Review – The Return of the Pink Panther

I can’t believe I’ve reviewed more than 3000 movies before getting to this one. It was one of my favorites when I was a kid, the first Pink Panther movie I ever saw. Though I admit I don’t find it as ass-laughing-off funny as I used to, it’s still a solid mix of Peter Sellers’s wonderful gift for physical comedy and a moderately entertaining caper story. Worth seeing

Review – Hugo

If a movie costs an estimated $170 million to make, is it still possible to call it a “cute little picture”? Martin Scorsese journeys ever closer to becoming one with Steven Spielberg by serving up a dish filled with childhood wonderment and special effects. However, buried under the thick sugar coating is an amusing romance about George Melies and the birth of motion pictures. Mildly amusing

Review – Rampart

Other than James Ellroy himself, who exactly is the audience for this kind of thing? Somewhere there must be a substantial market of folks who like to spend an hour or two with perpetually miserable characters in relentlessly unpleasant situations. Well, this house isn’t part of that market. Even the production values are nauseating. Dark Blue did the same bad cop routine without the “gritty reality” camerawork and editing. See if desperate

Review – No Strings Attached

My wife and I opted to watch this movie a day after learning of a death affecting someone close to us, figuring that a romantic comedy would be about as far as we could get from killing, horror or anything else not in keeping with the situation. So naturally in the first ten minutes the characters end up at a funeral. That notwithstanding, this is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from an Ivan Reitman picture in which Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play a couple who start a relationship of sexual convenience that ends up emotionally complicated. Mildly amusing

Review – The Great Mouse Detective

I watched this for two reasons: I like Vincent Price (who voiced the villain), and I wanted to see the first ever combination of hand-drawn cels and computer-generated images (however brief the latter was) in a feature-length animation. Mission accomplished on both counts. The rest of the picture was a missable mess from one of the low points in Disney’s animation quality history. Mildly amusing

Review – Mirror Mirror

I’m not surprised to find Hollywood and the SyFy Channel drawing closer together. However, I am a little shocked that the mainstream movie industry seems to be adapting its quality standards to match high band cable rather than the other way around. Though the weak, juvenile-joke-heavy script is the main culprit, the whole production has a cheap, amateurish feel to it. Odd, because I’m betting the studio dumped some serious cash into it. At least it was a light, fluffy little picture, just what I was in the mood for at the time. Mildly amusing

Review – The King’s Speech

Poor George VI (ably played here by Colin Firth). Thrust into a position he was never intended to have by his elder brother’s fondness for an American divorcée and Adolph Hitler, the new monarch must find a way to overcome his tendency to stutter so he can do the public speaking part of his new job. With the assistance of his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), he develops a relationship with a speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush) who helps him with his stammering and the underlying psychological damage that caused it. Overall this Oscar-winning drama struck me as a touchy-feely, 20th century reheat of The Madness of King George. Mildly amusing

Auld acquaintance 2012

The Grim Reapster was a busy boy this year. Notables from Neil Armstrong to Rodney King gave us pause to recall where we were when humanity first landed on the Moon or ran short in Los Angeles. The entertainment world lost a few elder statespersons, such as Andy Griffith, Ernest Borgnine and Phyllis Diller.

But the theme for 2012 appeared to be premature passing. Actors from Michael Clarke Duncan to Robert “Epstein” Hegyes sent me off to IMDb to check a feeling that the recently departed weren’t all that old. Even a life as controversy-filled as Whitney Houston’s didn’t seem like it got to run its full course. Indeed, Tony Scott almost made the official list not by virtue of his contributions to Hollywood decades ago but because his brain-cancer-prompted bridge-plummet suicide was dramatic enough that it could have been the end to one of his movies.

With due deference to the many folks who didn’t make the list, the following eight people were remarkable even in a field of respected media masters.

Ray Bradbury – You are now reading words written by me thanks in no small part to Ray Bradbury. The Halloween Tree and The Martian Chronicles were great personal favorites way back in my early years when I first began to develop the notion that writing might be a fun thing to do. As I got older I lost some of my appreciation for his sweetly sentimental view of life (not that all his stuff was sweet; “Fever Dream” still creeps me out). But I always respected his skill as a writer and his contributions to the worlds of novels, short stories, television and movies. Were I the black-arm-band-wearing sort, I would have worn one to mark his passing.

Don Cornelius – As a kid I hated Soul Train. I had no particular animosity for the music or the show’s host. But the long wail of “It’s the Sooooooooooooooooul Train!” signaled that Saturday morning cartoons were over. Though running a show in such a dreadful time slot wasn’t the height of respect from station owners, Cornelius’s creation nonetheless became one of the most successful shows in first-run syndicated TV history. Sadly, in the end Cornelius joined Scott on the list of suicides prompted by declining health.

Nora Ephron – For better or worse, Ephron’s work reshaped romantic comedy in the late 80s and early 90s. When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail helped establish genre conventions still in use today.

Donna Summer – Being known as the Queen of Disco might not seem like much of an honor now, but back in the 70s it was a big deal. Summer’s songs were the sound of an era. Without “Hot Stuff,” disco wouldn’t have been the same (and that one actually hit somewhat late in the game). Even if her music had never gone anywhere, she would still have been worth it just for her album covers.

Helen Gurley Brown – Hard to imagine a time when Cosmopolitan was at the forefront of sexual freedom for women. Lists of ways to drive your man wild in bed seem outmoded now, but in the 1960s Cosmo represented an acknowledgement that sex might actually be fun rather than just an ugly duty performed for the sake of maintaining a marriage. As the magazine’s editor and a successful book author on the side, Brown helped usher in big changes in publishing and society.

Gore Vidal – Gifted essayist. Prolific novelist. Forget all that. The man wrote the screenplay for Caligula and once came ever-so-close to getting into a fistfight with William F. Buckley on national television. What more could anyone do to make the list?

Kodak – Corporations don’t really die. But in January this former mainstay of the photography world filed for Chapter 11 protection. In February it pulled out of the digital camera business, and in August it announced that it would sell several of its remaining operations, most notably the lion’s share of its film manufacturing division. This isn’t just the passing of a company. It’s the official acknowledgment of the end of an era. Kodak dominated the photographic film business for more than 100 years, starting with George Eastman’s invention of roll film. Now Kodak’s bread and butter has joined open-air cooking and horseback riding on the list of things we might do for fun every once in awhile but don’t rely on as part of our everyday lives.

Maurice Sendak – For the second year in a row the list ends with the heartbreaking loss of a beloved children’s book author. Sendak would have been a great loss to the world even if Where the Wild Things Are had been his sole creation. But then there was Higglety Pigglety Pop! And then there was The Nutshell Library. And then there was Really Rosie. And then there was ... well, everything else he ever did. And he was actively creating new work up until right around his death. So his passing really did deprive the world of a good opportunity to be less terrible. He will be missed.

Review – The Chernobyl Diaries

Obnoxious, quarrelsome twentysomethings pay for a guided tour of the reactor-leak-ravaged ghost city of Chernobyl, where naturally they end up in a life-and-death struggle with irradiated mutants. So this could either have been an awesome use of a creepy location for a well-planned creature feature, or it could have been yet another feature-length parade of obnoxious twentysomethings quarreling with each other. Any guesses as to which path the filmmakers chose? A damn shame, too, because some of the effects shots early in the picture suggested that they could have made a good monster movie if they’d been inclined to do so. See if desperate

Review – Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Lodge

Until some kind-hearted soul makes Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Codpiece, this will have to do. Amazingly this effort is even more Jeezified than the last one, though otherwise the two productions are on par with each other. The story here left me grateful that God’s compassion is infinite, because I’d hate to imagine Jesus taking time away from healing the sick and feeding the poor just to help a woman put a financing package together so she can pay for restoration work on the family’s vacation home. A Christmas Carol this ain’t. See if desperate

Last minute shopping

Last day to participate to the fullest in the annual shopping orgy.

If you still haven’t bought a gift for me, don’t sweat it. My true love already has me covered:

12 farting Santa pillows

11 Star Trek pizza cutters

10 frog guts models

9 Tweeting collars

8 bacon wallets

7 pink machine guns

6 zombie targets

5 eyeball rings

4 Chiefs logo toasters

3 lizard phone covers

2 useless clocks

And a $2 million personal submarine.

Thanks, sweetie!

Eight media moments to watch in 2013

Let me start by confessing that my crystal ball is faulty at best. Of all the items on the 2012 list, I would have predicted few if any of them 12 months ago. Still, the following eight items deserve attention even if they don’t turn into major media moments.

The current month is likely to leave a couple of interesting points unresolved. In early December the United States backed out of talks about a new international telecommunications accord. At the outset of the consideration the terms seemed completely uncontroversial, the sorts of things that would interest only telecom nerds. But then a coalition led by Russia and China began building references to the Internet into the language. Though the accord wouldn’t have imposed an actual duty on any government to censor the net, the idea of incorporating content restrictions into a purely technical bargain rubbed the United States and several other countries the wrong way. As of this writing the deal looks dead, but it’s worth keeping an eye on. At least it’s nice to know that someone in our government understands the issues at stake.

Less comforting is the FCC’s current stance on ownership deregulation. Rumors from DC suggest that the commission is poised to further relax the rules governing how much of the country’s media markets may be dominated by a single company. The name Rupert Murdoch keeps coming up in criticism of the anticipated move, though of course Newscorp isn’t the only player that stands to benefit. So far the commission hasn’t made an official announcement, so this stands to be big starting early next year.

With the election over and politicians less immediately concerned about their popularity with voters, we need to watch closely for a brain-eating-zombie resurgence of SOPA. Recall that big media companies want this draconian crap something fierce, and folks with that kind of money generally aren’t great at taking no for an answer.

