Will Pfeifer's Blog, page 35

P. Craig Russell talks about our Spirit story

As part of "P. Craig Russell's Guide to Graphic Storytelling, Series 2," an educational DVD produced my buddy Wayne Harold, Craig talked about "Art Walk," a short Spirit story we collaborated on for the final issue of DC's "Spirit" series.

Here's the video, with Craig ably demonstrating how much work he put into a mere eight-page story...


The Spirit - Art Walk from Wayne Alan Harold on Vimeo.

If you're an aspiring artist, fan of comics, or just interested in the creative process, you'll probably want to see the entire DVD, which features Craig discussing many other works, including "Coraline," "Stormbringer" and "The Dream Hunters."  You can check out the project's Kickstarter page here.

Gerry Anderson, RIP

To mark the death of Gerry Anderson, creator of "Thunderbirds" and "Space 1999" and a million other crazy things, here's a clip from the 1966 theatrical movie "Thunderbirds Are Go" featuring a musical performance by Cliff Richards and the Shadows (in puppet form, natch) that's not just my favorite Thunderbirds clip, it's one of my favorite things, well, ever. So much work went into making these two minutes and 50 seconds of wonderful strangeness. Please, enjoy...

Merry Christmas from Darlene and Dave and me and all the folks here at X-Ray Spex

Here, in case you missed it, is a little last-minute Christmas present: Darlene Love's performance of the Phil Spector-penned classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" as seen on "Late Night With David Letterman" this past Friday.

Darlene shows up every year to sing the tune she first recorded for 1963's "A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector," and this year -- as always -- she blew the roof off the joint. Combined with Letterman's other great Christmas tradition, Jay Thomas telling his Lone Ranger story and knocking the meatball off the tree -- it's one of the things that makes the holidays special each year ... no kidding.

So, on behalf of everyone here, have yourself a merry little Christmas. And Peace on Earth.

The X-Ray Spex Holiday Shopping Guide, Part 7: The thrilling (and humiliating) final chapter!

There are items listed in the Lighter Side Co. holiday gift catalog that are more disgusting, more feces-obsessed and just plain more asinine (so many Jeff Dunham products ... so many...) but for some reason I can't quite explain, this relatively innocuous prank designed for small woodland creatures...


I think I'm fascinated by the Big Head Squirrel Feeder because it, and I quote, allows you to "feed them AND humiliate them at the same time!" Who among us doesn't lie awake nights dreaming of humiliating squirrels? Do squirrels even feel humiliation? I suppose this is the perfect product to put that potentially groundbreaking hypothesis to the test. And, as a bonus, it's "Nutty-looking!" Well, of course it is. Why wouldn't it be?

In other words, Merry Christmas.

The X-Ray Spex Holiday Shopping Guide, Part 6: Save a dollar by buying two!

Enough with the soap. There are a lot of other gifts in the Lighter Side Co. catalog, including a few from the world of fashion. Here's a swimsuit that would be timeless if it weren't based on a single joke from a movie that left theaters six years ago...


Some of you might think that the most terrifying line in that product description is "May become transparent when wet," but I'd argue the line with the most terrifying implications is this one...

Please tell me this wasn't included become someone tried to return a used one. 

TCM remembers 2012

Each and every year, Turner Classic Movies (the greatest channel in the history of TV) pays tribute to those moviemakers (and not just actors) who've died in the past 12 months with a suitably melancholy and celebratory montage of their faces. Here's this year's version...

The X-Ray Spex Holiday Shopping Guide, Part 5: More soap, offered without comment

Because really, what can I say that's going to compete with the image that's forming in your head...


... right about now?
I'm deeply sorry.

Movies I Watched in November, Part 2

Continuing the rundown of movies I saw last month....

