Animation Sidebar : “Superman Vs. The Elite”

As far as these DC Universe animated flicks go, 2012′s Superman Vs. The Elite was a bit of an aberration for me since, unlike most of the others, I had no familiarity whatsoever with the comic story on which it was based. I was seeing it with “fresh eyes,” is you will,  and therefore  actually found myself to  be in the very same position most other viewers find themselves in with this stuff.

Unfortunately, the on-screen product probably wasn’t arresting enough to get me to go out and hunt down its printed-page counterpart (sorry, I know it’s bad form to give away the “final verdict” this early in a review but oh well, too late to turn back now), so for all I know maybe the issues of the pre-”New 52″ Superman monthly comic this is taken from are the greatest thing since sliced bread (not that bread — sliced or otherwise — is all that exciting, but for some reason the cliches are flowing pretty easily today, please bear with me), but ya know — I kinda doubt it.

Which isn’t to say, I guess, that Superman Vs. The Elite is all that bad — it’s just kind of a bog-standard 21st-century superhero mash-up with cardboard characterization and very little depth. The basic run-down here is that Supes (here voiced by George Newbern, who’s okay in the role but no James Denton by any stretch) is confronted by the arrival on the scene of a new team of uber-beings calling themselves “The Elite” (hence the name), who hail from various corners of the world and not only show themselves to be more than willing to cross lines “Big Blue” won’t in terms of killing their adversaries, but are flat-out eager to openly show their outright disdain for his, in their view, antiquated set of ethics and morals. In other words, it’s fairly typical “meet the ruthless new blood out to take your place” sorta stuff. Youth — they’ve always been bad, don’tcha know?

Director Michael Chang does a decent enough job with the battle sequences, which are numerous briskly-arriving, but if you’re looking for anything much beyond that, there really isn’t a tremendous amount on offer to sink your teeth into. Lois Lane as voiced by Pauley Perrette (talk about a too-clever-by-half name that puts even Parker Posey or Imogen Poots to shame) is little more than career-woman window dressing, and Robin Atkin Downes as head bad guy Manchester Black (speaking of too clever by half) is all sneer and no substance, so don’t go look for anything too dramatically gripping on the vocal front, either.

Still, I guess I didn’t find this to be just over an hour of my life completely wasted — that’d be too harsh, and frankly I didn’t get the sense that anyone here was actually trying hard enough to come up with an actively lousy product. After all, that still requires effort.  This whole thing just sorta starts up, chugs along, and finishes its job on schedule. Don’t waste your time peeking around corners for surprise plot twists — there aren’t any — or hoping for complex moral arguments about the relative merits of doing things the Superman way or the Manchester Black way, since all that’s presented as a given, as well. But I guess if you’re in the mood for quick-n’-easy, shut-your-brain-off stuff, this’ll do in a pinch.

Superman Vs. The Elite is available on both DVD and Blu-Ray from Warner Premier. I got the DVD from Netflix (yes, some of us still have a disc rental plan with them), and as usual it’s a bare-bones affair with the only “bonus” material being promo stuff for other “DCU” releases. Widescreen picture and 5.1 sound mix were both pristine and unworthy of any criticism. I’m sure the Blu-Ray offers a few more goodies for the fans, but I’m not in any hurry to scrounge up a copy. All in all, this is strictly uninspired, by-the-numbers stuff, good for a single viewing if you’ve had a long day and just want to kick your feet up, but really that’s about it.

Animation Sidebar : “All-Star Superman”

 

As far as the 2013 summer blockbusters go, it’s probably fair to say that, at this point, Man Of Steel has pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Oh, sure, Iron Man 3 has made more money — at least to date — but its success was essentially a given, and a nervous studio (and an at-least-as-nervous comic book publisher) didn’t really have a tremendous amount riding on its box office performance. Add  in the fact that the last Superman flick  under-performed rather drastically in comparison to its pre-release expectations, and you’ve gotta concede that plenty of “suits” over at Warner Brothers, Legendary Pictures, and DC Comics are breathing a fairly huge collective sigh of relief right now. Plus, people are talking about it. There’s a tremendous amount of internet “chatter” — good, bad, and indifferent — about both its relative artistic merits and the reasons for its breakaway box office success going on right now, all of which ramps up the likelihood that, no matter which of the already-released and/or forthcoming big-budget popcorn extravaganzas come out on top in terms of cash earned at the turnstiles, 2013 will, in all probability, go down on record as the summer where Man Of Steel ruled the roost. Or at least the interwebs.

Of course, for those of you who’ve read my own armchair musings on the film both here and over at Through The Shattered Lens, you’ll know that I found it a mixed bag at best. I appreciated its amazing visual stylings and some of the smart chances it was willing to take in terms of the character’s backstory, but by and large I felt that its reach exceeded its grasp in terms of the “uber-mythic” slant it attempted to give/graft onto the character, and the end result was a cold, emotionally distant film that tried to hide its flaws by, simply put, clobbering you over the head so hard time and again that you were either too awed (if you liked it) or worn out (if you didn’t) to notice them. Superman is a character that works best when both parts of his name — the “Super” and the “man” — strike a delicate (and admittedly tricky) balance and learn to not only co-exist with, but also complement, each other — and at the risk of repeating myself to those who did, in fact, read my Man Of Steel review, I feel it gives up on trying to establish the “man” all too quickly and goes all-in on the “Super,” ultimately to the detriment of both.