The net neutrality question will also probably continue to percolate. AT&T’s back-track on the FaceTime front feels more like a strategic retreat than a genuine surrender. I don’t know exactly where the next battle will flare up, but I nonetheless feel it coming.

A couple of media industries bear watching in the coming year. For some time now I’ve been wondering exactly when non-media corporations were going to start taking a closer look at the value of advertising. With budgets tightening and audiences migrating, I expect more and more companies are going to start asking hard question about the effectiveness of spending money on ads. I’m not predicting some sudden, momentous collapse of the entire ad industry. Still, this is an area worth keeping an eye on.

The movie industry also may be making some changes. For decades now Hollywood’s revenues have steadily increased with only a few relatively small hiccups here and there. But in 2011 the studios saw a decrease in box office receipts for the first time in years. The final numbers for 2012 aren’t in yet, but if they show continuing downward progress then we may start to see some changes.

One of the more disappointing trends to emerge during the election this year was wholesale disregard for media aimed at Hispanic audiences. Spanish-language and other Hispanic-oriented TV networks saw only a small fraction of the total money spent on campaign advertising. This was likely tied to efforts by the parties in power to prevent Hispanic people from voting (because if you can’t vote, why would anyone bother trying to talk you into voting for his candidate?). That might reflect the short-term status of this crucial demographic, but it isn’t sustainable in the long term. This segment of the population is growing too rapidly to be successfully marginalized forever. So wise media planners will monitor the growth of Hispanic-oriented media.

And finally, I’m counting the days until Google Fiber actually arrives. The company’s web site currently indicates that I can expect my fiberhood to get hooked up sometime this coming fall. Let’s hope the process stays on schedule. Because if it does, the “biggest moments” list in 2013 is likely to have at least one obvious entry.

And on that cheery note, I wish you all a happy new year.

The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #1: AT&T caves on FaceTime

Speaking of American Telephone and Telegraph, the company rounds out the 2012 list with its early December decision to cave (at least in part) on its block of FaceTime use for its cell subscribers. FaceTime is an Apple app that allows users to video chat between Apple devices (especially iPhones). Neither Sprint nor Verizon had trouble with the app, but AT&T blocked it based on the claim that users would occupy too much bandwidth.

The claim was technically questionable. Worse, the decision was barred by the FCC’s net neutrality regulations. Though a service provider could conceivably charge users extra for excessive use, it can’t block software entirely. Only Ma Bell knows for sure whether the decision was prompted by potential legal woes or the possibility of losing customers to less assholish competitors.

Review – Cleanflix

Part of this documentary is fascinating stuff. A few years ago in the conservative haven of Utah, DVD distributors and rental stores started specializing in Hollywood movies that had been re-edited to remove sex, violence and profanity. Naturally the practice raised some interesting legal and ethical questions, such as “what kind of morality makes it a sin to swear but isn’t bothered by stealing?” The serious issues get a fair treatment here. Unfortunately the picture also devotes an excessive amount of time to the personal shortcomings of Daniel Thompson, Cleanflicks store owner and convicted child molester. Hypocrites are common enough that they aren’t all that interesting. Mildly amusing

Review – Good Hair

Depilated and white as I am, I admit I never thought much about hair products marketed to black people. And yet the subject turns out to be fascinating. Chris Rock supplies wry commentary about toxic relaxer, expensive weaves, hair from India and a big styling competition in Atlanta. Mildly amusing

Review – Liquid Sky

Wow, did we ever think we were cool for liking this movie back in high school. The 1980s were a magical time. Apparently disgusted with the decadence of American culture in general and the whole Club Kids thing in particular, Russian director Slava Tsukerman cranked out this largely improvised tale of tiny space aliens who kill people at the moment of orgasm in order to extract the opiates they need to survive. The production sports a good line here and there, but overall it’s far too amateurish and arty. Mildly amusing (mostly just because I have a soft spot in my heart for it)

The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #2: Fiberhoods

In early September Google set its “fiberhoods,” the neighborhoods in KCK and KCMO that will get hooked up to the new fiber optic network. The run-up to the official announcement was exciting stuff, as neighborhoods competed first to get enough pre-commitments to meet the company’s minimums and then to get enough pre-commitments for a prime spot on the installation timetable.

The run-up was also disturbing stuff. The map on the Missouri side revealed a sharp division between the gonna-get-its and not-going-to-get-its, a literal “digital divide” running right down Troost. Faced with criticism about who would get connected and who wouldn’t, Google extended its upcoming reach to neighborhoods that likely would not have qualified on their own. That partially resolved the backbone issue, but it should keep us all mindful of the social, cultural and economic differences between those who can consume the most up-to-date digital media and those who can’t.

On the plus side, at least I now have a general idea of when I’m finally at long last going to be able to fire AT&T.

The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #3: The Olympics

The non-election half of the quadrennial Landru-commands-it festival of media mania is of course the Olympics. NBC hit a down note when it ran an ad with a gymnastics-performing monkey right after Gabby Douglas won gold, but otherwise we all had fun watching talented athletes from many countries competing at the top of their games.

Oh, wait. No we didn’t. Plug pullers like me got to see little or nothing of the Olympics. Even the stupid ad with Her Royal Majesty and James Bond failed to play properly, crapping out in the middle and leaving me to wonder why Betty Battenberg, Daniel Craig and a gaggle of corgis walking down a hallway was such a big deal.

I already griped about this when it happened, so at this happy time of year I’m prepared to let the matter rest. However, when the festivities move to Sochi in 2014, I’m going to be quite put out if Comcast’s atavistic self interest deprives me of my beloved biathlon coverage.

Review – Clerks

I loved this the first time I saw it. Of course back then I was a little less distant from the “customer service” phase of my own life, so perhaps I found it easier to empathize with some of the things the protagonist endures. Though I still laughed at my favorite lines and still enjoyed the general sense of absurdism, this time around I was less tolerant of the production’s many weak points. Perhaps now I just know too much about what became of Kevin Smith after he made this. Mildly amusing

The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #4: Gangnam Style

 This video came out in July. By my presentation in November, it was the number two video in YouTube history, rapidly gaining on Justin Bieber. As of this writing, it’s now number one by a substantial margin and likely to become the first video in YouTube history to get more than a billion views.

Its immense popularity has a few lessons to teach us about media in the 21st century. First, it reminds us that our media marketplace is global. One of the few things the United States exports more than imports is media products. And here we have a piece of K-pop fluff surpassing sophisticated efforts from big record companies.

The source is also significant. South Korea tends to live in the giant media shadows of Japan and China, so PSY’s success at least got the world to recognize that Korea exists. A big part of the video’s popularity comes from viewers throughout East Asia.

Except Japan, where it seems to be more of a “meh.” Anti-Korean racism aside, the Japanese may be forgiven for their luke-warm reaction to the whole “Gangnam Style” thing. After all, Japan has been producing weird goofiness like this for decades. PSY’s magnum opus (op-op-op-op-oppa Gangnam style! damn this thing gets stuck in my head) isn’t particularly different from literally thousands of Japanese animations, music videos and other pop culture offerings.

And that’s the real million-dollar question: what makes a video that isn’t really much different from a lot of other videos suddenly catch on and “go viral”? This drives Big Media nuts. In most other realms, they’ve got success formulas all worked out. They know what makes a blockbuster movie turn a huge profit. They know which singers are going to sell tracks and get airplay. They know what works and what doesn’t in just about every medium. Sure, sometimes they guess wrong. But they’re right often enough to maintain their considerable profit margins.

But not with stuff like this. There’s no apparent formula for raising a PSY out of peninsular obscurity and selling his performance to hundreds of millions of people. This lack of predictability makes web-based media one of the most interesting things going on now and an area to watch closely in the future.

Review – Assassin’s Bullet

A State Department factotum falls in love with a belly dancer who is actually an English teacher slash Manchurian Candidate who kills terrorists and ... okay, I admit it. I lost interest in this thing early on and just let it run for background noise. So at least it was fairly noisy. See if desperate

Review– Trek Nation

Thank goodness for a documentary about the whole Star Trek thing that doesn’t spend the lion’s share of its running time mocking the show’s more unusual fans. Unfortunately, in exchange we have to put up with a lot of mooning from Gene Roddenberry’s son about his sometimes-rocky relationship with his famous father. Celebrities – connected and unconnected – wax rhapsodic about the shows. The production is a little short on actual information, but it was still a nice trip down other people’s memory lanes. Mildly amusing

Review – The Adventures of Tintin

Like The Spirit, Tintin entered and exited my life when I wasn’t yet old enough to appreciate its distinctive nuances. Fortunately for people like me, though there seemed to be a thing or two here that only a devotee of the comics would truly appreciate, for the most part this was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get bit of brainless action cinema. This is also director Steven Spielberg’s first foray into computer animation. His work reminded me of the heady days of the 1990s when amateur speakers first discovered the fancy transitions in Powerpoint. Suddenly everything is about what the technology will do rather than what makes for a good production. The result is video-gamey, which is a shame to see from a veteran director working with plot- and character-intensive source material. Mildly amusing

Review – The Desert Rats

Billed as a follow-up to The Desert Fox, this picture features James Mason only briefly and as more of a villain than in the earlier, Rommel-centered movie. An English officer (Richard Burton) leads a unit of Australian commandos during the extended siege of Tobruk. As war pictures go, this is par for the course. Mildly amusing

The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #5: Penn sues The Star

Last year The Star fired Steve Penn, a columnist for the metro section. Penn had worked for the newspaper for more than 30 years, which made the termination seem odd at best. However, the editors’ allegations were damning: they said Penn had been copying sentences and paragraphs from press releases, pasting them into his stories and passing them off as his own work.

