General

A single photon of light…

Fascinating article by Charles Q. Choi and presented at MSNBC.com regarding a new manner in which to search for signs of intelligent life, via faint laser pulses in contrast to the larger, isolated bursts they were looking for before:

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/faint-alien-laser-pulses-sought-hunt-extraterrestrial-intelligence-8C10995618

Perhaps the most fascinating quote of the article is this one:

“We assumed that aliens would use the simplest possible way of attracting our attention, one already implemented in seafaring since ancient times using lighthouses — that is, periodic light pulses,” (laser scientist Walter) Leeb said.

The key is repetition in the signals, faint as they may be, which would indicate something not necessarily found in nature.

As I said, fascinating stuff!

Now, on to the other side of the coin:  Top Ten Alien Encounters…Debunked:

http://www.space.com/9704-ten-alien-encounters-debunked.html

Movies

Hopscotch (1980) a (very) belated review

Edward Snowden.  Glen Greenwald.  Julian Assange.  Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.  Wikileaks.  The NSA…

The names and institutions have been all over the news of late and, unless you’re getting reaaaaally tired of reading and/or seeing stories about leaking of highly confidential government material and are in the mood for a comedy featuring the same concept and some top notch acting talent, you could do far worse than settle in and give Hopscotch a try.

Based on a far more serious thriller written by Brain Garfield (also the author of Death Wish), the theatrical version of Hopscotch deals with Miles Kendrig (Walter Matthau) an older CIA agent whose boss, the crotchety Myerson (Ned Beatty), decides is over the hill and should spend the remainder of his career before retiring working behind a desk.  Lined up to immediately replace him is Cutter (Sam Waterston), Kendrig’s understudy.

Instead of doing as he’s told, Kendrig pulls his personnel file, destroys it, and heads off to Europe and meets up with an old flame, Isobel (Glenda Jackson).  He’s not sure what he’s going to do next and, upon meeting his friendly rival from the other side, Russian agent Yaskov (Herbert Lom), Kendrig comes upon the idea of writing a memoir of his experiences in the spy agency…warts and all.

Once finished with the first chapter of his manuscript, Kendrig sends it out to all the major intelligence agencies of the world with a promise of sending each subsequent chapter to them as it is completed.  Naturally, the revelations within that chapter -and what is to follow- pushes Myerson over the edge and what follows is a manhunt to find -and eliminate- Kendrig before the whole book is completed and all the “dirty tricks” of the agency are exposed.

Though the film implies more than one spy agency (and therefore government) is out to get Kendrig, the focus of the film is on the games played between our renegade agent and the CIA.  Matthau is rock solid in the title role and Ned Beatty is wonderfully vulgar as his ex-boss and nemesis.  I have to give the film a lot of credit in the decision to portray Sam Waterston’s Cutter as a protege that is sympathetic to his elder spymaster.  The character could easily have been presented as a typical “young gun out to get the older gun” but is instead the only person on the side chasing Kendrig down to actually understand what he’s up to and wish he come to no harm.  It is also his character that delivers what is perhaps the film’s biggest laugh at the movie’s climax (It is also his character’s final line).  Glenda Jackson, as Kendrig’s love interest, is a delight, but be warned her appearances alongside Walter Matthau aren’t quite as many as one would have hoped.  In fact, her character’s role is relatively minor when all is said and done.

Hopscotch does show its age and unfolds at a pace that many younger viewers may find too dull.  Having said that, I personally found the film a delight to watch and, if I have any complaint at all, it is that the film could have actually been expanded (again, showing the “other sides” going after Kendrig).  Recommended.

I’ve presented the trailer below but, a warning: Most of the film’s funnier bits are given away here.  Just goes to show how trailers, even trailers to thirty three year old movies, had a tendency sometimes of giving away a little too much.

Movies

4 Inappropriately Awful Final Movies of Great Actors

A fascinating list from Cracked.com regarding the above:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-inappropriately-awful-final-movies-great-actors/

I found it eerie that the last John Candy and Chris Farley comedy films were, at least in terms of setting and the fact that there were two leads, eerily similar.  They also shared the morbid similarity of having these actors die before the film was completed, therefore necessitating considerable (and, by the looks of it, failed) work to get the picture completed.  I haven’t seen either Wagons East or Almost Heroes yet recall when both were released to considerable critical scorn and very little financial success.  A sad last legacy for both successful comedic actors.

As for Raul Julia in Street Fighter, I always wondered why he took on that particular role and the article offers the explanation:  His kids loved the video game and therefore he wanted to be in the film.  Raul Julia was a great, very talented actor and, truly, Street Fighter was a bad, bad way to finish a promising career…not that he envisioned it as his finale.

