PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

This Lucille is a Ball

Tonight I watched the sequel to The Affairs of Annabel. It was on TCM last night. I picked up a double bill of comedies that I hadn't seen before. They make #342 and #343 for the year. This 1938 Lucille Ball movie is called Annabel takes a Tour. It's got Jack Oakie reprising his role as Lucy's crazy publicity man. He's got a scheme a minute, that guy. Lucy is a young starlet with sights on the big time and Jack is trying his darnest to get her the publicity to get her there. There's a lot of story in this 67 mintue movie. There's some pretty good slapstick, jabs at the film industry and some bad jokes. Most of Jack's plans don't turn out as he planned. His character must lead a life of hirings and firings. Luckily criticism doesn't phase him. He keeps moving in his bull-in-a-china-shop manner and some hilarity ensues. You'll be the judge of that. Parts made me laugh, but not as much as the second feature.

That's Right---You're Wrong was the second Kay Kyser film that I had seen, but his first feature. Kay and his Band play themselves. In the film, like real life, Hollywood has seen how popular Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge are. They come a callin', lookin' to cash in on some of that sweet sweet musical money. Twenty million people tune in each Wednesday evening and in 1938 there wasn't anything to keep those fans out of the movie theaters. Kay and his ochestra did 7 movies and That's Right---You're Wrong was the first.

The movie opens and closes with versions of the radio show. These fun pieces bookend the adventure Kay and the boys have in Hollywood. There are musical numbers in the opening and closing bits as well as the Hollywood second act. It's not bad but it's music I don't care much about. There were a couple of weird songs by a guy with a really weird voice. The radio show had a Q&A session. I enjoyed that. Kay asks contestants music based questions. It's very snappy and fast paced. Lots of jokes and notes a flying. The band in Hollywood stuff was fun enough. They go to be in a movie, all excited like, and next thing you know they are seduced by the Hollywood life style. It's pretty much the clean version, not your Hollywood Babylon grist. The studio had writers working on a script for Kay and the gang. Edward Everett Horton was one of the two. I always liked him. The original premise was pretty bad. Kay is a gondoler in Venice. He becomes a band leader and the toast of Europe. The scene Kay shot in the gondola with Lucille Ball was pretty funny, especially in the context of the story. Time Well Wasted.

Been busy, still

I wasn't feelin' too good last friday and missed movie night. They watched Thunderball and a Ginger movie. I watched some Angel's before going to bed at 9:30. I finished the fifth season last night. I like some of the shows better on re-watching. Angel does survive the end of the season. At least according to a comic I read a few months ago.

I've been busy in the attic, packin' boxes of books. Sorting out authors and packing them in boxes. Boxes that are smaller than the boxes the books were in before. Cutting the weight per box, just more of them. It's been cutting into the blogging time. I went through some more boxes tonight and found some cool stuff. Most of the rest of the evening I was labeling all the dvd's that I burned over the Thanksgiving weekend. I burned nearly 50 discs working two machines more than a dozen hours a day. Mostly Daily shows and such.

There were several movies on TCM over the holiday that I wanted to add to my movie collection, including a few Doris Day movies. I saw most of them as a kid and I still enjoy their colorful 50's and 60's reality. It Happened to Jane was one I didn't remember seeing in my youth. Doris has a lobster farm in Maine and Jack Lemmon is not her husband...yet. It takes a whole movie to get those two kids together. That, and a lot of coal. There's a train, and some kids, and some lobsters. Ernie Kovaks plays a railroad tycoon. He's a big loud mouth bully who gets a lesson in being a nice person, and learns from it. Lover Come Back was not as good. Doris plays a nice advertising executive who's rival firm is headed by the sleazy Rock Hudson. Doris is a bit too naive for my tastes. Everyone generally acts like an idiot, there's lots of deception, and people who hate each other fall in love. Kind of like a Shakespeare comedy with less thou's and thee's.