News folk have always had an uneasy relationship with press releases. In an ideal world, a reporter would start with a press release from an outside source (company, government agency, charity, etc.) and – convinced of the story’s newsworthiness – use it as a springboard to go out and find her own facts and quotes. Someone lazier – or more pressed for time, if we want to give this practice a positive spin – might use quotes directly from a press release, provided of course that the source was clearly identified in the story.

Back in my days working PR, I heard stories about newspaper folk doing what Penn did. In fact, I heard about some reporters who copied entire releases, stuck their bylines on them and passed the whole thing off as their work. At least Penn didn’t go that far. Still, what he did was bad enough, a clear violation of the ethics we all learned in J-school.

If the firing had been the end of the story, it would at best have been one of the Eight Most “That’s Just Sad” Media Moments of 2011. But then Penn put the mess on this list by filing a wrongful termination suit in June. His most disturbing allegation was that he shouldn’t have been fired for plagiarism because what he did was common practice at The Star and in the newspaper industry.

Though I hate to see a big media company get away with firing someone who worked for it for decades, I hope he loses his suit (or at least wins it on grounds other than his “common practice” argument). I’d really hate to see him successfully prove that news writers everywhere are parroting corporate spin rather than going out and gathering the news. As if the newspaper industry isn’t already beset by enough trouble. The last thing it needs right now is erosion of confidence from the few readers it has left.

Review – Witness for the Prosecution

If you love ever-so-British courtroom drama, you’re in the right place here. Charles Laughton plays a curmudgeonly defense lawyer who takes on an apparently impossible case. His client (Tyrone Power in his last movie) seems like he might have an outside chance until his wife (Marlene Dietrich) takes the stand. But the twists keep a comin’ just as one might expect from an Agatha Christie story. Though this isn’t my usual cup of tea, I got a kick out of it. If nothing else it was fun to watch Laughton fussing with his nurse (played by the actor’s wife, Elsa Lanchester). Mildly amusing

Review – The Wild Geese

I loved this movie when I was a kid. Now it seems more to me like a silly, over-sentimental view of who mercenaries are and what they do for a living. Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Roger Moore slum (well, okay maybe it isn’t so much slumming for Moore) as out-of-work ex-soldiers hired to free a political prisoner from the clutches of an African dictator. The morality compass points just about every possible direction as the story plays out. But if you can put your indignation on hold, there’s some moderately entertaining action sandwiched between the simple-minded plot developments. Mildly amusing

Review – The Crucible

Many years ago my wife and I first met in a high school production of this Arthur Miller classic, so I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the play. But that only goes so far. This film version is badly infected with scenery-chewing celebrities, particularly Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. Perhaps they should have aimed this at Broadway where such play-it-for-the-back-row performances would have been more at home. Acting aside, the story remains a poignant portrait of the potentially evil effects of mass hysteria. Mildly amusing

The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #6: Political ad files on the Internet

Once every four years we can all count on two big media moments: the Olympics and the election. On the latter front, most of the public’s attention focuses on attack ads. “They’re awful. Everyone hates them. Why do the candidates even run them? Still, what are ya gonna do?” Collective shoulder shrug.

But one of the biggest moments on the political ad front went largely unnoticed, taking place months before the non-stop onslaught got underway. In April the FCC ordered broadcasters to make their political advertising files available online.

By virtue of their use of the public airwaves, broadcasters are subject to a lengthy list of regulations that don’t apply to other media. In the realm of political advertising, broadcasters are required to accept ads from candidates and run them at the lowest rate available. Stations must keep records of all such ads and make the records available for public inspection. The new twist this year was the requirement that the records be made available via the Internet.

The National Association of Broadcasters challenged the change in court, but the suit went nowhere. Now anyone can go to the FCC’s web site and find out exactly how much each campaign is paying each TV station. Of course a lot of advertising – such as ads from pressure groups – isn’t subject to the rules. But at least now it’s possible to track at least some of the doings on the airwaves without a trek to broadcasters’ offices.

The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #7: The death of SOPA

Congress kicked off 2012 with a couple of eerie efforts to smother free speech on the Internet. The version in the House was called the Stop Online Piracy Act, and the Senate’s was the Protect Intellectual Property Act. Of course the two versions differed in some details, but the main idea was the same: extend copyright “protection” well beyond the already-generous boundaries established by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (a.k.a. The Mickey Mouse Protection Act) more than a decade ago.

The Mickey Mouse law was bad enough, but this pair were plain crazy. They would have introduced the principle of “guilty by accusation,” allowing big media companies to run crying to the federal government and get entire sites shut down based on a simple claim of copyright violation. The edges of the law’s protection are fuzzy enough – particularly in the realm of the fair use exception – to require proper adjudication, not censorship based on mere suspicion.

But more interesting than the proposals themselves was the reaction to them. Big Media (with Disney and Time Warner in the lead) lobbied hard, but they found themselves up against Big Internet (particularly Google). And worse, they faced a sudden groundswell of grassroots opposition from Internet users. After a 24-hour protest that blacked out Wikipedia and several other popular sites, legislators turned tail and removed the bills from consideration.

That alone made it a big moment. How often do you see Congress pay attention to anyone other than lobbyists?

Review – Tinker Bell

At least she finally gets to speak. According to the notes on IMDb, this was a real nightmare in production, plagued by so many false starts and other woes that Disney considered abandoning its straight-to-DVD division altogether. And that’s odd considering that there isn’t all that much to this. It’s a cut or two above the whole Barbie Fairytopia thing, but still nowhere near what one would expect from the studio that pioneered feature-length animation. I also had trouble watching it because of my constant dread of the moralistic teaching points inevitably incorporated into children’s entertainment. As usual, the message was mixed. I liked the acknowledgement that girls can grow up to be designers and engineers, but the notion of predestined “right things” for people to do was harder to swallow. Mildly amusing

The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #8: The Media Survival Guide

Last month I did an Academic Symposium at the college where I work. The subject was the eight biggest media moments of 2012, and my goal was to cover things that might have gone unnoticed by people who don’t follow the media for a living. Many of the things the communications industry gets up to behind the scenes have a strong influence on our daily lives as consumers. I decided to do the events in chronological order, which I admit led me to lead off with the most self-serving item on the list.

In January 8sails officially released the Media Survival Guide. I wrote the bulk of the text while on sabbatical in the fall of 2011, and in the spring the guide underwent a largely successful “beta test.” In the summer I added a downloadable PDF and a Kindle edition. In the future I hope to release it as an iBook and on the web in a format customized for mobile devices.

Based on the “bite-sized learning” model, the guide is designed for easy reading in smaller chunks, customized for students who need to study in short bursts between other activities (such as during a break at work). If a particular topic happens to pique the reader’s interest, she can delve further by exploring the links at the bottom of each page.

Amazon makes me charge 99 cents for the Kindle version, but everything else is available free of charge, a considerable savings over the $80 or so the textbook publisher charged for the textbook I used to use for my Intro to Mass Comm class. And that’s the real importance here. In the old publishing world, creating a textbook was a costly proposition requiring students to pay the substantial costs of production. Now content is key and distribution is free (or near enough to free that publication costs don’t have to be passed along to those least able to pay them).

I’m not ready to proclaim “behold the future of textbook publishing” just yet. Too many people (professors and publishers alike) are still making too much money for this new approach to learning to instantly catch on. But at least now such a thing is possible.

Review – Beauty and the Beast (1991)

The end of this story always breaks my heart. If she falls in love with the Beast, why does he have to turn into a handsome prince? Why can’t he just be who he is? Further, this picture came out at an awkward time in movie history. Disney was trying to make the transition away from princesses who wait helplessly for their princes to arrive and toward a more reasonable portrayal of women. It kinda works, but then it kinda doesn’t. Of course it didn’t help to start with the screwed up sexual politics of a story about a monster who changes and becomes a good man because a woman loves him. It seems like setting up a generation of girls with abusive relationships with monsters who just get worse because now they know they can get away with it. On the other hand, the musical numbers are cute. Mildly amusing

Review – Alice in Wonderland (1951)

“Alice in Wonderland / How do you get to Wonderland / Over the hill or under land / Or just behind a tree.” I hadn’t seen this movie since I was a kid, and for years I’ve been convinced that I misremembered the words to the opening theme song and substituted simple-minded nonsense the way kids sometimes do. But no, those are the real words. Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories supply Disney’s artists with plenty of fuel for the vaguely hallucinogenic fantasy stuff popular with animators in the 1950s. Do I even have to mention that this was extremely popular on college campuses in the 60s? Mildly amusing

Review – The Medalion

The forces of darkness – personified as a smarmy Englishman – are after a child with magical powers. Enter a do-gooding hero to lay down some fearsome kung fu and save the day. Did I accidentally re-watch The Golden Child? Oh, no. That’s Jackie Chan, not Eddie Murphy. Mildly amusing

Review – Rites of Spring

I got lured in by the promise of something supernatural waiting in store for some kidnappers. Sadly, the picture wears out its welcome well before it gets to anything spooky (assuming it ever does). After half an hour or so of listening to women scream and cry as they’re tortured by their attackers, I’d lost pretty much all my interest in whatever redeeming qualities the movie might possess. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Amityville Curse

The curse must go something like this: “For now and forever, let all movies with ‘Amityville’ in the title have nothing at all to do with the original tale of demonic house possession. Instead, may they all be cheap attempts to market moronic ghost stories. So mote it be!” See if desperate