Still, what’s done is done, and we can — and probably will — debate what Man Of Steel got right, and what it didn’t, for a long time to come. Movie geeks are like that, and comic geeks, bless us one an’ all, are even more like that.

 

Still, if I were one of the legion of die-hard, instant Man Of Steel fans that are out there defending my new favorite movie from any and all detractors (or even semi-detractors like myself), the question I’d pose (to, uhhhmm, myself, I guess) at this point would be : “okay,hotshot, you talk in these big, high-fallutin’ terms about ‘delicate balances’ an’ all that, so name me a Superman flick that you think gets it right.”

It’s a perfectly apt question (even if I do say so myself), and fortunately you don’t even have to go too far back to find it — just a couple of years, in fact, to 2011 and the DC Universe animated feature All-Star Superman, adapted for the (small, since it was a straight-to-video release) screen from the highly-acclaimed 12-issue mini-series of the same name by writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely by the late, great Super-scribe Dwayne McDuffie and director Sam Liu.

Here we have another in a long list of  hypothetical “last Superman stories ever told” (my personal favorite still being Alan Moore and Curt Swan’s legendary “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?”) done with heart, humor, and intelligence — a story that embraces the admitted absurdities of 1950s/60s era single-issue Superman tales that had him (and know in advance that he only does some of these things here, but it’s the thought that counts) getting amnesia, revealing his secret identity, turning into a gorilla, or going back in time and saving Krypton from destruction (only to have all of these monumental changes immediately cancelled out by some ultra-convenient plot contrivance on the last page, naturally), translates them into a form palatable to modern, supposedly “sophisticated” audiences, and ends up reminding us just why it is that we love the character, both “Super” and “Man,” in the process.

 

Okay, sure, it’s not without its flaws — this is a story that definitely works better on the printed page, as a series of interconnected “one-offs,” than it does as an animated flick, where its  entire litany of plot developments — Superman gets solar radiation poisoning and learns that he’s dying, then has a big, bad confrontation with an ultra-pumped-up Parasite while trying to keep his identity a secret from Lex Luthor, then goes ahead and reveals said secret identity to Lois Lane, then gives her his powers for 24 hours as a birthday gift, then solves the Riddle of the Sphinx, then has a final, winner-take-all battle with Luthor, then has to save the sun itself and thereby the Earth in the process, perhaps at the cost of his own life — feels a bit rushed at best and disjointed at worst, but trust me — that ear-to-ear smile you’ll have from start to finish will be sending a signal to your brain that says “who cares, just go with it,” and ya know what? You will. And yeah, while I’d have preferred to see a bit more of Quitely’s unique and, heck, amazing art style translated into the animated proceedings, enough of its awe-inspiring grandeur and childlike sense of innocence and wonder survives the leap in formats for me to not have much to complain about on that front. This is, both script-wise and art-wise, a Superman who dazzles and inspires us not because he’s apart  from us, like Zack Synder and Christopher Nolan’s take on the character, but because he’s a part of us. He’s an ideal for all of us to strive for, not something too awesome, too other, too alien,  for us to ever hope to emulate.

As far as the voice casting goes, James Denton is — as always — pitch-perfect as both Superman and Clark Kent, Christina Hendricks projects secure, confident humanity as Lois Lane, Anthony LaPaglia clearly relishes the chance to “evil-genius-it-up” as Lex Luthor, and little touches such as having Edward Asner on hand as Perry White and Frances Conroy as Ma Kent show that some real thought went into this thing from top to bottom. I hesitate to use grandiose terms like “labor of love,” but this sure feels like one to this usually-too-cynical-for-his-own-good critic.

 

All-Star Superman is available on a few different home video iterations from Warner Premier — either as a single-disc DVD, a single-disc Blu-Ray, or a two-DVD “special edition.” The single-disc DVD contains some preview material for other “DCU” titles but is otherwise essentially a bare-bones release, while the two-disc version and the Blu-Ray feature a fairly intriguing “making-of” featurette and a handful of tangentially-related episodes from various Superman animated television series selected by Bruce Timm as bonus features. Widescreen picture and 5.1 sound are stunning no matter which option you go for.

All told, if you like myths that you can actually relate to, and you prefer your Superman to be a bit more accessible than the Godlike,  Nietzchean ideal of Snyder and Nolan, I think you’re going to find All-Star Superman  right up your alley. And hey — even if you did love Man Of Steel to pieces, I still think you’re likely to dig this populist, universal take on the character that really does bring the legend to life in a way all of us can appreciate. This is a movie that leaves you saying to yourself “gosh, that was neat” and not feeling the least bit self-conscious for doing so.

