Franklin Harris' Culture Shock

Culture Shock 02.23.12: 'Artist' makes Oscar case loud and clear

2012-02-23T01:12:00.000-06:00

"The Artist" is nominated for 10 Academy Awards and is favored to win at least a couple of the top prizes, including Best Picture and Best Director for Michel Hazanavicius.

That's good because "The Artist" is easily the best of this year's nine Oscar-nominated films.

Still, it's a shame that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' antiquated, arbitrary and sometimes just plain bizarre rules — the same rules that allow the Academy to continue ignoring Andy Serkis' brilliant motion-capture performances year after year — don't allow Jack Russell terriers to compete for Best Supporting Actor.

Otherwise, Uggie, who steals "The Artist" as easily as he might steal a sausage, would end the streak of supporting actor wins Christopher Plummer has racked up this awards season.

The Oscars always say more about Academy voters than they do about the year's best films, so it's best not to take them too seriously — or seriously at all most years.

(Nine Best Picture nominees, and the Academy still manages to snub 2011's two best films not titled "The Artist" — "Young Adult" and "Drive"? It's insane.)

When the Academy recognizes the year's best film as such, it's usually a happy coincidence. I think the last time that happened was "Silence of the Lambs" in 1991.

We're due for another happy coincidence, and "The Artist" — backed by the Weinstein Company's hype machine — just might provide it. Never mind all that Weinstein hoopla, "The Artist" is a magnificent, magical piece of work.

"The Artist" is set during Hollywood's transition from silent films to talkies, an era Hazanavicius and cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman capture beautifully in sparkling black and white, taking full advantage of the narrow, old-style 1.37:1 aspect ratio to give us gorgeous vertical scenes such as one taking place on a staircase.

George Valentin (Best Actor nominee Jean Dujardin) is one of the silent era's biggest stars, with a trusty canine sidekick (Uggie) and admiring fans such as Peppy Miller (Best Supporting Actress nominee Bérénice Bejo), herself an aspiring actress working her way up from bit parts in chorus lines.

Peppy's timing is perfect. She has a voice for sound, and the studios are looking for new talent to usher in the dawn of talking pictures.

Meanwhile, George's star is fading, and when his studio drops him, he sinks his own money into making a silent movie — just as the Great Depression looms. Not the best of timing for long-shot bets.

"The Artist" features a solid supporting cast, including John Goodman as a cigar-chomping mogul, Penelope Ann Miller as George's disillusioned wife and, especially, James Cromwell as George's faithful chauffeur. But this is Dujardin and Bejo's movie to carry. And because "The Artist," like the movies it honors, is a "silent" film, they do so without saying a word.

Yet the artist isn't really a silent movie. It uses music, sound and silence to create an alternate universe where everyone "speaks" in title cards and spoken conversations are some scary, science-fiction monster from the future, ruthlessly invading the present.

In that silence, too much is left unsaid. George's wife keeps her unhappiness and disappointments mostly to herself. George and Peppy remain quiet about their mutual attraction. And the secrets they keep from each other could lead to disaster for them both.

Hazanavicius may have a nostalgic fondness for the silent era, but in the end he and "The Artist" side with the talkies — and with talking.

If Uggie could talk, he'd say he deserves that supporting actor award.

Culture Shock 02.16.12: 'Chronicle' chronicles why teens shouldn't have super powers

2012-02-16T00:43:00.000-06:00

Super powers are wasted on the young.

Andrew Detmer's life is miserable. He's an outcast at school. His mother is bedridden with pulmonary disease. And his father — stepfather? I was never sure — is an alcoholic who does little but collect dust and disability payments, except for when he takes time out of his busy schedule to slap Andrew around.

That's the poverty-row setup for "Chronicle," the first feature film for both director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis (son of director John Landis).

As if looking to make himself even more of a social pariah, Andrew starts "recording everything" with his new video camera. Why? He never says. Certainly not to have evidence against his abusive dad, even though Andrew captures plenty.

Is Andrew just a narcissist in spite of his crippling shyness? That would explain some of what follows.

One day Andrew (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and Matt's friend, the super-popular Steve (Michael B. Jordan), stumble across a pulsating, crystalline object of presumably extraterrestrial origin and — presto! — all discover they've developed super powers.

From there, our newborn superheroes use their superhuman abilities to make life better for everyone, especially for poor, miserable Andrew and his family.

Stop. That must be a different movie, because that's the opposite of what happens. Even the obvious thought of going to Las Vegas and using their telekinetic powers to strike it rich at the roulette tables, so Andrew can afford the medicine that keeps his mom alive, is beyond our three geniuses.

Instead they practice their abilities by playing practical jokes and, after they get the hang of flying, tossing a football around at (at least) 6,000 feet.

Even Spider-Man tried to profit from his powers before Uncle Ben guilt got the better of him.

We see all of this through Andrew's camera and the cameras of others.

Yes, this is another "found footage" movie, and this time the gimmick doesn't appear to serve any purpose except to provide an in-story excuse for the movie's lo-fi look. "Chronicle" has a modest $12 million budget, and most of it seems to have gone into the grand finale — an old-fashioned superhero smack down at the site of Seattle's Space Needle.

It's not giving away much to say that one of our three super-powered protagonists eventually starts to go bad and must be stopped. Hint: It's probably the one who behaves like a sociopath long before he reaches his Columbine moment.

Before that, though, we watch as Steve helps Andrew use his powers to become popular while Matt goes off on an unnecessary subplot to win the affection of Casey (Ashley Hinshaw), a classmate who, coincidentally, is also recording everything on video — "for her blog," she says.

There might be an interesting movie here somewhere about people who feel compelled to constantly film and take pictures of themselves, but as an undercurrent to a movie about kids who have never heard that "with great power comes great responsibility," it gets lost.

On the flip side, the story of how having super powers changes — or doesn't — the lives of Andrew, Matt and Steve gets equally lost by having to compete with the found-footage approach to the material.

There is no reason "Chronicle" couldn't have been shot as a conventional movie. That "Chronicle" wants to be the latest heir to the checkered legacy of "Blair Witch" and "Cloverfield" only makes the exercise almost as frustrating as Andrew's home life.

Culture Shock 02.09.12: 'Woman in Black' is showcase for post-Potter Radcliffe

2012-02-09T02:37:00.000-06:00

The boy who lived is now the man who survived.

He has graduated from Hogwarts, but Daniel Radcliffe is still facing supernatural threats in his first post-Potter film, "The Woman in Black."

In this Edwardian period piece, Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a young widower left alone — if you don't count the nanny — to care for his now 4-year-old son following his wife's death in childbirth.

Arthur survived his late wife, but you sense part of him wishes he hadn't.

In the years since his wife's death, Kipps' position at the law firm where he is employed as a lawyer has declined, along with the quality of his work, and he now has one last chance to redeem himself, keep his job and maintain a household for his son.

That means journeying to the countryside to put into order the estate of a recently deceased client, Alice Drablow. But when he arrives in the village near Drablow's crumbling, overgrown house — located deep in a saltwater marsh and cut off from civilization during the high tide — he finds uncooperative villagers and a local attorney who is trying his best to send Arthur packing back to London on the very next train.

You'd think Arthur was in town to visit Castle Dracula.

What the villagers know and Arthur is about to find out, is Drablow's old house is haunted, and the ghostly Woman in Black who haunts it has cursed the village.

Alas, there are no magic spells that can help our hero this time.

From its period setting to its gothic atmosphere to its suspicious villagers, "The Woman in Black" is a quaintly old-fashioned ghost story, hitting all the familiar notes but doing so with such skill it's hard to complain.

This is the movie we've been waiting for the revived Hammer Films to make.

After an unnecessary remake ("Let Me In") and missteps like the Hilary Swank-starring thriller "The Resident," Hammer is back in its element — even if "The Woman in Black" is sorely missing the crimson "Kensington Gore" blood spatter that so enlivened Hammer horrors of old, such as Christopher Lee's Dracula films.

This is almost the kind of movie Hammer made in the 1950s and '60s, but not quite. There are no busty Hammer scream queens with plunging necklines here (a shame, really), and there's no climatic action scene of the sort Dracula and Professor Van Helsing used to provide.

Director James Watkins, in only his second feature, opts for a more sedate approach with his adaption of Susan Hill's chilling novel — perhaps too sedate, as the slow burn is sometimes more slow than burn.

But it pays off in the movie's pervasive sense of dread — which follows Kipps through the dim, dusty corridors and out to the misty woods. Mood trumps gore every time.

The deliberate pacing also gives Radcliffe a chance to show us what he's got, and he delivers an understated performance that would make his Hammer predecessor Peter Cushing proud. Radcliffe's Arthur Kipps is a haunted man long before he sets foot on the marsh and glimpses the spectral woman who haunts the place.

Outside the estate's dreary ruins, the former Harry Potter is again aided by able British supporting actors, like Roger Allam as Kipps' boss and Ciarán Hinds as the village's one helpful and skeptical resident, Mr. Daily.

Naturally, however, Mr. Daily reeks of someone hiding a dark, terrible secret. It's that kind of movie — the kind of horror movie they don't make enough of anymore.

But with Hammer back, maybe this is just the beginning.

Culture Shock 02.02.12: 'Shazam!' isn't just a magic word anymore

2012-02-02T00:32:00.000-06:00

You can call him the World's Mightiest Mortal. You can call him the Big Red Cheese — his arch-nemesis does. But don't call him Captain Marvel.

The superhero some mistakenly called Shazam is getting a new name.

Now, the Superhero Formerly Known As Captain Marvel is, officially, Shazam. That means the arguments I've had about how his name is Captain Marvel and Shazam is just the magic word he uses to become Captain Marvel have all been in vain.

But how did we get to the point where a character who was once the world's most popular superhero can't go by his original name? It starts at the beginning.

Captain Marvel first appeared in 1940 in the pages of Whiz Comics No. 2. For most of the decade, Captain Marvel's comic-book adventures were so popular they outsold Superman's and inspired a 12-part Republic movie serial, "The Adventures of Captain Marvel."

This annoyed Superman's publishers at what would eventually become DC Comics. So, they sued Captain Marvel's publisher, Fawcett, for copyright infringement, claiming Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman. Fawcett dragged out the suit until the 1950s, when comic-book sales declined and Fawcett left the business.

Afterward, Captain Marvel's main writer, Otto Binder, moved to DC to write Superman, and when he did, Superman's stories became almost as bizarre and surreal — and entertaining — as Captain Marvel's had been.

So, who was copying whom?

In the 1970s, DC took the next step by licensing Captain Marvel outright and publishing new Captain Marvel stories. But by this time, Marvel Comics has come along and created its own Captain Marvel, the trademark to the original having expired while no one was paying attention.

Over the years, Marvel Comics had published several characters named Captain Marvel. Most of them are currently dead. But a new one always shows up or a dead one becomes temporarily undead just long enough to ensure Marvel Comics keeps the Captain Marvel trademark.

It's never-ending payback for DC's having filed that stupid lawsuit way back when.

DC can publish the original Captain Marvel, and it can call him Captain Marvel. But it can't use Captain Marvel as a title or on merchandise. So, since his revival, the original Captain Marvel has appeared in comics titled "Shazam!"

A '70s Saturday-morning TV show featuring Cap was called "Shazam!" too, and eventually people began to think the character's name was Shazam because that's what the title said.

It's like how some people think the name of the creature in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is Frankenstein, even through the book's title clearly refers to the creature's creator. We call these people "illiterates."

Also, for the record: Steely Dan is a band, not one guy.

So, DC Comics is finally giving in to the popular misconception. Now DC's Captain Marvel is Shazam. But I'm not sure this is an improvement. Apart from surrendering to people who can't bother to remember the character's real name — which is rather like letting the terrorists win — Shazam is problematic, too.

Anyone who grew up in the 1960s probably thinks of "Shazam!" as Gomer Pyle's catchphrase. (He was referring to Cap's magic word, but how many people know that?) And kids nowadays think of Shazam as a smartphone app that identifies music.

Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But is the same true for a Big Red Cheese?

Culture Shock 01.26.12: You're better off not running with 'The Devil Inside'

2012-01-26T01:05:00.000-06:00

As a movie, "The Devil Inside" is a failure. As a horror movie, it's a scare-free bore. But as a test of the audience's willingness to put up with being jerked around for an hour and a half, "The Devil Inside" is a resounding success.

Never before have I attended a movie after which every single audience member made his displeasure known with some sort of verbal outburst, some of which I cannot repeat here. (Must think of the children.) I'd heard stories of audiences being so angry with "The Devil Inside" they threw popcorn at the screen — which means they were really mad, 'cause theater popcorn ain't cheap. That didn't happen at the screening I attended, which is a shame. That would have been entertaining.