As for Sean Connery and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…I don’t understand all the hatred directed at this film.  No, it isn’t a classic by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t think it is quite as bad a film as many make it out to be.  I suspect much of the hatred directed at it comes from fans of the much more ambitious original Alan Moore penned comic book that inspired the movie.  Yes, they took Mr. Moore’s writings and dumbed them down considerably to make the film, but all in all the film didn’t really strike me as the stinker so many people feel it is.  I would quickly hasten to add that neither do I feel the movie is a particularly great accomplishment, either.  A quick look at Sean Connery’s many films on IMDB shows he has had a hand in several movies I feel were far, far worse than this one.  The Avengers (1998), Just Cause (1995), Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), and  Family Business (1989) are just a few he was involved in toward the later third of his career that were, IMHO, far worse.

An actor not mentioned in this list but should be is Steve McQueen.  During the 1960’s and early 1970’s he was one of Hollywood’s biggest, best known actors.  While still at the height of his success, however, he withdrew from the public eye and seemed to all but disappear.  1974’s all star disaster film The Towering Inferno featured Mr. McQueen alongside his longtime acting rival Paul Newman in the starring role, but it would be four long years later that Mr. McQueen would reappear in the never theatrically released An Enemy of the People.  That film was shelved by the studios and, because there was no home video market in those days, it wasn’t until 1980 that audiences once again saw Mr. McQueen, first in Tom Horn (a cowboy film that was a box office and critical dud) and then in his final film, the very mediocre The Hunter before succumbing that very same year to cancer.

The Hunter is one of those films that should have been a hell of a lot better than it was but suffers from a very weak script.  Watching that film fills me with sadness at what could have been.

Movies

Bullet to the Head (2012) a (mildly) belated review

I suspect most people, while about to watch a “new” movie, approach the subject before them with a certain amount of optimism and/or good will.  They hope the film they’re about to see is, at the very least, worth their time.  One feels even more optimistic about the film they’re about to watch when one is a fan of the work of one or more of the people involved in the film.

In the case of last year’s barely-theatrically-released Bullet to the Head, directed by Walter Hill, I’ve noted several times in several posts to being a big fan of his movies.  Starting with 1975’s Hard Times (his directorial debut) and going through such classics (in my opinion) as The Driver, The Warriors, The Shadow Riders, Southern Comfort, 48 Hours (perhaps his biggest hit) and up to 1984’s Streets of Fire, Mr. Hill had quite a run of incredible, testosterone fueled hits.

Following Streets of Fire, however, Mr. Hill hit something of a rough patch.  While a few of the films that followed had their moments, the overall quality of many of the theatrical films he directed after this point was noticeably…less.

Still, I’ve kept an eye out for his new works.  When I heard he had paired up with Sylvester Stallone to make an action film/crime drama, I was intrigued.  I eagerly awaited word of when the film would be released, fully intent on giving it a whirl while it was in theaters.  Time passed.  Then more time.

And more.

It seemed obvious the movie studio bankrolling the film wasn’t all that thrilled with the final product.  BY the time Bullet to the Head was finally released theatrically, it was done with little to no major promotion and, subsequently (and not surprisingly), the movie disappeared rather quickly before reaching the home video market.

Did the film deserve this fate?

When I put the film into my DVD player, I hoped for the best while, in the back of my mind, I braced for the worst.  For the first twenty or so minutes of the film, things looked good.

Mr. Stallone plays James Bonomo, a hired killer.  He and his younger partner take on their latest target and eliminate him.  Afterwards, they go to a bar to unwind and pick up the second half of the payment for their job.  Bonomo’s partner, however, is viciously knifed and killed.  The assassin, Keegan (Jason Momoa), tries to do the same with Bonomo but fails to take down the more senior of the two hit men.

Enter Taylor Kwan (Sung Kang), an out of town cop who arrives to investigate Bonomo and his partner’s latest victim.  Turns out he was Kwan’s boozy ex-partner and a man who may have incriminating evidence related to some very powerful interests within this big city.  Kwan quickly connects Bonomo to the hit and manages to meet with him.  Both men, interestingly enough, seek the same thing: The people who hired Bonomo to perform this latest kill.

Thus, we have the set up for this buddy action/adventure/crime drama:  A by the book cop and a bloody hit man are forced to partner up to get to the bottom of this case.

Sadly, despite starting well enough, the film loses steam with each passing minute.  Both Bonomo and Kwan are simply not very intriguing characters and their “bickering” is never terribly funny or engaging.  The story, too, unfolds in a highly predictable manner, offering few surprises along the way to a rather unimpressive climax.

