PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Clilling Classics Disc 7

Slient Night, Bloody Night is the first movie on side A. Patrick O'Neal plays a lawyer who arrives in a small town to sell an old house for his client, Jeffrey Butler. It's a house with a past as a mental institution and you know that can't be any good. The local people are a weird bunch. John Carradine is a non talking newspaper publisher. He has a little bell he rings, and once he uses a piece of paper to pass his words along. Patrick and his girlfriend stay at the house of doom. They don't know it but an escaped lunitic is headed their way. After the couple goes to bed the lunitic arrives at the house all murdery. He starts the killin' by chopping Patrick and his girlfriend, with a big axe. Just as they were gettin' busy, baby. So the fairly big name is dead 30 minutes into the movie. Well, I don't care, he's no Drew Barrymore. Mary Woronov is the mayor's daughter. She befriends Jeffery, also newly arrived in town. They head over to the house to search for Patrick O'Neal. Seeing the sheriff's car they stop. Imagine what they find. You have to imagine. You can't see much action in the night scenes. They are way too dark. You heard a lot of heavy breathing in the darkness and some yelling when the killer gets the sheriff. After a lot of talk Tess, the town communication director, is next. In the dark. The sidetracked couple never got to the house. Jeff drops Mary at her house and leaves. She does flashback research about the Butler family. It's not good, but who's surprised. When Jeff returns they make a second attempt to get to the house. On the way they find John Caradine's burning car, but he's ot in it. Continuing on they run him over in the near dark. Someone's cut off his hands but we just have to take their word for it. It's too dark to see anything. I wonder how many times John has died in his career. The IMDb lists 332 projects he acted in. From 1930 to 1995. Nice. Our couple actually get to the house this time but Mary waits in the car. She discovers Jeff has taken the keys. Ironically we can see the keyless ignition clearly in the well lit dashboard close up. Mary is worried. Jeff finds his father's diary with a flashback in it. It's the long sad story of the mental institute and how his father let the inmates out to attack the doctors. After that sepia tone blood bath we jump back to present day. Tired of waiting in the car Mary enters the house to find Jeff with the knowledge that his father is alive. He wasn't burned up in the fire in 1950. Mary's dad shows up with a shotgun and in the shoot out he and Jeff are killed. By each other. Lunatic guy shows up. There's screamin'. That Mary is a good screamer, and a good shooter. She blasts that guy dead and falls all apart. A year later they tear the house down but that can't erase the painful memory of that fateful night. Well, that's more than you need to know. Better than many in the box it's still pretty tedious.

Panic was worse. It's an 1976 Italian/Spanish film called Bakterion. It's a typical low budget horror show about a Professor Adams and his virus. An accident occurs and the good doctor disappears. Some sort of shambling monster starts killing. David Warbeck is some sort of investigator named Captain Kirk. He thinks the monster is the doctor. There's more tedium as the authorites debate nuking the town and not much killin'. After a long chase in the sewers they get the monster. Hooray! It's all over. No nukes.

Messiah of Evil got reviewed back on March 25, a friday.

The Blancheville Monster was called Horror in Italy. It's a 1963 black and white film that does a pretty good job on the mood department. The story is simple. The nearly 21 year old daughter returns to the family home to find the brother has changed all the servants. They are an odd lot. Then she finds out that her dead father is really alive. He didn't die in the fire. He just got burned really bad, went insane from the pain, and now believes that the only way to break the family curse is the kill the daughter before her 21st birthday. Luckily he's chained to the wall in the locked tower. Oh, no! He's escaped. It looks bad for the daughter. It's a slow mover of the old school variety that rates an honest 5.2 on the IMDb. It's pre 20th century setting and costume remind me of Roger Corman's Poe films. It's not as good as Corman but it's highly watchable. The sets are great. I can't tell what's a set and what's a location. The castle and old ruins used in the film have some remarkable areas. Very dark and moody. There's a lot of talking and walking, sometimes both at once. Strange things start to happen to the characters as the story unfolds. I'm watching it in a tiny window on my monitor, and it looks pretty good. The sound is a bit hissy but you can't do much with these cheap versions. Still, a better pay off than many of the movies in this set.

