E.R. Torre's Blog, page 156

19 Worst Movies Mystery Science Theater 3000 Ever Riffed

Once again over at io9 you’ll find an article by Rob Bricken listing the above, the 19 Worst Movies the hilarious Mystery Science Theater 3000 ever riffed:

http://io9.com/the-19-worst-movies-mystery-science-theater-3000-ever-r-1732624992

Bear in mind, what this list shows are the worst movies that the author felt appeared on the show.  Of course, Mystery Science Theater 3000 was devoted to showing terrible films while a crew of three (one guy and two robots) skewering the films as they watched them.

I tend to agree with the list.  The interesting thing is that the worst the film, the better the riffing and the better, therefore, the overall episode of MST3K.  Check out the films and see if you agree.  I really liked Mr. Bricken’s description of The Creeping Terror (#9 on the list):

The Creeping Terror is a movie only in the most technical sense. Things have been filmed, and that film has been stuck together to produce what is generally termed a motion picture, but that’s it.

Moving aside for a moment on the notion of which film they showed was the worst, for those who haven’t seen any MST3K fare, I highly recommend they check these film “treatments” out: Mitchell, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Teenagers From Outer Space, Attack of the Giant Leeches, and The Killer Shrews.

A good time will be had by all!

This ‘n that…

Couple of interesting articles worth reading, both found on io9:

First up, Remembering the Mysterious “Vela Incident” 36 Years Later.

I must have missed this intriguing news when it originally came out, but the “Vela Incident” involves a U.S. satellite back in 1979 detecting an explosion in the southern Indian Ocean which may have been a secret test of a nuclear weapon.  If this was the case, which nation tested the nuclear device?  Was it a nuclear device?

The mystery continues!

Next up, Appeals Court Rules the Batmobile is Copyright Protected.

The article linked to above, written by James Whitbrook, concerns DC Comic’s lawsuit against Mark Towle, a man who ran the “Gotham Garage” and specialized in making replicas of cars from movies and TV but who specialty, according to the article, were replicas of the 1966 Batman TV show Batmobile…

…as well as the 1989 Tim Burton directed Batman movie Batmobile…

In a decision that didn’t surprise me all that much, the court asserted that DC Comics does indeed have a copyright over the Batmobile and Mr. Towle was violating that copyright by producing -and making money off of- these vehicles.

I urge you to read the article if only to read the legal wording justifying why DC Comics is entitled to claim the copyright on the vehicle despite the fact that there have been many varieties of Batmobiles over the years.

Interesting stuff!

Spartan (2004) a (very) belated review

As I’ve been transferring more and more of my films to digital and in doing so I’ve stumbled upon some movies I hadn’t seen since first purchasing them sometimes many years before.

One such work is the acclaimed playwright 2004 directed/written film Spartan.  Other than the fact that the film featured Val Kilmer as a secret service (or somesuch) agent searching for the President of the United State’s missing daughter (an early screen appearance by ) I recalled next to nothing else about this film.

After watching it, I can see why.

Now, before you assume I’m going to slam this film hard, don’t.  Even with the considerable problems the films has (I’ll get into them after the trailer below), I’d probably give this film two to two and a half stars out of four.  It was entertaining enough (especially in the early going) to interest me but the film’s later half had many problems…all of them related to the screenplay.

Since I’ll be getting into considerable spoilers here, let me say this: If you’re a fan of David Mamet’s work, you may want to give Spartan a look.  It may not be up there with some of his best written work especially considering how much of the plot revolves around at times extremely hard to swallow coincidences (again, I’ll get into them in a moment), but the film isn’t a complete disaster.

Faint praise, I know, but I can’t deny watching the film to its end and therefore it did, at the very least, keep my attention.

Anyway, here’s Spartan’s trailer and afterwards we’ll get into some heavy story spoilers.  However, in watching this trailer, it occurs to me this is yet another case where the trailer gives away too much, so watch at your own peril.  What follows from this point on are…

SPOILERS!!!!

 

Still here?

Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

All right so the first part of Spartan introduces us to Scott (Val Kilmer) a no-nonsense “I do anything I’m ordered” soldier.  He’s resourceful, he’s deadly, and effective.

