Edward M. Erdelac's Blog, page 36

DT Moviehouse Reviews: The Adventures Of Robin Hood

Continuing my infrequent blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I slog my way alphabetically through my 200+ DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money, here’s 1938′s The Adventures of Robin Hood.

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD

(1938) Directed by Michael Curtiz

Written by Norman Reilly Raine,SetonI.Miller, Rowland Leigh

Tagline: None originally (The Best Loved Bandit Of All Time! – rerelease)

[image error]

What it’s about:

When Norman King Richard The Lionheart (Ian Hunter) is taken prisoner while returning from the crusades, his treacherous brother Prince John (Claude Rains) conspires with Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone) and the Sheriff of Nottingham (Melville Cooper) to buy his way to the throne by hiking taxes against (and in the process, violently oppressing) the poor Saxon serfs. One loyal knight, peerless archer Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn), organizes a revolt against the prince, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor with the aide of his merry guerillas Little John (Alan Hale, father of The Skipper from Gilligan’s Island), Will Scarlet (Patrick Knowles), and Friar Tuck (Eugene Pallette), wooing the true king’s ward, Maid Marian (Olivia deHavilland) along the way.

Why I bought it:

I was raised on this movie. Sunday mornings in the Chicagoland area, WGN channel 9 had a show hosted by Frazier Thomas (a local TV personality and the creator of Garfield Goose) and later Roy Leonard, called Family Classics.  The list of great movies I was exposed to through Family Classics is about as long as Eel O’Brian’s arm.  Ben Hur, the George Pal sci-fi classics, the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies, A Christmas Carol, and most of the Errol Flynn swashbucklers, The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood, but most vividly, this movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood.

 Errol Flynn in this and the aforementioned movies embodies my concept of a classic hero probably to this day. Upright and handsome, swift in action and wit, a daredevil who literally laughs in the face of danger. We first meet Flynn’s Robin Hood when he protects hungry Saxon serf Much The Miller (played by Herber Mundun), who shoots a deer on the royal lands to keep from starving and is nearly executed by the villainous Sir Guy. Sir Robin immediately claims Much as his servant to take the heat off of him, and Guy informs him killing the king’s deer warrants the death penalty. Robin coolly slips and arrow into his bow and draws down on Sir Guy.

“Really? Are there no exceptions?”

 But Flynn really shines when he carries the dead deer on his shoulders right into Prince John’s crony-filled dinner party at Sir Guy’s castle and plunks it down on his dinner table. The guy exudes confidence, even in a pair of Technicolor green tights and a feathered cap. He plops down in a chair, eats the Prince’s food, puts his feet on the table, and even manages to insult Sir Guy and the Lady Marian (Robin: I hope milady had a pleasant journey. Marian: What you think can hardly be important. Robin: Tsk. It’s a pity her manners don’t match her looks, my lord.), just in from London.

Playing Robin entirely as a swashbuckling smartass wouldn’t have enamored me to the performance. When Prince John announces his plan to declare himself Regent, Robin spits his food out on the table and wipes his hand on the cloth. (Prince John: What’s the matter? Have you no stomach for honest meat? Robin: For honest meat, yes. But I’ve no stomach for traitors. Prince John: You call me traitor? Robin: You, yes. And every man here who offers you allegiance.).

Melville Cooper, Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains: Them’s fightin’ words.

This triggers the movie’s first action sequence, when one of the traitorous knights pitches a spear through the back of his chair. Robin kicks out of the chair, and proceeds to dodge and brawl his way through the party guests, getting up on the balcony at one point and killing four guards with arrows before making his escape.

To my five or six year old self, Robin Hood was amazing. Outnumbered about a hundred to one, he still jumps into his enemies without hesitation and comes out unscathed, proceeding to Sherwood Forest where he rounds up the peasantry and organizes an armed revolt ‘exact a death for a death’ and ‘to strike a blow for Richard and England.’

The archery scenes in the movie are all fantastic. No CGI arrows here. Just stuntmen taking real arrows to the padded chest and back (in one memorable scene, a bearded Norman guard pulls a screeching Saxon girl into his lap. The camera trucks in to a candle positioned on the table directly behind the guy. There’s a hiss, and Robin’s arrow streaks out of the night, puts out the candle, and buries itself in the would-be rapist’s back), and an arrow actually being split in the famous archery tournament.

Howard Hill as Owen The Welshman

The archery stunts are mainly performed by Hollywood’s patron saint of bowmen, Howard Hill, who appears onscreen as Owen The Welshman one of the archers in the tournament. He shot the arrow that splits Phillip of Arras’ bullseye arrow from nock to head to win the whole shebang. In DC comics, Hill is the idol of young Oliver Queen. In one story Queen actually meets Hill and Hill gives him the bow he used on Adventures of Robin Hood. Queen uses this bow throughout his career as the masked Emerald Archer, Green Arrow.

Now everybody knows the story of Robin Hood, how he proceeds to rob from the rich and give to the poor, how he romances Maid Marian and gets his butt whipped by Little John in a quarterstaff fight, thereby gaining his lieutenant. The Robin Hood story is pretty pervasive.

This movie is the reason. It informs every depiction of Robin Hood from 1938 onwards. To be fair, its look was inspired by NC Wyeth’s illustrations of Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood and Douglas Fairbanks’ 1922 silent action outing of the same name.

But there’s something about Technicolor that brings The Adventures of Robin Hood indelibly into the collective unconsciousness. It’s like The Wizard of Oz in that regard. People who have never seen this movie think of Errol Flynn in green tights when they think of Robin Hood.

Like Wizard of Oz, there’s an inherent four color goodness to The Adventures of Robin Hood that I find appealing. The bad guys are suitably dastardly, and they get their comeuppance. When the Norman Maid Marian seeks out the men of Sherwood to warn them about Robin’s pending execution, the thing that convinces the Saxons to trust her is simply Friar Tuck asking her to swear by her love for the Blessed Virgin that she’s telling the truth. She swears, and the whole room breathes a sigh of relief. That’s all it takes.

And I have to talk about Olivia de Havilland as Lady Marian Fitzwater.

In doing that, I have a confession. I’ve written exactly two unabashed fan letters to celebrities in my entire life.

The first was to The Muppets when I was six, inviting them all to come stay at my house. They sent me back an autographed group photo and a handwritten note thanking me for the invitation, signed by Kermit.

The second was to Olivia de Havilland.

Every hero needs a reason to fight beyond the greater cause, and Robin’s is Maid Marian. De Havilland was my first ideal for feminine grace and beauty growing up. She’s just effervescent in the role of Marian, charming, lovely, intelligent (and open to change – she goes from a loyalNormanto sympathizing with Robin’s cause) strong without being crass. A lot of the time writers can’t seem to conceive of strong women without putting a gun or a sword in their hand, basically writing them as men. Marian at one point is the damsel in distress, but she’s also instrumental in saving Robin when he’s arrested after the archery tournament, and decries John’s policies even in the face of her own execution.

I’m an avid admirer of Ms. de Havilland’s career. Besides doing great turns in Gone With The Wind and Captain Blood, she avoided the obscurity of other aging starlets later in her career by taking on some heavy, interesting roles in movies like Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, The Snake Pit and the incredible Lady In A Cage (where’s she’s stuck in a personal elevator and terrorized by a young James Caan in his chilling debut performance as a violent sociopath).

