Monsters. I love 'em, you love 'em, they're everywhere, especially now that Halloween is upon us. Once objects of fear, now they've become objects of fun, mascots of the season (or at least October). And towering far above your Freddys and Jasons and Jeeperses Creeperses are the Icons, the Pantheon of Fear. The Universal Monsters (or their templates, anyway) are the Kings of Halloween, y'all. Count Dracula. The Non-Specific Werewolf. The Surprisingly Ambulatory Mummy. The Monster Whom We Should Probably Just Call "Frankenstein" Already. The Gill-Man, I Guess.
(Seriously, though, is there a more unwieldy appellation than "The Frankenstein Monster"? Everybody called him "Frankenstein" at one time or another, before their "Um, actually"s set in. Let it be so again!)
These guys are the rock stars, the elder statesmen. The Big Five (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) have been everywhere, from beer commercials to fighting games to (hoo boy) sexy Japanese figurines to terrible '90s action cartoons to... cute high school girls? (By the way, this "Monster High" thing: is it a less sincere attempt to capture the same accidental audience as That Pony Show, or slight misinterpretation of a certain pop star's bizarro term of endearment to her fans? You be the judge!) They're so ingrained in our minds, our pop culture, our very pores. Kids are born with inherent knowledge of Frankenstein! (and also, like, Superman, but that's a different post.)
Well, obviously Dracula and Frankenstein are at the top. Even today, Dracula, as created by Stoker and popularized by Lugosi and Browning, is the yardstick by which other fictional vampires are measured against. Jack Pierce's makeup for the Monster is the first thing anyone thinks of when you say "Frankenstein". Yeah, the werewolf might be up there, slightly below the other two, but less as a character than as an archetype; that's the nature of the beast, as it were. In his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, Steven King lists his "monster Tarot" as the Werewolf, the Vampire, and the Thing With No Name.
Don't talk to me about the Mummy or the Gill-Man, 'cos I don't wanna hear it. They're just not as exciting to me as the others. What's the Mummy's deal, anyway? Sometimes he's a weaker cousin to the Frankenstein Monster in different clothes (Kharis being used as a weapon reminds me of Ygor using the Monster to kill the jurors who elected to hang him), sometimes (Imhotep in the original, and the '90s update) he's an evil wizard. As for the Gill-Man, he's kind of on the edge, the last "classic" horror monster and a harbinger of the "big bug" mutation monster of the '50s. But, hey, they were both in The Monster Squad. That's credentials enough.
Occupying a lower tier is probably the Bride (an iconic look and performance is enough to offset the very little screentime she actually has) and the Phantom of the Opera (the junior Chaney could never match the manic energy of his old man). (And some would argue in favor of the Invisible Man, but I just don't see it.)
Aside from all that, there's something else I'd like to mention. Something slightly older, slightly more... autumnal. These faces entered into our consciousness not necessarily through films, but from older traditions. The Ghost. The Skeleton. The Witch. They're from darker, more primal corners of our minds. Fears of death, of decay, of darkness. The Skeleton and the Witch appear as masks in the woefully underrated Halloween III (with the Ghost swapped out for a more practical Pumpkin, but, you know.) If the Universal Monsters are kings of Halloween, these three are Emperors (and Empress). But maybe bringing them into the present day, making them Halloween characters, using their images for fun, is our way of saying we're not afraid of what they represent.
It all goes back to what many people enjoy about Halloween. Fear can be fun. In the face of autumn (and oncoming winter), it's nice to have a moment of excitement and joy. So have a happy All Hallow's Eve tonight. Just watch out for the monsters.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
Man vs Before it was Cool
So, a while back, before a number of personal tragedies and minor inconveniences, I wrote a post about a certain cult show that isn't so cult any more. I left it open-ended, intending to write a follow-up post that goes past those early memories into my growing appreciation of the show and my tentative steps into "fandom", such as it was.
This is not that post, or at least, not how I intended it to turn out. I may get back to that, or whatever bits of it I don't use here, but, frankly, it would have been boring, trite, list-y trash, and I've already done several of those posts anyway. I'm in a different place now, and I'm trying to work something out here, fine tune my writing anyway. I can't just go "Here Is a Thing That Happened And It Sometimes Had a Meaning To Me And Here Is the Next Thing" every time. This thing, though... this thing...
*sigh* Okay, so you may have heard Doctor Who has made a bit of a comeback in recent years and is now, like, the biggest deal ever on both sides of the Atlantic as well as both sides of the gender gap. And it's genuinely mostly good, with flashes of brilliance, thanks in no small part to the lead actors and the all-star crop of writers. (Neil Gaiman! Paul Cornell! The fella who wrote Coupling!) This is one of the better-crafted science-fantasy adventure shows to come down the pike in recent years. However... it's lacking something. Some fundamental oddball quality, some cheap weirdness, some indefinable thing that would compel me to stay up way too late on a Saturday night to watch.
New Who just isn't late-night Saturday viewing; it's Prime Time. And that's just what it needs to stay healthy in a 21st century television environment. In a post-Buffy world, even fantasy-adventure shows need defined character arcs and storylines, however awkward the fit is (*cough*badwolf*cough*). And it proved to be successful, not just in the UK, where it was regarded as a fond memory, but also in the US, where its status at the time could be described as "cult at best" (or "that weird section in Suncoast Video").
But here's the thing. I don't know whether it's out of some misguided resentment over missing out due to lack of cable, or because my expectations were too high, or because of the new fanbase the new show was cultivating but I realized that I'm just not as enthusiastic about New Who as I thought I'd be. But that's okay. Plenty other people are. Plenty.
Back in the day, my quiet, shy-around-girls, teenage self was able to find maybe one other person in my whole high school who watched Doctor Who, but, aside from during the downtime between matches at that one Quiz Bowl event, she and I didn't get to talk much about it (see "shy around girls"). I even tried to get one of my college roommates to watch "Inferno" before admitting defeat and just hooking headphones up to the TV. Nowadays, you can't throw a virtual stone in the global ideaspace without hitting a TARDIS, or a cartoon Dalek, or a gender-swapped version of the Eleventh Doctor complete with fez. Like it or not, thanks to the revival, New Who is huge. And Classic Who seems to get lost in its younger sibling's wake.
I think that's what I'm getting at, here. It sometimes feels like Classic Who has been marginalized to make way for the new. The show I fell in love with, the bubble-wrap monsters, action by HAVOC, the anything-can-happen adventure, has been supplanted in the public eye by CGI spectacle, "timey-wimey", and overwrought storylines. More people know "I don't want to go!" than "It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for." This thing, this wonderful, weird TV show I grew up with doesn't matter to them, and that's a little disheartening. Though, I should be glad they at least get a version of the Doctor for them. (And I have to admit, Matt Smith really gets into the role in a way we haven't seen in a long time.)
I still like New Who (well, mostly). Just in a different way from the classic stuff. Fortunately, Classic Who isn't exactly dead. The DVDs are being released (and re-released!) steadily over the years to revisit at any time. I follow three different rewatches of the classic series online (plus another in print). As noted before, audio drama group Big Finish have put out new stories with a classic vibe for something like 13 years now. And, if I'm really desperate, I can dig into my stack of old paperbacks from the so-called "wilderness years". Plus, there's the added bonus of not getting any funny looks when I mention Doctor Who in public, so, yeah, it's not a total loss.
Now, who's up for some "Talons of Weng-Chiang", hmm?
This is not that post, or at least, not how I intended it to turn out. I may get back to that, or whatever bits of it I don't use here, but, frankly, it would have been boring, trite, list-y trash, and I've already done several of those posts anyway. I'm in a different place now, and I'm trying to work something out here, fine tune my writing anyway. I can't just go "Here Is a Thing That Happened And It Sometimes Had a Meaning To Me And Here Is the Next Thing" every time. This thing, though... this thing...
*sigh* Okay, so you may have heard Doctor Who has made a bit of a comeback in recent years and is now, like, the biggest deal ever on both sides of the Atlantic as well as both sides of the gender gap. And it's genuinely mostly good, with flashes of brilliance, thanks in no small part to the lead actors and the all-star crop of writers. (Neil Gaiman! Paul Cornell! The fella who wrote Coupling!) This is one of the better-crafted science-fantasy adventure shows to come down the pike in recent years. However... it's lacking something. Some fundamental oddball quality, some cheap weirdness, some indefinable thing that would compel me to stay up way too late on a Saturday night to watch.
New Who just isn't late-night Saturday viewing; it's Prime Time. And that's just what it needs to stay healthy in a 21st century television environment. In a post-Buffy world, even fantasy-adventure shows need defined character arcs and storylines, however awkward the fit is (*cough*badwolf*cough*). And it proved to be successful, not just in the UK, where it was regarded as a fond memory, but also in the US, where its status at the time could be described as "cult at best" (or "that weird section in Suncoast Video").
But here's the thing. I don't know whether it's out of some misguided resentment over missing out due to lack of cable, or because my expectations were too high, or because of the new fanbase the new show was cultivating but I realized that I'm just not as enthusiastic about New Who as I thought I'd be. But that's okay. Plenty other people are. Plenty.