Scott is brought in from a training mission due to a critical emergency: The Daughter of the President of the United States has disappeared.  After a bit of investigating, the Secret Service team comes to believe she has been kidnapped.  The kidnappers, it is also believed, don’t know who they have.  These kidnappers are sex slavers.  They kidnap women from the United States and force them work in a brothel in Dubai.

With a very tight deadline (the worry being that the kidnappers will discover who they have kidnapped), the Secret Service is on red alert, tracking leads and getting closer and closer to the ones that run the brothel.  There is Mission: Impossible-style chicanery and misdirection, especially when Scott acts as if he’s a common thug to try to worm his way closer to one of the higher ups in the prostitution/kidnapping organization.  Though they are operating without 100% certainty that they’re following the trail of the President’s Daughter, they forge ahead.

Until…

Shortly after the infiltration plan fizzles, news agencies report that the President’s Daughter’s body was found.  She had apparently drowned with her teacher/lover and, the Secret Service group assumes, they were chasing another similar looking woman (again, they were never 100% certain the kidnapped woman was the President’s Daughter).  The mission, it appears, is over.

But all is not what it seems.

Scott’s new partner, Curtis (), realizes that the media is being fed a pile of bull and it is here that those pesky (and truly hard to swallow) coincidences start to rear their heads.

A little earlier in the film and while staking out a beach house Scott and Curtis suspect might have the kidnapped President’s Daughter in it, three whooper coincidences occur:

1) Curtis sees squiggled in a window’s dust a sign attributed to the President’s Daughter (oh yeah, when kidnapped by sex slavers everyone leaves weird personal marks known only to the person making them and her boyfriend instead of “Please help me” messages!)

2) For no reason I could see other than to help Scott a little later on, a scarecrow is left on a seat behind a shack by the beach house.  Said scarecrow is also conveniently facing away from the beach (I’ll explain why that’s important in a moment), and…

3) Curtis, when stationing himself to cover Scott while he enters the house just happens to lay his tarp on the ground where it picks up the President’s Daughter’s earring.  The earring, a veeeery tiny little thing, just happens to have been dropped there for him to pick up and, also coincidentally, Curtis subsequently finds a nice photograph of the President’s Daughter in a newspaper that just absolutely beautifully displays her wearing this very earring.  Think hard about this: Of all the family pictures I have with my wife and daughters (and there are many of them) I can all but guarantee you there probably isn’t a single one that I could identify an earring they’re wearing in it, yet Curtis finds a beautiful newspaper picture that is clear enough in showing a tiny earring on the President’s Daughter.

Whew.

The very hard to swallow coincidences #1 and 3 are needed later on when Curtis convinces Scott’s “I’m a soldier and follow orders” protagonist to realize that his superiors are bamboozling the media and the world and that the President’s Daughter was indeed kidnapped and did not drown with her supposed teacher/lover.

The two return to the beach house to investigate but as they begin their search for the “sign” left behind Curtis is shot dead and Scott is forced to hide behind the (you guessed it) shack with that curiously placed scarecrow.  He’s pinned down by the sniper who took out Curtis, so what will he do?  How oh how will he ever escape?  If only he had a means of diverting the sniper, of making him think he’s been shot…

Good thing there’s a damn convenient scarecrow within arm’s reach, eh?

Yup, Scott dresses the scarecrow in his clothing and the sniper takes the scarecrow out.  Instead of then coming ashore (the sniper and his crew are on a boat just offshore) and making sure of the kills, they go away which in turn gives Scott time to escape.

Now, you would think this would end the preposterous coincidences, right?

Wrong.

We get a few more, including an elderly Secret Service (female) Agent that has Scott dead to rights and should have shot him the moment she suspected he wasn’t who he said he was (and while he was standing, by the way, just a few feet of the first lady!).  Turns out she (coincidentally!) knows the First Daughter very well and has a stronger emotional attachment to her than her actual parents.

And then, later on, Scott heads out to Dubai and manages to get a hold of the First Daughter only to find that he’s been bugged.  All appears doomed except, MEGA-COINCIDENCE a Swedish news group happens to be in the hanger where the final shootout occurs and they get footage of the very much alive First Daughter and are also able to flee the airport with her in tow.

