Amazing Watch: Starcrash (1978)

Watched:  04/17/2020
Format:  Amazon Prime Streaming
Viewing:  6th?
Decade:  Italian 1970's
Director: Luigi Cozzi

Bunch of chuckleheads got together on Friday evening for a live-tweeting of Starcrash, the finest Italian-produced 1978 sci-fi film featuring a cowboy robot that I've ever heard of.

And I will defend Stella Star's fashion choices with my last, dying breath.

Russell/ Noir Watch: The Las Vegas Story (1952)

Watched:  04/18/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1950's
Director: Robert Stevenson

Pivoting from the exotic locale of Macao to the oasis in the desert that is Las Vegas, Nevada, Jane Russell drops Mitchum and picks up Victor Mature, Vincent Price and "the guy who will be a bad guy", Brad Dexter.

Catch-Up Watch: Booksmart (2019)

Watched:  04/18/2020
Format:  Hulu Streaming
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2010's
Director: Olivia Wilde

I'd had a few trusted sources go to the mat for this one and been interested in seeing it when it was out, but... didn't.  A few blunt points on the movie:  in many ways, this movie is very, very familiar as a high school comedy about privileged kids and has a lot in common with movies that get routinely dismissed as dumb comedies.

But, sometimes it's about the execution.

Noir/ Russell Watch: Macao (1952)

Watched:  04/15/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1950's
Director: Josef von Sternberg/ Nicholas Ray


I've been trying to track this movie down for years.  Fortunately, this month on TCM, Jane Russell is Star of the Month on TCM.  And, in any circumstance, Jane Russell is just an excellent idea.

This one has not just Russell as a lounge singer, she co-stars with Robert Mitchum, with whom she was apparently pretty good pals.  It also has Thomas Gomez and Gloria Grahame in an oddly small role for her chops (this is five years after Crossfire and the same year she got an Oscar nom for The Bad and the Beautiful).   Throw in William Bendix (as one always should) and Brad Dexter, and you've got an interesting cast.  Not to mention the large cast of Asian and Asian-American extras and supporting roles.

Oz Watch: The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Watched:  04/11/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  Ha ha ha ha
Decade:  1930's
Director: Victor Fleming

It's hard to think of a film more universal in the American imagination than The Wizard of Oz (1939).  Watching the film is as much a right of passage as Kindergarten, organized sports or name-your-item for a good chunk of America, and has been for 80 years.

We refer to it in popular culture and literature, make allusion to the film (for surely the books would now be mostly forgotten without the movie) as often as Biblical reference, Superman, and, maybe Star Wars.  It's weirdly universal for a fantasy movie about a girl who has no idea what's going on, her three goofy friends and a witch who just wants a new pair of shoes.  The songs are all familiar as Christmas carols.  People on the street will automatically know Dorothy, rainbows, little dogs, tin men, flying monkeys...

And the weird thing is how the movie really doesn't get old.  And it holds up.

It's a technical marvel, and even in 2020 and an era with CG and everything in color, that door opening on Oz still works.  It doesn't matter how many times you've seen it.  Flying monkeys remain flying monkeys, and Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West remains a revelation.  As is Frank Morgan in about 20 different roles.

But the kaleidoscope vision of the movie, the dialog that has become part of the American venacular (ex: "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain", "we're not in Kansas anymore", "and your little dog, too!"), is just now part and parcel of how we've taken the movie in and refract it back out onto the world.  Similar stories may get lots of nods - Alice in Wonderland, for example - but it's hard to say the movie is more popular than the book, and perhaps it's Englishness and sheer nonsense has kept it from having exactly the same impact.  As familiar a film as Gone with the Wind has aged(... poorly) it's simply not considered something everyone should have to see at least once.  Star Wars stands a chance of retaining the same level of cultural integration if Disney doesn't accidentally kill the golden goose and gives it another 40 years.

I have seen the movie run up against Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and it is pretty crazy.  But I really do think it's a coincidence.  And, of course, we can endlessly debate whether or not Baum meant the story as an allegory for the Gold Standard v Silver Standard v Greenbacks that the liberty the studios took with the story kind of annihilates.  Still: Flying monkeys!

Anyway, it's The Wizard of Oz, and it's a sort of singular thing that is, really, everyone's favorite movie about hallucinations induced by head trauma.  But I will fight anyone who says anything negative about this movie.

Twitter Watch: The Shadow (1994)

Watched:  04/10/2020
Format:  Amazon Streaming and tweet-along
Viewing:  Unknown
Decade:  1990's
Director: Russell MulCahy


I dunno.  I still like this movie.  It's a mess, but it wasn't what I was expecting when I saw it the first time, and while I would, one day, love a ahrd-edged anti-hero version of The Shadow to make it to TV or the big screen, this very-90's take on the character is okay for what it is, in my book.  But I am well aware, when I went to go see stuff like this back in the day, the bar was so low, you had to dig for it. 