I’ve also got to mention a pair of minor but brilliant performances in the persons of Much The Miller (Mundun) and Una O’Connor’s Bess (Lady Marian’s maid), both funny (‘You’ve never had a single sweetheart in all your life? I’ve had the bands on three times!’) and at turns heroic. Much’s intervention in the assassination really turns out to be one of the most important deeds in the movie.

And Lady Marian’s horse? That’s Roy Rogers’ famously brilliant steed Trigger.

Best bit of dialogue:

He fights like three of us too.

Obviously this movie has great lines to spare, but the one that never fails to crack me up is when, after recruiting Friar Tuck (following an awesome sword duel with the deceptively fat clergyman – by Our Lady of The Fair Swordsman!), Will Scarlett rides up to the gathering and dismounts, doing a quick double take at the presence of the portly newcomer.“It’s alright, Will, he’s one of us,” says Robin.

“One of us? He looks like three of us,” Will quips, to the uproar of the Merry Men.

Best scene:

Hands down the climactic duel between Sir Guy and Robin at Prince John’s would-be coronation.

Up to this point, Sir Guy has come up short and been outshined by Robin in every endeavor, but as soon as they go to blades, Basil Rathbone displays his real-life fencing ability to the nth degree. For most of the fight he actually gets the better of Flynn, nicking and cutting him up maybe five times.

The fight takes them all over the castle, down into the dungeons, and incorporates most of the scenery. They kick over tables, pitch chairs and candelabrums at each other, and basically put on a helluva show. 

The duel in Adventures of Robin Hood is one of the best in cinematic history, right up there with the ones in Captain Blood, The Princess Bride (which is a clear homage to the Flynn/Rathbone matchings), Highlander, The Mark of Zorro, and any of the Star Wars films. You can clearly see its influence in everything that came after.

The rousing, triumphant (and deservedly Oscar winning) score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold perfectly compliments every ring of steel on steel, every feint and leap in the entire movie, but especially in this scene, right up to the final stab and fall.

Would I buy it again? Yes.

NEXT IN THE QUEUE: The Agony And The Ecstasy

DT Moviehouse: The Adventures Of Robin Hood

(1938) Directed by Michael Curtiz

Written by Norman Reilly Raine,SetonI.Miller, Rowland Leigh

Tagline: None originally (The Best Loved Bandit Of All Time! – rerelease)

[image error]

What it’s about:

When Norman King Richard The Lionheart (Ian Hunter) is taken prisoner while returning from the crusades, his treacherous brother Prince John (Claude Rains) conspires with Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone) and the Sheriff of Nottingham (Melville Cooper) to buy his way to the throne by hiking taxes against (and in the process, violently oppressing) the poor Saxon serfs. One loyal knight, peerless archer Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn), organizes a revolt against the prince, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor with the aide of his merry guerillas Little John (Alan Hale, father of The Skipper from Gilligan’s Island), Will Scarlet (Patrick Knowles), and Friar Tuck (Eugene Pallette), wooing the true king’s ward, Maid Marian (Olivia deHavilland) along the way.

Why I bought it:

I was raised on this movie. Sunday mornings in the Chicagoland area, WGN channel 9 had a show hosted by Frazier Thomas (a local TV personality and the creator of Garfield Goose) and later Roy Leonard, called Family Classics.  The list of great movies I was exposed to through Family Classics is about as long as Eel O’Brian’s arm.  Ben Hur, the George Pal sci-fi classics, the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies, A Christmas Carol, and most of the Errol Flynn swashbucklers, The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood, but most vividly, this movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood.

 Errol Flynn in this and the aforementioned movies embodies my concept of a classic hero probably to this day. Upright and handsome, swift in action and wit, a daredevil who literally laughs in the face of danger. We first meet Flynn’s Robin Hood when he protects hungry Saxon serf Much The Miller (played by Herber Mundun), who shoots a deer on the royal lands to keep from starving and is nearly executed by the villainous Sir Guy. Sir Robin immediately claims Much as his servant to take the heat off of him, and Guy informs him killing the king’s deer warrants the death penalty. Robin coolly slips and arrow into his bow and draws down on Sir Guy.

“Really? Are there no exceptions?”

 But Flynn really shines when he carries the dead deer on his shoulders right into Prince John’s crony-filled dinner party at Sir Guy’s castle and plunks it down on his dinner table. The guy exudes confidence, even in a pair of Technicolor green tights and a feathered cap. He plops down in a chair, eats the Prince’s food, puts his feet on the table, and even manages to insult Sir Guy and the Lady Marian (Robin: I hope milady had a pleasant journey. Marian: What you think can hardly be important. Robin: Tsk. It’s a pity her manners don’t match her looks, my lord.), just in from London.

Playing Robin entirely as a swashbuckling smartass wouldn’t have enamored me to the performance. When Prince John announces his plan to declare himself Regent, Robin spits his food out on the table and wipes his hand on the cloth. (Prince John: What’s the matter? Have you no stomach for honest meat? Robin: For honest meat, yes. But I’ve no stomach for traitors. Prince John: You call me traitor? Robin: You, yes. And every man here who offers you allegiance.).

Melville Cooper, Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains: Them’s fightin’ words.

This triggers the movie’s first action sequence, when one of the traitorous knights pitches a spear through the back of his chair. Robin kicks out of the chair, and proceeds to dodge and brawl his way through the party guests, getting up on the balcony at one point and killing four guards with arrows before making his escape.

To my five or six year old self, Robin Hood was amazing. Outnumbered about a hundred to one, he still jumps into his enemies without hesitation and comes out unscathed, proceeding to Sherwood Forest where he rounds up the peasantry and organizes an armed revolt ‘exact a death for a death’ and ‘to strike a blow for Richard and England.’

The archery scenes in the movie are all fantastic. No CGI arrows here. Just stuntmen taking real arrows to the padded chest and back (in one memorable scene, a bearded Norman guard pulls a screeching Saxon girl into his lap. The camera trucks in to a candle positioned on the table directly behind the guy. There’s a hiss, and Robin’s arrow streaks out of the night, puts out the candle, and buries itself in the would-be rapist’s back), and an arrow actually being split in the famous archery tournament.

Howard Hill as Owen The Welshman

The archery stunts are mainly performed by Hollywood’s patron saint of bowmen, Howard Hill, who appears onscreen as Owen The Welshman one of the archers in the tournament. He shot the arrow that splits Phillip of Arras’ bullseye arrow from nock to head to win the whole shebang. In DC comics, Hill is the idol of young Oliver Queen. In one story Queen actually meets Hill and Hill gives him the bow he used on Adventures of Robin Hood. Queen uses this bow throughout his career as the masked Emerald Archer, Green Arrow.

Now everybody knows the story of Robin Hood, how he proceeds to rob from the rich and give to the poor, how he romances Maid Marian and gets his butt whipped by Little John in a quarterstaff fight, thereby gaining his lieutenant. The Robin Hood story is pretty pervasive.

This movie is the reason. It informs every depiction of Robin Hood from 1938 onwards. To be fair, its look was inspired by NC Wyeth’s illustrations of Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood and Douglas Fairbanks’ 1922 silent action outing of the same name.

But there’s something about Technicolor that brings The Adventures of Robin Hood indelibly into the collective unconsciousness. It’s like The Wizard of Oz in that regard. People who have never seen this movie think of Errol Flynn in green tights when they think of Robin Hood.