Back in the day, my quiet, shy-around-girls, teenage self was able to find maybe one other person in my whole high school who watched Doctor Who, but, aside from during the downtime between matches at that one Quiz Bowl event, she and I didn't get to talk much about it (see "shy around girls"). I even tried to get one of my college roommates to watch "Inferno" before admitting defeat and just hooking headphones up to the TV. Nowadays, you can't throw a virtual stone in the global ideaspace without hitting a TARDIS, or a cartoon Dalek, or a gender-swapped version of the Eleventh Doctor complete with fez. Like it or not, thanks to the revival, New Who is huge. And Classic Who seems to get lost in its younger sibling's wake.
I think that's what I'm getting at, here. It sometimes feels like Classic Who has been marginalized to make way for the new. The show I fell in love with, the bubble-wrap monsters, action by HAVOC, the anything-can-happen adventure, has been supplanted in the public eye by CGI spectacle, "timey-wimey", and overwrought storylines. More people know "I don't want to go!" than "It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for." This thing, this wonderful, weird TV show I grew up with doesn't matter to them, and that's a little disheartening. Though, I should be glad they at least get a version of the Doctor for them. (And I have to admit, Matt Smith really gets into the role in a way we haven't seen in a long time.)
I still like New Who (well, mostly). Just in a different way from the classic stuff. Fortunately, Classic Who isn't exactly dead. The DVDs are being released (and re-released!) steadily over the years to revisit at any time. I follow three different rewatches of the classic series online (plus another in print). As noted before, audio drama group Big Finish have put out new stories with a classic vibe for something like 13 years now. And, if I'm really desperate, I can dig into my stack of old paperbacks from the so-called "wilderness years". Plus, there's the added bonus of not getting any funny looks when I mention Doctor Who in public, so, yeah, it's not a total loss.
Now, who's up for some "Talons of Weng-Chiang", hmm?
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Man vs the Origin
I don't exactly recall which comic was my first. Two memories spring to mind. One was a DC digest that had a team-up between the Justice League of America (whom I already mostly knew from the Superfriends on Saturday mornings) and the new-to-me Justice Society, as they raced through time to find a third group of heroes to fight an impossibly huge menace. Bits of it stuck in my memory, like Batman using the phrase "an historic monument" or Johnny Thunder suddenly having hiccups. Yes, a bit of 21st-century research turns up the answer quickly, and I now have more recent vintage reprint of that story, but for years, the nature of this story was lost in time, not unlike the scattered Seven Soldiers in the story.
That's a decent story and all, but I'd like to believe the other possibility. My other "first comic" was my Dad's copy of Origins of Marvel Comics. The 1974 edition, to be precise. It printed the first appearance of several early Marvel characters, and another, more polished story from later in the '60s. This was in a whole different league than the DC digest. Where the Justice League story had more heroes than I could shake a stick at, the Marvel book had... well, it had the Thing!
I instantly took to the Fantastic Four, who continued to be among my favorite Marvel characters for decades after. (Their powers, to me, seemed exactly the kind of things that "cosmic rays" would do to you, never mind that I hadn't heard of cosmic rays beforehand.) Then there was the Hulk. Big, powerful, more than a little scary (I don't recall if I ever made it past the intro to the TV show.) I'm afraid I didn't have an overwhelmingly positive reaction to Spider-Man or Thor (I was a bit too young to appreciate the soapy Romita-era Spidey and full-on Cosmic Kirby.) Then there was Doctor Strange. Who the heck was this guy, with his freaky eye-amulet and super-creepy art? A future underdog favorite, that's who!
Oh! I almost neglected one more character it introduced me to. No, not the Sub-Mariner. I'm talking about Stan Lee. I'm not gonna lie, dear readers; I still love his brand of hucksterism. All told, between Stan telling his story, and the characters I met inside, that book is probably the main reason why I've been mostly a Marvel reader.
Epilogue: 15 or so years later. I found that book again, in worse condition than I remembered it. The covers had fallen off, pages had been swallowed up by time, and a big chunk was torn out of "When Strikes the Silver Surfer", but reading what was left of it reminded me what I saw in it in the first place. Unfortunately, even more time has passed since even then, and I believe the book was lost in a flood. Of course, by then it had already taken root in my psyche. So, even if it wasn't the one I read first, I'm still going to say that Origins of Marvel Comics was my first comic. And to me, there couldn't be a better place to start.
That's a decent story and all, but I'd like to believe the other possibility. My other "first comic" was my Dad's copy of Origins of Marvel Comics. The 1974 edition, to be precise. It printed the first appearance of several early Marvel characters, and another, more polished story from later in the '60s. This was in a whole different league than the DC digest. Where the Justice League story had more heroes than I could shake a stick at, the Marvel book had... well, it had the Thing!
I instantly took to the Fantastic Four, who continued to be among my favorite Marvel characters for decades after. (Their powers, to me, seemed exactly the kind of things that "cosmic rays" would do to you, never mind that I hadn't heard of cosmic rays beforehand.) Then there was the Hulk. Big, powerful, more than a little scary (I don't recall if I ever made it past the intro to the TV show.) I'm afraid I didn't have an overwhelmingly positive reaction to Spider-Man or Thor (I was a bit too young to appreciate the soapy Romita-era Spidey and full-on Cosmic Kirby.) Then there was Doctor Strange. Who the heck was this guy, with his freaky eye-amulet and super-creepy art? A future underdog favorite, that's who!
Oh! I almost neglected one more character it introduced me to. No, not the Sub-Mariner. I'm talking about Stan Lee. I'm not gonna lie, dear readers; I still love his brand of hucksterism. All told, between Stan telling his story, and the characters I met inside, that book is probably the main reason why I've been mostly a Marvel reader.
Epilogue: 15 or so years later. I found that book again, in worse condition than I remembered it. The covers had fallen off, pages had been swallowed up by time, and a big chunk was torn out of "When Strikes the Silver Surfer", but reading what was left of it reminded me what I saw in it in the first place. Unfortunately, even more time has passed since even then, and I believe the book was lost in a flood. Of course, by then it had already taken root in my psyche. So, even if it wasn't the one I read first, I'm still going to say that Origins of Marvel Comics was my first comic. And to me, there couldn't be a better place to start.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Man vs the Inconsequential Anecdote
It's hard to figure out how to approach this, so I'll go right out and say it. I like strange old stuff. Records, books, and especially comics. On occasion I'll go to the local used bookstore and just browse for some pop culture ephemera. One time, I happened upon a grab-bag that had a few Archies from the '70s, a forgettably unreadable Charlton Flintstones, something called O. G. Whiz that mostly printed old Tubby stories, plus something that I had only heard about second-hand. An issue of Millie the Model. It was from late in the run, after the comic had gone from Stan Lee's version of an Archie-style humor book to a "romantic adventure" comic, and back to an even more Archie-styled book. So, of course I bought the bundle, and that Millie was a jewel in my collection.
Now, flash-forward to that November, when a certain pop-culture-magazine-sponsored comic convention rolled into town. Now, I hadn't been to a comic convention before, and this one was nowhere near San Diego levels of conventioneering, so I figured it would be a good place to check out for the day. And, dear readers, I may have gone a little spend-crazy. Several issues of Marvel Presents with Steve Gerber's rendition of the Guardians of the Galaxy, three randomly-selected silver/bronze-age Detective Comics, one copy of Avengers (vol. 1) #20 that someone wrote their name on, two Dazzlers with Bill Sienkiewicz covers and a Marvel Premiere featuring Tigra later, I saw it. Another Millie the Model. As it turns out, this was the first one after the style shift, but, after I got it home, I noticed something... familiar about it. Most of the stories in this issue were reprinted... in the only other issue I had!
Of course, I should have known there'd be reprints. The original X-Men comic was notoriously relegated to reprints before its original cancellation, and it looks like Millie was on her way there as well. Heck, one of the Marvel Presents had an only-tangentially-related Silver Surfer reprint in there. I only went to one other convention after that, and never saw another Millie. Maybe I'll set my sights on finding old Josies instead. The next con for me is only a few months away, after all...
Friday, August 3, 2012
Man vs the Resurrection of Dead Television
Oh, there you are! I'm afraid you're a bit early. I'm not quite ready to start this thing just yet. If you could hand me those vacuum tubes-- no, not the ones over by the Tesla coil, the ones on the bench, please. See, I've decided to bring my blog back to life (or what passes for it) and I decided the best way was to go the full Frankenstein-- watch out you don't trip on that cable there.
Well, yes, of course I got distracted. My Netflix queue isn't gonna watch itself, you know, and I did just spend last week re-reading the full run of iZombie (in finer comic shops everywhere!) Still, I had topics to discuss, stories to share, and big ideas that needed their space, hence the Colin Clive act on this space here. And what better way to revive this corner of ideaspace than with a discussion on, well, revivals?
So, I read an article recently about WKRP in Cincinnati, which got me thinking about its lesser-known follow-up, aptly titled The New WKRP in Cincinnati. Yes, they took the central premise and a few of the same characters and threw a bunch of new characters together to see if it worked. It lasted about two seasons in syndication, which shows you what the first-run syndication market was like. Actually, a lot of revival shows went straight into syndication. You had your more recently deceased network programs that were given new life, like Charles in Charge, or It's a Living (which sparked my preteen crush on Ann Jillian), or the interminable Punky Brewster, which had me convinced that Chicago must've been one of the most depressing places to live.
Then there were the ones that you had to dig a little deeper to find. Older programs that were given a kind of un-life. The New Gidget shambled along the beaches for two seasons, and I watched it, with very little knowledge of the original. What's Happening Now!! (don't forget those exclamation marks, kiddies) eluded death for 66 episodes, and I somehow conflated it with the original series. The New Monkees (yes, this was a thing that existed!) defied the natural order for 13 keyboard-driven, ponytail-pompadoured, '80s-tastic episodes, and, God help me, I watched it. The Munsters Today crawled from their tombs and somehow managed to stay on for three seasons compared to the original's two, and I... hang on, what?