TCM has been giving Rob Zombie a 4 hour slot to show cult movies of one sort or another. He does an intro to the first movie and a recap at the end. He's strangely like Robert Osborne. That's the white haired guy you usually see. The last week end was a double Arch Hall double feature. Arch Hall Sr was a film producer who cast his son Arch Hall Jr in several films. Jr was a singer and Sr wanted to create a career for him and used the film business to do it. Jr was more interested in learning to fly and the music died. Jr spent his life as a commercial pilot. Eegah is the only other Jr movie I have seen. I would like to see The Choppers, if only because of the title.

I had seen The Sadist before. It's in the Tales of Terror 50 Movie Pack. I haven't compared it to the TCM version. I think it's the same. Both have terrible hiss in the background. Still that doesn't lesson the impact of this violent Charlie Starkweather inspired story. Three teachers are on the way to a ball game in LA. Their car breaks down. Spotting a local auto wrecking lot they pull in. Unfortunately, they picked the lot that fucked up psycho killer Charlie Tibbs and his strung out girlfriend have just been murdering in. Oh, darn, still there! Someone's going to get killed. Turns out a few of 'em are. Doesn't Arch Hall Jr look real crazy? All twisted up like that. He's got a great unibrow. That giant black brow and some shadow to make his eyes look darker are the only makeup needed to turn the not so hansom to start with Jr into The Sadist. It's not a pleasent movie but it seems more real and honest than most better made efforts. I think the poor quality of this copy of the film also adds something to my liking it. More of a documentary feel. Like you were watching Charlie Starkweather killin' some folks. Nowadays people occasionally film themselves doing some crimes. Stupid is as stupid does. Charlie isn't too stupid, he's just psycho, and real mad. Everyone done him wrong. His girlfriend too. They especially don't like teachers. The film was the first feature for it's cimemaphotographer Vilmos Zsigmond. He would shoot many interesting films over the next 40 years. Some I have seen and many I would not.

The second feature on TCM was Wild Guitar. Arch Hall Jr plays a young musician who comes to Hollywood, meets a girl, and gets hooked up with a crooked manager and his flunky Steak. Mike the crooked manager is played by Arch Hall Sr. Steak is played by Cash Flagg who is also the director Ray Dennis Steckler. He's one of those worst film makers and not in a good Ed Wood Jr kind of way. He's not a good actor either. Still, there are some laughs to be had from the bad film making.

Friday Night Movies 85

And Now The Screaming Starts is a 1973 Roy Ward Baker film. It's set in 1793 England and there is some screaming in it. There's some boredom too, some rape and general unpleasantness. The lives of the people in the movie really suck. Most people die. The manor lord brings his young bride home to the family estate. She gets freaked out by a vision coming from a painting of Herbert Lom. There are a lot of ghostly visions accompanied by a murderous crawling spirit hand. It strangles well and often. The story has it's evil roots in the birth of the family legend. Fifty years ago the old manor lord raped the virgin bride of the woodman. That's where the severed hand comes from. Severed when the woodsman tried to fight back. Stumpycurses the lord. When a future lord brings his virgin bride to the manor home a horrible thing will happen. Now one has arrived and sure enough she gets deflowered on her wedding night by a ghost helped by the severed hand. Based on a novel by David Case, who also wrote the script. Who reads that stuff? Not me. This lowbudget film is fairly well made, has some ok actors, and pretty good production values. You can see a lot of photos here. With a better story they would have a more rewatchable movie.

Panic Beats is a Paul Naschy hat-trick. He wrote, directed and acted in this murder filled melodrama. It has some simularities to the first movie. A woman is killed falling down stairs in both movies which are set in large estate houses filled with mostly unlikeable people. There were some others but I can't remember all of them from last night. I should take notes. Paul is a business guy who has a wife, a mistress and an evil slut. He plots to scare his weak hearted wife to death. She's got a shit load of money and companies and estates and more money. He likes her money. After the wife dies he juggles the other two bimbos to their deaths. There's also a family legend involving a cold heartless ancestor, who in the opening of the movie beats his adulterous naked wife to death with a mace. There isn't the supernatural element of the first movie. It's just murderous Paul and his nasty but naked friends. I think just about everyone dies in this one too. And like the other movie...glad I didn't buy it.

