Superhero costumes in film…

…could it be the porn parodies do a better job of translating superhero costumes to the screen?

See for yourself:

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2015/04/08/nsfw-parody-costumes-that-are-better-than-the-movies-2843418

The only problem with the article is that they assume anyone who reads it already knows what the comic book characters look like on the page and therefore can judge which version, porn parody or movie version, more adheres to the original comic book look of said character.

So, for those not so familiar with the comic book versions, these two of six of the examples stuck me as where the porn parody versions more closely adhered to the original comic book looks:

First up, Scarlet Witch, as presented in the comic books:

Scarlet Witch in porn (left) versus the way she’s presented (right) in the upcoming Avengers movie…

Rogue, as presented in the comic books…

And in porno (left) versus in the X-Men movies (right)…

As I said before, these two, to my eyes, were the clearest examples of the six presented showing that the porn parody versions honored the original “look” of the characters more than the “legitimate” film versions!

About that ESPN reporter berating the Tow Truck Company clerk…

It’s been in the news for a couple of days now, the vicious, insulting statements ESPN reporter Britt McHenry made against a tow truck company clerk when she went to retreive her towed vehicle…

Ouch.  Amiright?.

Seems the entire internet has turned on Ms. McHenry, offering some choice words regarding her behavior and comments.

So, you think I’m going to pile on?

Nope.

In fact, while I cannot condone her words, I feel sympathy toward her and her situation.  Further, based on my own experiences with tow truck companies, I can completely understand why she blew her top.

You see, when I”m not writing I work in a high density area where tow trucks are an ever present constant.  As a business owner, you have a love/hate relationship with these companies.  On the one hand, you appreciate what they do.  On our property, there have been innumerable times when cars have illegally parked in our parking area.  Sometimes the offending parkers don’t realize this area is our space and when you point it out to them, they’re quick to move their vehicle and offer apologies.

Sometimes, however, they know very well what they’re doing and/or are rude to you when you point out their illegal parking and ask them to leave.

Sometimes, the very worst of times, someone illegally parks in our lot and we don’t realize this until we find that one of our legitimate vehicles is blocked in.  If the legitimate vehicle’s owner has an urgent meeting or needs to get out quickly, the illegally parked vehicle -and nowhere to be found owner- can create a big problem for us.

In cases like these, I’m pleased I have the option of calling a tow truck to remove the illegally parked vehicle and free the blocked-in vehicle.

But though I appreciate the tow truck services in this case, I’ve seen enough cases and read enough stories -some reaching the local news- of predatory towing to make me very uncomfortable with their business.

I don’t know all the details of Ms. McHenry’s towing situation.  I don’t know the hows or whys of her vehicle getting towed.

But I can completely understand -if not condone- her anger.

Cheap Trick should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…

…or so argues Annie Zaleski for Salon Magazine.

I’ve heard this argument in support of Cheap Trick before but I’m somewhat torn.  I think the band made some very good music but there are others still not in the Hall of Fame that I personally feel are more deserving of entry.  Music is, after all, nothing more than about one’s personal taste!

This then is a list of musical acts so far not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame:

http://www.futurerocklegends.com/The_Snub_List.php

Looking over the list, I feel there are many (in fact most!) of these acts should be in the Hall of Fame.  I’ll mention a few below that struck me as particularly egregious in their not being in the Hall.  Note that many of these picks represent bands I DO NOT have ANY of their songs on my Hard Drive.  But it is impossible not to acknowledge their influence to music in general:

The Carpenters – as with Cheap Trick I’m not a huge fan, but it is undeniable how popular they were in their heyday.  Sure they could be considered shmaltzy today, but there’s something about Karen Carpenter’s voice…

The Cars – A group I’m quite fond of.  They had a unique new wave sound and plenty of hits.

Def Leopard – Another band I don’t really care all that much about.  But, again, for many years they released a spate of very popular songs and, even though I’m not a fan, feel they should be in the Hall.

Depeche Mode – Have several of their albums, am a fan.  They have a strong list of hit songs and are certainly deserving of entry.

The Doobie Brothers – Not a fan of their music.  In fact, whenever one of their songs comes on the radio I move on to another station.  Having said that, they were a very big act and their music is clearly very popular with many.

Iron Maiden – Have a few of their albums but don’t consider myself a terribly big fan.  Having said that, they are certainly a very popular band worldwide.

Journey – Don’t stop believing… When I was in high school, I really liked their album Escape (which had that song).  Apart from that album, I never was a huge fan of the group but, again, they created some very popular music.

