Signal Watch Reads: "The Lady in the Lake" by Raymond Chandler (1943) - audiobook

The great thing about novel adaptations back in the day was that they clearly either adapted the movies of books they'd read ten years prior and couldn't remember anymore, or they'd be damned if they were going to finish the book before pounding out a script.

I say this, because I've seen the odd-ball noir detective film, The Lady in the Lake directed by and starring Robert Montgomery at least twice, but more like three times.  Why?  Well, it's a super strange movie told from a first person POV with a windy plot that takes a surprisingly believable break in the action for Christmas Eve, and features Audrey Totter at her Totter-iest.

Why, yes, I am going to look right into the camera the whole movie.  Why?

But I don't really want to write a compare-and-contrast of the film and book.  First, only one of you has likely even seen this movie (for shaaaaaame...), and, you know, they're two different beasts.

Still, Audrey Totter.

seriously, this movie is odd, and I totally recommend it

Star Wars and Mythology via Marketing

A curious thing has happened in the past month of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  Most of my facebook friends are in my age range, and they've got kids in a wide range of ages.  Not all, but many of them, made sure they and their family partook in a screening of Star Wars.  That's a normal thing.  (A) If I have learned one thing, it's that parents mostly take kids to the movies for the possibility of silence and peace in their lives for 20- 90 minute stretches, otherwise unknown while the kids are awake, and (B) people take their kids to see Star Wars, in particular.

But I saw the families dressed up in Jedi garb, the post-Christmas-Day pics of kids in Kylo Ren masks waving $10-40 plastic lightsabers, and the joy in the posts as people proudly showed off how they'd passed down Star Wars - something I've seen even with the weaker Prequels, which I am always amazed to hear the kids like just fine.*

We are certainly in the age of multi-generational media.  Or, rather - we have re-entered an age of multi-generational storytelling.

Bear Attack Watch: The Revenant (2015)

About five minutes after the bear attack in The Revenant (2015), I started to get a sinking feeling, and as the movie unspooled, the sinking feeling grew deeper and deeper.  I like to think I have middle-of-the-road taste in movies.  I like to think I can appreciate a dumb slapstick comedy - but I'll almost never pay to see a new one.  I like to think I can enjoy a standard actioner - but I don't know that I've gone to see one in the theater in years.  I've not seen The Expendables franchise and, sorry team, the Fast and the Furious franchise holds as much interest for me as hearing you describe your dreams at length.   I like to think I can muddle my way through art-house, but rarely bother.  And Oscar Bait movies generally bore me to tears.

What hit me as the movie progressed is:  I've become an arbitrarily picky movie watcher.  There's no science to my taste, no real sense to it.  But, oh my god, am I hard on anything that actually tries.

I'm the guy who didn't particularly like The Revenant.

Marvel Television: Jessica Jones and the New Era for Marvel

I'm about two months behind everyone else finishing the Marvel Netflix series Jessica Jones, a spiritual sibling of the much celebrated Daredevil, and as far from the TV-logic and twee shenanigans of Agents of SHIELD as you're likely to get.

I'm going to throw this out there, and I'll ask you to stick with me:  Jessica Jones may be, to live-action superhero media, what Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were to comics in 1986.

Way back in the late-90's/ early-00's, I was reading a lot of this new kid, Brian Michael Bendis, who had some indie success with Goldfish, Torso and other gritty crime books (and Torso is still an amazing read, the based-on-real-events story of famed lawman Elliot Ness trying to find a serial killer in Cleveland after putting Capone behind bars).  He followed this by teaming with Oeming on Powers, a "cops in a world with capes"  comic with a decidedly Rated-R bent, and I followed that series for years.  Around 2001/2002, Bendis and Gaydos brought Alias to Marvel and minted their new MAX imprint - a line of comics with a hard "R" rating, but absolutely within the Marvel Universe.  Something even DC blanched at, separating Vertigo from DCU proper circa 1994.

This was about fifteen years after the atom-bomb of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns exploded in the comics world and, in the aftermath, the idea that comics could reach an adult audience was left behind in the radiation and sand burnt to glass.  Bendis was part of the generation who came into the field when a few things were happening.  (A) Reaching an audience older than 17 was now possible - which meant the very real-world problems facing actual humans could be discussed in comics, even with a superheroic bent, which (B) meant that the comics companies were setting up imprints to deal with this idea, keeping their mainline branding safe for the parents associations who would show up and breathe fire and throw comics retailers in jail from time-to-time for not carefully shelving their wares.  And, of course, (C) Marvel was dealing with bankruptcy.  I have very little positive to say about 2001-era Marvel honcho Bill Jemas, but he was certainly willing to try new things, and all of that risk-taking has indirectly led to the Marvel we think of today.

Alias showed up in this market as a sort of indie-within-the-Big-2 title.  It was something to see a character who smoked and drank and had sex with Luke Cage (which she does in the first few pages of the series - so I feel spoiler free), and met Carol Danvers for coffee.  It was a detective series.  There was something in her background we'd get to sooner or later, some dark reason she'd quit heroing, but at the outset, it seemed to just be a series about a failed superhero making ends meet and seeing real human foibles and crime in the underbelly of the Marvel U.

So... the TV show.

Bowie Watch: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

I had not previously seen The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).  Something about the description on the back of the VHS box I used to consider made me pretty sure I knew what this movie was going to be, and...  I was about half-right.  It's an innocent-comes-to-earth-and-reveals-we're-kind-of-lousy-because-of-how-we-treat-him movie.  There's less in the way of sexual misadventures for our alien than I was expecting.  And a huge lack of actual David Bowie music, which I just wrongly assumed would score the movie.