Herge and Tintin

TINTIN AND I PROFILES COMICBOOK CHARACTER & RECLUSIVE CREATOR ON PBS

Anders Ostergaard's 2004 documentary, TINTIN AND I, about TINTIN creator Herge, premieres this week as a P.O.V. event on PBS stations in the U.S. In some parts of the country the show starts July 11, 2006, in Los Angeles it airs July 15 at 9:00 pm on KCET and in New York City, the doc airs July 13 at 3:30 am and again July 17 at 2:00 am on WNET. For other cities, check your local listings.

Interviews with Belgian cartoonist Herge reveal political and psychological forces behind creation of legendary boy hero, Tintin, In conjunction with the doc, the PBS website has audio and video interviews with the film's director Ostergaard, plus a series of online interviews with comic artists (Jessica Abel, Daniel Clowes, Phoebe Gloeckner, Jason Lutes, Seth and Chris
Ware).

Appearing from 1929 to 1982, the comicbook series took Tintin to the planet's most exotic places to confront all sorts of danger, treachery and political machinations, with an emphasis on the fast-paced visuals of trains, planes, cars, bombs and other new technologies. Though Tintin is not as well known in the U.S. as in Europe, his distinctive tuft of ginger hair and Herge's no less distinctive drawing style will ring a bell with many Americans.

Tintin was literally and emblematically a Boy Scout who always lived up to the Boy Scout code, no matter how dire, dark, strange or adult the situation. Herge totally identified with this ideal. But it was the treacherous and uncertain world around Tintin into which Herge poured the
reality of his own life. Based on 14 hours of audio interviews recorded in 1971 -- heard here for the first time -- TINTIN AND I shows that Herge, while trying in life to live up to the idealized Tintin, ended up creating in art a powerful graphic record of the 20th century's tortured history.

P.O.V. will also present with the doc the award-winning short film, LAWN, by Monteith McCollum, who directed P.O.V.'s HYBRID (2002). American television's longest-running independent documentary series, P.O.V. is public television's premier showcase for point-of-view, nonfiction films.

In 1971, the French-born Numa Sadoul (later an actor as well as a writer) was a young journalist doing a series of interviews with comicbook artists. Drawn to Brussels, the center of European cartoon art, Sadoul took a chance and knocked on the door of the artist he wanted most to meet.

He had no reason to expect a welcome from Herge, with the nom de plume of Georges Remi, whose creation, THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, already had been captivating millions of European children and adults for more than 40 years. Since World War II, Herge had had to face a blacklist for working under the German occupation, the embarrassment of abandoning his Catholic marriage and a nervous breakdown. The naturally reticent artist had grown even more reclusive.

Sadoul wanted to ask what Herge thought was so enthralling about the TINTIN series. Tintin, the forever-young art deco Boy Scout who never shied from danger or from doing the right thing, seemed too simple to explain the series' iconic status. Herge consented to being interviewed on audiotape. The encounter turned into 14 hours of audio interviews, recorded over four days, in which Herge, opened up with remarkable candor. Though the interviews later became the basis for a book, they were so heavily edited and rewritten by Herge -- perhaps recollecting the reasons for his former reticence -- that the book was far from a faithful representation of his
thoughts over those four days in 1971.

Now, 30 years after the fact, and with the full support of the Herge estate, Herge's talks with Sadoul are the basis for TINTIN AND I. Herge's own voice -- gentle, prodding, laughing -- takes viewers through the twists and turns of a life he readily admits was written into the adventures of the Boy Scout he once thought he was, or at least strove to be, even as the European world was spinning violently out of control. Director Ostergaard, with affection for Herge's visual universe, does the master's art homage by animating archival footage of Herge to sync up with Sadoul's audio, lending Herge's voice an uncanny visual presence. He has also turned some of the TINTIN series' most famous panels into 3D scenes, yielding new insights into Herge's art, especially its detail and dramatic formal structures.

Sadoul is also on hand, as he recounts his fortuitous meeting with Herge. Scholars Harry Thompson (who died in 2005), Fanny Rodwell, and Gerard Valet add their appreciations and accounts of the social and artistic circumstances under which Herge worked. Even Andy Warhol, in archival footage, turns up for at least 15 seconds in appreciation of Herge's art.
But it is the voice of Herge himself, intertwined with his animated image and striking family and public archival footage, that forms the drama of TINTIN AND I.

As recognizable in Europe as Superman or Mickey Mouse in the U.S., Tintin had neither super powers nor an anthropomorphic fantasyland to provide his fans with escape from a world of economic depression and war. In fact, Tintin, a very pro-active Boy Scout, flew right into the face of predicaments that, in detailed visuals and ever more complicated storylines, all too chillingly replicated the world's real dangers. Colonialism, war, oppression, criminal conspiracies and the promise and terrors of technology accelerated Tintin through the 20th century -- and his creator through an evolution of consciousness.