Review – Alexander the Great

I’m beginning to think that they could have cast Richard Burton in a movie about Batman fighting Godzilla and it still would have come out boring. At the very least they might have considered making more than half the film about Alexander’s conquests rather than his Byzantine battles with his father. It doesn’t help that this is one of those movies that should have been an epic except they didn’t have the money for the cast or the extras or the sets or the effects. The inevitable result is an empty-looking production that screams “a cast of dozens.” See if desperate

Review – Pocahontas

This story is obviously by its very nature problematic. However, at least it represents a step in the right direction for Disney, acknowledging the existence of awkward issues such as racism and the environment. Unfortunately, such serious themes lead the production far afield of the simple fun Disney specializes in. The animation is also sub par for the studio, looking Rotoscoped, over-simplified and cheap. And though this isn’t the movie’s fault, it’s hard to listen to Mel Gibson begin a conversation with a woman without silently praying that he’s sober. Mildly amusing

Review – Jaws of Satan

“Mess o’ Snakes” is more like it. In the guise of a large cobra, Satan invades a small town and starts dishing out the bites. The result is half Exorcist-inspired pseudo-theological horror and half venomous snake thriller. Somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Christina Applegate fans may enjoy her first-ever screen appearance as Girl Who Gets Bit by a Snake, but keep your eyes open because if you blink you’ll miss it. See if desperate

Review – Sand Sharks

I’m not too surprised to learn that Jaws 2 and Tremors hooked up, but I’m a little disappointed to learn that the union produced such an ass stupid child. The monsters here aren’t actual sand sharks (which are cool and scary and thus could never have been the villains in something as deliberately awful as this). Rather, they’re CGI (if it isn’t an insult to computers to use the term for such creations) sharks that swim around in sand as if it were water. Realizing that they were incapable of making something good, the producers of this flop opted for farce. The result stops just short of having the beasts tempt their victims with offers of Candygrams. See if desperate

Review – The Muppet Movie

I hadn’t seen this since I was 13, and in the intervening decades I’d forgotten how many celebrity cameos and musical numbers it featured. The former was a welcome surprise, the latter not so much. The cameos were something like meeting up with old acquaintances missing for years because they died (Madeline Kahn), retired (Mel Brooks) or just aren’t as funny as they used to be (Steve Martin, whose brief performance here is one of the highlights of the movie). The songs, story and dialogue are suffused with Jim Henson’s twee, dated sense of optimism. Still, it’s a fun little picture. Mildly amusing

Review – Airborne

The last flight out before a hurricane closes the airport. A mysterious package. A gun merchant and his thug bodyguards. War criminals. Art thieves. Sinister government agents. An ancient curse. A skyjacking. Demonic possession. Mark Hamill. And really that’s just a quick start on a list of all the junk packed into this movie. To the surprise of no one (other than perhaps the folks who made this mess), the result is a chaotic crowd of subplots that never fully develop because they keep stepping on each others’ toes. And that’s a shame, because with a little more breathing space some of the twists and turns might have made for a decent story in a general Twilight Zone groove. Mildly amusing

Review – Grease 2

How did this movie not kill Michelle Pfeiffer’s career before it even got started? She must already have been cast for Scarface before this stinker hit theaters. And frankly “stinker” sells the experience well short. I imagine someone at Paramount saying something like “hey, the first one wasn’t much more than dumb dialogue and musical numbers. Let’s just make another one of those. The formula’s so simple, even the choreographer from number one could direct it.” Not surprisingly, the notes on IMDb are peppered with phrases such as “unfinished script” and “difficulties with the cast.” Still, even a well-orchestrated production would have been unable to squeeze entertainment out of plot lines and songs so thoroughly bereft of humor, charm or any other redeeming quality. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Dead Season

Ladies and gentlemen, here we have the cutting edge of horror filmmaking. The geniuses who cooked this up are truly the masters of innovation. They start with the premise that some calamity has brought the dead back to life as flesh-eating zombies, leaving a small band of survivors struggling to make their way in a dangerous new world. And to avoid the smothering influence of the studio system, they shot this on the cheap with bad production values, using their friends rather than professional actors. How did they ever come up with such a brilliant, creative movie? Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Jennifer 8

If you’re gonna spend a lot of money on a serial killer thriller, it has to have some kind of twist. Here the value-added element is that the guy specializes in blind women. A neurotic cop (Andy Garcia) becomes obsessed with the case and the killer’s probable next victim (Uma Thurman). The picture tanked at the box office (taking Bruce Robinson’s directing career with it) doubtless due in no small part to the distinctly non-linear plot. See if desperate

Review – Party Monster

Seth Green and Macaulay Culkin seem to be having a ball prancing around the screen as stereotypical gay guys from the 80s. If only “fun to shoot” translated into “fun to watch.” I haven’t yet seen the “shockumentary” about James St. James and Michael Alig, so for all I know this could be an accurate portrayal. But even if it’s spot-on, it still comes across as broad caricature. The whole Club Kid thing had some influence on popular culture, so it’s a shame this movie makes it look like the highlight was drug-addled homicide. See if desperate

Review – The Hole (2009)

It’s nice to see Joe Dante back in the director’s chair. To be sure, this isn’t exactly his finest hour. The tale – kids discover a doorway to evil in their basement – depends far too heavily on tricks borrowed from other movies. Still, it’s a straightforward piece of storytelling that relies on plot and character development rather than special effects, splatter and suffering. Plus it was just fun to watch, as opposed to the chores one finds with many 21st century horror movies. Mildly amusing

Review – Raising Jeffrey Dahmer

Here’s a point of view you don’t get from every true crime slasher movie: the parents’ perspective. This production follows Lionel Dahmer – father of the title killer – as he weathers his son’s bizarre behavior and eventual notoriety. To the extent that the picture follows anything at all, that is. In true amateur style, the filmmakers mash flashbacks and poseur conceits together as randomly as if the editing had been done by picking shots out of a hat. Thus they transformed what should have been a fascinating, fresh perspective into a barely edible burgoo. See if desperate

Review – Out of Sight

I admit Elmore Leonard’s charm eludes me, so I suppose devotees of his clever-ish crime dramedies may get more out of this than I did. Or maybe not. True to the author’s style, this picture supplies capers aplenty and dialogue crammed with a certain low cunning. But even a die-hard fan would be hard pressed to endure the extended trapped-in-a-car-trunk-together exchange of riposte between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. See if desperate

Review – Hidden

I’m not exactly sure where this goes wrong, though the script is my strongest suspect. The premise is interesting enough: a scientist uses bug venom to make addictions physically manifest themselves as tumor-like objects that can be surgically extracted. But when the things begin to grow outside their hosts ... well, then unfortunately the story falls apart, turning into yet another run-of-the-mill stroll through an abandoned hospital in the company of annoying 20-somethings. Production values are fine, the acting is fine, but the plot wanders all over the place. Mildly amusing

Review – Mommie Dearest

I’ve seen this a time or two before this week’s viewing, and in the past it always struck me as a delightful farce, a masterpiece of scenery-chewing excess. However, this time around it bothered me at least a little. Faye Dunaway’s portrayal of Joan Crawford is completely out of control. Even Crawford’s supporters admit she was an alcoholic, and if her daughter’s account is to be believed she was also the victim of a nasty case of OCD and may also have suffered from bipolar or borderline disorder. Though her mental illness might make her a poor target for broad comedy (even given the general presumption that celebrities are fair game for most anything), it doesn’t excuse child abuse. And that’s the central problem here. “Wire Hanger Kabuki Demon” sounds more like a Japanese game show than a serious treatment of a serious problem. I could see sympathetic treatment of an actor destroyed by mental illness. I could see a skillful condemnation of her behavior. I just can’t see this inept trivialization. See if desperate

Review – The American Scream

Yet again a documentary team turns an eye on yet another subculture of obsessives. This time around it’s the folks who turn their yards into haunted houses for Halloween. We get a mix of three protagonists – the nerd, the good ol’ boy and the mildly mentally ill guy – with different approaches to their craft. But all of them have two things in common: too much time on their hands and too much space available to store their set pieces and props for the other 11 months of the year. Still, their creations are interesting, occasionally bordering on artistic. As obsessions go, this beats spelling bees or crossword puzzles. Mildly amusing

Review – Lockout

The problem with Me First and the Gimme Gimmes’ cover of “Sloop John B” by The Beach Boys is that it leads off with an homage to “Teenage Lobotomy” by The Ramones. The Gimmes’ song is fine, but it tends to leave me wondering why I’m not listening to The Ramones. Likewise I spent most of this movie wondering why I wasn’t watching Escape from New York (or at least Escape from LA). The time’s a little farther in the future, and the place is a space station rather than a repurposed metropolis. Otherwise it’s the same rebel commando prison rescue routine. A lavish effects budget and an addiction to ill-conceived quips doesn’t make for a better picture. Mildly amusing

Review – Treasure Island (2012)

Short of moving the show to outer space, this production does just about everything possible to make Robert Louis Stevenson’s story interesting. And still it comes up short. Long John Silver (Eddie Izzard) is recast as the anti-hero of a class warfare tale, set against a greedy, arrogant Squire Trelawney. The fun parts of the tale are still fun, and if this had been cut down to 90 minutes or so it might have been a good picture. Unfortunately the time demands of a two-part miniseries pack the plot with far too much filler. Mildly amusing

My eight favorite Thanksgiving movies

Thanksgiving lacks movies. Halloween? Plenty. Christmas? Oh please. But the holiday in between doesn’t have a clear cinema tradition other than the common practice of fleeing family gatherings for the relative peace of the movie theater. So let’s remedy this injustice. The holiday is about three things: gratitude, togetherness and eating. So at this festive time of year let’s get together and be grateful for movies about eating.