The Moody Blues – Again, not a huge fan but they’ve created some really solid work.

Siouxie and the Banshees – Am a BIG fan of their music.  Very big fan.  They’ve created some wonderful songs and should be in the Hall.

Man, I really like tnem.  Here’s another:

T. Rex – A strange omission.  Again, not a huge fan of T. Rex but there is no doubt they blazed a trail that many, including David Bowie, would follow.

Yes – Another band I’m not a huge fan of, but they’re not in the Hall yet?!?

So there you have it.  Again, I’m not trying to slight any of the many others on the list.  In fact, many -perhaps even most!- of them could easily be on this brief list.  But why repeat the whole thing?

As they say, your mileage may vary.

What Do People Love Today That May Not Hold Up In The Future…?

Fascinating question posed by the folks at i09.com (you can read the article here).

This being essentially an “open ended” question, the meat of the matter lies in the responses following the article itself, which posited that the insanely popular (at least at this point!) TV show The Walking Dead may not age all that well over time.

I found the very first response the most interesting: that the Marvel Cinematic Universe may not age all that well.

Let me go one better: It is often the most popularly watched/read/listened to items when they are originally released  that are in most danger of fading with time.  In part, this is due to oversaturation.  There will come a point, though probably not with the new Avengers film that’s about to be released, when the magic found in those films will suddenly be gone.

There was a time I watched The Simpsons religiously.  In fact, I thought it was the best comedy show on TV, period.  I watched the first five or so seasons, mostly with delight, but then something happened and from that point on I haven’t been willing to see an entire episode of the show at all.  Basically, I had my fill of The Simpsons and didn’t want or care to ever see it again.  And those early episodes that delighted me so?  I have them on DVD.  I have yet to re-watch any of them.

Will the same happen to the Marvel Universe movies?  Frankly, I think it is already happening to some degree.  Already a consensus is emerging on what the “good” Marvel Universe movies and what the “bad” ones are.  I, for one, didn’t find Iron Man 2 as bad as most people felt it was.  And yet, I don’t see myself seeing the film again.  One the other hand, I enjoyed both Thor films when I watched them, yet I don’t see myself revisiting either film in the future, either.

Another reason something very popular today may not be so popular tomorrow: Generational taste.  If there’s one thing I’ve come to realize over time it is that each generation has their own interests and sometimes they have little to no interest in what came before.  In part this could be due to changing attitudes. Perhaps it is also an issue of generational identity.

When I was a child, the novels of Harold Robbins were all the rage with adults.  His books usually featured sweeping generational stories loaded with (at the time) frank, graphic sexuality.  Perhaps it was nothing more than this sexuality (which may be considered tame by today’s standards) that brought the readers in.  Regardless, his books sold in the millions and a mind-boggling ten of them were made into movies and/or TV mini-series.

Yet by the 1980’s, it seemed to me that Mr. Robbins’ red-hot books were suddenly not as popular.  Mr. Robbins died in 1997.  By that time, I suspect very few remembered who he was.  Today, I doubt there are many younger readers out there who have any idea at all who Harold Robbins is.

So we return to the question at hand: What work that people love today will not hold up in the future?

As with everything, time will tell.

City of the Living Dead (1980) a (very) belated review

Though I wouldn’t consider myself a huge fan of cult horror director Lucio Fulci, I do admire several of the films he directed and, if not always the end results, the concepts he was trying to present to audiences.

Arguably his two best known horror works, Zombie (1979) and The Beyond (1981) were nightmarish tales set in what appeared to be a dream/nightmare landscape.  Continuity between sequences wasn’t always strong, but there were images and concepts that kept you tuned in and creeped out.

Arriving between these two films was City of the Living Dead (1980).  The prolific director actually made four films (one was a mini-series!) between both Zombie and The Beyond, but this is the one I had available to me and this is the one I saw.

What I found most fascinating about City of the Living Dead (I’ll refer to it as CLD from here on to save on my typing) is that this film is effectively a waypoint between Zombie and The Beyond.  Elements of those two better known films can be found in this one, even if the end results aren’t, to my eyes, quite as good.

I’ll pause here for a moment to state the following: Watching a film like CLD today is not the same as watching it when it was originally released in 1980.  I suspect the much younger me would have been blown away by the gore and nastiness to be found in this film, not unlike I was for Phantasm (1979), released at roughly the same time.

But here’s the thing: Certain films age with time, and what was once a potent piece of action/suspense/comedy/horror/etc. does not resonate as it once did when removed from the era it originated.

