Mad Men Season 5 Ends

Season 5 of Mad Men ended Sunday night.  That means only two more seasons to go, which is good.  TV shows need to know where they're headed or you run into the X-Files Syndrome.

People talk about smart TV, and then they mention something like Lost that was sort of dumb TV in smart-TV drag.  The creators got so caught up in creating loop-de-loops of logic and plotting, they managed to do a lot of hand waving about some sort of spiritual meaning to the proceedings, but by the mid-point of the final season, it was pretty clear that what they meant by spiritual was a non-threatening atmosphere CD from Target.

Mad Men, somehow, is a show you can most certainly watch as a soap opera with people falling in and out of love, having illicit sex, making bad decisions, etc...  But it's increasingly a show that's built on its longevity to build a lexicon and a readability that until 15 years ago, was reserved for film and books.

Signal Watch Watches: Prometheus (2012)

Look, this thing is full of spoilers, so don't bother unless you've seen the movie.

Signal Watch Watches: Stardust Memories (1980)

Interesting.

So, as some found horrifying, I didn't take to Allen's 1979 film Manhattan.  I've generally basically liked the Woody Allen movies I'd seen, so I gave Allen's follow-up, Stardust Memories (1980), a whirl and hopefully my positive reaction will get me back in your good graces as a watcher of cinemaaaah.

Basically, Stardust Memories solves the problems I had with Manhattan in many ways, or The Problem I had with Manhattan, which was that I finished the movie thinking "and so what?".  It seemed as if in Manhattan Allen had found he had a particular patter down from Annie Hall, found he could play himself in his own context, and it didn't really matter if the story went anywhere or was basically upperclass urbanites mistaking their high school-ish romantic tangles as interesting enough for the rest of us (yes, I got the thing that Allen's character could only connect with a high schooler.  All well and good til you consider his real life marital woes, which...), and the clumsy, flailing quest for something "deep" by self-medicating and spending too much on therapy that went nowhere as a pursuit unto itself.

Stardust Memories acknowledges all the questions, perhaps a bit too on the nose from time to time, but it at least tries to move beyond Allen in one of his stand-in roles, but challenges the character, adding on the layer of the frustrated artist at a crosspoint in his life of the guy who has made it, and all the expectation and responsibility inherent.  The trials of the filmmaker, piled on top of the usual hand wringing Allenisms over the allure and complications of women drive the character conflict, and create enough of an arc to give the movie the weight that Manhattan sought for but never achieved.

I guess if you're going to have a "character driven story", this is a pretty darn good example of what that can look like, even if its hard not to guess how close the "character" is, as pre-usual, just Allen casting himself against good looking women.

Watching the movie, I still grapple a bit with some of the line delivery and Allen-patter, and 70's-era signposts for intellectualism that had become a parody of themselves by the time I came of age, but I won't hold it against the film, especially as it pushes the narrative boundaries a bit, and effectively at that.  Further, while Manhattan is always the movie that gets the credit for the visual love letter to New York, I'll take the work in this movie.  Even without the dialog and banter, it seems to use the frame less to show and more to tell the story.

Anyway, fear not Woody Allen fans.  I have not sworn off the man's work.

Signal Watch Watches: Best Worst Movie (2009)

After a steady diet of terrible flicks over the past two decades, something I had somehow come to enjoy in my teen years, seeking out bad movies is something I'm now limiting in my intake as I realized a man can only watch R.O.T.O.R. so many times, and there's actually stuff you can enjoy because its actually worth watching.  But for a long, long time I felt like I was fairly well in tune with what we all considered the worst of the worst.

And yet, somehow, I'd missed the phenomenon of Troll 2.

Of course, I was also living in Phoenix when The Alamo figured out how to turn genre-film and midnight screening material into part of their bread and butter, getting people excited about movies that they had never seen, or getting them to pay good money to see movies they'd seen for a far more modest cost on late-night HBO a decade before.

