PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

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I just read this article over on msnbc.com about science type guys seeing gorillas in the wild using tools. This is a first according to the article. I thought that maybe Planet of the Apes might not be too far away. This could be a good thing. And remember, they had some nice robes.

Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn

I picked up another copy of Evil Dead II, it's my third. I have the previous Anchor Bay dvd and a laser disc which is red. The new dvd has the most of the same material as the previous. Anchor Bay drops the full screen version, changes the previews and adds a new 16 minute featurette by Tom Sullivan. It's really a slide show with narration. Sullivan also worked on both Evil Dead films, in effects and animation, and he also designed the Book of the Dead covers for the special editions. To the left is the cover for the first movie. It doesn't look like the Book of the Dead in any of the movies. The second movie gets teeth, and if you poke the yellow eye, the book screams at you but not nearly loud enough.

It's cruel to be ganked

After cutting the grass and trimming some shrubbery to work off the anger about careless ebay sellers I watched a borrowed double feature.

First up, Ganked, Kel Mitchell's 2005 black music comedy. Sperhauk got a free screener from somewhere and he watched it while he was delirious with sick. He said I might like it, and I did. Kel plays a young guy who wins a contest from a recording company. Instead of a recording contract he's given a job in the mailroom. He meets the owner's daughter who steals his song and claims it as her own. He complains, she butters him up and steals another song. "You been ganked, player" she tells him. That's what we need, even more slang. Who's got the time to keep up with that. If the language keeps changing faster and faster we won't be speaking English 2005.9 by the time I retire. I think that's what Burroughs was talking about, language is a virus. And the sad thing, I won't even have noticed that it happened. Unless I read this blog 16 years from now. Fuck, I wasn't hopin' for that big of a commitment here. Anyway, Kel now vows revenge and he gets it. He sells her car, he gets her maced in an embarrassing public fight, his friend drugs her, they kidnap her and eventually propinquity brings the two of them together and they cement their love with smooching and hit records. I know, I know, you see that story all the time. I firmly believe people like a familiar story. Work in a bookstore and see what energy it takes to interest someone in something they aren't looking for, and that's after they ask. I gave that shit up. I like Kel Mitchell, he was also Invisible Boy in Mystery Men, he wrote this mess with his wife, and some guy named Kenn Michael directed it. Mitchell got his start on All That, which ran on Nickelodeon from 1995 to now. It appearently just got cancelled. Kel was a regular for the first 4 yrears, playing many characters in this pre/teen sketch comedy show. I watched it once in a while and it was good clean fun. That's where the Good Burger sketch began. It spawned the Good Burger movie. Back in Ganked there are a hodge podge of styles going on, as it switches between them for comedic effect. They don't all work and it's not a great comedy, the low budget detracts, but it's silly and fun. I'm glad I didn't pay for it. I like the Kenan and Kel Good Burger much better.

Greg had leant me the 1974 Swedish revenge thriller, ironically called Thriller - a cruel picture. Some of you might know it as They Call Her One Eye, or Hooker's Revenge. He had given this to me weeks and weeks ago. I was just not into watching it based on his description. I got to be in the mood for some movies, and lately I haven't been watching much. So, today, weeks later, most of those words have evaporated out of my head and while I was thinking cruel things about some ebay dealers, I thought I should finally check this out. It's violence filled alright, and there is lots of nudity and cruelty, even some hardcore inserts. It's a cult classic restored to it's former glory. That's what Synapse Films would like me to believe. The story is a time honored one, a young woman, mute from a childhood rape, accidently gets picked up by a suave fuck, he wines her, dines her and drugs her. Unfortunately, especially compared to the previous movie, she wakes up a heroin addict and she has a new job as a prostitute. Her pimp puts out her eye and on her day off she trains in martial arts and gun handling. We see those scenes over and over again, the director not wanting us to miss any detail of her evolvement. There are many scenes of hookering also, which is where the hardcore inserts scenes appear. They look so bad, added in. Not soon enough do we get to the revenge part of the movie and it's not that good. Our one eyed heroin heroine buys a car, steals a shotgun, and after a long sawing scene, she's off to off her pimp and his cohorts. Several of the baddies die violent deaths at the end of her shotgun, but the scenes are so poorly executed they're laughable. Not to mention the slow motion. Between the killin' there is lots of drivin', and some underwhelming car chases. It was during some of the un-exciting auto sequences that I just couldn't stop laughing out loud. The chase runs several cars off of the road and luckily they explode in great gassy fireballs. The effects are so poorly done, I laughed out load. In my favorite, a car is driven off the road and onto a grassy verge, where it passes infront of a poorly timed vertical whoose of fire, the source of which is so obviously planted in the ground. These are the things that I can easily ignore in a better movie but there are several poor choices in filmmaking going on here. The fight scequences are a mixed bag. There's too much slowmo and there is one really annoying part where the soundtrack is this annoying noise, a loud tick kind of sound, repeated over and over. This is a director who doesn't know how to economise, not on the budget but how long his scenes should be, or his editor failed him. Still many like this movie, it gets 6.5 on the IMDB fan-o-meter, but I don't think it lives up to it's title.