Despite the title, this movie is actually a love letter to "Star Wars," with the usual carping about the awful prequels and endless tinkering with the original trilogy but much more testimony about how the 1977 movie shaped the lives of the witnesses. (Hell, I was 10 years old in 1977, so I can obviously identify with those folks.) The documentary itself is a snappy affair, quickly cutting from person to person with a nice mix of snarky humor and heartfelt emotion. The fan film section alone might make you reconsider your opinion of Lucas... after all, he never took any sort of legal action against those movies, when he obviously could. (He does hate that "Holiday Special," though.)

And speaking of the 1970s... I was more concerned with "Star Wars" and comic books back in the last days of the decade, but I do remember the Iran Hostage Crisis (as we called it), with images on the news of angry crowds and kids wearing T-shirts with Mickey Mouse flipping the bird and saying "HEY IRAN!" Crazy times, in other words, and Ben Affleck's sure-to-be-nominated drama does a bang-up job of capturing the era in costumes, news footage and facial hair. I realize the movie plays with the actual facts (getting on the plane, for instance, was actually no big deal), but I'm smart enough to know that this is a Big Hollywood Movie and not a documentary or a book, so I'm willing to sacrifice accuracy for entertainment -- and this movie is damned entertaining. That Affleck, he's really something, isn't he? Bet he just looks back on those day with Jennifer Lopez like they were some crazy dream.

In his fascinating book about forgotten movies, "Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood," Wheeler Winston Dixon singles out this 1956 movie as an especially notorious Bowery Boys effort -- Leo Gorcey's dad, Bernard, (who played Louie in the series) was killed in a car accident just after the film was completed, and Leo Gorcey himself (who starred as Slip) was visibly drunk and slurring his lines. (With the death of his father, his drinking got much worse.) I  didn't notice that when I watched it on TCM, and I actually thought the gnomelike Bernard Gorcey was pretty damn funny. The strangest thing about the movie to me was that, at the end, the three villains actually DIE in a car crash caused by our heroes, and no one seems the least bit upset. (By the way, this single entry is going to be a mere amuse bouche compared to the Bowery Boys avalanche I unleash once I start reviewing this DVD set .) Bet you can hardly wait.

So-so HBO movie about the Alfred Hitchcock torturing Tippi Hedren during the making of "The Birds" and "Marnie." Toby Jones makes for a pretty good (though pint-sized) Hitch, and Sienna Miller is OK as poor Tip, but the whole thing has a small-scale TV movie feel about it. I'm guessing it's loads better than that "Hitchcock" movie currently in theaters, which to me looks pretty terrible -- and I'm a huge fan of "Psycho." Every time I see those fawning quotes from America's Worst Movie Critic, Peter Travers, I want to throw my copy of "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of 'Psycho'" at the TV screen.


Finally caught this Alexander Payne drama about a year after it hit theaters. Solid stuff, with Clooney once again proving how damned charismatic he can be on the big screen, this time around playing a guy who discovers his comatose wife had been cheating on him. It's a fairly small, intimate movie, but the Hawaiian location adds an intriguing element of both exoticism and scope. The scenery is genuinely breathtaking, but Payne refreshingly includes the other, less glamorous side of Hawaii, where the people who live their spend their less glamorous lives.

                     

You might remember Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda teaming up for the 1941 Preston Sturges classic "The Lady Eve." Odds are, you don't remember them teaming up for this movie, "The Mad Miss Manton," which arrived three years earlier. It's no classic, but it is a lot of fun, with Stanwyck, playing a spunky socialite who stumbles onto (what else?) murder and Fonda as an intrepid editor who accuses her of being a flaky prankster before they stumble into (what else?) love. Likable leads, a swell 1930s ambience and some good gags. What more do you want?