TINTIN AND I recounts the crisis in Herge's life in the late 1950s in part by an exploration -- literally entering 3D animations -- of the strip that many regard as Herge's masterpiece, TINTIN IN TIBET (1960).

"Millions of kids in many different countries have grown up with the ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, which is reason enough to make a portrait of Herge," said Ostergaard. "But Herge's story, the life of a dreamer whose inner clarity was so much in conflict with the world outside him, was very moving itself. Can't you, especially if you are an artist or other creative type, just remain inside the dream? You can't. Not without paying a high price. It's a sad story, I guess, but the result was TINTIN, a visual icon of the 20th century."

TINTIN AND I is a production of Angel Production (Denmark) and Moulinsart Production (Belgium) in co-production with Periscope Prods. (Belgium), Dune (France), Leapfrog (Switzerland), RTBF (Belgium), Avro (Netherlands) in association with France 2, VRT, DR TV, France 5, Suisse Romande, SVT, NRK, YLE-FST and RUV.

Produced by American Documentary Inc. and in its 19th season on PBS, the award-winning P.O.V. series is the longest-running series on television to feature the work of America's best contemporary-issue independent filmmakers. Airing Tuesdays at 10:00 pm, June through October, with primetime specials during the year, P.O.V. (www.pbs.org/pov) has brought
nearly 250 award-winning documentaries to millions nationwide, and now has a Webby Award-winning online series, P.O.V.'s Borders. Since 1988, P.O.V. has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent nonfiction media to build new communities in conversation about today's most pressing social issues.

American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc, www.americandocumentary.org) is a multimedia company dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings.

From the Animation Newsletter. Back to Garth. Hey, this sounds like it might be good, I haven't seen this yet on the local station, but I forget to check as PBS isn't a very much watched channel in this house. I really like Tintin. It's a series I started reading back in the early 70's. There was a series of animated cartoons a few years ago. I just transfered them to dvd not wanting to pay for a real set of dvds. They are not as good as the comics. Which you can get at some of your local comics shops, or online. You can read more about Tintin here, and here, and a list of books here.

Friday Night Movie 73

According to the IMDb John Saxon acted in over 180 things, but he only directed Death House, or Zombie Death House as the movie has been retitled for the RetroMedia DVD release. It's not surprizing that he didn't direct any more movie. It's not a great thing. It's watchable. Occasionally it's awful, occasionally it's good. Often in the same scene. There is a co-director named Nick Marino in the credits so maybe it's not all John's fault. The evil going on in the movie is all John's characters fault. He's is an evil government project leader. He's got scientists making a mind controlling super soldier serum. It's being secretly and illegally tested on prisoners. They get super strong alright. Then they get all fucked up and start killin' people. The prisoners take over the prison after many are infected with the virus. It gets ugly. John Saxon keeps inserting people into the infected prison, without telling them what's going on, including the scientist who worked on the serum originally. She's a reporter now. Even the Warden's family is there. Mom and dad don't make it, but the kids are rescued by the hero bad guy and the blond scientist/reporter. Most every one dies and the prison gets blow'd up pretty poorly.

Colossus and the Amazon Queen is an Italian movie from 1960 starring Rod Taylor. It's crap but sort of funny, mostly from the dubbing. Even Rod is dubbed by someone else. He didn't remember it too fondly in interviews, claiming he was embarrassed from his lapse of sanity and he had wanted a free trip to Italy so he could bang Anita Ekberg. You can read a bit more at the Complete Rod Taylor Site. Rod and Ed Fury, a big hansome guy, are shanghaied by slavers. The men are sold to the amazons, mated with, then enslaved in the mines. Rod and Ed proceed to shake up the amazon society. It's a pretty whacky society with the male and female role reversal. At least that's what I think the movie was trying to pull off. But these guys couldn't pull their own pants off at bed time. There's some tired comedy with really effeminate men and manly amazons in domestic situations. There's some bad fights that made me laugh. This movie can be found in the Sci Fi 50 Movie Pack. It's not something one should buy on it's own. I had seen it before, I watched that whole pack, but I did not remember it at all. It's been a couple of years, I was mostly likely at the PC while I was watching it, and it's totally forgetable.