As I recall, my own response at the time was something like, "That wasn't very good, now was it?"

That's an understatement. "The Devil Inside" will make you angry. Any hope I'd had that it would be "so bad it's good" faded in the first 20 minutes. This is a film that combines two overused horror tropes — exorcism and "found footage" — and makes something less than the sum of the parts. There's even a dash of "Da Vinci Code"-style Vatican conspiracy paranoia thrown in for bad measure. I almost feel bad for reviewing this movie. It's like drowning a puppy because it's too dumb not to poop on the rug.

The movie starts in the 1980s, with 911 recordings and police video taken from the scene of a triple homicide. The slaughter, it turns out, was committed by a woman (played by the aptly named Suzan Crowley, in the film's only credible role) who may or may not be possessed by the devil. (Go ahead. Guess.) Flash forward to the present day, and the woman is, for reasons that vaguely make sense only if you assume a vast Vatican conspiracy rules the world, incarcerated in an asylum next door to the Vatican in Rome.

Her now adult daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) is making a documentary about Mom and exorcisms. Assisting her is a filmmaker (Ionut Grama) whose purpose is to hold the camera and be a jerk. (In these movies, the guy holding the camera is always a jerk.) During her quest, Isabella sits in on — and films! — an exorcism class. Turns out, Vatican-authorized exorcisms are really boring, and, as it happens, two rogue priests whom Isabella meets agree. The priests (Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth) have been performing unauthorized exorcisms on the side because the church is too busy covering up demonic possession to be of any help. Naturally, the priests decide to tag along for a fateful meeting with Isabella's mom.

After tricking the world's dumbest hospital staff into leaving them alone in an examination room with Isabella's mom, our four heroes confirm their worst suspicion: Mom is possessed not by one demon but by five. If you can add, you can figure out the rest.

That's the problem. There is nothing the least bit surprising about "The Devil Inside." Even the attempted scares are telegraphed well in advance. And the ending manages to be even less satisfying than anything in the "Paranormal Activity" franchise. It's no wonder people want to throw things afterward.

Writer/director William Brent Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman have reached the rock bottom of the found footage genre. The whole contrived exercise seems like an excuse to take a trip to Rome — and then it rained the entire time.

Maybe they were just taking their disappointment out on the audience.

Culture Shock 01.19.12: Tucker and Dale vs. stereotypes

2012-01-19T03:12:00.000-06:00

"Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" is a romantic comedy masquerading as a horror spoof in which various college-student stereotypes meet grizzly ends.

If you like horror movies but are tired of horror clichés, it's a nice way to spend an evening.

But if you feel empty the next morning, it may be because of a nagging sense that "Tucker and Dale" could have been so much more.

"Hillbilly horror" is one of the most used and abused sub-genres of horror. City slickers go to the woods or the mountains or the middle of nowhere and run afoul of the natives — inbred, possibly cannibalistic rednecks wielding meat hooks, axes and chain saws. From "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to "The Hills Have Eyes" to "House of 1,000 Corpses," it's a family tree without a lot of branches.

But "Tucker and Dale" diverges from the norm. This time, the rednecks are the heroes.

Dale (Tyler Labine) and his best and probably only friend Tucker (cult favorite Alan Tudyk of "Firefly") are just two good ol' boys minding their own business. They're on their way to Tucker's new fixer-upper cabin in the woods, a not-so-palatial spread Tucker insists on calling a "vacation home."

On the way, they pick up supplies at one of those absurdly well-stocked country stores that exist only in movie depictions of country stores. (This is part of the genre, so roll with it.) While there, they encounter an SUV full of college students, who happen to be on the way to party it up at another nearby cabin. This is somewhat breaking with tradition, because cabins in these movies normally don't have close neighbors.

Anyway, the students — probably having seen all of the horror movies I named, plus "Deliverance" — are immediately suspicious of Tucker and Dale.

After they get to their cabin, and after a few ghost stories and beers — ghost stories being something college students tell only in movies — the college kids decide it's a good time for skinny-dipping. Except they keep their underwear on, because skinny-dipping no longer means what it did when I was in college.

At this point, a student named Allison (Katrina Bowden of "30 Rock") falls, hits her head and is rescued by Tucker and Dale, who are fishing nearby. When Allison's friends assume she has been kidnapped by those two scary rednecks, a hilariously tragic series of misunderstandings follows. Each of the kids' attempts to "rescue" Allison ends with one or more of them painfully dead, and Tucker and Dale become convinced the college kids are part of a suicide cult.

If this sounds like a cool idea with a heartwarming message about not judging people by appearances, it is — as far as it goes. I hope everyone learns a valuable lesson about not looking down on hillbillies. But while "Tucker and Dale" fights the evil of stereotyping rednecks, it embraces just about every other movie cliché.

Writer/directer Eli Craig and co-writer Morgan Jurgenson saddle Allison with two-dimensional friends, which at least has the advantage of letting us not care when they die. And the movie saddles us with a standard-issue romance between a hopelessly mismatched pair: namely Dale and Allison.

If there is any genre more deserving of being subverted than hillbilly horror, it's the romantic comedy about a couple of opposites who overcome their differences — and plot contrivances — to find love.

We've all seen "Lady and the Tramp." Enough already.

For what it is, "Tucker and Dale" is a fun movie, even if it does underuse its greatest asset, leaving Tudyk to sit out most of the final reel. Yet, "Tucker and Dale" is a missed opportunity.

Maybe it's too much to expect two hillbillies to deal with more than one evil at a time.

Culture Shock 01.05.12: 'Young Adult' subverts the traditional rom-com

2012-01-05T11:09:00.000-06:00

Mavis Gary is no serial killer, but she's undoubtedly Charlize Theron's most despicable character since she won an Oscar for "Monster."

Mavis is narcissistic, selfish and — ultimately — delusional. That's bad for her but great for us. Fortunately, Mavis is the kind of despicable that is fun to watch. Most of the time, anyway.

Directed by Jason Reitman from a script by his "Juno" collaborator Diablo Cody, "Young Adult" is a romantic comedy waiting to happen. All the pieces are there: a woman returning to her rural hometown from the Big City, an old high-school flame, a former classmate/confidant.

We've seen it a thousand times — usually with Reese Witherspoon in the starring role — and Mavis knows the fairy tale cliché only too well.

But "Young Adult" is not a rom-com. Instead, it's a slightly dark and refreshingly pointed reversal of the lazy, insulting rom-com formula.

After graduating high school, Mavis left her "hick" town for a bustling metropolis — in this case, Minneapolis, where she found modest success as a writer of young adult novels. But with her deadline to turn in the series' final volume looming, Mavis has a sort of premature mid-life crisis, set off by an email announcing the birth of her high-school boyfriend's new baby.

By all accounts, Buddy (Patrick Wilson) is happily married to his wife, Beth (Elizabeth Reaser), but that fact and the couple's new bundle of joy are just minor complications for Mavis, who returns to her hometown with her laser sight on winning Buddy back.

All she has to do is look her best — not a problem for someone who looks like Charlize Theron — inflate her resumé and convince Buddy they are meant to be together. It's just like in the movies.

The only person fully aware of Mavis' insane scheme is Matt (Patton Oswalt), a classmate Mavis virtually ignored in school, although it's subtly implied Mavis might be indirectly (and unknowingly) responsible for the brutal hate crime that left him crippled in more ways than one.

Matt is a geek who shares a house with his dorky sister, makes custom action figures and — in an unorthodox twist — distills bourbon in his garage. He tolerates Mavis only because he's had a crush on her since high school.

As he says during a scene where both are indulging their neediness, guys like him always fall for girls like her.

For the rest of us, Mavis is a hard character to like, and yet Theron still manages to make her sympathetic during fleeting moments, conveying hints of fear behind tired, hungover eyes. There's a real person behind Mavis' self-created, cartoon-character exterior, which evokes at times Paris Hilton, complete with a little dog tucked away in a shoulder bag.

"Young Adult" subverts the typical romantic comedy's clichés by always doing the opposite, but it subverts other Hollywood clichés, too. It says: "Most people are pretty happy. Family life can be fulfilling. Life in small-town America isn't all bad." Maybe those things aren't for everyone, but they're valid choices. The quiet suburban desperation of "American Beauty" says more about screenwriters than it does about the suburbs.

Despite centering on a miserable protagonist, "Young Adult" is a strangely optimistic film. In Reitman and Cody's neighborhood, most people are doing OK. When Mavis drives her trendy Mini Cooper through her old stomping grounds, wrinkling her nose at the chain stores and the combination KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut — a Frankenstein restaurant that reeks of tackiness — she's not actually showing off her good taste. She's just being a snob.

Everyone's happy except Mavis and the people like Matt who are unlucky enough to fall for her.

Culture Shock 12.29.11: Not everything was annoying in 2011

2011-12-29T02:34:00.000-06:00

Once again, it's time to say goodbye and good riddance to another year.

As far as years go, 2011 isn't winning any awards, but at least it isn't the end of the world. For that, we have to wait until next December, or so I'm told by people who don't really understand how calendars work.

On Dec. 21, 2012, the Mayan calendar "runs out." This uneventful event is apparently regarded as cosmically significant by people who don't realize that our own Gregorian calendar runs out every Dec. 31 — at which point it cycles back to the beginning, as it has since it was introduced in 1582, replacing the Julian calendar, which ran out with virtually identical frequency, give or take a few doomsdays.

At this point, however, if the world did end, I'd be hard pressed to say we didn't have it coming.

When I look back at 2011 and see that one of the cultural high points was the return of "Beavis and Butt-Head" to MTV, I know the pickings are pretty slim.

Still, in keeping with the spirit of the season, here are a few things that did not annoy me in 2011:

The sixth season of "Doctor Who" was the best since the show's revival in 2005, and Matt Smith firmly established himself as my favorite Doctor since Tom Baker's tenure in the 1970s.

"House" is never going to be as good as the first three seasons were, but at least the current Cuddy-free season is an improvement over last year's. Nothing against departed co-star Lisa Edelstein, but after the writers decided to have House and Cuddy get together — and then break up — her leaving was the only thing that could save the show. It has been more than 20 years since Dave and Maddie's kiss of death on "Moonlighting," yet TV writers still tempt fate.

C'est la vie.

At the movies, the best of the best was Werner Herzog's 3-D documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," which I reviewed a few weeks ago.

For superhero movies, it was a down year, with "X-Men: First Class" the best of the bunch, despite glaring flaws like January Jones' non-performance. I have higher hopes in 2012 for "The Avengers," but I'm worried about "The Dark Knight Rises," which seems dangerously close to taking the whole "taking Batman seriously" thing way too seriously.

Apart from "The Avengers," the two films I'm most anticipating are both prequels: Ridley Scott's "Alien" prequel "Prometheus," and Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth with "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," featuring Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins. (If you're honest, you'll admit "The Hobbit" is a much better story than the bloated "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.) Speaking of Martin Freeman, he and Benedict Cumberbatch return next year for a second season of "Sherlock," the BBC's modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes, from the creative team of Mark Gatiss ("League of Gentlemen") and Steven Moffat ("Doctor Who").

The best books I read in 2011 were mostly nonfiction: "The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human" by V.S. Ramachandran and "Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark," Brian Kellow's biography of the still-influential New Yorker movie critic whose style the rest of us all lamely try to imitate.

I'll have to take an incomplete on Haruki Murakami's newly translated novel "1Q84," which I've just started and is approximately the length of the Tokyo phone directory.

And lastly, on the music front, a word of advice: If you have a chance to see thepau Alabama Shakes perform live, take it. This little band, originally from Athens — as am I, so I confess a slight bias — is probably about to hit it big, and deservedly so.

For the Shakes, 2011 wasn't a bad year at all. But 2012 will be even better.

Culture Shock 12.22.11: When you wish upon a Wish Book

2011-12-22T02:08:00.000-06:00

There it is was, on page 442. Seven and a half feet long, and the Holy Grail of G.I. Joe toys — the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier.

At a retail price of $109.99 — in 1985 dollars — you had to be a very good boy indeed for Santa to leave that under your Christmas tree.

I was never that good, but that's why they called it the "Wish Book," wasn't it?

Before the Internet killed the catalog business, you knew the Christmas shopping season had begun when the Sears Wish Book arrived in your mailbox. There were other catalogs — the J.C. Penny catalog wasn't bad — but none had the allure of the Wish Book. Whether you were a boy or a girl, it had just what you were looking for, whether or not you knew you were looking for it.

That's my idea of an "old-fashioned Christmas."

From remote-controlled airplanes and Teddy Ruxpin storytelling bears to Cabbage Patch Kids and the Atari 2600, the Wish Book was an illustrated guidebook to Christmas bliss.