Specifically, movies about people eating people. I’m not trying to do the whole vegetarian “imagine the turkey was you” thing (though it is at least something to think about). It’s just that movies about cannibals tend to be more fun than movies about gourmets. To keep things simple, this list excludes people-eating zombies (after all, as Dr. Millard Rausch pointed out in Dawn of the Dead, “They don’t eat each other”). I don’t care for Italian shock movies from the 1970s, so the list also omits that particular sub-set of the cannibal sub-genre.

Still, that leaves us with a lot of movies to pick from. Especially these eight:

Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Rough as it is, this is still the ultimate “country folk will eat you” picture. Loosely based on the crimes of Wisconsin cannibal Ed Gein, this movie will leave you with at least a scrap of doubt the next time you eat a hot dog, sausage or any other kind of mystery meat.

Something from the Ed Gein list – Speaking of the Butcher of Plainfield, Gein has served as the inspiration for many a movie, some better than others. In keeping with the theme, I suggest one of the productions that sticks closer to the true story (Deranged or Ed Gein) rather than the looser, classier adaptations (Psycho and Silence of the Lambs).

The Hills Have Eyes – The Web tells me someone made a movie directly based on the exploits of Sawney Beane and his cave-dwelling, cannibal family. However, IMDb doesn’t have a listing for it, which suggests that it hasn’t been released yet. While we’re waiting, we’ll just have to be content with The Hills Have Eyes, a Beane-inspired desert romp directed by Wes Craven.

Motel Hell – It does indeed take all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters. You’ll be a huge hit at the family dinner table if you volunteer to say grace and then offer up “meat’s meat and a man's gotta eat!”

Parents – Most of the rest of the movies on this list assume that cannibalism is something you encounter only if you’re foolish enough to venture outside the safety of the suburbs. This entry brings the threat right into the wholesome family kitchen. And of course Thanksgiving leftovers can’t help but bring one mindful of the “leftovers to be” line from this movie.

Sweeney Todd – I didn’t want to go the whole list without one big budget production. And what would the holidays be like without musicals? Needless to say, the list of big-budget musicals about cannibalism is fairly short.

Ravenous – In honor of the Thanksgiving myth about the Wampanoag generously (if foolishly) sharing food with the Pilgrims, the last two entries feature the Wendigo. According to Algonquian legend, anyone who eats human flesh risks becoming possessed by an evil spirit that brings with it a horrible hunger that can never be satisfied. This picture pits the monster against a small band of soldiers on the 19th century frontier.

“Skin and Bones” – If you’re watching this whole set as a Thanksgiving Day marathon, then by now you’re probably ready for something shorter and lighter. This episode from Fear Itself meets the short requirement, but it’s by far the creepiest entry on the list.

Review – Parents

If you don’t already have some kind of food-related childhood trauma, you will by the time you’re done watching this. Further, if you’re on the border of going vegetarian, this might be just enough to push you over the edge. Here the ultimate childhood fantasy fear – that your parents are secretly some kind of monsters – comes horribly true. Normally I don’t care much for the stiff, mopey, ponderous mood of indie movies, but here it actually contributes to a delightful sense of strangeness and menace. Worth seeing

Review – Mega Piranha

Because sometimes at the end of a long week you just have to shut your brain off for awhile. Let it cool down. Reboot. When that’s where you are, The Asylum has your back. Weaponized piranha take over the Orinoco, getting larger and larger as they swim downstream. By the time they hit the ocean, they’re as big as houses and completely comfortable in salt water. I genuinely respect former pop princess Tiffany for her attempt to stay in the public eye, but the rest of the cast is missable. As is the script, direction and just about everything else here. Put this on your viewing list only if you seriously need to go for an hour and a half without firing a single synapse. See if desperate

Review – The Pact

Buried somewhere under a giant pile of indie film crap lies the potential for a good horror movie. Certainly the house haunted by a malevolent force thing has been done to better effect elsewhere, as has the serial killer with a creepy nickname and MO (however Boo-Radley-gone-bad it might be here). Sadly, any chance this picture had of scaring, entertaining or not sucking in any way is undone by filmmakers desperate for admission to the IFC club. The result drips with minor key piano plinking, extreme close-ups and a host of other bargain-basement “art” conceits. I found the sound work particularly hard to take, especially the cliché trick of inspiring a sense of menace by playing a relentless, low-pitched humming noise. Oh, and the scene that blared dreadful music so loud that I had to hit the mute button, thus missing some of what I assume was key dialogue. See if desperate

Review – Werewolf: The Beast Among Us

Not for the first time (and probably not for the last), I find myself wondering why productions like this bother trying to come up with plots. Just assume that the audience has come for the werewolf, and don’t feel like you need to bother so much with the non-mysterious mystery about who the shape-shifter secretly is or why he’s targeting this particular town. Or if you do feel the need to tell as story more sophisticated than “once upon a time a monster ate a bunch of people the end,” go ahead and come up with a good one. See if desperate

Review – Coma (2012)

I’m not sure a reboot or remake or bootmake of the original movie was strictly necessary, but here it is anyway. As not exactly unusual with miniseries plots, this story seems to have a lot of unnecessary filler (not to mention fading big-name stars in supporting roles). Still, the basic story is the same: a doctor discovers that a center for coma patients is secretly using them as an organ donation bank (among other things). The new version packs a lot more “thrilling” chase crap, and it lacks the simple creepiness of bodies suspended in midair by thin wires. In other words, this isn’t terrible but the first one was better. Mildly amusing

Review – Red Scorpion

What a shame all the production hassles didn’t manage to shut this thing down before they finished shooting it. In the wake of the whole Rambo thing, the Reagan 80s spawned a slew of cheap action movies with jingoistic conservative plots. In this go-around Dolph Lundgren plays an evil Spetsnaz operative sent to assassinate an anti-communist guerilla leader in Africa. Abandoned by his cruel taskmasters and befriended by the indigenous population, our “hero” goes to work for the forces of truth, justice and the American way. If only Lundgren didn’t look quite so much like a living, breathing Tom of Finland cartoon, this would have been a little easier to take seriously. Not a lot, but a little. See if desperate

Review – Dark House

The old evil-possessed house shtick gets a cyber twist (and yes, I meant to use a term as trite as “cyber”). A neurotic acting student seeks an excuse to return to the title location, where she had a bad experience as a child. Fortunately (or ultimately unfortunately) for her, a professional haunted house attraction designer needs actors to escort a couple of critics through the hologram-intensive show he constructed in the eponymous spot. Do I even have to tell you that the terror scenes eventually go from computer-generated illusion to deadly reality? See if desperate

Review – Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

“Tales from the Mopey Side” is more like it. The first segment in this set of three (plus bracket) is a reasonably entertaining take on “Lot 249” by Arthur Conan Doyle. The other two spots are considerably more mediocre, more depressing than spooky despite their supernatural underpinnings. And production-value-wise, this is very much the kin of the George-Romero-produced TV series that spawned it. Overall this is a cut or two above the average horror anthology piece, but that’s a fairly low standard of comparison. Mildly amusing

Review – Spliced

The “movie within a movie” here is actually more interesting than the main plot. A high school student who suffers from severe nightmares doesn’t exactly help her cause by going to see the latest slasher picture. She walks away afflicted by visits from the movie’s cliché villain: a supernatural stalker who finds fiendish ways to grant whatever wish might accidentally escape the protagonist’s mouth. The bad guy’s M.O. of slashing his victims with broken glass shards stuck to his fingers is way too Freddy Krueger, and the rest of the production follows suit. See if desperate

Review – The Town

Boston native Ben Affleck directs and stars, leaving me wondering if people from his hometown really do live the criminal mook stereotype lifestyle Hollywood ascribes to them. The picture sports solid production values but suffers greatly from the assumption that armed robbers who menace working folks and kill law enforcement officers will naturally appeal to audiences. Affleck plays a typical poor-boy-criminal-just-looking-for-a-way-out who falls in love with a bank employee kidnapped during one of his crew’s heists. My interest waned after only 40 minutes, so thank goodness the thing didn’t go for its original four-hour running time. Mildly amusing

Review – The Evil One

I came here for the premise: the evil spirit of Herman Mudgett (better known to the world as H.H. Holmes, creator of the notorious “murder castle”) haunts Englewood, his old Chicago neighborhood, now largely lower-class African American. The set-up provided all kinds of potential to explore Holmes’s psychosis or at least make some points about racial inequality. Instead, incompetence smothers any chance this picture has of doing anything other than wasting nearly two hours of the audience’s time. See if desperate

Review – Albert Fish

For an exploitation documentary about a perverted killer, this isn’t half bad. Most of what I’ve read about the notorious child murderer focuses on his most famous crime: the kidnapping, slaying and eating of Grace Budd, the deeds that seated him in the electric chair. But this production delves deeper into the rest of his criminal career and some possible explanations for his behavior. Though I could have gone for the whole rest of the day without gazing upon the visage of Joe Coleman, I found the rest of the picture professional and informative. Mildly amusing

Review – The Oblong Box

The Oblong Bore. The premise is simple Poe, typical skulduggery about burial alive, grave robbers and the like. Even the nonsense about the protagonist’s disfigured brother might have been okay if handled differently. Unfortunately, this picture gets packed with far too much baggage to successfully find its way to its destination. The result is an experiment in wasted time, a relentless parade of supporting characters engaged in pointless pursuits with obscure motivations. And of course there’s the business with the brother’s mask: spending so long being so coy about what the red cloth hides guarantees disappointment no matter how good the makeup turns out to be (and in this case it ain’t great). What a pointless squandering of Vincent Price and Christopher Lee. See if desperate