Like Wizard of Oz, there’s an inherent four color goodness to The Adventures of Robin Hood that I find appealing. The bad guys are suitably dastardly, and they get their comeuppance. When the Norman Maid Marian seeks out the men of Sherwood to warn them about Robin’s pending execution, the thing that convinces the Saxons to trust her is simply Friar Tuck asking her to swear by her love for the Blessed Virgin that she’s telling the truth. She swears, and the whole room breathes a sigh of relief. That’s all it takes.

And I have to talk about Olivia de Havilland as Lady Marian Fitzwater.

In doing that, I have a confession. I’ve written exactly two unabashed fan letters to celebrities in my entire life.

The first was to The Muppets when I was six, inviting them all to come stay at my house. They sent me back an autographed group photo and a handwritten note thanking me for the invitation, signed by Kermit.

The second was to Olivia de Havilland.

Every hero needs a reason to fight beyond the greater cause, and Robin’s is Maid Marian. De Havilland was my first ideal for feminine grace and beauty growing up. She’s just effervescent in the role of Marian, charming, lovely, intelligent (and open to change – she goes from a loyalNormanto sympathizing with Robin’s cause) strong without being crass. A lot of the time writers can’t seem to conceive of strong women without putting a gun or a sword in their hand, basically writing them as men. Marian at one point is the damsel in distress, but she’s also instrumental in saving Robin when he’s arrested after the archery tournament, and decries John’s policies even in the face of her own execution.

I’m an avid admirer of Ms. de Havilland’s career. Besides doing great turns in Gone With The Wind and Captain Blood, she avoided the obscurity of other aging starlets later in her career by taking on some heavy, interesting roles in movies like Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, The Snake Pit and the incredible Lady In A Cage (where’s she’s stuck in a personal elevator and terrorized by a young James Caan in his chilling debut performance as a violent sociopath).

I’ve also got to mention a pair of minor but brilliant performances in the persons of Much The Miller (Mundun) and Una O’Connor’s Bess (Lady Marian’s maid), both funny (‘You’ve never had a single sweetheart in all your life? I’ve had the bands on three times!’) and at turns heroic. Much’s intervention in the assassination really turns out to be one of the most important deeds in the movie.

And Lady Marian’s horse? That’s Roy Rogers’ famously brilliant steed Trigger.

Best bit of dialogue:

He fights like three of us too.

Obviously this movie has great lines to spare, but the one that never fails to crack me up is when, after recruiting Friar Tuck (following an awesome sword duel with the deceptively fat clergyman – by Our Lady of The Fair Swordsman!), Will Scarlett rides up to the gathering and dismounts, doing a quick double take at the presence of the portly newcomer.“It’s alright, Will, he’s one of us,” says Robin.

“One of us? He looks like three of us,” Will quips, to the uproar of the Merry Men.

Best scene:

Hands down the climactic duel between Sir Guy and Robin at Prince John’s would-be coronation.

Up to this point, Sir Guy has come up short and been outshined by Robin in every endeavor, but as soon as they go to blades, Basil Rathbone displays his real-life fencing ability to the nth degree. For most of the fight he actually gets the better of Flynn, nicking and cutting him up maybe five times.

The fight takes them all over the castle, down into the dungeons, and incorporates most of the scenery. They kick over tables, pitch chairs and candelabrums at each other, and basically put on a helluva show. 

The duel in Adventures of Robin Hood is one of the best in cinematic history, right up there with the ones in Captain Blood, The Princess Bride (which is a clear homage to the Flynn/Rathbone matchings), Highlander, The Mark of Zorro, and any of the Star Wars films. You can clearly see its influence in everything that came after.

The rousing, triumphant (and deservedly Oscar winning) score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold perfectly compliments every ring of steel on steel, every feint and leap in the entire movie, but especially in this scene, right up to the final stab and fall.

Would I buy it again? Yes.

NEXT IN THE QUEUE: The Agony And The Ecstasy

Happy Star Wars Day! May The 4th Be With Youze

Four years ago on Halloween, my first professional writing work was published. It was a milestone in my career. The first.

I also managed to fulfill another lifelong aspiration at the same time….I wrote for Star Wars.

A recent website revamp unfortunately disintegrated everything I contributed to Lucasfilm, but the good folks at wookiepedia remember me…

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ed_Erdelac

Art by Cat Staggs, logo mockup by my buddy Greg Mitchell

Fists of Ion was a little short story I did for the exclusive content that ran on the Star Wars official website.

The Rebel Alliance: Where everybody knows your name.

It took place in the New Republic era (after Return of The Jedi) on Reuss VIII, an industrial nightmare world of acid rain and toxic sludge that was hosting the Galactic Shockboxing Championship between defending champion Tull Raine (a Barabel – a kind of thick skinned lizard man) and up and comer Lobar Aybock, a red skinned near-human from the planet Shiva IV (a planet that appeared in the Marvel Comics Star Wars run).It was a nifty little boxing pulp caper story transplanted to the Star Wars universe, involving New Republic Intelligence agents using the televised (or rather holovised) fight as cover to take down an ex-Imperial Moff and his slimy crime lord partner Torel Vorne, who was exploiting the downtrodden populace via an illegal organ trading ring. It had appearances by a lot of sideline Star Wars characters (like Bren Derlin – Cliff from Cheers, who a lot of people don’t realize was in Empire Strikes Back). The name of the main character, Lobar Aybock, was a portmanteau of Rocky Balboa, and his trainer, Eedund Cus, was partly Angelo Dundee and Cus D’amato, amalgamated into a Chevin – that’s a fugly pachyderm-like alien. I also managed to name a minor Rebel character after my wife, Dransa Beezer (Dransa or Sandra), which was nice because the piece ended up seeing the light of day on October 31st, the day we first started going out.

You can read a summary of the story here. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lobar_Aybock

Here’s an excerpt -

The ninth is a world of pain and blue-green lights. Tull’s a black and red blur.  Then I’m on my hands and knees watching my own blood spotting the Tuffweave. The Rodian’s voice is counting. Since I can’t understand him I forego the downtime and get right back up. Tull puts me down again, good naturedly.

Catch your breath, redssskin.

The buzzer cuts off the Rodian’s count. I lean on Cus all the way back to the vertex.

Tenth and last phase. My head feels like it’s on a flexicoil. I see flashes of Cus’ pachyderm face, hear snatches of Stitchy’s worried gibbering. Moff Ammar’s lighting an afterdinner cigaretti. No wonder he needs my lungs.

Across the way, Tull sags in his own vertex. It feels like I’m getting killed, but I must’ve done some damage. There’s a brand new gap in his pointy grin. His pretty red armor is scuffed and dented, the primer showing gray beneath.

They march us out to the center.  We touch shockmitts. Tull hisses something at me. Doesn’t anybody speak Basic?

Cus tells me on the walk back,

“This is it, kid.” Is there something in his throat?

“Yeah,” I manage.

I turn to face this monster one more time. He’s a shining pillar of darkness, stitched out of solid black leather. I look past him at the real monster. Vorel Torne looks put out and Moff Ammar’s giving him a sour glare.  All I have to do is live through this phase and he’s done.

Then I hear it.

Way up in the nosebleed seats, where they’ve opened the vent shutters to cool the place despite the murderous air and the hard rain outside, where the fans have to pack masks or permanently damage themselves sitting through an hourlong contest, they’re calling a name, and it isn’t Tull Raine’s.

It’s mine.

Lobar Aybock: Gonna fly now.

