Marvel Hall-o-ween-Hall-o-Watch: Werewolf By Night (2022)

Watched:  10/10/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  (checks notes)  Michael Giacchino.  Huh.

This fit the dictionary definition of "fine".  I'm not mad I watched it, I wasn't against what the story was trying to do, but as pal JAL rightfully pointed out, the Marvel machinery seems to have taken over for a portion of the film, and I'm not sure it was to the movie's benefit.  

Werewolf By Night is no one's favorite thing in comics, and if I'm tracing the lineage correctly, the character (Jack Russell, which surely is someone @#$%ing about) appeared in 1972 at what I'm assuming was part of the 1970's monster explosion as classic horror became hip for kids again.  But, also, the Comics Code was no longer nun-teacher strict about rules, and things like "no vampirism, no werewolfism" were stricken from the code.  

This thing is a kind of neat experiment by Marvel - making essentially a TV special that works much in the same way we used to get both the famous kids' stuff like Charlie Brown, but also some older-skewing fare.  Werewolf By Night is maybe 45 minutes, has a more humble budget than, say, Endgame, and exists as a fun holiday treat.  But it's Marvel, so it's also opening the door to the weird and horrific corners of the Marvel U from whence we get Blade the Vampire Hunter (still in development), actual Dracula, but also fellows like Man-Thing.  

But as a 45 minute, moderately budgeted film, it's also led by a first time director in Michael Giacchino, who you know as one of the current wave of actually very talented film scorers.  Why direct?  I have no idea.  But I do think, the oddball impact is that you can see what rails Marvel clearly puts around directors as a support system and to ensure certain bits of quality are maintained.  But, in this case, I'd say that's where the film gets away from them.

The film has the vibe of someone trying to borrow from Universal horror pictures who doesn't actually know what made up the 1930's and 40's Universal cycle of horror's look and feel.  It is definitely in black and white (which some Marvel horror was in the 1970's, natch), but it lacks a certainly visual moodiness and the weight of scenes moored by cameras the weight of an automobile.  I am not insisting that anyone shoot everything in American shots for 45 minutes on grainy film, but continuous camera movement is not how Tod Browning and James Whale were shooting movies.  It lacks the expressionistic ethos or methods used in both Universal and RKO horror - ie: anyone can turn down color-gradient, not everyone knows what to do next.  

PodCast 214: "DC League Of Super Pets" (2022) - A Kryptonian Thought Beast Episode w/ Jamie & Ryan

 

Watched:  10/02/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jared Stern and Samuel J Levine

For more ways to watch

The podcast goes to the dogs as Jamie and Ryan talk 2022's furriest super-offering. Join us as we sniff around for a take on family fun in Metropolis as Superman's lesser-known pal gets his own feature and DC/ WB tries to kick-start a lucrative super franchise for the kiddos.

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The Signal Watch PodCast · 214: "DC League Of Super Pets" (2022) - A Kryptonian Thought Beast Episode w/ Jamie & Ryan

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DC Movies Playlist

The Signal Watch PodCast · DC Cinema and TV

Dracula Watch: The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

Watched:  10/03/2022

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First 

Director:  Alan Gibson

Well, this is the final Dracula movie starring Christopher Lee as the good count, it's 1973 happening out there, and the soundtrack has a wah peddle.  I won't say I didn't enjoy this movie.  I did!  It's got Cushing still leaning into it, Lee is much more engaged than in Dracula AD 1972, and how can you go wrong when you include Joanna Lumley?  

This movie follows what happens when Dracula gets himself a cult going, and managed to plan ahead.  His plan may make no sense, but it is very, very dramatic.  Some key scenes seem to take place off-camera, and you will not like the guy who they cast as "our hero".  He has a terrible haircut and is rude to Joanna Lumley while also clearly supposed to have a romantic spark with her that no one is buying.  She's clearly way, way out of his league.  