Yes, The Munsters Today somehow lasted longer than The Munsters. And you thought this Frankenstein bit was just for show. No, I don't remember much about this show other than a pre-Boy Meets World Jason Marsden as Eddie doing a "hip" version of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore." And John Schuck was no Fred Gwynne. And I don't really care to spend any more words on it. Look, okay, I misspent my youth watching far more television than is healthy. And now, the TV landscape has changed and bastions of weird programming don't exist in the same capacity these days.
Besides, it wasn't all bad. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the more successful revivals. Yes, despite having none of the original cast (and an extremely rocky first season), Star Trek: The Next Generation led to new televised Star Trek in one form or another for 18 years (and probably kicked off the late '80s/early '90s TV revival craze in the first place), and the BBC Wales revival of Doctor Who is bigger now than it ever was during its original 26-year run. Of course, they have their detractors, too, fans of the original, clashing with fans of the new. Kirk vs. Picard. Tom Baker vs. David Tennant. Somehow I doubt there was ever an internet discussion of Andy Travis vs. Donovan Aderhold.
I don't have any lessons, morals, conclusions about this. Now that I think about it, reviving my blog by talking about failed revivals is probably a risky thing in itself. I guess the main thing to take away from this is, they tried something newish, and it didn't always work, but they gave it what they got, and the rest is history.
And Ann Jillian was a babe.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I've a giant wall switch to throw and laugh maniacally at. Don't be a stranger, hmm?
Well, yes, of course I got distracted. My Netflix queue isn't gonna watch itself, you know, and I did just spend last week re-reading the full run of iZombie (in finer comic shops everywhere!) Still, I had topics to discuss, stories to share, and big ideas that needed their space, hence the Colin Clive act on this space here. And what better way to revive this corner of ideaspace than with a discussion on, well, revivals?
So, I read an article recently about WKRP in Cincinnati, which got me thinking about its lesser-known follow-up, aptly titled The New WKRP in Cincinnati. Yes, they took the central premise and a few of the same characters and threw a bunch of new characters together to see if it worked. It lasted about two seasons in syndication, which shows you what the first-run syndication market was like. Actually, a lot of revival shows went straight into syndication. You had your more recently deceased network programs that were given new life, like Charles in Charge, or It's a Living (which sparked my preteen crush on Ann Jillian), or the interminable Punky Brewster, which had me convinced that Chicago must've been one of the most depressing places to live.
Then there were the ones that you had to dig a little deeper to find. Older programs that were given a kind of un-life. The New Gidget shambled along the beaches for two seasons, and I watched it, with very little knowledge of the original. What's Happening Now!! (don't forget those exclamation marks, kiddies) eluded death for 66 episodes, and I somehow conflated it with the original series. The New Monkees (yes, this was a thing that existed!) defied the natural order for 13 keyboard-driven, ponytail-pompadoured, '80s-tastic episodes, and, God help me, I watched it. The Munsters Today crawled from their tombs and somehow managed to stay on for three seasons compared to the original's two, and I... hang on, what?
Yes, The Munsters Today somehow lasted longer than The Munsters. And you thought this Frankenstein bit was just for show. No, I don't remember much about this show other than a pre-Boy Meets World Jason Marsden as Eddie doing a "hip" version of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore." And John Schuck was no Fred Gwynne. And I don't really care to spend any more words on it. Look, okay, I misspent my youth watching far more television than is healthy. And now, the TV landscape has changed and bastions of weird programming don't exist in the same capacity these days.
Besides, it wasn't all bad. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the more successful revivals. Yes, despite having none of the original cast (and an extremely rocky first season), Star Trek: The Next Generation led to new televised Star Trek in one form or another for 18 years (and probably kicked off the late '80s/early '90s TV revival craze in the first place), and the BBC Wales revival of Doctor Who is bigger now than it ever was during its original 26-year run. Of course, they have their detractors, too, fans of the original, clashing with fans of the new. Kirk vs. Picard. Tom Baker vs. David Tennant. Somehow I doubt there was ever an internet discussion of Andy Travis vs. Donovan Aderhold.
I don't have any lessons, morals, conclusions about this. Now that I think about it, reviving my blog by talking about failed revivals is probably a risky thing in itself. I guess the main thing to take away from this is, they tried something newish, and it didn't always work, but they gave it what they got, and the rest is history.
And Ann Jillian was a babe.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I've a giant wall switch to throw and laugh maniacally at. Don't be a stranger, hmm?
Monday, April 30, 2012
Man vs Pop Culture Week 4/23-4/28
Another week, another pop culture roundup.
In light of recent events, I re-read the most recent arc of Chris Roberson and Mike Allred's monster mashup iZombie from Vertigo. The story is, by necessity, ramping up to a conclusion (it's due to end with issue 28), and it's nice to see the various plot threads, including random throwaway bits from earlier issues, tying together. Plus, there's a panel where guest artist J. Bone gets to draw Zombie Abraham Lincoln fighting Nazi werewolves. I'm gonna miss this book when it's gone, but it's been a heck of a ride, and I'll be re-revisiting it after it wraps up.
After hearing about Kagan McLeod's Infinite Kung Fu on War Rocket Ajax a while back, I decided I'd check it out. Finding out it was on sale last weekend only clinched the deal, and I spent a good chunk of the weekend blissed out in kung fu goodness. Though I'm not familiar with many, many martial arts movies, I knew enough (would you beleive I heard about the Five Deadly Venoms in an old RPG sourcebook?) to appreciate the feel of what was going on. For those who still need convincing, get a load of this trailer:
On the movie front, I got to check out Tucker and Dale vs Evil, which I had been meaning to see since I heard about it last year. It's usually good to see Alan Tudyk in stuff, and Tyler Labine was fun in Reaper, and they had pretty good chemistry here, too. The joke in the central premise had the potential to wear itself out, but it hit all the right story beats that I didn't mind. By the time the college kids get the sheriff involved, you know what's going to happen next, but it's still funny as hell when it does.
Next week, I dig into a long-forgotten comic genre!
In light of recent events, I re-read the most recent arc of Chris Roberson and Mike Allred's monster mashup iZombie from Vertigo. The story is, by necessity, ramping up to a conclusion (it's due to end with issue 28), and it's nice to see the various plot threads, including random throwaway bits from earlier issues, tying together. Plus, there's a panel where guest artist J. Bone gets to draw Zombie Abraham Lincoln fighting Nazi werewolves. I'm gonna miss this book when it's gone, but it's been a heck of a ride, and I'll be re-revisiting it after it wraps up.
After hearing about Kagan McLeod's Infinite Kung Fu on War Rocket Ajax a while back, I decided I'd check it out. Finding out it was on sale last weekend only clinched the deal, and I spent a good chunk of the weekend blissed out in kung fu goodness. Though I'm not familiar with many, many martial arts movies, I knew enough (would you beleive I heard about the Five Deadly Venoms in an old RPG sourcebook?) to appreciate the feel of what was going on. For those who still need convincing, get a load of this trailer:
On the movie front, I got to check out Tucker and Dale vs Evil, which I had been meaning to see since I heard about it last year. It's usually good to see Alan Tudyk in stuff, and Tyler Labine was fun in Reaper, and they had pretty good chemistry here, too. The joke in the central premise had the potential to wear itself out, but it hit all the right story beats that I didn't mind. By the time the college kids get the sheriff involved, you know what's going to happen next, but it's still funny as hell when it does.
Next week, I dig into a long-forgotten comic genre!
Friday, April 27, 2012
Man vs the Mobile Post
I'll make this quick as I'm typing this post from my phone. For a long time I've resisted ebooks; now I have the Kindle app. For a long time I resisted digital comics; now my weekly haul is through Comixology. That doesn't mean I'll eschew paper entirely, but digital isn't so bad. So I'm only a little bit behind the curve.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Man vs Pop Culture Week 4/16-4/23
Better late than never, here goes...
I rewatched Christopher Guest's folk mockumentary A Mighty Wind. I didn't realize that Guest, McKean, and Shearer actually performed as the Folksmen before the film by a couple of decades (and even had them perform as the opening act for their other alter egoes, Spinal Tap), but they fit right in here. However, they take a back seat to Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara as the duo of Mitch and Mickey. Levy especially sells his role as the perpetually shellshocked Mitch. It doesn't hurt that the songs (all written for the film!) are catchy. I had "Never Did No Wanderin'" stuck in my head for days after.
I also finished up the brief run of Hawkeye & Mockingbird. I've been a Hawkeye fan since Kurt Busiek's run on Avengers, so I caught this series when it came out originally, but forgot most of it since, so it was nice to revisit this. The two had something of a rocky relationship ever since their time on the West Coast Avengers, so it's good to see them back together, even though it doesn't last. And, yes, it also ends with a teaser for the crossover with Black Widow that eventually just became the (sadly, unread by me) Widowmaker mini after both books were canceled.
