PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Head bangin'

I broke my nose and spent the morning with Kevin Smith. One figuratively and the other literally. You can guess which one is which I bet.

I had a real bad charleyhorse in the back of my calf this morning and it hurt like a sonofabitch. I fell getting out of bed and landed on my face. Luckily I didn't have my glasses on. I was sitting there in the half dark and felt liquid on my chest. I figured correctly that I had a nose bleed. I sat there for a bit letting it drip while I got my senses back. My nose bleed for a while and when I was cleaning up I discovered a nasty cut above my right eyebrow.

I didn't have any of the symptoms that come from a fall, but I put a cold washcloth on my nose, knowing about problems with brain swelling etc. I waited a bit and after having Simba and Sperhauk call me back to see if I stayed conscious I packed myself into my car and headed for the Park Nicollet Clinic grabbing Kevin Smith's new book Silent Bob Speaks. It's a collection of his essays for some magazines and internet sites. It's 325 pages and I figured I would be there for a while. I got to the PNC at 8 am and left just before 1 pm. I had almost finished the book.

The main news of the medical visit was I had broken my nose but it wasn't too bad. I have to take an antibiotic for ten days, pills that are huge, like swallowing the first half of my little finger. I have a cut above my eyebrow which I now believe is from the electrical cord that is on the floor. It's jagged and a good inch wide but not so deep. The doctor said there wasn't enough flesh there to stitch so they superglued it. I got a bit of soreness and for a while my chest muscles were pretty sore from being tense. Since I ate and came home I feel a bit better. I have to go back next week for an Ear, Nose and Throat doc to check me out but my nose isn't even that swollen, so I should count myself lucky.  I had been bragging a few weeks ago about not breaking anything on my body, but I guess if I had to break something other than wind this is the thing to break.

I enjoyed Kevin's book, he's an easy writer to read having a comfortable conversational style, and he's talking about something I am interested in - films and his films. The first third of the book is his running commentary about the casting of the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. There are lots of jokes and funny stories, a bit of dirt about Reese Witherspoon not being a very nice person, and Elisha Dushku and Elizabeth Shannon being really fun to hang with.

The middle of the book has essays on other topics like his obesity, lap dancing, DeGrassi Junior High, Britney Spears, California and New Jersey, and a couple of interviews that are more like loveletters to Ben Affleck and Tom Cruise. There is a nice trilogy of articles on the Jersey Girl film, which I really liked. All in all it's a good read and it kept my mind off of being at the clinic most of the time.

The Asian influence

I stopped into DreamHaven to see what new crap had showed up. Wednesday is new comic day. DreamHaven for the few that might not know is Greg Ketter's Science Fiction Bookstore and Comic Shop here in Minneapolis. I have worked there for many years as my part time job. I used to work more hours when there were two stores. Now I am there Sunday afternoon and Monday evening.

There were a few new things in this week. I don't buy many comics any more, this week there were two that I had ordered and two on the new release shelf, which is higher than normal. On the way to the new release shelf I found two issues of DONALD VA BAN HUU, which is published by the Saigon Times. The two issues were used and dated from November and December 1999. There are Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse stories as well as stories with Scrooge McDuck, the Beagle Boys, Gyro Gearloose, Pluto, Goofy, Magica DeSpell and Gramma Duck. There are pages of letters and non-fiction material. The nice thing about these issues is that there is an English translation for the comic page dialog. There are no translations for the other material. The other nice thing is they were priced at a quarter each.

They had been withdrawn from the Minneapolis Public Library, some how slipped into Greg's hands, only to be transfered to mine. I have a huge Disney comic collection.  I occasionally go out and buy some old issues to fill in gaps. It doesn't happen very often, there are a lack of sources here in town for back issues and the ones that show up are rather pricey, especially if they are in good condition.  I bought a 4 inch stack last fall at a comic convention, about 20 issues and that cost me $200. I have several other foreign Disney comics, they turn up occasionally and people have brought them from other countries knowing I would like them. All the rest have no translations though, so these Vietmanese issues are even more interesting. Disney comics are much more popular in other places than here. This is the same with most comics in other countries.