So it is, sadly, with CLD.

This film, like The Beyond, finds the director very much working in a H. P. Lovecraftian horror setting.  Unlike The Beyond, this worked in spurts, though especially during the film’s opening sequences and its later half.

The story goes like this: A priest in the town of Dunwich walks the town’s graveyard one dark and foggy night.  He ultimately ties a rope to a tree and his intention is made clear: He’s going to hang himself.  Meanwhile, in New York, a seance involving Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl) psychically links into what the priest is about to do.  Mary watches in increased horror as the priest puts his neck around the rope and then commits suicide.  The suicide causes Mary to have a seizure.  She falls to the floor and, when the others in the seance check her out, they think she’s dead.

Mary’s body is taken away and ultimately is about to be interred.  Peter Bell (Christopher George) a reporter interested in this case, stops by the graveyard where Mary is being laid to rest.  But the psychic isn’t dead and her screams bring Peter to her rescue.

Once out of the grave, Mary tells Peter that the suicide of the priest has opened the gates of hell and, by All Saints Day just a few nights from then, the dead will walk the Earth and wreak havoc.  Peter is skeptical but agrees to take Mary from New York and in search of the mysterious town of Dunwich, a place not even maps list (besides, we’re in the days before smartphones and GPS).  If Mary is right, their goal is nothing less than to stop armageddon.

For a horror concept, it’s not too bad, right?

Thing is, the film’s low, low budget and pace start to work against the overall product.  Given that we’re dealing with the very end of the world, its weird how few people we see before the screen.  And when our heroes arrive to Dunwich it would appear that town is populated by a total of something like eight people (and by the end of the movie, half of them are zombies).

Even with such a small cast, we nonetheless have sequences involving ancillary characters that never quite connect with the quest of our two leads, including the fate of a strange Dunwich citizen by the name of Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice).

What I ultimately came away with in watching CLD was, as I said before, that this is a film the passage of time hasn’t been kind to.  Even now I could appreciate what the director and actors were attempting to do but I never felt the horror and dread I suspect my younger self watching the film at the time of its release might have felt.

On the other hand, I really liked the movie’s plot and concept.  In an era when too many “big” films of the past are being remade -often very badly- CLD, to my eyes, is a prime candidate for a proper modernist reworking.  It’s story is simple yet intriguing and with the right talent could easily be a modern horror classic.

City of the Liviing Dead is certainly worth a look if you’re a fan of Lucio Fulci.  Others may want to check out Zombie or The Beyond first.

A sign of the times…

Perhaps one of the best known/watched TV shows today is HBO’s Game of Thrones.  This past weekend, as they are wont to do, HBO offered a “free” weekend of viewing for those who don’t have the cable station as a way to give them the premiere of this season’s Game of Thrones (it aired Sunday).  Of course, the free “taste” of the fifth season of this show is intended to get people to, hopefully, subscribe to HBO.

But even before that first episode aired came news that the first FIVE episodes of the fifth season had already leaked and were available to be downloaded at various pirate websites:

http://gizmodo.com/nearly-half-of-game-of-thrones-season-5-just-leaked-1697305966

As I said in the heading, this is unfortunately very much a sign of the times.  If you have anything that is popular and desirable, be it music, movies, books, and, yes, TV shows, chances are good you’ll find pirate copies of them available online.

And that’s too bad.

While shows like Game of Thrones no doubt earn their investment dollars many times over, the fact is that not all works of art and their creators/investors are as fortunate.  Piracy, even in small amounts, hurts the bottom line.  While there may be those who illegally download something and later on legally pay for the same product, there will always be some percentage of these people who get material illegally and for free and do not bother to pursue it any other way.

One of the great concerns I have today is that artistic creations have become dangerously devalued.  There are great and powerful industries out there that create wonderful machines that allow you to see and experience artistic works (smartphones, computers, tablets, etc.) and as consumers we’re willing to pay sometimes big money to have the latest of these items…yet the things the machines allow us to see/hear -from music to movies to books- are for the most part unprotected.

You have the latest iPhone or iPad or Samsung or HP computer, etc. etc. and with them you can go to assorted websites and illegally download a movie/music/book/etc. you want to see.  Sometimes, this movie/song/book hasn’t yet been formally released!

The end result, I fear, is that the ease with which people can get these items creates a sense the act of creating them didn’t involve much actual work.  I’ve noted before the weird (to me) idea that authors “shit out” their books in their free time while and during the rest of the hours in the day pursue a life of fun and leisure.  This concept has been exacerbated by TV shows such as Murder She Wrote and, more recently, Castle.