I also re-acquainted myself with another avenging pair of super-spies: John Steed and Emma Peel. I dug up the DVDs of ITV's The Avengers. These were some of the first DVDs I bought, back in 2000 (I got a DVD player for Christmas '99), thanks to some Barnes&Noble (or was it Borders?) gift cards. These sets have gone out of print, I think, so I doubt I'll be able to continue the run. (I only ended up with one and a half sets after all was said and done, thanks also to the newer-at-the-time Amazon.) I watched a couple of episodes from the 1965 season, including a personal favorite, "A Surfeit of H2O." (Rain as a weapon! A sinister winery! Local eccentric builds an ark! Young Geoffrey Palmer!) Now, I don't even recall why I bought these, since I never actually watched the show before, but I'm glad I did. The combination of wit and spy stuff reminds me of another ITV favorite that got a bit more airplay on one independent channel or another, The Saint. Plus, 1960s vintage Diana Rigg? More, please!
I rewatched Christopher Guest's folk mockumentary A Mighty Wind. I didn't realize that Guest, McKean, and Shearer actually performed as the Folksmen before the film by a couple of decades (and even had them perform as the opening act for their other alter egoes, Spinal Tap), but they fit right in here. However, they take a back seat to Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara as the duo of Mitch and Mickey. Levy especially sells his role as the perpetually shellshocked Mitch. It doesn't hurt that the songs (all written for the film!) are catchy. I had "Never Did No Wanderin'" stuck in my head for days after.
I also finished up the brief run of Hawkeye & Mockingbird. I've been a Hawkeye fan since Kurt Busiek's run on Avengers, so I caught this series when it came out originally, but forgot most of it since, so it was nice to revisit this. The two had something of a rocky relationship ever since their time on the West Coast Avengers, so it's good to see them back together, even though it doesn't last. And, yes, it also ends with a teaser for the crossover with Black Widow that eventually just became the (sadly, unread by me) Widowmaker mini after both books were canceled.
I also re-acquainted myself with another avenging pair of super-spies: John Steed and Emma Peel. I dug up the DVDs of ITV's The Avengers. These were some of the first DVDs I bought, back in 2000 (I got a DVD player for Christmas '99), thanks to some Barnes&Noble (or was it Borders?) gift cards. These sets have gone out of print, I think, so I doubt I'll be able to continue the run. (I only ended up with one and a half sets after all was said and done, thanks also to the newer-at-the-time Amazon.) I watched a couple of episodes from the 1965 season, including a personal favorite, "A Surfeit of H2O." (Rain as a weapon! A sinister winery! Local eccentric builds an ark! Young Geoffrey Palmer!) Now, I don't even recall why I bought these, since I never actually watched the show before, but I'm glad I did. The combination of wit and spy stuff reminds me of another ITV favorite that got a bit more airplay on one independent channel or another, The Saint. Plus, 1960s vintage Diana Rigg? More, please!
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Man vs Pop Culture Week : 4/9-4/15
Now that I am mostly settled in the new apartment, I am ready for regular posting. Taking a cue from Siskoid, I am posting various nerdy, genre, and pop-culture accomplishments from throughout the week.
Primarily, I watched the final two series of British sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look. Some of my favorite sketches poked fun at television, not as parodies of specific shows (which runs the risk of alienating overseas viewers), but of television in general. Witness the Gift Shop Sketch, as (over)produced by the fictional "False Jeopardy Productions", or the increasingly desperate Quiz Broadcast, which shows that even after an unspecified apocalypse, television endures.
I also read the full, short run of Marvel's Black Widow series. The first arc, by Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuña, was pretty solid and atmospheric, but after the creative team changed, the second arc focused on a different PoV character and ended up with a cliffhanger tying into the Widowmaker mini, which was initially conceived as a crossover with the even-shorter-lived (but more fun in this blogger's opinion) Hawkeye and Mockingbird series.
More to come in weeks ahead!
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Man vs the Big Move (or, Pardon Our Dust)
Things have been fairly quiet here at the Fortress of Inevitability, but that's bound to change fairly soon. I will be moving to a new apartment in a few weeks, in a new environment hopefully more conducive to wacky ramblings, so my sporadic-at-best posting will resume shortly.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Man vs the Thing in the Chair
In the spirit of Kindertrauma's "Name that Trauma!" feature, I'd like to share this old, strange memory I have. Whether it was from a movie, a TV show, or a particularly vivid dream, I don't know. It's just a fragment of something, but it's pretty freaky as it is. In it, an older couple are checking something in an attic (it may not have been for the first time), and find a doll sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth. Anybody who came up to see this doll was terrified, even though it didn't do anything other than rock in the chair.
Now, a quick Google search doesn't bring up anything like it. Just things like a 100-plus-year-old doll named Robert, and a link to the productivity black hole known as TVTropes (which I will not link to from here, thankyewverymuch.) And, sure, creepy doll movies/TV episodes are a dime a dozen (I did peer into the aforementioned productivity black hole just to see), but I recently stumbled across something interesting that brought this whole thing up in the first place. It's part of a phenomenon I call the Thing in the Chair.
I came across this last week while watching some old episodes of Dark Shadows, a few instances in the space of 10 episodes. First, when governess Rachel went to investigate the mysterious tower room, the cliffhanger showed, just beyond the door, a cradle with two dolls in it, rocked by an unseen hand. Then, after another cast member gets killed and revived via black magic as a zombie, Rachel (again!) wakes up to find him rocking in a chair right next to her bed (another cliffhanger). Interestingly enough, the next episode has a scared-more-than-usual Carl Collins go into the bedroom to confront said zombie, similar to how my memory of the Thing in the Chair plays out.
As of this posting, I haven't seen how the zombie storyline goes from there, but let's look at the math. Dolls are creepy (thank you, doll room in the Million Dollar Museum). In fact, anything resembling a person, yet clearly not alive, but still somehow sitting up (like the aforementioned ambulatory dead guy) is pretty damn creepy. Rocking chairs that rock on their own? You bet that's creepy. Combine them together, and you get the Thing in the Chair (which, surprisingly, doesn't seem to have been used as a title nearly as often as you'd think. Maybe I'll crib it for a ghost story of my own). In fact, I've had a real-life Thing in the Chair moment myself (though, in the interest of tact, I'll not talk about it now.)
Here's where I leave it to you, dear readers. Have you ever come across the Thing in the Chair? Or is there something else, some nagging fear-thing in the back of your mind? Comments are open, so feel free to reply.
Now, a quick Google search doesn't bring up anything like it. Just things like a 100-plus-year-old doll named Robert, and a link to the productivity black hole known as TVTropes (which I will not link to from here, thankyewverymuch.) And, sure, creepy doll movies/TV episodes are a dime a dozen (I did peer into the aforementioned productivity black hole just to see), but I recently stumbled across something interesting that brought this whole thing up in the first place. It's part of a phenomenon I call the Thing in the Chair.
I came across this last week while watching some old episodes of Dark Shadows, a few instances in the space of 10 episodes. First, when governess Rachel went to investigate the mysterious tower room, the cliffhanger showed, just beyond the door, a cradle with two dolls in it, rocked by an unseen hand. Then, after another cast member gets killed and revived via black magic as a zombie, Rachel (again!) wakes up to find him rocking in a chair right next to her bed (another cliffhanger). Interestingly enough, the next episode has a scared-more-than-usual Carl Collins go into the bedroom to confront said zombie, similar to how my memory of the Thing in the Chair plays out.
As of this posting, I haven't seen how the zombie storyline goes from there, but let's look at the math. Dolls are creepy (thank you, doll room in the Million Dollar Museum). In fact, anything resembling a person, yet clearly not alive, but still somehow sitting up (like the aforementioned ambulatory dead guy) is pretty damn creepy. Rocking chairs that rock on their own? You bet that's creepy. Combine them together, and you get the Thing in the Chair (which, surprisingly, doesn't seem to have been used as a title nearly as often as you'd think. Maybe I'll crib it for a ghost story of my own). In fact, I've had a real-life Thing in the Chair moment myself (though, in the interest of tact, I'll not talk about it now.)
Here's where I leave it to you, dear readers. Have you ever come across the Thing in the Chair? Or is there something else, some nagging fear-thing in the back of your mind? Comments are open, so feel free to reply.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Man vs Arbitrary Goal Month
Yikes, did I really go through all of October with only one post to show for it? Not even a post on Halloween? (What kind of blogger with sometimes horror-related content am I?) However, I had an epiphany, just after midnight, that just may change my blogging habits for the better. Now, I hear that blogging about blogging is a sin, but this is something I feel needs to be shared.
Now, there is a certain writing challenge thingy out there on the internets for the whole of November. I'm decidedly not participating this time around, rather than ambivalently not participating like previous years. (Last year, I was psyched up to throw my horror western concept at it, but my user ID apparently got eaten during the registration process. I still don't know how that happened, but I took it as a sign that maybe I didn't want to continue after all.) This particular challenge emphasizes quantity over quality anyway, and given my propensity for self-editing (you don't want to know how many times I re-wrote this sentence), I would either give up entirely or have very little personal time remaining trying to meet that goal.
Monday night, after the Halloween festivities died down (that is to say, some left to make an early night of it, others left to attend the launch of the aforementioned writing challenge thingy, and the rest made repeated attempts to find, somewhere in town, a copy of somewhat-after-my-time witchy kids movie Hocus Pocus (And they call that a Halloween tradition?) Just before I drifted off to sleep, it hit me. What if, instead of focusing on a word-count goal set by someone else, I were to set my own goal in time with something I was already doing? And thus was born Arbitrary Goal Month.
