Saw this meme way back when 2020 was coming to an end…
2020 wasn’t much fun but neither was 2021. For the family and I in particular, it was downright awful.
So we said goodbye to 2021 and we aren’t even done with the first month of 2022 and already its been this avalanche of bad news coming through.
I suppose the biggest bits of news are the celebrity deaths. While it happened on the very last day of 2021 (December 31st), you had the beloved Betty White, longtime star of television and movies, passing away just shy of her 100th birthday…
Yesterday/today came the news of the passing of two celebrities, Meat Loaf, aka Michael Lee Aday, mostly known as a terrific singer but also actor…
And, finally (for now, I suppose), comedian Louie Anderson…
Betty White had supposedly had a stroke a few days before her passing and it was likely the cause of her death. I read articles which stated Louie Anderson was being treated for cancer and this was the cause of his death.
As for Meat Loaf, the reports indicate he had contracted COVID and this was the cause of his death.
While the information is still very fresh and not entirely sourced, there have been those who have noted the singer had stated in previous interviews he was against vaccine mandates. There was evidence to suggest he had a conservative viewpoint.
Obviously, I can only go by those reports as I didn’t know the man myself.
However…
While it feels unseemly to speculate, I can’t help myself.
I can’t help but wonder if he was one of those people who refused to get vaccinated for COVID.
Understand: There is no joy in this speculation. I don’t have any feelings but sadness at his passing.
But I’d be lying if it doesn’t cause me to contemplate the weird times we’re living in.
We live in a time where the politization of things seems to have gone waaaaaaay too far.
In the past, vaccinations weren’t something I thought about all that much but when I did, I tended to view them positively.
After all, you vaccinate yourself against Polio. Chicken Pox. Measles. Mumps. Shingles. The flu.
I can’t recall anyone stating these vaccines were some liberal plot and/or a threat to one’s freedoms and yet this seems to be exactly what’s happened with too many people when it comes to COVID vaccines.
It hurts to realize this weird thinking has taken over too many people, especially when I have very close family members on my side as well as my wife’s side who have fallen into this bullshit crap as well.
Which begs the question: What is it going to take to convince people reluctant to get vaccinated to do so?
How many more people have to pass away before then?
I just don’t know anymore.
It’s a hell of a way to begin the new year, though.
My thoughts are with the families of those who passed, regardless.
POSTSCRIPT: Just goes to show how much has happened and how many celebrities have passed. I forgot to mention two:
Yvette Mimieux. Perhaps not as well known today, but an absolutely stunning actress, perhaps best known for the original The Time Machine and Where The Boys Are. She was 80.
And, shockingly, Bob Saget, amiable comedian and star of the popular Full House. He was 65.
First, sorry for the dearth of posts. New Year’s been incredibly busy for me and, well, time to hang around here’s been too short.
I’ll try better!
Now then, The Chosen.
Never heard of this film? You’re probably in pretty good company. Here’s the movie’s trailer:
It’s no exaggeration to say I likely saw this film in/around the time it was first released, ie circa 1977 (the above trailer says 1978, but everywhere else I see the earlier year listed but… whatever!). It was the first, and only, time I saw the film and I recalled two things about it, specifically, which I’ll get into in a moment, and neither of them was the fact that the film starred Kirk Douglas….!
Yes, I was a very young movie watcher back then, and I had no idea about who Kirk Douglas was, though in time I would come to be a fan.
But let’s back up a moment.
If you’re an old fart like me and you remember the 1970’s, it was a wild time. The hippie movement was ending and new interests emerged. There was a fascination, I remember, with “mysteries”, be they things like UFOs or Bigfoot (those who lived through that decade surely remember The Six Million Dollar Man going up against Bigfoot…right?)…
Meanwhile there were a slew of books exploring all these various mysteries, spreading out into the idea that perhaps aliens visited the Earth years before and left behind evidence of doing so (Chariots of the Gods?) and the weird mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
The UFO interest would eventually lead to a young Steven Spielberg making Close Encounters of the Third Kind while demonic possession -another of those areas of mystery and interest, would lead to The Exorcist (1973).
In a way, the success of The Exorcist would have far reaching impacts, even to today. It is my feeling the film inspired the movie studios to make The Omen, (1976) another demonic possession -in this case, quite literally the anti-Christ- to be made. That movie’s success would lead the father son duo of Alexander and Illya Salkind to seek out that movie’s director, Richard Donner, to direct their Superman movie, and its arguable that this film’s success would lead to the current glut of superhero films we have today (Marvel movie overlord Kevin Feige has stated the first Superman film is the one they emulate with their Marvel films!).