Review – H.H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer

I admit to a fascination with H.H. Holmes’s notorious “murder castle,” a building designed to facilitate its creator’s practice of killing people and dismembering their bodies. But even though I liked director John Borowski’s later work on a similar piece about Albert Fish, I found this production wanting. The only interesting part about the Holmes story is his building. Beyond that he’s just another con artist slash serial killer, neither the last nor the first America would ever suffer (despite the title’s claim). Sadly, this relatively short picture spends far too much time on the more mundane parts of the killer’s career. Mildly amusing

Review – Cabin in the Woods

Leave it to Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard to find a way to put a new spin on worn-out horror movie clichés. I ignored this when it was in theaters, guessing that it would be yet another tale of twentysomethings butchered for the high crime of venturing out of the city. But recently I got so desperate to see a horror movie with any kind of production values that I added it to my Netflix queue. I’m glad I did. The reflexive twist to the old tale had a certain Watchers-watching-Watchers quality, but it was still clever enough. I also liked the nearly-Lovecraftian nature of the underlying threat. Overall the picture does a great job of putting a new edge on some of the genre’s tired old saws. Worth seeing

Review – Red Lights

They got the budget. They got the cast (Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver and Robert De Niro). They even had a good premise: fraud-debunking scientists run up against a legendary psychic known for using telekinesis to harm his enemies. Yet somewhere around an hour in, this production began to annoy the hell out of me. Perhaps I was just in a crabby mood, but every little thing – from screeching feedback to ringing phones – turned the experience into a matter of endurance rather than entertainment. It didn’t help that the filmmakers opted to bet the farm on the final surprise twist, a decision that left them farm-free. Mildly amusing

Review – Brüno

After Borat, I was expecting something more biting and less Zoolander. Sacha Baron Cohen gets up to his usual tricks, playing a foreign character who pulls outrageous stunts. And every once in awhile he strikes a legitimate social nerve. But for the most part “dumb Austrian gay guy” isn’t that funny a shtick. See if desperate

Reveiw – Tomorrow, When the War Began

Looks like someone down under really likes Red Dawn. This actually doesn’t fare too poorly in comparison to John Milius’s great contribution to civilization. Some mysterious foreign power invades Australia, allowing the plot to partially side-step the geopolitical awkwardness of a named aggressor. The teenagers who form a werwolf unit and go to war are considerably more life-like than the Wolverines. That’s a plus and a minus. They’re more likable, but they also spend more time with typical 21st century teenage banter and bickering. Overall this is an entertaining if not particularly realistic action picture, not to mention an obvious set-up for a sequel or even a series. Mildly amusing

Review – The Legend of Bloody Jack

Sounds like the sort of thing you’d want to see a urologist about. And if you’re about to chastise me for being stupid and nasty, my poor attempt at humor has nothing on this poor attempt at filmmaking. From the start the production telegraphs its dreadfulness by setting up camp in northern Alaska where in the summer the sun never sets (i.e. they don’t have the equipment or lights to shoot at night). Then it bets the farm on the theory that a Jeep cap, bandana and axe make your antagonist the next Freddy Krueger. This picture systematically violates just about every reality check I have to offer low budget horror folk. If all that isn’t enough to talk you out of this experience, then feast on the description from its IMDb listing: “The legend of Jack the Ripper comes to real when one of his descendants revive him.” Sic. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Paranormal Activity 3

I’m developing a grudging affection for the whole “found footage” deal. Typically these pictures have trouble maintaining logical consistency, and sadly this effort is no exception. But at least they tend not to rely so much on gratuitous gore or pointless boob shots. Some even sneak a few genuine chills in between dull domesticity and flimsy booga boogas. I could have done without all the kid threatening served up here, but otherwise it was a reasonably good specimen of the sub-genre. Mildly amusing

Review – Jackboots on Whitehall

This is like Thunderbirds meets Marwencol meets some crappy English sitcom. If you’re a big fan of British puppet adventures for boys or winking references to other movies (especially the Lord of the Rings set), then this tale of an alternate-history Nazi invasion of England may be your cup of tea. Beyond that, it squanders a stellar cast on a script that never rises much above low cleverness, sort of an anglicized watering down of the harsh vulgarity of Team America World Police. Wildly amusing

Review – My Bloody Valentine (1981)

I’ve watched this thing twice and the remake once, and all either of them does for me is inflict an ear worm of Chet Baker singing a perverse twist on an old Rodgers and Hart tune. Question: what the hell does any of this have to do with Valentine’s Day? Yeah, the deranged killer is out to avenge some crap that happened on Feb. 14. Yeah, he cuts out human hearts, stuffs them into candy boxes, tosses in doggerel-infested cards and leaves them for people. Beyond that, however, the main action takes place in a coal mine. Could any setting be farther removed from pink lace and roses? I don’t see a slasher picture this dumb actually trying to be ironic, so I’m going with “tried to surf the whole holiday-specific horror flick thing spawned by Halloween and figured this might work better than Labor Day.” See if desperate

Review – The Hunger Games

I liked this better than I thought I would. But then I assumed I was going to hate it – as I often do with over-hyped blockbusters – so liking it more than I thought I would isn’t exactly the same as liking it. For anyone reading this review sometime in the glorious future when it’s once again possible to not know anything about the whole Hunger Games thing, it’s set in a dystopian society that forces its districts to send children to die fighting in the eponymous contest. To the picture’s credit, it keeps up a decent pace and manages to make some relevant points about media hype and disregard for the value of human life. Still, it covers little ground not already trampled by The Running Man. By using kids, however, the show overplays its hand and moves from poignant to slightly ridiculous. Mildly amusing

Review – Boggy Creek

When I was a kid, I was way into the whole Boggy Creek monster thing, due mostly to the classic “documentary” about the creature. Honestly, that was the only reason I decided to give a chance to what looked like yet another parade of stupid twentysomethings falling victim to a monster/slasher/whogivesacrap. The beast looks like Saruman bred Orcs with Ewoks. Even so, the creature’s greatest fault is that it can’t kill the witless, whiny “heroes” fast enough to make this a shorter ordeal. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Pawnbroker

This works better as a piece of film history than as a film. In the early 1960s the American movie industry found itself hampered by its own production code and increasingly unable to compete with films from European market. This Sidney Lumet production was the first to successfully petition for code exception in order to show a brief nude scene. It’s also one of the first movies to take on the horrors of the Holocaust. It’s also Morgan Freeman’s big screen debut in an uncredited role. Unfortunately the picture itself is hard to watch. Rod Steiger plays the title character, emotionally killed decades earlier by the Nazis but still going through the motions of running a pawn shop in one of the seedier sections of New York City. Though the concept had potential, the French New Wave aesthetic, laconic plot, theatrical dialogue and discordant Quincy Jones score thoroughly spoil the experience. See if desperate

Review – Idiots and Angels

Though I really loved some of Bill Plympton’s earlier work, I really didn’t love this. It’s the dialogue-free story of a jerk who abuses everyone and everything around him until one morning he sprouts wings. His new appendages allow him to fly but prevent him from being an asshole. The picture has some of the animator’s trademark quirky humor, and the soundtrack sports a couple of Tom Waits songs. Beyond that, however, the picture rarely rises above lowbrow religious allegory, which scarcely justifies such a large dose of mean and depressing packed into 75 minutes. See if desperate

Review – These Amazing Shadows

The National Film Registry is yet another example of a government arts project kinda working. Film is an extraordinarily fragile medium, easy prey to mold, decay and flame. Even the negatives of big, modern movies such as The Godfather have fallen victim to studio neglect. Enter the Library of Congress to establish a bureaucracy to help preserve these vulnerable cultural treasures. The registry has done some great work since its inception in 1988, and its prouder moments are recognized in this documentary. But subject to the whims of public pressure, it has also enshrined some work of less obvious merit. Still, the registry puts a publicity-savvy face on the library’s worthwhile conservation efforts, and this documentary does a solid job of conveying the importance of the work. Mildly amusing

Review – The Phantom of the Opera (2011)

This is a recording of a live performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical at the Royal Albert Hall in celebration of the show’s 25th anniversary. I’ll bet fans of the musical will absolutely love this, particularly the encore in which the original Christine sings with no less than five Phantoms from various stagings. However, I felt about this more or less the same about this as I did about the 2005 Hollywood version. Mildly amusing

Review – Little Deaths

Perhaps if I was more impressed with kinky sex I might have gotten more out of this trio of horror shorts. The lead-off piece is the best, because a couple of rapists get a grim come-uppance (though first we have to sit through a brutal rape). The second – some mess about medicine made from monster semen – spits on the concept of logical plot development. And the third must have been deliberately to annoy, because it did such a great job of it. Sex and horror should be easier than this to combine. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Man Who Laughs

Every time I see this, my heart goes out to poor Conrad Veidt. In order to play Gwynplaine, whose face was permanently cut into a hideous grin, the actor had to wear a dental appliance with hooks that held his mouth in the proper position. Fortunately his sacrifice was worth it. No doubt thinking about a previous success, Universal served up another Victor Hugo tale of a physically-deformed-yet-kind-hearted hero. Though the story is more than a little melodramatic, the acting more than makes up for the weak plot. Worth seeing

Review – Terror’s Advocate

Back when I was a lawyer, I knew folks who shared Jacques Verges’s general outlook on life. They were a big part of why I gave up the profession. Verges and his ilk are consummate egoists, feeding their own sense of magnificence by seeking acquittal for criminals who don’t vaguely deserve it. Indeed, the more monstrous the client the sweeter the victory. Though even the likes of Ilich “Carlos the Jackal” Ramirez Sanchez and Klaus “The Butcher of Lyon” Barbie are entitled to competent legal counsel, Verges revels in a job that oughtn’t to be done with glee. Still, his life might have made an interesting documentary. The money trail connecting fanatics on all sides of the political spectrum might also have been movie-worthy stuff. Sadly, Barbet Schroeder swiftly loses himself in his own maze and slowly meanders around in it for more than two hours. A director with his experience has no excuse for disorganization that drains the life from what should have been a much better production. See if desperate