So, here's the gist of it. For the month of November, I'm going to write at least five quality, substantial blog posts. This way, I'm not bound to any one narrative (other than the ongoing text that is my life), and I can self-edit until I have something I deem "passable." Will this experiment work? It's too early to tell (and, having pushed this very post aside for four days, I already have my doubts). At any rate, I'll be around throughout the month, with a few more words here or there. Until next time, have a safe and happy Arbitrary Goal Month!
Now, there is a certain writing challenge thingy out there on the internets for the whole of November. I'm decidedly not participating this time around, rather than ambivalently not participating like previous years. (Last year, I was psyched up to throw my horror western concept at it, but my user ID apparently got eaten during the registration process. I still don't know how that happened, but I took it as a sign that maybe I didn't want to continue after all.) This particular challenge emphasizes quantity over quality anyway, and given my propensity for self-editing (you don't want to know how many times I re-wrote this sentence), I would either give up entirely or have very little personal time remaining trying to meet that goal.
Monday night, after the Halloween festivities died down (that is to say, some left to make an early night of it, others left to attend the launch of the aforementioned writing challenge thingy, and the rest made repeated attempts to find, somewhere in town, a copy of somewhat-after-my-time witchy kids movie Hocus Pocus (And they call that a Halloween tradition?) Just before I drifted off to sleep, it hit me. What if, instead of focusing on a word-count goal set by someone else, I were to set my own goal in time with something I was already doing? And thus was born Arbitrary Goal Month.
So, here's the gist of it. For the month of November, I'm going to write at least five quality, substantial blog posts. This way, I'm not bound to any one narrative (other than the ongoing text that is my life), and I can self-edit until I have something I deem "passable." Will this experiment work? It's too early to tell (and, having pushed this very post aside for four days, I already have my doubts). At any rate, I'll be around throughout the month, with a few more words here or there. Until next time, have a safe and happy Arbitrary Goal Month!
Friday, October 14, 2011
Man vs the Soap Addiction
I'm not ashamed to admit it. When I was in college, I was addicted to a soap opera, to the point where I would tape it during morning classes and come back to my room and watch it at lunch (not entirely unlike the oft-repeated "I used to run home after school to catch it" anecdotes) Of course, since nothing's ever that simple, it was a 30-odd-year-old soap running repeats on a cable channel. Now, serialized storytelling is one of the most dangerously addictive forms of entertainment known to man (due, no doubt, to the Audience's driving urge to know What Happens Next), but add vampires, ghosts, witches, and other horror elements, and I can't help but watch. Yes, I was hooked on Dark Shadows.
In my previous post, I mentioned catching syndicated repeats in the early evening during the "1897 flashback" storyline (before the timeslot was eaten by the infomercial beast), but I also got to see the film House of Dark Shadows on television as well (so used was I to the Victorian trappings of the episodes I saw, I was surprised to learn of the film's more contemporary setting.) The film told an accelerated version of the initial "Barnabas" arc of the series, but got to be a bit less stagey and a bit more bloody. (I didn't get to see the sequel, Night of Dark Shadows, until much later.)
Years passed, and along came college, on-campus housing, and paid cable. A new multitude of viewing options became available, and I soon zeroed in on one bit of something I remembered from my childhood. One station had Dark Shadows available, for two episodes daily! Sure, it was a morning timeslot, while I would be in classes, but that's what VCRs were for, right? After classes, I came back to my room to watch. Barnabas Collins, sometime vampire and former heroic figure, had reluctantly become a villain again, acting on behalf of the Leviathan cult, recruiting a local antiques dealer and his wife for the cult's nefarious needs. Meanwhile, the long-missing, once-believed-dead Paul Stoddard had come back to Collinsport to re-unite with his estranged daughter, and Chris Jennings learns of his Collins ancestry. (Did I mention Chris was a werewolf?) Oh yeah, I was hooked all through the Leviathan plot arc, with the return of Quentin and his groovy sideburns, to Angelique the witch on the side of the angels for once. And then they brought in the abandoned room that lead to the parallel timeline...
Needless to say, I could go on about it. I loved the idea of arcs in different timelines, giving the actors (many of them from the stage) chances to play different characters, though this wasn't without its strangeness (David Selby played four different characters, all named Quentin Collins!) True, the production values rivaled those of '70s Doctor Who, but the line flubs, camera bumps, and other technical mishaps added to the show's weird charm. Its cult status gained it entry into the home video market (to this day, it is the only English language daytime soap with a complete run on DVD), and production company Big Finish, primarily known for their Doctor Who audio adventures (and yes, I do own several of those), also have a range of full cast dramas and audiobooks based on Dark Shadows, featuring original cast members.
However, there is another piece of the story missing. For that, stay tuned...
In my previous post, I mentioned catching syndicated repeats in the early evening during the "1897 flashback" storyline (before the timeslot was eaten by the infomercial beast), but I also got to see the film House of Dark Shadows on television as well (so used was I to the Victorian trappings of the episodes I saw, I was surprised to learn of the film's more contemporary setting.) The film told an accelerated version of the initial "Barnabas" arc of the series, but got to be a bit less stagey and a bit more bloody. (I didn't get to see the sequel, Night of Dark Shadows, until much later.)
Years passed, and along came college, on-campus housing, and paid cable. A new multitude of viewing options became available, and I soon zeroed in on one bit of something I remembered from my childhood. One station had Dark Shadows available, for two episodes daily! Sure, it was a morning timeslot, while I would be in classes, but that's what VCRs were for, right? After classes, I came back to my room to watch. Barnabas Collins, sometime vampire and former heroic figure, had reluctantly become a villain again, acting on behalf of the Leviathan cult, recruiting a local antiques dealer and his wife for the cult's nefarious needs. Meanwhile, the long-missing, once-believed-dead Paul Stoddard had come back to Collinsport to re-unite with his estranged daughter, and Chris Jennings learns of his Collins ancestry. (Did I mention Chris was a werewolf?) Oh yeah, I was hooked all through the Leviathan plot arc, with the return of Quentin and his groovy sideburns, to Angelique the witch on the side of the angels for once. And then they brought in the abandoned room that lead to the parallel timeline...
Needless to say, I could go on about it. I loved the idea of arcs in different timelines, giving the actors (many of them from the stage) chances to play different characters, though this wasn't without its strangeness (David Selby played four different characters, all named Quentin Collins!) True, the production values rivaled those of '70s Doctor Who, but the line flubs, camera bumps, and other technical mishaps added to the show's weird charm. Its cult status gained it entry into the home video market (to this day, it is the only English language daytime soap with a complete run on DVD), and production company Big Finish, primarily known for their Doctor Who audio adventures (and yes, I do own several of those), also have a range of full cast dramas and audiobooks based on Dark Shadows, featuring original cast members.
However, there is another piece of the story missing. For that, stay tuned...
Friday, September 30, 2011
Man vs Channel 27
When I was growing up, television was much more of a cultural touchstone than it is now, especially since we lived on the outskirts of town where there wasn't much within walking distance aside from the Big Pantry convenience store. Don't get me wrong; there was still time for playing or reading or what have you, but television was such a big part of my life it still sometimes surprises me that I don't watch nearly as much of it as I used to.
This, of course, was back in the days when local channels were king of late afternoon, pre-prime-time programming, and cable was just something other people had. Aside from the PBS station, which served as the home of Grover Monster, the Frugal Gourmet, and the Doctor, one channel in particular rose above the rest: Channel 27. With their mix of weekend movies and weird rerun packages, Channel 27 was the go-to channel. Other stations on the dial played it relatively safe with their I Dream of Jeannies, or their Laverne and Shirleys, but Channel 27 hit late evenings with the one-two punch of The Monkees and Gothic soap Dark Shadows (which they replaced with infomercials in the middle of the crazy awesome Victorian werewolf/cursed hand storyline. Not that I'm bitter or anything...) They even ran weird short-lived shows like Ghost Story/Circle of Fear and the quite bonkers The Fantastic Journey.
This, of course, was back in the days when local channels were king of late afternoon, pre-prime-time programming, and cable was just something other people had. Aside from the PBS station, which served as the home of Grover Monster, the Frugal Gourmet, and the Doctor, one channel in particular rose above the rest: Channel 27. With their mix of weekend movies and weird rerun packages, Channel 27 was the go-to channel. Other stations on the dial played it relatively safe with their I Dream of Jeannies, or their Laverne and Shirleys, but Channel 27 hit late evenings with the one-two punch of The Monkees and Gothic soap Dark Shadows (which they replaced with infomercials in the middle of the crazy awesome Victorian werewolf/cursed hand storyline. Not that I'm bitter or anything...) They even ran weird short-lived shows like Ghost Story/Circle of Fear and the quite bonkers The Fantastic Journey.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention their "Sci-Fi Saturday" block, a triple feature of schlocky B-movies, British horror, Japanese monster movies, or whatever cheapie films they had the rights to air (sometimes with an episode of Hammer House of Horror thrown in for good measure.) While I liked the schlock-monster flicks just fine, I gravitated more to the horror films they showed. Soon, I was planning my Saturday around which ones to watch and which ones I could afford to skip. Of course, anything with Vincent Price was a given, especially the Dr. Phibes films, and the Poe stories, like Masque of the Red Death. I had a weak spot for anthology films, too, with Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors being a recurring favorite. My first Dracula movie was not the Lugosi film, but Christopher Lee in one of the many Hammer sequels* (I can’t remember the details, but I want to say the hero attempted to dispatch of Dracula by burning his coffin before sunrise, leaving the Count with nowhere to go when the sun came up.) And, yes, if Godzilla Versus the Cosmic Monster came on, you could bet my brother and I both would be right there watching.