The first time I ever heard the words "Troll 2" was, curiously, at an improv show performance where one of the actresses mistakenly believed that repeatedly making callbacks to a movie few people have not seen nor remember was comedic gold.  I swear she dropped the movie's name four times, hoping for a laugh.  She was greeted with stony silence, but the fact that she kept going back to the well made me realize "oh, this is one of those things today's hipster kids are into.  I get it.  But, seriously, naming something funny when you aren't doesn't draw a laugh.  STOP IT NOW.".

Best Worst Movie (2009) tracks the circa 2006 fad (I'll go ahead and call it that) of being really into Troll 2 from the perspective of the folks who participated in the creation of the movie, including the stars, writer, director, extras and, of course, some of the folks making midnight screenings happen.

The film's former wanna-be child star, Michael Stephenson, actually does an amazing job directing the documentary, collecting all the folks from the film together, getting them to talk honestly both about the film, where they are now, and how they related to the film then and now.  A lot of the questions I had left over at the end of Rock-afire Explosion are nowhere to be found in this film.  I mean, sure, you can still have some questions, but those might be of a nature that you can sort out for yourself.  Basically, the film doesn't raise more questions than it answers, and its pretty honest about what's going on.

Signal Watch Double Bill: Shock Corridor (1963) & The Naked Kiss (1964)

Holy hell, y'all.

I'm not familiar with the work of writer/ director/ producer Samuel Fuller, but he has one of those names you always hear.  And, I haven't had opportunity yet to visit the Paramount yet this summer for the summer series, nor had I ever been in the State Theater on Congress, side by side with the Paramount.  Wednesday night provided a great opportunity to knock some items off my list, and so I caught both Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964), two movies that earned their bonafides.

Of the two films, Shock Corridor may have dated more poorly, even if it still holds up very well from a narrative standpoint.  It follows a newspaper journalist who knows he can earn a Pulitzer by going undercover into an mental hospital to solve a murder the police have been unable to crack as the only three witnesses were hopelessly mentally ill.  He recruits his stripper girlfriend, played by the lovely Constance Towers, into posing as his sister who files charges of attempted sexual assault.  With training from a psychologist, Johnny Barrett sneaks in undetected.

And then learns that a mental hospital run under the common practices of mid-20th Century medicine was no picnic.

When they make my bio-pic, tell them this is exactly what I want the poster to look like, but with Jamie dancing in the corner.

Signal Watch Reads: Superman Family Adventures #1

I know some of you, especially those of you with kids, have been reading Tiny Titans for a while.  And if you haven't been reading the series, go out and find the collections.  They're absolute gold when it comes to funny comics, especially if you follow DC Comics.

Possibly due to the reboot of the DCU, sadly, Tiny Titans has now wound down.

Not to fret, Art Baltazar and Franco's work lives on!  Not only is Art Baltazar illustrating the superlative line of fun kid's books under the Super Pets banner published by Capstone (catch up with Krypto, Streaky, Ace the Bathound and others!), Franco and Baltazar have moved their efforts over to a new kid's book: Superman Family Adventures.

The first issue arrived on Wednesday, and we gave it a read Wednesday night.

Yup, its a "New 52" inspired Superman operating in a Silver Age milieu, right alongside Super Pets, his young pals, Lois, Jimmy and The Chief.  And, of course, Lex Luthor and his rampaging robots.  The book is a first issue, and so its perhaps not the well oiled machine we came to expect of Tiny Titans, but its already got the peppy voice of the Tiny Titans book, but with longer-form content.

Unlike Tiny Titans, this comic isn't a "gag" comic, but takes the length of the issue to tell the story.  It's a change in format, but the spirit seems mostly the same.  And if you liked running jokes in Tiny Titans, one nice bit about the Amazing World of Superman is that there are already plenty of running jokes for Franco and Baltazar to draw upon (Jimmy's role as "coffee fetcher" for Perry White, Clark's winkiness when it comes to his secret identity, etc...).

In a lot of ways, DC has serious ground to make up when it comes to restoring Superman to the good graces of the public.  A ponderous 2006 movie, the drudgery of ten (10!) seasons of Smallville, and doing absolutely nothing to react to 20 years of press, comics and otherwise, rambling about the irrelevancy of Superman.  And, of course, DC's own staff seeming to want to do everything in their powers to avoid owning the big, crazy world of Superman so they could pretend that comics are for serious adults (or, at least, 18 year olds trying to identify with a broody Batman).