Stranger than Buffy

I have pounded a stake half way through the 6th season of the Buffster. Even after the 4th or 5th viewing some of the shows still are pretty darn watchable. I am watching them at the 1.5 speed on the dvd player so they take less than 30 minutes to watch. I put some on while I'm at the pc and when I was sorting stuff in the living room. I don't have a dvd player in the attic but I could put an old one up there. I sure don't want to lug the spare 25 inch tv up there and the old 19 inch that's up there sucks. That's way too small. At 1.5 speed the theme song really rocks out, then the show kicks into super ass kicking Buffy time. Who doesn't like that. Course, I'm speeded up like a motherfucker nowadays. Work. Home. Busy, busy, busy. Who used to say that? Do you know? Anyone? I need to relax, man.

I'll take a break from Buffy and watch the Strangers With Candy movie. (Some time passes) It was ok. I don't think it was as tight as the show was. Still made me laugh. Amy Sedaris plays Jeri Blank, who's a horrible whore. That's not a slur, she is a horrible whore. In every possible way. But, she's back in school to hopefully revive her daddy. He's been in a coma since she left home 32 years ago. Daddy is played by Dan Hadaya and Ian Holm is his doctor. Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinelo reprise their roles as star crossed closet queens and Greg Hollimon returns as Principal Onyx Blackman. What a blackman! There are some fancy big name stars playing people Jeri encounters at school. Alison Janney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kirsten Johnston, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker and Justin Theroux, who no one remembers as Cowboy in Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. I loved Romy and Michelle. I don't even like Lisa Kudrow but she was great in that. She was also great in  The Opposite of Sex (1998) for which she got the New York Film Critics award. I liked SWC but was a bit disappointed. The story is pretty much a retelling of the series. Jeri comes home, family is all changed and she's off to school. There are some funny bits, a bit of nudity, and Jeri, the horrible fish-out-of-water whore. She's a selfish, self centered racist bitch who's destructive and funny in a Beavis and Butthead, or Deathklock kind of way. The fascination is wondering what sort of fucked up shit she's going to pull this week. There were episodes of the series that I liked better than the movie. The series was recently released as a complete series. As punishment for buying the series in it's early version I got to pay a higher price.

Friday Night Movies 84

The Great Yokia War is a Takashi Miike film that was watchable to these old eyes. Here's the official website. The movie seems a bit dark for a kids film. It's got some vicious deaths. A little kid gets chosen to be the Kirin Rider at the town festival. He has to take the path to the cave on the mountain and pull the magic sword. It's a yearly ritual. He's given some beans and rice and a towel. Can't go wrong with a towel. He's too scared to go far into the dark forest. He screams a lot in his journey of discovery. This is a remake of a 1968 film called Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare on the US dvd. There are two others from the 60's released by the same dvd company. All are fun and a bit goofy. They use more models.

This new version uses a plethoria of fairly good cgi to bring the Yokai to life. There are lots of them in the final scenes. The kid travels on his quest with a Kappa, a river princess, a Kasa Obake, a Rokurokubi and a few others. There is an evil villian bent on releasing hell on earth. He makes demon beasts out of spirits and modern inventions like motorcycles. He tosses both into a burning pit of magical fire and out comes an evil killing machine to do his bidding. Nice, huh. The evil guy has a murdery gal sidekick. She's got a pointy hairdo from which she pulls hairs that become whips. Where are those nice girls who don't kill you when you meet them? As you can imagine it ends badly for the evil duo and their naughty plan. Our kid comes through with the help of the yokai. Good for them.

After that we watched a trio of cartoons from Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. The first was about a Barbarian called Korgoth of Barbaria. You can see it over at YouTube. It was fun, made me laugh. The other two were about a deathmetal band called Dethklock. They are ugly and selfish and stupid and kind of funny in an ignorant guys wrecking havoc where ever they are kind of way. Sperhauk said there were a lot of in-jokes based on real euro-metal bands. Not a music field I follow, haven't for years. Still, not helping me break my 2001 record of movies watched. I am up to 324 and the 2001 total was 353. Still do able this year, with 50 days left. Hooray for the 50 movie packs...quantity, not quality noted.

Mind you I'm not getting any further along by watching all the Buffy's of late. I am finishing season 4 as I write this. I took a break early this week when my mom sent a copy of the third season of Corner Gas. I really like that Canadian series. It sure makes me laugh.