It has been a few years since I lived in the Dallas area, but I was saddened to learn some time ago that Sci-Fi Saturday was no more. An infomercial void sits where it used to be. Of course, thanks to things like Netflix and Hulu, I can recreate my own programming block, but there's something to be said about seeing this stuff on TV, week after week. Maybe tomorrow I'll throw on my DVD of Masque of the Red Death, for old time's sake.
*By the way, Dracula was the “safe” Hammer vampire to watch. I remember their airing of “The Vampire Lovers” not sitting well with my Mom, who claimed she saw, uncensored, an exposed breast. I don’t actually remember the incident in question, and I never found another televised airing of “The Vampire Lovers” to find out for sure!
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Man vs the Radio Silence
Just a quick little post to remind myself I'm still around. Some bad stuff went down a couple of days after my last post (I may expand on this later), and my fledgeling blogging activities were the furthest from my mind. While this may be Blogging Cliché Number One, I will be back with more content, like it or not.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Man vs the Cult of Abbadon: Bloody Mallory Review
After seeing it in my Netflix suggestions for a while now, I decided to take the plunge and watch French monster action-pop film Bloody Mallory, and, really, why did I wait so long? This is like the adaptation of a French comic book that never was, but should have been. It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer times The Fifth Element with a dash of Cutie Honey thrown in for good measure.
Olivia Bonamy stars as Mallory, leader of a paranormal commando force who is haunted by the spirit of her dead husband (whom she killed because he was a demon, admittedly, but still...) Oh, and that's not a spoiler, by the way. It's revealed in the opening scene, where a wedding-dress-clad Mallory is shown to be stalking the demonic groom, in a subversion of expectations. Also in Mallory's team are Vena Cava (Jeffrey Ribier), a drag queen demolitions expert (yes, you read that right, and it is every bit as crazy-awesome as it sounds.), and young mute telepath Talking Tina (not the only pop-culture-horror reference here).
After a routine mission against a group of nun-kidnapping ghouls goes wrong, thanks to a mysterious masked figure, the team needs time to recover, and Mallory gets a new assignment: The newly-elected Pope has been kidnapped, and the security footage shows the same masked figure! After consulting with her informant, the aforementioned spirit of her dead demon husband (doomed to wander in limbo due to a demonic technicality), she learns that this is the work of the cult of Abbadon, a old-school fallen angel who wants to open the gates to the Abyss and release his brethren.
While the rest of her team recuperates, Mallory sets out on her own to find the missing Pontiff, tracking supernatural disturbances to a village that got sucked into a hell dimension, where she comes across Papal bodyguard Father Carras (see pop-culture reference, above). They're not alone, though, since Talking Tina, in a coma back home, telepathically hitch-hiked in the brain of a bat, and Vena Cava parachuted in behind them. With our heroes re-united, it's time for another action scene, as they try to fight off a band of cultists. Did I mention Carras could fight, too? ("God will guide my fists," he says.) And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Vena Cava's machine-gun-toed shoes. (No, I don't know how it works, either.)
As it turns out, in Hell Dimension Logic, jumping down a well leads right to the fortress of Abbadon, where cult leaders Morphine, the shapeshifting succubus and Lady Valentine, the aristocratic vampire who survived her run-in with the guillotine (and has the scars to prove it!) prepare for the imminent arrival of the fallen angel himself with the requisite blood-draining and other sundry sacrifices. While it's hard to pick a favorite character in a movie that has both a kung-fu Papal bodyguard and a drag queen demolitions expert, Lady Valentine just may be it. Veteran actress Valentina Vargas plays her with with the right mix of crazy and apathetic, yawning over the use of commoner's blood one minute, and relishing a duel with Mallory the next.
If you think you know where this film is going by now, you may be right. One unfortunately telegraphed plot twist later, Mallory is captured by the baddies, but another encounter with the Former Mister Mallory (who clearly still has feelings for her, despite being a dead demon) gives her the strength she needs to escape her bonds and go after Abbadon before he can open the Abyss and release Hell on earth. As this is a French-language action movie and not a Fulci film, you can probably guess the outcome, but there are still a couple of treats on the way, including a dramatic wig throwing, another bodyhop for Talking Tina, and one more duel between Mallory and Lady Valentine.
What this movie lacks in substance (don't get me wrong, there is some there there, but it just takes some effort to find) it makes up for in style, style, style. From the color-coded costumes to Mallory's taunting pose before jumping down the well to Vena Cava's frequent use of English to just about any scene with Lady Valentine, this movie has the comic book aesthetic all over it. The special effects, unfortunately, tend towards the hokey, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's intentional, just because the movie can't help but be fun. Funnier than Van Helsing, less self-important than Dogma (and with fewer poop jokes, to boot), it's currently available on Netflix Instant Watch in its original French language track. Recommended, especially for those who miss syndicated action dramas (you know who you are) and fans of crazy French action films.
Olivia Bonamy stars as Mallory, leader of a paranormal commando force who is haunted by the spirit of her dead husband (whom she killed because he was a demon, admittedly, but still...) Oh, and that's not a spoiler, by the way. It's revealed in the opening scene, where a wedding-dress-clad Mallory is shown to be stalking the demonic groom, in a subversion of expectations. Also in Mallory's team are Vena Cava (Jeffrey Ribier), a drag queen demolitions expert (yes, you read that right, and it is every bit as crazy-awesome as it sounds.), and young mute telepath Talking Tina (not the only pop-culture-horror reference here).
After a routine mission against a group of nun-kidnapping ghouls goes wrong, thanks to a mysterious masked figure, the team needs time to recover, and Mallory gets a new assignment: The newly-elected Pope has been kidnapped, and the security footage shows the same masked figure! After consulting with her informant, the aforementioned spirit of her dead demon husband (doomed to wander in limbo due to a demonic technicality), she learns that this is the work of the cult of Abbadon, a old-school fallen angel who wants to open the gates to the Abyss and release his brethren.
While the rest of her team recuperates, Mallory sets out on her own to find the missing Pontiff, tracking supernatural disturbances to a village that got sucked into a hell dimension, where she comes across Papal bodyguard Father Carras (see pop-culture reference, above). They're not alone, though, since Talking Tina, in a coma back home, telepathically hitch-hiked in the brain of a bat, and Vena Cava parachuted in behind them. With our heroes re-united, it's time for another action scene, as they try to fight off a band of cultists. Did I mention Carras could fight, too? ("God will guide my fists," he says.) And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Vena Cava's machine-gun-toed shoes. (No, I don't know how it works, either.)
As it turns out, in Hell Dimension Logic, jumping down a well leads right to the fortress of Abbadon, where cult leaders Morphine, the shapeshifting succubus and Lady Valentine, the aristocratic vampire who survived her run-in with the guillotine (and has the scars to prove it!) prepare for the imminent arrival of the fallen angel himself with the requisite blood-draining and other sundry sacrifices. While it's hard to pick a favorite character in a movie that has both a kung-fu Papal bodyguard and a drag queen demolitions expert, Lady Valentine just may be it. Veteran actress Valentina Vargas plays her with with the right mix of crazy and apathetic, yawning over the use of commoner's blood one minute, and relishing a duel with Mallory the next.
If you think you know where this film is going by now, you may be right. One unfortunately telegraphed plot twist later, Mallory is captured by the baddies, but another encounter with the Former Mister Mallory (who clearly still has feelings for her, despite being a dead demon) gives her the strength she needs to escape her bonds and go after Abbadon before he can open the Abyss and release Hell on earth. As this is a French-language action movie and not a Fulci film, you can probably guess the outcome, but there are still a couple of treats on the way, including a dramatic wig throwing, another bodyhop for Talking Tina, and one more duel between Mallory and Lady Valentine.
What this movie lacks in substance (don't get me wrong, there is some there there, but it just takes some effort to find) it makes up for in style, style, style. From the color-coded costumes to Mallory's taunting pose before jumping down the well to Vena Cava's frequent use of English to just about any scene with Lady Valentine, this movie has the comic book aesthetic all over it. The special effects, unfortunately, tend towards the hokey, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's intentional, just because the movie can't help but be fun. Funnier than Van Helsing, less self-important than Dogma (and with fewer poop jokes, to boot), it's currently available on Netflix Instant Watch in its original French language track. Recommended, especially for those who miss syndicated action dramas (you know who you are) and fans of crazy French action films.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Man vs the Last Three Weeks
Initially, when I started this blog, I didn't intend to post about Things that Happened Recently, but this was just too big to let go. To make an unnecessarily long story short, my apartment got flooded less than 48 hours after my last post, forcing me to relocate, first to a temporarily vacant apartment (with no internet connection, but that was the least of my problems), then to the spare bedroom in a friend's home/office, with a third move in the works this month if the currently-staying-with-his-parents roomie and I can find a new place. It was only recently that I motivated myself enough to post again.
Fear not, readers, for regular-ish content will return shortly. I've got a doozy of a review in the works for... ah, but that would be telling. (I need to watch it again to take notes anyway, not that I mind watching it again...) À bientôt...
Fear not, readers, for regular-ish content will return shortly. I've got a doozy of a review in the works for... ah, but that would be telling. (I need to watch it again to take notes anyway, not that I mind watching it again...) À bientôt...