Earlier I watched The Grudge, which is a remake of the Japanese horror movie Juon. It has Sarah Michelle Geller, Clea Duvall, Bill Pullman and another favorite character actor - Ted Raimi, whose brother was the reason that I picked up the original and this movie on DVD. Raimi does a commentary on both the original and the remake. I have still not gotten around to watching Juon. I had promised Sperhauk that I would get The Grudge watched this week so he can borrow it. I had brought it to Friday night movie night and Joe Wesson was not interested in watching it, then I had put it off for a while watching other things. Last week we were going to watch it as Joe was not going to be there until late, but I grabbed Juon instead and we had to watch The Mysterians, which was not a bad thing.

If you haven't seen The Mysterians before I would highly recommend it. It's out here in the USA in a nice DVD from Toyko Shock. I liked seeing Sperhauk's copy so much I had to run out and buy one the next day to replace the bootlet tape I have, although I probably will keep the tape as it has a different translation. I need to look at it, if I don't need it I will sell it at DreamHaven. The Mysterians is a 1957 alien invasion movie. Aliens come wanting a piece of land and some earth women. There is a great giant robot attacking towns and destroying the landscape. Directed by Ishiro Honda who directed many of the early Godzilla films, is one of my favorite directors.

I wrote a bit in Tony Dalmyn's blog A Sea Of Flowers about seeing Matango. I am reprinting it below.

Just a bit about this great movie that has finally come out on DVD in the USA, and I am guessing Canada. Media Blasters/Tokyo Shock have just released Matango - The Attack of the Mushroom People. It's a 1963 Japanese Toho Studio horror film about a group of people shipwrecked on a small deserted island. They have little food and find that the strange mushrooms will keep you alive but with drastic complications. It's rather dark and gritty. It's one of my favorite movies and this is the third copy that I have bought, I had a bootlet VHS and still have a bootleg DVD. This new version looks great and has an interesting subtitled commentary by one of the actors in the movie. It's directed by Ishiro Honda who directed the first Godzilla and many others in that series. If you haven't seen the Japanese version of Godzilla, you really missing a great movie. It's nothing like the American version with Raymond Burr.

I have mixed feelings about watching Japanese horror, so I understand Joe's lack of interest. Most of them we have seen in the last while are not scary and don't move all that fast. I didn't find The Ring trilogy that great and wouldn't buy them. I did like the remake by Gore Verblinski somewhat but didn't buy it. Someday when it is cheap I might pick it up.

I don't usually get scared when watching horror movies, I get startled when something jumps out at me from the screen. Monsters don't scare me, homicidal maniacs don't scare me. The last time I was creeped out by a horror movie was the Blair Witch, and that was mostly because I don't like running into the dark. I hated that whinny bitch. I am more worried about walking into a dark alley or basement, tripping over something and breaking a part of me I cherish. Home invasion, now that's some scarey shit right there. I don't mind getting up in the middle of the night and walking through the dark house to look outside or make a trip to the bathroom for a pee, or go get a drink of water because I know where everything is and I rarely walk into stuff. It's when I place a new box on the floor, then I got to watch out.

The Grudge had me getting goosebumps on my bare legs, this is unusual. Now I did have no pants on, think what you will. I did get a bit of a tingle from the creepy spirits in the movie. I was telling this to Joe W. and I thought it might be the highblood pressure medicine I have just started taking. Like I said I rarely get scared by these horror films, and that is the only thing that is different from the normal turn of events. I don't know if I would recommend The Grudge, it was better than most of the recent Japanese horror films I have seen. I have a natural bias to many of the older Japanese films I know and love. Someday when it is not so late and I am not so tired I will tell you about some of them.

Branded, Have Gun -Will Travel & Mike Mazurki

I picked up the second DVD box set of Branded, Chuck Conner's series from 1965-66. Chuck plays Jason McCord, a soldier falsely accused of cowardice at the Battle of Bitter Creek. Here's a good synopsis of the series,

http://members.tripod.com/~northfork/branded.html

which is also retold in a great song in the opening credits. I remember the song to this day, but I could not tell you anything about any of the episodes. Like the one I am watching now, McCord runs into a group of black army men lead by Greg Morris who you might remember from Mission Impossible. Poor Greg is inexperienced and puts his men into a trap where they are attacked by Indians, McCord sends him off to get help. McCord gets caught by the Indians and Greg gets thrown in jail facing desertion charges. McCord talks to the Indians, Greg escapes to go help McCord, and the Indians make them fight to the death. What a crappy day at the office.

