General

Gotta love the internet…

So I’ve got a few free minutes and I’m goofing around on the internet and on reddit.com I find the following link which states:

“My girlfriend just sent me this with no context”.

I click on that link and viola…

I have myself a good laugh.  I mean…what the hell…a pug with a pepperoni pizza on its back in the middle of a nice green lawn/field.  Weird…amusing…weird.

Then I go to the commentaries for this link and right away it is pointed out that this photograph is the work of a photographer by the name of Jonpaul Douglass.  Turns out taking photographs that involve pepperoni pizzas is his “thing”.

Curious to see more examples?  Then click the link below and enjoy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/jonpaul-douglass_n_4904595.html

And don’t ever say this blog never does anything for you.

Movies

World on a Wire (1973) a (virtually) belated review

A few months back the kind folks at the Criterion Collection, makers of some of the finest BluRay/DVD releases of intriguing national and foreign films, had a sale on their products.

I checked through their stuff and considered some films here and there but nothing stuck out.  As diverse as their listings are, for the most part I had the films I wanted and, while there were some that called out to me, they didn’t make me curious enough to outright buy them.

So I narrowed my search to “science fiction” titles and, in a few seconds, stumbled upon the listing for the 1973 2 Part German TV movie World on A Wire.  The description of the film, as presented in the Criterion listing, follows:

World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of reluctant hero Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the world of tomorrow from one of cinema’s kinkiest geniuses.

Huh, I thought.

I had never before heard of this film and had only the barest idea of who director Rainer Werner Fassbinder is/was.  Yet that description had me and I ordered the movie.  Before it arrived, I researched Mr. Fassbinder and found him to be a fascinating character.  He died in 1982 at the age of 37 from an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills…and left behind a mind-boggling legacy of 41 films made in a span of 13 years, many of which are considered classics of German cinema.

Incredible.

World on A Wire would be Mr. Fassbinder’s only science fiction film and, as stated in the Criterion description, it was essentially forgotten and lost (hence the need to be “rediscovered”) for many years.  No doubt this was due in part to the tremendous amount of work Mr. Fassbinder released.  As was stated in some of the supplemental materials on the BluRay, there is such a wealth of material Mr. Fassbinder left behind that much of it even today waits to be rediscovered.

Based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye, World on a Wire can rightfully be called one of the very first -if not THE first- film to deal with the concept of virtual reality, something explored to great effect in more recent years and in movies such as eXistenZ, The Matrix, Dark City, and The 13th Floor (itself also based on the novel Simulacron-3)  Virtual reality has also found its way into various TV shows, including the concept of the “Holodeck” in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Even I’ve explored the concept in my short story Virtual found in the short story collection Shadows at Dawn. (self promotion ends in 3…2…1…)

As I put the movie into my player, I frankly didn’t know what I’d get.  It is, after all, an older film and a TV movie to boot.  It’s long, consisting of two parts each of which run a little over an hour and a half.  It was a daunting task to find that much free time…

Still, that description had me.  I gave the film a go…

…and I couldn’t have been happier with what I saw.

World on a Wire is, paradoxically, an incredibly forward thinking work yet one whose luster is nonetheless -perhaps inevitably- somewhat dulled by the movies/TV shows I’ve mentioned above.  I imagine audiences in 1973 were floored with the cliffhanger revelation at the end of the first part of the film but modern audiences, I suspect, will have figured out that particular twist long before it is formally revealed.

The thing is, once that revelation is made, we’re left with the entire second part of the film and this is where we venture into “new” and unexplored territory.  To put it more clearly, part 1 of World on a Wire acts as a “rules of the game” presentation while part 2 gives us the story/resolution proper.  This very logical progression worked incredibly well and, in spite of my familiarity with the concepts, had me intrigued until the very end.

Those expecting to see a special effects extravaganza need look elsewhere.  Despite its science fictional trappings, World on a Wire is decidedly low tech and features almost no special effects.  Its tone is more in line with film noir mysteries, and indeed that works best for the mysterious story presented.  Our hero, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), as also noted in some of the extra material on the BluRay, is essentially a Humphrey Bogart detective-type, a man who is presented with an initial mystery involving a disappeared co-worker no one else but he remembers existed.  It is this initial mystery that leads him down dark paths and strange new experiences and tests his very sanity.

World on a Wire turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.  I so enjoy discovering older, fascinating works that put into perspective other works.  In the case of this film, it clearly is the granddaddy of many more famous, recognized virtual reality works, yet it stands out on its own.

Highly recommended.