 

Documentary Sidebar : “Evocateur : The Morton Downey Jr. Movie”

Before Glenn Beck, before Rush Limbaugh, before Sean Hannity, before Bill O’Reilly, there was Morton Downey Jr. Mort hit the TV airwaves in 1988 like a house on fire, and became an overnight sensation. He was brash, loud, obnoxious, and well to the right of Attila The Hun, politically speaking. He chain-smoked on air. He berated his guests. He stoked the fury of his studio audience into a lynch mob-like frenzy. And just as quickly as he arrived on the scene, he was gone, his shooting star going supernova and exploding right into his own face within the span of two short years.

So what happened? That’s the question the new documentary Evocateur : The Morton Downey Jr. Movie not only asks, but answers. Directors Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller,  and Jeremy Newberger  spend ninety minutes talking to friends, acquaintances, fans, and even enemies of the late Mr. Downey (he died of lung cancer in 2001)  and piece together a pretty fascinating portrayal of a guy who had hungered for success his entire life (his father was a famous crooner and Junior tried to follow in his footsteps for a time) but was in no way, shape, or form ready for it when it finally hit well into his fifth decade on the planet. Simply put, he still had a lot of growing up to do.

Aided by some pretty clever animated segments that keep the proceedings snappy, the filmmakers trace their subject’s steps from his short-lived singing career to his time as bored suburban house-husband to his days as one of radio’s early “shock-jocks” to his gangbusters television debut as a modern reincarnation of the equally onerous Joe Pyne to his show’s becoming “ground zero” for the notorious Tawana Brawley (falsified) rape case (you get to see a lot of vintage Al Sharpton footage here from when he was a couple hundred pounds heavier and considerably more entertaining) to his full-throated embrace of the worst show biz excesses to his crash-and-burn descent that was aided and abetted in no small part by a fake “attack” he perpetrated on himself and blamed on some Nazi skinheads no one was ever able to find (and yeah, in case you were wondering, this movie definitely answers the question as to whether or not Mort drew that sloppy-looking  pseudo-swastika on his face with his own hand). With voices as disparate as those of Pat Buchanan, Gloria Allred, and Alan Dershowitz sharing their personal reminiscences of the man, we finally are able to get a clear idea of just how — and why — a guy who hobnobbed with the Kennedys right up until the early 1980s was able to become TV’s first big right wing sensation just a few short years later.

The picture painted is hardly a pretty one — Mort wasn’t the most pleasant guy in the world even before fame went to his head, but afterwards it got exponentially worse — but in the end this is a very human story about a hopelessly flawed guy who spent decades reaching for the brass ring, only to have it slip through his fingers largely due to his own dumb mistakes. His subsequent tragic illness, also largely self-inflicted, further humanized someone who used to be more or less a walking, talking, smoking, swearing caricature, and by the time he passed away, even his most bitter critics had to concede, “ol’ Mort — he was a sonofabitch, but I’m gonna miss the guy.”

For my part, I wish today’s conservative gas bags were even half as entertaining as Downey was in his prime. You get the disturbing feeling that the likes of Limbaugh and O’Reilly actually believe the venomous shit that they’re slinging, but Mort was so over the top and off the rails that there was no way his whole shtick could have been anything other than an act. Call me deluded, stupid, or hopelelssly nostalgic, but I kinda miss that. Sadly, the ugliness and audience-baiting are pretty much the only facets of Mort’s slim “legacy” that have survived, and the folks who tread that ground today actually have the temerity to  insist that we take them seriously. If you ask me, The Right’s never been actually right, but at least in Mort’s day they he made sure they were  fun.

Evocateur : The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, which is getting some limited theatrical play on the coasts right now and is also available on demand on most major cable and satellite systems nationwide,  hews to that same “hey, it’s all just an act, anyway” ethos (wait for the awesome spoof of Rocky Horror‘s famous singing mouth as the final credits roll),  and the end result is one of the more enjoyable show business documentaries in recent memory.

Documentary Sidebar : “Trekkies”

 

I’ll start things off here with a confession — I’ve never been the world’s biggest Star Trek  fan. I don’t have anything actively against it — in any of its iterations — per se, but I never really quite figured out its appeal, and consequently the absolute devotion to it that its enormous legion of die-hard partisans displays has always felt, I dunno — kinda weird to me, somehow. Maybe even a little bit sad and/or pathetic.

Mind you, this is coming from a lifelong hard-core Doctor Who fan who once even owned a Tom Baker scarf, so not only would you be quite correct to take anything I say here with a grain of salt, you’d also be well within your rights as a sane and functional human being to wonder “who the fuck is this guy to call anyone else pathetic?”

But ya know, thanks to fellow Twin Cities area native Roger Nygard and his superb 1997 documentary Trekkies, I can honestly say I have a new-found respect for these folks who speak Klingon, give each other the Vulcan hand sign, and argue over the most pointless minutiae of each and every episode of their favorite show. I still don’t quite “get it,” true, but I’ve at least come to view it as a relatively harmless phenomenon — hell, for some, immersion in this collective fantasy world might even be a positive thing.

 

Okay, yeah, there’s nothing inherently normal about the idea of, say, a Trek-themed dental office, or people writing a Klingon dictionary, or the forewoman of a jury showing up in regulation Starfleet uniform, but shit — it’s not really hurting anyone, is it?

