detected hints of Evangelion in this as well (the Buster Machines for instance are semi-sentient with humanoid faces) which is also not surprising. The computer animation here is not garish nor does it stand out like a sore thumb compared to the 2-D animation, and I liked that very much.

But the heart and soul is the story, and – for the most part – it is well done. It is confusing in a few spots and there are a few tiny plot holes but the revelations and aforementioned plot twists will leave you delighted, and the emotional content – while over the top at times – is genuine and touching. Some who do not like latter-day Gainax may not like it so much, but I loved it. One element that has been discarded from the original Gunbuster is the subplot about time dilation at the speed of light. I guess the creative team for Diebuster felt that it really didn’t have much to do with the story they were trying to tell, and its exclusion is no big loss (besides which, as intriguing as it was in the original, Hideaki Anno and his team got it wrong – Noriko would not have experienced months-worth of dilation going to the edge of the solar system and back considering that Pluto is light-hours, not months away from the Earth – at most it would have been the better part of a day lost, but that’s not dramatic, is it?).

In conclusion, while I didn’t enjoy it *quite* as much as the original Gunbuster – or FLCL – I found Aim For The Top 2: Diebuster to be a very worthy successor to the original and a fun way to spend three hours of my time. I recommend it highly.

Screenshots

Get used to it.  Nono does a lot of this.

And this.

Lal'c.  Hmm, she looks familiar... now where have I seen her before?

Ohhhhh.

In the future, even baseball will involve giant robots.

Psychedelic!

Wait, why does a robot need to exercise?

More broadsides... IN SPACE!

For Teh Fanservice!

Next Time: Adventure In The Desert

Obligatory Halloween Sequel

This Halloween, three more Scary Movies that you won’t see on television. All three are worth tracking down and without further ado here they are:

Onibaba (1964) – An old woman and her daughter-in-law live in the middle of a swamp in Feudal Japan. They make a living by murdering lost samurai and selling their looted weapons and armor for food they desperately need. One day a friend of their son/husband comes home and tells them that he was killed in the war – but he’s available if they need to have a man around (wink, wink). What follows is an unfolding tale of psychological savagery, with a mix of jealousy, sexuality, hate, love, lust, fear and violence that would make Freud orgasm about fifty times over. I know that I just made this movie sound like a psychological drama rather than a horror movie, but the key is all in the mood… this movie can get very creepy, and there is a horrific element that enters the film in the latter part that qualifies Onibaba as a bona fide horror classic.



Scanners (1981) – A woman is gripped by unexplained seizures in a shopping mall. A man’s head literally explodes in front of a corporate conference. Both of these events are the result of Scanners – telepaths with the ability to not only read minds but completely interface with the body of another human being. One of these scanners, until recently a homeless derelict is recruited to hunt down the leader of a dangerous group of his brethren – a group whose mission it is to eliminate all “normals” and establish scanner supremacy.  Any other movie dealing with human telepathy would be a straight-up sci-fi movie, but since this movie is directed by David Cronenberg you’re going to get a lot of body horror watching this. Cronenberg seems to be more

interested in the negative (and gruesome) consequences of human telepathy rather than the positive implications. Well, at least it gives us a pretty good sci-fi horror yarn with some great special effects. Oh yeah, and Patrick McGoohan’s in it. And yes, even though it is never shown on television and hardly anyone anymore has seen it, it is the movie which gave us this famous image:





Prince of Darkness (1987) – An L.A. church is housing an ancient and deadly secret… a canister of green goo that has been locked away for more than two thousand years. A team of scientists and grad students is called in to study it, and they find out what it is: pure Liquid Satan (now 50% more refreshing!). The evil substance calls out to the homeless population of Los Angeles and they besiege the church, while inside the science team is slowly taken over one by one by the soft drink/unholy terror. This is easily John Carpenter’s most underrated film – for some reason a lot of people don’t like this one as much as his other stuff. I can kind of see why: it is a little clunky and not as well put together as some of his other movies. But the premise is interesting, the ideas are cool and the atmosphere is genuinely scary. I certainly consider it to be better than Halloween, which is considered by most to be his best film but that I find overrated (sorry). This movie has a lot to recommend: good FX, Alice Cooper and a truly frightening pornstache. Check it out.




