Things You Should and Shouldn't Look Into

I thought I'd start with an amendment to Monday's piece about The Simpsons Season Twenty. While the episodes are, in fact, in high definition, so far there's nary a widescreen presentation to be found. Based on the opening credits, I may have mistaken the jump from 4X3 to 16X9 by a season. The current run (season 21) has different opening sequences, many of which poke fun at the wider image. Still, I'm a little confused why Fox pushed so hard to rush season twenty out, since it technically misses the 20th anniversary and it's Blu-Ray release doesn't take advantage of the screen in the way fans are going to expect.

Additionally, there is literally one extra on the disc: a three minute teaser with Morgan Spurlock for a forthcoming Anniversary Special. Unfortunately, there's no indication of when the special is airing, or if it's going to be available. None of the commentaries from other seasons are present, or deleted scenes, commercials, making of's, or anything else. It screams of a quick cash-in, and I'm really not going to be shocked if you see this season released AGAIN sometime before season twenty-one.

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For anybody with Netflix's "watch it now", while you can't see any new Warner Brothers releases, what you can do is catch two movies that are a little trickier to see: Big Fan and Che. Now Che comes out from Criterion next week, but Steven Soderbergh's four-and-a-half hour Benicio del Toro as Che Guevara epic is going to be a little steep on DVD or Blu-Ray. Luckily, you can watch Part One and Part Two in HD streaming right now. I might just do that in a bit.

While Big Fan technically came out yesterday, no store in the area was carrying the DVD and Amazon has it on a two week back order, so I wouldn't be seeing it that way until the end of the month. Netflix, sensing this problem, not only has Big Fan to watch Instantly, but they one-upped the DVD version by offering the film in HD. Since there's no Blu-Ray release listed, you're getting a bonus here.

I did watch Big Fan, but I'm going to save that review for tomorrow. In the meantime, if you have access to the movie (instantly or on disc) I highly recommend it. Patton Oswalt is excellent, the character study is engrossing, and the ending was a bit surprising. I'll say more tomorrow, but go seek Big Fan out now.

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The Cap'n promised I wouldn't make you sit through another pan of Terminator: Salvation, and so you won't have to. I won't tell you about the reasonably interesting action sequences hampered by an idiotic story punctuated with massive plot holes. I won't tell you about the squandered opportunities or the myriad references to other films that were bungled. I won't mention the stupid ending, a weaker version of the "John Connor is a terminator!" twist that leaked prior to filming. I won't mention how toothless the film feels with a PG-13. I won't tell you all about how fake the digital Arnold face looked or the REALLY STUPID plan by Skynet that JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, or how Sam Worthington's accent goes from "Southern" to his native Australian while he's hanging by a car frame. Above all, I certainly won't mention how the film feels exactly like the exercise in futility that I thought it would, but somehow manages to be even less interesting than I expected.

No sir, you won't have to sit through that, and I won't have ripped off a Harlan Ellison article to not tell you.

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In the wake of having written my defense of Rob Zombie's Halloween II - which is the best way to prepare someone for that film, because it really is Rob Zombie's singular take on the series - I'd like to hear from Cranpire and find out what others thought. Don't get me wrong; I've seen a lot of bad reviews, but none from people I know. So if there are some guest bloggers out there, I'm asking for your input.

Fool Disclosure

It's finally winter here in Blogorium central; a polite but persistent snow fall fell for most of the day and well into the night, blanketing the streets and buildings with nary a Mr. Plow truck in sight. This would be as good a time as any for your Cap'n to stay in and watch movies, but as I must always buck the trends you expect of me, I'm going to go for a walk in just a bit here, over to Major Tom's Festivus get together.

(This is probably for the best, because blogspot is being awfully naughty and not auto-saving this, so who knows if this entry will be up when I leave)

Nevertheless, I do have quite a bit to watch here at HQ: there's The Hangover, Public Enemies, and the latest Netflix arrival, Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad, a black comedy that reunites him with Robin Williams (who has a cameo in Shakes the Clown). As I put Inglorious Basterds on a familial Festivus list, that's going to have to wait at least another week. While I'm out of town next week, the Cap'n is planning on seeing Sherlock Holmes and Up in the Air.