Honestly, this wasn't really my cup of tea.  Not terrible, but I feel like I've seen this story done before and with both more narrative economy and with more focus.  Bowie himself is actually pretty good.  I'm just not sure this movie was as good as it thinks it is.  But it's also a product of it's time, and it's a necessary stepping stone that pushed sci-fi a bit further in cinema.

Signal Watch Reads: The High Window (1942) by Raymond Chandler

I've been thinking a bit about the difference between the Continental Op work, Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.  Brighter minds than me have surely covered this - but you're here reading this, so...  here we go.

To be sure, there are more similarities than there are differences.  Working class detectives working in a shadowy world where wealth buys your way into indulging your perversions and clear of ignominy.  Low class hoods are always on the make.  Dames who can work an angle have it made, until they don't.  And then they wind up cold and stiff.  It's not whether everyone you meet has an angle, it's what their angle is - and if they don't have one, they're a chump.

Mostly, anyway.

The Continental Op doesn't have a heart of gold, but he's a square guy.  He's a brawler, almost always has a gun and will throw some lead around.  Sam Spade has a heart in there, too, one that's more likely to fall for a dame than the Continental Op, who knows he's no looker and has reason to distrust any dame that gets too close.  But Hammett's detectives never really warm to much of anyone, even when they tell you otherwise.  At best, they tolerate others and try not to admit it when any women get too close.

Alan Rickman Merges With The Infinite

This week is going down as a week I'll remember for all the wrong reasons.

News has hit my feed that Alan Rickman has passed.  Like Bowie, he was 69 and it was cancer.

We all know Rickman from his many roles, and, at the end of the day, when we think about it - there really weren't too many actors working in our favorite movies that showed his range or depth.

He will be sorely missed.

Bowie Watch: Labyrinth (1986)

We watched this one for obvious reasons.  It's been a while, and I was surprised how well I actually liked the movie.  I don't really remember how I felt about it upon release, and as it's essentially a long allegory for a young woman learning important life lessons about the transition from childhood to young adulthood - maybe being 11 was not the right time to be getting some perspective.  But I remember liking Bowie in the movie.

Of course I've seen it since.  Heck, we own a copy (seems like a Jamie purchase if ever there was one), but we haven't seen it in years.

A bit sad, of course.  Henson passed decades ago.  Bowie has gone into the cosmos.  But for the kids who want to see some amazing visual effects, practical FX and how it was done in a pre-CGI era, this is a heck of a movie.  Yeah, yeah.  The owl is CGI in the opening.  I know.  But you know what I mean.  And, hey, Bowie looks like he's having good fun with his pals.

Batman! The 50th Anniversary!

Longtime readers will know - Batman, the TV program, is probably ground zero for everything you see here at the ol' blog.  Born in '75, obviously I was too not-yet-in-existence to catch the show when it premiered in 1966, and I think my dad was in Vietnam and my mom was in college and not watching TV when the show hit the airwaves.

Family history says my first words included "Batman".  Or, more specifically, "Mat-man", as I couldn't quite work that "b" sound quite yet.  The story is that my mom needed to fix dinner for my brother and myself, and at some point she figured out I'd hold perfectly still for half an hour each week night when she'd point me at the TV while Batman played in syndication, and the rest just sort of played out.

As big as Star Wars may have been in my early childhood, so, too, was this version of Batman - or so I am told.  But I have almost no memory of watching the show at this age, I just remembered the characters and sounds of the show.  It fell off the syndication wagon in my local viewing area for a number of years, and didn't return until 1989, when the popularity of the Michael Keaton Batman meant someone decided to cash in.

Saying Good-Bye to David Bowie - Starman Merges With The Infinite

I was up too late for a Sunday night, still Googling into Monday morning, when Cavendar's facebook prompted with the simple question "David Bowie?"

I don't know why, but I knew it was not a question about the album, and in a Google search I found "David Bowie Death Hoax" and a post from just two days prior.  But then, when I hit the same search again two minutes later, The Hollywood Reporter was in agreement.  Then someone linked to the twitter account of Duncan Jones, Bowie's son, confirming the rumors.  David Bowie was dead.

By now literally millions of people will have said something.  I don't know that there's any more to say, but that's never stopped me before, and I want to say good-bye to one of my favorite humans, someone whose work helped shape the universe not just for me, but for millions or billions.

The Alamo Drafthouse affiliated publication and website Birth.Movies.Death. had a post up this morning, and it's right on.

As with God, everybody’s relationship with Bowie is deeply personal. Everybody’s relationship with Bowie is one-on-one.

Born in '75, my early awareness of Bowie stems from the Mick Jagger "Dancing in the Streets" era, with "Blue Jean" and "China Girl" in tow.  I can't separate the three, all staples of early MTV.  At any rate, I was well aware of the existence if not cultural influence and legacy of Bowie by the time I caught Labyrinth at the Showplace 6.  

But I think the first time I was just stopped short by Bowie wasn't even when he was on screen or playing music. I couldn't tell you how old I was when I saw The Breakfast Club, but of course the movie ended with the lyrics from "Changes", and it was the first time I saw an adult acknowledge that I might have some self-awareness, that I was not a dumb beast in need of constant correction, to have what was patently obvious explained to me.

“... And these children
that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware
of what they're going through...”