Well, there you go. My personal recommendations for a Horror Movie Night. And keep in mind that these don’t have to watched only on Halloween – Horror is good year round! ‘Cause when you continually confront the dull existential horror of your everyday life, the best way to entertain yourself at the end of the day is watching the horror of seeing someone’s eyes imploding or seeing the grim spectacle of endless corpses being dumped into a bottomless pit.

Pleasant dreams.

The Great German Vampire Films Complete Review Project ––– Part Two of Two

Halloween's a' comin' up, and I'm celebrating the occasion by posting up a lazy photo review of the original silent Nosferatu.  Yep, I finally got around to seeing the F.W. Murnau classic... more than a year after reviewing the Werner Herzog remake.  Oh well, better late than never.  Can't dally long (more horror movies to watch) so sit back, relax and enjoy as I bring you

Huh.  This one starts out just like the Herzog remake - KITTY!

You will see this smile in your nightmares tonight...

and this creep is the hero.

"Is your wife a goer, know what I mean?"

"She sometimes goes, yes."

 Count Orlock: He lives in the night, feeds on the blood of the living... 

and is capable of splitting an arrow in twain with his own gray goose shaft.

Man, those schnitzengruben will wipe you out.

"Hello, this is your 6am Evil Undead Alarm Call!  Up and at 'em!"

Count Orlock: vampire, feudal lord, package deliveryman.

Oh, it's one of those marriages.

"Our minds are joining, Ellen... they are becoming one and the same...."

"What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and... oh, shit."

Tomorrow: More Halloweeny Goodness.

Boldly Going Where Every Blog Post Has Gone Before

Well, I'm back as promised (well, a little bit late) with a positive review, although it won't be a conventional essay.  No, I'm feeling lazy so it's going to be another review in pictures, just like Die Nibelungen was.  And it will be positive in the sense that it will not be downbeat.  So you see, I am fulfilling my obligation to you the reader and thus am not technically committing a lie.  I'm slick, ain't I?

So what is the subject of this review?  Well, hold on to your hats because I'm actually tackling AMERICAN animation for once (why should the Japanese have all the fun?).  And it's a television program.  Made in the Seventies.  And the title of this gem is... Star Trek.  Yes, prepare yourself for some 70s Filmation Cheese (Hey, at least it's not as bad as Hanna Barbera - uh oh, there I go being negative, stop it, stop it....) and enjoy the ride through the Final Frontier as I give you

Kirk and Co. looking fabulous.

 Star Trek needs more miniskirt-centric episodes like this one (ahem).

Also, when did Nurse Chapel join Security?

Facts I Learned From Star Trek: The Animated Series,

#1: The Japanese did not invent animated tentacle rape.

I guess the ship's tailor is a Captain Picard fan.

 

Facts I Learned From Star Trek: The Animated Series,

#2: The color of you eyes...

 ...is the exact same as the color of your skin.

Also, Kirk apparently snorts cocaine.

"Spock, I think we'll have to practice harder 

if we want to win the interpretive dance competition."

 The first clue that this is a Saturday Morning Kid's Program:

Kirk gets hit on by a woman and he doesn't  immediately

"educate" her in "this thing you humans call kissing."

Spock, getting a free lapdance...

...and McCoy, getting his groove on.  Cue Marvin Gaye!

"They don't understand you.  Only I understand you, my love."

Alright, slashers. On your mark, get set....

Okay, before it was Kirk, now the whole bridge crew is trippin'.  What gives?

"What's that look, Jim?  What are doing with that tribble, Jim?
Where are you going to put that tribble, Captain?"

 Facts I Learned From Star Trek: The Animated Series,

#3: Captain Kirk laughs just like a Japanese schoolgirl.

For those of you with a Furry fetish, TAS DELIVERS!

"Is Nurse Chapel gonna hafta choke a bitch?"

 "Since joining these men I have seen shit that will turn you white."

 

Jimi Hendrix eat your heart out.

Holy crap, now it's a strung-out alien!  

What is with all the drug use on this show?

Well, there you go, that's Star Trek: The Animated Series.  It's an okay show.  It's not great, but it is an entertaining enough way to spend a half of an hour.  It's certainly a better Star Trek show than Voyager or the cosmic shit-storm that is (ack) Enterprise.  


There I go, being negative again...




Happy Place. 


Happy Place. 


Happy Place.