Then I remember. I’m not fighting for the purse or the sash, I’m fighting for those sickly kids who braved a run in killer rain to show me they had my back. Whether it was all just a publicity stunt of Derlin’s doesn’t matter any more. When this fight’s over, it’s all over. The slums, the orphans on the street, the slime, the smog, it all goes away.

What’d Derlin say? We wanna make you a hero, kid.

Heroes don’t die. Well, maybe sometimes, but not like this.

It’s the Reussi up there cheering, stamping their feet and chanting, “Lo-bar!  Lo-bar! Lo-bar!”

The swells are turning in their seats and squinting up into the shadows.

I never got the chance to fight the Empire. But I know about the battle madness, what my people call the ryastraad. When we’re up against the wall, sometimes something takes over, makes us into more than we are.

My whole skeleton is charged. My muscles constrict. I feel like I could throw off my shockmitts and batter Tull to paste. My legs have been gone. I’ve hardly felt them the last three phases, but now they catapult me the length of the wedge even as the buzzer’s sounding. I don’t even see Tull. I see a black wall I have to tear down to get at something precious on the other side.

My heart’s like a battery, charging up my arms, sending them out and snapping them back like chains of white lightning. I’m aware of pulses of blue from Tull dancing on my armor, making it sieze up. I fight past it. His mitts go green and I match him and batter down his guard. My shoulder joints won’t move. I force them. My head is swimming in molten iron. I can’t think, just react, and force reaction.

When I come out of it, I see Tull dancing on the shockwire. I see his hub shield go black. My left shoots forward like a speedertrain, and his hub explodes in a spray of sparks along with the emitters on my mitt. Most of the bones in my hand shatter. The blow drives him inbetween the bouncewires. He goes tumbling out of the wedge and lands on one of the pricey tables, shattering glasses and dinnerware, sending food and swells flying. I almost go with him. I grab the vertex post and totter there.

It’s Torel Vorne’s table and I’m serving Barabel. Vorne’s standing there trembling, his suit spackled with micromite pâté. Moff Ammar’s flat on his back, spluttering through a busted cigaretti.

I look right into Torel Vorne’s eyes….and I laugh through the blood, through the count.

* * *

It was everything you wanted to know about boxing in the Star Wars universe (I even created a short lexicon of shockboxing terms and rules), and even featured nifty illustrations by Cat Staggs.

Eedund Cus and his protege, Lobar Aybock

I also did a trio of backstories for some minor onscreen characters. The first, a droid in the sandcrawler I named m-HYD 6804, is named for my daughter Magnolia’s birthdate. Again, those are gone from the Databank (the feature isn’t even on the Starwars.com site anymore), but you can read the wookiepedia summaries of the articles I wrote over on the right hand side links on this page, under Look On My Works Ye Mighty.

One of ‘em, Bane Malar, got turned into a Star Wars figure. The only one I own still in a package.

I’ve loved the original Star Wars trilogy from the time I saw it in the theater as a kid with my parents, and no matter where the series goes, those three original movies still hold a special place in my heart.

So the obervance of May the 4th holds a particular meaning for me.

My professional debut took place in a Galaxy Far, Far Away.

MTFBWY,

-Ed

Van Helsing In Texas Places In JournalStone’s $2,000 Advance Contest

Hey all, JournalStone has released the top ten entries in its annual competition for a $2,000 advance and my effort, Terovolas or, Van Helsing In Texas has managed to wrestle a spot.

http://journalstone.com/contest/journalstones-2000-advance-in-2012/

The premise of Van Helsing In Texas is bookended by the concept that Van Helsing was discredited in the academic community following the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and that following his death in the 1930′s, his longtime friend and colleague Dr. Jack Seward comes forward with a series of unpublished personal papers to vindicate Van Helsing’s Name…

‘Following the defeat of Count Dracula, Abraham Van Helsing checks himself into Jack Seward’s Purfleet asylum, suffering violent recurring fantasies related to his destruction of the count’s vampiric wives and centering around Mina Harker.

Upon his discharge, he volunteers to return the ashes and personal affects of the late Quincey P. Morris (the American adventurer who died in battle with the nefarious Count) home to the Morris family ranch inSorefoot,Texas.

Van Helsing arrives to find Quincey’s brother Cole Morris embroiled in an escalating land dispute with a group of neighboring Norwegian ranchers led by the engimatic Sig Skoll. When cattle and men start turning up slaughtered, the locals suspect a wild animal, but Van Helsing thinks a preternatural culprit is afoot. Is a shapechanger stalking theTexasplains? Is a cult of wolf worshipers responsible? Or are the phantasms of his previously disordered mind returning?

The intrepid professor must decide soon, for the life of Skoll’s beautiful new bride may hang in the balance.’

Anyhow, doesn’t mean I’ve won anything, but those of you who know me personally know my family and I could sure benefit from it if I did…haha.

Wish me luck/say a prayer.

-Hasta pronto.

Van Helsing Texas Places In JournalStone’s $2,000 Advance Contest

Hey all, JournalStone has released the top ten entries in its annual competition for a $2,000 advance and my effort, Terovolas or, Van Helsing In Texas has managed to wrestle a spot.

http://journalstone.com/contest/journalstones-2000-advance-in-2012/

The premise of Van Helsing In Texas is bookended by the concept that Van Helsing was discredited in the academic community following the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and that following his death in the 1930′s, his longtime friend and colleague Dr. Jack Seward comes forward with a series of unpublished personal papers to vindicate Van Helsing’s Name…

‘Following the defeat of Count Dracula, Abraham Van Helsing checks himself into Jack Seward’s Purfleet asylum, suffering violent recurring fantasies related to his destruction of the count’s vampiric wives and centering around Mina Harker.

Upon his discharge, he volunteers to return the ashes and personal affects of the late Quincey P. Morris (the American adventurer who died in battle with the nefarious Count) home to the Morris family ranch inSorefoot,Texas.

Van Helsing arrives to find Quincey’s brother Cole Morris embroiled in an escalating land dispute with a group of neighboring Norwegian ranchers led by the engimatic Sig Skoll. When cattle and men start turning up slaughtered, the locals suspect a wild animal, but Van Helsing thinks a preternatural culprit is afoot. Is a shapechanger stalking theTexasplains? Is a cult of wolf worshipers responsible? Or are the phantasms of his previously disordered mind returning?

The intrepid professor must decide soon, for the life of Skoll’s beautiful new bride may hang in the balance.’

Anyhow, doesn’t mean I’ve won anything, but those of you who know me personally know my family and I could sure benefit from it if I did…haha.

Wish me luck/say a prayer.

-Hasta pronto.

DT Moviehouse Reviews: 300

Continuing my infrequent blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I slog my way alphabetically through my 200+ DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money, here’s Zack Snyder’s only good movie, 300.

(2007) Directed by Zack Snyder, Written by Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, Michael B. Gordon, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley

Tagline: Prepare for glory!

What it’s about:

The monument to Leonidas and the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae

In 480 B.C. the Persian emperor Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) invades Greece and stubs his well pedicured pinky toe on the militant nation of Sparta, whose forward thinking monarch Leonidas (Gerard Butler) defies convention and logic and leads three hundred soldiers and a couple hundred Athenians to a narrow canyon pathway to bottleneck the million man invasion force in an ultra-heroic do-or-die last stand.

Why I bought it:

300 is the movie that for me, saved modern film.