Friday NIght Movies 83

We were at my place this friday, watchin' the big screen. Joe was the only one coming over. He rented two recent action flicks. First up the french film Empire of the Wolves. I wasn't too sure from the box what to expect. It's got Jean Reno, so that's good. The movie starts off a bit slow as the story unravells. Jean doesn't appear for a while, so that's bad. A young woman has a form of amnesia. One that makes her husbands face unrecognizable. I never heard of that before, but I did read recently that Scott Adam's of Dilbert fame lost his ability to speak for 18 months. He got his yak back a couple of weeks ago. He's the only one to have ever recovered from this problem. The mind, what a whacky place, you often need someone to help you out. Our mixed up girl goes to see a psychologist who helps her unravel a big bag of trouble. Turns out she's had face reconstruction and does not remember that or who she was. The other story line concerns a serial killer and the cop investigating the three murders. He recruits Jeno Reno, "the Devil" according to the Coroner, a ex-cop forced from the Police ranks. It gets more and more complicated and more people die. There's drug smugglers and terrorists and lots of blowing up, fighting and great locations in Paris and Turkey. The story is from a book by Jean Christophe Grange. I wouldn't read that novel, it's a bit too thrillerish for me, I prefer my thrillers in movie form. A good genre film with a good presentation and some interesting characters. Joe thought it could have been trimmed a bit, but not as much as our second feature.

Mission Impossible: III was ok, even if it's a bit long and drags in spots. I showed Joe the 1.5 speed during the epilog and he thought it worked well. He could hardly notice, it was that slow moving. Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt. He's just gotten married and that just leads to trouble. There is some good action with a plethoria of bullets and bombs, a little too much melodrama and a good villian played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's a cold vicious dealer, in weapons and other stuffs, who will murder you. Pulled back into the field from agent training Ethan and Philip cross paths and it all goes to hell. There's the usual cross and double cross action. People dress up as other people to trick someone. The director only directed some tv episodes before this movie: a couple of Felicity's, the 2 part pilot to Lost and five episodes of Alias. He did a pretty good job and the IMDb has him down to direct Star Trek XI.

Blinded by blight

I barely got through the third Lemony Snicket book in my proposed dismal-orphan-life marathon. I had to read something else. They are too much the same the Lemony near-novels. Between the 2nd and 3rd books there was a Snape-Hermione fan-fic novel by some fan. I heard about it on a Harry Potter Podcast. Snape tricks Hermione into being his sex slave when she signs a contract to do what ever he says in order to become his potions apprentice. Kind of icky. I have a feeling that there is a lot of this sort of forced sex fiction out on the net. It's a genre that seems to have a name. I don't normally read stuff like this but it did sound interesting in a twisted sort of way. It was a short novel finished in an evening and it was fairly well written.

Just as I was finishing the 3rd LS book the latest Diana Wynne Jones Chrestomancy book magically arrived at DreamHaven. I knew what I would read next when I saw it there Monday evening. The Pinhoe Egg was pretty good. Lots of characters and fun scenes, lots of magic and a good villian. It took longer than the last DWJ book to read. I finished Conrad's Fate the night I got it, staying up til 3-4 am on a weeknight. I normally don't do that, even for tv. TPE was more fun but didn't make me want to read it like a fiend, taking most of the work week. I liked the cover quite a bit. I think the girl on the right side is striking.

A couple of weekends ago I read some graphic novels. That kept me off the Lemony teat all day.

Hellboy - Strange Places. Here's the description from the Dark Horse Comics Website's Mignola section. They have good web at DH, lots of info on the books they sell, pictures, animations, wallpaper, screensavers, etc.

Mike Mignola returns with his first new Hellboy collection since 2002's Conqueror Worm. After leaving the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, Hellboy's travels take him briefly to Africa, then for a two-year stint at the bottom of the ocean. An ancient witch doctor, a giant fish woman, and the keeper of the secret history of the universe force Hellboy to either accept his role in the coming apocalypse, or have that role stolen from him. Weird undersea creatures and talking lions populate this turning-point adventure, which reveals secrets buried since Hellboy's very creation. This volume collects Harvey-and-Eisner-award winner Mike Mignola's Hellboy series The Third Wish and The Island with over a dozen unused pages, and a new epilogue.
Strange Places is the first Mignola-drawn Hellboy collection in over three years. Collecting issues of The Third Wish and The Island, plus new material.