Demento duo make Important Pictures

SOUTH PARK DUO JOIN TWO LIVE-ACTION FILMS
For their next foray into features, SOUTH PARK creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have high school comedy and "rubber suit" monster movie in the works at Paramount, reports the trades.

The demented duo, who have re-named their Paramount-based company Important Pictures, will first make the Jeff Roda-scripted high school laughter MY ALL-AMERICAN. They will follow that film up with GIANT MONSTERS ATTACK JAPAN!, a film written by J.F. Lawton (UNDER SIEGE) that will combine live-action with the "rubber suit" monsters like GODZILLA. Parker will direct each film and Stone produce. They will also work revisions with the writers. Sean Daniel and Nickelodeon will also be producers on GIANT MONSTERS.

Parker and Stone are scheduled for a 2007 production start on ALL-AMERICAN, planning it during a hiatus from SOUTH PARK, which this week launched its 10th season. "Neither of these movies feel like vehicles for big stars, but this will be our opportunity to find out if there are any actors left who want to work with us," Stone said. "We learned from the last two films that these can't all be self-generated," Stone said. "Trey and I are script whores, so we'll be very involved in shaping these projects. We've averaged a movie every five years. We'd like to make more and produce films that give other directors a chance."

Garth here - This was a snipit from the Animation Newsletter that I get. I've liked all of those guys movies so far. As always I recommend Cannibal - the Musical. It's a favorite of mine. I just love those songs. And the cannibalism is pretty funny. Mind you, that's such an easy subject to yuck about.

Grindin' Away at the pile

Normally I would watch a shit load of movies all weekend and not think much of it. This weekend I was pulling things off of the shelves in the little room off the living room. It's a small room full of stuff. The shelves were four in number, part of a bigger unit filled with many a thing. The shelves hold the dvd's that I have bought but haven't watched. There are many, it's a virtual digital legion, but the numbers are down by 10 this weekend, and that meant that I could consolidate a bit and clear off the fourth shelf. There are still just over 4 feet of dvd's to watch. Some are TV series dvds and they hold more discs per inch of shelf than the movie dvds. I don't know how many hours that is. Come over and count for me.

Before movie night I watched The Forgotten. It's got Julianne Moore and she's great. Big hand. This movie had been watched at movie night while I was away in Winnipeg. I saw it at Target for 6 bucks and bought it. I liked it. I don't want to give away the secret of the film, so I won't give too much away. I liked the concept of the story and the action supports it. Nothing is wasted and nothing is too spectacular. Except that one bit. That was fucked up. It's a good solid piece of story telling. It gets a 5.8 on IMDb and that's about where it should be. The cast is good, they deliver some good actin'. It all depends on your buying into the story. It's emotion driven rather than action driven, even though there is some running and a nice car crash.

I bought The Ninth Gate to listen to Roman Polanski's commentary. It's fair, not very incitful, and often just stops. The movie looks great most of the time, has a pretty good story but I don't care for the ending. The whole bit with Johnny Depp fucking the devil in the woods while the castle burns. It just seems so dumb. The basic story has Johnny as a shady rare book dealer. He's sent by Frank Langella to find the last remaining copy of a devil raising book. Why do people always want that devil raisin' book. It just leads to bad things happenin'. Johnny does find the book and lots of people get killed along the way. A guy burns up real good, and Johnny has sex with the devil. Or maybe she's the devil's helper on earth. It's hard to tell. Even Roman didn't know. Maybe it wasn't spelled out in the book he based the movie on. He cut a lot of story from El Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte, in fact everything about Dumas. I haven't read the book. Doubt if I will.

I've had Rumble Fish for ages, at least a couple of years. I had seen it before, when it was new, and liked it then. It's still good. Very arty with a strange mix of styles. It's black and white with occasional bursts of color. The fighting fish are in color. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983. Matt Dillion is Rusty James and he's a punk in a gang in this stylized 50's-60's small town America. His brother, The Motorcycle Boy, is legendary. Rusty James does not live up to The Motorcycle Boy's rep, he just does not have the stick-to-itivness that a leader needs. He misses his rumbles. Not because no one's having 'em. He just forgot and now he's late. He's not a focused guy at school or out on the streets. Nothing worse than an unfocused hoodlum. Can't stay out of jail that way. The Motorcycle Boy is played by Mickey O'Rourke. It's a good preformance. He returns to town with news of the outside world. I used to know who said you can't return home again and that sure is true for The Motorcycle Boy. It's all tragedy and angst at the end of the movie, and still I liked it. This is the kind of movie that speaks more to the young, they who have some changes to get under way, lessons to learn. Show someone who's twenty this movie, and tell them to get on with it. Then we'll see what happens. Hope they don't burn down my house.