I had just completed a rotten string of bad luck at the theater. I had seen, in rapid succession, Superman Returns, Nacho Libre, Lady In The Water, (and I could’ve sworn, though the dates don’t seem to bear it out, a Nicholas Cage movie which among my moviegoing friends is now known infamously as ‘that flaming skull biker movie’ and shall remain forever nameless on this blog).

I was pretty disillusioned with Hollywood. I’d gotten to the point where I had to be in the mood to watch anything new.

I was familiar with the story of the Battle of Thermopylae from Larry Gonick’s treatment of it in his seminal Cartoon History Of The Universe, but I hadn’t read Frank Miller’s graphic novel, although I’d been aware of it for some time.

Forget the Spartans...go tell Nanny 911.

I had zero expectations about this. Though it looked visually interesting, I had seen the same extensive green screen technique already used by Robert Rodriguez in his Sin City adaptation, and felt the whole thing had turned out kind of silly. I lovedSinCitythe comic (particularly The Big Fat Kill), but like Watchmen, it worked better as a comic. The exaggerated look of the characters in the film was ridiculously literal and the dialogue just sounded goofy when spoken. I didn’t hate it, but it was pretty forgettable.

I went down to Palm Springs to see 300 with an old buddy who was staying down there for a couple weeks while he worked on the wind turbines (DON’T say windmills in his presence).

From the opening scene, this movie positively arrested me in the theater. It’s baroque style brutality (featuring children no less – something that’s almost NEVER done), it’s Wagnerian music and staging (I love the strangely ominous swelling of the chorus at the return of the majestic young Leonidas wearing the skin of the wolf he killed), and most especially David Wenham’s voice, which drips with the same kind of classical, grand guginol theatrical quality of narration by Vincent Price or Christopher Lee. It’s perfectly matched to the overblown, overdramatic, hyper-realism of the movie’s imagery.

I’m a tremendous fan of Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan. I was drawn to seek out Howard via the 1980 Milius movie, but it was the amazing cover art that graced the various Zebra and Lancer paperbacks of Howard’s work that drove me to obsessively collect them. The art of Boris Vallejo, Jeff Jones, and most especially Frank Frazetta set fire to my imagination.

Frank Frazetta - Seven Romans

300 is obviously meant to reflect the style of Frank Miller, but I can’t help but think of Frazetta watching it. The female figures are voluptuous and sensual (spearheaded by the beautiful Lena Headly as Leonidas’ Queen Gorgo – the woman projects maturity, strength and soft and cuddly womanhood at the same time, without being either a waif or a tomboy.  She really should’ve been tapped to play Wonder Woman), the males tigerish and virile in the extreme, and the various ‘monsters’ suitably hideous yet disturbingly humanoid, bolstering the idea that they’re not quite monsters, just corrupt offshoots of humanity.

Which they are.

I’ve heard the cries of homoeroticism leveled at 300. I guess people see what they want to see. Of course the real life Trojans practiced institutionalized homosexuality (it could be argued, pedophilia – which always makes me cringe ruefully at the ‘boy lovers’ line Leonidas directs at the Athenians at one point), but this is only lightly touched upon if at all, mainly in hints in the friendship between the Captain’s son and his best friend.

For my part though, 300’s unabashed maleness appeals to the 12 year old in me that flexed his skinny arms in the mirror hopefully and dreamt of rescuing the cutest girl in class via some act of extreme, righteous (and somehow impressive) violence. It’s a gung ho, unapologetically un-PC guy movie, promoting esprit de corps, nationalism, and the supposed virtues of war, but God dang it if doesn’t pull it off masterfully.

And it’s a helluva a lot smarter than it lets on (perhaps even smarter than its director knew judging from his other work). Consider that the entire movie is narrated by the lone survivor of the Battle of Thermopylae, Wenham’s Dilios.

Leonidas has defied the Ephors (insanely corrupt, bestial oracular priests who molest virgins are part of their ceremonies) and his own government (being maniuplated by Dominic West, who is on the Persian payroll – and looks like an evil Harry Hamlin/Perseus) in taking the fight to Xerxes because he knows the Persians must be defeated. So he tells the wounded Wenham to return and tell them what’s happened. It’s then revealed in the end sequence that Wenham has been narrating the entire movie to a new force of Spartans and free Greeks who have amassed to deal with the Persian threat following the destruction of the 300.

This immediately puts all of the movie’s gross exaggerations (Xerxes is a giant, the Persians are monstrous and use magicians, the traitor Ephialtes is a subhuman, the corrupt Ephors look like C.H.U.D.s, Sparta itself is a sunblessed paradise) into perspective. Wenham’s Dilios intends to relate a heroic, larger than life tale to spur the Spartans to war.

LEONIDAS: ‘You have another talent unlike any other Spartan. You will deliver my final orders to the council with force and verve. Tell them our story. Make every Greek know what happened here. You’ll have a grand tale to tell.’

Dilios spins his tale.

Thus, the movie we’re watching is a tall tale, a grand, glorious bit of propaganda spun by Dilios, the most eloquent of the three hundred, and every fantastic bit of nonsense becomes completely justified. The bomb throwing ‘wizards,’ the monstrous inhuman Immortals, the incredible martial art death dealing of the individual Spartans (ignoring the fact that most of them break the phalanx that was the most crucial component of their defense), all of it.

300 becomes, in this context, a fantastic Greek hero myth, as lusty and bloody and beautiful as anything Homer might’ve recited to get the audience’s blood pumping.

As I said, 300 made me love movies again. At the time I saw it, it was practically unlike anything else that had come before it, a brilliant moving Frazetta painting with larger than life heroes and action.

Best bit of dialogue:

This movie is endlessly quotable, some of the lines actually coming from the original historical accounts (‘Fight in the shade,’ ‘Spartans! Lay down your weapons!’ ‘Persians! Come and get them!’, are both purported to be true exchanges), but my personal favorite is the final curse Leonidas lays on the traitorous Ephialtes just prior the final stand of the 300. Spartan law decrees that any infant born too weak to be raised as warriors, be left to die, and Ephialtes is a twisted, deformed hunchback. Yet his parents, out of love for him, chose to spare him, and we presume left Spartan society. Ephialtes returns, wearing the warrior garb of his late father, claiming his father taught him how to fight. He offers his service as a soldier to Leonidas. Leonidas rejects him due to the practical reason of his not being able to raise his shield arm to maintain a phalanx with the other Spartans. The spurned Ephialtes goes straight to Xerxes and betrays Leonidas, guiding the Persians to a secret pass by which they can circumvent the Spartan defense and surround the 300 in exchange for wealth, sex, and a ridiculously clownish Persian uniform.

In one simple, almost offhanded remark, Leonidas cuts the traitor to his soul, alluding to all the cultural lessons Ephialtes’ father tried to instill in him about seeking honor and a warrior’s life (which of course must end, by a Spartan’s way of thinking, with a warrior’s death on the battlefield). All in five heavy words.

‘Ephialtes. May you live forever.’

If you play it in slow mo, you can see the exact point where Ephialtes' heart breaks...('oo')...right there.

Best scene:

Again, almost too many to cite.  I love the opening sequence, but there is another scene that really sticks with me.

The Spartans are on a bluff overlooking the ocean as a tremendous night tempest unleashes all it’s fury on the horizon-to-horizon Persian fleet, capsizing the great ships, smashing them into each other, and sending thousands of Persian sailors (and we presume, warriors) sinking slowly to the bottom.

The Spartans lose all their previously established discipline and match the storm’s violence with their own apparent exuberance. They beat each other’s shoulders, ball their fists, and scream their exultation at the drowning Persians as the slanting silver rain drives against their bare skin, plastering their hair and cloaks.

