Now I actually kind of want to see Gatsby...

We Salute Mythbusters as they enter their 10th Season

I often forget to mention that I watch Mythbusters nigh religiously.

Yes, they blow things up real good in most episodes.  Yes, I am curious about what happens when you throw a car in a swimming pool, or jump at the last second in a falling elevator, or try to maximize gas mileage or park a car behind the exhaust of a 747, drop a car from a helicopter or blow up a cement truck, just 'cause...  The show raises questions I didn't know I had, then answers them pretty thoroughly.  Even if, in an early episode, they got that whole thing about sodas exploding in one's car wrong.*

Adam has aged, but Jamie is eternal

No doubt the mix of personalities keeps the show working, and the dichotomy of Jamie and Adam's approaches always an object lesson in how even two people who know each other well can have completely different ways of solving a problem.  And, of course, we all love the build team and you should really follow them on Twitter.  They're pretty amusing.

It may not be perfect science, but the progam aims to demystify science and engineering, and therefore, perhaps, demystifies the world through some of the steps of the experimentation (and less often, the scientific) method.  Evidence is reviewed.  Hypotheses and ideas are considered and explained (including why some options are cast aside), and small scale testing of components is shown.  As the full experiment is built to, math is shown, explanations of physics are all brought down to a consumer level.  And if the myth doesn't go off as planned, in recent years, Mythbusters has gone on to find what they think would be required to replicate the scenario described in the myth.

Supermarathon: Superman - The Animated Series! ("Last Son of Krypton" and "Blasts from the Past")

I started developing an interest for Superman in high school, and just after I'd picked up a couple of issues, DC launched the whole "Death of Superman" business, which I knew was a gimmick, of course, and so I didn't bother with it.   And this sounds perhaps a bit trite, but when Superman "returned" with a mullet and entered into what I consider to be one of the weakest eras of Superman writing and development, there wasn't much to grasp onto.*

In 1996, Warner Bros. responded to Fox Kids Network's complaints that Batman was too "dark" by trying their hand at a Superman series.  Superman was a lot spunkier, in theory.  Of course, it's a story that depends on killing an entire planet of people just to get started, but let's not split hairs.

Supermarathon! Pilot: Lois & Clark

I wasn't watching much TV when Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman debuted.  I was a freshman at UT and the only TV I really watched was:

• Animaniacs
• Batman
• 90210 (it's a long story)
• Melrose Place (an addendum to the long story)
• X-Files
• Brisco County Jr.

Of course, the only channels we had good reception for in the dorm were Fox and PBS.

As I recall, the show aired on Sundays, which was homework night.

the show more or less promised Lois and Clark would eventually "do it" from the first promo pic

I did watch the pilot with some buddies, no doubt our iffy reception riddled with static.  And it aired at the same time as the pilot of SeaQuest DSV, and we couldn't figure out which to watch.  In the end we decided to try to pass our courses (barely) and didn't watch either on an ongoing basis, really.

Stars Dean Cain (Superman/ Clark) and Teri Hatcher (Lois Lane) became household names immediately.  A nation embraced the phrase "Great Shades of Elvis!" from our erstwhile Perry White.

Planning The Super-Marathon - a list of things we'll be watching!

Leading up to the release of Warner Bros. Man of Steel, expect this blog to become all the more Super-Centric.

If I could watch all of the Harry Potter movies again before catching the final installment, and watch all the Avengers movies leading up to Whedon's Avengers, I think I owe it to myself, to you, and to the world to watch just a whole ton of Superman media leading up to the film's release.

I am going to go chronological, and if you want to play along at home, I'll try to keep you up to speed with what I'm watching.

Also, I am not averse to having screenings where folks can come over and join me if they're in the Austin area, but time is of the essence.  We can't really dilly-dally while you try to find a date that works for you.  We've got, like, 100 hours of media to watch before the movie kicks off.*

The Fleischer cartoons

I figure three or four ought to do it.  These cartoons are groundbreaking for the era and hold up remarkably well today.  Superman still can't fly in most of them, but he's a heck of a lot of fun as the squinty-eyed, devil-may-care action ace who is always two steps behind Lois's nose for news.

Superman (aka: The Mad Scientist)
The Mechanical Monsters
Terror on the Midway 
The Underground World

We'll see, I'll probably watch all of them peppered in with other items.