Anyway, a mysterious cult seems to have recruited some deeply important people with the promise of power.  They kill a chicken and everything.  But it's secretly Dracula planning to use a super-bubonic plague that will wipe out humanity.  As the authorities bring in Van Helsing to sort things out, he sorts out that Dracula survived their last encounter and is now working to create a plague so all of humanity will die, and he will then be able to die, himself.  This idea gets no further consideration as some kinda wild stuff.  

There's a basement full 'o brides, a gang wearing matching sweater vests of evil, a woman wildly othered and exoticized for being Asian, snipers, excellent use of a net, and Dracula getting caught in a shrubbery.  

Joanna Lumley plays Jessica Van Helsing, seen in the prior year's Dracula AD 1972 as portrayed by Stephanie Beacham.  And her wardrobe is 70's fabu.  No notes.  She looks terrific.  

The movie plays it pretty straight, and nobody is an idiot just to serve the story.  I'm not sure how unleashing a plague requiring physical contact that becomes obvious one has said plague is particularly frightening when you realize no one would touch those people and just walk away from the threat.  Literally Lee's scheme in Captain America: Death Too Soon is 10000x more effective.   

There's some kinda interesting direction here that shows we've moved well on from the TV-like set-ups on the first Dracula.  Even if the title sequence just yells "make it cheap!".  It's funny what some camera angles and not pumping a studio full of flat lighting can do.  But, man, you can also feel that this is not the world's most expensive movie when Dracula's office looks absolutely borrowed for the day.

Yes, Dracula has an office.

Anyhoo.  Go watch!  It's the last Dracula Lee/ Cushing team up.  

PodCast 213: "Jekyll And Hyde" (1990) - a Halloween PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Watched:  08/16/2022

Format:  Amazon

Viewing: First

Decade:  1990

Director:  David Wickes

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SimonUK and Ryan make a change for the spooky and ponder a transformation to covering classic story adaptations with top tier talent. We dive into Robert Louis Stevenson's tale, told as a period piece and changed about a bit to include Michael Caine and Cheryl Ladd. Join us as we talk a 1990 adaptation!

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The Signal Watch PodCast · 213: "Jekyll And Hyde" (1990) - a Halloween PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

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Music:

Jekyll & Hyde - Jim Burgett 

Halloween 2022

The Signal Watch PodCast · Halloween 2022

Horror and Halloween

The Signal Watch PodCast · Halloween and Horror

Vampire Watch: The Velvet Vampire (1971)

Watched:  10/02/2022

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stephanie Rothman

You can't go wrong when your Dracula has a dune buggy.

I'm making light, but The Velvet Vampire (1971) was better than you'd figure with some stunning visuals and occasional actual sexiness, while being hampered by the budget and issues usually plaguing anything bearing the New World Pictures marquee from pre-1982.  

A lovely woman (Celeste Yarnall) who is absolutely and clearly our titular vampire stops for some death along the way to an art gallery show where she meets two dim-witted hip post-Summer of Love 1970's types.  The woman, Susan (Sherry E. DeBoer) rightly perceives Diane as a threat, but her husband, Lee (Michael Blodgett) sees a good looking dame who seems game and goes about telling his wife she has hang-ups and she should trust him.*  She absolutely should not.

The pair drive out to the desert where there's evil foreboding stuff and their car breaks down.  Fortunately, Diane appears driving a yellow dune buggy in full sunlight.  

At dinner (steak tar-tar, of course), Lee and Diane are basically announcing their intention to bang while Susan objects.  And then a bunch of vampirey stuff happens.  

If you showed up for partial nudity, you're in luck.  This is New World Pictures circa 1970 and they deliver on the spectacle you're hoping for.  If you showed up for Oscar-worthy performances, you may find yourself wanting.  But director Stephanie Rothman (the first woman inducted into the DGA, apparently?) does not screw around when she has an opportunity to do something cool.  And so we get some fascinating dream sequences and other bits that do a lot with some trick visuals, a fan and red negligee against the backdrop of the desert.