Some whacky shit happens to the big red guy. It's way more complicated to break down into some glib synopsis but it's got some punching and interesting art. I really like the Mignola style and the coloring of his books. I also read the B.D.R.P. collection The Black Flame. Written by Mignola but not drawn by him. A crazy rich guy calls up a super powerful demon and it goes all bad for him. Like you haven't seen that before. The book has a sad ending with the death of a favorite character. There's a plague of frogs just like in The Pinhoe Egg.

I read a couple of Robert Crumb collections. There have been a few things piling up, waiting to get read. Waiting For Food 3 had been sitting for a while but it took no time to polish off, just a collection of drawings. Crumb lives in France and when he eats out he draws on placemats and publishes them in books. Keeps him in croissants I guess. I don't know which is worse, him doing the books, or me buying them at $26.95 a pop. Of course, I get a 35 percent discount at DreamHaven and that sure helps. The Complete Crumb is a better buy at $18.95. They are up to book 17 now and it's the last one. There a few comics to collect but the plan seems to collect them seperately. I like the earlier stuff better than the stuff in this volume. According to the Fantagraphics website some of the series are out of print. That's the way it goes.

Mark Bode finished a story from the vast unfinished file left by his father Vaughn Bode. The Lizard of Oz is Bode's version of guess what. It's naughty and has Cheech Wizard. You can see a preview over at Amazon. The art isn't too bad but I didn't care about the story. It's pretty slight.

TinTin in America is a reprint of the first version of Herge's story. It's a black and white story from 1932. I have been a fan for over 30 years and the ones I bought first were the redrawn color stories. One of the books I bought years ago has a 1973 date I put in it. I bought it at The Hudson Bay Company book department. The HBC was 300 years old in 1970. They gave the Manitoba Museum a ship to celebrate. I bought many TinTin and Asterix books at HBC's bookstore. It was a pretty good store. The other big department store was The Eaton Company. They started in 1869 and folded in 1999. I bought lots of books at both bookstores. Especially after I started working. This B&W version is some what simpler and cruder in style than the version I bought back then. Here's a guys review. That's not the right cover for the book I read. I didn't find a copy on the internet but I didn't look too hard. After TIA it was back to the Baudelaire Orphans and their sidetrip to The Miserable Mill. It was miserable there, with all that tree gnawing and bubble gum for lunch. I don't even like bubble gum. What's frustrating about the LS books, for me, is all those adults are so ineffectual. I think it would be good to read a parody in which Count Olaf gets stabbed, possibly repeatedly, and someone plants a boot deep in the pathetic Mr. Poe's ass.

The Spirit is an adult who is as powerful as the Lemony adults are weak. The collected hardcovers are up to 19 so far but some how I buried volume 18. I found it well after I had read the 19th. They are all good. There are still several books to go, 2-4 maybe. That's one hell of an investment at 50 bucks a pop. Good thing I got that discount. Amazon has them for 33 bucks, for those who don't have a discount. Still a ton of money for a 2 dozen volume set of comics.

I have been sorting stuff and putting all the work by artists in piles by artist. Mike Mignola and all the Hellboy and related books are now in one place and fill a nice big box. By getting it all together I found I was missing a few items. The Hellboy trade paperback Conqueror Worm was one of the missing items. I picked up one at the store and read it after The Spirit collection. Here's the story plot:

Dark Horse presents new editions of the entire Hellboy line with new covers. Hellboy is one of the most celebrated comics series in recent years. The ultimate artists' artist and a great storyteller whose work is in turn haunting, hilarious, and spellbinding, Mike Mignola has won numerous awards in the comics industry and beyond. The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense has sent Hellboy out on what will be his final mission. At the end of World War II, the American costumed-adventurer Lobster Johnson led an Allied attack on Hitler's space program, but not before the Nazis were able to launch the first man into space. Now, sixty years later, Hellboy and Roger the Homunculus-- who's been implanted by Bureau scientists with a bomb-- travel to a ruined castle in Norway to intercept the returning capsule, and its single passenger... the Conqueror Worm! Conqueror Worm #1-#4. The trade paperback also features a nine-page epilogue. Includes assorted story comments and illustrations by Mike Mignola. Features a 5-page Mike Mignola sketchbook.