The Serials

Live action (except for flying scenes), these serials are good, clean fun with a very young Noel Neill and the affable Kirk Alyn playing a less lantern-jawed Superman.

At minimum, it seems necessary to catch the first two episodes
Superman Comes to Earth (in which his parents are Eben and Sarah, I believe)
Depths of the Earth

Annette Funicello Merges with The Infinite

It seems that original Mouseketeer, beach movie fixture and boomer icon, Annette Funicello, has passed.

 I knew Annette from her 80's-era TV appearances and also as the girl that, apparently, men of my Dad's generation all grew up having a crush on.  Annette Funicello was going through a sort of nostalgia-tour renaissance when I was a kid, in peanut butter commercials, guest appearances, etc.. at a time when we also happened to have the Disney Channel, which would rerun the old Mickey Mouse Club episodes (but not in order, because that would be nuts).  And I was just the kind of kid who was cool enough to think a good afternoon included Mr. Ed and Mickey Mouse Club re-runs.

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Elisabeth Moss

we will always make time for Peggy Olson

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Christina Hendricks

Mad Men returns April 7th on AMC.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Superman: The Musical!

Holy cow.

I've known about It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman! for around 10-12 years, but I had never seen it in any form.  Originally produced as a campy Broadway spectacular  in 1966 (it debuted the same year as the Adam West TV show), the show ran for about four months before closing.  I think that, these days, the show has mostly been forgotten.

In 1975, because nobody was paying attention, ABC broadcast a version of the musical.  Reportedly the program aired a single time, fairly late at night and in a dead zone where networks were often trying to figure out how to fill the airwaves*.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no legally obtainable copy of the broadcast available.  For Superman fans, the musical is about as close to an intentionally obscure artifact as I can think of to that king of pop cultural ephemera, the Star Wars Holiday Special.  Superman fans have all seen clips or stills, but we haven't seen the actual full program.

Can you read my mind?

This week, I did obtain a copy.  We'll keep it a little shrouded in mystery, but my source knows who he is, and knows how awesome he or she is.  As the existence of this video may not be entirely on the up and up (and so offended am I that I have immediately burned the DVD so that NONE may find yourself tainted by the sheer audacity of it's illegality), I'm keeping the gifter's name out of it.

But, thanks, man.  That was SUPER of you!**

The video itself is a transfer from tape.  Tape from 1975.  So, it's got some rough edges and the sound is occasionally wobbly because: aging analog media.  It's not the drug-fueled nightmare that the Star Wars Holiday Special devolves into within minutes of the opening, and, frankly, the Star Wars Special had about 20 times the budget of this show.  It's also an oddball bit of nerd media, and would fit nicely on your shelf next to the shelved low-budget, very 90's Justice League pilot, the Legends of the Superheroes, the Captain America TV movies, etc... etc...   But the musical is pure hammy schmaltz, but intentionally so, and it's oddly charming, even if it's not much of a musical.

It's Like Seeing a Fever Dream Come True: Axe Cop TV Trailer

@#$% just got real.

Spy Shows, Melodrama, Planet of the Apes

The only TV I had time to watch this weekend was an episode of Archer and a week-and-a-half-old episode of The Americans.  I'm still liking the show well enough, but I kind of think they need to slow it the hell down.  I'm no master spy, but having a new mission every week while you're supposed to be undercover and a sort of sleeper agent feels like a lot of missions.  Perhaps it makes sense in the context of Archer, but I'm cool with long-game sorts of scenarios and letting the domestic issues the show writers seem to want to focus on (and I welcome) broil from episode to episode is fine.

But, really, I have no complaints.

Well, one.  Every episode now seems to end with our leads in their bedroom having a whispery and angry conversation, and it's a bad pattern to get stuck in.  Yes, we need to see these two together, but somehow it reminds me of how Smallville started going downhill when every episode started ending the A Plot with 10-15 minutes left, and spent 10 minutes with Lana and Clark in Clark's barn-loft with Lana making cow eyes at each other and being weepy teens.

If the killer Russian spies turn into Clana, I shall be disappointed.

I also picked up and read the second volume of  a trade of a Planet of the Apes comics series that has to be two or three years old now.  It's well written and fantastically drawn, and, like all POTA stuff, it's also headed somewhere incredibly nihilistic and depressing.  Just showing a world where humans still talk is the start of the end of a world where humans cease talking and become primitive and beast-like by their first appearance in the Cheston films.  And, of course, when you blow up the Earth in the second movie (spoiler?), there's just not really a "and things get better" to be had.*

All of this makes it hard to go seek out the third volume as... I kind of know how all this wraps up.  Hmmm...