There's also a few other sequences that don't look like it was a crew fighting a losing battle with white walls and lighting, including a shot of Diane in a grave and two versions of voyeurism that appear in the movie.  

I can't say I loved the ending of the movie, but it's... fine.  I guess.  I would have ended it a full ten minutes earlier, but it's not my movie.  I'm just not sure how scary "vampire on a Greyhound" is.  But mostly I feel like it's a shame it appears Rothman never quite escaped doing exploitation films before hanging it up.   For example, I believe her take on the male hero of this film has to be satire in a way.  He's a being completely navigated by his dick who constantly gaslights his younger, vulnerable wife - even telling her it's no big deal when she witnesses him having sex with Diane.  The entire stance seems set up to get him murdered in the final reel.  

Susan's vulnerability and guilelessness is, frankly, unappealing and you can't blame either she or Lee for falling for the vampire's charms (there's definitely overt vampire lesbianism that never quite sticks the landing).  But it also makes Susan hard to follow as a character as the dramatic irony piles up around her.  And it all feels very intentional.  

I didn't love this movie, but as a curiosity, I'd recommend it.  It's not paced as glacially as some European films of the era, and you can feel okay about rooting against the leads.  I just wish the movie had left off much earlier and not decided a chase sequence was needed.  

*this, friends, is a red flag in your personal life as well as in vampire movies

Monster Watch: Q - The WInged Serpent (1982)

Watched:  10/01/2022

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Cohen

I'd tried to watch Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) a number of times, going back as far as high school, but the lack of monster to minute ratio was daunting.  But with October upon us, and Criterion offering up a bevy of 1980's and vampire-based horror films (it *may* be your best bet, value-wise, this Halloween, after Shudder) I took a look at the list decided now was the time.

What a weird @#$%ing movie.

The entire look and feel of the movie is firmly in 1970's film-making.  By 1982, we're two years past Empire Strikes Back, and two years away from 1984, which is pretty much where you can lock in Gen X's idea of modern movie-going, and this movie looks and feels like it should be 1974.  The effects are a reminder of how dodgy stop action could be if work wasn't coming out of ILM.  The characters are stock 1970's characters - a world weary cop in a grungy NYC police precinct and a ne'er-do-well living outside the confines of square life who also has an artistic side and troubles with his woman.  New York is filmed as an unglamorous city in decline.  Every conversation turns into a stylized argument straight out of 1970's acting school.

About half-way through the movie, I began to believe I'd misunderstood what the movie was, really.  For a hot minute, I thought the monster of the film was going to be inconsequential and we were really getting a character study of a cop delving into stuff beyond him on one side and, really, the way government and power work in a crisis through the lens of the Michael Moriarty story as a crook and hustler tries to exploit his knowledge during a crisis.  But, nope, it's a big, goofy monster movie with some deeply 1970's vibes and an ending that feels hopelessly tacked on for the kiddies who showed up for a monster and cop movie.  

My understanding is that Moriarty's role (which now feels like he reached into the future and channeled Bill Burr) is what people grab onto and why the film has such a high reviewer rating.  And they're not wrong.  He's great.  Candy Clark is in one of those thankless but terrific "gotta support my man" parts from the 1970's that seems far closer to gender dynamics of the 1950's than the 1990s.  David Carradine is a solid actor, but I'm sure if he knew what Moriarty was up to, he wouldn't have gone for "Crusty Hero Cop #8974".  

Most weird is that the film, about a Mayan diety, features no Latinos as near as I can tell.  In NYC.  Nor does it ever really explain how people were volunteering to be human sacrifices or why.  The chief murder-priest isn't played by anyone with a Central American heritage - he's from Bombay.  And I'm not sure if he's supposed to be from India or he's supposed to pass for Hispanic?  I know Hollywood has a fraught relationship with Latinos but this is just wild.  

There's a great movie buried in here, and so it's a good and entertaining movie, but one that feels like it has studio notes all over it to the detriment of the film.

I'm glad I finally saw it.  I might watch it again.  But - for me - the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts.