The music reaches a tremendous crescendo, utilizing as never before, weird, crashing electric guitar strains that capitalize the barbarity of the moment -men abandoning themselves to extreme joy at the death of other men.

Dilios narrates:

‘Zeus stabs the sky with thunderbolts and batters the Persian ships with hurricane wind. Glorious.’

The camera cuts to Leonidas, who alone stands grim and subdued, frowning at the destruction, not because he doesn’t share in his men’s appreciation at seeing the enemy so destroyed, but because he knows that ultimately, it’s not gonna be enough.

Dilios continues,

‘Only one among us keeps his Spartan reserve. Only he. Only our king.’

Would I buy it again? Yes.

NEXT IN THE QUEUE: The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Better To See You

A very quick note to any who might’ve missed it earlier.

Last Halloween my seven year old daughter Magnolia and I sat around her tent in her room telling each oher ghost stories. She came up with a doozy, a ‘spooky’ version of Little Red Riding Hood, in which the ghost of Red’s grandmother appeared to her to warn her not to visit the house.

I thought it was a neat idea, so I asked her if she’d let me write it out and submit it. I did, and it’s appearing in Dark Moon Diget #7 as ‘The Better To See You.’

In true collaborator fashion, she complained about the changes I made and demanded the lion’s share of the compensation.

Here’s a blog post the folks at Dark Moon did about it.

http://www.lastwritesdmd.com/?p=1613

She was quite excited about seeing her name in print, and we spent last weekend working on a new story, a creepy little tale of her own invention involving lost hikers and moths….

I still hope for her sake she returns to her prior aspiration of owning a floral shop, but it seems she has a gift.

Innsmouth Free Press On The Merkabah Rider Series

I wanna take a minute to familiarize the peanut gallery with the excellent, insightful reviews J. Keith Haney has been giving the entire Merkabah Rider series since it’s beginning.

I love IFP’s reviews anyway and am really honored to see Merkabah Rider get such an appreciative write up over there.

Here they are in order, with some of the best bits quoted. Please take a look at the links for the full review.

MERKABAH RIDER: TALES OF A HIGH PLANES DRIFTER -

‘There are two elements of Merkabah Rider that  make it stand out. One, the clash of cultures highlighted throughout.  Too much of what we have come to accept of the history of the old  American West has come from white-washed Hollywood films and their pulp  predecessors. The biggest mistake these fictions make is that everything  is just as homogenized as we like to pretend our society today is.  Erdelac reminds us that this landscape has many competing cultures  knocking heads, with little to no arbitration to keep the bloodshed  down. He shows that the main source of the strife is when all the ugly  prejudices that these immigrant cultures came up with in the Old World  follow them out west.

Two,  there are no happy endings at the close of most of these tales.  Westerns have been selling happy endings like hot cakes for well over a  century now, but a few of the best ones (Unforgiven, the comic miniseries Saint of Killers)  leave troubling endings that echo in the brain long after the story is  over. By the volume’s conclusion, the Rider has lost more than he has  gained and too many of his opponents prove to be more sympathetic than  they would seem at first glance.’

http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/?p=12129

MERKABAH RIDER 2: THE MENSCH WITH NO NAME

‘The  extraordinary characterization and culture clash are back here with  gusto. The Yiddishcentric cosmic view I had complained about in the last  volume is more-than-rectified here. The main trunk of the tree is still  Yiddish tradition, but the branches of it manage to incorporate the  Great Old Ones into the woodwork. It has the added bonus of showing  faith of any kind as a constant struggle to keep up with the real world,  rather than an issue that can be settled forever and ever. Modern-day  Christianity could learn something from this lesson. In addition, the  gradually increasing price of the Rider’s quest is brought painfully  home. This also closely follows the Lovecraftian model of mystical  insight: the more you learn about how the universe works, the more it  costs you. The Rider’s journey adds the twist that he started off his  journey THINKING he knew everything. But the revelations take as hideous  a toll on him as they do on any of the scientific rationalists of the  coming century (Lucifer’s punishment for these souls is particularly  unsettling).’

http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/?p=12585

 

MERKABAH RIDER 3: HAVE GLYPHS WILL TRAVEL

‘For a reviewer, it is always a pleasure to find the unexpected trinket of treasure somewhere in the pile of dreck that too many novels of any genre tend to indulge in. The Merkabah Rider series has been exactly that, combining the Weird West mystic overtones of Joe R. Lansdale with the commitment to historical accuracy of Max Allan Collins. Having picked up on Mr. Erdelac’s work in “Crawling Chaos Blues” for the first time and loved his unique, historically based take-off on the Mythos, I can honestly say that I am looking forward to the next work that comes from his pen.’

http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/?p=17328&cpage=1#comment-36198

DT Moviehouse Review: 8 Mile

OK, to christen my new blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I slog my way alphabetically through my 200+ DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here)  and decide if each one was worth the money, here's Curtis Hanson's Eminem vehicle 8-Mile. I'm sure this will be one of my most popular posts as this movie has a huge following. Probably bigger than Gymkata even.

8 Mile (2002) Directed by Curtis Hanson, Written by Scott Silver

Tagline: Every moment is another chance to turn it around.

What it's about:

Eminem portrays B-Rabbit, an aspiring white rapper who at the beginning of the movie moves back into a double wide at the 8 Mile Mobile Home Court in Detroit with his younger sister, unemployed single mother (Kim Bassinger of LA Confidential), and her shiftless boyfriend (Michael Shannon of Shotgun Stories). Rabbit works at a bumper stamping mill and spends his nights driving a beat up car full of his big dreaming (and slightly self-delusional) friends around (including Future, played by the great Mekhi Phifer of Lie To Me) shooting cop cars with paintballs, brawling, and scrawling rhymes on bits of napkins. Future wants Rabbit to enter and win the extemporaneous rap battle at the local underground hip hop club, The Shelter, but in the opening scene, Rabbit chokes on stage and is humiliated. The big antagonists of the movie are The Free World crew, the antithesis of Rabbit's 313 clique, a successful bunch of up-and-comers, well dressed, sweet cars, fine girls. Led by ace rapper Papa Doc (Anthony Mackie of The Hurt Locker and Real Steel), the Free World dominates the Shelter's rap battles and generally makes life for Rabbit and his friends unbearable. Skirting the two crews is the opportunistic Wink (Eugene Byrd of Dead Man), a little glad handing twerp who often promises Rabbit the fast track to stardom via one of his innumerable dubious contacts but never delivers. A new muse enters Rabbit's life in the shape of aspiring model Alex (played by the late lovely Brittany Murphy), who will pretty much do anything she can to attain her dreams.

Eminem as B-Rabbit: Eye of The Tiger, man! Eye of The Tiger!

Why I bought it:

A movie has to speak to me on some level for me to shell out money to put it in my collection. Now those who follow this blog may wonder what the hell a movie about underground hip hop battlers has to offer a guy who mainly writes horror and westerns.

Well, my formative years in high school I spent listening to hip hop. It was the new musical form – how could a forward thinking young man like myself not become enamored by it? Those who disparage hip hop or really any form of music usually haven't spent any time or effort exploring the best it has to offer (I'd recommend A Tribe Called Quest, GangStarr, or The Pharcyde as a good jumping in point). My least favorite genres of music still contain the occasional gem I can appreciate. I've never really been moved by Reggae, but Desmond Dekker wailing 'The Israelites' gets me every time. And I have no fondness for Jazz music as a whole, but I recognize the genius of Charlie Parker, Louis Jordan, and Billie Holiday.