Review – The Devil’s Hand

Bad script (some kind of nonsense about a devil cult that uses voodoo dolls to maim and kill people). Bad acting (the high point: hey, isn’t that the guy who played Commissioner Gordon on the old Batman TV series?). Bad production values (cheap, flammable sets and a total overdose of lounge music). This thing barely claws its way up from Ed-Wood-level filmmaking, and yet it’s still better than most of the camcorder crap infecting the market now. See if desperate

Review – Lovely Molly

This indie horror picture introduces an interesting new element or two. If nothing else, the couple beset by a haunting are working class – a truck driver and a custodian – rather than the usual collection of suburbanites. It also sports some unusually graphic sex; I was a trifle surprised this got an R rather than a dreaded NC-17 from the MPAA. Beyond that, sadly, not much. Vengeful spirits. Childhood abuse memories. And worst of all, an unreliable narrator (and all the plot problems that entails). At least it didn’t turn out to be the “found footage” mess the pre-credits footage made it look like. Mildly amusing

Review – Apartment 143

More “found footage.” More ghost-hunting. More families with dark secrets. Yay. The folks who made this picture must have taken a “How to Make a Horror Movie” class, paid rapt attention during the “booga booga” lecture but then skipped or slept for the rest of the semester. A handful of the shock shots supply a thrill or two, but the plot, script and characters are pure crud. Even the good moments are offset by the copious use of annoying racket such an endlessly ringing phone, that buzzing noise you get in your ears sometimes, and general cacophony. See if desperate

Review – The Tall Man

The folks in distribution went out of their ways to make this look like a supernatural slasher movie, which it most certainly is not. Normally I wouldn’t fault a filmmaker for the misdeeds of the publicity department, but writer/director Pascal Laugier spends the first half of the movie conveying that same false impression. So when it turns out to be an uneven blend of hillbilly melodrama and grim meditation on poverty and child abuse, the new angle meets with a cold reception. Pick a movie and make it. Or at least do a better job of mixing genres. See if desperate

Review – Exit Humanity

For some time I’d been tempted to give up on blends of the horror and Western genres. Then The Burrowers gave me reason to hope. Well, abandon that all ye who enter here. The filmmakers shot for a cross of The Outlaw Josey Wales and George Romero, but what they got was more Jonah Hex dumbed down into an idiot-with-a-camcorder zombie picture. Dee Wallace must be desperate for cash or simply doing someone a favor to show up in witless, low-budget gunk like this. See if desperate

Review – Trumbo

Famous blacklist victim Dalton Trumbo gets the sentimental celebrity treatment. Aside from an unseemly digression about masturbation, the documentary focuses almost exclusively on the writer’s role in the Hollywood Ten and associated HUAC witch-hunting. Several movie stars – some of whom worked on Trumbo pictures and some of whom didn’t – read passages from the writer’s personal correspondence, which of course gave the whole thing a sense of currency and importance it might otherwise have lacked. Normally I tend to regard that as a cheap tactic, but here I’m willing to overlook it. Considering the current political climate, 21st century audiences could stand to be reminded about the risks of letting intolerant idiots run the government. Mildly amusing

Great moments in theology #5

 

Judging by the art on this billboard, what else might Christ be up to on your behalf?

1. He smelled a bad smell for your sins
2. He took an algebra test for your sins
3. He ate a day old pizza with anchovies for your sins
4. He smoked a doob for your sins
5. He filed an amended return for your sins
6. He stood in line at the DMV for your sins
7. He watched three Bruce Willis movies back to back for your sins
   

Seriously, was this ad really created by the Roman Catholic Church? C’mon, guys! You have the world’s single most awesome art collection – including at least two or three pictures of Jesus – and this is the best you can do?

Review – Barbarella

Journey back to the wacky days of 1968, when the “sexual revolution” gave the movie industry free reign to revel in sexuality worthy of a adolescent boy who just discovered masturbation. Jane Fonda hops merrily through an endless string of absurd perils and skimpy outfits in a realm of psychedelic sets and flimsy plot twists. Watching this movie stoned would likely lead to either the best or worst trip of your life, though either way would still be better than watching it sober. See if desperate

Review – The Grudge 3

The creepy Japanese ghosts are still up to their creepy ghost business. Now they’re slowly (and I do mean slowly) making their way through a mostly-deserted apartment building. Other than some creepy ghost stuff, there isn’t much to this at all. Mildly amusing

Review – Midnight in Paris

I wonder if it’s possible to make an entire feature-length movie out of nothing but clever moments. Woody Allen comes really close here. A discontented writer (Owen Wilson) finds himself transported to Paris in the 1920s, where he gets to pal around with literary and artistic greats. Overall there’s some kind of point about living in the real world rather than becoming obsessed with fantasy. But the real draw isn’t the sitcom plot as much as the small touches. My personal favorite was the protagonist feeding the plot for Exterminating Angel to Luis Buñuel, who’s having none of it. That took me back to my film school days! Mildly amusing

Review – The Best Years of Our Lives

More than six decades later this tale of three vets home from the war is powerful stuff, so I can only imagine the impact it must have had back in 1946. Fredric March, Dana Andrews and Harold Russel play three guys having varying degrees of trouble readjusting to civilian life. March resumes his everyday job at a bank and suffers from what nowadays would be diagnosed as minor depression complicated by alcoholism. Andrews battles nightmares, swallows enough of his pride to go from Air Force officer to drug store counter help, and falls out of love with his wife and in love with March’s daughter. But Russel outshines them both as a former sailor learning to live without hands. Russel was an actual disabled vet facing the same challenges as his character, and his lack of slick Hollywood pedigree helped him bring an impressive honesty to the role. Despite a touch of the melodrama typical for the time, this still stands as one of the best movies ever made about the difficulties service members can face. Worth seeing

Review – Silent House

So now we’re stuck with shaky-cam even in movies that don’t follow the “found footage” formula. In 15 minutes a woman finds herself trapped in a deserted house, and in 20 I quit caring why she was there or how she might escape. Based on the ham-handed plot structure, this promised to be either a Scooby Doo (uncle trying to drive his niece insane) or a hallucination (niece is already insane). I won’t spoil the twist for you just in case you’re inclined to spoil it for yourself. See if desperate

Review The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Morgan Spurlock takes on product placement in movies with a production that aspires to be Super Size Me but falls way short. The gimmick this time is that he’s trying to get corporate sponsors to give him money to make the documentary we’re now watching. Ever so briefly he makes a solid point about sponsor interference in the creative process. But overall he left me wondering why I should care about movie characters drinking a particular soda or driving a particular car when the money from a placement deal might make the difference between seeing a movie I want to see and missing it because it never gets made. Mildly amusing

Six shots or only five?

Several days later, the Clint Eastwood speech at the Republican National Convention is still bugging me.

At first the whole talking-to-an-empty chair thing was just bewildering. Apparently an imaginary Barack Obama heckled Eastwood throughout his rambling, incoherent speech, repeatedly telling him to shut up. That by itself would have been odd, as I can’t say as I’ve ever heard the President tell anyone to shut up. I suppose he’s done it, but it seems more like Bill O’Reilly’s thing.

Far more chilling was the spirit of Ralph Ellison invoked by the stunt. Black people have gone from not being seen when they are there to being seen when they aren’t. That’s a funny kind of progress.

Overall the experience just made me sad. I’ve enjoyed Eastwood’s work in the past, even admired some of it. But here he was clearly trotted out by the GOP with the cynical supposition that no matter what he said, his remarks would still serve as a rallying point for the party faithful. Mission accomplished. I posted a dig on Facebook about the difference between Eastwood’s notion of who owns America and what the Constitution says on the subject. It drew an “I liked his speech” from an acquaintance who sports hunter orange in his avatar photo.

The most telling moment: when even Eastwood wouldn’t stoop to uttering the line for which the crowd so deeply lusted: the Reagan-co-opted line from Sudden Impact. Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle raised the only question worth pondering about this legendary moment: why the hell would a handful of heavily-armed criminals just sit there gawking while Dirty Harry reached into his jacket to draw out his trusty hand cannon? “Do 50 bullets in your ass make your day?”

Do you feel lucky? Well do you, RNC?

Review – Adult Entertainment: Disrobing an American Idol

Not that we really needed it, but here we have another hour and a half worth of proof that there isn’t anything productive to say about pornography. The folks who create it come across as sleazy, and the folks who hate it come across as puritanical fanatics. The producers try to add some gravitas by stirring in a test of porn’s effects on a couple of average mooks, but even by the looser standards of the behavioral sciences this experiment is packed with artifacts. The result doesn’t exactly qualify as interesting. Mildly amusing

Lesson learned

If you want to hear from a lot of people on Facebook, you needn’t bother with cute pictures of your kids, links to your favorite web sites, funny videos or fuzzy kitties. Just say something mean about a candidate.

A remark Mitt Romney made during a recent speech set me off, so this is what I posted:

“Hey Mitt Romney, here's a citizenship test for you: does being born in Michigan automatically make you a U.S. citizen even if one of your parents was Satan and the other was a jackal? I don't want to see your birth certificate, Mitt. I want you to shave your big, stupid, rubbery head on live TV to prove that you don't have a triple-six birthmark.

“Congratulations, jackass. You just made me decide to vote in November. I know the electoral college keeps you safe from the likes of me. But now I'm going to vote against state and local Republicans as well, something I might not have done if not for your birther crap. Keep up the good work.”