Everything Watch: Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

Watched:  09/24/2022

Format:  Amazon Streaming

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

Look, one would really need to watch this movie 2-3 times and plan on several thousand words to really talk about Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).  Suffice to say, this movie was very, very much in the wheelhouse for a lot of us, and if it was nominated for - and then won - awards, I might have respect for the awarding industry and begin to believe that it actually recognizes what cinema can do.

I am painfully and tragically aware that some will watch the movie and say "oh, they were trying too hard" or "that was just weird for weird's sake".  And, if that is your takeaway, I wish you well on your journey through life.  Sadly, you and I are going to view this rock we live on, and our time here, with wildly different eyes.

Everything Everywhere All at Once will be one of the films that I'm going to hold close, because we don't get them very often.  Whether you think the movie is saying something new - and, arguably, it is not - it is saying it beautifully, artfully, and humanely.  And maybe when we need it most.  

Sci-Fi and fantasy always are at their best when they are  allegories which may reflect, shift or challenge our views.  And whether we're considering response to a technological change and vast societal ripples or deeply personal stories, the closer we hew to recognizable reality, the greater the impact.  There's a reason we well up as Spock makes a sacrifice for the crew - it's a statement on the logic of serving the greater good, not on the problems of a made-up warp-core technology.  But it's a lesson forgotten again and again in comic books, television and movies, which become about the concepts and less about what it says to the audience about the world or themselves.  

SPOILERS

Comedy Watch: Out of Office (2022)

Watched:  09/10/2022

Format:  Comedy Central DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Paul Lieberstein

Not so long ago, I got my bivalent COVID booster shot, and it basically took my ass out all weekend.  At some point I'd decided to DVR the Comedy Central movie Out of Office (2022) as it seemed to have okay comedic actors in it, and you never know.  

Leslie Jones, Ken Jeong, Jay Pharaoh, Oscar Nunez, Jason Alexander, Cheri Oteri, many others, and - most important, Lily the AT&T girl herself, Milana Veyntraub.  I think we've all been pulling for Veyntraub for a while, but she never really shows up anywhere other than AT&T ads.  She was almost a Marvel at one point, but her turn as Squirrel Girl has disappeared into the bin of history.

This movie, written and directed by King of the Hill and The Office alum Paul Lieberstein, is truly a complete waste of a viewers time.  Everything is vaguely joke shaped in a way that you can imagine working if it was workshopped a bit or didn't feel like something pulled out of a Judd Apatow movie's reel of stuff that didn't even make the bloopers.  The lead (tragically Veyntraub) is breathtakingly unlikable as written, which translates to - this is just like sitting at work with your worst colleagues, not people you want to spend time with.  And, worst, it tries to find some schmaltzy closure about the friends we found along the way at the end, which is utterly unearned.  

PodCast 211: "Vampira/ Old Dracula" (1974) - a Halloween PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Watched:  07/26/2022

Format:  Amazon Streaming

Viewing: First

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Clive Donner

For more ways to listen

SimonUK and Ryan take a bite out of a 1974 vampire movie neither of them had previously seen, starring David Niven as a Dracula whose seen better days. It's 1970's hipsterism mixed with Blaxploitation meets horror meets comedy meets a sad trombone moment in the last 45 seconds. Join us as we kick off Halloween 2022!

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The Signal Watch PodCast · 211: "Vampira/ Old Dracula" (1974) - a Halloween PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

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Music:

Vampira - David Whitaker 

Halloween and Horror

The Signal Watch PodCast · Halloween and Horror

80's Watch: American Gigolo (1980)

Watched:  09/17/2022

Format:  Streaming Paramount+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Paul Schrader

After watching Cat People for our Halloween podcasts, and making my way through Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This podcast series Erotic 80's, I figured I should get around to watching American Gigolo (1980) a movie I'd successfully not seen for 42 years but never actively avoided.  

I was doubly enticed by a Georgio Moroder soundtrack and finding out the movie had Bill Duke and Lauren Hutton, and was excited to see both for very different reasons.  