Here's a genuine pre-Code oddity spotted (where else?) on TCM: It's a murder mystery set almost entirely inside an aquarium (circa 1932, where the tanks and enclosures are painfully cramped) that co-stars Robert Armstrong (a year before "King Kong"), Mae Clarke (a year after "The Public Enemy" and "Frankenstein"), Donald Cook (a year after "The Public Enemy"), Edgar Kennedy (a year before "Duck Soup" -- and with a shaved head!) and Clarence Wilson (who I'll always remember squaring off against Spanky as Mr. Crutch in the Our Gang short "Shrimps for a Day"). The leads are James Gleason (a million movies, including "Meet John Doe" and "Night of the Hunter") and Edna Mae Oliver (lots of movies you've never seen) as a detective and teacher trying to solve the crime. Not exactly fast-paced, but it's quirky enough to make spending 70 minutes with it well worth your time.

I finished off the month with an uplifting double feature of two movies written by Robert Siegel. First up? "The Wrestler," which in retrospect I think we can all agree was just about the best movie of 2008, with only "The Dark Knight" and "Man on Wire" offering any serious competition. Mickey Rourke is stellar, of course, and so is his co-star, Marisa Tomei, who also plays an aging person who makes a living with their body. Bringing it all to stark life is Darron Aronofsky, who gives just right right amount of grungy realism to his direction. (Watch how often the camera follows Rourke further down his spiral.) Spoiler alert: My friend Bob and I had a mini-debate while watching this, arguing whether or not Randy "The Ram" died in the last moments of the movie. I say yes, of course he did, and what's more, I don't even call that a sad ending. From everything we'd seen about The Rammer in the past 109 minutes, it's the only way he would want to leave this world.

That was immediately followed by 2009's "Big Fan," also written (and this time directed) by Siegel and, if anything an even bleaker portrait of a sad life. (After all, The Rammer  did have moments of fame and glory.) Patton Oswald is excellent as Paul, a New York Giants fan so devoted that he scripts out his comments to sports radio before he calls the show. When poor Paul encounters his favorite player -- and the encounter goes horribly, horribly wrong -- we learn how horrifyingly devoted he is. Like "The Wrestler," it's a movie where dozens of tiny details build to form a fully rounded portrait of a 21st century male. Can't wait to see what Siegel does next.

Movies I watched in November: Part 1

November was such a busy month for movies in the Pfeifer house that I'm splitting up the usual rundown into two parts. Part one includes two bits of cinematic Satanism, the usual black-and-white obscurities and not one but two movies seen in an actual theater...


This was a pretty solid 1968 Satanic shocker from director Terrence Fisher (also known as "The Devil Rides Out"). Christopher Lee plays the good guy this time around, with the head devil worshipper played by Charles Gray, who a few years later would map out the dance steps to the "Time Warp" in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." The movie is so very, very British, but it's also genuinely unnerving, with a real feeling of Things Man Is Not Meant To Know. Good devil makeup, too.

This 1958 John Ford political drama was part of TCM's election-related package, and though it was filmed just a few years before other political films like "The Best Man" and "Advise and Consent," it feels like something from an earlier, cornier era. Spencer Tracy (of course) plays the beloved mayor of a New England town, and the Irish blarney is laid on a little too thick for my tastes. John Ford packs the film with quirky, "loveable" characters, and the big twist ending feels a little too pat and perfect. Nice cast though -- besides Tracy, you've got Pat O'Brien, John Carradine, Jeffrey Hunter, Frank McHugh and Basil Rathbone.
                         
Interesting little thriller that I recorded for the Peter Lorre factor but still enjoyed even though Lorre only appears in a pair of short scenes. Instead, the film focuses on a reporter (John McGuire) whose testimony sends an innocent man to death row (Elisha Cook Jr., twitchy as always) and then finds himself suspected of murder himself. Lots of interesting life-in-1940 scenes between the reporter and his fiancee, and the entire film comes to a stop midway through for one of the most mind-blowing dream sequences I've ever seen. It shows up every so often on TCM -- check it out!
                       

One of the last discs to stagger in on the free movie gravy train of my late, lamented column, this documentary by Danish journalist Mads Brugger follows Mads as he obtains credentials as a European ambassador to Africa for the unspoken but understood-by-all purpose of cashing in on the lucrative (and potentially lethal) blood diamond trade. It's a fascinating look inside a scary, morally adrift side of life few people ever see. Give it to Mads, the man has some serious balls.