To his credit, Nygard never really loses sight of how all of this might look a little bit ( to say the least) weird to an “outsider,” but he gives an even-handed portrayal of all the various subjects he follows around, and by and large shows them to be mentally healthy, well-rounded individuals who just happen to share a mutual obsession. Choosing Star Trek : The Next Generation star Denise Crosby as his narrator was a wise move, as well, as it shows us all that the primary goal of this film is to respectfully explore, at times even celebrate, the Star Trek  universe, rather than to poke fun at it, and helps establish a “we’re on your side” tone that puts most of the film’s participants at ease — no matter which side they might take in the whole “is it ‘Trekkie’ or ‘Trekker’?” debate.

 

What’s perhaps most amazing to witness for someone not a part of it, though, is how admirably inclusive the whole Star Trek “thing” is. Gay or straight, black or white, male or female (or, as the photo above demonstrates, somewhere in between), it just doesn’t seem to matter — if you love Trek, those who also love it will accept you. All differences are small potatoes compared to the one thing that binds them all together. Methinks there’s a lesson to be learned there for society as a whole.

The on-camera interviews with many of the show’s stars are pretty revealing, as well, as they explain in very personal terms what their involvement with Gene Rodenberry’s fictional universe has meant to them, and how they feel it’s affected not only popular culture, but human culture as a whole, as well. Leonard Nimoy, for instance, reveals how the values espoused by Trek influenced the work of visionay “underground” cartoonist Sue Coe (of Dead Meat fame), and Nichelle Nichols relates the story of how her performance as Uhura inspired none other than Whoopi Goldberg  to pursue a career in acting. Hell, no less than Buzz Aldrin himself makes an appearance, vouching for how the show has helped to keep humanity’s dream of reaching for the stars alive and well.

 

All of which, I guess, is my roundabout way of saying that not only does Trekkies do a good job of laying out the territory for the “uninitiated,” but it goes further than that to show why it all actually matters, and even if you haven’t partaken of the Star Trek  Kool-Aid (metaphorically speaking), you’ll probably walk away from the film with a better understanding of those who have done so.

Yeah, okay — a Trek convention still looks like foreign territory to me, and not even one I’d be too terribly keen on exploring in person, but ya know what? If that’s your idea of a good time, you’re A-Okay in my book. Go knock yourself out.

For those of you sufficiently tempted to give Trekkies a whirl, it’s available as a bare-bones DVD from Paramount, where it’s presented full-frame with stereo sound, and at 86 minutes long it’s just enough to keep the average viewer fascinated without bludgeoning us with just too damn much — and  If I were a Trekkie (or Trekker, as the case may be), this flick would leave me feeling very satisfied, even happy, with its depiction of my world and my fellow fans. You can’t ask for a better endorsement than that. So hey, Trek fans — I may not be one of you, and I may not even want to be one of you, but live long and prosper, my friends. Live long and prosper.

 

Ya Know What Bites? “Reality Bites”

I’m sure that if you’ve been following my —ahem! — “byline” both here on my own site and over at Through The Shattered Lens in recent days, it’s become painfully obvious that I’ve been on some sort of massive “Generation X” nostalgia trip lately, but rest assured, I think I’m pretty well cured of it and am more than ready to get back to yammering on about the kind of flicks we normally talk about around here.

How can I be so sure of this, you may wonder? Well, last night I watched 1994′s Reality Bites on our local cable on-demand menu (oh, and in case you were wondering why I didn’t provide any DVD/Blu-Ray specs for either of the Before films, or why I won’t be doing so for this one, either — now you know), and if there’s one thing — and I stress it’s only one thing — this movie’s good for, it’s for readily disabusing ex-slackers of any romanticized notions of our past.

Not that nostalgia is, in and of itself, all that bad a thing —- at least in limited doses. After all, reminiscing about one’s wasted youth makes for a nice change of pace from contemplating the state of one’s wasted adulthood. But honestly — if either myself, or any of my friends, were even half as self-absorbed, shallow, preposterous, and downright annoying as anybody in this flick is, it’s amazing that no one older and wiser decided to shoot any of us dead when we were 22, because we certainly would have deserved it.

Notice I used the carefully-chosen words “anybody in this movie,” rather than calling any of them proper characters, because they aren’t — the roles written by screenwriter Helen Childress are merely disjointed stereotypical collections of bog-standard “Gen X” tropes that are about as interesting and “authentic” as a Goo-Goo Dolls or Matchbox 20 album. Consider :

Winona Ryder plays Lelaina Pierce, a recent college grad trying to get her TV pilot project off the ground, who’s torn between two “romantic” interests — guitar-strumming “soul of a poet” dreamer Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke ), and not-as-cheesy-as-he-seems-at-first cable network producer Michael Grates (Ben Stiller , who also directed this mess — and of all this film’s sins, launching this almost pathologically unfunny, untalented cretin on the road to Hollywood superstardom is perhaps its greatest). She’s joined in going nowhere fast by her kinda-sluttier-than-you’d-at-first-expect best friend/roommate Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo), who’s only here to sweat the results of an AIDS test, and amateur cameraman pal Sammy Gray (Steve Zahn), who’s here to check the box marked “gay character included,” and together they try to navigate their way through the early-90s social landscape of noted slacker capital Houston, Texas. Renee Zellweger turns up in an early and largely pointless part, and the genuine talents of the likes of John Mahoney, Swoosie Kurtz, and the great Joe Don Baker are completely wasted in dull-as-unbuttered-toast “parents (and other older people) just don’t understand” roles.