I finally got around to David Cronenberg's Spider. I had seen the movie before. We watched it at movie night back in 2003. The movie is a weird one. Ralph Fiennes is a man released from a sanitarium into the hands of Lynn Redgrave. She is in charge at a halfway house in London in the 40's. Spider has a hard time dealing with people, he is withdrawn and has a lot of weird habits. As he wanders around the area we see bursts of his past, real and imaginary, which lead him to his final break through. Then it's back to the wacky farm for Spider. It's a dark film, in story and image. Certainly won't appeal to most people. From the commentary it sounds like some of the people who did see it had trouble with understanding it. It's not that hard to understand, but if you weren't paying attention you won't know who Miranda Richardson is playing. I thought it really helped to have Cronenberg explain what he was thinking when he was making the film. He adds a nice extra layer of story to the film. He almost always has an interesting commentary. They do nicely enhance his films. I was glad to see with Spider and the wonderful A History of Violence that Cronenberg is exploring new areas. Less physical and more mental.

There are two good reasons to pick up the new dvd of Crumb. It has a commentary by Roger Ebert and Terry Zwigoff. It's an interesting commentary most of the time. The two worlds, of cartoonist turned filmmaker and of film critic, collide in an nice way. Ebert knows little about the comic scene but he doesn't come off too badly. People don't know of the comic book industry. The guy who owns Crossroads Stamps didn't know of the X-men until he saw the movie. And I'm bettin' he knows less about Robert. So, I liked the commentary, that's one. The other is a comment in the commentary. Zwigoff says there was something mismastered in the other dvd. I haven't compared them but he thought this was a much better transfer. That's good too. There's nothing much else on the disc. A scene from Art School Confidential. If you haven't seen Crumb, it's worth a look. He's an interesting guy and the family is pretty out there. You don't see many like that.

I bought Bullet in the Head last year. The Hong Kong dvd's were finally cheap enough. It's the 125 minute version, on a disc from Hong Kong. The pictured disc is the Tai Seng disc which is only 117 minutes. There's supposed to be another version of the movie that is a bit longer but I haven't seen it. BitH, like God of Gamblers 2, was always 50 bucks on the early dvds. Lately they have gotten to affordable levels like $12-15. Bullet in the Head is John Woo's delightfully bombastic look at 60's life in Hong Kong. Some guys are looking forward to poor propects in HK after they kill the gang member who robbed them. They run off to Viet Nam carring some contraband to sell. They get caught up in the conflict. All their goods are destroyed. Our trio fall in with criminals. Simon Yam plays a white suited criminal type. He's always great. They all accidently wind up in a prisoner of war camp run by the Viet Cong. It just goes on and on, one brutal scene after another. Not so brutal you puke but pretty tough. And we still haven't gotten to the bullet in the head. That's a motherfucker right there. Snakes on a Plane ain't got nothin' on this mo-fo. It's a pretty good movie. It's just not going to appeal to everyone.

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi and Sonatine are packed into one box. Both are Beat Takeshi Kitano movies. He's a Japanese actor and comedian. He's the guy who made that stupid show from Japan. It's the one with the castle and weird stunts. People fall on huge rollers and big boulders fall down a ramp and hit people. It's dubbed over here with gag lines and commentary. He's also the guy who makes violent cop and gangster movies. In fact, one is called Violent Cop. It's about a violent cop. I didn't think he was violent enough, but I'm here in the US, and he's in Japan. Sonatine is a violent gangster movie. I saw it years ago and have a laser disc. It's a pretty slow movin' movie. There isn't much excitement, even when people are having a gun battle. Kitano plays the lead character. He's a local crime boss with a nice money makin' territory and he's being played by his bosses in a land grab. They set him up and he knocks things down. Everyone dies. Except the hooker. I know, it's weird, but according to Quentin Tarantino this was ground breaking stuff. Not the kind of movie movie go-ers in Japan were used to. Didn't make much money but sucked up the critical praise like a sponge. Zatoichi is Kitano's version of the Shintaro Katsu Zatoichi films. Most of the series is great. Nice tight little action dramas with great fights and lots of killing. The bad guys get their due, often in spectacular and/or humiliating ways. Very bloody at times. Lots of stabbin' and slashin' with swords. The modern version doesn't really improve anything on the old series. It's adds some CGI to the fights. Most of the spurting blood is CGI. The story is similar to what might have gone on before, with a bit more comedy.