You leafed through its slick, glossy pages — past the clothes and furniture, bedroom linens and other boring, adult things — and you stared in wonder, not just at the fancy, high-end toys that you suspected might be outside of Santa's price range, but at the elaborate displays of toys in action.

A two-page layout of "Star Wars" action figures might feature dozens of Stormtrooper action figures. Now that was more like it! Not just the one or two Stormtrooper figures you had, but an entire legion!

That was what you needed if you were serious about recreating scenes from the movies.

Just think: It was someone's job to put together those Wish Book photo shoots. Now that must have been a dream job.

The Internet has changed all that. Sears closed its catalog business in the early 1990s.

Nevermore a Wish Book. But while the Internet is great for ordering things, no website has yet come up with a browsing experience that equals sitting down with a fat, heavy catalog in your lap.

But when you had your wish list, what to do next?

Why, time to take it to the man himself, of course. Santa.

Today, you send a letter or email, or maybe you visit Santa's helper in the red suit at the nearest shopping mall. But there used to be a more ostentatious way of going about it.

Believe it or not, there was a time when TV stations aired shows that were nothing but young children sitting on Santa's lap and telling him what they wanted for Christmas. One of these was "The Santa Show," which aired Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in December on WAAY-31, taking half of the half-hour time slot usually devoted to cartoons.

A similar show aired for a time on what was then the Shoals area's NBC affiliate, WOWL-15.

Unfortunately, little video evidence of "The Santa Show" remains. You can find almost anything on the Internet, but the only video footage I could locate was a partial episode from 1982 (see vimeo.com/24661874).

I can only assume that most children whose parents videotaped their appearance on "The Santa Show" either destroyed the evidence or are too embarrassed by it to upload it to YouTube.

As I explain to my younger friends who don't remember much of the 1980s, to say nothing of the '70s, it was a different time back then.

Local TV stations were desperate for programming and would air almost anything.

It was a strange time in American history: getting big books in the mail, writing lists on paper and sitting on Santa's lap on local television.

Our children will never believe it.

Kim Jong Il Is Dead: A 'Tribute'

2011-12-19T00:52:00.000-06:00

North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, the world's greatest filmmaker and star of Team America: World Police, has died. With the help of Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, I give you this tribute:

Steal This Comic

2011-12-16T13:36:00.002-06:00

Via Geeks Are Sexy.

Culture Shock 12.15.11: Superheroes are real, and they look like us

2011-12-15T11:31:00.000-06:00

Phoenix Jones is a superhero, or a reasonable facsimile.

For the past year, he has patrolled the neighborhoods of Seattle, stopping fights, changing tires and staring down drug dealers.

Despite incidents that have landed him in the emergency room, he has, amazingly, avoided a trip to the morgue.

Even more amazing, Phoenix Jones isn't alone.

According to journalist Jon Ronson, Phoenix Jones is one of about 200 self-styled, costumed superheroes operating from the Pacific Northwest to Florida.

None, however, embraces the calling as thoroughly as Phoenix Jones.

Ronson explores their comic-book-come-to-life world in his new e-book, "The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones: And the Less Amazing Adventures of Some Other Real-Life Superheroes."

Phoenix Jones doesn't have any super powers. He hasn't been bitten by a radioactive spider or survived a gamma-bomb explosion.

He isn't a billionaire with a cave full of high-tech equipment, which makes you wonder why billionaire do-gooders such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are such slackers. He isn't even a strange visitor from another planet, although that seems almost plausible compared to the truth.

Phoenix Jones does, however, have an origin story of sorts.

After someone broke into his car and his stepson cut his knee on the shattered glass, the man who would become Phoenix Jones took the mask the robber left behind and made it part of a costume.

"They use the mask to conceal their identity," Phoenix Jones tells Ronson. "I use the mask to become an identity."

That's how superheroes talk.

Ronson is no stranger to true stories that are nearly impossible to believe. He also is the author of "The Men Who Stare at Goats," the true story of the U.S. military's forays into spending your tax dollars on paranormal research. (That book was turned into a disappointing movie starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.)

As advertised, Phoenix Jones' adventures are amazing — and baffling.

In his spare time, he is a mixed martial arts fighter, and until recently his civilian alter ego worked at a home for autistic children. But he lost that job after he was arrested for using pepper spray to break up a fight.

He was never charged, but now the world knows his secret identity: Benjamin Fodor.

Most of the time, Fodor seems to be acting purely to help others. Then he does something that makes you wonder, such as stopping to have his photograph taken with a fan while letting a suspect get away.

You wonder if maybe being a masked "superhero" isn't a kind of narcissism for the terminally shy.

"When I wear this I don't have to react to you in any way," says another costumed vigilante, Urban Avenger. "Nobody knows what I'm thinking for feeling. ... Sometimes I wish I never had to take the mask off."

In New York, Ronson encounters a group of "heroes" who seem anything but.

"These men just seemed menacing," he writes, "with no fun to them. I don't want my superheroes to be bullies."

Whatever his faults, Phoenix Jones is no bully, but he is imposing.

After watching Phoenix Jones intimidate — by sheer willpower — armed drug dealers into leaving a neighborhood, Ronson becomes a fan.

Whether he is really a superhero or just an arrested adolescent who has let his love of comic books go too far, it's hard not to be a fan of Phoenix Jones.

'A Krampus Carol' by Anthony Bourdain

2011-12-10T18:37:00.000-06:00

Culture Shock 12.08.11: These 'Dreams' old but not forgotten

2011-12-08T01:27:00.000-06:00

The one thing that strikes me as off about Werner Herzog's documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" is the title.

As we see, these dreams have not been forgotten. They've lived on, surfacing at other times and in other places, long after the cave vanished beneath a rock slide some 20,000 years ago, to be rediscovered only in 1994.

Maybe "Dreams of the Forgotten Cave" is the more accurate title, even if it sounds a bit too much like an Indiana Jones movie crossed with an H.P. Lovecraft story.

The cave is Chauvet Cave, located in southern France and site of the earliest known cave paintings, some of which are between 30,000 and 33,000 years old. As Herzog tells us, that makes them twice as old as any other known prehistoric paintings.

The cave of Altamira in northern Spain — subject of an admiring Steely Dan song, "The Caves of Altamira" — contains paintings generally thought to be about 15,000 years old, although some researchers argue for some of them being as old as the oldest Chauvet paintings.

That, however, is an archaeological dispute for another day, and one that probably doesn't interest Herzog in the slightest.

Given special permission to film in Chauvet — under severe restrictions — Herzog descended with a small crew and advanced 3-D cameras. Confined to a narrow walkway and limited to just four hours a day during six shooting days, Herzog and company nevertheless emerged with remarkable footage that Herzog has fashioned into an equally remarkable film, enhanced by Ernst Reijseger's melancholy score.

The paintings are astonishing for their age. These prehistoric artists capture horses, bison, lions, bears, mammoths and woolly rhinos in unmistakable detail. They simulate the movement of fleeing beasts by giving them extra legs.

More remarkable still, they use the irregularities and contours of the cave walls as part of their paintings. In the torchlight, Herzog notes, these creatures must have seemed to come to life.

For once, the 3-D is worth it. Viewing "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" in the standard two dimensions, you miss the three-dimensional tricks that play out over Chauvet's walls, and which Herzog recreates. Leave it to a 3-D skeptic such as Herzog to finally put the technology to good use. I wouldn't suggest purchasing a 3-D TV and Blu-ray player just for this film, but if you have them already, this is a film you must own, if for no other reason than to show off your home theater.

Perhaps the cavemen who left these paintings were showing off, too.

There is no evidence anyone ever inhabited Chauvet, so its purpose was likely ceremonial. Maybe it was the world's first art gallery, or maybe it was just the world's first graffiti.

In evolutionary psychology, there's a hypothesis that art, like the peacock's tail, is something used to attract a mate. Maybe we're looking at the works of prehistoric Don Juans trying to impress a girl.

The normally fatalistic Herzog (see his "Encounters at the End of the World") seems drawn to these artists as kindred spirits. They, too, document the world around them and seek meaning in symbols. The closest thing we find to a depiction of a human among the horses and rhinos is symbolic — part-woman/part-bison. It's the earliest blending of human and beast, starting a tradition that goes through Egyptian hieroglyphs and continues today in the pages of Batman and Spider-Man comic books.

Who were these Ice Age people who left behind only their art and their hand prints? What were their hopes and fears? In the end, they seem very much like us, and their dreams are our dreams.

In his career-long search for what he calls "ecstatic truth," a truth deeper than mere facts, Herzog has never come closer.

Thankfully, he takes us along for the ride.

Culture Shock 12.01.11: Ken Russell was uncompromising in pursuit of excess

2011-12-01T12:53:00.000-06:00

Challenged to make a movie so offensive even he would say it should be banned, British director Ken Russell came up with an eight-minute film called "A Kitten for Hitler."

The title is just the beginning. It's downhill from there. And did I mention it's a Christmas movie?

Best known for his adaptations of D.H. Lawrence novels and "Altered States," his psychedelic foray into science fiction, Russell died Sunday at age 84 after a series of strokes.

Many filmmakers are described as "uncompromising," but few have earned that descriptive so thoroughly as Russell, who was uncompromising in his pursuit of cinematic excess.

Baffled audiences? An occupational hazard. Outraged critics? Serves the bums right.

Often, to watch a Ken Russell film is to be assaulted by sight and sound. If film is a visual medium more than a narrative one, Russell carried that to its logical — or is it illogical? — conclusion. In his hands, even so straightforward a genre as the biopic becomes a mad experiment in imagery and symbolism. The facts of the matter, when they matter at all, are in service to what you see.

Russell described "The Music Lovers," his 1970 film about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as a movie about a homosexual who marries a nymphomaniac.

That's a cute way of putting it. It's also a story of repression, obsession and madness. One thing it's not is a literal biography of Tchaikovsky. But it shouldn't be taken literally in any case. It's a backdrop on which Russell can project the fantasies, fears, nightmares and delusions of his characters, all set to the compositions of the Russian composer at the center of the proceedings.

By the time the "1812 Overture" inevitably comes along, we're not surprised to see actual canons going off and beheading Tchaikovsky's tormentors.

Even when working with a more traditional narrative, as in "Altered States" or his adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Lair of the White Worm," Russell used dreams and hallucinations to stunning visual and thematic effect.

His frequent collaborator — you might even say "muse" — Glenda Jackson, who won an Oscar for her role in Russell's "Women in Love," called him an "incredible visual genius." But he also was a director who got brave performances from his actors, whether from Jackson, as Tchaikovsky's doomed wife in "The Music Lovers," or the temperamental Oliver Reed, who shared an infamous nude wrestling scene with Alan Bates in "Women in Love."

For all his visual flair, it might still be possible to dismiss Russell if all there were to his films was the extravagance. In some of his movies, such as 1972's "Savage Messiah," it seems the only direction he gave the cast might have been, "Act louder!"

Not all of his experiments are successful. "Gothic," his 1986 retelling of how Mary Shelley came up with "Frankenstein," is absurd fun, but I'm not at all convinced it's actually a good movie.

Russell also tested the boundaries of subjects such as sex and religion, both of which tend to get artists into trouble. "The Devils," Russell's 1971's film set in a nunnery, deals with both, and it has yet to get a proper U.S. release in its uncut form.

When he didn't break a boundary, he at least showed the rest of us where it is.

In his later years, Russell returned to making television documentaries, which is where he started, and the cinema lost one of its most daring, original voices.

Ultimately, I'm not sure the world really knew what hit it when Russell burst upon the scene in the late 1960s.

And I'm not sure it knows now, either.

Culture Shock 11.24.11: 'Star Wars' fandom is like a dysfunctional family get-together

2011-11-24T00:48:00.000-06:00

It was around Thanksgiving in 1978 that "The Star Wars Holiday Special" aired for the first and last time.

George Lucas supposedly hates the special so much it remains the only part of the "Star Wars" saga he hasn't marketed, merchandised and re-released multiple times in multiple formats.

And this is a man who still defends Jar Jar Binks.

That tells you two things. One, "The Star Wars Holiday Special" is bad in ways no brief plot synopsis can convey. (I will say Bea Arthur is in it, and she sings a song that is not even close to the worst thing about it.) Two, Lucas didn't have anything to do with it. His name isn't even on it. And it's much easier to disown something you're not responsible for.

Perhaps overcome by their devotion to their ancient religion, some "Star Wars" fans track down bootleg copies of "The Star Wars Holiday Special" — a much easier task now than years ago — and muddle through.

For some, this is a holiday ritual, and, truthfully, it's no more painful than most family gatherings, especially if your family is the Manson family.

Being a "Star Wars" fan is a lot like being in a dysfunctional family.