The lie of the First Daughter’s death is therefore revealed though the principals behind it, we find, are clever enough to hide their devious deeds.

And so our movie ends.  As someone who fancies himself a writer, pointing out all these outrageous coincidences is giving me a headache.

I don’t know the history behind the making of this film and it is very possible Mr. Mamet was in a rush to complete the screenplay and had to do what he could to make the story make some kind of sense.  But in this case, the glue that holds the plot together is held by some very hard to swallow coincidences.

If the above bugs you, then steer clear of Spartan.

On Creation…

A couple of days ago in the blog post Crediting Bill Finger I stated Mr. Finger, while very much deserving of finally being acknowledged as a co-creator of Batman, isn’t the only one that should be credited.  I pointed out that Shadow author extraordinaire Walter B. Gibson also might deserve some credit as Mr. Finger and company, when they wrote the very first Batman story which appeared in Detective Comics #27 essentially made a comic book adaptation of one of Mr. Gibson’s Shadow stories.  While this was one (and the most obvious) of the Gibson written Shadow stories that clearly influenced Mr. Finger, I nonetheless feel I came off waaaay too glib in my posting and for that I apologize.

The fact is that while the very early Batman stories may have cribbed certain ideas (and even complete stories) from The Shadow works by Mr. Gibson, the Batman character and his world quickly moved off into other very fascinating and often unique directions.  While Mr. Gibson and some of his Shadow novels were an inspiration at the start of the Batman series, so too were other works and, again, Batman would go off into its own unique direction and for that Mr. Finger richly deserves the lion’s share of the credit for what he did.

I suppose the above should clue you in on the fact that I’m incredibly fascinated with artistic creation(s) and the credit deserved for them.

Perhaps one of the most interesting of the “creator” issues, to me, is that regarding author Alan Moore and arguably his most recognized creation, Watchmen.

Back in the 1980’s author Alan Moore became a superstar writer, and deservedly so, for his work on Marvel (later Miracle) Man, V for Vendetta, and Swamp Thing.  Watchmen would come at the tail end of his association with DC Comics in the form of the 12 issue limited series.  Watchmen explored the dark side of what the world would be like with Superheroes.  It was subsequently made into a film…

It was because of what followed after the release of this series that Mr. Moore had a major falling out with DC Comics and left the publisher never to return.  My understanding of the situation, based on interviews Mr. Moore gave after the fact, was when he and DC Comics came to an agreement about publishing Watchmen the contract specified that once the series was out of print, something which Mr. Moore expected to happen rather quickly, the rights of this series would revert to Mr. Moore and artist Dave Gibbons.  However, Watchmen proved an incredible success and DC has been able to keep reprinting it since its first publication in 1986.  I’ve read there were other issues which caused Mr. Moore’s ire as well regarding royalties, but I don’t know enough about them to comment.  Suffice to say Mr. Moore’s anger toward DC stemmed to a large degree over the fact that he lost control of Watchmen when he thought it would come to him soon after the initial publication.

When Mr. Moore left DC Comics in 1989 it was with considerable rancor and, as an author I could sympathize with his desire to control his own works.

But we’re talking about creative credits here and this is where certain facts rear their heads.

To begin, Mr. Moore originally conceived Watchmen as a story which would feature the various Charlton superheroes that DC Comics had at that time acquired.  Below is an image of those various Charlton Characters.  From upper left and moving clockwise you’ve got The Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, The Question, The Peacemaker, and Peter Cannon/Thunderbolt.

And here we have the principle cast of Watchmen.  From left and moving clockwise, you have Ozymandias (Peter Cannon), Silk Specter (Nightshade), Doctor Manhattan (Captain Atom), Nite Owl (The Blue Beetle), Rorschach (The Question), and The Comedian (Peacemaker).

Mr. Moore’s concept for a Charlton based Watchmen proved difficult for DC Comics to accept as the story was self-contained and ended in such a way it would be difficult to re-use the recently bought characters in any other way.

Therefore Mr. Moore modified the established Charlton characters into these “new” characters and the series was greenlighted and published.