I have seen But I'm A Cheerleader several times. It a hoot to me, it's sexual subversion to some. I like the look of the movie and there are a great bunch of young and old actors to watch. Natasha Lyonne plays Megan. Mink Stole and Bud Cort play Megans parents. RuPaul Charles appears out of drag, and Cathy Moriarty is wonderfully strict. Megan cheers in school and dates a football player. Her family and friends think she's a lesbian. Off to deprograming camp with Megan. Clea Duvall plays another girl caught up in the drama at camp. And what a place it is. The color choices for the sets are great. It's a very pink movie at times. Blue for the boys.

I don't know why I bought The Lawnmower Man. I think because it was science fiction and there weren't many discs available used in the 20th Century. That's when I got it, back when there was a CD store above the old Dinkytown DreamHaven. All of that's gone now. For some reason I never got around to watching that dvd. It might have been 2000 that I got the movie. It's that old anyway. It not the best movie that's for sure. Kind of a modern jazzed up Charly, with lawnmowers and meglomania. I heard the second one was worse. I might have even seen it. I just don't remember. I did listen to the commentary and it was ok. They were proud that their effects movie cost 30 million and The Terminator cost so much more. You got more in The Terminator. Jeff Fahey is no Arnold. I don't care for Jeff Fahey, something about him bothers me.

Friday Night Movies 72

We watched the now-oop Anchor Bay 3 disc dvd edition of Suspiria, Dario Argento's 1977 film starring Jessica Harper. I have mixed feelings about Dario and his so called film makin'. At times he's great and interesting, and at other's, he's absolute crap. I'm planin' against the grain here. Dario is a huge horror god. But I'm not worshipping and here's a bit of trivia from the IMDb page, where the film gets a 7.2 as a score, to illustrate.

Director Dario Argento's original idea was that the ballet school would accommodate young girls not older 12. However the studio and producer (his father) denied his request because a film this violent involving children would be surely banned. Dario Argento raised the age limit of the girls to 20 but he didn't rewrite the script, hence the naivety of the characters and the occasionally childlike dialogue. He also put all the doorknobs at about the same height as the actress' heads, so that they will have to raise their arms in order to open the doors, just like children.

That's the trouble with Dario, he's a weird one. And Suspiria is a weird one. I'm no stranger to weird things, I've spent my whole life looking under artistic rocks, but I think Dario is just not quite at the brilliant level. He tries hard, and occasionally has a nice piece of film to show off, but mostly he's average. Then he does stuff like the dialog thing. As we were watching I kept being annoyed by the dailog. I didn't guess why until I read the above trivia piece. Maybe he doesn't try hard enough for me. Jessica Harper arrives at her new ballet school in the middle of a thunderstorm. There's a storm at the front door when she arrives. A young woman leaving yells some clues to Jessica, who isn't let into the building. After Jessica leaves in her taxi we follow the other young woman to her destination, the apartment building of a friend. The building, like so many of the locations, has an amazing decor. Dario's production team does a remarkable job. It's Italy in the mid 70's, the height of the design riots, and color was being shotguned into the chests of the unsuspecting public at every turn of their heads. The young woman isn't safe at her friend's apartment, the killer arrives all stabby. She is chased onto the roof. Why, oh why, do they run up. After being stabbed on the roof she falls through the skylight of the building. Falling glass and metal kill another woman in an improbable manner. That's just the start of the killin'. There are several kills and a whole lot of maggots before Jessica finds out the deep dark secret at the end of the film.

I don't think there was a deep dark secret at the end of Equinox. The secret is how did it get to be a Criterion disc. It's probably the worst film on their list of over 350 films. There are two versions here. The 1970 theatrical release and the original 1967 film. I have a copy of the original from somewhere. I watched it a couple of years ago. I don't remember much of it. The movie's claim to fame is having Dennis Muren as a special effects guy. He's an uncredited director also. Jim Danforth did some stop motion animation. We watched the original version from 1967. It was the longest 72 minutes I ever fidgeted through. It's sunday morning and my back is still sore. Some 20 somethings are on the way somewhere and they get caught up in some magical goings on. When they arrive at the cabin of the friend, it's a wreck and the friend is gone. Frank Bonner, WKRP's Herb Tarlek, plays one of the group of four. Fritz Leiber, the science fiction and fantasy writer, plays an old coot. Leiber's dad was an actor and they both appeared together in The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1939. Back in Bronson Canyon with the teens we get some killin' by animated and physical monsters. There's a now you see it, now you don't castle. This is where all the monsters are coming from. There's an invisible barrier keeping it hidden most of the time. Eventually it's over and we can run away home.