I fear this idea is permeating other creative fields.  Coming up with a song/album?  Come on, how hard can that be?  Drawing a 22 page comic book?  Shouldn’t take more than a day, right?  Writing a story?  Can’t take much more to create it than it does to read it.

Even worse, there are those who know creating such works takes time and effort and they just don’t care.

If I work somewhere -from a Wall Street office to a McDonalds- eight hours a day for two weeks, at the end of this time I expect to get a check for my work.  With artistic creations, you may do the very same time and work just as hard and for just as long…and your hard work can then be taken from you, posted online, and whatever monies you might have made are now subject to that loss.

I’m not saying anything anyone out there shouldn’t know already.

Piracy is, at least as of now, a sad reality of life.  Perhaps in time there will be a way to more securely protect your artistic works so that they don’t end up pirated online.

Or perhaps there will never be a way of doing this.

Regardless, the irony is that the people who will ultimately be hurt by this are the consumers.  The Beatles took years to practice their trade and be properly paid for their work until they were able to create some truly memorable songs and albums.

Somewhere out there might be a band that, with time, might have become just as good as them, but they make no money from their music because it simply doesn’t sell as much as it is pirated.  Unlike John, Paul, George, and Ringo, the members of this band eventually have to break apart…they simply cannot sustain themselves.

And we, the public, will never get to hear what this band might have made.

Or see what this director could have created.

Or this writer.

Or this artist.

Your daily dose of anxiety…

Today, let’s worry about the rise of Artificial Intelligence machines, and the fact that so many scientists and figures involved in high level technology have expressed concern regarding the imminent appearance of said machines:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-barrat/hawking-gates-artificial-intelligence_b_7008706.html

For those who have read all five (so far) of my Corrosive Knights novels, the concept of Artificial Intelligence, along with a few others, are a central concern.  I have wondered about the possible appearance of a self-sustained AI and, like many in the article, worry what will happen once such a creature appears.  Will it view humans as an obstacle?  I can’t help but think it will.  And depending on how much power it controls, the effects could be devastating.

It is certainly something to think about…yet another worry to ease you into your day.

Welcome to the future…part deus

After the scary news of hackers shutting down a major French TV network, here’s some good technology news: It would appear the clean energy “revolution” is ahead of schedule:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-08/clean-energy-revolution-is-way-ahead-of-schedule

How interesting that as we reach what seems to be a tipping point regarding global warming/pollution, we’re moving pretty quickly into the area of far cleaner renewable energy.

To this, all I have to say is I couldn’t be happier.  If there is an alternative cleaner energy source out there to use, why would anyone want to continue using the older, dirtier methods?  Why would anyone want to live in a world increasingly filled with polluted skies, land, and water?

Here’s hoping at least this part of the future is bright.

Welcome to the future…welcome to today

So a French TV network got hacked big time earlier in the day.  Of the 11 channels it has, it’s regained control of one of them.  Oh, and all their social media material was also hacked.  Click on the link for details:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/09/europe/french-tv-network-attack-recovery/index.html

I’ve mentioned before my feelings -both good and bad- regarding the rapidly changing economy thanks to the arrival of computers and the internet.

One of the biggest negatives of the interconnectivity people/businesses have is the fact that somewhere out there might lurk very clever people with some deeply dark thoughts.  And so it is that today I’m reading about hacking a major French TV network.

Will one day we read about an airplane that was hijacked electronically and forced to land (or worse!) somewhere other than its intended destination?  I see the writing on the wall and know that we’re soon going to have driverless cars.  But what if someone hacks into the programming that drives these vehicles?  Could you picture the mass chaos?

But let’s think bigger: What if someone should hack into a city’s electric grid?  Or a government’s military?

No wonder the field of cyber security is a booming one.

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969) a (very) belated review

As a film fan, I couldn’t be happier about living in this era.  Movies I’d seen many years before and hadn’t had a chance to see again are, to my delight, being released to home video.  A few weeks ago, for example, the for the most part forgotten 1979 thriller Firepower (read my review here) was released and I finally, finally got a chance to see it again after having originally seen it one time in and around the date of that original release.

Sure, the film didn’t hold up that well, but I was so damn curious to see it again.  For whatever reason, pieces of it stuck with me all these years and I just had to revisit the work, regardless of how it would come off to my much older self.