One day Uncle George gives you a timeless story about a boy, a girl and a universe, then the next thing you know, you're watching Chewbacca's family grunt at each other — without subtitles — for 20 minutes straight. (Again, this is much like human holiday gatherings.) It's one thing for some one-off TV special that Lucas disowns to let you down. It's another thing for the man himself to do so. That's an entirely different level of disappointment.

For an idea of what I mean, see Alexandre O. Philippe's 2010 documentary "The People vs. George Lucas," which recently made its way to DVD and video on demand.

In this case, "the people" is a subset of "Star Wars" fans who think the original trilogy belongs as much to them as it does to Lucas.

Think of them as Occupy Skywalker Ranch, only without the occupy part.

These are fans who have made themselves at home in that galaxy far, far away. The more enthusiastic of them make their own fan films set in the "Star Wars" universe, a practice Lucas even encourages when other copyright holders might unleash their lawyers.

Unfortunately, that sense of "fan ownership" runs into reality whenever Lucas — a tinkerer since boyhood, Philippe tells us — decides to tinker with his trilogy.

Lucas isn't just tinkering with movies. He's tinkering with memories.

Yet this sort of revisionism is common, particularly when it comes to sci-fi. Ridley Scott unveiled his "final cut" of 1982's "Blade Runner" in 2007, while Robert Wise's "director's edition" of 1979's "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" made its debut in 2001.

The difference is Scott and Wise improved on what was originally screened in theaters. If Lucas did that, few would complain. But every time Lucas changes the "Star Wars" trilogy, it's for the worse. We end up with new scenes that serve no purpose, digitally inserted characters who wander aimlessly into the frame and spoil the composition, new dialogue looped into scenes for no good reason, and "improved" special effects that don't mesh with the original.

Like Darth Vader says in "The Empire Strikes Back," "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

At least I think Vader says that. He did in the original, anyway.

Even as a lifelong "Star Wars" fan, the best I can manage is weary ambivalence. Despite silly, overly entitled notions of fan ownership, "Star Wars" belongs to George Lucas, and he can do whatever he wants with it.

But as a critic — and a fan — I can't ignore where he goes wrong.

Sure, blame others for Bea Arthur. But blame George Lucas for Greedo shooting first.

Culture Shock 11.10.11: New documentary unleashes 'Machete Maidens'

2011-11-10T00:35:00.000-06:00

A scene from director Jack Hill's "The Big Bird Cage."

If you want to make a movie today, you might seek out a location where the tax incentives are enticing (Australia, perhaps) or the production costs almost nonexistent (for example, Bulgaria).

During the 1970s, the place to be if you wanted to make a movie on the cheap and without a lot of pesky safety regulations was the Philippines, and "Machete Maidens Unleashed!" — the new documentary from director Mark Hartley — is a 90-minute crash course in the seat-of-your-pants filmmaking that resulted.

Throughout the decade, producers from the West looked east for a place to shoot inexpensive movies, mostly for drive-ins. Chief among them was B-movie king Roger Corman, who had formed New World Pictures and was instilling his penny-pinching ways in a new generation of directors.

When Corman learned he could make movies in the Philippines less expensively than in the U.S., or just about anywhere else, that was all he needed to know. He dispatched director Jack Hill, and Hill returned with "The Big Doll House."

"The Big Doll House" wasn't the first "women in prison" movie, but it was among the first to push the genre's exploitation elements to their limits. It was a huge success back in the U.S., kick-starting a boom in similar movies, like "Women in Cages" and Hill's camp follow-up, "The Big Bird Cage."

All three — recently released together on DVD and Blu-ray as "The Women in Cages Collection" — feature Hill's greatest discovery, and the only real star to emerge from the Philippine film boom, Pam Grier.

In 1972, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, but that did nothing to stop producers and directors from setting up shop in his country. They kept making their exploitation movies, and Marcos was just happy for the money. As director John Landis says, these were sometimes movies about overthrowing fascist dictatorships that were being made in a fascist dictatorship.

Or, as another filmmaker puts it, "Human life was cheap. Film was cheap. It was a great place to make a picture." With a few bribes, you could rent the army's helicopters for a day, provided they weren't busy putting down rebels somewhere.

It's an eclectic cast of characters that populates "Machete Maidens Unleashed!" The Philippines was where actors like Christopher Mitchum and Patrick Wayne — sons of Hollywood royalty — could make their own fortune, or not. It was where 2-foot-9 Weng Weng could be the hero in the bizarre spy spoof of questionable taste, "For Your Height Only."

It was mostly schlock and exploitation, although some of it wildly entertaining, Hill's movies in particular. Yet into this stumbled a film with an undeniable pedigree — "Apocalypse Now."

Martin Sheen may have woken up thinking he was in Saigon, but he was really in the Philippines. Where else was Francis Ford Coppola going to get all of those real military helicopters to set to "The Ride of the Valkyries"?

The Philippines was nearly the death of them both.

As with his earlier documentary, "Not Quite Hollywood," Hartley gives us high-octane history. It's not deep, but it is fun, glossy and well-made pop. If "Machete Maidens Unleashed!" doesn't quite equal "Not Quite Hollywood," that's only because, as wild as the Wild East was, the Philippines in the '70s and early '80s still wasn't as insane as Australia during the same period.

Those tax incentives you get in Australia nowadays are just no substitute for driving too fast, setting people on fire and blowing things up in the Outback.

"Machete Maidens Unleashed!" is new on DVD from Dark Sky Films.

Culture Shock 11.03.11: Beavis and Butt-Head bite the channel that feeds them

2011-11-03T00:00:00.006-05:00

When the first new episode of "Beavis and Butt-Head" aired on MTV last Thursday, nearly 14 years after the show's apparent end, it was as if Beavis and Butt-Head had never gone away.

Like Sherlock Holmes returning from his "death" at the Reichenbach Falls, Beavis and Butt-Head picked up right where they left off.

They're still in high school and still laughing their way through every painful misadventure.

Their comeback seems perfectly timed. Something about this moment seems to be crying out for the deep cultural insights only two oblivious, cartoon teenagers can provide. And the first lesson Beavis and Butt-Head have for us is a simple reminder: The more things change, the more they remain the same.

When Beavis and Butt-Head vanished, it was from a world where the Internet was still new, "reality television" as we now know it was limited to MTV's own "The Real World" and MTV still aired music videos.

Beavis and Butt-Head return to a world of smart phones, smart cards and "Jersey Shore," to which "smart" doesn't apply.

But it's all the same to them. For Beavis and Butt-Head, the world was and is black and white.

There are things that are cool, and there are things that suck. And Beavis and Butt-Head know the difference.

In the 1990s, they told us Michael Bolton and Vanilla Ice sucked. Now, from the comfort of their battered sofa, they can confirm all of our darkest suspicions about "Jersey Shore" and "Teen Mom."

They may not have a large vocabulary, yet Beavis and Butt-Head have their place of distinction alongside other criticism-dispensing duos, like Statler & Waldorf and Siskel & Ebert's thumbs.

As before, Beavis and Butt-Head are idiots. In the season opener, they decide to become werewolves or vampires — it doesn't matter which — in order to attract women, because, as you know, women are all into that "Twilight" stuff. So, they get a homeless man, whom they mistake for a werewolf, to bite them.

Unfortunately, all that gets them is a litany of diseases that would intimidate even Greg House.

Yet when they watch television and talk back to it, Beavis and Butt-Head are almost geniuses, identifying and ridiculing stupidity wherever they find it.

Does TV make Beavis and Butt-Head smarter? Or is TV just so dumb now that they seem smart by comparison? What are we supposed to take away from Beavis and Butt-Head's half-baked couch-potato wisdom?

During his 14-year hiatus from "Beavis and Butt-Head," series creator Mike Judge turned to the Middle American pragmatism of "King of the Hill" and conceived the sci-fi comedy "Idiocracy," about a future that values anti-intellectualism and celebrity above all else.

When Beavis and Butt-Head talk back to their TV, it's impossible not to think of them as Judge's voice, and not just because he provides the literal voices for both.

There's a weird circularity to that. In the '90s, critics cited MTV in general and "Beavis and Butt-Head" in particular as prima facie evidence of Western civilization's decline and imminent demise.

Those were scary times. MTV had to forbid Beavis from saying "fire" on the off chance of his inspiring a generation of arsonists.

Today you again hear pretty much the same complaints about MTV in general and "Jersey Shore" in particular. And Beavis and Butt-Head have joined the chorus in passing judgment.

As far as Beavis and Butt-Head are concerned, the future of "Idiocracy" is the present of television, which has made Snooki and The Situation household nicknames.

It's too bad Beavis and Butt-Head aren't smart enough to get the joke.

I'm sure they'd laugh.

31 Days of Halloween, Day 31

2011-10-31T00:00:00.006-05:00

Happy Halloween...

31 Days of Halloween, Day 30

2011-10-30T00:00:00.005-05:00

Three Poe stories transformed into a European art film, Spirits of the Dead:

'I had a little trouble with the scissors...'

2011-10-29T12:10:00.001-05:00

John Carpenter remakes It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown...

Charlie Brown: Blockhead's Revenge from Dylan OBrien

31 Days of Halloween, Day 29

2011-10-29T00:00:00.002-05:00

So, this happened...

31 Days of Halloween, Day 28

2011-10-28T00:00:00.001-05:00

Culture Shock 10.27.11: Chuck Norris has met his match: Peter Cushing

2011-10-27T01:10:00.000-05:00

Chuck Norris is no longer the toughest guy on the Internet.

Despite various "Chuck Norrisfacts" you may have heard — "Duct tape uses Chuck Norris to hold things together," "Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table because the only element Chuck Norris recognizes is the element of surprise," etc. — Chuck has met his match.

A few weeks ago, another Internet meme quietly started making the rounds. It said:

"Killed Dracula with a pair of candlestick holders. Blew up Alderaan. Fought Daleks. Has been to the Earth's core. Killed more vampires than Buffy. Outsmarted Moriarty. Verbally bitchslapped Darth Vader. I beg your pardon, but do you really think Chuck Norris can top that?"

And who, pray tell, fits that description? Only one man: Peter Cushing.

Although not as famous today as his longtime friend and costar Christopher Lee, Cushing was just as important to the success of the second great era of horror films, spanning almost two decades from the late 1950s to the early '70s. Working together and separately, Cushing and Lee were their generation's equivalent of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

Cushing was arguably the finest actor of all of the horror icons. Whether playing an upright hero or a depraved villain, his performances were precise, measured and deadly serious.

His Baron Frankenstein in 1957's "Curse of Frankenstein" marked the first time the character was played as an outright villain, rather than as a flawed, tragic hero undone by hubris. And his Dr. Van Helsing in the following year's "Horror of Dracula" was a bold, energetic take on the character. For the first time, Dracula's arch nemesis was an action hero, and their final showdown remains the screen's best confrontation between the vampire and the professor.

Cushing was the face of British horror, both for Hammer Films and Hammer's chief rival, Amicus. Cushing appeared in virtually all of Amicus' signature anthology films, from "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" in 1965 to "From Beyond the Grave" in 1974.

Amicus also cast Cushing in numerous sci-fi films, most notably as the Doctor in two movies based on the BBC television series "Doctor Who" — "Doctor Who and the Daleks" and "Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D." — and as a scientist in the Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation "At the Earth's Core."

Cushing was Sherlock Holmes in the first color Holmes film, Hammer's 1959 version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and he also played the Great Detective on television for the BBC.

But in a way, what has become Cushing's best-remembered role outdoes them all.

As Grand Moff Tarkin, military governor of the Galactic Empire's outer rim in the original "Star Wars," Cushing put Darth Vader in his place. He then ordered the Death Star's destruction of Alderaan, population 1.97 billion, just because he could.

That's first-class villainy. It tops anything else in the other "Star Wars" movies and, let's be honest, Chuck Norris has no answer for it.

Yet, by every account, the real Cushing was one of the nicest people you could ever know. He was a man so in love with and devoted to his wife that when she died in 1971, he started to slowly waste away.

Although still active in films until the 1980s, Cushing was never the same. He died in 1994 at age 81.

Halloween is the perfect time to sample the work of this most unassuming of horror stars. Cushing stars in "The Gorgon" and "The Creeping Flesh," airing back-to-back Sunday beginning at 5 p.m. CDT on Antenna TV (locally on digital channel WHNT-19.2).

Then, on Halloween, Turner ClassicMovies will feature four of Cushing's films during a marathon of eight Hammer movies from 6:15 a.m. CDT until 7 p.m. First is "The Gorgon" again at 7:45 a.m., then "Curse of Frankenstein," "Frankenstein Created Woman" and "The Mummy" starting at 12:45 p.m.

And who wants to watch Chuck Norris movies at Halloween, anyway?