If it all sounds vaguely insulting and aggressively uninspired, that’s because it is. I mean, my friends and I were capable of devising some pretty insipid ways to waste time when we were that age, but having rooftop sing-a-longs of “Conjunction Junction, What’s Your Function?” and playing Good Times-themed drinking games didn’t even cross our dying-for-something-to-keep-us-preoccupied minds.

Still, I think it’s fair to say that the most perplexing thing about Reality Bites is how completely out of touch with its own subject matter it seems. Stiller was still in his late 20s or early 30s at the time, and Childress was an “X’er” herself, yet the whole thing plays out like a movie that was made by 50(at least!)-year-olds who were trying to cobble together a story based on what they’d heard the younger (at the time, mind you) generation was like. The only thing missing is a “who would you rather fuck, Ginger or Mary Ann?” conversation.

Anyway — sure, I’m still looking forward to Before Midnight. Who in their right mind isn’t? But I think I’ve had my fill of memory lane for awhile. Frankly, even imagining that I may once have been anywhere near as unbearable as any of these spoiled troglodytes is just too depressing a prospect to spend very much time considering.

Before The New One Comes Out — “Before Sunset”

 

When I got back to the US after spending 18 or so months abroad in 2005, Before Sunset had already come and gone from theaters the previous year, and to be honest, my first reaction to it was to be a bit perplexed by the whole idea. “Never saw that one coming,” I thought to myself — but I knew I had to see it. Yeah, as I said last time, I couldn’t really picture any other ending for Jesse and Celine apart from one where they absolutely had to have met up again six months later and lived, as the saying goes, “happily ever after,” but here we were, nine years down the road, with the real (well, okay, not “real” — it is a movie, after all — but you know what I mean) story of what came next. Fortunately for me, my very good (to this day) friend with whom I had seen Before Sunrise had missed this one in the cienmas, as well, so just a few days after getting settled back into my house, with almost no furniture in place, and my TV and DVD player only having been hooked up a matter of hours earlier, we kicked back and did a little marathon viewing session of both films back-to-back.

The first thing I was taken aback by was how much of an emaciated meth-head Ethan Hawke looked like this time around, and Julie Delpy looked to be bordering on “unhealthy thin” status as well, but no matter — for the next hour-and-a-half or so we were back in their lives, and they were back in ours, and even if everything wasn’t gonna be perfect, it was all gonna be good enough.

Which isn’t too bad a summation of Before Sunset as a whole, with one added caveat — “good enough” can be pretty damn beautiful in its own way. Jesse’s an author know, touring Europe to promote his new book, an obviously-autobiographical account of two strangers who meet on a train, spend an evening in Vienna, and fall deeply, passionately, and completely in love. Then never meet again. Or maybe they do. The novel’s ending is deliberately ambiguous.

Sound familiar? Anyway, on the last night of his tour he happens to be giving a reading/signing in Paris, and Celine shows up. They have just enough time, it seems, to grab a cup of coffee before he’s on a plane back home, and the motif of “stolen time” that they should never have had in the first place that runs through the first film is definitely pressed even further this time around, as events unfold very nearly in real time and every minute our two long-separated lovers spend together is one that pushes the envelope of their “real lives” even further out of shape.

I have to be honest — on first viewing this ultra-compressed time frame gave things a very rushed feel that I wasn’t terribly “in to,” but  I’ve subsequently grown to appreciate its utility as a story-telling device more and more. Jesse’s got a wife and son back home, but it’s a sham marriage where they’re both just going through the motions, while Celine, who now does some sort of unspecified work for an environmental organization,  has a boyfriend who works as a photojournalist and is basically gone all the time. She couldn’t make it back to Vienna to meet him all those years ago because her grandmother had just died, while Jesse showed up and couldn’t find her, even going so far as to post missing persons flyers around town in hopes of tracking her down. And that “missed meeting” has informed and shaped the course of their lives every bit as much as the time they actually did meet.

Once again,  Richard Linklater’s superbly subtle eye ensures than the camera is in exactly the right place for maximum dramatic impact with every shot, but giving the proceedings an even more naturalistic flow here is the fact that there’s no Linklater/Karen Krizan script to be read — rather Hawke and Delpy were allowed to “get in character” and create their own dialogue for these people they knew so well. It works like a charm, and the whole thing feels like nothing so much as an expertly-filmed conversation between two old lovers that unfolds as they hurriedly stroll through the streets of Paris. Every second counts. Every word counts. Ever movement and expression counts. Everything counts. Even if it’s delivered with the more practiced nonchalance that most of us acquire as settle into what life is rather than dream about what it could be.