I should have watched the movie years ago after catching a cab in Las Vegas with some pals and - as I am wont to do - I began chatting with the cab driver who revealed to us his dream of becoming a gigolo.  And he used that word (with what seemed like a Russian accent, but I didn't ask).  We stayed in the car way after arriving at the hotel and listened to him discuss his strategy and goals.  He really, really wanted to sleep with older women for money.  I hope he's out there now with someone named "Gertrude" just raking it in.  

Anyway, I was completely ignorant of the plot of American Gigolo (1980), but what I assumed it to be was not what it is.   Honestly, I assumed it was a melodrama entirely about the life and loves of a gigolo in LA in 1980.  Seemed like there was plenty there as hunky Richard Gere impeccably banged his way across the Los Angeles landscape until finding real love or something.  And it is that, but with 45% of the runtime caught up in a murder plot that, frankly, is intensely telegraphed from the minute it kicks into gear (no pun intended).

I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but American Gigolo is also a movie that seems to live in a curious twilight zone of being frank about sex in many ways, but in comparison to, say, Body Heat which would show up a year later, it feels almost chaste.   Look, Lauren Hutton is...  a whole scene.  But I kinda wish the movie was just whatever was going on with Gere and Hutton.  

That said - this is a watershed film.  It isn't looking backward the way Body Heat would, it's leaning forward into adult-oriented fare but it also needs to serve an audience in 1980 who probably could have been interested in just the loves and issues of a gigolo, but would really get hooked by a crime story.  But I was kinda curious where the movie was going with Gere's alternately broken and abstracted sexuality which feels like it needs a lot more investigation than what it gets.

Everything you've heard about the hyper-stylization of the movie is true.  It's gorgeously shot and really does do its utmost to bring the various worlds of the Cali nouveau-rich and establishment rich as well as the occasional dive into other locales from gay clubs to political fundraisers.  It's a Playboy spread of the best in the lifestyle of the swinging gentleman, from cars to stereos to tasteful book collections and artfully placed desks.  

But now it almost looks quaint.  Miami Vice did this weekly on TV within a few years.  It's become a pastiche in other movies.  Still, it works.  And in no small part because the score on this thing (Moroder) - riffing occasionally on Blondie's Call Me is so f'ing great.*

All in all, the movie wasn't what I expected, and that took some adjustment.  What it did do, though, I think earns the reputation in some ways, less so in other ways (sexy ways).  But as a perfect artifact of "what set the tone for the 1980's?" you'd be hard pressed to find the thing better than this movie, which seems unaware the 1970's ever existed.  

*no one told six year old me blasting Call Me from the Chipmunk Punk album how the song became so mainstreamed  

Ida Watch: Ladies in Retirement (1941)

Watched:  09/16/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Director:  Charles Vidor

Everything about this movie screams pre-WWII play.  More or less a single location/ set, daffy characters, moments of strong internal reckoning, a maid to be the dumb one, a ne'er-do-well relative, and a dowager-type causing trouble.

And I loved it.  

We picked this as a watch party before we dive into the monster season entirely on the cast.  Starring Ida Lupino, Louis Hayward, Elsa Lanchester, Evelyn Keyes, Isobel Elsom and Edith Barrett, I was entirely curious as I'd only seen mention of the film on Jenifer's blog before - and that was a faded memory.  It's now streaming on Prime, and I suggest you go check it out.  

And, man, is Elsa Lanchester ever good (and so underutilized by Hollywood).

Noir Watch: Hit and Run (1957)

Watched:  09/15/2022

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Hugo Haas

Eddie Muller may or may not have programmed this flick for Noir Alley, but he did host it.  I don't really know how Noir Alley selections work, to be honest.