Music

Now this is interesting…

The Doors’ last two albums, made after the death of frontman/singer Jim Morrison, will be officially released come September of this year:

http://theseconddisc.com/2015/05/29/break-on-through-the-doors-other-voices-and-full-circle-come-to-cd-lp/

Like many, I didn’t know there had been more Doors albums released other than the controversial 1978 album An American Prayer (which featured recorded poetry by Mr. Morrison set to music by the remaining band menbers along with other bric a brac).  This was deliberate as the remaining members of the band seemed to decide, after the fact, to ignore those last two albums and focus on the legacy of the six “classic” Doors albums which featured Jim Morrison singing, culminating with their 1971 classic L.A. Woman.

When I did learn, much to my shock, that the remaining members of band actually released not one, but two albums following the death of Mr. Morrison, I was intrigued.  The first, 1971’s Other Voices, according to the article linked above, arrived in stores a mere 6 months after the release of L.A. Woman and only three months after Mr. Morrison’s death. Again, according to the article above, Mr. Morrison had rehearsed some of the songs that eventually appeared in the album but I suppose none of rehearsals were recorded and/or they might not have been good enough to use on the album itself.

Here’s Tightrope Ride, from that album.  Keyboardist Ray Manzarek, I believe, sang this particular song:

Not to sound nasty, but I don’t think even Mr. Morrison could have done all that much with this particular song.  Clearly Mr. Manzarek tries his best to do Morrison-esq singing but the lyrics feel half-baked.  The song sounds like it could have used a little more work.

The second and last album the band would release came the next year in 1972 and was called Full Circle.  The last song to chart in the US (reaching #85) for The Doors was The Mosquito, from that album.  Here it is, as sung by guitarist Robby Krieger:

Yikes.

I mean, its a quirky song and not terrible per se.  In fact, it reminds me to some degree of some of the sillier stuff The Beatles did, such as…

Having said that, The Beatles were known to create both serious and “silly” songs.  In fact, their ability to go into so many different modes/moods was one of the things that made them so endearing.  The Doors, on the other hand, tended to be so much more serious and “dark” with their music so it is weird hearing a song like this coming from them.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder:  Would Mr. Morrison have been comfortable singing this?

Who knows.  I most certainly would have liked to hear it, if only for curiosity’s sake!!

Movies

5 Movie Villains Who Stupidly Sabotaged Their Own Schemes…

From the delightful Cracked.com comes this list which explores the above, five films in which the villains, at some point in the film, did something that “stupidly” sabotaged their own goals:

http://www.cracked.com/article_22362_5-movie-villains-who-stupidly-sabotaged-their-own-schemes.html

The main reason I’m providing a link to this article is because of the very first item mentioned, a bit of silliness/nonsensical storytelling found in The Dark Knight Rises, the last of director Christopher Nolan’s Batman movie trilogy.

Now I know there are many who feel The Dark Knight Rises was the weakest of Nolan’s Batman films and there has been plenty of abuse heaped upon the film.  However, I’m not one of those who “hated” it.  In fact, I felt the film was on par with the other two: It was ambitious, at times wildly entertaining, yet at other times showed some glaring flaws.

I’ve mentioned many times before, for example, that the fate of Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman Begins, where Batman simply allows the villain to die in the train crash, was wildly out of character for our hero.  It was made even worse, in my opinion, with Batman’s silly reasoning for why he allowed Al Ghul to die.  “I’m not killing you, I’m just not going to save you”.

Yeah, right.

Still, I could accept the flaws because the film makers were clearly trying their best to create something that rose above it being “just” a superhero film.

So, having said all that, that first item listed in the cracked article is one of those things that did indeed irk me about The Dark Knight Rises.

To wit, Miranda (who we will soon find out is actually villain Ra’s Al Ghul’s daughter Talia Al Ghul and is secretly behind all the evil events in the film), encounters Batman/Bruce Wayne after he’s escaped the Lazarus Pit and returned to Gotham to save it from Bane and (what we assume are) his League of Assassins.

Again, not one of the heroes knows that Miranda is in reality Talia Al Gul.  Batman/Bruce Wayne comes to her and she knows he’s back in Gotham!  Instead of arranging a meeting with him somewhere she can have an army of assassins take him out, she continues to go along with her deception until almost the very last moment.

When the deception was revealed, I believe I actually groaned.  There had been rumors/speculation for months before the film’s release that “Miranda” was in actuality Talia, so when the movie revelation was made, it didn’t come as a complete surprise.  But in an otherwise pretty good film (IMHO!), this bit really struck me as a major story fail, in more ways than one.

Yes, as mentioned in the Cracked article, Miranda/Talia kept her deception with Batman/Bruce Wayne even though it no longer mattered and she could have easily taken him out when he revealed he was back in Gotham.

But even more frustrating, at least to me: Batman is supposed to be the world’s greatest detective, right?  Yet until the moment Miranda/Talia plunged a knife into Batman’s side, which effectively ended her charade, our hero didn’t have the slightest idea she might be behind everything.

To me, that was the film’s Ra’s-dies-in-the-train moment.