Mostly, I worked on Saturday, and today I made a cake for Jamie's birthday.  And then we made dinner.  And now I'm sort of done.  And the weekend is over, and we're starting all over again.





*yes, there are three more films after they blow up Earth.  What of it?

I got nothin': Mad Men and creeping up on my blogging anniversary

We started our pre-Season 6 review of Season 5 of Mad Men this evening.  I firmly believe you kind of have to watch every season of this show twice, not just to get the quick, throw away lines you might have missed, but it's a show that writes in a literary mode.  Once you know the score, it's amazing to see the foreshadowing and symbols.  I've seen some critics complain that, basically, the show does this on TV and they feel it can be clunky, and, sometimes, yeah.  But for the occasional open elevator shaft, there's a throw-away line about "not being around by Christmas" that plays out with grim irony nobody but the writing staff could have anticipated.

As much as I live a good show like The Americans and the challenges of the show, they're all there on the surface.  It's a gripping drama that challenges the American hero perspective of the 1980's (or today), but that's the function of the show.  It weaves in home and life to characters we've only ever seen as drone-like killing machines or bed-mates for James Bond.  Again, I really like The Americans, but Mad Men is trying in a completely different way and isn't in danger of becoming a one-hit wonder.

Also, I watched this evening's episode of The New Girl.  I long ago moved on from just watching it for the Deschanel-ness and genuinely like what I suspect is about 50% made up on the spot from an outline.

In the next 10 days I need to finish the 10th Anniversary post for my blogging.

10 years, man.  10.  That's a lot of navel gazing.  And sometimes I feel bad that I only have 200+ posts on Superman on this blog, and then I think:  well, man, that's like 200 posts you did about Superman on this site alone.  That's actually a lot of thinking and writing about Superman that nobody paid you to do.  You're no Steve Younis, but that's nothing to shake a stick at.  Also, go out and get some sun or something.  All this sitting can't be good for you.

Anyway, if you have anything to contribute to the 10 year anniversay-palooza, we welcome you to send in your post-cards and comments.  You can do so via email at the contact link that is in the menu bar running horizontally at the top of the page.  We'll reprint whatever you want to send in.

One thing I learned from visiting with people I hadn't seen much or at all in 20 years last weekend is that their memories of you and  (what was to them) specific, very important moments can be something you don't really recall yourself until they bring it up.  I was just glad that the two things I had dropped on me were both really pretty positive.  But then modern-me looked like a jack-ass for not immediately remembering either event.*

So, yeah, I don't know what you people think of when you think of The League of Melbotis franchise of social media.  But if you want to help me out on this, it'd be appreciated.


*apparently I defended a young woman's honor in the cafeteria and was someone else's first kiss (as a stage kiss.  I had no idea.).

Baltimore

No, I've never watched The Wire and your references will be lost on me.*  Yes, I'll get to it.

I am headed for Baltimore from Tuesday til Thursday.  I haven't been there since a day trip from DC when I was a kid where I saw an 18th Century Man-o-War and the rest of my family got lost in the projects looking for Edgar Allen Poe's house.

In honor of the trip, here's a cut from the super-depressing Lyle Lovett album, Joshua Judges Ruth



I'm going for work, not pleasure.  But I hope to have fun working, which, you know, weirder things have happened.


*The only characters' names I know from The Wire are Omar and Bubbles and I know what happens to Omar because the internet is full of people who hate narrative payoff, I guess.

Let Us Break Out the Ketel One and Christian Bros. Brandy and Ponder an "Achewood" TV Show

No lie, one of my favorite things of recent western history has been the web comic/ experience, Achewood.

Achewood is almost impossible to explain, fits a specific comedy and writing niche that is most certainly not for everyone, and is the most quotable text of the 21st Century.

Of late, Achewood has been halted, out of print, or whatever you want to call it when a web comic ceases publication.

It was clear something went down with strip owner and operator Chris Onstead, and that's his issue or issues to share or keep to himself.  But, suddenly, after months of silence, Onstead appeared today announcing that he's trying to sell an animated version of Achewood in LA this week.