But he seemed delighted to show a poverty row-adjacent film and talk about Hugo Haas, the producer, director and star of Hit and Run (1957), a self-made man in cinema who only made a handful of films, but did it on his own terms, including casting himself alongside Cleo Moore, one of the lesser known blonde bombshells of the mid-50's.  And there's probably a fascinating movie or prestige TV show about the shadow world of these films and their distribution in an era where the studios were still running the show and for everyone else, it was the collision of art and commerce and doing what you could afford to do.

Hit and Run plays mostly like a local theater production of The Postman Always Rings Twice, but like the local community theater producer had some ideas for revisions to juice it up a bit.  But, similarly, it features Cleo Moore as the blonde girl who, down on her luck, marries the most stable and financially sound guy in her world, even if he's older and they make a weird pair.  Rather than John Garfield wandering into the gas station, Vince Edwards (whom I like a lot, generally), is already employed there, so it's Moore who's the interloper breaking up a happy home.

This version leans (a) first into the idea that the blonde is not a willing participant in her romance with Edwards or his murderous scheme to take out her husband.  And (b) there's a previously unseen twin who appears to take the husband's place and stir things up.  Y'all, this is how you just keep plussing an idea.

Weirdly, both Moore and Edwards seem like they didn't get enough takes or just weren't that into it, and the energy level in this film, aside from Haas, is weirdly flat from beginning to end.  Which, in contrast to 1946's Postman, is weirdly odd.  But part of that is the ambiguity about what is really happening with Edwards and Moore - she seems to loathe him but melt in his arms when he forces himself on her - so what is she playing?  And Edwards is laconic and then suddenly is not.  It's weird.

There's some curious touches like a society for people to make fun of superstitions and the people who believe them, which seems mostly to be about drinking and shit-talking people you don't know, which may make me an honorary member.

And Chekhov's goldfish enter in the first act but don't really achieve any significance.  

It wasn't great, but I like all of the players - Cleo Moore has really grown on me - and was so weird as a parallax version of a well known film, I couldn't really look away.  But at film's end, I was probably more interested in the movie someone should make about Hugo Haas and Cleo Moore.

PodCast 210: "Thor: Love And Thunder" (2022) - a Marvel Madness PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan

Watched: 09/11/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing: First

Decade: 2020's

Director:  Taika Waititi

For more ways to listen

Jamie and Ryan sit down with Marvel's return to Asgard that apparently people didn't like, and we're not exactly sure why it got the hate. Join us as we harness up the goats and take off on a journey through a movie that takes us all over and manages to really land their use of Guns n Roses.

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The Signal Watch PodCast · 210: "Thor: Love And Thunder" (2022) - a Marvel Madness PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Sweet Child of Mine - Guns'n'Roses, Appetite for Destruction 

Welcome to the Jungle - Guns'n'Roses, Appetite for Destruction 

Marvel Madness

The Signal Watch PodCast · Marvel Madness - Movies and More...!

PodCast 209: "The Sandman" - Season 1 discussion w/ MRSHL and Ryan

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MRSHL and Ryan step into the dream-realm to talk Netflix's gigantic gamble - adapting a comic property that isn't based on superheroes, is written for older readers, has nuance and complexity, and doesn't talk down to the audience. It's the thing fans didn't believe could ever be adapted faithfully. Do we dare dream?

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 209: "The Sandman" - Season 1 discussion w/ MRSHL and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

The Kingdom of Dreams - David Buckley

Mr. Sandman - The Chordettes 

DC Comics Playlist

The Signal Watch PodCast · DC Cinema and TV

PodCast 208 B: "Inhumans" (2017) - Episodes 3 & 4 - A Superheroes Every Day PodCast w/ Danny and Ryan

contrary to this image, this show is not about two women about to present at a conference

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More Coverage:

Episodes 1 & 2

Danny and Ryan discuss episodes 3 and 4 of the ongoing tale of a bunch of mutant moon men kicking around Hawaii - all part of a TV series which made Marvel decide network TV was probably a terrible idea. Let alone doing it on a budget. Join us as we recount the puzzling adventures of our "heroes".