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Man vs the Review: Cold Prey (2006)
(This is part of the Final Girl Film Club series of reviews. Thanks to Stacie Ponder for the selection.)
The malfunctioning air conditioner, the hastily-patched-up hole in the living room window and the Texas-in-July heat have all combined to make this a hotter-than-usual Sunday evening, so what better way is there to beat the heat than to spend a couple hours in an abandoned hotel somewhere in Norway? Oh, sure, there's a crazed killer around, but that just adds to the charm!
First things first, I watched the dubbed version of it, since that was what was on Netflix Instant when I watched it. I know there's a lot of virulently anti-dub folks out there, but I didn't mind too much because the dub was, in my opinion, pretty well-done (and after an adolescence spent watching Godzilla movies and localized anime on TV, I can take it.)
The first act of Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt in its native Norwegian) has us meeting our main characters: main couple Jannicke and Eirik, PDA couple Mikal and Ingunn, and quippy friend Morten. One thing that caught me by pleasant surprise was that all the characters were actually likeable, unlike the usual slasher fare of characters who are just there to add to the bodycount. And, yes, this is a slasher, but in the slow-burn, Carpenter's Halloween kind of way. Instead of just establishing future victims, the film takes the time to get to know our characters before killing them off.
Our protagonists are out snowboarding on a particularly remote mountainside (where people have been going missing for decades, I might add), when Morten breaks his leg in an accident. Inconveniently out of cell phone range (of course) and in need of medical attention, they find a run-down ski lodge where they decide to take shelter for the night. This leads to a great shot where Eirik breaks an upstairs window and the camera pulls back ever-so-slowly to reveal more of the shadowy interior.
Here, the film trades the gorgeous snowy scenery for the cramped quarters of the ski lodge. Once inside, resourceful Jannicke sets to work patching up Morten's leg with ski lodge booze and a discarded tube of super-glue. Soon, the others get the power switched on again (complete with cheesy diegetic music, Dawn of the Dead style). Mikal and Ingunn decide to sneak off for a little alone time, but when Ingunn realizes that being stranded in a creepy abandoned ski lodge is something of a mood-killer, it leads to an argument, and Mikal walking out in a huff. Unfortunately for Ingunn, a mysterious someone picks that moment to strike. With a pick-axe. This is one of the film's few bloody scenes, but it's effective for that reason. Eirik sets out in the morning to find help, but he doesn't get very far, and it's soon apparent to the remaining survivors that they're not safe alone. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game as the friends try to stay one step ahead of the killer.
The killer here is credited simply as "Fjellmannen", or "Mountain Man". They do give him a bit of back-story at the end (and Fritt Vilt 3 expands on it) but in this film, there's really no reason for it (not unlike The Shape, who also isn't given much motivation for killing other than "evil"). It turns out the Fjellmannen has been using the hotel as his base of operations since the '70s, killing travelers and collecting their shoes, jewelry, clothes, and other stuff (was that a Lillehammer '94 Olympics cap I saw?). And he's got a great look, too, dressed like a ragged mountain man with a utilitarian cloth mask that resembles a featureless ghostly face. This is put to great effect in one of my favorite shots, from the p.o.v of one of the survivors looking out a window. We see a long shot of the Fjellmannen, contrasted by the snow, then he turns to the camera, noticing the window, and we get a quick, disturbing look at the eye-and-mouth-holes in his mask. He's also good at the old slasher trick of appearing out of nowhere. Without giving too much away, there was a chase scene towards the end that I just had to rewind to see again for that very reason.
On the downside, the film does have a couple of incongruous moments, like the random Burger King product placement, or the Dramatic Shotgun Reveal Music. There's some spots of shaky-cam, too, but it's only noticeable in particularly tense moments. I also could have done without the "shadow crossing the foreground quickly" scare that happened in a couple of spots. And then there's Morten's unrequited crush on Jannicke. Even though I can almost see where he's coming from, and it does lead to some nice Character Bits towards the end, it almost comes as too little, too late, because most of her Character Bits (until she goes all Laurie Strode) were about how she's hung up on Eirik. But overall, Cold Prey is a tense, well-shot, claustrophobic thriller (chiller?) with a likeable cast that's light on the gore, but still delivers. Recommended
The malfunctioning air conditioner, the hastily-patched-up hole in the living room window and the Texas-in-July heat have all combined to make this a hotter-than-usual Sunday evening, so what better way is there to beat the heat than to spend a couple hours in an abandoned hotel somewhere in Norway? Oh, sure, there's a crazed killer around, but that just adds to the charm!
First things first, I watched the dubbed version of it, since that was what was on Netflix Instant when I watched it. I know there's a lot of virulently anti-dub folks out there, but I didn't mind too much because the dub was, in my opinion, pretty well-done (and after an adolescence spent watching Godzilla movies and localized anime on TV, I can take it.)
The first act of Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt in its native Norwegian) has us meeting our main characters: main couple Jannicke and Eirik, PDA couple Mikal and Ingunn, and quippy friend Morten. One thing that caught me by pleasant surprise was that all the characters were actually likeable, unlike the usual slasher fare of characters who are just there to add to the bodycount. And, yes, this is a slasher, but in the slow-burn, Carpenter's Halloween kind of way. Instead of just establishing future victims, the film takes the time to get to know our characters before killing them off.
Our protagonists are out snowboarding on a particularly remote mountainside (where people have been going missing for decades, I might add), when Morten breaks his leg in an accident. Inconveniently out of cell phone range (of course) and in need of medical attention, they find a run-down ski lodge where they decide to take shelter for the night. This leads to a great shot where Eirik breaks an upstairs window and the camera pulls back ever-so-slowly to reveal more of the shadowy interior.
Here, the film trades the gorgeous snowy scenery for the cramped quarters of the ski lodge. Once inside, resourceful Jannicke sets to work patching up Morten's leg with ski lodge booze and a discarded tube of super-glue. Soon, the others get the power switched on again (complete with cheesy diegetic music, Dawn of the Dead style). Mikal and Ingunn decide to sneak off for a little alone time, but when Ingunn realizes that being stranded in a creepy abandoned ski lodge is something of a mood-killer, it leads to an argument, and Mikal walking out in a huff. Unfortunately for Ingunn, a mysterious someone picks that moment to strike. With a pick-axe. This is one of the film's few bloody scenes, but it's effective for that reason. Eirik sets out in the morning to find help, but he doesn't get very far, and it's soon apparent to the remaining survivors that they're not safe alone. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game as the friends try to stay one step ahead of the killer.
The killer here is credited simply as "Fjellmannen", or "Mountain Man". They do give him a bit of back-story at the end (and Fritt Vilt 3 expands on it) but in this film, there's really no reason for it (not unlike The Shape, who also isn't given much motivation for killing other than "evil"). It turns out the Fjellmannen has been using the hotel as his base of operations since the '70s, killing travelers and collecting their shoes, jewelry, clothes, and other stuff (was that a Lillehammer '94 Olympics cap I saw?). And he's got a great look, too, dressed like a ragged mountain man with a utilitarian cloth mask that resembles a featureless ghostly face. This is put to great effect in one of my favorite shots, from the p.o.v of one of the survivors looking out a window. We see a long shot of the Fjellmannen, contrasted by the snow, then he turns to the camera, noticing the window, and we get a quick, disturbing look at the eye-and-mouth-holes in his mask. He's also good at the old slasher trick of appearing out of nowhere. Without giving too much away, there was a chase scene towards the end that I just had to rewind to see again for that very reason.
On the downside, the film does have a couple of incongruous moments, like the random Burger King product placement, or the Dramatic Shotgun Reveal Music. There's some spots of shaky-cam, too, but it's only noticeable in particularly tense moments. I also could have done without the "shadow crossing the foreground quickly" scare that happened in a couple of spots. And then there's Morten's unrequited crush on Jannicke. Even though I can almost see where he's coming from, and it does lead to some nice Character Bits towards the end, it almost comes as too little, too late, because most of her Character Bits (until she goes all Laurie Strode) were about how she's hung up on Eirik. But overall, Cold Prey is a tense, well-shot, claustrophobic thriller (chiller?) with a likeable cast that's light on the gore, but still delivers. Recommended
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Man vs Not Calling it a Reboot
Recently, a well-known fictional franchise has undergone a bit of a nip and tuck to scrub off some of the trappings that have been part of it since the beginning. No, I don't mean the hullabaloo at DC Comics. I am, of course, referring to the release of Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche, the latest James Bond novel. While the film series already had a Continuity Upgrade or several, most notably with the advent of Daniel Craig in the role, the novels kept the character and his circumstances more or less the same, supposedly. But this is the first time it's happened in the novels, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Now, I don't consider myself a huge fan of the Bond franchise, but I have been known to stop and watch the films if I ever catch them on TV, and I have a few of the Ian Fleming novels, plus Thunderball on DVD. (One of these days I will upgrade my VHS copy of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, as well.) Admittedly, I haven't read any of the continuations by Martin Gardner or Raymond Benson, but I do have a hardback copy of the one-off Devil May Care, a Cold War-set novel by Sebastian Faulks meant to hearken back to the Fleming stories. In theory, I'm not opposed to this Temporal Re-adjustment of the novels, but one detail caught my eye. As of Carte Blanche, Bond was born in 1979. I am now older than James Bond.