Oreo Dulce de Leche

I bought a pack of these while I was at the store over lunch. I needed some supplies and these cookies caught my eye. I ttok them into work and three people tried them so far and no one is jumping to repeat the eatin' of a cookie. Not a good sign. The Oreo mint and creme cookies are great.  I dont' even buy them anymore as they are addictive. These new Limited Edition ones are not so good. I wish I could find a picture. I'm a work and don't have a long break.

Mira, Mirror

While I was at job number one I finished Mira, Mirror by Mette Ivie Harrison over lunch. Ham sandwiches. When I got to job number 2 there was the newly issued paperback. The hardback came out in 2004. The pb and hb share the same cover by Lori Koefoed. It's the cover that attracted me to the book. Very interesting look. Caught my eye. The story is related to Snow White. It tells the back story of the magic mirror. The mirror, Mira, has a good voice and she tells an interesting story. The well written story flows along nicely with lots of characters and situations. There's no Snow White or the 7, just a sliver of a mention in passing. Most of the story takes place a hundred years after the Snow White story we know. The mirror is found by a runaway peasant girl, who carries it out into the world and some stuff happens and then it's over. There's some death. It's more of a book for young girls than young boys. There are a lot of feelings and introspection, not so much punching, and a nice layer of magic and evil. I'd still recommend it to everyone except Mack Bolen readers, they probably wouldn't like it as much as The Executioner. Especially the part where he knifed that guy. Wait a minute. There is a lot of stabbing in Mira, Mirror. Maybe they would like it. You just never know with people. They will surprise you.

New paper

I went to the Second Sunday Stamp Show yesterday. There were 4 dealers there. Just my luck. Luckily the new guy had little I might have wanted. I had gotten a postcard from this other dealer, Dan Lemke, informing me he had gotten together some runs of current Japan. Unfortunately, that stuff I got. I was really interested in going through his singles and sets. That's how you buy stamps. Single and sets or in big lots. The singles and sets have been identified by the stamp dealer and put into some sort of holder.

The stamps on that white card are some sort of official stamps from Peru. I didn't look them up. It's hard to see but the front of that white paper card is three quarters covered with clear plastic. The plastic stops just below where it says Cat. Val. 55 cents. I don't know where the cents sign is. I'll have to look for that some day. This plastic is sealed on three sides, which forms an open top pocket, which holds the stamps. This is how most singles and sets are sold. You see these long red boxes at stamp shows. Larger things are sold in larger versions of the same concept.

There a large sheet that is punched for a 6 by 9 inch binder. These are good for larger size stamps or souvenir sheets. That's a whole 'nother problem with stamp collecting, too many god damn souvenir sheets. Some are cheap and others dear. You can usually find big lumps of them for sale at a low price but that's because no one is looking very hard to buy those sheets. Larger souvenir sheets can be stuck in 8 1/2 by 11 inch size display sheets which are punched for a regular size three ring binder. Stamp dealers and collectors are heavy binder users. Sheet protectors too. I have more than a dozen 3-ring binders filled with stuff that's partially sorted or mounted for display of some sort. 

I had a lot of manilla stock sheets that were in binders but that was bulky and I recently emptied and tossed all those binders. Manilla stock sheets are another way you see stamps for sale. Collections and lots are the cheapest way to buy stamps. These are stamps in a lump that could be arranged in just about any imaginable format you can think of. People store stamps in many things as well as all those binders. I was looking at the eBay collections listing and there were some amazing piles of stuff to buy. Buying a massive collection is a good way to start a collection as the  cost per stamp is lower than buying them by singles and sets.