8-Mile's fascinating glimpse at underground rap battles is almost worth the price of admission alone. This is a phenomenon that harkens back to the Delta blues practice of 'cutting heads,' when two buskers would set up across the street from each other and play and wail, sometimes disparaging the other guy. Whoever the crowd flocked to was the evident winner, and the loser packed up his guitar and moved on. In a rap battle, the job is to cut the other guy verbally down to size and entertain the crowd at the same time. Whoever elicits the most 'oos' with their combination of lyrical aptitude and cleverness is the winner.

I love nearly everything about 8 Mile, and I came to respect Eminem much more than I had prior to seeing it. At the time this movie came out Eminem was a superstar. His talent in that regard is undeniable. Listen to 'Lose Yourself,' 'Run Rabbit Run,' or '8 Mile' if you think he only spouts violent anti-gay misogynistic crap. You're frankly mistaken.

What an Eminem movie could've been.

For his first (and to my knowledge only) movie role, Eminem could've played anything  he wanted. He could've been a poon-dogging superpowered secret agent from Venus in a frat humor rom com crapfest (I know for a fact he was artist J.G. Jones' inspiration for the main character of Mark Millar's ultraviolent comic book-turned action movie 'Wanted.'). I've heard the critique that this wasn't much of a stretch for him as an actor, but I have to admire that he chose to play a diamond in the rough character who vomits out of sheer fright and then freezes cold his first time on stage – right when we meet the character. Clearly the guy checked his legendary (and maybe undeserved?) ego at the door. For Eminem having something of a loud-mouthed stage persona, Rabbit doesn't say a whole lot, but he's always thinking. You can see it. And when he does do something, or does explode, well, I hate to make the comparison as it will undoubtedly turn some people off (and probably wouldn't be well-received by Eminem himself due to the racial implications that have been leveled at him in the same way as The King), but he really reminded me of a young Elvis Presley memorably smoldering and sneering his way through Jailhouse Rock.

I recently read a blog, possibly on Cracked.com, where the author bemoaned the tendency of 80's movies like The Karate Kid and Rocky to show the road to success in terms of a three minute montage that sugar coats the fact that in order for the main characters of those respective movies to actually triumph, they would have to do about a thousand times the amount of work depicted. 8 Mile doesn't sugar coat.

After the climactic rap battle, Rabbit's friends ask him what he wants to do next, and he says 'I gotta get back to work' and promptly goes off to catch the bus back to the bumper stamp mill.  The penultimate triumph of 8 Mile is just a stepping stone in Rabbit's journey. There's still a hell of a lot of work to do after the credits roll, but it's to the strains of the wonderful and well-deserved Oscar tune 'Lose Yourself,' so we can imagine that Rabbit stuck to it, that he eventually made it.

Believe that if you wanna but I tell you this much. Riding on the train with no dough (or bus), sucks - Phife Dog, A Tribe Called Quest

I have never aspired to being a hip hop performer, and I've never peeled my drunken mother off the floor of a cluttered double wide trailer in Detroit, but I know what it means to hunger for a dream, to fill my head with that dream nearly every waking moment, and to be so goddamned disappointed when the world around me and the people in it fall short of that dream, particularly due to my own failings. You can see that hunger in Rabbit's eyes throughout this movie, and he's such an underdog that you can't help but be carried along with him. The other great inspiring rap movie I would draw comparisons to is the excellent Hustle And Flow, but the fact that Terrence Howard's character is a pimp draws a line in the sand that I can't entirely mentally cross. With B-Rabbit though, a grey clad loser who carries his clothes in a garbage bag, I can totally empathize.

You can also see Rabbit change. In the beginning of the movie he makes excuses to his boss about being late for work, usually around the phrase 'it wasn't my fault.' Toward the end he makes a conscious effort to eliminate that phrase from his speech at one point in mid-sentence ('Yo it wasn't….it won't happen again.').  Part of the theme of 8 Mile is finding and accepting the truth about yourself and not treading water on hope and pipe dreams alone.  A lot of the characters in 8 Mile are self-delusional. Rabbit's mother thinks things will get better as soon as her nominal live-in boyfriend's 'settlement check' comes in. Wink thinks he can dole out the big breaks on the strength of his own bullshit. Papa Doc, for all his gangster posturing, went to a private school in a good neighborhood and is content to rest on his laurels (we never even see his much vaunted skills in action). None of these characters realize the dream takes work – a LOT of work.

There's another bit in 8 Mile I love. The music. All the diagetic music is pretty great era hip hop by Gangstarr, Nas, The Pharcyde, Method Man, etc. But the Eminem music is confined entirely to non-diagetic intrumentals. There are two times when Eminem's music is used, both times when Rabbit is shown writing on his scraps of paper. We hear the beats and snatches of the refrains of 'Run Rabbit Run' and 'Lose Yourself,' but the songs never play in full in the course of the movie. We're getting glimpses into Rabbit's genius, a lyrical mastery that's still rough and un-honed, unproven. As an audience, we only have Future's constant assurance that Rabbit is any good, plus one or two halting but promising displays in the lunch line at work and screwing around with his friends. Throughout the movie he's just a wannabe, but by the end he finds his legs – and what a great and inspiring moment that is.

Sure it's not without flaws. The love interest is a tad weak and kind of leaves you hanging, and the resolution of the mother's story is a bit convenient. I've also heard it said that the friendship Rabbit strikes up with a gay coworker might've been intentionally crafted to patch things up between Eminem and the gay community (he'd gotten into some trouble for the perceived anti-gay content of some of his songs), but without that knowledge, it plays out fine. It's still a top notch movie.

Best bit of dialogue:

After discovering Alex having sex with Wink on a soundboard at the radio station (ostensibly to further her career), Rabbit punches his ex-friend out and goes home to find the bloodied Wink and the entire Free World crew waiting for him. They jump him and beat the crap out of him in front of his shrieking little sister (tellingly, Rabbit doesn't lift a finger to defend himself against them – his physical quarrel was entirely with Wink and he's already satisfied). That night his mother, having just lost her meal ticket boyfriend, wins a couple grand at bingo and comes home (in what in my opinion is the weakest bit of character writing in an otherwise fairly strong story – she should've gone out and found a job) having decided to turn a new leaf. As she sets out to make what we presume is the first dinner for the kids in a long time, she turns to Rabbit and looks at him as if for the first time.

Rabbit's Mom: Did you mean what you said about doin' that demo with Wink?

Rabbit: No…I'ma do it on my own.

Rabbit's Mom: You know, Rabbit? I think that's the best way.

Best scene:

Easily the climactic rap battle. This is the fight at the end of Rocky, Luke vs. Vader, the gunfight in the graveyard between Blondie, Tuco, and Angel Eyes. The rest of the movie has been a slow burn leading up to this confrontation, and this scene doesn't disappoint. In a seedy, close packed room full of blue-lit angry faces and bobbing heads, Rabbit finally finds his voice on stage and burns his way through the two lesser MC's of the Free World crew, coming head to head at last with Papa Doc. A toss of the coin forces Rabbit to go first (usually the disadvantaged position, because you can't respond to whatever the other guys says) and what happens next is really Patton-esque in terms of audacity and tactical brilliance. Bearing out the movie's themes of truth and self-awareness/acceptance, Rabbit cathartically and self-deprecatingly throws everything wrong with own his life in Papa Doc's face with all the unbridled fury Eminem packs into his rhyme delivery –

'I am white

I am a fuckin' bum

I do live in a trailer with my mom

I did get jumped by all six of you chumps

…And Wink did fuck my girl

I'm still standin' here screamin' fuck the Free World!