General

World’s Oldest Murder…

How long ago was this murder committed?  Try 430,000 years ago!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/29/oldest-murder-case_n_7466222.html

You should really check out the link above, but if you don’t want to, a somewhat brief summary:  The skull was found in a cave system in Spain that had another 28 set of bones within it.  When the skull pieces were put together, the forensic team realized it showed signs of two blunt force trauma wounds, either of which was sufficient to kill the subject.  Both wounds, by the way, were created with the same weapon.

The motive for the killing, of course, will likely never be discovered, but it is fascinating to learn that humans, even all the way back then, were very much capable of committing homicide.

skull

Movies

Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994) a (very) belated review

Question: When do you know your personal movie collection is spiraling out of control?

Answer: When you find films you purchased years before and didn’t remember having them.

A little while back I wrote a review of Phantasm II and noted the following regarding the original Phantasm and its sequels:

Over … time I became aware that sequels were made to that original film.  However, I missed pretty much all of them, only realizing there were sequels when the (I believe) third film was shown on TV one night.  I found the sanitized version I saw Ok enough, but I was confused by the various characters and situations.  It felt like I needed to brush up on the original and its sequel to understand what was happening now. 

(the entire Phantasm II review can be found here)

So the other day I’m going through my DVD/BluRay collection and its so damn large that its two rows deep, with the DVDs in the second row covered by those in the first.  I move around a few DVDs and, viola, am shocked to find that I have a copy of the Anchor Bay release of Phantasm III!  I grab it and realize that when I wrote the above paragraph regarding Phantasm and its sequels I had conflated two memories into one: I did indeed see a sanitized TV showing of Phantasm III at some point but obviously I had also purchased this DVD and must have seen it too… only I forgot most of what I saw.

This is not a terribly good sign, I’m afraid.

Still, after seeing Phantasm II so recently and having a more solid idea of where we were, story-wise, with the whole Phantasm universe, I eagerly popped my copy of Phantasm III into the DVD player and gave it a whirl.  Would the fact that I had more of a backstory of what was going on make the difference?  Would I react more positively to the film?

As it turned out, the answer is a definite “yes”.

Phantasm III compresses the entire second film into its first few minutes to give new viewers a sense of what happened before.  But because what happened before was so out there, newbies might find the recap -as I originally did- more confusing than illuminating.

In one particular way, this film’s opening reminded me of Alien 3 in that it brutally eliminated one of the main characters featured in the second Phantasm movie in the opening minutes.  Without getting into too many spoilers, the actor who played that particular role chose not to return to the third film and was therefore disposed of right away, a curious thing given how “important” the character was supposed to be to the Phantasm story…well, at least in Phantasm II.

The other big difference is that the original actor playing Mike returns to that role (Phantasm II was the only big studio release of the Phantasm series and the studios forced writer/director Don Coscarelli to feature a more prominent actor in that role).

For better or worse and depending on your views, this movie is very much in the vein of Phantasm II.  In fact, at times I felt I was watching a in-tone/spirit remake of Phantasm II with Phantasm III rather than an entirely “new” film.

As I said before, depending on your views this will be a positive or not.  For me, it proved to be a positive.  Having a better understanding of the characters and situations thanks to having seen Phantasm II, I found Phantasm III a far more coherent affair than I remembered.  The same mix of humor and suspense can be found within this film though clearly the budget was much lower this time around versus for the second studio paid film.

In sum, if you’re in the mood for an oddball horror film that features some genuinely creepy scenery along with some sly humor, you should check out Phantasm III…but I recommend doing so only after seeing Phantasm II.

General

Artistry vs. hackery…

The art world is a most curious place.  It hit the news a couple of days ago that “artist” (I put his name in quotes for a very good reason) Richard Prince had created quite the controversy.  Why?  Because he was selling -for quite a good bit of money- instagram photos he appropriated (ie took) from that service.  What exactly did he do with the appropriated items?  He simply blew them up in size without altering the images in any way and then put some new text messages on the bottom of said photos.

That was the extent of his “artistry”.

Read all about it here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/richard-prince-instagram_n_7452634.html

While one of the “artistic” pieces sold for as much as $90,000, I suspect this attempt to cash in on others’ works will stall now that the artist has been exposed for what he is.

However, Mr. Price is not a unique figure when it comes to “appropriating” others’ artistic works to make money for themselves.

Ask some prominent comic book artists/fans about the revered Roy Lichtenstein and you’ll find some pretty strong opinions regarding “his” most famous works.  Check out this article, for instance, which gives very clear examples of how Mr. Lichtenstein ripped off various comic book panels to “make” his art:

http://nextpanel.blogspot.com/2011/08/roy-lichtenstein-plagiarist-or-art.html

Perhaps Mr. Lichtenstein’s most famous work of “art” is this one, called “Whaam!”:

The image was ripped off almost whole by Lichtenstein from this panel from DC Comic’s Men at War #89, originally drawn by Russ Heath:

And this is only one of many such works of “art” that Mr. Lichtenstein made off the works of others and which earned him millions while the original creators got nothing.