31 Days of Halloween, Day 27

2011-10-27T00:00:00.002-05:00

Hey! This looks like a rip-off of Mr. Bill! Oh, nooooooooooooooooo!

31 Days of Halloween, Day 26

2011-10-26T00:00:00.001-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 25

2011-10-25T00:00:00.007-05:00

Click on the video below to start:

31 Days of Halloween, Day 24

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31 Days of Halloween, Day 23

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31 Days of Halloween, Day 22

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31 Days of Halloween, Day 21

2011-10-21T00:00:00.002-05:00

Culture Shock: 10.20.11: Whatever happened to the Halloween television special?

2011-10-20T02:25:00.001-05:00

Like a lot of things from the days when there were only three TV networks and cable TV was mostly reruns and wrestling, the prime-time Halloween special is largely a thing of the past.

"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," a holiday staple since it first aired in 1966, is pretty much the sole survivor from that bygone era.

It aired annually on CBS before switching to ABC a decade ago, a transition that came as a shock to those of us who grew up accustomed to seeing the swirling "CBS Special Presentation" logo — accompanied by a slightly alarming drum-and-brass fanfare — introducing each year's broadcast.

Halloween-themed episodes of regular prime-time shows don't count.

Besides, it's a little difficult to think of the "Treehouse of Horror" episodes of "The Simpsons," which have aired since 1990, as proper Halloween specials ever since Fox got the rights to the World Series and began delaying them until early November.

That's like watching a Christmas special in January. By then, you're over it.

The 1970s and '80s were a fertile period of Halloween programming.

"The Fat Albert Halloween Special" began its run in 1977.

What you need to understand about "Fat Albert," which was based on Bill Cosby's stand-up comedy routine, is that back then, childhood obesity was hilarious. Really, there was nothing better, especially if you tacked on a heartwarming life lesson.

The heartwarming life lesson at the end of "The Fat Albert Halloween Special" is that old people are, indeed, people, too.

More instructive in retrospect is the special's accurate depiction of trick-or-treating, which didn't yet involve parents hovering over you as you and your friends ventured from house to house wearing costumes unmarked by gaudy, reflective safety tape.

It's a wonder I survived the '70s, what with all of the horribly dangerous behavior I engaged in. We called it childhood.

A year later came "Bugs Bunny's Howl-oween Special," a glorified clip show comprised of classic "Looney Tunes" shorts linked by new and distractingly inferior footage. But who cared if the new animation was lousy and Mel Blanc's voice had changed so much in the intervening decades that Bugs didn't always sound quite right? It was Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck in prime time, and that's all any kid needed to know.

But not every Halloween special was animated, and not all were instant classics.

In 1976, ABC gave Paul Lynde, best known as the center square on "The Hollywood Squares" and Uncle Arthur on "Bewitched," his own special.

It's on DVD now, but it aired only once, and with good reason. It was terrible. When I watched it recently, it was against my doctor's orders — he told me to avoid ham.

Yet "The Paul Lynde Halloween Special" does have a secure place in television history because it featured an early TV performance by Kiss and established that the Wicked Witch of the West from "The Wizard of Oz" (Margaret Hamilton) and Witchiepoo from "H.R. Pufnstuf" (Billie Hayes) are sisters.

It is also the only known instance of Tim Conway not being funny.

By the end of the show, most of Kiss look like they're going to have a long, serious discussion with their agent. They wouldn't do anything this embarrassing again until their sans makeup period.

The last gasp for Halloween specials was "Garfield's Halloween Adventure" in 1985, which had the advantage of being entertaining and airing before most people started to hate Garfield the way Garfield hates Mondays.

At least I assume Garfield still hates Mondays, because it's not as if that joke ever gets old.

You know, come to think of it, maybe there's a reason they don't make Halloween specials anymore.

31 Days of Halloween, Day 20

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31 Days of Halloween, Day 19

2011-10-19T00:00:00.001-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 18

2011-10-18T00:00:00.001-05:00

Bonus: The American TV spot...

31 Days of Halloween, Day 17

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31 Days of Halloween, Day 16

2011-10-16T00:00:00.002-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 15

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31 Days of Halloween, Day 14

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Culture Shock 10.13.11: An unexpected nomination for best 'Dracula'

2011-10-13T01:18:00.000-05:00

Few literary characters, with the exception of Sherlock Holmes, have been adapted to the screen as often as Dracula.

The creation of Irish novelist Bram Stoker, Dracula has appeared on film since the earliest days of the medium. Not counting a lost Hungarian film from 1921 titled "Dracula's Death," about which little is known, the cinematic Dracula first appeared in 1922 — with name changed and serial numbers filed off — as the horrifying, rat-toothed Count Orlok of F.W. Murnau's German expressionist masterpiece, "Nosferatu."

Dracula is again set to take to the screen next year in "Dracula 3D," directed by Dario Argento ("Suspiria," "Deep Red") and starring Dario's daughter Asia Argento ("The Last Mistress").

But of all the Dracula films both famous and obscure, one in particular is underrated and too often overlooked. Yet director John Badham's 1979 version of "Dracula" is arguably one of the best.

Take nothing away from Bela Lugosi's performance in the 1931 edition, and all due respect to Hammer's bold, energetic 1958 retelling, "Horror of Dracula" starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, but Badham's "Dracula" is a complete package. It's a gothic fairytale with beautiful sets, imaginative set pieces and moments of truly inspired horror.

And it's just ambiguous, and ambitious, enough to be analyzed a couple of different ways. If you're into that sort of thing.

Like most of the better Dracula films, Badham's diverges significantly from Stoker's book. Don't get me started on Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula." That garish, parody-inviting misstep may be largely faithful to Stoker — apart from the addition of a standard-issue love story — but it looks increasingly ridiculous with age, done in mostly by bad acting (Winona Ryder, how could you?), non-acting (I'm looking at you, Keanu Reeves) and overacting (paging Anthony Hopkins).

In Badham's film, the characters of Mina and Lucy are essentially reversed, and Mina (Jan Francis) is the daughter of professor Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier), while Lucy (Kate Nelligan) is the daughter of an older-than-usual Dr. Seward (Donald Pleasence). Also, the setting is shifted forward from the Victoria era to the end of the Edwardian era.

Dracula himself also differs from Stoker's original. Played brilliantly by Frank Langella, who, like Lugosi, had first portrayed the role on stage, this Dracula is the seductive Dracula of popular culture, a romance-novel figure with feathered hair and open collars, who, in one scene, rides a horse through the evening fog, looking every bit like a Jane Austen hero. He owes as much to John Polidori's suave Lord Ruthven — a product of the same stormy night that gave the world "Frankenstein" — as to Stoker.

Yet he's still a brutal, bloody figure, and Langella gives his lines real menace, as when he says to Van Helsing, "In the past 500 years, Professor, those who have crossed my path have all died, and some not pleasantly." And, more importantly, this vampire doesn't sparkle.

Weaving through these proceedings is a grand, sweeping score by John Williams, fresh off his Oscar-winning "Star Wars" triumph and at the peak of his talents. It's one of his best film scores, and like the 1979 "Dracula" itself, it's unjustly neglected.

Badham's "Dracula" is available on DVD and Netflix streaming. The DVD includes a director's commentary.

31 Days of Halloween, Day 13

2011-10-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 12

2011-10-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 11

2011-10-11T00:00:00.002-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 10

2011-10-10T00:00:00.002-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 9

2011-10-09T00:00:00.002-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 8

2011-10-08T00:00:00.002-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 7

2011-10-07T00:00:00.002-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 6

2011-10-06T00:00:00.001-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 5

2011-10-05T00:00:00.001-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 4

2011-10-04T00:00:00.001-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 3

2011-10-03T00:00:00.002-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 2

2011-10-02T00:00:00.002-05:00

31 Days of Halloween, Day 1

2011-10-01T00:00:00.005-05:00

Culture Shock: 09.29.11: The third-worst movie gets 'special treatment'

2011-09-29T01:13:00.000-05:00

According to the collective wisdom of voters at IMDB.com, the worst movie of all time is "Superbabies:Baby Geniuses 2," which is arguably the career low for the late Bob Clark, considering he also directed near classics like "A Christmas Story" and the Sherlock Holmes thriller "Murder by Decree."

The second-worst film is a German production from 2004 called "Daniel the Wizard." I know nothing else about it, and I plan to keep it that way.

Currently ranked third is a little movie called "Manos: The Hands of Fate."

Plucked from obscurity to become the best episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," this cinematic cow patty was made on a dare by the late Harold P. Warren, who wrote, directed and starred in it. That’s three strikes right there.

Warren, a fertilizer salesman from El Paso, Texas, knew nothing about making movies, and "Manos: The Hands of Fate" testifies to his every bad decision, both in front of and behind the camera. And yet "Manos" is hypnotic. You can’t look away. Every frame has something to offer, even when it’s out of focus, which is a lot of the time.

"Manos" is no ordinary train wreck. It’s a high-speed passenger train full of piranha derailing in Six Flags during spring break.

That’s probably why "Manos: The Hands of Fate" is the first MST3K episode to earn the royal treatment — a two-disc "special edition" DVD set that includes both the MST3K version and the original as intended by Hal Warren, left to stand, however wobbly, on its own. Add new interviews with the MST3K cast and the documentary short "Hotel Torgo," which details the making of "Manos," and you basically have the Criterion of crap.

This Shout! Factory release also includes the documentary "Jam Handy to the Rescue," directed by Chattanooga filmmaker Daniel Griffith and starring a deadpan Larry Blamire ("The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra"). A clever, tongue-in-cheek parody of old educational films, "Jam Handy" is the story of Henry Jamison "Jam" Handy, who produced training films for the military and Chevrolet. And it’s here because Handy’s short "Hired!" is the comedic fodder for the MST3K crew at the start of "Manos."

Basically, Shout! Factory’s special edition is the ultimate "Manos" experience.

But what is it about "Manos" the film that makes it worth this effort?

Is it the characters saying lines of dialogue twice for no reason? The nonsensical script? The lapses in good taste and judgment? Bizarre characters like Torgo, the lovestruck satyr/caretaker with bad knees?

The protracted driving scenes? The lingerie wrestling sequence? The catchy, yet inappropriate jazz score? The two teenagers who seem to be in a completely different movie?

Who can say? All I know is "Manos: The Hands of Fate" has spawned no fewer than three stage versions, including a musical and one with puppets. And a sequel, "Manos: The Search for Valley Lodge," starring surviving members of the cast, is in the works for 2013 — as improbable as that may seem.

This past year, movie hostess Elvira,Mistress of the Dark, finally took her own shot at "Manos" on her revived "Movie Macabre" show.

Without a doubt, "Manos" has finally made it. It’s the big time, now.

Sadly, Warren didn’t live to see his movie become the phenomenon it is today, ridiculed but beloved, an inspiration to other independent filmmakers, giving them the confidence that comes only from knowing you can’t do any worse.

Thank you, Hal, for making a really, really bad movie.

Culture Shock 09.22.11: Can Netflix survive long enough for its master plan?

2011-09-22T00:34:00.000-05:00

Netflix has had a bad couple of months.

Since the company announced its new price structure, which took effect this month and amounted to an increase for most subscribers, Netflix has been dealing with one PR disaster after another.

The rate hike was followed by Netflix's failure to renew its streaming deal with Starz, meaning lots of on-demand movies — including Disney films — will disappear from Netflix's offerings at the end of February.

As a consequence, the past two months have been ugly. Netflix has shed roughly 600,000 customers, while its stock has lost about half its value.

The backlash's severity caught Netflix's top brass off guard — and me, too, for that matter. I figured most Netflix users would complain and then suck it up, deciding Netflix was still worth the money. As it happens, most did. But, still, more than half a million customers actually following through on threats to dump Netflix. I don't think anybody expected that. It runs counter to the entire 20-year history of Internet griping, which had never amounted to anything.

Until now.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings tried to stop the hemorrhaging this week in an emailed apology that doubled as an announcement for Netflix's next move, spinning off its DVD-by-mail business into a separate company to be called Qwikster, while Netflix continues to offer streaming video.

Cue yet another round of angry customers and widespread ridicule.

Adding the cherry to this self-inflicted pie to the face, the newly valuable @Qwikster Twitter ID is already spoken for, and the guy who speaks for it does so only in a vague approximation of a language, presumably meant to be English.

From a PR standpoint, you couldn't ask for much worse, which is why it's ironic that from a pure nuts-and-bolts business perspective, everything Netflix has done makes sense — in the long run.

In the long run, DVDs are a dying format, destined to appeal only to collectors, aficionados and aging hipsters the way laserdiscs and vinyl albums do now. Nobody is going to make bank renting discs by mail. Even the Postal Service can't make money on mail.