Quite a busy schedule, I admit. But that's what I will be doing. What I have been doing, aside from finishing Eoin Colfer's ...And Another Thing* and Harlan Ellison's Watching, is watching Slacker and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets again, both with supplements on.

I will say that as much as Slacker grates on my nerves, with its endlessly freshmen-level philosophy rants, the Richard Linklater commentary track is much more interesting. The reason I decided to put it on in the first place is due to how much I enjoyed his track on Dazed and Confused, a film (that I have stated many times) still holds up every time I revisit it.

Sure enough, Linklater brings a mix of technical, historical, and anecdotal information to the table, and manages to contextualize most of the rambling monologues in a way that's more entertaining than the film itself. I'm still on the fence about Me and Orson Welles, but if nothing else, I consistently enjoy Linklater the speaker, even if his films don't always work for me.

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The first thing that stood out while watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in light of everything that followed is how much of a "children's movie" it is. Perhaps it's merely that Chris Columbus trades in those sorts of films, or that the expectations were that only children would be interested in the second Harry Potter film, but it's filled with "aw wow!" moments that compound and get a little worn by the twenty minute mark.

If you're thinking "well, of course they do! it's a children's movie!", then you've a) fallen into the trap I laid out in the paragraph above, or b) are perhaps unaware that so-called "children's movies" can actually be entertaining to people who lost their baby teeth long ago. Pixar has consistently been proving that for years, but if I need to provide more examples: Labyrinth, Gremlins, Fantasia, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Time Bandits, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and even Kung Fu Panda. Not to mention the four Harry Potter films that follow Chamber of Secrets, which are also presumably "children's movies", but challenge the audience with less simplistic characters and better than "gee whiz" effects for their own sake.

Still, I have to give Chamber of Secrets some credit: I hated Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone, and had I not given the second film a chance to win me back over, it is very unlikely that review of Half Blood Prince would ever have come to pass. It is a better movie than the first one, if for nothing else than introducing the plot point that Harry might be a spiritual heir to Voldemort and not the Chosen One. Moral ambiguity usually helps in tempering "children's" entertainment.

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Apparently the Federal Trade Commission wants bloggers to make it abundantly clear when / if we're reviewing or advocating something that was given to us, so as not to muddy the waters about endorsements. In the interest of full disclosure, Nobody Gives The Cap'n Movies/Books/Music/Etc to Review. I'm not saying that wouldn't be nice, but the reality is that I either buy or rent the movies in question. The only films provided to me come from Netflix, a service I pay for, so no one is buying my opinion.

Now if you want to buy my opinion, I'm not going to turn down free movies. I'll just be telling everybody that you gave them to me. But that's fair, right?




* A pretty good book, particularly if you've been longing for something since Mostly Harmless. It periodically has flashes of Douglas Adams but suffers the most from the fact that Eoin Colfer is not Douglas Adams. That being said, the story is entertaining: it involves Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, Thor, and a colony planet for wealthy Earthlings modeled after Innisfree as realized in The Quiet Man. Don't go in expecting a purely Hitch-Hiker's experience, but there is some fun to be had from Colfer's book and seeing everyone again, plus a rather amusing Blade Runner reference.

So.... did you ever wonder how it is the Cap'n finds such random movies when he's reviewing? How on earth I make the jump from Phantasm II to Surveillance, or even Tyson (review coming soon-ish)?

Well, I usually do one of two things when I hear about a movie that sounds interesting: I bookmark it and file it under the "Stuff to Buy/Rent" subfolder, or I add it to my Netflix queue in order to find it much later when I've forgotten such a film existed.

To demonstrate:

the "Stuff to Buy/Rent" page, which is normally reserved for things I'd like to have with little reservations.

Most other films end up in the Netflix queue, and to give you some idea how random it can get because of that, I'm including some screencaps. As with any picture in the blogorium, click on it for a larger, more legible version.