Though it asks the same question  as the "Toy Story" movies -- what do playthings do when they're not being played with? -- this Disney (not Pixar) film is aimed at a slightly older audience, namely one that knows what the heck an "arcade" is. The genius move of the film was casting the great John C. Reilly as the sad sack title character, and though the movie drags in the middle (too much time playing Sugar Rush, if you ask me), it looks great, packs in a lot of solid jokes and delivers the sort of self-empowerment message you want from this sort of movie. 
                   

I love James Bond movies, but this is one of the only times I watched the end credits roll and thought, "Wow. That was a real movie." Director Sam Mendes keeps things clipping along at just the right pace, and cinematographer Roger Deakins makes it all look beautiful. Plus, Daniel Craig -- a solid actor -- actually has a story with some genuine emotional heft, and, as a bonus, we even get to bid farewell to the Aston Martin DB5 (with modifications). Speaking of those modifications, when Bond and company were gathering up all their weapons for the final siege, I kept thinking "I hope someone remembers there a machine guns behind the headlights." Thankfully, someone did.

Inspired by this post by Richard Harland Smith over at TCM's Movie Morlocks page, I wound up watching "Ghost Catchers," a movie I'd never seen despite my love of Olsen & Johnson's fourth-wall-shattering comedy/musical "Hellzapoppin'." This 1944 film doesn't hit those dizzying heights of absurdity, but it is a lot of fun, with a couple of crazy dance numbers and some truly strange visions (including the very disturbing man crying like a baby the TCM article mentions). Trouble is, all these Olsen & Johnson movies are very tough to find, especially in the states. Hey, Criterion -- how about an Eclipse collection of these forgotten oddities? Hell, I'd buy one!

Another movie inspired by an intriguing write-up, this time around coming from Bill Landis' "Sleazoid Express" book . Also known as "An Eye For An Eye," this 1973 no-budget chiller focuses on a children's TV host who brings murderous justice to parents who abuse their kids. There's a potentially powerful movie to be made from that premise, but unfortunately, this ain't it. The script is lifeless, the direction is awful (though, admittedly, I was watching a nth-generation dupe) and the performances are lackluster. If it weren't for a bit of mild gore and the generally sleazy tone of the whole thing, I'd swear this was a made-for-TV movie ... except, frankly, it never even reaches that level of basic competence.

Ah, now this is more like it. A great film that manages to be both funny and creepy, often at the same time. That other big devil movie of the era, "The Exorcist," is fine, but it pretty much beats its audience into being scared with loud noises, child abuse and, of course, a heady brew of pea soup puke and blasphemy. "Rosemary's Baby," on the other hand, gently lures you down the path until, by the time you realize it's too late, everyone you know is a Satanist and your baby's in a black crib with an upside-down cross hanging over it. "To 1966! The Year One!"

Next time: Nine more movies, including an Oscar contender, a murder mystery set in an aquarium and possibly the most depressing double feature of all time.

The X-Ray Spex Holiday Shopping Guide, Part 4: "A Genuine-You-Know-What"

I realize that the Johnson Smith Co. made its bones back in the day peddling fake doggy doo, but even the most poop-obsessed child eventually grows up and beyond that particular fascination. Not, however, these guys, now operating as "The Lighter Side Co." As proof, I offer this "completely usable" soap that "smells great" and is "sure to cause outrageous bathroom double-takes"...


I do appreciate the sense of humor the poor copywriter shows in asking prospective customers to state their choice of "corn" before sadly admitting there is, in fact, no choice at all. And really, upon seeing what appears to be a large and imposing piece of fecal matter on someone's bathroom sink, what other reaction could a visitor possibly have but "Oh My Gosh, What's That?"

Next up: Soap that doesn't look nearly as bad -- until you realize what it's meant for.