Anyway, Netflix would rather spend money on content than on postage.

But, knowing that, all of the Hollywood studios have started upping their demands, which is what forced Netflix's rate hike and restructuring. Movies and TV shows don't come cheap.

The long-run plan is sound, but in the short run, Netflix has all of the dead-eye aim of an Imperial Stormtrooper.

Still, how bad are things for Netflix, really?

Despite losing half of its market value, Netflix's stock is still in the neighborhood of $130 a share, which is about $100 a share more than where media giants Disney and Time Warner currently trade.

Netflix also still has 24 million subscribers in the United States alone, which is more than either Showtime or Starz, and not far behind HBO's roughly 28 million. And Netflix has yet to roll out its own original programing.

The biggest threat to Netflix is still that someone might beat it at its own game. Blockbuster's new owner, Dish Network, might turn that floundering brand around, or a new owner might try to make Hulu competitive — something Hulu's current owners seem to discourage, with the exception of offering Criterion Collection films to Hulu Plus subscribers.

But first things first. Netflix really needs to buy that @Qwikster Twitter account.

Culture Shock 09.15.11: Don't be too quick to blame 'SpongeBob'

2011-09-15T01:03:00.001-05:00

Someone needs to study whether or not stupid studies are detrimental to the nation's mental health.

They're driving me crazy.

The latest example, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, says fast-paced TV programs could be harmful to preschool-age children.

Maybe they are, and maybe they aren't. None of the studies claiming that TV is detrimental to children are all that persuasive. That applies especially to studies claiming to link television viewing and violence, even as violent crime rates have declined for most of the past 30 years. But one thing about this new study is clear: It offers no valuable evidence one way or the other.

Here's how the study worked. One group of 4-year-olds watched nine minutes of "SpongeBob SquarePants." That was the fast-paced show. Another group of preschoolers watched nine minutes of a slower-paced PBS cartoon called "Caillou." Immediately afterward, all of the kids were given mental function tests, and the ones who watched "SpongeBob" scored lower and displayed less impulse control.

That led the study's authors to speculate that fast-paced cartoons are bad. Mmkay? (Tell that to everyone who grew up with Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry.)

I drew a different conclusion.

I suspect that when kids watch nine minutes of "SpongeBob SquarePants" and then are yanked away to take some boring old test, all those kids can think about is how much they'd rather still be watching "SpongeBob." What else would you expect? "SpongeBob" is one of the most popular kiddie-TV programs ever and, for the past decade, one of the most popular shows on cable.

Meanwhile, the kids forced to watch nine minutes of "Caillou" may have been somewhat less traumatized by no longer watching "Caillou," even if that meant taking a test.

After watching a seven-minute clip of "Caillou" I found on YouTube, I wanted to do something that was not watching "Caillou." I also realized why some parents online complain that the show's title character is an annoying brat.

Also, I never want to have children.

Even if the study's findings are valid, they apply only to the short term. Why not test the kids an hour or two after they watch "SpongeBob" and see how they perform then? Obviously that's too much like a real-world situation and makes too much sense. Besides, if the study's authors did that first, they might not have any need to include the usual disclaimer about how more study is needed.

It's a lot easier to get grant money for your next study if the first study's main finding is something may be a problem and its secondary finding is more study is necessary. Finding that something isn't a problem or that more study isn't needed is bad for business.

Despite my cynicism about this particular study, I actually do think our generally faster-paced culture — including movies and TV — may be rewiring our brains, adapting us to life's quickening pace and all of the information coming at us from every direction. I also suspect this is not necessarily a bad thing, and it may help us with things like multitasking. But if that's the case, then the way we test children's mental abilities must adapt, too.

Kids aren't getting dumber, and steady increases in IQ — the Flynn effect — back that up. But children may be thinking differently, and our tests aren't accounting for that, which might partially explain why test scores have remained flat despite rising IQs and greater per-pupil spending than ever.

Or I could be wrong. Maybe more study is needed.

This date in history: September 13

2011-09-13T12:25:00.000-05:00

Darth Vader learns to say 'yes'

2011-09-08T11:45:00.000-05:00

Tired of Darth Vader screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" all the time? See what happens when the Dark Lord of the Sith learns to say "yes."

Culture Shock 09.08.11: George Lucas isn't finished ruining 'Star Wars' yet

2011-09-08T01:21:00.000-05:00

"Art is never finished, only abandoned," or so Leonardo da Vinci supposedly said, according to the entire Internet, apart from the websites that attribute the quote to E.M. Forster.

I'm going to side with Leo, because he was an eccentric genius, while E.M. Forster wrote novels that eventually became tedious Merchant Ivory films, if you'll forgive the redundancy.

But I'm not here to talk about Merchant Ivory films. I'm here to talk about films people still watch.

Next week, the three "Star Wars" movies that matter, as well as the three that don't, make their Blu-ray debut. They are why I mention da Vinci, although not because I think George Lucas is a genius — sadly, that day has passed — but because as far as Lucas is concerned, his original "Star Wars" trilogy has never been finished, only abandoned.

Abandoned and, unfortunately, revisited. Again and again.

Lucas has been making changes to the trilogy since at least the early '80s. For example, the subtitle "Episode IV: A New Hope" isn't on the original 1977 "Star Wars" print. But the first major changes that everyone noticed — the ones that really started to alter the films for the worse — came with 1997's theatrical release of the "Special Editions."

That's when Lucas revised the Holy Trilogy to change key scenes, add pointless footage and generally clutter one scene after another with needless CGI, all for no reason other than no one could stop him.

So, now Greedo shoots first, Han steps on Jabba the Hutt's tail and anonymous droids and giant lizards wander into the frame seemingly at random.

Next came the trilogy's long-awaited DVD release in 2004, and Lucas wasn't done yet. Among other, more minor tweaks, he replaced the ghostly Anakin Skywalker played by Sebastian Shaw at the end of "Return of the Jedi" with the prequel Anakin portrayed by Hayden Christensen. (I guess it could have been worse. Lucas could have replaced Shaw with Jake Lloyd.) Now it's seven years later, the original trilogy is set for yet another re-release, and Lucas is back to his old tricks.

The latest changes, leaked to the Internet last week, are almost trivial at this point, but they still leave me shaking my head. Now, Darth Vader screams an anguished "Nooooooo!!!" before grabbing the Emperor and throwing him to his death. I get that this "no" is supposed to echo the equally absurd "Nooooooo!!!" that Vader screams at the end of "Revenge of the Sith," but there's more to storytelling that just having one scene refer back to another. If that's all you've got, you've got lazy storytelling.

Congratulations, George. You've robbed what was once one of the screen's greatest villains of his last shred of dignity. To paraphrase Vader from back when he was still cool, "Your failure is now complete."

But why?

I've come to think Lucas does all this deliberately to irritate the legion of fans who made him the insanely wealthy film and special-effects mogul he is today. Maybe he really wanted to keep making small, personal movies like "American Graffiti." But the snowballing success of the "Star Wars" films, not to mention the "Indiana Jones" series, put him on a different path. Maybe, deep down in his soul, he resents that.

So, he takes his revenge with "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the "Star Wars" prequels and his repeated defacements of the original trilogy.

It's that, or else he really has just flat-out forgotten how to make a good movie.

Culture Shock 08.25.11: Discovering the uncanny truth about Canada

2011-08-25T01:18:00.000-05:00

Let's get ready to fumble!

Even as football season begins in earnest tonight with the start of high school football in Alabama, to be joined by college football next week and the NFL the week after that, there's one place where they've been playing football all summer.

The Great White North. America's Hat. Canada.

Most Americans think of the Canadian Football League — when they think of it at all, which isn't often — as a kind of purgatory, to which players who can't hack it in the NFL are sentenced for an indeterminate time, and from whence only a lucky few (namely Doug Flutie) ever return.

Briefly, during an ill-fated expansion attempt, there was a CFL team in Birmingham. But it folded because Alabama is already home to two semi-professional teams and doesn't need a third.

Currently, CFL games air in the U.S. on NFL Network, which could help the league's profile here. Or not.

You see, I've watched several CFL games over the past few weeks, and I've reached a conclusion: Canadian football is creepy.

The CFL is a lot like U.S. football. After all, the U.S. and Canada are the only countries on Earth where "football" doesn't mean "soccer." So, we have that in common.

But there are slight yet unmistakable differences: the goal posts at the front of the end zones instead of at the back, the 110-yard fields with the C-line in the center, teams having only three downs (not four) to make a first down.

I mean, who puts goal posts at the goal line where players can run into them?

Watching the CFL, I was struck by how odd these small changes made the game. It was weird. Then I realized I'd had this feeling before.

I was watching an ABC cop show called "Rookie Blue." At first, it seemed like an ordinary police drama, but I soon noticed there was something different. The police cars and the uniforms weren't quite right. I felt uneasy. Then it hit me: "Rookie Blue" is actually Canadian.

Between "Rookie Blue" and the CFL, I had an epiphany. Canada is America's uncanny valley.

Think of a human being. Next, think of a cartoon character, like Elmer Fudd. Now think of an almost-human CGI character, like the Tom Hanks clones in "The Polar Express." The Hanks clones exist in the middle, between the two extremes of reality and unreality. They look almost human, but not quite, and their almost-but-not-quite appearance makes them creepy. They're too plastic, too artificial. They scare small children.

They fall into what scientists call "the uncanny valley."

For many Americans, Canada is like that. Sorry, Canada, but that's the truth. And that's coming from an American who can name two, maybe three Canadian prime ministers.

For someone from the U.S., I'm relatively Canada-savvy. One of my favorite comic books growing up was "Alpha Fight," which is about a team of Canadian superheroes. Later, I learned most of the characters were broad, possibly even insulting stereotypes. But, hey, it's the thought that counts.

Despite that, I get weirded out by how Canadians are so like us — more so, I suspect, than many Canadians would care to admit — and yet so different. It's the uncanny valley, like Angelina Jolie in "Beowulf," where you're attracted to her CGI double even as you're dimly aware it's a CGI double.

Yet I doubt Canadians feel the same unease about us. Roughly 90 percent of Canadians live within about 100 miles of the U.S. border.

Whether they like it or not, for better or worse, they're are a lot more familiar with us than most of us are with them.

And that, Canada, is why Americans act so strange whenever we come to visit. But we do appreciate you, even if we don't say so.

Who else could we pretend to be when vacationing in countries where everyone hates us?

Culture Shock 08.18.11: Of course you know this means 'war'

2011-08-18T02:46:00.000-05:00

When they said "Storage Wars," I was expecting something

Culture Shock 08.11.11: Does anyone really still want their MTV?

2011-08-11T01:48:00.000-05:00

"I am The Great Cornholio!"

Aug. 1 marked the 30th birthday of MTV, not that you'd know that from watching MTV. The network's birthday passed virtually unremarked.

Maybe that's because MTV, a channel identified with youth and youth culture, can't bring itself to admit it has entered adulthood. If real life were "Logan's Run," MTV would be running for Sanctuary.
Or maybe it's just that there isn't much to celebrate now that MTV is little more than the shambling zombie husk of the once vibrant, groundbreaking cable station that helped define the 1980s.

MTV has been on the receiving end of jokes for so long, it's hard even to recall, much less appreciate, just how relevant it once was. Professional "concerned parents" used to drum up hysteria about how "Beavis and Butt-Head" and racy Madonna videos were corrupting an entire generation. (Generation X turned out just fine. Thanks for asking.) Now, the most controversy MTV can manage is a few critics writing boilerplate articles about whether "Jersey Shore" makes everyone from New Jersey look bad or is offensive to Italian Americans.

Well, it does make Jersey look bad, but we've all got our stereotypes to bear, OK?

And if you are looking for a music video that tries way too hard to be edgy and "transgressive," well I suppose you can find some of Lady Gaga’s on the Internet. But you won't find them on MTV, which stopped airing music videos so long ago that the joke about there being no music on Music Television stopped being funny a decade ago.

But, hey, at least Mike Judge is back. After 13 seasons of "King of the Hill" on Fox — a successful run by any standard, but a wildly successful one given Fox's track record of canceling shows — he has returned to MTV with new episodes of "Beavis and Butt-Head." And this time around, Beavis and Butt-Head will be making fun on MTV’s current programming, including "Jersey Shore."

That merits repeating: Two animated cartoon characters once thought to be horrible, even dangerous role models for children will be dishing out insults at the expense of a cast of flesh-and-blood cartoon characters, one of whom looks like an Oompa Loompa.

What do you get from too much MTV? A pain in the neck and an IQ of three.