With both characters now in the early 30s, those possibilities of which I speak have narrowed considerably compared to last time around, but I think that’s the whole unfolding theme of this entire series — learning to find a place for dreams, and for love, in a world that whittles away the chances at achieving both as the years go on. A search for beauty and truth and meaning by projecting our hopes and ideals into visions of a world that we wished existed inexorably giving way to a life where we can still, hopefully, search for — and maybe even find — beauty and truth and meaning in a world that already exists.  It’s painfully obvious that both Jesse and Celine have never really “moved on” from their one magical night together, and that they’ve both dreamed of an existence where they were able to meet again ever since. Jesse’s stumbled into a responsible “family man” life simply because he saw it as all that was on offer anymore, and Celine’s carefully walled herself off from real emotional connection with others simply because it all hurts too much when they inevitably leave. Both are hopelessly infatuated with a memory, yet torn apart by it at the same time,  and are  now presented with a very rare opportunity in life — the chance to rekindle that memory, actively, in the present day, and maybe — just maybe — build on it. They both share the unbreakable bond of one moment in time that’s authored every moment since. And now, finally meeting again after all these years, wouldn’t ya know it — they’re in a hurry.

Imperfect circumstances for two people leading imperfect lives that have largely been a series of imperfect reactions to one perfect evening. Celine’s completely neurotic, Jesse’s completely resigned to his fate, and yet — the spark is still there. Their time together here is often painful, argumentative, and decidedly uncomfortable, but it all feels so almost unbearably authentic that you can’t help but become just as swept up in it as you were by that night in Vienna.

All of which leads to an ending you can’t help but love, despite the enormous complications you know it will present to both of these characters’ lives. Linklater is obviously trading in reversals with Before Sunset from the outset — showing us still-frame shots of where our couple will go at the beginning rather than showing us where they’ve been  at the end, and swapping out talk of what they want their lives to be with a litany of regrets over what their lives have become, but whereas their first meeting was a luminous evening capped off with a separation, their second is a rocky, tenuous, long-delayed and frankly even a bit faded afterglow that Jesse purposely blows off his flight home to stay in. This is no longer an idealized memory, or a painful reminder of what might have been — this is here. This is now. This is real life with all its flaws and foibles and tragedies and responsibilities. And these two are in in together.

As with all things as we get older, moments of revelation and life-altering decisions become more subtle and unpronounced in their execution, but their impact is every bit as real. When Celine tells Jesse “you’re going to miss that flight,” and he replies “I know,” it’s not tinged with the momentous import of every new character revelation we enjoyed in their first outing, but it sure does resonate at least as much as any of them, if not moreso. These people are grown-ups now. Their actions matter. And our reactions to them are consequently more complex and nuanced. “Dude, you’re fucking your life up big-time here” is answered by “but you’ll be fucking it up even more if you leave.” I was, and still am, elated by his choice, despite its implications, and am eagerly awaiting the next chapter in this story with a burning interest I haven’t felt for any other film in years. Before Sunrise left me in love with an idealized vision; a dream. Before Sunset left me in love with the real world and all the possibilities that still exist within it.

Grindhouse Classics : “The Pink Angels”

 

It pleases me to report that my home state of Minnesota recently became the 12th state to legalize same-sex marriage, and gay and lesbian couples will be free to say “I do” beginning on August 1st of this year. There were many celebratory shin-digs, large and small, thrown to commemorate this historic moment, and there will be even more if whack-job congresswoman Michele Bachmann follows through on her promise to move to a more socially retrograde region of the country, and it’s certainly no stretch to imagine  that there have been plenty of movies playing, at least in the background, at many of these joyous get-togethers. But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that director Larry G. Brown’s 1972 Crown International gay-biker flick The Pink Angels wasn’t among the viewing choices on offer at any of them. Call it a hunch, if you will.

Not that the film itself is especially offensive, mind you, even though most (though not all) of the characters are stereotypical “swishy” ’70s queens rather than the leather-clad “bear”types you’d probably expect to be a bit more representative of the reality of the homosexual motorcycle-enthusiast community. It would likely be quite a reach to describe this flick as being in any way a respectful treatment of its lurid-at-the-time subject matter, sure, but at least our titular Angels are depicted as being, by and large, decent, fun-loving guys who just want to be left alone to pursue their livesi n their own way, and the bad guys are the authority figures and gay-bashing, overly-macho hetero  Harley-heads who are out to rain on our (for lack of a better term) heroes’ parade.

Still — it’d giving it far too much credit to describe this film as a monumental leap forward for gay rights and/or tolerance in general, either. So what exactly are  we talking about here, then? Well, weird as it may sound to say this about a movie centered around gay folks made in the early years of the so-called “Me Decade,” The Pink Angels seems to have no political or social agenda whatsoever! But that’s just part and parcel of a larger issue, really — that being that it seems to have no clue what sort of flick it wants to be on any level, and Brown and company were quite obviously just winging things from the get-go and willing to settle for, well, whatever they ended up coming up with.