When I first started getting *into* comics I found out you could get, for free, something called the Bud Plant catalog, which offered up stuff you weren't going to find on the Piggly Wiggly spinner rack, and they had sections dedicated to the pulp characters like The Shadow and The Spirit.  The art I saw for The Shadow made The Punisher look tame by comparison (the work was Mike Kaluta's Shadow). 

I didn't know, at the time, how far back The Shadow went - originally appearing as the voice of a nameless narrator on a crime fiction radio program in the 1920's, and eventually becoming a character in his own right, making the move to short stories and novellas, comics, movie serials, and more.  There's zero question that he's part of the inspiration for Batman.  And Orson Welles cut his teeth on a Shadow radio show. 

But I'm not sure 1994 movie audiences who were there for action-figure-spawning movies were ready for the complicated world of The Shadow.  So, things got really, really streamlined and the movie feels like a set-up so they can get on to sequels where more things happen.  Which is usually a mistake.  And while the movie did fine, it didn't do Batman numbers, and that was the end of that for everybody. 

The movie certainly feels the way too many comics projects wound up in the aftermath of Batman in 1989.  The look of the film seems to borrow a lot from Burton and Co., and they even try to replicate some Danny Elfman.  Fortunately, I think Baldwin finds his own path to Lamont Cranston (if he's not actually Kent Allard, but let's not quibble), and it's hard to complain about the cast beyond teh fairly broad performances of the kinda all-star cast of John Lone, Jonathan Winters, Peter Boyle, Tim Curry, Penelope Ann Miller and more. 

And, it's kind of fun.  Baldwin's take on Cranston isn't exactly camp, but more of a battle of wits where he can't help but be a smart ass.  Which, you know, he *is* a guy who laughs while in life or death situations.  Not that I think there's deep character stuff going on here, but it's not a flawed performance.  But it does give for some questions as to what everyone involved thought this movie was as it was being produced.  It's kinda brutal in some parts even as they will have incredibly jokey parts in the next shot.

Anyway - We watched it and tweeted it!  You should have been there.

Trek Watch: Star Trek - Generations (1994) & First Contact (1996)

Watched:  04/06 and 04/07/2020
Format:  Amazon Streaming
Viewing:  Third?  Second?
Decade: 1990's
Director: David Carson/ Jonathan Frakes

I still remember walking out of Star Trek: Generations (1994) and roughly saying "what the @#$% was that?"

A cheap looking movie with a singularly ridiculous end for one of my childhood fictional heroes, and a ludicrous A plot that went nowhere, meshed with a B plot that only Data got to experience.  It genuinely just felt like a very expensive episode or three of the series that spawned it - but not even a particularly brilliant episode or arc.

Disney Watch: Timmy Failure - Mistakes Were Made (2020)

Watched:  04/04/2020
Viewing:  First
Format:  Disney+
Decade:  2020's
Director: Tom McCarthy


My guess is that you're sleeping on Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (2020).  This would be a mistake.  This will be one of the finest movies you could watch this year.

Noir Watch: I Wake Up Screaming (1941)

Watched:  04/05/2020
Format:  Noir Alley on TCM on BluRay
Viewing:  3rd or 4th
Decade:  1940's
Director: H. Bruce Humberstone

I'd already seen this, so I wasn't going to watch it, but I've been on a Victor Mature kick lately, and Laird Cregar is so damn good in this movie I wanted to at least watch his scenes.  I also hadn't really contextualized I Wake Up Screaming (1941) in the timeline of the noir movement, and it's crazy to see a movie that so thoroughly *already* has down the noir style visually when the form was just getting started. 

Victor Mature is a little cagey

Kaiju Watch: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) AND Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)

Watched:  04/01/2020 and 04/03/2020
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  Second?  First as an adult
Decade:  1970's

Frankly, on top of and due to Coronavirus happenings, work has been a bear, and - thus - in the evenings I've mostly just been looking for something *fun* when I peel myself out of my office chair and mosey down to the living room.   For some time, my Criterion Godzilla set has been calling to me from the bookshelf, so we finally broke into it a while back and started watching some Kaiju Kraziness.