This week, a trio of interesting films I’ve yearned to revisit have been released to home video.  The first two, Hooper and Sharkey’s Machine, are Burt Reynolds vehicles that were available before but are now, for the first time, being released to BluRay (and, I hope, are finally being presented in their proper cinematic aspect ratio).  I had avoided the earlier releases of these films because people who saw these video releases said the image quality of each film was very poor, a debit I hope these BluRays correct.

The third film, the 1969 feature Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (aka Doppleganger), is a film I have the barest of memories about, having seen it (probably) on TV one day way back in the mid to late 1970’s and never again.

And yet, like Firepower, the film lingered in my mind, an itch I had to scratch and a movie I was dying to revisit.

Yesterday the BluRay was formally released and I eagerly put it into my player.

Would the film enchant or disappoint me?

As it turned out, it did a little of both.

For those familiar with their works, the names Gerry and Sylvia Anderson should set off certain memories.  The one time husband and wife duo were responsible for, among others, the TV shows Thunderbirds, UFO, and Space: 1999.  They are the ones behind Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (so I don’t go insane re-typing the film’s title, lets refer to it as JFSS from now on, OK?).

The plot of the film goes like this: In the near future, the European Space Agency sends an exploratory probe towards the sun but an unexpected magnetic draw shifts its position and it takes pictures of a mysterious, and surprising, object: A planet that lies directly opposite the sun!

This planet, it is found, rotates in the same orbit as our Earth but has never been seen by us because it is always opposite the Sun and therefore obscured by it.

What follows is a race to get a European spacecraft up and away to explore that mysterious planet.  Eventually, the ship is sent but the mysteries of this alien world are just beginning to be uncovered.

I won’t say more (for now) because I don’t want to spoil the story.  I will get into SPOILERS after the trailer, however, so for those who don’t mind a more in depth examination of the film, feel free to read on.

To conclude the non-spoiler part of this review, I’ll say the following: JFSS proved a far more positive experience to me than revisiting Firepower.  The film’s effects remain quite good although the story could have been a lot more focused (I’ll get into that below).  If you’re a fan of the works of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, picking up JFSS is a no-brainer.  If you’re curious to see an interesting and at times even haunting sci-fi mystery/thriller, you’d do far worse than check this film out.

Alright, there was the trailer.  What follows below are…

SPOILERS!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

As I mentioned above, JFSS’s story could have been a lot more focused and this is my biggest complaint against the film.  And yet paradoxically let me state that while the story could have used more focus, the “extraneous” material was presented rather well.  The problem was that it didn’t really need to be in the film.

Which is my long winded way of saying that this is a film that could have used a few tweaks of the screenplay.

The movie’s entire opening act, for example, involves the attempts of the head of the European Space Agency to a) find a mole (Herbert Lom in what amounts to a curious, almost non-speaking cameo) and b) use the discovery of this mole to force his reluctant allies to fund the exploration of the mysterious planet on the far side of the sun.

This part of the film was well presented but left me baffled when all was said and done.  Why did we need to spend all this time on the funding of this space probe?  The writer in me would have excised this entire section of the film.  Why spend all that time there, time that could have been used more wisely getting our spacecraft up and into space and dealing with the movie’s central mystery?

But wait, there’s more!

After the head of the agency gets his sought after funding, we go through the next part of the film, which first involves figuring out who will fly this mission.  The United States, the main backers of this mission, insist their most experienced astronaut, Colonel Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes) be the senior officer on the flight.  The head of the European agency agrees to the US terms and puts his right hand man (and friend) John Kane (Ian Hendry) to fly with Ross.

Having taken care of that bit of business, we then spend time following the grueling training of the relatively inexperienced Kane preparing for the flight along with some bits and pieces involving the rocky marriage of Colonel Ross.

Once again, this part of the film isn’t bad per se and is presented fairly well.  However, once again the writer in me wondered why we were spending all these precious minutes of film on these issues.  The Ross marriage, I suppose, did matter a little later on, but Kane’s training?  Not so much.  That could have easily been dispensed with and allowed more time for the space flight and the movie’s central mystery.

Anyway, once we got past all that, the film finally reached the point it probably should have forty minutes before: Liftoff and arrival to the mystery planet.

It was here where things got good and interesting and where my dim memories came roaring back.  Though I said I would get into spoilers, I won’t go into many more details here and leave the mystery for you to see.

I will say this much, though: I loved the film’s use of mirrors in this part of the film and felt the ending, and especially the denouement that makes us question whether what we’ve just seen was real or the ramblings of a madman, really made the whole thing end on a troubling yet satisfying note.

Again, I recommend the film despite the overly extraneous opening elements.