Frankly, I don't know how a writer's room and the sort of collaborative environment mixed with the needs of  TV networks can possibly bring the strip to life and retain the creative singular vision of a comic about cats named "Roast Beef" and "Ray".  But you never know.  Axe Cop is headed for television, so anything can happen these days, I guess.

Here's Onstead's announcement.

And here's the video demo of what a televised Achewood might look like.


Achewood Television Trailer One "Hello, world" from therussians on Vimeo.

I know, I'm sort of sweating, too.

Animated Teodor, y'all. Animated Teodor could happen.

Anyway, it's an outside shot, but I would love to see this happen and the name "Ray Smuckles" become a household word.

Signal Watches: The Americans (that Commie Spy Show on FX)

This is how I know I'm getting older.  Time has marched on enough that the scary people of whom we lived in fear during my formative years are protagonists on a new TV show.

FX's new hour-long drama, The Americans, follows the adventures of two KGB sleeper agents in the US at the dawn of the Reagan administration.  The Commies are the protagonists and Ronald Reagan is the looming specter of a heightened state of intensity as (we used to say) the cold war heats up.  We also have a federal agent living across the street from our Commie-heroes, the clammy bureaucracy of the Kremlin, and the rich pageant of life left behind in Mother Russia to contend with.

Movies and TV have taken various stabs at turning the traditional antagonist into the protagonist since Little Cesar pondered how this is how he ended.  Once we dropped the Hayes Code and adopted a rating system that didn't require a moral lesson at the end (ie: the Bonnie & Clyde ending for our protagonist and a realization that crime ends in a premature death and misery), we've explored bad-guy-ness in the movies.  And, of course, Sopranos broke the mold for TV, giving a weekly view and building sympathy for a mob family.  These days, of course, Breaking Bad gives us the drug manufacturers' perspective.

No Post Thursday - Superheroes on TV

I watched the first 2/3rds of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? for the first time since college, and its even better than I remember.  Saving the rest for tomorrow, but, man, everyone in that movie is so good.

Anyway, we'll talk about that movie later.

And, we really need to find me a copy of Straight Jacket.

Also watched a PBS show, Pioneers of Television, that I think Randy originally sent me the link for.  Anyway, the topics was superheroes, and featured Batman, The Hulk, The Adventures of Superman, The Greatest American Hero and (sigh) Wonder Woman.


You can watch the whole thing on the PBS site, so go nuts.

Watch Superheroes on PBS. See more from Pioneers of Television.

Here, Lynda Carter has had enough of your nonsense:

Here's, like, 9.5 minutes of Diana Prince turning into Wonder Woman.  It's kind of weird.




 And, as a reminder, The Adventures of Superman is a terrific TV show.

Thursday: Eddie Muller on Turner Classic - Talking Noir

Noir fans are exceedingly lucky to have a few key figures playing ringmaster for the genre mostly out of pure love for the genre.

Eddie Muller is known in some circles as The Czar of Noir.  He's written a few books on the topic.  I read and loved, Dark City, myself.  He also hosts and manages not just the San Francisco based Noir City festival (now in its 11th year), but he also hosts other noir festivals around the country.  

I first became aware of Eddie when I went to The Alamo Ritz to see The Prowler in a print restored with proceeds earned for the Film Noir Foundation at Noir City.  He's spent decades tracking down the films and some of the stars, now mostly forgotten except by the noir audience, and out of that - he's an excellent story teller, warm host for interviews and a really decent guy.

My pal Jenifer (@J__Swift) knows Eddie a bit, and so she introduced me at Noir City X.  Eddie was exceedingly kind to a dopey guy from Texas, making sure we got a tour of the Hammett apartment on Pike Street, and we agreed that the cinnamon laced bourbon they were serving was more than a little iffy.

Anyway, on Thursday, Eddie is guest hosting at Turner Classic with Robert Osbourne.  

Eddie isn't going to trot out the crowd pleasers, necessarily.  We've already all seen Gilda and Laura.  But he will uncover gems you might not otherwise ever see, and which have special qualities or performances you don't see anywhere else.

Of the films, Eddie selected four and the fifth was chosen by TCM as a special nod to Eddie and his restoration efforts for the film.

• Cry Danger
• 99 River Street
• Tomorrow is Another Day
• The Breaking Point
• The Prowler

I've got my DVR set, and I'm looking forward to seeing the films on this list I've not caught before.  Very much looking forward to the intros we'll see.

So, Golden Globes. amiright?