Mr. Moore’s story, unquestionably, was “his” concept, a darker take on what would happen in the real world if Superheroes existed.  He had already begun that process with Marvel (Miracle) Man and Watchmen was the culmination of that theme (I’ll ignore the climax of the book and its too-striking resemblance to the Outer Limits episode The Architects of Fear because it is my suspicion this might have been nothing more than an innocent coincidence).

The facts tell us that while Mr. Moore is clearly the creator and writer of the Watchmen story, every one of the characters he used within them were thinly veiled versions of other authors/artists creations.  Which makes me wonder: Should the creators of the various Charlton heroes which were the basis of the Watchmen characters not be entitled to some kind of recognition -and perhaps even monetary compensation- for the characters they created and Mr. Moore essentially appropriated?

Further, because the project was initiated because DC Comics purchased the Charlton characters and those were the ones that provided the impetus to Mr. Moore’s story, don’t the people behind that purchase also deserve some credit for bringing these characters to Mr. Moore’s attention and use?

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that sometimes –sometimes– creative credit is a harder thing to assign than it at first seems.

 

10 Movie Bloopers That Made It To The Final Cut

Interesting video displaying movie “screw ups” that, as mentioned in the title, wound up being in the film itself:

The last one mentioned, that from Back To The Future II, is one of those stunts that went very wrong and wound up being used in the film.

One of the more spectacular stunts featured on Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior, featured a motorcycle driving punk hitting a car and then being spun around into the air.  This was not intended (the stuntman was supposed to release the motorcycle earlier to have a more controlled flight) yet made the film’s final cut:

Crediting Bill Finger…

This fascinating bit of news appeared over the weekend:

DC Will Finally Credit Bill Finger As Co-Creator of Batman

For those who don’t know about this, since Batman’s first appearance way back in Detective Comics #27 released in 1939 and until today the “sole” creator of Batman has been listed as Bob Kane but most people who followed the character/creation knew that many, if not most, of Batman’s concepts were created by the series’ writer, Bill Finger.

To be fair, Bob Kane was the artist and person who thought up the idea of a “Bat-Man”.  But the concept he originally conceived of was radically changed to what we are more familiar with in the hands of the series’ writer, Mr. Finger.

Ty Templeton offered an amusing take on the Bob Kane Batman which gives you an idea where it went from his initial concept:

People have blasted the late Mr. Kane for taking credit for everything Batman related and snubbing all others.  It wasn’t until well after Mr. Finger died in 1974 that Mr. Kane finally copped to the fact that Mr. Finger should have been given a lot more credit for the creation/concepts behind the Batman character.

So, I’m happy to hear that Mr. Finger is getting credit where it is due…

…however…

I’m not trying to be a smart-ass here, but the character of Batman also owes a considerable debt to the works of Walter B. Gibson.  Mr. Gibson was an insanely proficient writer (it was said he could write up to 10,000 words a day) who wrote most of The Shadow pulp novels released from 1931 to 1949.

He was also the man who came up with many concepts which were subsequently cribbed (for those who don’t want to play nice, “stolen”) by Bill Finger and re-used in the Batman comics.  In fact, the very first Batman story, the one published in that 27th issue of Detective Comics mentioned above, was pretty much a scene for scene comic book adaptation of the Shadow story “Partners in Peril”, only with Batman sub-ing for The Shadow.

But don’t take my word for it.  Check it out for yourself:

http://www.shadowsanctum.com/pulps/shadow9.html

I believe the reprint book is still available for a reasonable price via Amazon.  Happy hunting!

The Overwhelming Era…

Keza MacDonald offers a fascinating article, posted on Kotaku.com, regarding his frustrations with so many really, really, REALLY big/multiple-hour-killer games being available seemingly all at once:

How Are We Supposed To Play All These Enormous Video Games?

I’ll go Mr. MacDonald one better: It’s not just video games.  We live in an era where we are being absolutely crushed by the amount of recreational material we have available to us.

I know, I know, first world problems.

Still, they’re there.  We have too many TV shows, too much music, too many books, too many DVDs/BluRays, too many (yes) video games, etc. etc. etc. screaming for every single second of our free time.

Used to be that the choices for entertainment weren’t all that many.  When I was young, there were something like five or so channels on TV and the major networks didn’t air all that many first run shows, at least compared to now.  You pretty much had to see these shows when they aired or, a little later, when they were rerun.

