Reviews, reviews, reviews

There have been some perks to this goddam never ending ongoing ZAP FORCE movie adaptation project I’ve been working on for the last 18 months with David at AIE Studios. I’ve somehow or other managed to get on a list to review advance copies of various new DVD releases. So I’m just going to cut and paste some stuff I’ve already sent off to the various different producers for your edification, although I’m violating about 40 different SWG guidelines by doing it:

Indiana Jones and the Ring of Fire - That’s not a final title yet, and the version I reviewed will probably be re-cut and may have new footage shot for it, but here’s what I got:

The fourth film in the franchise looks to be the worst so far, although it’s not for lack of ambition. Mostly what hurts it is that Spielberg is obviously desperate for a megahit, and as such, he’s trying to hard to include various ‘sure fire’ elements to appeal to fans of other very successful recent films.

Now I personally loved the Harry Potter cameo. When Indy stumbles across a young boy imprisoned as a male sex slave in a Turkish hareem who is obviously Potter, I was prepared to be revolted. Indy’s first reaction, of course, is to try to free the little rat, but then someone from off screen hands him a book. We can’t quite make out the title, but it’s pretty obviously an HP book. Indy skims through it, then throws it down, spits in Harry’s face, screams “This is far less than you deserve!” and stalks out again.

I love that scene, but I think it’s going to alienate a lot of HP fans.

Other ‘tributes’ don’t go as well. The decision to cast Orlando Bloom as Indy’s father in this one was going to be controversial no matter what, but dressing him in his Legolas outfit and make up, and having Indy make a sort of backhanded reference to “my father, reincarnated as an otherdimensional elf”, really didn’t seem plausible to me. Fortunately Indy doesn’t spend much time with his ‘dad’; they go off and rescue a couple of hairy midgets from some talking trees and Indy leaves again, with most of the primeval forest in flames behind him from his homemade napalm blaster.

I also admit, I think the obvious decision that was made to try to suck up to Rosie O’Donnell and Camryn Manheim in this production, by casting Alison Doody once again as Indy’s love interest, despite the fact that (a) her character is dead and (b) somewhere between CRUSADE and this film the actress put on something like 300 lbs, is a bad one. Spielberg seems to agree with me; I’ve heard persistent rumors that he’s going to re-shoot the love scenes with a different actress. Unfortunately, he’s still trying to appeal to focus groups, so the new love interest may be Betty White or Bea Arthur. I’m thinking that will be difficult to look at, too, but what do I know? I’m not a big Hollywood movie director.

The plot is just too rambling and unfocused. Indy is, supposedly, trying to find some mystical artifact called the Ring of Fire, and this quest not only sends him all over the world, but into other dimensions and other time periods, as well. I enjoyed the ten minute sequence where Indy wound up touring with the Rolling Stones in 1967 and he actually slaps Paul Williams live on the Phil Donahue show after listening to “Close To You” for the first time in the green room. But the brief cameo by an unnamed but still obvious Austin Powers seemed like a waste of time to me, since Indy didn’t kill him. And when Indy actually gets the Ring of Fire and uses it to travel to a distant galaxy so he can capture and torture a small group of rebels, including one guy who looks a lot like a younger version of himself with a bad 70s hairstyle, it’s just way over the top. Herve Villechez, or a computer animation of him, showing up, grabbing the ring off Indy’s finger, and hurling himself into the Death Star right before it explodes, as a final climax, just seems silly.

Oh, wait, I’m wrong. This isn’t the new Indiana Jones movie, it’s the first collaboration between Kevin Smith and Damon Wayans.

Oh, well. I loved it, then. Brilliant stuff. Go see it.

Overture! Curtain Lights! - Not so much a movie at about thirteen minutes of clips taken from one particular episode of Eight Is Enough where the family put on a show in their living room and sang the theme song from the old Bug Bunny cartoon hour about four hundred times. You get to see all four hundred on this rather bizarre DVD release. While that may not appeal to you, several odd little extras have been tucked on the DVD as well. One outtake depicts an obviously drunk Dick Van Patten, dressed only in a filmy blue negligee, shaking his fist at the camera and raging, over and over again “You people… you people… allllll you ever do is drag a man down! DRRRRRAG A MAN DOWN!! You people..!” It goes on a little too long, but it’s an interesting, little seen side of a beloved video icon.

Another, more disturbing outtake is obvious home video footage shot of what seems to be Betty Buckley at about the age of 14. She’s in the backseat of someone’s car, tears on her cheeks, pleading with people off camera to please take her home, she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t want to any more, while several male voices urge her to do things like “make an O with your mouth, honey”, “come on, show us your boobs one more time” and “take another drink, it’ll loosen you up”. It’s a short clip, and brutalizing to the sensibilities.

Most bizarre of all is a forty second clip showing a very young Ralph Macchio sitting in a canvas director’s chair watching an episode of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER on an old black and white TV. The clip ends when someone shouts from off camera “C’mon, Ralphie, we have to go hose down those goddam camels again”, and Ralph gets up with obvious reluctance and trudges off screen. It’s just plain damned weird.

I’m not sure if this DVD will ever be released publicly, because honesty, I drank way too much Robitussin last night right before I crashed and I could have just dreamed the whole thing. But if it does get released, it’s a must have for Dick Van Patten and Ralph Macchio fans.

John Byrne’s Little Big Book of Character Development - Not a DVD, but a new Little Big Book released by Gold Key just last month. In it, John Byrne discusses, with simplistic one page illustrations and in very large type, how one goes about improving long established characters. Examples he uses are how he took the Vision, ripped him apart, established that “that goddam toaster” had never been a functional male or even remotely human at all, destroyed the character’s past history entirely, and then walked off the book, leaving nothing but a shambles behind. He also bitches for about twenty pages at Marvel for not allowing him to do a story where Peter Parker would be revealed as a deadbeat dad who had fathered at least one illegitimate child on at least one of his many past girlfriends. He seems to feel that Parker could have been an archetypical character for the 21st Century if only he’d fathered at least one child out of wedlock… “a superhero fan’s version of Eminem” is how Byrne put it, I believe.

Aspiring comics writers, or, really, writers in any genre, could do no worse than to read and emulate these inspirational words.

Leaving that aside, I had a disturbing moment last night when I got home from work, saw the light on next door, walked in without knocking, and found three of my brother’s friends all greased up and vigorously engaged in a gigantic humping pumping gay orgy on the couch and floor. They didn’t notice me at all, they were so intent on each other, so I helped myself to Jeff’s Experienced Thor and Veteran Dr. Doom, Scott’s Unique Batgirl, and Pat’s Worlds at War Superman that they had all childishly refused to trade to me prior to this, and came home.

Our landlord came around to tell us we had to get rid of Chewie again, so we invited him in, tied him up, covered him in steak sauce, and went to a movie. When we got back Chewie had disposed of the problem for us. There was a little clean up to do, but not much.

I got 407 sales at work yesterday. They’re making me President.

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RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(c) be a better writer than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they’re not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that’s all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I’m in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people’s blogs, so this probably doesn’t matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don’t care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that’s just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say I don’t care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it’s just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what’s left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it’s a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

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THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

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