So Mr. Price isn’t the first to rip off the art of others in an attempt to make themselves money.  Perhaps the most eloquent response to these types of things was created by Mr. Russ Heath himself with regard to Mr. Lichtenstein and his “Whaam” painting…

Bottle of Wine by Russ Heath

Movies

Movie Malaise…

So this happened over the Memorial Day Weekend:

Wall Street Journal: Holiday Box Office Lowest Since 2001

(For those interested, a list of the summer movies from 2001)

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20 and, given that reality, the results don’t entirely surprise me, even if at least one of them I predicted beforehand.

Let’s start with that particular prediction, regarding THE big Memorial Day release, Tomorrowland.  Directed by Brad Bird, when word first came that this would be the next movie he did after Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, and was a movie he chose to do instead of the new Star Wars film, people like me were naturally curious.

But as I pointed out in a blog posting from May 22, the very day of the film’s formal release (you can read the entry here), I sensed audiences might have a tepid at best reaction to Tomorrowland, at least based on the odd, uninformative trailers being released to allegedly hype the movie up.

As I said in that entry, I got the feeling well before the film’s release that its plot might be a mess, and based on critical reaction, that turned out to be the case.

So if Tomorrowland was looking shaky upon arrival, then what of the other films out there?  As I mentioned in that same entry, it felt like the studios gave up on the Poltergeist remake.  I hardly saw any advertisements for it and, while it made some money, it doesn’t surprise me the film didn’t storm out of the gates.

Which leaves us with the “older” films.  Furious 7, while still in the top ten, is looking long in the tooth by this time.  Those who wanted to see it have pretty much seen it.  Still somewhat strong is Avengers: Age of Ultron, though I suspect that movie is falling into the same category.

The two big films of the previous week, Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max Fury Road, still did well.

Pitch Perfect 2 was so outside my wheelhouse that I can’t even begin to offer theories on why it did as well as it did.  Perhaps it was counterprogramming, giving audiences a welcome opposite of the typical big budget blockbusters.  Perhaps in part it was due to good will from the first film (which I don’t know all that much about either).  Regardless, the studios backing this movie have got to be smiling.

Which brings us to Mad Max Fury Road.  While the film is a critical darling and the internet is filled with gushing posts from people who absolutely love the film, it was beaten, financially, in these two weeks by Pitch Perfect 2.  That’s not to say the film is a financial failure.  Not at all.  However, one wonders, how did a comedy/musical wind up beating what looked, coming into the week before, to be a massive hit?

And here’s where my awesome powers of hindsight come into play…I suspect the thing that might have turned off some people from giving the movie a try was the fact that it looked a little too weird.

There’s a place for weird cinema but with the large summer audiences, one has to be careful to not go too far and potentially alienate these same audiences.  My wife was reluctant to see the film because the commercials made it look too “out there” for her.  Yet once I got her to the theater (no force involved! 😉 ), she came out with the opinion the film was far better than she thought it would be.  How many more people are there out there like her, people who might ultimately like the film yet are reluctant to go see it -indeed, might not go see it!- because of that feeling?

My own opinion of Fury Road remains the same.  I liked it but am not one of those people who absolutely loved it.  As good as the movie was it didn’t totally blow me away like The Road Warrior did back in the day.

I suspect in the long run the film will more than make its money back and, hopefully, will even see a sequel.

Interestingly enough, I suspect Mad Max Fury Road might have done better had it be released this past week rather than the week before and against Pitch Perfect 2.  I strongly believe the desire for people to see Tomorrowland was weaker than many thought.

As for the rest of summer…we’ll just have to wait and see.  And when all is said and done, maybe I’ll offer another sterling 20/20 hindsight opinion! 😉

General

This is your brain on politics…

If the results weren’t so damn scary (the man could have died!), you’d laugh at the following article concerning one Holly Nicole Solomon, an Arizonian who got so furious with her husband for not voting for Romney (he apparently didn’t vote at all) that she ran him down with her car:

http://theviralvault.com/woman-gets-3-12-years-in-prison-for-running-over-her-husband-for-not-voting-for-romney/

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: the political climate these days is so damn rancid.  The “product” from Fox News and the radio conservatives (among them Rush Limbaugh) are heavily to blame for this.  Mrs. Solomon, by the way, was pregnant at the time and felt that another Obama presidential term would somehow devastate her life.

Ironically enough, Romney won the Arizona vote and therefore the electoral votes for that state so her husband’s non-vote didn’t really matter.

Hopefully, we’ve already reached the crest of this particular wave and things will normalize…at least as “normal” as they can be in the wonderful world of politics!

The Blog of E. R. Torre