David Lynch speak to me

Greg lent me his copy of the David Lynch box set of short films and Eraserhead. When I saw Eraserhead in San Francisco back in the late 70's I was really intrigued by it. Now I can barely sit through it. His short films aren't fairing much better as they pass in front of my eyes. The guys had watched these during movie night when I was in Winnipeg. Luckily for me I was out of the country and didn't have to watch them at real speed. There are 6 short films on the dvd. Six Men getting Sick, The Alphabet, The Grandmother, The Amputee, these are the first four, done in the early 70's. They look like David Lynch art student films, and they really aren't much different from many other art student films. Eraserhead has a bit of that art student look, but by the time it was finished Lynch had made a major growth spurt in sophistication and technique over these short bursts of subconcious mentalness. Eraserhead also had the benefit of a story 0f sorts. Lynch has this fixation for rotting organic forms that I just don't care for. There is so much ugliness in his work. Look at the cover of the box. That's not an attractive piece of art, not something I would put up on my wall, although I might have 25 years ago. Even then I would have positioned it in with nicer things to create more of a contrast between them.

These short films don't speak to me in a language I can understand, although I think The Grandmother is about bedwetting. I wouldn't know what they are about without Lynch's telling me via the introductions, and even then he's often only talking about the circumstances that surrounded the making of the film. His vision in these early shorts is so uniquely his own, and so internal I have nothing to reference to, leaving me standing there wondering what the joke is. And let's face it, the more you know the more jokes you get. I ain't laughin' here, but I did get a smile from the fifth short. The Cowboy and the Frenchman was made in 1985 and it's a bit silly and fun. Some Frenchmen asked several directors to make shorts about their impressions of the French. Lynch dresses up three of his favorites, Jack Nance, Harry Dean Stanton and Tracey Walter, as cowboys and Michael Horse as an indian. Throw in a frenchman and you've got comedy. The sixth short is Lynch's contribution to the Lumiere and Company project from the late ninties. I'd seen that movie, a lot of shorts by many directors using the original Lumiere Brothers camera. I thought it was pretty boring and never kept a copy. Lynch was one of the few with a story in his bit, and there is a naked lady in a big glass tube of water, what's up with that.

Friday Night Movies 25

Our first feature was the 2003 Stuart Gordon film, King of the Ants. There were two films with the same name made that year. Here's a page from Yahoo Movies that mixes the two together. I don't know that we saw the better one. Stuart Gordon is probably best known in the horror genre for Re-Animator, and it's a pretty fun film. One of his best. I have rewatched it several times. Jeffrey Combs' Herbert West is really the reason the film is so re-watchable. King of the Ants doesn't fit into that catagory for me. I don't plan on getting a copy. Sperhauk is already thinking of selling his. And it's not that it was bad, it's just not that great that I would need to watch it more. Gordon's Space Truckers was more fun, and it has Debbie Mazar. This movie has Kari Wuhrer getting naked, and George Wendt getting his neck torn open. Those are some of the highlights. Our hero is a early 20 something looking for a calling. He falls in with low level bad men in the construction business. Always a hotbed of dishonesty. He makes all the wrong decisions and winds up being beaten by his boss and his cronies, in an attempt to brain damage him with out killing him. It's a long story at a 103 minutes, and there are some gruesome bits and some weird but cool brain damage sequences. He survives his beatings and escapes, recovers and returns to unleash vengence on his tormentors and rain fire down upon them. Everyone meets a gruesome death, ironically from the guy they created. And our hero heads off on his new career as an exterminator.

Our second feature, Curse of the Werewolf, was a 1961 Hammer drama with just a touch of werewolf. It drags the story over twenty odd years, from before Oliver Reed is born to the moment of his death. It seems a life time, even in those short 91 minutes. There is so much talking, both on and off the screen, that's always a bad sign. Mike slept for over half of it. Lucky Mike. A lot of people seem to like this film but I just found it slow moving and not very interesting. Oh, for my deck that plays stuff at 1.5 speed, I would only have sat through a 60 minute movie and it would seem faster paced. The werewolf hardly appears at all. You finally see the transformed Reed in full costume about the 80 minute mark, and it's not a pretty site. He looks like he belongs in Michael Jackson's Thriller. It's a good enuf looking picture, but the nice sets can't make the boring story any more interesting. Another one to give a miss on buying.