While I wish I could say that Mr. Hill has delivered a film worthy of his early classics, Bullet to the Head is ultimately a very average film.  It is certainly not terrible, but neither is it ever all that much more than mediocre.  A real pity.

General

The Bulls**t Police…

Fascinating article by Michael Moynihan for Newsweek Magazine concerning the “Skeptic” movement:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/08/16/james-randi-the-amazing-meeting-and-the-bullshit-police.html

Don’t know how long ago it was I first saw/heard/became aware of James Randi, the movement’s founder…perhaps it was on one of his Johnny Carson/Tonight Show appearances…but I’ve always felt a kinship, of sorts, with him.  I suppose what drove him into this area (he was a well known magician/illusionist before) was a distaste for people claiming to have some kind of extra-sensory power and using this flim-flam to get money.

In some cases, lots and lots of money.

Where the article gets really interesting, in my opinion, is when it deals with some of the groups trying to appropriate the term “skeptic” to essentially promote anti-scientific ideas and, the big one, the whole issue of religion in the skeptical community.  The author notes that skeptics can sometimes come off as arrogant and this passage, found close to the end of the article, sums up that danger:

Many believe that the movement’s insularity and self-confidence is damaging its ability to broaden its impact. In his 2010 speech at TAM, Slate’s Phil Plait offered his allies a harsh bit of advice: if you want to gain converts, he said, “don’t be a dick.” “The tone of what we are doing is decaying,” he admonished, and “vitriol and venom are on the rise.”

As I said, a fascinating article.

Movies

Olympus Has Fallen (2013) a (mildly) belated review

With many, if not most action films, you often are forced to overlook dumb/improbable things that occur in order to enjoy the feature.

For example, nearly every James Bond film has that scene where our hero is captured by the villain.  Instead of pulling out a gun and putting a bullet through Bond’s head, ending all unpleasantness right then and there, our villain inevitably decides now is the perfect time to tell Bond all about his plans before (usually) leaving him alone in some overly complex death trap he will inevitably figure a way out of.  Thus, when Bond is free once again, he knows where to go and what to do to triumph.

Moving away from Bond specifically and into action films in general, its hard not to notice that when bullets fly, they seem to have a really hard time finding the hero…but a much easier time finding the bodies of the villain and his henchmen.

I could go on and on with other, perhaps lesser examples, but suffice it to say I offer the above to segue into this:  Olympus Has Fallen is an awfully dumb action film.  Perhaps one of the dumber ones I’ve seen in a long time.

And yet…I can’t deny finding it entertaining as well.

Olympus Has Fallen is the first -and lower budgeted- of the two “White-House-gets-nuked-by-terrorists” films released this year (White House Down being the other, bigger budgeted one).  The movie opens with a sequence that, frankly, didn’t even need to be in the film at all:  We see the President (Aaron Eckhart) leaving Camp David with his wife (Ashley Judd, in what amounts to a very small cameo) during a snowstorm and their limo winds up crashing through a bridge guard gate.  The President’s personal bodyguard/secret service man, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), is forced to pull the President out of the limo just before it falls off the bridge but is unable to save his still trapped wife.

Eighteen months later, we find that Banning is now working for the Treasury (the President doesn’t want him around as his personal bodyguard because, even though everyone, including the President know his actions were correct, the mere act of Banning being around the President reminds him of this loss).  Banning wants to get back into his old job but knows it is difficult to get past the emotions.  Therefore, he does his paperwork and hopes to one day move back into the job he was meant for.

Enter: tensions between North and South Korea.

We find that a delegation of South Koreans, including their Premier, are coming to the White House for high level negotiations.  In the middle of negotiations, a large, U.S. military aircraft starts strafing Washington D.C. with high caliber bullets, slaughtering many people and causing incredible mayhem.  The President and the South Korean delegation head to the “bunker” under the White House where it is revealed the security detail of the South Korean leader are, in fact, a group of terrorists.  They take out the security details around the President and now have him and his immediate staff under their control.

Outside, a small army of North Korean (?) terrorists have emerged from hiding and are locking down the area immediately around the White House.  Banning runs from his job at the Treasury Department and makes it into White House grounds before the area is sealed.  By the time he reaches the doors of the White House and enters the bullet ravaged structure, he alone is left to fight the terrorists off…and free the President of the United States.