Unfortunately the low-rent company putting these out is using shorter versions of the shows which aren't the best quality. I believe stuff is cut from them and not just speeded up to fit the modern time slot. Shows ran about 25 minutes back in the 60's. Today they run about 22 minutes. Still, I bought the second season and I am enjoying them. I had seen the first season a few months ago. I picked it up having fond memories of it from it's original run, but so many of my memories improve over time. The series is OK not great, but it's watchable and the stories are good moral ones, with tough decisions that result in death or salvation. McCord's sense of right and wrong was certainly one of the things that shaped my sense of right and wrong as a child, along with a generous helping of mom. I can't say I always lived up to his ideals but I haven't been in any gunfights either.

When I found the first season of Branded at BestBuy I also picked up the first season of Have Gun - Will Travel Richard Boone's Western which ran from 1957-1963. I was more excited to find that. Paladin, like McCord a west point graduate, was a professional gunfighter who lived in San Francisco and traveled the west helping people who either paid him or just needed his help. Here's a bit of info on it:

http://www.hgwt.com/hgwt0.htm

I really enjoyed the first season of HG-WT. It is a better series than Branded. I was surprised on how gritty it is. I plan to pick up the other seasons when they come out. They have not been in syndication for some time. I saw some in the early 90's but black and white series don't play well to the modern audience and they didn't last long on what ever channel they were  on. HG-WT ran 225 episodes to Branded's 48, although the later was up against very tough competition on the other networks, like Bonanza and Ed Sullivan. Gene Roddenberry was a regular writer on the series, which was 4th in the rating the first year and 3rd for the next three years.

Richard Boone sure is cool, there's really nothing else to say. There were some good guest stars in HG-WT. The first season featured Claude Akins, Anthony Caruso, Harold J. Stone, Angie Dickinson, Strother Martin, Mike Conners, Ned Glass, Denver Pyle, June Lockhart (a love interest and unwanted frontier doctor), Mike Mazurki, Andrew Duggan, Pernell Roberts and many other great 50's and 60's character actors.  I have always had a fond place in my heart for hard working character actors.

I want to single out Mike Mazurki, a favorite of mine for over 40 years, and make a pitch to encourage people to take a look at Murder My Sweet, the 1944 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely staring Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. Mazuki, a vetran of over 100 movies and probably the same number of tv appearances, plays the hulking, simple and tragic Moose Malloy, recently out of jail and looking for his Velma. He hires Marlowe and it leads to the usual troubles, tragedy and death. It's a darn good movie and recently out on DVD, with a good commentary by film noir specialist Alain Silver. It also shows on Turner Classic Movies regularly. It will be on TMC 05/07/2005 at 8 am, probably eastern time. It's not a great adaption of the book but it is well worth a watch. Let me know if you like it.

Where it's from...

 
The title of my blog is taken from a line of dialog that Bruce Campbell speaks in Sam Raimi's Army Of Darkness. If you haven't seen it I would be surprised considering who I am talking to. That's one of my favorite pictures of Bruce above. It's actually a promo pic from the first Evil Dead movie. Below is Bruce introducing the local primitives to his Boomstick.

  
Army of Darkness is certainly one of my favorite films. It's always in my top 100. I have seen it more than a ten times I figure, which is a lot for me. I rarely have time to get back to the movies I have. There are many new things to watch on DVD...although that seems to be slowing down. I just don't seem to pick up as many as I did a couple of years ago. I did buy a lot of TV shows and now I am making DVD copies of the laser discs and tapes I have. If they stopped making films I could just watch my old ones...but where would all those people work...see the problem.

AOD has one of my favorite actors, Bruce Campbell, playing the lead role of Ash. He's probably never destined to be a big name star but he's got a lot of fans, and I consider myself one. His autobiography If Chins Could Kill Confessions of a "B" Movie Actor is a lot of fun. Look for his new book Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way in June. You can see him at http://www.bruce-campbell.com/

I am going to end my first post here to see what it looks like. More in the future. I don't like the spell checker on this interface.