So as I expect you’ve gathered from that, the “birther” stupidity really pisses me off. Romney just made it worse by helping de-marginalize it.

Mass media nexus: this rant drew more feedback than anything else I’ve ever put on Facebook.

More from Ma Bell

Speaking of AT&T, here’s the potential fruit of its latest dissatisfaction with the amount of money it makes:

When I posted a link to Freepress’s petition to the FCC on Facebook, the whole mess brought me mindful of those ancient days of yore when the Justice Department actually tried to do anything about monopolies. Seriously, didn’t this noise get broken up back in the 1970s? And now here it is again. This thing is like a T-1000. There’s no point to busting it into a thousand pieces, because it’ll just put itself back together and come after us again.

Review – The Pentagon Papers

This made-for-cable version of Daniel Ellsberg’s biography indulges in just about every possible Vietnam-related cliché. Ellsberg (James Spader) starts as a pro-Domino-Theory enfant terrible working for the Rand Corporation. But personal experience with the horrors of war and lies spun by the Departments of Defense and State thrust him into the hippie camp, motivating him to leak the notorious Pentagon Papers. Once the papers hit newsrooms and the fecal matter hits the air circulation device, the story gets interesting. Sadly, that’s the last half hour of an otherwise dull repetition of A Bright Shining Lie, Path to War and every other disillusioned-with-Vietnam movie ever made. Mildly amusing

Review – Outbreak: Anatomy of a Plague

Though this is the usual pseudo-apocalyptic gloom and doom about humanity’s continuing vulnerability to killer plagues, this one has a creative twist. It’s two stories in one, a series of re-enactments of a 1891 smallpox outbreak that devastated Montreal combined with speculative drama about the possible effects of a similar epidemic in the 21st century. Though the show is a little light on the hard epidemiology and a little heavy on the germs-are-scary stuff, overall it’s a good mix of medicine and entertainment. Mildly amusing

Review – Ghost Bird

In 2005 naturalists announced the rediscovery of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, thought to have been extinct for decades. The news caused a boom for the economically-depressed corner of Arkansas where the sighting supposedly took place. Sadly, the sightings went unconfirmed, and eventually the furor died down. This documentary explores the various aspects of the controversy, from bird-watching tourism to scientific integrity to competition for government funding. The movie could have been shorter and might have featured fewer false endings, but overall it was good stuff. Mildly amusing

Review – Pinochet’s Last Stand

This is a made-for-cable dramatic retelling of the events surrounding Augusto Pinochet’s arrest and detention in England in 1998. Derek Jacobi does a solid job as the ailing mass murderer. If only the story had a happier ending. Mildly amusing

It’s a beautiful day in the fiberhood

This post commemorates our neighborhood’s achievement of the minimum number of pre-registrations for Google Fiber. So now it’s official. When the company starts installation, we’ll get hooked up.

Oddly, it isn’t even the prospect of an internet connection 100 times faster and more reliable than our current arrangement. It’s that long-cherished dream that someday, if I was pure at heart and said my prayers by night, I’d finally get the opportunity to fire AT&T.

Because I don’t just hate AT&T. I hatey hatey hatey hate AT&T. Hate it so much that flames out the side of my face, burning ...

Well, you get the picture.

Review – The Big Uneasy

Harry Shearer serves up a documentary about the mistakes that helped turn Katrina into such a colossal mess. In its better moments it’s a fairly interesting story of government incompetence and indifference to the lives of poor people. However, it frequently strays into less fascinating subjects, such as New Orleans residents carping about how they don’t get any respect. Mildly amusing

Review – Catching Hell

On more than one occasion I’ve found myself wondering exactly why people in general and sports fans in particular have such a powerful need to fix blame on one particular person. I admit I’ve been known to play the scapegoat game myself, but not to the extent that Red Sox fans blame Bill Buckner for the 1986 World Series loss and Cubs fans heap hate on Steve Bartman for messing up a catch in the 2003 NLCS. This ESPN production covers both incidents – though the emphasis is on 2003 – pointing out that in both cases multiple problems led to the unfortunate losses. And in both cases the losing team had a whole other game to stage a comeback. The documentary goes on long enough that eventually it stops making fresh points, but it still raises some good questions about baseball fans and disappointment. Mildly amusing

Review – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Oddly enough, I liked this one a little better than the first one. I still think Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey Jr. and martial-arts-intensive action form a Venn diagram of three circles that don’t touch. But just because they don’t work together doesn’t mean they don’t have their moments separately. In this go-around Holmes squares off more directly against arch foe Professor Moriarty, trying to foil a plot to corner the armaments market and start a war in Europe to drive up demand. Mildly amusing

Review – Small Town Gay Bar

For the most part this is a pleasant little documentary about a couple of small bars in rural Mississippi that cater to gay, lesbian and ally crowds. Though it isn’t earth-shaking stuff, it’s at least nice to have a reminder that not everyone in the isolated corners of the country conforms to redneck stereotypes. Sadly, right in the middle of the movie the filmmakers drop in a mess of footage of Fred Phelps. So even in a documentary that has nothing to do with the Westboro vermin, we still have to look at them. That alone knocked the picture’s rating down a level. See if desperate

Review – The World Without US

Even after sitting through the whole thing, I'm still not quite sure what to make of this movie. The premise is simple enough: what would happen if the United States withdrew its troops from its bases in other countries and stopped committing forces to solving problems around the world? Bad stuff, apparently. But it was hard to get a handle on exactly what agenda the picture was advancing. The Video-Toaster-circa-1994 aesthetics suggested neo-con Christian apocalyptic screed, but that turned out not to be the case. The analysis of our inaction in the Balkans suggested we should be more interventionist, but then the part about Iraq implied that we spend a ton of money to provide economic advantages for European and Chinese companies. The parts about South Korea and Taiwan were even stranger, advocating our continued presence and support of strong economies capable of their own defense. As if we wouldn’t be capable of massive retaliation against Chinese aggression even without a permanent U.S. presence in the region. I’m not saying ambiguity is a bad thing. I’m just saying it was a surprise coming from a production that looks like this. Mildly amusing

Review – Jackass 3D

After the second one, I almost took a pass on this outing. I’m actually kinda glad I didn’t. Some of the stuff in this one was actually, genuinely funny. Of course it helped to keep a finger near the fast forward button for anything that looked like it was going to make anyone puke. But the parts we didn’t buzz were entertaining, occasionally bordering on clever. And for the record, no I didn’t watch it in 3D. Mildly amusing

Review – Inkubus

A demon (Robert Englund) worms his way into a police station to play deadly tricks on the cops and other occupants. Gore and boredom ensue. See if desperate

Review – The Last Remake of Beau Geste

Marty Feldman stars in and directs this send-up of the ultimate French Foreign Legion storyline. The result lies somewhere between Mel Brooks and the English sense of humor best known to American audiences in the form of Monty Python. Though it has a few clever moments, it has just as many “yeah, that didn’t work like you thought it would” gags. On the other hand, I thought this was hysterical when I was a kid, so maybe I’m just not the target audience anymore. Mildly amusing

Review – Asylum (1972)

Peter Cushing? Patrick Magee? Herbert Lom? An insane asylum? Must be another dreary British horror anthology piece. This one sports a number of familiar faces, including Charlotte Rampling and Brit Ekland as her homicidal imaginary friend. Though some segments are weaker than others (an unfaithful, murdering husband pursued by his wife’s brown-paper-wrapped body parts?), overall this was reasonably entertaining. Mildly amusing

Review – A Haunting in Georgia

This ghost story takes the form of one of those supernatural-themed shows from the high band cable channels. Trouble is, they re-create the presentation format a little too closely, frequently re-using footage and making the same points over and over. I wavered between seeing this as a clever, low-budget riff on the ghost show and an inept, low-budget attempt to tell a weak ghost story. By the time they started stirring in a bunch of ambiguous theology toward the end, I started leaning toward the latter. Mildly amusing.

Review – Mothra

The great peril of this movie is getting the “Mothra” song stuck in your head. Beyond that, this is strange even by giant Japanese monster standards. The beast begins life as a big, ugly caterpillar. While I concede that having your city destroyed by a caterpillar would kinda suck, somehow it just doesn’t stack up against radioactive dinosaurs. Even when it transforms into a giant moth, it still isn’t as scary as ... well, something that isn’t a moth. Still, the picture spawned one of the key figures in the giant Japanese monster pantheon. Mildly amusing

Review – Flight of the Intruder

According to the trivia on IMDb, director John Milius calls this one of his worst movie-making experiences. I’m assuming it must have been trouble on location or something, because the final product is the same kind of two-fisted macho stuff he’s famous for. During the Vietnam War, an A6 pilot (Tom Berenger substitute Brad Johnson) and his bombardier (Willem DaFoe) decide they’ve had enough of attacking meaningless targets, so they hatch a plot to hit a missile cluster hidden in Hanoi, much to the chagrin of their commanding officer (Danny Glover). The third act gets mired down in uninteresting search-and-rescue drama, but the rest of the picture is a reasonably good war movie. Mildly amusing

Review – The Undying

Let me begin by admitting that I watched this mostly to see how Robin Weigert would do in a starring role. Otherwise I would most likely have skipped anything resembling a romantic ghost movie. The acting was a cut above the dreadfulness I was expecting based on the reviews on Netflix (and just for the record, other critics: if you thought the acting was bad in this, you haven’t seen many low budget horror movies). But the story proved to be as dull as I’d feared. A doctor living in a haunted house supplies her pet ghost with a recently-dead body to inhabit. The tale doesn’t begin to take a dark turn until nearly halfway through, and just about everything before and after is completely predictable. Mildly amusing