I love Donald Duck, but I wouldn't want to marry him

This is one of my favorite Donald Duck covers. It's by Carl Barks. I think it captures the very essence of Donald and his relationship with the boys. I love Donald's face, it's so alive, he's so happy. So happy, even though he might be in danger, he's so excited he doesn't even notice. Bark's was a gag writer for the Disney animation studio before he started drawing comics and he brings that gag man attitude to the stories. He builds his stories around gag ideas. The Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 10 pages were elaborate set-ups and pay-offs, often involving huge collateral damage, insanity, huge fights or contests of will between Donald and Huey, Dewey and Louie. They were loud and fast and funny. Donald often rushed into things and there were hilarious results. Other times he is the fantastic worker who fails miserably on the last job, often with huge amounts of chaos and jokes. I like Donald's elasticity here. He is so flexible. I also like the frozen moment. The action captured. But that's what good comics are about.

In one of my favorite stories Donald, Daisy and the boys are riding in Donald's Car. I really like Donald's car. He is still driving it today, over 50 years later. Must be a good car. They pass a sign for the town of Omelet. Donald hands out disguises for him and the boys. Donald explains to Daisy that he and the boys are not welcome in the town, but they need to go that way to get where they are headed. Donald proceeds to tell the curious Daisy the story of his attempt to run a chicken farm. It was located on top of one of those rolling hills, overlooking the town, which was named Pleasant Valley in those days. Things were going along pretty good, Donald had 10,000 chickens. Thinking he would speed things up growth wise Donald whips up a mess of vitamins and feeds that to the chickens. The chickens respond by dropping all their feathers. Thinking the loose feathers can be sold Don and the boys rake them into piles on the hill above the town. The town thinks it's snow already and begin tarring their roofs for the winter. While that is going on a big wind blows the feathers off the hill into the town. Donald is not welcome there anymore but he keeps on struggling. The chickens aren't laying eggs. The boys suggest selling the chickens for eating. Donald drives the ten thousand chickens right into the town thinking he can just load them up like cattle at the rail yard. He gets sued. Now he's so broke he needs the price of eggs to jump 60 cents, to a buck a dozen, to break even. He  starts stockpiling eggs. Soon there are a million eggs and their weight is too great for the flimsy stockade. It bursts. The eggs rush down the hill flooding the town to the roof tops. The people burn down the town to make it easier to remove the eggs. Donald quips on the way out "But you would think those soreheads could have spelled it 'Omelette' or something fancy. After all, those were mighty expensive eggs." The end, no lesson learned, back to the action next story. It's a funny story and the art makes it all the more special.

I went to look at my copy of Walt Disney's Comics (and Stories) 146 which has the above story. It turned out to be defective. I opened it to find not the Omelet story. On further inspection it turns out that the contents are from WDC&S 96. Rats! Luckily, the Nostalgia Zone has a fair one for 6 fifty. Still, now I got to go over there and it's such a crappy area to park in. I started to sort the unboxed comics to be mixed in with the older part of the collection. I need an assistant, I never get enough done. If I could get someone to sleep for me I could really get a lot of tv watched.

I'm Batman

I went to see Batman Begins with Sperhauk. We went to the Riverview, the wonderful cheap theater near our houses. It's only 2 bucks on tuesday. It's one of the few theaters that I go to anymore. It's has a nice ambience and it has great sound. Take the tour. If you look in the theater part, scroll over to the left side.  On the right hand side of the aisle count 8 rows from the front and 2 seats in. Sperhauk says that seat isn't any good. Don't sit there.

I liked Batman Begins. A fine adaptation of the Batman legend, lots of action, some good moral messages, mixed in with a touch of vengence and revenge. Much to learn Grasshopper, then the punching. Sperhauk's complaint was about the fights, too close and too quick to see much, I have to agree. It's a style I am not much caring for. There's a good story, some great villians and some great actors. Michael Caine, Gary Olman and Liam Neeson all stand out. Michael Caine's Alfred reminds me of the character he played in Cider House Rules. I really like Cider House Rules, but I have a thing for the way Lasse Hallstrom tells a story. Rutger Hauer, Morgan Freeman and Tom Wilkinson usually turn in good preformances, here they have small but pivotal parts, and do a great job. If I was a woman my age I would think that Morgan Freeman is so cute, but not as cute as Katie Holmes, who is cute as a button cute. Christian Bale is quite a talented guy, unfortunately I don't care to see many of his movies. I did like him in Shaft, he's so dislikeable, you wanted him to get fucked up. Hell! I enjoyed it. Here he pulls you in, keeps ya'. Hope he's in more movies I am interested in seeing. Looks like there is to be another Batman Begins. He'll begin after he gets his foundation fixed I guess. Oh, that could go so wrong in the hands of some writers. Imagine to yourselves.