All of which means, of course, that’s this is an absolutely fantastic watch from start to finish — even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Or maybe because it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

 

The “plot,” to the extent that such a thing can even be said to even exist here, revolves around our erstwhile flamboyant protagonists making their way out to Los Angeles (from where it’s never stated) in order to attend a drag ball, and along the way they have a fancy roadside picnic, raise hell at a hot dog stand, get hassled by the cops, get hassled again by some of their straight freewheelin’ counterparts (led by B-movie stalwart Michael Pataki and future Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty) run afoul (from a distance) of a bumbling military General, pick up hitch-hikers, try on dresses, and generally engage in pointless tomfoolery just because — hey, they can. Throw in some bargain-basement wannabe-surrealism, a lame-ass pseudo-funky/pseudo-folkish soundtrack, uniformly bright and sunny cinematography, and the general “making this shit up as we go along” ethos of Easy Rider, and you’ve got a recipe for one thoroughly entertaining, always-engaging cinematic disaster.

Of the six principal players, John Alderman stands out as scruffy, rough-and-tumble leader Michael, Tom Basham takes a memorable turn as the ultra-effeminate David, Bruce Kimball does nicely as hulk-with-an-overly-sensitive- side Arnold, and Henry Olek is all kinds of stupid fun as the supposedly British, wanna-be-Oscar -Wilde-in-leather Edward, but it’s all such overtly campy and OTT stuff that you can’t fairly single out anyone as doing a “better” job than anyone else, I suppose.

 

And then there’s  that ending. Now, according to someone on IMDB who claims, at least, to be this film’s executive producer — one Gary Radzat — what they were really going for here was some kind of “cinema verite” thing, but director Brown was batshit insane, couldn’t keep things in order, and neglected to film a final reel altogether! So they had to get everybody back together and shoot some kind of conclusion (under whose direction the supposed Radzat never says), since CIP had picked it up, sight unseen, for distribution, and what they came up with was shockingly downbeat, even tragic, absolute “bummer” that, sure, at least ostensibly brings together the various strands of the impromptu “story” that had been left dangling and didn’t seem to be destined to meet up in any way, shape, or form, but that completely turns the light-hearted atmosphere established in the first 70-or-so mutes on its ear for no apparent reason other than a kind of ruthless-outta-nowhere expediency.

In other words, it’s fucking perfect.

 

Let’s be honest — anyone who wants to watch a flick that fits anything like a standard definition of “competent,” or that even has anything vaguely recognizable as a point,  will have checked out of this one at about the 15-minute mark. Those of us still left standing by the time they need to put a wrap on things are pretty much willing to take anything the filmmakers serve up and just go with it. Sure, it’s a shocker to have such a crash-and-burn (not literally, mind you, but it may as well be) finale tacked onto an essentially harmless — and formless — romp, but hey, nothing  else about the proceedings makes any sense up to this point, either, so why start now ?

 

So — what are you waiting for? Grab Mill Creek’s 3-disc, 12-movie Savage Cinema DVD bargain pack  (where it’s presented with a nicely-remastered widescreen picture, pretty damn good mono sound, and no extras) and give The Pink Angels a go right now. It’s quite literally unlike anything else ever made — which doesn’t, of course, mean that it’s actually any good, but is still pretty much the highest compliment I can think of to bestow upon anything.

Grindhouse Classics : “The Big Snatch”

Honestly, with the absolutely harrowing news that’s come out of Cleveland over the last few days, you’d think — perhaps even hope — that I’d have the good sense and just plain human decency to not go anywhere near legendary exploitation producer David F. Friedman’s 1971 softcore sex-slave sleazefest The Big Snatch right now, but since I’ve never really been noted for my sense of timing —

I suppose the fact that no one involved in the actual making of this film wanted their real names to be associated with it probably tells you everything you need to know right off the bat (check the credits for hilarious pseudonyms such as “Jim Nasium”and “Mary Goround”), doesn’t it? Shot for a paltry $11,000 in Southern California by co-directors Byron Mabe and Dan Martin (who mas moonlighting from his gig as an L.A. county sheriff’s deputy and billed himself as “Ronnie Runningboard” in case his bosses ever got wind of this thing), The Big Snatch centers around the hare-brained scheme of two truck-driving yokels (ringleader Bart, played by a guy calling himself “Harry Chest,” and dim-witted sidekick Momo, played by a guy calling himself — well, “Momo”) to kidnap five beautiful young co-eds and turn them into their own personal low-rent harem. The  gals spend a pretty good chunk of the flick stuck inside a drained-out swimming pool,then they all get raped in turn (“rape” in this case being portrayed as a series of largely listless softcore dalliances featuring plenty of full-on nudity and simulated pseudo-penetration), a bit later one of the ladies tries to escape and has her panties yanked down before being tied down, spread-eagled,  to a revving car engine that’s had its radiator cap removed (the infamous “steamed clam” scene you may have heard about), and then the industrious gals actually do manage to  effect an escape en masse, whereupon they immediately strangle Momo to death before twisting and crushing  Bart’s cock with a pliers and then tossing him down onto a dirty old mattress and “gang raping” him for about the final 30 minutes of the film, although I have no idea how his “junior member” was even supposed to be functioning by that point.

Anyway, that’s what happens when you refer to women as “pigs” and order them to call you “master,” I guess.