So maybe reminding people why this world works once you take yourself out of the context of competing for Punisher readers - aiming at the kids may be exactly the right tack.  In many ways, its two completely different milieus that just happen to co-mingle in the wild world of superhero comics.  But as The Punisher was meant to reflect a Bronson-type character in the Marvel U, it may be a wise move to find ways to use various characters to reach different audiences.  Or exploit how that audience feels about different characters to cover various bases.

The single most useless comment I read online about this book basically boiled down to "I like everything about it, but I'm a Batman fan, so I would have preferred a Batman family book".  That sort of navel-gazing doesn't really get you anywhere.  It's a bit like watching Star Trek and criticizing it for not being Star Wars or wishing you had the beef sandwich instead of the ham.  But I wonder.  Its not that I think that can't work, but DC has spent so much time rebranding Batman into The Dark Knight, they pulled the superlative Brave and the Bold from television to make room for a cartoon more in line with the grim avenger model.  Certainly they don't want to miss an opportunity for profit?  Maybe we'll get a sister Batman book out of all this.

Really, I have nothing but positive things to say about the comic.  They start off without bothering to discuss Superman's origin, rockets from Krypton, etc...  and they leap right into the action with Superman joyfully saving Metropolis from collision with a meteor(ite?), running into the Planet offices as Clark, and hitting the streets when Lex unleashes three robots to wreak havoc.

The art is energetic and extremely kid friendly (see the cover above).  I'm always impressed with the range of character and expression Baltazar pulls off as a cartoonist given the simple forms he's working with, but that's what makes him so favored as a cartoonist by fans, I suppose.

Anyway, its a very promising start and a missing component in DC's line of books.  And that missing component has been anything resembling "fun" or "joy", which, if you go back over Superman's long and storied history, has been where he's shone as often as when he's battled the forces of evil with a set jaw and narrowed eyes.

I saw that Comics Alliance had posted a preview.  I think you should check it out.

Signal Watch Watches: Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

It'd been a good long while since I'd seen Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the Warren Beatty & Faye Dunaway starring film loosely retelling the story of the very real life depression-era gang that cut a path through the central united states, from Texas to Iowa.

It's a great piece of filmmaking and one of those movies that both said quite a bit about the time of its release and manages to act one of the points of demarcation between filmmaking that had preceded it and what was to come as the 70's roared into cinemas.

I've talked before about how much I love Gun Crazy (1950),* and its not hard to see a bit of mashing of the facts around the Bonnie & Clyde case and the spirit and plotting of Gun Crazy in this movie.  But, of course, unlike the 1950 film, Bonnie and Clyde is one of the earlier adopters of obvious violence on screen, not shying away from putting bullets in the faces of bankers or showing Faye Dunaway getting riddled with bullets (I'd say spoiler, but if you don't know what happens to Bonnie and Clyde, you guys need to seriously start watching more TV).  It's also beautifully shot, well edited and the audio of the film presages a lot of what I think you'll hear in films to come as the mix attempts for naturalism, blending in the wind of the plains, a score that's semi-regional and period.

Signal Watch Watches: Ramona and Beezus (2010)

As a child of a teacher with her Masters in Reading Education, we never wanted for books around the house.  I had my favorites, and I read a lot of the Beverly Cleary books featuring the neighborhood of kids of Klickitat Street, with Henry Huggins, Beezus & Ramona (and Henry's dog, Ribsy*).

It's been a long, long time since I read the series, probably closer to 30 years than 20, and so my memory is a bit hazy.  Still, I was amazed at how many scenes and references from of the books came back to me when I found Ramona and Beezus on the HBO in-demand options, and once the movie started rolling.  From the "kitty-kat Q" to the proper way to crack a hardboiled egg (a technique I still employ from time to time), to the employment problems of Mr. Quimby.

I believe this is the edition of the book I had.  Beezus was such a square.

Signal Watch Watches: King Kong (1933)

I was in high school before I got to see King Kong (1933) in its entirety, and I've probably seen it almost a dozen times since.  Before that I had seen both the 1976 version of King Kong with Jessica Lange and the almost forgotten King Kong Lives (1986) in the theater.