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 208 B: "Inhumans" (2017) - Episode 3 & 4 - A Superheroes Every Day PodCast w/ Danny and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Paint It Black - Valerie Broussard

Don't Fear the Reaper - Denmark & Winters 

Superheroes Every Day Playlist

The Signal Watch PodCast · Superheroes Every Day

Cage Watch: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

Watched:  09/04/2022

Format:  Amazon?  Jamie put it on

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

I am a fan of Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal on HBOmax, a show that is absolutely about Inception levels of reality.  It's a reality show, pushing the envelope of what is real, what is fiction, what is simply dicking around with people who expect reality to conform to certain principles and people who have made up their own reality tossed into the mix and given lead roles.

I feel like that was good training for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022), a film - a bit like Being John Malkovich - that asks an actor of particular talent and quirkiness to engage with their own persona and perform as themselves as a central character in a movie in which everyone else is fictional, and the version of themselves is only loosely based on reality.  

For those of us old enough to have grown up on Vampire's Kiss, Leaving Las Vegas, Moonstruck, as well as Raising Arizona and Honeymoon in Vegas, Cage's late 90's turn to action-hero came as a bit of a surprise.  He was the hero of the indie film world who was out there walking tightropes, making films he was in memorable and better.  His Sailor in Lynch's Wild at Heart (paired with Dern's Lula) is still a favorite character of mine in anything.

The film is a fascinating fractal of a kaleidoscope of Cage - tracking his career in beats through the movie, which starts as a small, character-driven quirky indie feature and ends as a huge Hollywood-style actioner with an operatic happy ending in slow-mo, starring Cage as himself, of course.  

In the purest sense, it's absolutely a love letter to Cage, an actor whose post Leaving Las Vegas career I've not stuck with (Con-Air delivered my very first migraine, through I didn't know that's what it was at the time).  But one does not make it through a year of one's life and not see a Nic Cage movie.  

Structure aside, Cage is here to remind you - he's one of the most talented actors of his generation, and when he's not cashing a check, there's no one else like him on screen.  If you need an actor who can convey every range of human experience and emotion without a word, Cage is your guy.  

And I do wonder how he viewed the script, which couldn't have been written about anyone else and landed the same way, which includes whole scenes with Cage fighting with his younger, punk rock version of himself - something the younger kids won't get, but for those of us who recognize this version of Cage, it's a whole thing.  

Of course, the movie co-stars Pedro Pascal as an olive importer/ exporter who may actually be a criminal mastermind - but who is using his money to bring his favorite movie star, Nic Cage, to his villa in Majorca.  And, as it's turning out, Pascal's success in the US is not a fluke.  At the heart of the film is the unlikely friendship between Pascal and Cage as Pascal's Javi doesn't just understand Nic's filmography, there's a real kinship there.  

Meanwhile, Cage has to navigate his broken relationship with his teen daughter (I don't know if he even has a teen daughter) and ex-wife (he has several).  

I'm underselling how genuinely hilarious the film is, but it is genuinely the funniest movie I've seen this year.  I don't *think* you have to have been tracking Cage for decades to enjoy it - I've mostly not been.  But there's certainly layers upon layers if you know much about the guy.  And it's absolutely a treat to see Pascal and Cage making all of this look so easy.

Myrna Watch: I Love You Again (1940)

Watched:  08/30/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First?

Director:  W.S. Van Dyke

It's possible I've seen this movie before and simply don't recall watching it.  I believe it's in a DVD set Paul found for me years ago.  I thought I'd watched the whole set, but I don't remember this one in the slightest.

William Powell and Myrna Loy made 14 films together, and the ones I've seen are all pretty terrific.  It's impossible not to dig Powell's charm and Myrna Loy is maybe one of the funniest actors with the smallest effort in all of film, and always utterly buyable.  

Here, the pair team up in a screwball set-up as Powell plays an aggressively boring manager of a plant that makes cookware like pots who is out on a sea voyage when he bonks his head and rather than losing his memory, regains his memories from nine years prior when he was a shady con-man and crook, but loses all memory of the last nine.  During which he married Myrna Loy, who is set to divorce him for being so incredibly boring.  