Hot off the heels of the release of The Omen, Italian director Alberto De Martino, known mostly for creating movies which were… ahem… inspired by other films (he would jump on any popular genre), would quickly get a crew and cast together and make The Chosen, aka Holocaust 2000.
While it may seem incredible they got Kirk Douglas to play in the film, the fact of the matter is that by the 1970’s these old guard “golden era” Hollywood actors were getting rather old and I suspect getting starring roles in theatrical films was becoming increasingly difficult.
Thus, Gregory Peck would appear in The Omen and Kirk Douglas, no doubt looking for a hit and not adverse to taking on the job, would play the lead in The Chosen.
Both Peck’s character and Douglas’ are similar from both films, as is the general plot: The anti-Christ is out there and our hero, a well-healed industrialist, slowly comes to the realization that the villain is near… even as those around him die in sometimes very creative ways.
In fact, the two things I recalled about The Chosen after all these years were the two most “creative” deaths presented in the film, one involving a helicopter blade and the other a wood panel.
But… what about the rest of the film?
You know… its not too bad, considering its a rip off of The Omen, which is overall a far, far better overall work, yet I’d be lying if I said it was some kind of lost treasure from the 70’s.
Douglas really gives the movie his all, doing some stuntwork on his own (you can see some of it in the trailer above) and that’s pretty impressive given he was around 61 years old when this film was made.
He also, for those who are really faint of heart, has a sequence involving a nightmare where he runs around a desert naked.
Yeah, could be one of the scarier sequences in the film! 😉
Still, I’ve seen far worse. The soundtrack, by the legendary Ennio Morricone, isn’t bad but neither is it among his most memorable. Further, the story is not without its strange hiccups, scenes where Douglas’ character seems convinced without a doubt he’s dealing with demonic matters only to then be convinced by some really lame dialogue from others that he’s being overly worried, where he laughs and slouches it off, only to again be hit in the face with undeniable evidence.
There’s also a sequence in the film that genuinely shocked me, but for other reasons.
MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW!
At one point in the film Douglas’ character and a Catholic Priest he’s been consulting become convinced the baby his girlfriend is carrying is the anti-Christ. So, naturally, they arrange to take her to a doctor, under the pretext of getting her checked up, but in reality they’ve arranged for… an abortion!!!!!
A Catholic Priest arranges an abortion?
What in the world?!?!
Anyway, as I said before, I’ve seen much worse in my time. Having said that, I doubt modern audiences will find much interest in this film. It’s mostly a slow moving feature that, while interesting here and there, simply doesn’t measure up to The Omen.
If you’re in the mood for some anti-Christ hijinks, that’s the film to watch. If you want more, you could do worse than giving The Chosen a spin.
If you’ve read my posts ’round here, you know this has been a very bad year for me and my family. We’ve faced horror and tragedy above and beyond the COVID pandemic and that stuff is still being sorted out.
My wife was determined to stay awake past midnight, to effectively tell 2021 to go fuck off, before going to bed.
Me?
I used to be somewhat nocturnal, but nowadays it’s tough for me to stay awake much past 11 pm… if I get to that hour!
But much before we got to that time, I was alone and had nothing going on. The daughters were busy, the wife was (at the time) visiting the next door neighbor, and I was alone in the family room.
I knew The Matrix Resurrections was available via HBO Max. Now, its been a very long time since I’ve set foot in a movie theater… I’m hoping in the new year I get to finally go back… but for now, with the movie available for streaming, I figured I’d finally give it a look. Here’s the movie’s trailer:
I very much recall going to see the original The Matrix way back in 1999 and upon its initial release and being totally blown away by the film. Terrific action sequences and a truly mind-bending story. And the trio of Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishburne were at the top of their game, delivering the goods scene after scene.
What was there not to love?
Thing is, Lilly and Lana Wachowski, who directed The Matrix, would follow that terrific film with a string of others which… well… didn’t appeal to me that much.
Despite the wonderful spectacle, I wasn’t a big fan of the two follow up Matrix films, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (also 2003). Despite being a fan of the original Anime, I found it hard to watch more than 20 or so minutes of Speed Racer (2008). I have a digital copy of Cloud Atlas (2012) but haven’t had a chance to catch it as of yet, so I have no opinion on that film. What I saw of Jupiter Ascending (2015) seemed like more of the type of thing that had slowly turned me off of the Wachowskis and their films: Beautiful, in your face spectacle but a tough plot to follow and characters who didn’t appeal as much as I would have hoped.
Oh, and also, these films were all very long. I came away feeling like perhaps the Wachowskis could have used someone to edit the material down a little so that the stories had a better, stronger focus.
The bottom line is that as I sat in my living room yesterday on the last day of 2021 and with nothing else to do, I was somewhat hesitant to venture into The Matrix Resurrections.