There's one on there today that has a Minkus World Wide Album in 10 volumes. The seller says that the replacement cost of the album and binders is $2000. The bid is $480 with 13 bids and three days to go. I might remember to keep an eye on it, I did mark it at My eBay but that's no guarantee I'll put it down here. The seller doesn't tell you how many stamps there are, but they do show you 200 pictures of what's in the album. It seems to work, and I can't get over the number of pictures. If you need to show a lot of pictures there are ways to do bulk display. Sun Philatelic seems to have a lot of collections for sale all the time. Makes sense, dead stamp collectors all  over New York, lots of bulk to move.

There was another collection that looked interesting. It had 285 pictures. All the binders fill 5 large boxes. It's just over 200 bucks right now and days to go. Those two low things to the right of the front row of binders are cigar boxes. That's another thing you see stamps in. Loose or in glassine envelopes, a box lot for sale. If you are lucky there might be some better things in them, junk if you're not, you have to look carefully before you buy. I didn't buy any boxes, just some nice stamps for my Japan album.

I did get one of the sets that I like for some reason. The stamps are to commemorate the 75th  Anniversary of the Japanese Red Cross. They were issued May 1, 1952. I like them quite a bit. I like the smiling nurse, that's what you want to see when you're in a hospital. Not so much the lily's. I also have a fondness for Red Cross stamps. It's was a fairly often commemorated subject, back in the day. Back then most of the stamps were monochromatic and that burst of red really stood out.

Update. The 10 volume set went for $1725 and the 5 boxes went for $811.50.

Friday Night Movie 71

Sperhauk had found a copy of Martial Angels for a dollar at the Half Price Books clearance tent. It's a movie worth a dollar, especially since it's a single disc dvd that comes in a two disc case. Put the movie in a single dic case and switch the paper insert and you have a two disc case to use where you need one. Nearly worth as much as the movie. I have taken to putting dvdr's in the cases of store bought movies. This, rather than putting them in their own seperate jewel cases. Most of the dvdr's that I have made reside in paper sleeves. They are much cheaper than jewel cases, and while I got several hundred cases for free, the space saved by going paper is more important than saving a few bucks. The paper sleeves take up a fifth of the space of a jewel case. They take up even still less room when they are stored in something nearly hollow already is taking up some cubes.

Back to Martial Angels. It's fair to middlin', a bit slow in places and filled with giggling girl/women crammed into tight fitting leather outfits who occasionally kick some butt. Actually they gun down a lot of Russian Mafia with high powered weapons, but that's just one scene. The rest of the action is hit or miss, with the latter slightly in the lead. Some of the fights are pretty poor, both in execution and in capture by the film crew, while others have some nice action elements. The MA's are a gaggle of orphans, who became The 7 Beautiful Catburglars in the movie's back story. In a plot with elements pulled right out of someone's ass all kinds of movie's you've seen before, the girls reunite to steal some software. It's to be traded for Cat's ex-boyfriend who's in the hands of the evil Russian Mafia. There's some fighting and a lot of girl on girl action, but sadly the only intercourse is verbal, and it's not that. Just girly chit chat and lots of flashbacks to past love. The movie pretty much stops to engage in romantic subtext with smeary soft focus teary eyes. This happens way more often than you might appreciate. Eventually it's over. All the boyfriends are dead. That makes you think. Some pussy has just too high a price. Time for some more fare from the Craptastic, with a Capitol C, Drive-in Classics 50 Movie Pack.

Death by Dialog is an aptly named film. The story is about a cursed script that kills people. The dialog of the film kills me. The first guy who reads the script gets burned up pretty good, and it's a nice long fire scene, but after that it's pretty average. Unfortunately the sound is not good and the cameraman is not your award winning type. Tha actor's are fair to poor and their characters are not endearing. As our cast is picked off one by one their deaths are depicted in different ways. Some better than others. In one scene a woman is blasted off a guy when they are having sex in the hayloft. She's blown through the wall of the barn and out out of camera range. Wow. You don't see that very often. Well, not that often with bare boobs. The rest of the movie isn't so good. There is a rubber monster that's pretty bad looking, and one of the guys looks like Willam Katt, and the black guy, who's wearing a red shirt, doesn't die. Weird. Greg kept saying this or that scene was the worst he'd ever seen and some people over at the IMDb seem to think this is just another bad horror movie only to be enjoyed for that aspect of it. I think it's just below average and nothing one can care about in the long haul. I don't think I've ever seen the worst film of all time. Something new and stinky keeps showing up, and worst of all time, what does that mean anyway. Certainly not 33 cents worth of entertainment but that chick shooting through the wall was worth a good nickel, that's a start.