You either like award shows for the entertainment industry, or you do not.  I suppose this is true for both participants who have to go to these things, and for those of us who can opt out at home and not watch.

As a media consumer, you either value what an award for a member of the entertainment industry represents, or you do not.  This is also true for the folks who show up for a one-in-five chance of winning a kind of gaudy statue, as well as us, the viewing public.

I won't try to convince anyone to my viewpoint.  That way lies madness.  I don't watch awards shows, and I don't think much of the value of the awards.  I will confess that I am often interested to see what won some of the technical awards and categories such as "score", because it gives me something to consider if I've seen a movie.

This evening I turned on The Golden Globes just long enough to see Lena-what's-her-face win some award for her HBO program, Girls, which I've seen exactly five minutes of, felt terribly aware that the show was aimed at an audience which did not include me, felt I got where this show was headed, and got out before I got emotionally invested in actively disliking everything about the show and those involved.

Because of when I tuned in, all I know is that The Big Bang Theory has fallen from grace with the Hollywood Foreign Press as, this year, it was not funnier than Girls.  Is it possible Louie was not nominated?  Can you see why I can't take this seriously?

I made it for a whole of three minutes before Jamie saw me walking off with my laptop and just turned off the TV again.  I heard enough of Lena-what's-her-face's speech to recognize that it sounded like everyone else's speech.  It sounded like every television or movies award speech ever done that wasn't someone going crazy once they had a chance with a microphone and a massive, captive audience.  This was the banal, overstuffed speech where people who made a thing drop superlatives.

As a facebook friend said:  Dear Hollywood, stop saying it took courage to make your TV show/ movie.  It took money.

Some end of week Media: Bernie, Where Danger Lives, Ghosts of Belfast, Downton Abbey

Watched two completely different movies tonight.  Bernie and Where Danger Lives.  These days I'm re-watching movies less and trying to see new things more.

Bernie was shot somewhat locally by Austin-based filmmaker Richard Linklater and got a lot of local praise when the movie was released, but I don't know how far and wide it was seen outside of Texas.  A true story of a mortician (Jack Black) and his nebulous relationship with an older woman (Shirley MacLaine) and how everything's relative in a small town in Texas, including murder.

I'd heard a lot of good things, and the locals both cut into the movie in "interview" segments and playing themselves were a very clever twist.  I just wasn't sure the movie actually worked all that well, especially as the murder - which is a matter of public record - doesn't come til the 2/3rds mark...

Probably worth a spin sometime.

Also watched Where Danger Lives with Robert Mitchum, and it's sort of a studio-friendly take on the Detour concept.  Frankly, that is one crazy movie and I'll need to watch it again.  It's so noir, it's almost dripping black off the screen, with Mitchum getting in way, way over his head, while drunk and concussed with a classic femme fatale who doesn't have Ann Savage's brutal, sexy cruelty, but has her own more recognizable looney-tunes-ness.  It's a great "and mistakes were made" kind of story.  Bonus points for brazen sexuality in a 1950 film, all through a lack of camera movement and a few key lines of dialog.

Started listening to the audiobook of The Ghosts of Belfast.  It's an interesting book thus far, and I wish I knew more about the history of the IRA, but even what little I do know is sort of keeping me up to speed.

Last night we tried our first episode of Downton Abbey.  I can't say I exactly see what the big deal is, but it was the pilot.  We'll try again later.  I do not get hot and bothered often by Upstairs/ Downstairs-type dramas, and it's so over the top, it does feel like camp.  Is this show supposed to be camp?  Someone help me out.

All right.  I'm tired.  I'm going to bed.

Pre "Man of Steel" Superman-a-thon?

I am planning some sort of epic re-watching of Superman media in the lead up to this summer's release of Man of Steel.

I have several issues.

unlike Superman, I do not go to the moon to ponder.  I bore you guys.

1.  What do I watch?

I own:

• The Fleischer cartoons
• The original serials starring Kirk Alyn
• The entire George Reeves series (6 seasons)
• the four cycle movie series with Chris Reeve, including the Superman 2 Director's Cut and Superman Returns
• Supergirl - yes, it's in continuity and it counts
• the animated series from the 1960's
• the animated series from the 1980's
• Season 1 of Superboy
• Season 1 of Lois and Clark
• Superman the Animated Series, Justice League
• a handful of DC/ WB Animation Studios direct-to-video movies like Superman Vs. The Elite