At 30, MTV looks old, tired, worn out. It's like 30 is the new 80. And for being MTV's signature show, "Jersey Shore" isn't even all that distinctive. Every cable channel has some fake "reality" show about awful people, whether it's "The Real Housewives" or "Mob Wives" or "Keeping Up with the Kardashians." It's all so homogenized, I had to double check that "Jersey Shore" is an MTV show. It could easily be on E! or Bravo or SyFy or History or any of a dozen channels that, like MTV, no longer have anything to do with their name or initials.

We're far removed from when MTV invented the modern reality TV show with "The Real World," which, now a quaint relic, is entering its 26th season — another zombie that just won't die.

And the days when MTV's music videos provided a new and exciting artistic format, which served as a proving ground for future movie directors like Spike Jonze ("Where the Wild Things Are"), Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") and David Fincher ("Fight Club"), are now the stuff of legend.

Thirty years after it shook the world, MTV looks like just another cable channel that has lost its identity. Sure, people still watch. But it's just not important anymore.

Manos: The sequel of fate strikes in 2013

2011-08-07T12:00:00.001-05:00

The sequel no one expected is now set to be released in 2013.

According to a post at Horror Society, Manos: The Search For Valley Lodge will star the WWE's Gene Snitsky and Maria Kanellis, horror-movie actresses Helene Udy (the original My Bloody Valentine) and Tara Cardinal (Song of The Shattered), as well as original-film cast members Jackey Neyman (Debbie), Bernie Rosenblum (the teenage guy who really liked kissing) and Tom Neyman (The Master).

Written, produced, directed by, and starring Hal P. Warren, a fertilizer salesman from El Paso, Texas, Manos: The Hands of Fate languished in bad-movie obscurity until it was resurrected as one of the most memorable episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The sequel's plot synopsis:

A woman battling mental illness regains her memory and heads into the deserts of El Paso, Texas to confront her inner demons and discover her mysterious past.

Just guessing, but the woman there is probably the original movie's Debbie, who remembers her traumatic childhood experiences in the first film:

So much trauma.

Harry Potter as a teen comedy [Video]

2011-07-25T22:58:00.000-05:00

Video of the Day: A movie trailer for Harry Potter if it were a teen comedy.

If Nick Fury were in other movies

2011-07-24T19:10:00.000-05:00

[Via Geeks Are Sexy.]

'Doctor Who' series 6.5 Comic-Con trailer... spoilers!

2011-07-24T16:09:00.000-05:00

Sunday link-o-rama

2011-07-24T12:14:00.000-05:00

Fox has acquired the rights to make a CGI film based on the comic strip Mutts by Patrick McDonnell.
Weird science: Why can't astronauts whistle while they spacewalk?
Live-action Marvel Comics television projects in development include The Hulk, AKA Jessica Jones, Cloak & Dagger, and Mockingbird. Animated shows in the works include Astonishing X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.
Cracked knocks Donald Trump down a peg or 10.

Shatner's long Khan

2011-07-23T13:44:00.000-05:00

[Via Topless Robot.]

Friday afternoon link-o-rama

2011-07-22T15:28:00.000-05:00

From SDCC, Robert Rodriguez shares his insane plans for ~~world domination~~ Sin City 2, Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again (in space???), a live-action Heavy Metal, and a live-action remake of the Frank Frazetta/Ralph Bakshi animated flick Fire and Ice. Obviously, Rodriguez's plan to become the most important filmmaker in the geek world is under full steam.
Apple shakes up the online streaming world with reports it may bid for Hulu.
See new/old deleted scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy. (Deleted scenes from original Star Wars > any scene from the prequels.)
Translations for "untranslatable" words. [Via Neatorama.]

Beavis and Butt-Head return

2011-07-22T13:44:00.000-05:00

Get More: Beavis and Butt-Head, MTV Shows

Al Di Meola turns 57

2011-07-22T12:36:00.000-05:00

Legendary jazz/fusion guitarist Al Di Meola turns 57 today. That's a good enough excuse to post this:

Midday link-o-rama

2011-07-22T11:13:00.000-05:00

Cabin in the Woods, the long-delayed horror flick co-written by Joss Whedon, has a new (we really mean it this time!) release date of Friday, April 13, 2012.
Real, honest-to-Cartman Cheesy Poofs-brand cheesy poofs are coming to a Walmart near you.
We've been spared one unnecessary remake, at least for now. New Line and Warner Bros. have let their option for the Escape from New York reboot to expire.
Is the "death of superheroes" (in the movies) being greatly exaggerated?

Culture Shock 07.21.11: No, the Internet is not making you stupid

2011-07-21T02:08:00.002-05:00

Google the question "Is Google making us stupid?" and you'll get roughly 640,000 results.

Like every new technology, the Internet is going through that phase when it gets the blame for everything wrong with the world.

The Internet exploded into the mainstream in the mid-1990s, so it's been a very long phase. But 15 or so years is nothing. Fifty years after Newton N. Minow, then-chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, called television a "vast wasteland," TV still takes heat for all sorts of societal ills, from youth violence (even though youth violence has been steadily going down since the 1970s) to childhood obesity (which you could easily blame on any sedentary activity, like reading a book).

The claim that the Internet is making us stupid got a level-up this past week after publication of a study showing that the Internet is actually changing how we think and remember things.

Now, as it happens, the authors of the study said, explicitly, that their findings did not — I repeat, not — mean the Internet is making us stupid.

"I don't think Google is making us stupid — we're just changing the way that we're remembering things," lead author Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University told the BBC. "If you can find stuff online even while you're walking down the street these days, then the skill to have, the thing to remember, is where to go to find the information."

Basically, our brains are getting better at knowing where and how to find stuff, but at the expense of just remembering stuff, and that's because we're unconsciously training, and rewiring, our brains to work that way by how we use the Internet.

For some people, this is a self-evidently bad thing.

Yet if so, why stop there? The Internet isn't the first technology to alter the workings of our brains.

Centuries ago, our ancestors had fantastic memories that put ours, even pre-Internet, to shame. Bards and poets in the ancient Greek world could recite, from memory, epic tales of gods and heroes that, when written down today, run on for hundreds of pages. True, they used repeating lines and other mnemonic tricks to keep everything straight, but they really did have memories built for recalling a lot of information.

If behavior can rewire the human brain, then that's exactly what you'd expect, because the Greeks who lived in the dark ages between the fall of the Bronze Age city states and the rise of classical Athens, were, by and large, illiterate. This is when bards created the oral tradition of epic poetry that would eventually find its way into print as "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."

The finished works we have today, attributed to the blind poet Homer, may not have been written down until the classical period, centuries after their composition began. Before that, these unwritten stories were passed down by memory, bard to bard, generation to generation.

Arguably the greatest, most influential works of Western literature were composed by illiterates, who relied not on writing but on their remarkable recall.

So, if you're really worried about technology robbing people of their ability to remember things, start with writing. That's where the trouble all began.

Impressionist Does Shakespeare in Celebrity Voices

2011-07-20T12:53:00.002-05:00

[Via The High Definite.]

Midday link-o-rama

2011-07-20T11:40:00.002-05:00

Because no one asked for it, Cartoon Network and Transformers franchise producer Don Murphy are planning a live-action Captain Planet movie.
Because no one asked for this either, a live-action movie of the 1990s Top Cow comic book The Darkness is also in the works.
Because the Big Two comic companies never tire of retelling their characters' origins, Marvel is launching a series of "original graphic novels" that will go back to its heroes' early days. Zzzzzz.
The trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man movie reboot is here, and I'm bored already.
News you can actually use: Amazon video on demand picks up more CBS shows.

Venture Bros. cosplayers tell all

2011-07-19T10:35:00.000-05:00

[Via Topless Robot.]

Kung Fu Volleyball or Kung Fu Soccer?

2011-07-19T00:31:00.000-05:00

[Via Geeks Are Sexy.]

Blue Note jazz album covers in live action

2011-07-18T23:11:00.000-05:00

Hi-Fi from bante on Vimeo.

[Via Open Culture.]

Late link-o-rama

2011-07-18T23:04:00.000-05:00

The Americanized, live-action Akira movie isn't dead yet, unfortunately.
Universal passes on proposed Dark Tower movie trilogy, TV series.
Brick-and-mortar bookseller Borders could begin liquidation as soon as this week.
Dynamite Entertainment will revive the cult TV series Dark Shadows as a comic book.
As expected, Superman and Lois Lane's 15-year marriage will have never happened when DC launches its rebooted comics in September. (But, unlike Spider-Man, Superman didn't have to make a deal with the devil to make his marriage go away.)
Science: All non-African people are part neanderthal.
Economist Robin Hanson defends a non-socialist version of the Star Trek future.

Manos: The Hands of Fate, The Soundtrack - Forgetting You

2011-07-17T00:03:00.000-05:00

Sean Bean Death Reel (Spoilers!)

2011-07-15T01:03:00.000-05:00

Watch as, one by one, virtually every character Sean Bean has ever portrayed dies.

John Carter (of Mars) teaser trailer

2011-07-14T20:20:00.000-05:00

Late, late link-o-rama

2011-07-14T02:26:00.000-05:00

David Goyer (The Dark Knight) has been tapped to rewrite the screenplay for the latest attempt at an American Godzilla movie.
An Evil Dead remake is happening and Diablo Cody is polishing the script. (I know. I don't really believe it myself.)
MTV has ordered a second season of Teen Wolf. (Firefly fans continue to bemoan the unfairness of life.)
Look at this: Awesome fake poster for Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
It's a map! Netflix movie rentals by state.
It's a map! The U.S. according to a New Yorker.
Yoda orders pizza. [Cartoon]
Nickelodeon brings back its awesome '90s shows.
Science! Wormholes at the movies.
Bad news, True Blood fans: The 13th Sookie Stackhouse novel will be the last.

Culture Shock 07.14.11: Rate hike will test Netflix surplus

2011-07-14T01:56:00.001-05:00

It really is amazing sometimes how something can go from not existing at all to being such an essential part of daily life that any change to it is met with anger, frustration and uncontrolled sobbing.

Netflix didn't exist before 1997, and it only really became virtually ubiquitous just a few years ago. But when the video-on-demand and DVD rental company announced a new, less user-friendly rate structure this week, you'd have thought the Spaceballs had landed and said they were going to start charging us to breathe.

Basically, if you only want streaming movies and TV shows, or if you only want DVDs delivered to your home, Netflix is willing to cut you a deal. But if, like most Netflix subscribers, you want both, you're going to have to pay more. How much more? In the neighborhood of up to 60 percent more, in some cases.

If, for example, you currently have a subscription that gives you two DVDs at a time and unlimited video streaming, you can expect to pay about $5 more per month, roughly a 33 percent increase, starting Sept. 1.

The reaction to Netflix's price-increase announcement was instructive.

The Netflix blog and Facebook page quickly filled with complaints and threats to cancel subscriptions, with formerly loyal and suddenly outraged Netflix customers threatening to jump to competitors like Hulu Plus (cheaper, but you have to put up with ads) or Amazon Prime (also cheaper, but with a smaller selection of streaming titles overall, although Amazon is arguably better when it comes to recent TV shows).

If you take the angry customer reaction at face value, then you're probably thinking Netflix has just made a huge, possibly fatal mistake. Netflix is about to lose so many customers it will earn less money than before the rate hike.

That conclusion, however, is probably wrong. And Netflix knows it, otherwise it wouldn't be risking this customer revolt in the first place. (And if you want to know why Netflix is doing this, look to Hollywood. The studios are demanding more money for the right to stream their movies and TV shows, and Netflix is passing the cost along.)

Before this week's bombshell, it seemed like most Netflix customers were thrilled with the company's offerings and service. To hear most of its customers talk, Netflix was the greatest thing since the invention of moving pictures. Simply put, the vast majority of Netflix customers, based on their own reported satisfaction, seemed to enjoy a rather large consumer surplus.

"Consumer surplus" is what those of us with economics degrees call the difference between what you pay for something and what that something is actually worth to you. If I pay $5 for a double mocha latte with whipped cream but would be willing to go as high as $10 for it, my consumer surplus is $5. You may think I'm crazy, but I'm getting a 100 percent consumer surplus. That's a steal.

Netflix is betting most of its customers have been getting enough of a consumer surplus that they'll absorb the rate hike, even if they have to vent about it first. That's probably a safe bet, because all of those angry Netflix customers wouldn't have been so upset if they didn't really love their Netflix.

And that means a lot of Netflix's customers are dirty, dirty liars.

Either they were lying just a few days ago when they were saying how great Netflix was, or they're lying now when they say they're going to cancel their accounts because Netflix suddenly turned into a greedy, profit-maximizing corporation with bills of its own to pay, which it totally wasn't just last week.

You can't believe what people say. But when they actually put their money on the countertop, that's when they're telling the truth.

When it comes to Netflix, we'll find out the truth sometime in September.