That, kids, is a set-up.

honestly, pretty typical mealtime here at League HQ

Powell is in almost every shot and scene, and you will find yourself wishing there were more Loy, but when isn't that true?  The pair are firing on all cylinders in Thin Man energy, which is remarkable when you realize Powell is coming off of cancer treatment and the death of his fiance, and Loy was getting divorced.  This had to have been some terrific therapy.  

The additional cast includes familiar face Frank McHugh as a fellow con assisting Powell and giving him someone to talk to, and he's hysterical.  Edmund Lowe plays a career criminal.  Nella Walker is Loy's mother.  And a cast of familiar studio players fill other roles, including a post Our Gang Alfalfa.

The movie is light fluff and maybe a few minutes longer than it needs to be, but I can't say where they should trim.  I laughed out loud a lot.  There are some great gags, terrific word play, and I'll take a Loy side-eye any day.

PodCast 208 A: "Inhumans" (2017) - Episodes 1 & 2 - A Superheroes Every Day PodCast w/ Danny and Ryan

Watched:  August 2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing: First

Decade:  2010's

For more ways to listen

For some reason, Danny and Ryan are talking Marvel's biggest failure - the 2017 attempt at a network TV adaptation of one of Marvel's highest concepts. The show dares to ask the question "sure, that's a neat idea, but what if we eliminated everything interesting about it?" We discuss the first two episodes (of eight) of the ill-fated show, and ponder what, exactly, was going on at Marvel and ABC?

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 208 A: "Inhumans" (2017) - Episode 1 - A Superheroes Every Day PodCast w/ Danny and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Paint It Black - Valerie Broussard

Don't Fear the Reaper - Denmark & Winters 

Superheroes Every Day

The Signal Watch PodCast · Superheroes Every Day

Joan Watch: Mommie Dearest (1981)

Watched:  08/27/2022

Format:  Showtime trial on Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Frank Perry

I've been avoiding Mommie Dearest (1981) for some time.  But Steven and Lauren were going to see the movie, and I figured - hey, this is a reminder or a sign it's time to catch up.

It's crucial to remember, Mommie Dearest was not intended to be a high camp classic - this was someone's idea of a warts-and-all, scathing unmasking of Joan Crawford and her hideous relationship with her children that blew the doors off the movie-star image, which... if you know how Joan's post 1950's career and life went, is almost punching down.  Not to mention her life prior to Hollywood and stardom.  And even after.

Look, Joan was very dead by the time the movie arrived and was unable to rebut the portrayal of herself in the movie, which was based on a single source, that of an extremely bitter daughter who had been cut out of her mother's will.

As I've grown older, I have become aware that smaller incidents for adults play out as grand dramas for children (just as grand dramas in the actual adult world frequently pass by unnoticed by children and people on twitter).  I know we're supposed to believe anyone who comes forward with a story, and I do - insofar as I believe Joan Crawford and her adopted children had a terrible relationship.  

Doc Watch: Paris is Burning (1990)

Watched:  08/20/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jennie Livingston

I remember seeing the trailer for Paris is Burning (1990) when we went to see Slacker at the River Oaks in Houston in summer of 1990.  A straight white 15-year-old from the suburbs of Austin, recently transplanted to the suburbs of Houston, the world of gender-bending queer Black culture was - you will be shocked to learn - not on my radar.  It was so utterly alien to my experience that I was wildly curious - but I also was not going to have a ride back down to the River Oaks and asking to be taken to such a movie would be wildly transgressive, no matter how open minded my mom was.

I remember seeking out the doc a few times in college and being unable to find it, but mostly I'd forget about it except when it was mentioned in cultural touchstone moments, like pretty much anything having to do with Madonna post Vogue.  But by and large, I just forgot about trying to watch it until I saw Alicia Malone was hosting it on TCM as part of the style-centric "Follow the Thread" programming series, and I set the DVR.