Yet I did, and I’m rather glad I did so.
My verdict is that The Matrix Resurrections is a too long (not surprising) work that brings our older characters back (though Laurence Fishburne did not return this time around) for another round and while it may not be a great film, there is so much meat on the bone that I’m glad I went down this particular rabbit hole.
Having said that: I don’t feel I can recommend this film to everyone.
Looking around the internet and blog posts here and there, there are clearly many people who really hated the film. Still, over on rottentomatoes.com, the film has a “fresh” rating of 65% positive with critics and 64% positive with audiences.
But the film is bound to be divisive.
To begin with, the action sequences, while at times pretty well done, aren’t up there with the original film or even the sequels. I don’t know if its because so many years have passed but the action sequences never took my breath away.
However, the plot, involving the reconnection of Neo (Keanu Reeves, looking so much older than when he was last in the Matrix) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) was something that by the end had me genuinely near tears.
I just wish that they spent more time showing them together!
The story goes like this: Neo (Keanu Reeves) lives his boring, empty life working on video games. See, he created this great game several years ago called The Matrix and now the company, which is owned by Warner Brothers, wants a sequel.
Yes, the film is quite meta.
Neo, however, is deeply depressed. Perhaps even suicidal. He goes to a cafe to eat day after day and often sees Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) there buying a drink for herself. He pines for her, though he doesn’t know who she is and is too shy to introduce himself to her.
Eventually they do talk, and that opens the whole doorway into the film’s plot… and the machinations therein.
The film doesn’t move all that smoothly and there are moments where I could see people throwing their hands up and giving up. Things are often very weird and dragged out and, as I mentioned, the action sequences aren’t necessarily as good as some of the others we’ve seen from the Wachowskis (for the record, Lilly Wachowski bowed out of involvement in this film and her sister Lana is the sole director).
Still, if you stick around, you start to really get into Keanu Reeves’ Neo. This is a haunted man, one who knows a big part of himself is missing (could the meta storyline have something to do with Lilly Wachowski’s not returning to this film?) and he’s incredibly depressed about that… to the point where he’s considering suicide.
Granted, not the most fun stuff to watch for a potential blockbuster film, but the payoff is all that much stronger when it comes.
I doubt there will be another Matrix film, certainly by the Wachowskis. It feels Lana Wachowski took this opportunity and made a highly symbolic and very meta film about her current state of mind. If so, I hope she’s found her peace, just as Neo and Trinity appear to.
Yeah, it’s a tough film to recommend to everyone, but if you’re in the mood for a feature that doesn’t offer smarmy characters spouting smarmy dialogue, you may just find it worthwhile to take a dive into The Matrix Resurrections.
Earlier today the trailer for the upcoming Robert Eggers (The VVitch, The Lighthouse) was released. See it for yourself:
To say the film is highly anticipated by many would be an understatement. Robert Eggers’ previous films have earned him considerable positive word of mouth. He has helped make actress Anya Taylor-Joy a near household name, and in my opinion hit the ball out of the proverbial park with the weird, eerie, mysterious, yet at times strangely hilarious The Lighthouse.
So, yes, I’m one of those people who was interested in his latest work and, yes, I was one of those that eagerly looked into the trailer to The Northman.
And now that I’ve seen the trailer…
…I’m curiously underwhelmed.
Don’t get me wrong: There are some very fine images here and it looks like Mr. Eggers has certainly taken a big step up and made a far bigger film than he has before.
However, the story that’s presented here feels old hat, a tale of a young man whose father is murdered by some brutal warlord, who then grows and schemes his revenge…
…did I not see almost the exact same plot in the original Conan The Barbarian film all the way back in (checks notes) 1982?!
Now, lest you think I haven’t done some research, it is my understanding the film is more than it appears in the trailer, that it goes into strange territory (makes sense given Mr. Eggers’ previous movies and the co-writer of the screenplay to this film is Sjón, who, if you read his IMdB profile, has been involved in some “out there” works, including the recently released Lamb).
That it isn’t exactly what it appears, which is a movie very much in the vein of Conan (not, by the way, that that’s necessarily a bad thing… I happen to like the film quite a bit).
Still, I’m surprised the trailer featured what appeared to be such a standard swords and sandals -albeit with a Norse element- revenge story.
There are those who have praised what they’ve seen and opined it “blew them away”.
I just wish I could say the same.
Still, don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade and yes, I’m certainly hoping for the best…
First: Hope everyone’s having a decent time as we head into the holidays. Sorry for the dearth of posts but, as pretty much expected, things have been extra-busy lately and finding the free time to post -much less do much of anything with the very little free time I’ve had lately- has kept me busy.