I like Roger, I was sorry he wasn't in the movie. Maybe if they do a second one.

Joan Aiken's The Witch OF Clatteringshaws caught me up and sailed me along for a while. Then the wind went out of the sails and I coasted along as it sat on my clock stand by the bed. I finally finished it and don't plan to keep it, already passed onto to Simba, and don't plan to get more Joan Aiken. She's no Eva Ibbotson. Taking even longer to read than The Witch of C was Thomas Andrea's non-fiction book, Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book. Published by The University of Mississippi. Here's the pitch from their page.

The first full-length critical study of the genius who created Duckburg and Uncle Scrooge. For over twenty-five years, Disney artist Carl Barks (1901-2000) created some of the most brilliant and funny stories in comic books. Gifted and prolific, he was the author of over five hundred tales in the most popular comic books of all time. Although he was never allowed to sign his name and worked in anonymity, Barks's unique artistic style and storytelling were immediately evident to all his readers. Barks created the town of Duckburg and a cast of characters that included Donald Duck's fabulously wealthy Uncle Scrooge, the lucky loafer Gladstone Gander, the daffy inventor Gyro Gearloose, the roguish crooks the Beagle Boys, and the Italian sorceress Magica de Spell.

Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book: Unmasking the Myth of Modernity is the first critical study of Barks's work in English. From a cultural studies perspective, the author analyzes all phases of Barks's career from his work in animation to his postretirement years writing the Junior Woodchucks stories.

Andrae argues that Barks's oeuvre presents a vision strikingly different from the Disney ethos. Barks's central theme is a critique of modernity. His tales offer a mordant satire of Western imperialism and America's obsession with wealth, success, consumerism, and technological mastery, offering one of the few communal, ecological visions in popular culture. Although a talented visual artist, Barks was also one of America's greatest storytellers and, Andrae contends, lifted the comic book form to the level of great literature.

Thomas Andrae, an instructor in the cinema department of San Francisco State University, is the senior editor and cofounder of Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture. He produced The Duck Man, a feature-length documentary on Carl Barks, and was an editor of the Carl Barks Library.

JULY, 272 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 18 line illustrations, appendix, index

It's an interesting book but I had to think alot and who wants that when they are reading. I thought I liked Bark's stories because they were fun, who cared that they were carefully crafted social satire. I obviously didn't learn anything concerning rampant consumerism from them, or I wouldn't have all this crap in my house that I keep sorting through. Even when I toss out a lot there seems to be still more than when I started. How the hell does this happen?  Anyway, Carl and I, we wouldn't see eye to eye on some things, but that's not important as the stories he left behind. And as I can't repeat enough, great stories. Too bad kids today don't give a shit. Gemstone is cutting some of the Disney comics that aren't making them much money. They plan more trade paperbacks. They were trying to market the cheaper comics to kids but kids just weren't buying them. I see a Disney section in all the local comic shops but they mostly sell to collectors like me. I can't get kids or parents to buy them at DreamHaven. This last week at the store the third and final volume of Magnus Robot Fighter came in. It's a hardback reprint of the last third of the Russ Manning Magnus series. I read that and enjoyed those stories for the umpteenth time over the years. I just love that Russ Manning art.

Before I got back to Lemony I read the latest Buffy book Portal Through Time by Alice Henderson. Most of the Buffy books are pretty good and this one was too. Buffy travels back and forth through time to save herself from time-travelling vampires who are trying to stop Buffy from killing the Master. It takes place just after the 1st season. They travel to see Gilgamesh, some place in Wales when there was a war going on and the civil war. Most everyone gets shot or stabbed and nearly dies. I know, it was still pretty good. Not DWJ's good but ok. Lemony's The Austere Academy was next, started on Halloween, polished off in a day and a half. The best thing about it? Cakesniffers! What a great word. Now it's Friday Night Movie night next. Gotta go.