Signal Watch Reads - Further: Beyond the Threshold

Exploration.

I don't read a tremendous number of science-fiction novels, and I never have.  I know what that looks like, and I appreciate the fandom, but its never been me.  Sure, I went through my Bradbury phase and I glanced off the Robot Novels of Asimov, but even in middle-school I'd pick up paperbacks, read the product description on the back, and only rarely walk out the door with one I felt was worth the while.

I also don't read book series.  Its not that I haven't read, say, books by William Kennedy that share a set of characters and circumstances, but its not episodic in quite the same nature.  When I think about a series of books that numbers more than four, I can't get my head around it.

As you may have heard, I've been enjoying the writing stylings of Chris Roberson for a bit now, so when I heard he had a book coming out, I pulled some strings (asked politely) and got a copy.*

I just finished Further: Beyond the Threshold, a book I assume is intended to start a new series.

This is no-@#$%ing-around science fiction, and I quite enjoyed it.

Captain RJ Stone awakens from hypersleep which he entered aboard a star-faring vessel in the 23rd Century.  He finds himself alive and deeply aged 12,000 years later in a world which has changed over the millenia.  The era of seeking new planets has been conquered and mankind has spread itself out far over the cosmos.  With so much time passed, some of those civilizations have been lost, and the challenges of passing from one world to the next have been solved by way of instantaneous transportation via "thresholds".

Signal Watch Watches: What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)

Let's get some facts on the table.

• Jamie and I have no children.  Without getting too personal, there are medical reasons this is (at least partially) true.  But it is also true that the biological tripwire that is native to most successful living organisms which tells them its time to procreate has never gone off within my own system. 
• I am longtime pals with the screenwriter for this movie.  She more or less informed me that the movie was not in my demographic, and that no feelings would be hurt if I gave it a pass.  But, dammit, if any one of you knuckle-heads writes a movie that plays near my house, its likely I'll go.  And so I did head out to see this film on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  Because I am supportive.  

In general, this is not the sort of thing I'd normally consume as comedy (I DVR Eagleheart on Cartoon Network and still will watch things like Warrior of the Wasteland for a laugh), but I also generally don't rush to the theater for comedies, anyway.

Now, the crowd at this movie was particularly interesting as (a) I don't know what the make-up is of the new Slaughter Lane Alamo Drafthouse, but this was not the usual young genre freaks, and (b) oh my god, the number of pregnant women in the theater.

As someone without children, it was also interesting to hear the things the mass of the audience found hilarious (I assume in a "we've all been there") sort of way, and the things I found funny (small children "discovering" a dead animal in the woods and presenting it to Dad) which didn't get as much of a laugh.

This is absolutely the big, star-studded ensemble comedy it appears to be, following a half-dozen storylines with different bits of misadventure, tragedy and other ways of examining the same human experience from multiple angles.  I do think with so many stories in the movie, there's a little something for everybody.

Signal Watch Watches: Crank (2006)

I don't listen to the podcast How Did This Get Made? all that often, but I had to give the recent Birdemic discussion a whirl, and that rolled me into the discussion of 2006's Crank, a movie I had absolutely no interest in at the time of its release.

HDTGM covers movies they cannot believe were put together (see: last year's The Smurfs), but it also covers movies that the crew (all working in the industry) cannot believe happened to get made in the studio system for their sheer audacity (read: awesomeness).  During the hour-long podcast covering Crank and its sequel, they kept referring back to elements of the films that I couldn't believe had made it into a movie in wide release (maybe in the mid-90's, but no so much today in this era of watered down, PG-13, aim-it-at-15-year-olds homogeneity).

I have to say, from a certain perspective, Crank does not disappoint.

Signal Watch Watches: Curse of Bigfoot (1976)/ Teenagers Battle The Thing (1958) - with RiffTrax

Wow.

There are a few breeds of "bad movies" out there.  This one falls into the "contemptibly incompetent/ nobody here knew how to make a movie.  No, that is not hyperbole, these people really had no idea what they were doing.  At all." category, the reigning champion of which still seems to be Monster-a-Go-Go (1965), but just by a sasquatch hair.