Naturally, there’s been a bunch o’ stuff going on, not a lot of it good.
First up is Omicron, the latest COVID 19 Variant which has, unfortunately, become a real issue worldwide. Why? Because it appears this variant is even more highly transmissible than Delta, the last variant, and further appears to be leading to record-breaking infection rates. In New York, for example, has a new one day reported infection record (you can read the full article here):
The previous record, set 11 months ago on Jan. 14, crumbled when Gov. Kathy Hochul announced 21,027 new positive cases statewide Friday.
Locally, we’re getting grim news as well regarding surging infection rates. The only positive, if one is to look at it as such, is that at least so far it appears Omicron might be a weaker infection despite its strong ability to be spread. In other words, those who catch it appear to have more mild symptoms. Doesn’t mean, however, that some people aren’t showing stronger symptoms.
I can’t help but wonder if the lag in people getting vaccinated has allowed this virus the time to mutate and therefore become much more infectious.
Regardless, there still exist those out there who refuse to get vaccines and, sadly, they may find themselves in the bullseye like never before. Which is not to say those of us who have been vaccinated -even those who have gotten a booster- need not take this seriously.
There’s no poetic way to say this: It sucks. It really, really sucks.
Onto the second topic and…
Politics…. Beware…!
So this morning Joe Manchin, senator from West Virginia, decides to go on Fox News (you just know that’s no good) and announces he’s a “no” vote on Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation.
He’s always been slow on the legislation, but there seemed to be a deal made where the Infrastructure Deal was allowed to pass with the understanding that the BBB legislation would be passed… in whatever form Manchin finally agreed with.
There were progressives within the House who didn’t want to pass one piece of legislation without the other, and it was only because of the promise that the BBB would be passed that the Infrastructure Bill was finally allowed a vote.
Therefore its not terribly surprising Manchin’s statement today has left many absolutely furious with him.
Frankly, they have every right.
I don’t know where things go from here. I believe this great country needs more of an investment in its infrastructure and services to the citizens. I believe we need to spend more on climate change. Almost all the elements I’ve read which are in the legislation feel like they are good.
But even if Manchin had issues with the bill, even if he didn’t feel the bill worked for him, this move, going on TV and publicly making this announcement… it’s chicken shit stuff.
Dude, what prompted you to do this? One can’t help but wonder now if all those other negotiations, all that other “work” done on the bill to date… was him bullshitting and hoping to get the Infrastructure bill done so he could then pack up his toys and set fire to everything else.
It really casts him in a negative light, IMHO, and I never had a particularly positive or negative impression about him before.
If you’re curious, you can read more about Manchin’s statement and the blowback in this article by Daniella Diaz and presented on CNN:
I like Chris Noth. Liked him since first seeing him many, many years ago in Law & Order.
Chris Noth, on the left, with Jerry Orbach on the right
He’s had a long and very successful career, more recently playing the role of “Mr. Big” in Sex and the City.
There was an interesting bit of controversy because in the premiere of the latest Sex and the City featured a stunning element involving Mr. Big’s character and… Peloton?! I don’t want to get into SPOILERS but if you don’t care about Sex and the City, you can Google that stuff yourself.
Anyway, its fascinating the way things blow up in the news and Mr. Noth has certainly become a cause celeb, but for all the wrong reasons. I suppose it was because the actor became newsworthy (he’s been around, as I said, a long time, but he’s never been front page news until the events of the first episode of the new Sex and the City).
The reason Mr. Noth is suddenly in the news? Because there have been actresses that have gone on record to accuse Mr. Noth of sexual assault. You can read about this in the following article by Lisa Respers France and found on CNN.com:
It’s a sad story to read. Again, I’ve like Mr. Noth’s acting in various shows. Obviously, what he projects on screen and in his acting jobs has little to do with the person and, if the stories are to be believed, this is yet another actor who may well find his career aborted. In that respect, what struck me was the speed in which Peloton reacted to this and cancelled the ads using him.
It feels like maybe they know the accusations have some merit and wanted to rid themselves of Mr. Noth as quickly as possible.
Finally, Spider-Man No Way Home is doing absolute gangbusters at the box-office. The opening box-office weekend is projected to be $253 million dollars, the third highest opening of all time and easily the highest opening since the start of COVID.
I have to say -and I make no claims of being a psychic or anything- I’m not shocked the film is doing gang-busters.
The fact is the Marvel Universe films remain extremely popular and the trailers for this movie, to me, were intriguing. Understand: I’ve tired of the MCU films. Since the dual release of Dr. Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy and my subsequent disappointment with both films, I’ve found myself blasé about the whole thing.