Late, late link-o-rama

2011-07-12T01:58:00.000-05:00

So many goodies tonight, so little time...

Disney and Johnny Depp's production company Infinitum Nihil are partnering to produce a feature-film version of the 1970s Darren McGavin series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, with Depp in line to possibly star.
Luke Skywalker finally gets some professional help. [Cartoon]
Spike Lee is directing a new version of the cult South Korean film Oldboy. There is nothing about that preceding sentence that is not a bad idea.
Space Trivia: It has been one Neptune year since the discovery of Neptune.
Father and son recreate 30-year-old space shuttle launch photo.
This is totally not metal: A Swedish heavy metal fan has had his musical preferences officially classified as a disability.
The California Highway Patrol has enlisted Erik "Ponch" Estrada to warn L.A. motorists about the upcoming "Carmageddon."
The classic Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing/Telly Savalas horror flick Horror Express is coming to Blu-ray and special-edition DVD in a handy combo pack from one of my favorite niche home-video labels, Severin.
Joe Bob Briggs visits Niagra Falls, aka the world's greatest tourist trap. (Related: "Niagra Falls! Slowly I turned, step by step. Inch by inch....")
Dean Martin's hamburger recipe. Just add bourbon (chilled).
The new teaser poster for The Dark Knight Rises just reminds me of one of the silliest Batman story arcs of recent years, "Cataclysm." Not impressed.
The Retroist goes in depth with Re-Animator: The Musical. (Yes, that happened.)

Starlog: 1984

2011-07-10T15:22:00.001-05:00

What Famous Monsters of Filmland was to Baby Boomers, Starlog was to Generation X. And there was a time when Starlog actually advertised on television:

Late, late link-o-rama

2011-07-09T01:00:00.000-05:00

H.P. Lovecraft's "commonplace book." [Via Open Culture.]
1980s comics publisher First Comics (Nexus, Grimjack, E-Man) is prepping for a revival.
TNT has ordered 10 episodes of a new Dallas series, and original-series stars Larry Hagman, Linda Gray, and Patrick Duffy are back.
Classic arcade game Space Invaders is being turned into a movie that will presumably involve space and invaders.

Holy catchphrase!

2011-07-09T00:58:00.000-05:00

[Holy High Definite!]

Thursday night link-o-rama

2011-07-07T21:22:00.000-05:00

The trailer for the animated Batman: Year One has gone live.
McDonald's is testing something it's calling an "English Pub Burger." (Will I be able to get a Guinness with that?)
ABC soaps All My Children and One Life to Live are getting a second chance online. (Somewhere, a Firefly fan is weeping.)
Sidekick vs. sidekick: Bucky vs. Jason Todd.

Culture Shock 07.07.11: John-Boy Walton goes back to space

2011-07-07T00:02:00.001-05:00

Of all the B-grade sci-fi movies that tried to ride the "Star Wars" wave in the late '70s and early '80s, probably none is more fondly remembered than "Battle Beyond the Stars," or, as we called it back in the day, "John-Boy in Space."

The nickname comes from its star, Richard Thomas, whose career-defining role as John-Boy Walton on CBS's "The Waltons" will follow him to his grave.

When he left "The Waltons," Thomas put a lot of distance between himself and Walton's Mountain. We're talking light years.

Now "Battle Beyond the Stars" is back — re-released for its 30th anniversary on Blu-ray and DVD — and loaded with bonus features befitting a film many Generation Xers grew up with thanks to frequent afternoon showings on HBO.

First unleashed by Roger Corman's New World Pictures in 1980, "Battle Beyond the Stars" helped launch several successful movie careers.

James Cameron worked on the film's special effects, while James Horner provided the musical score. Since then, Cameron and Horner have teamed up for "Aliens," "Titanic" and "Avatar."

"Battle" also helped launch other low-budget sci-fi films that reused its special effects.

Corman was a fan of recycling long before recycling was cool. So, it's fitting that the story of "Battle Beyond the Stars" is just as recycled. Basically, it's a remake of Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai," which had already been remade as "The Magnificent Seven."

And since Corman was looking to cash in on the success George Lucas had with "Star Wars," it's also only appropriate that Corman turn to Kurosawa, because that's exactly what Lucas did when he drew inspiration from Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress."

Lastly, in case you haven't had enough of the whole recycling theme yet, there's Robert Vaughn. He played one of the seven hired guns in "The Magnificent Seven," and he plays one again in "Battle Beyond the Stars," where he is joined by the likes of a space valkyrie portrayed by Sybil Danning ("Chained Heat") and a space cowboy played by George Peppard, who was between gigs in "Banacek" and "The A-Team."

Cowboy is the lone Earth man of the bunch, which is why he eats hot dogs and actually is named "Cowboy." (I hear he's also a gangster of love, but that's another story.)

Facing off against John-Boy and his magnificent seven is the evil Sador, played by John Saxon ("A Nightmare on Elm Street"). Sador, whose hobbies include extreme body modification, threatens to destroy John-Boy's peaceful world for reasons that only make sense to psychopaths who roam the galaxy randomly blowing up planets for no good reason.

Blowing up a planet is one thing if it obstructs your view of Venus, but otherwise it's just overkill.

Sarcasm aside, "Battle Beyond the Stars" is more than a B-movie with a formulaic plot.

The cast members all seem to be having a blast, and even with world-class scenery chewers like Vaughn around, supporting players threaten to steal the show. Morgan Woodward, under heavy makeup as the reptilian mercenary Cayman of the Lambda Zone, is one of the real stars here.

And the special effects, while dated, still hold up, which is something you can't say about most Corman-produced sci-fi movies.

(Actually, I can't think of another Corman film you can say that about.)

Give that Cameron guy some credit. He may be a bit nutty when it comes to 3-D, but he knew how to build a model spaceship that looks like it has huge breasts on its hull.

No kidding. It does. See for yourself.

Wednesday link-o-rama

2011-07-06T11:49:00.000-05:00

Ten "batshit crazy" sci-fi flicks from Italy.
Watch a trip to a drive-in movie concession stand turn into a trip to hell! Bwahahaha! [Via Laughing Squid.]
Is Atlas Shrugged Part 2 really going forward? Seriously?
Cracked.com looks at seven "ancient" forms of mysticism that are actually recent inventions.
Submitted for your approval: Star Wars meets The Twilight Zone.

Tuesday link-o-rama

2011-07-05T11:13:00.002-05:00

The dumbest complaint about the MPAA's movie ratings you'll read this week.
Let's play the Feud: Uwe Boll, arteur of crap filmmaking, attacks better directors.
Let's play the Feud, Part Deux: Comedy Central will roast Charlie Sheen on the night of Ashton Kutcher's debut on Two and a Half Men.
Wim Wenders remembers Peter Falk.
The end of brick-and-mortar bookstores. [Via Kurt Loder.]
20 anime films non-anime fans will love. [Via David Brin.]

Just a (Manhattan) gigolo

2011-07-04T17:01:00.007-05:00

In June 2001, actress-turned-newscaster Andrea Thompson (Babylon 5, NYPD Blue) became an anchor for what was then called CNN Headline News — now HLN, which sounds more like a homemaking and lifestyle channel than a news channel. This caused a minor scandal because 1) Thompson was a newsreading newbie, and veteran TV newscasters like to pretend reading a teleprompter requires journalism experience, and 2) Thompson had appeared nude in some movies back in the 1980s and '90s.

Despite its reputation for being "liberal," the mainstream news media in America is actually full of insufferable prudes.

While Thompson had done full frontal as recently as 1997's A Gun, A Car, A Blonde, in which she played "The Blonde," the movie that generated most of the heat was her first, an Italian-made bit of softcore Eurotrash called Manhattan Gigolo (1986).

At the time, Manhattan Gigolo had only been released on VHS, and the tape, a relic of the mom-and-pop-video-store era, was out of print. A few years ago, this all-but-forgotten flick — which would be completely forgotten if not for Thompson's involvement — finally made it to DVD, and, thanks to Netflix, I now know what all the fuss was about.

First things first: Manhattan Gigolo is a bad movie. If not for the sex and nudity — I'll get to that — it would be perfect material for Mystery Science Theater 3000. The bare-bones DVD from Televista doesn't help: The picture is murky and dark, the presentation is a cropped pan-and-scan, and if it looks like the movie was just copied off the old VHS release, that's because it probably was.

Can you believe they charge nearly $25 for this bootleg-quality crap? They're clearly counting on lots of guys being desperate to see Andrea Thompson naked — as if the Internet doesn't make that easy enough.

Manhattan Gigolo is like a bad Italian horror movie of the same era, except it's sorely lacking in gloved killers, zombies, zombies fighting sharks, or a director capable of overachieving with sub-par material. It also lacks the flair of other Italian softcore sex films. Director Amasi Damiani is no Joe D'Amato, and this is no Black Emanuelle flick.

I guess this movie might be competently edited and shot, and it's just impossible to tell from the washed-out, VHS-duped presentation. But I doubt it, because it has a scene where from one camera angle it's broad daylight while from the other it's pitch black. Continuity is not a strong point here.

The plot involves two friends, Johnny (Gianni Dei, known to Eurohorror fans for occupying the title role of Patrick Still Lives, the Italian knock-off "sequel" to the classic Australian exploitation flick Patrick) and Rudy (Aris Iliopulos, known to nobody for nothing) who have come to New York from Italy to seek fame and fortune as actors. This leads them to cross paths with actress/model Leslie (Thompson), who immediately takes a liking to the two. So, at about 17 minutes in, we get the steamy three-way that caused such a commotion when Thompson joined Headline News. What follows is 6 minutes of enjoyable Skinemax-level erotica. It's the highlight of the film but certainly no cause for moral indignation, no matter how flexible the young Ms. Thompson is.

Unknown to Johnny and Rudy, however, their tryst with Leslie was staged for a voyeur, with Leslie pocketing the money. (Why does the most popular model in New York need an illicit side job, anyway? Shut up, that's why!) And Leslie is all for doing it again, this time giving Johnny and Rudy a cut. Johnny has moral reservations, but not enough to bail, even as his career really starts to take off. (If you think this seems ironically like Thompson's real-life experience, stop over-analyzing now.)

Naturally, it all goes bad, with professional jealousies and obsessive voyeurs who want to do more than watch playing out predictably. There's also a bit more skin: a staged "rape" scene for one of the voyeuristic clients, another three-way interspersed in the middle of a montage, etc. But it's all pretty tedious stuff.

Did I mention all of this is told in a flashback from the back of an ambulance where Johnny, injured and possibly dying, and Leslie reminisce about how they met and fell in love? No? Well it is.

The sex scenes are the least embarrassing thing about Manhattan Gigolo. They come off well compared to everything else. Even with all the terrible acting surrounding her, Thompson seems especially bad. She is emotionless to the point of seeming constantly dazed, and, adding insult to injury, her voice is dubbed by someone else.

But to cut her some slack, this was her first film and she was probably the only native English speaker on the set. No wonder "confused" is a charitable description of her screen presence.

Thompson was much better on Babylon 5 — and reading the news on TV, for that matter.

A firework's point of view

2011-07-04T14:12:00.000-05:00

[Via Open Culture.]

Independence Day link-o-rama

2011-07-04T12:15:00.001-05:00

Whatever happened to Apollo Smile, the "live-action anime girl" — generally regarded as somewhat embarrassing by longtime anime fans in the U.S. — who hosted anime festivals on The Sci-Fi Channel back when the The Sci-Fi Channel still showed sci-fi? (See also: Apollo Smile's brief music career.)
Adrianne Palicki, TV's would-be Wonder Woman, has signed to be G.I. Joe 2's Lady Jaye.
Assigning blame. [Cartoon]
A Softer World's Emily Horne shares a drink recipe.
Cartoonist Peter Bagge visits a women's minimum-security prison.

The Star-Scream

2011-07-04T10:13:00.001-05:00

T-shirt by RedBubble. Link via Fashionably Geek.

Happy Independence Day!

2011-07-04T10:09:00.000-05:00

The creatures of Ray Harryhausen

2011-07-02T14:01:00.000-05:00

[Via io9.com.]

Saturday nostalgia

2011-07-02T12:41:00.000-05:00

This video may be from one independent UHF station in Chicago, but it reflects pretty much the universal TV-watching experience for anyone who grew up in the U.S. is the 1980s. (Note also the recycled 1960s cartoons on Sunday mornings.)

Midnight link-o-rama

2011-07-02T00:39:00.001-05:00

Michael Bay caught recycling explosions from one of his previous movies.
Netflix reaches the final frontier as hundreds of hours of Star Trek become available for instant streaming.
The companions of Doctor Who. [Infographic]
In honor of Canada's birthday, here's William Shatner performing "O Canada." Kinda. [Via Neatorama.]