Bad enough I'm older than current Doctor actor Matt Smith. That's okay; I'm in my early 30s and used to being older than actors now, and he's playing a 900-plus-year-old alien, but James Bond? Yes, I know it's just a fictional character, but I usually saw him as an older man anyway (the major plot impetus in the aforementioned Thunderball is that Bond has been getting on a bit and ordered to get a bit of R&R at a health spa). Add to that the fact that Bond (not to mention the whole super-spy genre he helped usher in) was firmly entrenched in the Cold War-era setting (see Sebastian Faulks, above), and it's enough to give a guy a complex.
On the other hand, maybe a younger protagonist is what the series needs. Comic books, after all, get away with a "sliding timescale" all the time these days (bar the occasional continuity hiccups; witness again the Storyline Reappraisal at DC), but that's supposedly to keep things fresh and attract new readers. Why try this with the Bond novels when the Fleming stories are still in print? I would figure a new reader would be likely to start with the Fleming "canon" first, then branch out looking for more. Personally, I would like to see more done like Devil May Care, but I will wait to reserve my final judgement until I've read the thing. Which probably won't be until it ends up in the second-hand bookstore, but still... Maybe I'll just re-read Casino Royale instead.
By the way, my favorite film Bond? Connery, with Dalton second. Moore was better as the Saint (but the radio version had Vincent Price, who wins that competition simply by virtue of being Vincent Price. But there's plenty of time to talk about Vincent Price later...)
Now, I don't consider myself a huge fan of the Bond franchise, but I have been known to stop and watch the films if I ever catch them on TV, and I have a few of the Ian Fleming novels, plus Thunderball on DVD. (One of these days I will upgrade my VHS copy of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, as well.) Admittedly, I haven't read any of the continuations by Martin Gardner or Raymond Benson, but I do have a hardback copy of the one-off Devil May Care, a Cold War-set novel by Sebastian Faulks meant to hearken back to the Fleming stories. In theory, I'm not opposed to this Temporal Re-adjustment of the novels, but one detail caught my eye. As of Carte Blanche, Bond was born in 1979. I am now older than James Bond.
Bad enough I'm older than current Doctor actor Matt Smith. That's okay; I'm in my early 30s and used to being older than actors now, and he's playing a 900-plus-year-old alien, but James Bond? Yes, I know it's just a fictional character, but I usually saw him as an older man anyway (the major plot impetus in the aforementioned Thunderball is that Bond has been getting on a bit and ordered to get a bit of R&R at a health spa). Add to that the fact that Bond (not to mention the whole super-spy genre he helped usher in) was firmly entrenched in the Cold War-era setting (see Sebastian Faulks, above), and it's enough to give a guy a complex.
On the other hand, maybe a younger protagonist is what the series needs. Comic books, after all, get away with a "sliding timescale" all the time these days (bar the occasional continuity hiccups; witness again the Storyline Reappraisal at DC), but that's supposedly to keep things fresh and attract new readers. Why try this with the Bond novels when the Fleming stories are still in print? I would figure a new reader would be likely to start with the Fleming "canon" first, then branch out looking for more. Personally, I would like to see more done like Devil May Care, but I will wait to reserve my final judgement until I've read the thing. Which probably won't be until it ends up in the second-hand bookstore, but still... Maybe I'll just re-read Casino Royale instead.
By the way, my favorite film Bond? Connery, with Dalton second. Moore was better as the Saint (but the radio version had Vincent Price, who wins that competition simply by virtue of being Vincent Price. But there's plenty of time to talk about Vincent Price later...)
Monday, July 4, 2011
Man vs Relative Dimensions in Space
(or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blue Box)
Let me start by talking a bit about my earliest memories. I must have had a menagerie of stuffed animals, including Papa Bear, Baby Bear, and Stacey the elephant. (I think I also wanted to call my new baby sister Stacey, but as I was a young'un of three-and-a-bit years, I was outvoted.) I also became aware of television. In particular, two specific images. One of them sad, and one scary.
I'm pretty sure I saw a news report about John Lennon's death. It sounds weird now that I put it to words, but I have a vague memory of seeing a news anchor talking with a picture of a man and the word "LENNON" in a banner somewhere. (A quick search of the YouTube gives me an idea of what I might have seen, but I won't post it here. I'm not going to dwell.) I'm pretty sure I didn't understand what it meant. Maybe I felt sad. I'd like to think I did.
The other memory I had of television was this: a man gets green slime on his hand that slowly turns him into a monster while he freaks out about his crazy green monster hand. Yes, my parents got me to watch Doctor Who. And I haven't been the same since. Okay, so I didn't really get into watching it until a few years down the line, but those early memories sparked my interest in it. It was scary, it was fun, but most importantly, it was weird. Much has been said by others about the idea that American TV was like small-scale movies, while British TV was like large-scale plays. Maybe that was part of the "weird" aesthetic of Doctor Who and the other occasional British shows I caught glimpses of here and there (see also: Fawlty Towers). Also, though I couldn't properly express it, I was always baffled by the use of film for exterior shots and videotape for interior shots (a practice that Doctor Who used more-or-less continually until 1986.)
The Dallas PBS station showed it on late Saturday nights, that weird netherspace where they didn't have any official PBS programming and so just threw whatever they could get their hands on at the wall. They also aired each story in "movie" format, with the occasional bad edit to reveal the serialized nature for those paying attention. This had the advantage of being like a new sci-fi feature film every week, but combined with the late night time slot, it meant that I would have to stay up until midnight or later to see the story through. And if it was a six-parter, forget about it. (There's plenty of Jon Pertwee stories I never saw the end of, and I still don't know how I managed to keep it together during "Talons of Weng-Chiang".) Oh, but when I got to the end, that "electronic scream" that to most viewers meant "scary cliffhanger" was, to me, one of the best sounds ever. Even though it was the end of an adventure, what an adventure it was! And Tom Baker, the guy with the scarf (because in those early days it was always "the guy with the scarf", even when it may have been Jon Pertwee) would show off that big toothy grin, promising even more next week.
I didn't always get to watch it, of course. Later, when we were older, my sister would want to watch Saturday Night Live. I did my rebellious older brother duty by calling it "Saturday Night Lame" and getting into arguments about it. And even before that, there were times when Iwasn't as obsessed just plain forgot it was on. It was after one of these gaps that I stumbled upon it again, or, rather, something that seemed like it. The music style had changed, I didn't recognize any of the cast, and who was this blond fella with the celery in his lapel, and why were they calling him Doctor? My mind would soon be blown, but more on that another time.
(And to tie it all together and make it relevant to the day of posting, Howard da Silva, who gave recap narrations on the episodic US broadcasts in the '70s also played Benjamin Franklin in the film version of 1776. Truly, the cosmos works in mysterious ways.)
Let me start by talking a bit about my earliest memories. I must have had a menagerie of stuffed animals, including Papa Bear, Baby Bear, and Stacey the elephant. (I think I also wanted to call my new baby sister Stacey, but as I was a young'un of three-and-a-bit years, I was outvoted.) I also became aware of television. In particular, two specific images. One of them sad, and one scary.
I'm pretty sure I saw a news report about John Lennon's death. It sounds weird now that I put it to words, but I have a vague memory of seeing a news anchor talking with a picture of a man and the word "LENNON" in a banner somewhere. (A quick search of the YouTube gives me an idea of what I might have seen, but I won't post it here. I'm not going to dwell.) I'm pretty sure I didn't understand what it meant. Maybe I felt sad. I'd like to think I did.
The other memory I had of television was this: a man gets green slime on his hand that slowly turns him into a monster while he freaks out about his crazy green monster hand. Yes, my parents got me to watch Doctor Who. And I haven't been the same since. Okay, so I didn't really get into watching it until a few years down the line, but those early memories sparked my interest in it. It was scary, it was fun, but most importantly, it was weird. Much has been said by others about the idea that American TV was like small-scale movies, while British TV was like large-scale plays. Maybe that was part of the "weird" aesthetic of Doctor Who and the other occasional British shows I caught glimpses of here and there (see also: Fawlty Towers). Also, though I couldn't properly express it, I was always baffled by the use of film for exterior shots and videotape for interior shots (a practice that Doctor Who used more-or-less continually until 1986.)
The Dallas PBS station showed it on late Saturday nights, that weird netherspace where they didn't have any official PBS programming and so just threw whatever they could get their hands on at the wall. They also aired each story in "movie" format, with the occasional bad edit to reveal the serialized nature for those paying attention. This had the advantage of being like a new sci-fi feature film every week, but combined with the late night time slot, it meant that I would have to stay up until midnight or later to see the story through. And if it was a six-parter, forget about it. (There's plenty of Jon Pertwee stories I never saw the end of, and I still don't know how I managed to keep it together during "Talons of Weng-Chiang".) Oh, but when I got to the end, that "electronic scream" that to most viewers meant "scary cliffhanger" was, to me, one of the best sounds ever. Even though it was the end of an adventure, what an adventure it was! And Tom Baker, the guy with the scarf (because in those early days it was always "the guy with the scarf", even when it may have been Jon Pertwee) would show off that big toothy grin, promising even more next week.
I didn't always get to watch it, of course. Later, when we were older, my sister would want to watch Saturday Night Live. I did my rebellious older brother duty by calling it "Saturday Night Lame" and getting into arguments about it. And even before that, there were times when I
(And to tie it all together and make it relevant to the day of posting, Howard da Silva, who gave recap narrations on the episodic US broadcasts in the '70s also played Benjamin Franklin in the film version of 1776. Truly, the cosmos works in mysterious ways.)
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