I’ve also found the Spider-Man films -the first two- rather unimpressive. I thought the first Tom Holland starring one was ok after a weak opening and found the second (the one that came right before this one) near unwatchable for the first 2/3rd of the movie.
Yet even someone as jaded about the whole MCU thing found the trailers for No Way Home intriguing!
So good for them. I’ll catch the film when I can.
Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll carve out the time to post again before the New Year. I’ll certainly try.
But if I don’t, my best wishes to everyone out there.
Hope the New Year proves far better than the last two.
There are movies you eagerly look forward to seeing the moment you hear about them being made. There are films you never heard of and watch and are pleasantly surprised -or not- by them.
Then there are films you have available to you and for whatever reason you simply don’t want to see them.
This was the case with the latest version of Dune.
Why?
Because I’d already seen David Lynch’s version of the film, released in 1984 and found some of it quite good (Sting in particular made for a great villain) while other parts were head-scratching and confusing. I also saw the Sy-Fy network’s mini-series released in 2000 and enjoyed it well enough, though it suffered from a lower budget and, IMHO, not as strong acting/direction.
I haven’t read the famous Frank Herbert written book both movie and mini-series are based on, though I tried. Like Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land, it seems like dense 1960’s era science-fiction novels are my kryptonite: I just lose interest as I struggle through their voluminous pages.
Regardless, I was familiar enough with the Dune story that the idea of sitting through another nearly three hour adaptation (and one that, I found out, covered roughly 1/2 of the book!) felt daunting. Add to the fact that Denis Villanueve, whose previous film was Blade Runner 2049, another nearly three hour sci-fi deep immersion which I ultimately found good but which suffered from a script should have been tightened considerably (read my review of that film here), and you can understand my doubts.
Yeah, the idea of sitting through another very long Denis Villanueve film featuring a story I was familiar with just… it was a tough thing to justify, especially when its so damn hard for me to find the free time to see any film nowadays.
Still, as luck -and my new best friend HBO Max- would have it, the film was available to be seen and I did have that free time so I decided: Let me give the film a try.
I wasn’t going to commit totally to it. My plan was to give it fifteen-thirty minutes and, if it appealed to me, I’d watch the whole thing. Otherwise, I’d shut it off an that was that.
Welp…
I suppose I could end the review with this statement: I saw the whole thing.
Unlike Blade Runner 2049, the movie’s very long presentation’s felt fully justified and the script much tighter, perhaps because it was based on such a long, and meaty, novel.
Considering we are dealing with a lot of political intrigue involving alien cultures and similar political games of chess, the movie moved surprisingly well and the exposition didn’t feel dull, at least to me.
The movie was aided immeasurably by a top flight cast, including Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Stellan Skarsgård, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling, Zendaya, and, in the role of Paul Atreides, the protagonist of the piece, Timothée Hal Chalamet.
Many of the names I mention above appear in the film in what could be considered “cameo” roles lasting no more than a few minutes (particularly Zendaya and Charlotte Rampling), but they all add their own intriguing elements to the story.
Mr. Chalamet, I feared, might wind up being a little too young for the role. Truly I feared we would have another Dane DeHaan/Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets situation where the protagonist simply wouldn’t look like he could survive in such a rough setting as presented.
As I turned out, though, Mr. Chalamet did fine. He had the advantage, versus Mr. DeHaan, of his character being very young and inexperienced at the film’s onset versus Valerian supposedly being already a Flash Gordon-like badass.
Here, we follow the growth of his character and his becoming aware of his abilities.
In many ways Dune plays out like a science fictional version of Lawrence of Arabia, presenting us this weird land and, via the protagonist, we immerse ourselves in it and her cultures. Dune’s story is a thinly veiled examination of policies in the Middle East. Replace the “spice” with “oil” and it all makes sense, though there is more to it than simply that.
As I said above, the fact that I found myself watching this film to its end despite having grave reservation I would is a testament to how I felt about it.
Now that we have the first half of the novel, I genuinely can’t wait to see the rest!
I saw the trailer to this film when it was originally released and, I must say, I was intrigued…
Not bad, right?
As with far too many films, I missed it upon its initial release (shortly, I believe, before COVID blew up) but the movie was on sale through VUDU and I picked it up and, a couple of days ago, the wife and I gave it a watch.
Afterwards, I asked her what she thought of it.
Not all that much, it turns out.
In fact, she thought it was beyond stupid, a film worthy of being presented on MST3K. A film that was dumb, dumb, dumb.
I could see where she was coming from.
But, I didn’t hate it quite as much.
Don’t get me wrong: The film was far from “great” and, if I were pressed to put it on a 4 star scale I’d likely give it two stars, perhaps 2 and 1/2 if I’m feeling charitable.