There was so little “new” programming available for all the hours of the day that it wasn’t unusual for the local networks to replay old TV shows on “down” times such as the weekends or early afternoons.

Thus it was that I’d discover shows cancelled long before I first saw them.  Shows like the original Star Trek.  The Wild, Wild, West.  Perry Mason.  The Twilight Zone.  The Outer Limits.

Cable came and grew and suddenly you had hundreds of channels and the need to fill the time with something.  So many new shows appeared that it became impossible to watch everything you were even mildly interested in.

A confession: I’m one of the very few people out there who hasn’t watched a single full episode of what is arguably the most popular show on TV today, Game of Thrones.  It’s not that I don’t want to, its just that I never got HBO and, when the episodes were finally available to me via video release, so much had been written/talked (and spoiled) about the various plot points that it was pointless -by that time- to try the show out.

But early on I was damn curious about it and even bought the first couple of books of the series.  These books sit unread on my bookshelf, given up for the same reasons I gave up on watching the show.  Granted, its my fault I was spoiled regarding the show’s plot.  I could have resisted checking out the various spoilers, yet having seen a few -even one!- there became no need for me to play catch up on the rest.

Getting back to Mr. MacDonald, I too have video games I’ve purchased fully intending to play them but getting sidetracked and eventually letting them go, sometimes without playing even a minute of them.

With whatever free time I have I’m nearing the completion of the latest Batman game (XBox One version) but waiting in the wings are The Witcher, Forza, and a few others I may never get to.  And that’s not counting the current Grand Theft Auto game I’ve got on my computer!

By now I think I’ve made my point: We live in an era of oversaturation and we have to be more and more picky about what it is we decide to spend our free time doing.

While it is a good thing we have so many options available for entertainment, I worry about all those things we might have missed while pursuing the new and shiny.  Used to be that certain works, with the passage of time, would be given second or third looks and, over the years, people would realize these sometimes forgotten works were special.

For example, the writings of H. P. Lovecraft.  Never successful in his time, his works were re-assessed over the years and became viewed long after Mr. Lovecraft’s death as truly great works of horror fiction.

Could that happen today and with so many works competing for our time out there?  Could anyone find the free time to re-assess an older work and realize they are holding something truly special in their hands?

For better or worse, I fear that is no longer the case.

Politics 24/7

It’s been all politics all the time it appears of late.  I skipped the latest Republican debate and, based on what I’ve read about it, I couldn’t be happier.  The Republican Party has degenerated, in my opinion, to such a strange, comical-if-it-weren’t-so-damn-frightening extreme that its hard to take them seriously.

Perhaps the best example of the (let’s be kind) oddities current Republican candidates display can be found in the below, a question asked in this latest debate about which woman they would put on the $10 Bill.  I found the article, written by Ben Mathis-Lilley, on Slate.com:

GOP Candidates, Asked To Name Iconic American Women, Cite Foreigners and their Relatives

You read that right, the answers by many of them were, to say the least…silly.

For those who don’t want to hit the link, I’ll post the candidate replies below:

Rand Paul: Susan B. Anthony.
Mike Huckabee: His wife.
Marco Rubio: Rosa Parks.
Ted Cruz: Rosa Parks (but on the $20; he’d keep Hamilton on the $10).
Ben Carson: His mother.
Donald Trump: His daughter or Rosa Parks.
Jeb Bush: Margaret Thatcher.
Scott Walker: Clara Barton.
Carly Fiorina: Wouldn’t change the bill.
John Kasich: Mother Theresa.
Chris Christie: Abigail Adams.

So basically three of the eleven candidates chose relatives (Huckabee would put his wife on the bill, Ben Carson his mother and Donald Trump his daughter…or Rosa Parks).  Frankly, I find these answers shameful.  If the three were trying to be “funny”, the joke is pretty damn weak.  Regardless, one gets the feeling their answer displays more about their ignorance of famous American women than any actual humor.