Before we go any further, let’s get to the dumb stuff.  I suppose I could enumerate all the dumb things that happen in the film but, in the interests of brevity, let me point out three of the juicier ones (Some mild SPOILERS follow):

1) Perhaps the biggest dumb thing this movie wants us to accept is the idea that an unauthorized military aircraft essentially can make it alll the way to the Washington monument while strafing the grounds with countless bullets before finally being taken out.  In pre-9-11 times I could envision something like this taking the U.S. defense forces by surprise.  Post 9-11…it is an awfully hard thing to swallow.

2) I keep having visions of Banning just outside the entrance of the White House, crouching behind a cement pillar in relative safety while wave after wave of soon to be dead (and most certainly brain dead) Secret Service members run out of the structure only to get mowed down by heavy machine gun fire.  Perhaps we needed better editing in this sequence, but all those supposed “professionals” came out looking like lemmings!

3) The traitor.  The moment I saw this recognizable actor in what appeared to be a “minor” role, I KNEW he was going to revealed as a baddie.  After this revelation, he delivers some ferociously nasty lines to the captured President of the United States and looks, for all intents and purposes, VERY willing to kill him.  But when he is sent (alone, of course) after Banning and the two eventually clash and Banning has him at his mercy, it takes a grand total of two seconds for the traitor to completely flip.  He agrees to help Banning out against the terrorists as his last act.  Seriously?!?

Ok, so there are a few of the really silly ones.  But the bottom line is this:  As silly as the film was, it moved.  There was very little fat -other than the opening sequence- to take up your time.  The good guys are good (if a little bit slow) and the bad guys, including Rick Yune as Kang, the head terrorist, are deliciously bad.

The movie never really lets up once it gets going, delivering a higher body count combination of 24 and Die Hard while entertaining you just enough to (almost) forget the silliness.  No, we’re not talking Oscar caliber material here…but if you’re in the mood for some pretty good action and aren’t the type to get too hung up on dumb plot points, you could do a whole lot worse than check out Olympus Has Fallen.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Marvel vs. DC

2 Comments

Its the age old argument many a child -and adult!- fan has engaged in at one time or another:  Which is the better comic book company, Marvel or DC?

Read on, read on…

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/rivalries/2013/08/marvel_vs_dc_comics_one_is_just_like_iron_man_the_other_like_batman.html

Big admission:  I’ve always been a DC fan.  When I was growing up in the early 1970’s, my first major comic book experiences almost all related to DC books.  At the time, I was absolutely wowed by the sinister, shadowy artwork of Berni Wrightson and great storytelling of Len Wein in the first ten issues of Swamp Thing.  I was also impressed with the Archie Goodwin/Walt Simonson Manhunter stories.  Not long afterwards I was equally blown away by the various Neal Adams drawn works, primary of which were his Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow series, at that time appearing in various reprint forms.

Don’t get me wrong, I was aware of the Marvel books and many of the creators involved in them.  I loved the works of Jack Kirby (who doesn’t…at least now?) and was floored by his Fantastic Four work…but, again, his DC work, which was more current at that time, simply had my attention.  I loved, loved, loved Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth and found The New Gods, and in particular the at times savage Orion, absolutely fascinating.

Lest I sound like a total DC fanatic, let me conclude with this:  The initial 38 issues of Spider-Man, the original issues created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, easily remain my all time favorite Marvel works.  This is no slight on the many contributions to Marvel Comics of Jack Kirby.  As I mentioned before, I loved his Fantastic Four run.  It is a very, very close second to the Spider-Man issues for best Marvel work ever.  In my humble opinion, of course.

Ok…think I got all that geekiness out of my system now.  Back to work! 😉

Movies

Solomon Kane (2009) a (mildly) belated review

Pulp author Robert E. Howard’s best known creation is, most likely, Conan the Barbarian.  Despite this, it is his another of his major recurring characters, Solomon Kane, that remains my personal favorite.  Surely it has something to do with the fact that the character is a religious 1600’s era Puritanical “Dirty Harry” that most intrigues me.  He hunts evil…and deals with it mercilessly.

A few years back, when word came that a Solomon Kane film was in the works with James Purefoy in the lead role, I was eager to see it.  The film was made and there was word of a coming release and then…nothing.

The movie, a European production, was eventually released to theaters in Europe but, as far as I can tell, didn’t make it to United States theaters.  If it did, it was very a very limited release.  More time passed.  Eventually, I found the movie was released to the video market, again in Europe, but it remained left out of the U.S. markets.

Until, that is, last month.

Now, four years later, I finally had a chance to get my hands on Solomon Kane and give it a shot.  Would it live up to my expectations?  More importantly, would it live up to Robert E. Howard’s original stories?

In a word…kinda.