Even so, that’s for the entirety of the product. There were moments in this film that I thought were quite great… I just wish the film had been like that at all moments rather than at some.
Chloë Grace Moretz stars in the film as Maude Garrett, a mystery woman who appears with a strange case in arm at a foggy airfield. The eerie mood is already set in those opening minutes with odd 1980’s synth music (which I really enjoyed, being a fan of such music, but which some might find out of place in a film set in World War II).
She enters an aircraft with its all male personnel and presents papers which suggest she’s on a secret mission carrying a top secret cargo (in her case) which needs to reach its destination.
The all male crew isn’t too fond of bringing a woman on board. Reading here and there about the film afterwards, it seems some felt it was “insulting” to feature the all male crew as mostly hormonal savages in the presence of a woman. Given the epoch, I didn’t find it all that problematic, but there sure does seem to be some major sensitivity these days about how men are portrayed in film (see the recent, all female starring remake of Ghostbusters).
They force their unexpected passenger into the “bubble”, the lower machine gun turret under the aircraft and, because its such a tight fit, she is forced to give up her case, which she does to one of the crewmen who promises to watch it and not look inside, which she claims would be a court martial worthy offense.
This, I must say, is where the film really surprised and delighted me and I’m going to SPOIL things a little so, if you’re interested in seeing the film, I suggest you do so and come back afterwards to read the rest of the review.
In case you’re doing that, I’ll offer my bottom line about the film: I can’t necessarily offer an unqualified recommendation for Shadow in the Cloud. Though its a well done film with pretty good effects (some, alas, aren’t quite as good), it features an engaging hero in Moretz’s Garrett and some genuinely eerie and thrilling moments… which are unfortunately upended by a script that I suspect was being reworked considerably as the film was being made.
Still, if you want to see something really far outside the beaten path, you could do much worse.
All right then…
SPOILERS FOLLOW…!
So Garrett is sent into the bubble and, for the whole first half of the film, we as viewers are stuck there with her, isolated and alone, with only the radio communication with the other officers -which at first is incredibly crude on their part- as her only “company”.
Garrett spots a plane pacing them and, worse, a creature -a gremlin- that is on the plane itself, slowly ripping it apart.
These moments are the film’s most effective, where she tries to convince the rest of the crew that a) they may be followed by enemy Japanese aircraft and b) that this creature is ripping their ship apart.
Before Garrett finally leaves the bubble, the crew realizes what she’s carrying, which turns out to be her baby, and it further turns out that she’s running away from an abusive husband who may want to kill her as the baby isn’t his… but is the baby of one of the crewmen on this flight.
Now, I’m going to stop right there and say: That was a HUGE mistake, storywise, in my humble opinion.
Worse, it felt like it was something added to the script after the fact.
The Gremlin attacking the aircraft seemed to keep honing in on the case and baby, trying to take it for itself, which truly didn’t make a lot of sense. Did it know there was a baby within? Never made clear. But even if it did, why would it be so interested in it?
It felt like, to me anyway, that there was some other story element which was discarded regarding the case and its contents which linked the Gremlin more closely with wanting it and choosing to attack that particular aircraft, and I strongly suspect it had nothing to do with Garrett having a child and fleeing from an abusive husband.
The movie’s story, which takes elements from what is perhaps the most famous Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (the one directed by Richard Donner and starring William Shatner, who sees a Gremlin on the airplane wing and freaks out trying to prove to the others in the aircraft they’re in danger) as well as the very first episode of Amazing Stories (which featured a crewman stuck in the bubble of an aircraft not unlike Garrett is and featured Kevin Costner and Keifer Sutherland in the cast) is credited to Max Landis who, shortly before the film’s release was accused of sexual and emotional abuse by eight women, has his name all but erased from the film’s actual credits (I honestly don’t recall seeing his name posted there, but I might have simply missed it).
What I do recall is that when the film was released the studio and stars made a point of noting that beyond the sale of the initial story, Max Landis wasn’t involved in the project at all, and the screenplay on IMDb is listed as being by Landis and director Roseanne Liang.
I have little doubt once the accusations against Landis were made public those in Hollywood made a great effort to distance themselves from him and I also strongly suspect Ms. Liang reworked the story/script quite a bit.
Unfortunately, and as I said above, we’re left with things that simply don’t connect well. The Gremlin which attacks is just there, without any real explanation or reason. He goes for the case carrying Garrett’s child “just because” and this too is presented without any real clear reason.
These things wind up hurting the film, which otherwise is not all that bad and is quite suspenseful at times.
In the end, I’m once again forced to say that a film that could have been quite good, which had plenty of ingredients, including generally good effects, a great lead/performance, and an intriguing initial premise, was undone by a script that needed a little more work, especially with regard to its reveals.