You would think that would be the worst type of answer, but then you have the very bizarre responses from Jeb Bush and John Kasich.  Jeb Bush chooses…former British P.M. Margaret Thatcher?!  John Kasich wants to put Calcutta’s Mother Theresa on a U.S. bill?!?!  As with the relative answers above, I can’t help but think these responses show their ignorance of famous American woman.

Three of them chose Rosa Parks: Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump (but as noted above, he said either Ms. Parks or his daughter!).  I find the choice of Rosa Parks, especially with regard to Ted Cruz, a curious one.  Considering some of the philosophies he -and the others- espouse, I wonder if they’re not just mentioning a name they’re familiar with rather than what she’s most known for.

Scott Walker’s choice of Clara Barton, the nurse who founded the Red Cross, is actually a rather neat choice, in my opinion, though it doesn’t warm me at all to his candidacy.

Susan B. Anthony, a feminist involved in the woman’s suffrage movement, was Rand Paul’s choice and is also not bad at all, though we did have her already appear on currency, albeit a coin…

Chris Christie chose Abigail Adams.  I think she’s an interesting choice though if I were to go with a First Lady, I might be more inclined to pick Eleanor Roosevelt.  Given Mr. Christie’s party, it would have been quite shocking had he -or any of them- chosen her.

Finally, and most curiously, the only female candidate at the Republican debate, Carly Fiorina, stated she wouldn’t change the bill at all.  I’ll give her this much, that’s a very conservative answer.

So…what have we learned by this little exercise?

Hmmm….maybe….

No…

…Uh…

I have no idea.

 

24 Horrifying True Stories…

…Behind the Scenes of Huge Movies:

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1296_24-horrifying-true-stories-behind-scenes-huge-movies/

Though I was familiar with some of them (Vic Morrow and the children he held being ripped to shreds -literally- by a falling helicopter’s blades while filming a scene for the Twilight Zone film is one of those horrifying things that make you realize stuntwork within films can sometimes be a very haphazard thing), many of them were unfamiliar to me.

Perhaps one of my favorite “horrifying” behind the scenes looks can be found on the bonus sections of the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die.  The film featured plenty of stuntwork, including the very famous “jumping over a pit of crocodiles” escape bit that has to be one of the most clever cliffhanger escapes ever committed to film, IMHO…

Anyway, what horrified me wasn’t so much this stunt (which, let’s face it, required some major stones from stuntman/owner of the crocodile farm to do) but rather some of the other stuntwork present in the film.  Specifically I’m referring to those involving the car/motorcycle chase.

Again, if you’ve seen the bonus material on the Live and Let Die BluRay, you find that many of those stunts had the stuntmen doing the work with little preparation or anticipation of what might happen.  One stuntman, for example, jumped with his motorcycle into water and, as it so happened, there was coral where he landed and he banged himself up badly.  And that was just one of the stunts!

As I watched that making of material, I got the impression that the stuntmen hired to do the work within this film were told to do this or that and they just said “Sure!”, not bothering to see if the stunt was doable or if they might get hurt doing it.  Perhaps that’s the way things were back then…

A crazy, crazy business!

On being a successful writer…

Laura Miller for Slate offers the following interesting essay regarding British novelist Scarlett Thomas and the hard road to become a successful novelist:

Did Scarlett Thomas Miss Her Chance?  What Happens When Stars Don’t Align For A Gifted Novelist

I wrote a comment after this article, which I’ll reproduce here:

An interesting article, though I can’t help but wonder about the desire to hit it “big”.  With so many, many novels released in the course of a year (including my own!), if one manages to make an impression with even one of them you’re doing good, in my opinion.

Audience tastes are fickle and it isn’t too surprising that a person who hits it big with one novel sometimes doesn’t replicate that achievement with their next.  In music, this is an almost too common event (for those old enough, do you remember how popular Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill was?  Her output since that point hasn’t exactly captured audiences as well as that album, to say the least).

As I said, at least the authors mentioned in this article managed to capture the audience’s attention at one point which is certainly better than many other authors have in the course of their career.

And don’t get me started on people like H. P. Lovecraft or Stieg Larsson or Robert Howard or Herman Melville or Joseph Conrad etc. etc. etc., authors who during their lifetimes achieved minimal success yet after they died their works were suddenly red hot.

Such are the vagaries of “good” fortune!