While Monster-a-Go-Go has its own stunning production history to consider, Curse of Bigfoot is a 1976 repackaged 1958 movie originally titled Teenagers Battle The Thing.

Apparently seeking to cash in on the mid-1970's Bigfoot craze (yes, our younger readers, there was a mid-1970's Bigfoot craze.  I don't know.  How do any of these things happen?  I blame The Six Million Dollar Man and In Search Of, but they seem to post-date this movie, so I have no clue, man.  Bigfoot and Wildboy?).

Signal Watch Watches: Twilight - Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (with RiffTrax)

Without RiffTrax, its impossible for me to wrap my head around the experience of viewing any of the Twilight films.  It's safe to say: I am not in the demographic to which the series is aimed.  But it's also become a hugely successful movie series, spinning off the classic vampire genre and tropes, and we quite like monster movies, so there you go.

In the spirit of full disclsure, before starting the movie, we armored up with a couple of cocktails and with the protective barrier of RiffTrax to shield us a bit from unfiltered Twilightness.  I, myself, wore the mithril coat of Manhattans made with generous portions of Bulleit.

Seriously, all of these people can shut up now.  Except the girl on the left.  She's cute enough, she gets a pass.

Let's get the preliminaries out of the way.

• Kristen Stewart is both bad and insufferable in these movies, a fact which is mind-boggling considering how many directors have now had a crack at her.  I have to assume her stammering, energy-free performances in these films suggest a level of contempt for the material that one must share in order to properly decipher her true intention.  Or else she's just that bad.
• Robert Pattinson's "Edward" may be handsome, I guess, but he's otherwise completely worthless as a character.  Since the first movie, in which he stalked Bella into submission, he's since mostly been dialog-free and at an arm's length from Bella, enough so that they seem like work acquaintances than the subjects of the most popular romance in pop fiction.
• The core of the drama in the Twilight movies stems from the fact that the characters seem incapable of making decisions or taking action, and are very into waiting to see what happens.  I don't like the term "proactive", either, but I don't think its particularly useful to tell four books' worth of stories and never present anyone making a decision other than "I'm in love, I guess".
• Oddly, discussing this movie aimed at a YA audience is going to spawn one of the more adults conversations we're going to have around here.  Mainly because I'm not sure any adults were associated with the making of this film.
• Do not be confused by the length of this discussion.  This is a terrible movie.  Frankly, its one of the worst high-budget feature films I've seen in my entire life.  Its just astonishingly terrible on any level you'd care to discuss.  We're really going to rein it in here this evening so that we can try to retain some focus, but suffice it to to say, one could spill no small number of bits dissecting how this movie is a failure on every level.
  

Signal Watch Watches: Warriors of the Wasteland (1983) - with RiffTrax

I think the era of me seeking out movies like this without the benefit of RiffTrax has largely passed, but with them...

Warriors of the Wasteland is a 1983 Italian knock-off of The Road Warrior, sort of.  I mean, if The Road Warrior were filtered through the mind of a guy who was reading too many Humanoids comics, had no budget and had possibly suffered a severe blow to the head.

Its basically a guy with a really goofy-looking muscle car with a plexi-glass dome affixed to the roof for no reason driving around and picking fights with a bunch of guys in odd Storm Trooper-like outfits if the helmets were missing and they all had visited Journey's stylists.

The movie is notable for a number of reasons:

It co-stars Fred Williamson, who has been in more than 100 films and TV shows.  I sort of recognized him from some of his Blaxploitation work.  Here, he plays a guy with a rad mustache and who uses a bow & arrow with explosive tips.  Eat it, Hawkeye.

Everything about the movie's character designs would become prevalent in comics in 1992 or so thanks to the influence of artists like those who would go on to work on books like "Lady Death".  I have to assume they designed any number of female characters based upon the look of "Alma" in the movie, what with her huge shoulder pads, amazing bouffant hair-do, and then, inexplicably, just a pair of underwear and shoes below the ribcage.  And, of course, all the men are decked out in terribly impractical armor.