Solomon Kane is a low budget movie and, like many low budget features, suffers at times from a lack of spectacle.  While this can hurt movies that strive for “big” stories, it doesn’t hurt the film all that much…at least until the end (I’ll get to that in a second).  Where the film may bother Solomon Kane fans is in the story it tells.  Solomon Kane is, essentially, an “origin” story for the character and this winds up being the worst -and most unnecessary- part of the film.  Worst because the character’s story arc from bad to good feels way too compressed and -given what we see- unlikely.  Unnecessary because the movie’s makers could have eliminated almost all that back story and still given us almost everything presented…only without that clutter.

Robert E. Howard never bothered to give Solomon Kane much of an origin, though one of his best Kane stories -in this case a poem- involves Solomon Kane’s return to his home town.  It was this poem, I suspect, that was the primary inspiration for this movie.

Unfortunately, while the poem was wistful and grand, the movie is decidedly smaller.  We start with Solomon Kane as a berserk killer, a privateer lusting for gold and mayhem and willing to kill anyone that gets in his way.  On his latest adventure his pirate crew invades a castle in search of gold.  As they climb the castle, however, evidence of dark magics appear.  Eventually, Solomon Kane’s entire crew is butchered while the bloodthirsty man is confronted by one of the Devil’s own…a demon who wants to drag evil Solomon Kane to Hell.

Solomon barely escapes with his life and, years later, we find that the encounter with the Devil’s minion has made Kane renounce his evil ways.  He now lives in a monastery, alone and non-violent, and is trying his best to repent.  Alas, and as I said before, this is the part of the movie that just doesn’t work for me.  Why?  Because rather than the Robert E. Howard vengeful zealot, we have a man that, for lack of a better word, was scared shitless into becoming “good”.

Seriously?

Anyway, the monastery decides its time for Solomon to leave their grounds.  They can’t keep him anymore and he ventures off, only to run into foul deeds performed by a rumored sorcerer.

Once again, I was bothered by this whole introductory segment.  Not only is Solomon presented as a bloodthirsty murderer who was “scared straight”, but he’s also forced to leave the Monastery when they don’t want him anymore.  Had this not happened, would the fearful Solomon Kane remain hidden for the rest of his life?

An instant fix that might have worked better:  Eliminate the whole privateer thing and introduce audiences to Solomon as a mysterious figure in the monastery, a man who knows the devil has chased after him all his life and decides, on his own, that the time has come for him to leave the safety of the monastery and confront his nemesis.  The monks beg him to stay, but he refuses.  He will not live in fear anymore.  On his way out the door, he tells the head monk regarding his eventual, inevitable confrontation with the Devil: “We’ll see who’s left standing”.  After saying this, he walks out the monastery gates.  No more “scared” Solomon, no more silliness.

Anyway, back to the real movie…

So Solomon Kane is out and about and, because he has renounced all violence, suffers from this, especially when a family he falls in with are for the most part butchered by the sorcerer’s soldiers.  This wakens the grim Solomon and he vows to save a kidnapped maiden and rid the terrorized lands of the sorcerer and his army.  The climax, if you haven’t guessed it already, leads Solomon Kane back to familiar ground and the poem I referenced above.  Unfortunately, the final battle features some CGI effects that may work better in a DOOM type game rather than Solomon Kane.  Ah well.

Even with the faults I mentioned above regarding the character’s origin, Solomon Kane is a reasonably entertaining film, but one that could -and should- have been much better.  Even ignoring the unnecessary origin aspects for a second, the film, at least to me, never really catches fire.  Mind you, it moves along well enough and doesn’t bore…but neither does it draw you in with bated breath like a good action film should.  The bottom line is that while you may be entertained, you’re likely not to be terribly impressed.

On the plus side, and despite the silly origin aspects, the filmmakers clearly were familiar with the Solomon Kane stories and tried hard to make a film that honored them.  A bigger budget, a rethinking of the origin aspects, and a more exciting pace would have surely helped make for a better film.

Despite this, I would cautiously recommend Solomon Kane to fans of the stories.  Others may want to stay away.

Uncategorized

Shades of Geraldo Rivera…

I’m a sucker for these kinds of stories:  A very old floor safe was discovered in a Cincinnati bar.  The owner wasn’t aware of the safe, which was lost/forgotten for decades…so he called in a safe cracker to open it and see what might be inside.

Watch the results for yourself:

http://on.aol.com/video/old-safe-found-at-otr-business-opened-517893674

I suppose many of you may not recall the Geraldo Rivera reference above.  Relates to this:

The Blog of E. R. Torre