Okay, I'll admit it's a bit random. I've got Del Tenney's Curse of the Living Corpse (and some other movie) alongside Jacque Tati's Playtime, Slaughter High, and The Friends of Eddie Coyle occupies the same space as Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. But come on now, I have Outlander (the Vikings vs Aliens movie) Alien Tresspass (a Lost Skeleton of Cadavra-like film from last year), and Doctor Who at home right now. It's just how the Cap'n operates.

I really like this segment, because it really jumps haphazardly between high and low art. I challenge you to find me someone else who has Preston Sturges between Return of the Living Dead 3 and April Fool's Day. Or American Movie and The Bad and the Beautiful side by side.

And here I exercise my indie / art house tendencies, only to switch it up at the very end with I Drink Your Blood. Classy.

I have no particular comment here. Just thought it was a pretty odd mix of movies.

Schlock, followed by some class. It's a cinematic blender when you leave the queue-ing to me.

Kagemusha. Kickboxer. Hot Rod. Need I say more?

So yeah... maybe that helps you understand my scatterbrained approach to what I watch and when. Throw in the considerable amount of disc and tape-age here art the ATDB, and it's hard to say where I'm going next. Hopefully you now understand that it's not only horror I dig into; that's just the easiest to write about quickly.

Blogorium Review: Harlan Ellison - Dreams with Sharp Teeth

I'm glad that someone finally made a proper documentary about Harlan Ellison; it's a wonder that someone so well acclaimed, so frequently published, so damned interesting, remains essentially a "cult" author. I don't mean it as an insult to Ellison, because I'm a fan. Anyone who is a fan knows the name immediately and can without pause rattle off a list of their favorite books, stories, essays, or scripts.

My favorite book is and probably always will be the first Ellison collection I ever read: Strange Wine.

And yet I suspect that, unlike Hunter S. Thompson, there is a swath of "hip" readers that don't know who Harlan Ellison is, who don't know his impact on science fiction or imaginative writing. For them, I hope Dreams with Sharp Teeth is an introduction, a gateway drug.

I'll give it this: Dreams with Sharp Teeth shows Harlan Ellison in his many facets - cantankerous old man, gadfly, advocate, genius (and I do not throw the word around lightly), procrastinator, lecturer, asshole, perfectionist. More importantly, it does so without favoring one over the other. There is no attempt to portray Ellison as anything other than he is, and if you are put off by what you see, he admits that he does not blame you.

What I appreciate about the documentary is how it follows a semi-linear structure, covering his career up through the 1980s, but it is punctuated and tends to digress along the way with interviews, appearances, lectures, signings, and home visits that seem to bounce all through his life. There are other interviews with friends and fans; folks like Battlestar Galactica helmer Ron Moore or A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson. Fellow writers like Peter David and Neil Gaiman pop up, and perhaps my favorite interviewee: Robin Williams. I had no idea they were friends, and despite a few side jokes, Williams is mostly focused on Ellison in the many ways he relates to him.

Since Sci-Fi Buzz went off the air and the Sci-Fi Channel ceased to be what it started as, I've missed the presence of Ellison on tv. He used to have a segment called "Harlan Ellison's Watching", which was for the Sci-Fi Channel what Andy Rooney is for 60 Minutes, albeit less self-parodic. Ellison's tangents, rants, or essays are as much a part of his appeal as his stories are, and the introductions to his collections are often pieces I go back to frequently. Alas, I'm not talking about the documentary itself. I've let my mind wander, as the film does to fine effect.

The other key component to Dreams with Sharp Teeth as the "readings", which a brief segments featuring Ellison in front of a green screen, with a background appropriate to the segment he's reading from. Reading is a bit of a misnomer, as he simply faces the camera and speaks directly from "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick Tock Man", "Spider Kiss", or the original version of "The City on the Edge of Forever" as though he's kept them memorized this whole time. Considering the subject, he probably has.

At any rate, I highly recommend this as a primer for people who have heard of Harlan Ellison in a fleeting manner but don't really know anything about him. It may be the best way to understand a person who appears to be many different things coexisting in one body, as difficult as it may be to believe at times. Then comes the hard part: finding Ellison's books. Good luck.