I liked the story, the writer David Goyer has written an interesting list of genre movies. Christopher Nolan directed Momento and Insomnia, both of which I bought ages ago, and haven't watched yet. I'd rather watch Batman Begins over.

More stuff to look at

Gary sent me this link to a huge starship size comparison chart. It's pretty cool. Gary also sent this link to Tumbleweed Houses  a company that sells really cool small houses and buildings. I wouldn't mind having several, all crammed together. Lance sent this link to Cartman telling the Aristocrats joke, with the comment..."Dude! Just stop!" Bruce sent a link to a page on weird and cool vehicles, but only seems to have #93-100. How ever the  home site for RetroCrush is pretty fun. There's an interview with Bruce Campbell. Check that out. Lance sent a link to the Walker Art Gallery's article on "The Little Artists". There is a Walker Art Gallery here in Minneapolis, the link is to one in Liverpool, England.

Friday Night Movie 24

We had two big helpings of Go Nagai and I'm so stuffed I'm sweatin'. Either that or I over endulged on snacks. There was a plethoria of bad stuff, and I didn't even have any M&M's or chips.

The first of our Japanese double feature was the 2004 Devilman. This is the latest version of Go Nagai's 30 year old manga classic, and like many new versions just isn't up to snuff. I had seen a couple of cartoons back a few years ago and don't remember enough to compare, other than to say the start is simular enough. Our hero Akira and his best pal Ryo are played by real-life twins, both of whom are in some boy band or other. They don't so much act as pose, all moody and hair covered eyes. Ryo takes Akira to his dad's work and exposes him to the demon spawn his father has released. Instead of going all demony and joining Ryo in evil, Akira retains his human heart and his goodness. That's not good, and according to the IMDb neither is the movie, scoring a 3.7 with only 138 votes. I found a guy who's a fan on one of the message boards and he wrote a pretty good review, which certainly answered some questions. Like who is this giant black guy reading the news, badly, on the news station in Japan? Turns out that guy is Bob "The Beast" Sapp, a K1 champion kickboxer in real life. Why he's in the movie, still unknown. Not all answers are to be known. Still, he looks good as a three headed monster.

As the demon spawn spreads it turns more humans into demons and the rest of the humans go nuts hunting them down. There's a lot of heavy handed plot points and comments from the filmmakers. The movie races around, chasing demon and human alike, killing everything is sight. By the end of the movie the city is a blasted ruin, you expect the rest of the world is like that too. There are several types of demons, some ok, others not so ok. Silene is the demon in the picture. The complaint was she's topless in some versions of the story, but not here. I have an action figure with fake looking boobs, huge for the tiny figure. Here's a page unrelated to the movie but odd anyway. Here's an interesting page of things to buy. And another. Back to Devilman, after the humans fight each other in their cities, country after country falls under massive missle attacks. Eventually, it's all crap and the two friends have to battle it out until the credits. The movie tries to be overly emotional but comes off silly. There are boring parts, especially over the middle, and there is the poor cgi. I don't really care about the quality of the cgi in movies, I am flexible, the more I like the movie the more I can overlook. I just didn't care about this film much.

Cutie Honey is another Go Nagai character from manga and anime. It starts fairly promising with some yelling, fighting, hardwood floors and underwear. After the promising opening, the rest of the movie drags quite a bit, and there is hardly anymore underwear. The director has mostly directed anime and hasn't made such a good transition to live action. He's puttin' people to sleep here. Cutie Honey is a superhero girl who lives up to her name in this very 70's looking film. The lady cop is a cutie too.  Here's a picture of her on this review page. The evil demon villian isn't too cute. Cutie and the lady cop partner up with the help of a reporter. They defeat the evil Lady Jill. Here's a page with pictures of everyone. It's very cartoony as you can imagine, especially the hair on Sister Jill's main toady. More fun than the Devilman film but still might have been better. It didn't make me want to get a copy.

Winnipeg Day 4

After another sleepless night I finally got out of bed and had coffee and toast. Mike was watching soccer from England. Manchester versus Manchester. God, nothing's happening, it's worse than watching porn. At least, porn changes every 15 to 20 minutes. "Hey, lady, here's your pizza." Zip. " And here's your pepperoni!"

I packed and headed south just after 11 am. I had been hoping that the weather would be nicer than it was. It was hot, nearly 90. Just like if I was driving back in July, I had to keep the AC on. That sure cuts down on the gas mileage. I was pretty tired and had to keep sucking back the coffee's. Not so good for the tummy, by then I had eaten too many greasy burgers, good as they were. Luckily about6:30 I started to get my second wind and I felt better. Home soon after. Yeah, glad to be there, even with 36 emails.