Back when I was very, very young, I stumbled upon this book…
Written by Harry and Michael Medved (Michael would go on to become yet another –yawn– of those pants-on-fire conservative commentator/extremists), the book was a hilarious look at some of the worst films which, to that date, had been released.
At least according to the Medved brothers.
The book was popular enough to merit a sequel…
…and it too was quite humorous.
I have to admit, though, over the years and as I’ve become a writer, I’ve grown to be… uncomfortable… with books like this, even though I can’t deny the humor of lambasting works which are so bad they deserve the treatment.
Why?
Because I’ve been on the proverbial “other side” and know that creating a work, any work, requires considerable effort and time and I know now that nobody sets out to make something truly awful… even if when all is said and done that’s what is indeed created.
Having said that and while I feel bad for those who worked to make something and failed, perhaps miserably so, it’s still undeniably funny to read a post ripping said project to pieces…
Which brings us to the matter at hand, Steven Lloyd Wilson’s review of the Bruce Willis film Survive The Game, another of Mr. Willis’ seemingly endless VOD releases he’s participated in.
Here’s the movie’s trailer:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uMDaFlO_CZs
I’ve read here and there that Mr. Willis has gotten to the point in his career where he takes on these types of films because a) they involve no more than one day’s worth of work and he’s quite strict about leaving when his time is up (so the film’s makers often have him in a single room/set saying his lines, often without co-stars present all that much) and b) he’s paid for that one day’s worth of work somewhere in the range of one million dollars.
There are many such films listed on Mr. Willis’ IMDb page (check them out here). Currently he has an astonishing 13 films listed on his resume for 2021 alone and all of them, near as I can tell, are similar low budget VOD features like the one above.
Anyway, without further ado, here’s Mr. Steven Lloyd Wilson’s review of Survive The Game. It’s quite hilarious, in my humble opinion…
Despite its formulaic episodes, I happen to love the Raymond Burr Perry Mason TV show. Based on the very popular (and also formulaic!) novels by Erie Stanley Gardner, who could pump out a book a week it seemed, there was something grandly entertaining about seeing Raymond Burr’s Perry interact with a usually fascinating all star cast and solve a murder his client seemed to absolutely do and there was simply no way around it.
However, there were a series of Perry Mason films made well before Raymond Burr took to the television role and The Case of the Curious Bride is one of them.
Here’s the movie’s trailer:
One day while going over the latest movies offered on TCM, I spotted this film. Now, I haven’t seen a single non-Raymond Burr Perry Mason feature but this one really got my curiosity and for one reason and one reason only: It had a very early appearance of one Errol Flynn.
Don’t recognize the name? Welp, he was a very big action star, featured in such films as The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, and Captain Blood. He was primarily known as a very handsome swashbuckler, and his personal ilfe… ho boy, that must have been something (he would die at the very young age of 50 in 1959, his hard living, hard drinking, and sexual adventures/misadventures having sapped the life out of him by that point).
But I was fascinated by the idea of seeing a very young, pre-fame Errol Flynn in a Perry Mason movie. Yeah, I was damned curious to see this!
Alas…
If you’re interested in seeing this film solely for Errol Flynn, be prepared to see him for a grand total of maybe two minutes (or less) of screen time. In fact, he doesn’t say a single line and shows up in a flashback toward the end of the film where its revealed how exactly he died.
Yep, he’s the film’s murder victim.
Having said that, The Case of the Curious Bride nonetheless proved to be a fun, if ultimately frivolous, mystery film. Warren William plays a decidedly theatrical Perry Mason, a man with food on his mind (!) who gets involved in a case involving an old female friend of his (played by Margaret Lindsay) who is now married but who had previously been married and -she thought- widowed. Only it turns out her previous husband is alive and blackmailing her (the role seemed to fit Errol Flynn to a tee, given his reputation outside the studio!).
Anyway, Perry, Della Street (a delightful Claire Dodd, who inhabits the role almost as well as Barbara Hale would in the Raymond Burr TV show), and personal P. I. “Sudsy” Drake (Allen Jenkins, putting on the ham in a big way… I much prefer William Hooper’s more serious Paul Drake from the TV show) get themselves chin deep in the case and figure out, by the end, whodunnit while their client comes very close to the electric chair.
Another element beyond the cameo by Errol Flynn that makes the movie notable is that it was directed by one Michael Curtiz, a workhorse of a director who, a few years later, directed this one little and almost forgotten film called Casablanca. He also directed several of the best known Errol Flynn films, including the aforementioned The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Yes, The Case of the Curious Bride isn’t a film destined to be remembered or admired but it is a fun little mystery with the added bonus of having two fascinating minutes featuring a pre-famous Errol Flynn directed by what would be one of his bigger collaborators in Michael Curtiz.