PODCAST: "Streets of Fire" (1984) - Ryan's Random Cinema w/ Jamie

Watched:  03/14/2020
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  Unknown
Decade:  1980's


Jamie and Ryan revisit one of Ryan's inexplicably favorite movies, 1984's "Streets of Fire" (which he is well aware is probably not a good movie, but it's somehow a movie he'll always stop to watch). Another time! Another place! It's sorta the retro 1980-50's, a sprawling urban landscape where rock rules and so do dudes in leather gear on motorbikes! But a steely-eyed dude with a high powered rifle and Amy Madigan at his side can save the day AND the cute girl (Diane Lane!)! Adventure! Excitement! Cool cars! Bad bad guys! Rock AND Roll!




Music: 
Nowhere Fast - Fire Inc., Streets of Fire OST
I Can Dream About You - Dan Hartman, Streets of Fire OST
Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young - Fire Inc., Streets of Fire OST

Proto-Super Reboot Watch: Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981)

Watched:  03/30/2020
Format:  Amazon streaming
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1980's

I remember being confused that, in 1981, I was not allowed to see either Legend of the Lone Ranger or Zorro the Gay Blade.   I'd catch Zorro in the summer of 1993 on TV  - summer I graduated high school, and it confirmed what I'd heard from friends at the elementary school lunch table about why I'd not been taken to see a movie about the original superhero.  Legend of the Lone Ranger held a lot more mystery - partially because it was just harder to find and partially because of what little I'd heard.  "It's really violent" I was told.

Pirate Watch: Against All Flags (1952)

Watched:  03/29/2020
Format:  Amazon Streaming
Viewing:  fourth
Decade:  1950's

Ah, Maureen O'Hara in technicolor as a pirate captain.

Amazing Watch: Sorceress (1982)

Watched:  03/27/2020
Format:  Amazon Prime Streaming
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1980's (oh, how very 1980's.  Specifically, how very EARLY 1980's)

On facebook a friend (Hi, Laura S.) asked if I'd ever seen Sorceress (1982), and I was pretty sure I hadn't.  When I went to look it up on Amazon Prime, I realized I'd once watched the first two and a half minutes of the movie and then gave up.  People - this was a mistake.

The poster above does absolutely nothing to relate anything about the events or actual characters of the movie.  There is a sort of lion-winged thing, a blonde woman and an ape guy.  A snake appears on screen for about five seconds.  But there are two blonde women: that's the entire thing of the movie.  And it seems like that should have made the poster.  The titular sorceress of the film: not shown.

Lockdown Birthday Watch: Avengers Endgame (2019)

Watched:  03/26/2020
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  fourth.  fifth?  I don't know.
Decade:  2010's

For Jamie's birthday she wanted to watch Avengers: Endgame (2019), one of her favorite recent movies - even if spring of 2019 now seems like it occurred several decades ago.

In a time when we're in lockdown, watching a movie about a group of people reeling in the face of loss, disaster, tragedy and personal failure that impacted a universe is a hell of a thing.

Noir Watch: Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

Watched:  03/25/2020
Format:  Noir Alley on TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1940's

I've been meaning to read some Dorothy B. Hughes, and now I'm deadly curious.  She wrote the novel this movie - a gritty, all-in-one-night (well, two nights) - is based on, and it sounds like the book is even meaner.

But you kind of have to know that anything that's called "Ride the Pink Horse" is either a children's book, porn or something rough and tumble enough that it can have a goofy name and walk away with it.  Sort of the "Boy Named 'Sue"" effect.  I won't pretend Ride the Pink Horse (1947) is a great film, but it's different and interesting enough that I can see why it's got it's own reputation among noiristas and landed a Criterion edition release.

PODCAST! "Doctor Strange" (2016) - Avengers Chronological Countdown #14 w/ Jamie & Ryan

Watched:  03/22/2020
Format:  Disney+
Viewing:  Second
Decade:  2010's

Jamie and Ryan delve into the multiverse of madness that is the 2016 Marvel entry, "Doctor Strange". It's no one's favorite Avengers film, but it's got some interesting stuff and absolutely pushes us forward toward what would become Infinity War. It's a hero who may be a bit of a jerk, but he's got some neat special FX.



Music:
Doctor Strange Main Theme - Michael Giacchino, Doctor Strange OST

Avengers Chronological Countdown

Musical Watch: It's Always Fair Weather (1955)

Watched:  03/23/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1950's

This movie had a lot of things converge to recommend it.  It's from the same writing team that did On the Town from a few years prior, it was directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, it *starred* Gene Kelly, and, if I'm being honest, Cyd Charisse.

Kaiju Watch: Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971)

Watched:  03/21/2020
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1970's

I had never seen Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), and I remember asking Stuart about it about a year or two ago, and he sort of said "it's the psychedelic one" and sort of gave an amused shrug, so... I didn't really know what to expect. 

Kaiju Watch: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966)

Watched:  03/20/2020
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1960's

Well, the poster is an amazing summary of this film, so I'll let it speak for itself.