Fun fact:  in comics, that look just never really went away.

And there's a little Dennis the Menace-like scamp who is a murdering psychopath and a hero.

Go figure.

The RiffTrax on this one are absolutely spot on, and, frankly, if they can make viewing this trainwreck not just bearable but fun?  I tip my hat.

Movie itself: no recommendation.
With RiffTrax?  A must see.

Signal Watch Watches: High Anxiety (1977)

I had never seen Mel Brooks' High Anxiety (1977), but thought at first that I had when JeniferSF had been describing it to me.  Well, no.  I hadn't seen it, but I'm glad for the recommendation.

A loving tribute to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, High Anxiety is in the vein of other Brooks spoofs, which he made right up until just a few years ago.  Probably what you want to know is which of the Brooks 70's era stable of supporting players does he recruit?

The movie stars Brooks himself, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, and features an amazingly hilarious and quotable performance by Cloris Leachman.  Seriously, I'm watching it again just to see if I can remember some of her dialog.

I don't really want to spoil it, so I'll just recommend it if you think you've seen Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles too many times and you're looking for something in a similar vein.  It doesn't quite reach those epic heights (no Gene Wilder, perhaps?), but it gets the job done.

Signal Watch Watches: The Avengers (2012)

You know what?  Spoilers Ahoy.  Don't read this discussion unless you've seen The Avengers.

Signal Watch Reads: Action Comics #9

Action Comics #9
The Curse of Superman
writer - Grant Morrison
artist - Gene Ha
colorist - Art Lyon
letterer - Patrick Brosseau
associate editor - Wil Moss
editor - Matt Idleson
Superman created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster

And now for something completely different...

It's no secret that at this point, of the New 52 relaunch, I may actually be down to just Action Comics.  This week, more out of knee-jerk loyalty than anything, I also checked out Levitz and Perez on World's Finest, but I don't think that book is going to be my thing, either.

What I am interested in is what Grant Morrison is saying and doing with his run on Action, a book that by issue 9 has already suffered two fill-in issues.  If readers were having doubts, what with the broken momentum of the first 8 issues and the seeming "well, here's the set-up" vibe of the book, Action Comics #9 is a remarkable comic, and, it seems, possibly Grant Morrison's line in the sand to the overlords at DC, to the readers, and to maybe very specific people.

Morrison has long said he tries to manage reality by working his will through comics, and for anyone paying attention, the allegories and symbols are riding on the surface level.  Not the least of which is Morrison's decision to put an entirely reimagined, African-American Superman on the cover of his book (with the help of Gene Ha).

Signal Watch Watches: The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

One cannot talk about this movie without SPOILERS.  If you have not seen the movie and plan to see the movie, please do not read this post until such time that you have seen The Cabin in the Woods (2012).

So, seriously, go away.  Just...  Look, I'm recommending it for horror fans, so just go see it and don't ruin it for yourself.  In fact, don't read anything about this flick.  Just go see it.

If you have seen the movie or do not plan to see the film?  Stick around.

So....  Those other guys gone?

Signal Watch Watches: Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope

I have never been to Comic-Con International in San Diego.  I am on record as finding the much smaller Cons I've attended here in Austin and one in Phoenix sort of depressing, expensive and uncomfortable.  So, selling me on the ideal that Comic-Con is a sort of geek-topia where nobody need feel out of place as they pursue their passions doesn't necessarily sing.

This evening we checked out the latest Morgan Spurlock documentary, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope.  As suggested by the grating title, the movie seems done by folks with a cursory knowledge of the sci-fi, gamer and comic geek culture, and outsider looking in and starting to understand the contours enough to know "oh, Star Wars isn't just called Star Wars?  Weird!" but not enough to realize everyone in the Cantina has a name and homeworld the Star Wars geeks will know.  

The doc is relentlessly pro-ComicCon, told from an outsiders enthusiastic perspective, perhaps not entirely seeming to know what its doing sometimes right up to and including the "let's switch to comics panels between scenes" thing you've seen in a few other comics-related films, not the least of which was last year's HBO doc on real-life superheroes (who went to ComicCon.  Awk-ward).