For those who find that alone fascinating, the movie is an easy recommendation.
In the news lately have come articles regarding the heirs of Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, Gene Colon, and others’ moves toward getting control over characters they created for Marvel Comics back in the day… and which they may have the possibility of getting thanks to the passage of time.
What does this mean to you or I? Not really all that much, I admit, unless of course we are heirs to the estate of some of the creators of the various Marvel characters and/or have financial interests in Disney and their movies.
So, what exactly is happening here?
Well, for many, many years comic book work was considered a “one and done” type deal. You would get your assignment, write and/or draw your story, get it published, it sells (hopefully), and you get your next assignment and so on and so forth.
There wasn’t a sense of permanence to the job. People figured once the current story was published and left the newstands, that was pretty much it and whatever work you did would be forgotten in time.
Only, that didn’t happen.
Sure, it was the case mostly from the early days of comic book work through perhaps the later 1960’s. By the 1970’s there was a healthy collector market which had sprung up and publishing companies realized there was money to be made in reprinting past works. It was a win-win for the publishers: They had already paid for the work so reprinting it was like making free money. They didn’t have to pay the author or artist and whatever was made was gravy.
Certainly back then there was no sense that the characters they had could become billion dollar movie properties.
Here’s the thing: These companies, like the artists and writers, tended to feel the work had little permanence. Some of the contracts might have been lost over time or discarded, though the companies do have a claim over the characters they have continuously published over the decades.
Regardless, the work tended to be “work for hire”, which meant the author/artist was doing the work specifically to sell it to the company and, in theory, they had no rights to the work and/or any new characters they created after this fact.
However, there is a loophole, of sorts, which the above article states: After a certain amount of time, the creator(s) or heirs can request the copyright revert to them, and that is making a company like Marvel pretty nervous… to the point they are proactively suing to ensure they retain copyrights to the various characters in their stable.
There are people who have no sympathy for the creators of these myriad characters. They may say things like “well, they signed the work for hire contract, they knew what they were getting into” but how does one see what’s coming two or three decades down the line?
Artist/writer Jack Kirby essentially created or co-created most of the Marvel characters. Artist /writer Steve Ditko created or co-created -I tend to lean into the former rather than the later, but others may be more willing to give more credit to Stan Lee- what is arguably Marvel’s best known character, Spider-Man.
Both Kirby and Ditko left Marvel Comics in the later 1960’s and both had the same complaints, that Stan Lee -whom many today and thanks to his humorous cameos in various Marvel films have come to view as some kind of saint- was only too willing to take more credit for what was, in Kirby and Ditko’s opinion, their work.
In fact, the rumor is that Ditko left Spider-Man, and Marvel Comics, because he was essentially writing as well as drawing the book and Stan Lee wanted a certain villain, the Green Goblin, to be revealed as a certain character, and Ditko adamantly was against that.
Further, it is pretty well known today that Jack Kirby created the character of the Silver Surfer all on his own. The story goes that one day Kirby delivered the pages to the latest Fantastic Four issue and on it was the first appearance of the Silver Surfer and Stan Lee, confused as to the character on the page, asked who that was!
Again, though, Kirby and Lee would butt heads about, among other things, the story of the Silver Surfer and Kirby eventually left the company for, among other things, because Lee wanted his story to go in one direction and Kirby wasn’t interested in going that way. This apparently occurred in other books as well.
Now, despite what I’ve just written above, I don’t feel Stan Lee is some kind of terrible villain.
What I do believe is that he was very willing to take more credit for his work than he should have and that doesn’t reflect all that well on him.
Having said that, its not like he did nothing to make Marvel Comics the juggernaut it became. He wrote some great dialogue and captions to many of the comics he worked on even if there might be a question as to how involved in the stories he was, especially when Marvel Comics really started to take off and many more books were released each month. Further, he was terrific as a gushing fan for the product, hyping it up and creating a sense of fun in the various books which was lacking in rival DC at the time.
Ultimately, though, I side with the artists and writers of the works. They created wonderful stories and now we have people in movie studios picking over their years of hard work, making adaptations (as a writer, trust me, its easier to adapt a story already made versus coming up with something reasonably original), and then making a bundle for work while the original creators or their estates/heirs get next to nothing.
Sadly, this is nothing new.
Back in the 1970’s and when Warner Brothers was in the process of making a big budget Superman film, artist/writer Neal Adams shamed DC comics/Warners into giving monies to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of the character, who by that point were elderly and in need of the help.
It’s a shame and I hope that Marvel/Disney, rather than sticking to suing and countersuing, instead become a little more generous to those whose work they’re now using to make their millions… and billions.