…Don't ever try to judge me, dude

You don't know what the fuck I been through….'

Then Rabbit proceeds to 'out' Papa Doc as a privileged youth from a healthy family in a well-to-do suburb (a big no no considering Papa Doc has postured as the biggest gangster around, even waving a pistol in Rabbit's face at one point), and winds it all up by tossing the mic offhandedly to Papa Doc, shouting – -

'Here....tell these people something they don't know about me.'

This leaves the previously rocking room in stunned silence and Papa Doc entirely dumbfounded, without a bit of ammunition to use against him. He necessarily forfeits and Rabbit wins.

Like I said, brilliant.

Would I buy it again? Yes.

NEXT IN THE QUEUE: 300

DT Moviehouse

I've decided to institute a new (ir)regular feature here on Delirium Tremens.

I watch a lot of movies. A LOT.

But I don't take home everything I've seen. For me to pay for a movie again past the initial theatrical viewing or rental, that movie has really got to speak to me on some level that will induce me to not only want to revisit it at my leisure, but to send a monetary message to the creators that I appreciated their work (altough in taking stock of what I have, there are a couple titles I was given as gifts that I haven't even watched yet!).

That said, I own something over two hundred movies, give or take. So yeah, lots of appreciation there.

In part to give me something more to do on this blog than just plug my work, and in part to justify my owning all these dang DVD's and Blu-Rays, I'm going to go through my collection alphabetically and start revisiting and reviewing them here.

I'm no film critic. At least, no more than anybody else. I went to film school yeah, but I promise I'll keep the mise en scene and chiaroscuro comments to a minimum. I've got opinions, and I've got memories of the movies on this list, and I'll share them. That's it. Oh and there'll probably be spoilers. So I'm telling you now 'cause I don't intend to write it over every single review. Most of these are a couple years old anyway, or will be by the time I get to 'em.

Here's the list, which I'll update if I make new purchases. I also intend to replace the reviewed titles with hyperlinks to the reviews as I write them for ease of reference (if I can figure out how to do that). This should take me a while to get through. No promises as to regularity, but eventually, one day, I'll get to the end. Maybe it'll even be fun.

Anyway, here's the list of my collection.

As always, feel free to comment, if you're so inclined.

8 Mile
300
The Adventures of Robin Hood
The Agony and The Ecstasy
Alien
The Apostle
At The Circus
Attack The Block
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Bad Company
Back To The Future Trilogy
Ben-Hur
Better Off Dead
Big Trouble In Little China
Blade
The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
The Blood of Heroes
Bonnie and Clyde
Bronco Billy
Buffalo Soldiers
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
The Call of Cthulhu
Chato's Land
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe
Cloverfield
Captain Blood
Cimarron
Conan The Barbarian
Conquest of The Planet of The Apes
Constantine
Cool Hand Luke
Cross Of Iron
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Cyrano De Bergerac
Daimajin/Wrath of Daimajin
Dances With Wolves
Daredevil
The Dark Crystal
A Day At The Races
Dead Man
Destry Rides Again
Die Hard
Dillinger
Dog Soldiers
Down With Love
Dragonslayer
Dungeons and Dragons
Enter The Dragon
Escape From New York
E.T. The Extraterrestrial
Ever After
The Ewok Movies (Caravan of Courage/Battle For Endor)
Excalibur
The Far Country
Fiend Without A Face
The Fighting Kentuckian
First Blood
A Fistful of Dollars
Flag Of Iron
Flight Of The Phoenix
For A Few Dollars More
Frailty
From Russia With Love
Glory
Godzilla vs Hedorah
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah
Godzilla vs. Mothra:BattleFor Earth
Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla
Godzilla vs. Destroyah
Godzilla 2000
Godzilla Mothra and King Gihodrah: Giant Monster All Out Attack
Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla
Godzilla Tokyo SOS
Goldfinger
The Good The Bad And The Ugly
The Goonies
Go West
The Great Santini
The Great Silence
The Green Hornet
Green Lantern
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan The Lord Of The Apes
Gunga Din
Gymkata
Halloween III
Hamlet (Mel Gibson)
Happy Accidents
The Haunting
Hell Is For Heroes
The Hidden Fortress
The Hired Hand
Hombre
Hulk
Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
In Harm's Way
Insomnia
Iron Man
It's Always Fair Weather
Jarhead
Jesus Christ Superstar
John Carter of Mars
The Jungle Book (Sabu)
The Karate Kid
The Killing
King Arthur
King Kong vs. Godzilla
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Krull
Kung Fu Panda
Kwaidan
LA Confidential
Ladyhawke
The Last Detail
The Last Starfighter
The Last Man On Earth
The Last Temptation Of Christ
Lawrence of Arabia
A League Of Their Own
Legend
Legend of The Drunken Master
Leon The Professional
Lethal Weapon
The Life And Times of Judge Roy Bean
Lone Wolf And Cub: Sword Of Vengeance
Lone Wolf And Cub: Baby Cart At The River Styx
Lone Wolf And Cub: Baby Cart In The LandOf Demons
The Long Riders
The Lord Of The Rings (Ralph Bakshi)
The Lost Weekend
Mad Max
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Manchurian Candidate
The Man From Earth
The Mark Of Zorro
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
Mars Attacks
The Missing
Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life
Mystery Men
The Naked Prey
Near Dark
Nevada Smith
A Night At The Opera
A Night In Casablanca
Observe And Report
Office Space
Once Upon A Time In The West
On The Waterfront
Open Range
The Others
Outland
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Patton
Peter Pan
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse of The Black Pearl
Platoon
Popeye
Predator
The Princess Bride
The Proposition
The Punisher
The Quiet Man
Raging Bull
Rambo (IV)
Ravenous
Real Steel
The Rebirth of Mothra (1 and 2)
Red River
Reign of Fire
The Return of The 5 Deadly Venoms
Ride With The Devil
Rio Bravo
Rio Grande
Robin And The 7 Hoods
Robocop
The Rocketeer
Rocky II
Rocky III
Rocky IV
Room Service
Run Ronnie Run
Saving Private Ryan
Scarface (Howard Hawks)
The Searchers
Se7en
The Seven Ups
Shaft's Big Score
Shaolin Soccer
Shaun Of The Dead
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
The Shootist
Signs
The Sixth Sense
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow
Sleeping Beauty
The Sound Of Music
Spartacus
Spider-Man
Spider-Man 2
Stander
Stardust
Star Trek The Motion Picture
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek: Generations
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Nemesis
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of The Jedi
State of Grace
The Sting
Strangers On A Train
Superman The Movie
Superman II
Sword Of Doom
The Ten Commandments
Thief Of Bagdad
The Third Man
The Thirteenth Warrior
Touch Of Evil
Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
True Grit (original)
Unforgiven
The Untouchables
Wall-E
Warlock
The Warriors
Whale Rider
Where Eagles Dare
White Zombie
The Whole Wide World
The Wild Bunch
Winchester '73
The Wizard Of Oz
The Wolfman
Wyatt Earp
X-Men (X2, X3, First Class)
The Yakuza
Young Guns
The Young Lions