It it all sounds pretty rancid and sleazy, well — it is. But it is fun to see future sexploitation semi-starlets such as Peggy Church, Jane Tsentas, and especially incomparable Russ Meyer stalwart Uschi Digard in early roles, and the truly atrocious “acting” is a hoot to sit back and absorb. Beyond that, there’s nothing much on offer here — the camerawork is all pretty straightforwardly haphazard (if that makes any sense), the revenge factor is decidedly dialed down since the rapes were portrayed as being an enjoyable experience for them women, and the whole thing’s quite obviously just a flimsy excuse to get some uniformly very good looking ladies to debase themselves for what had to have been an undoubtedly paltry paycheck. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — we all know that people will do anything for money, but it’s what they’ll do for no money that’s truly amazing.

Even for a “roughie,” this is a pretty mean-spirited affair, and even for a cheapie, its production values are astonishingly low, but I gotta (shamefully, I assure you) admit — as a curious memento of a largely-forgotten cinematic age, The Big Snatch makes for some strangely compelling — if crushingly, achingly dull — viewing at times. Which is hardly the same thing as me actually recommending this film, as I hope you’ll agree. If you’re foolish enough to attempt to take this flick seriously, you’ve gotta put aside not only your sense of what’s good and bad, but also what’s right and wrong. But who says you’ve gotta take something seriously in order to fully absorb what it’s all about? I’m not going to go so far as to say any of you good people will actually enjoy what’s on offer here, and chances are you’ll find yourself as flat-out bored during the “sex” scenes as I was, but there’s a certain amount of bravado on display here by our anonymous-at-all-costs filmmakers for even thinking that they could get away with making something like this in the first place that’s, while certainly far from admirable, at least interesting to witness.

And if witness it you must, you’ll be glad (I guess) to know that The Big Snatch is available on both VHS and DVD-R from, you guessed it, Something Weird Video. It’s presented full-fame with mono sound, neither of which are very good (which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, quite appropriate), and the only “extras” to speak of are a smattering of trailers for other SWV titles. All in all,  bare-bones release for a bare-bones movie with a very bare-bones “idea” behind it. But shit, since the bare breasts are all anyone cares about here, I guess it all works out. Just please don’t go getting any ideas from this thing , I beg you.

“Demon Cop” Takes A Bite Out Of Crime — And Your Brain

I don’t know who Rocco Karega is. I assume he’s from Colorado Springs — or at least that he lived there in 1990, which was  when he got the bright idea to write, direct, and star in a little number he called Demon Cop. He never made another movie, and he’s probably bagging groceries somewhere now, but we all should be in awe of the factl that, at one point, he had the decidedly poor judgment to chase his dream and make this lower-than-lower-than-low-grade straight-to-VHS Maniac Cop cash-in quickie, because it’s really quite unlike anything else you’ll ever see.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s good — you know that. Nor does it mean it’s “so bad it’s good,” a la the cinematic works of Ed Wood, Ron Ormond, Coleman Francis, or — I dunno — Steven Spielberg. Sorry, our guy Rocco lacks the earnestness and tunnel vision of these blind-to-their-own-weaknesses auteurs. Simply put,  he had to know he was churning out absolute crap here, there’s just no other way of looking at this thing. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t create a piece of must-see viewing here (actually, you could fairly call it a “piece of” many other things, as well) — or,  at least, he did  if you’re either brave, bored, or reckless enough to be willing to gamble your  perception of reality itself  all for under 90 minutes of “entertainment” that is, in all honesty, anything but.

By this point you’re probably quite confused, as well you should be, but trust me when I say anything I write here won’t be nearly as baffling as is Demon Cop itself. You or I — with no experience, no money, no equipment, and no fucking clue — could hit the streets with a camera tomorrow and come up with something better than this. And therein lies this film’s mystifying power.

A slumming Cameron Mitchell turns up as a psychiatrist of some sort at the outset (and again at the end, but by then, well — just keep reading), apparently relating a “true-life case” of one of his patients, a cop who suffered from a rare blood disorder that turned him into a vaguely lycanthropic creature with a thirst for human blood. He’s talking, needless to say, about Karega himself, the titular Demon Cop this story’s ostensibly about. He’s generally offing slimeball “gang- banger” types, but the Colorado Springs PD want to catch him anyway even though some of their more hard-assed members — and many in the community at large — feel he’s doing folks a favor. There’s a quack scientist everybody ignores (of course) who’s trying to convince humankind at large about the dangers of this rare blood disorder he’s discovered that has turned a former cop into a vaguely lycanthropic creature that might just  exhibit a propensity for killing slimeball “gang- banger” types, but — oh, shit, I’m repeating myself already. And quite a bit, at that.

Notice, though, I did give myself a bit of an “out” when it came to that wretchedly-worded (on purpose, your honor, I swear it!) plot recap — I said this movie was really only ostensibly about the story it presented. And if you’re watching Demon Cop for its dramatic value, trust me — you’re making a huge mistake. Not just because it has none, but because even if it did , that’s not where the real action is to be found here. Not that it has any action. Not that — oh, dear God, I really am hopelessly out of my depth here already, aren’t I?

In any case, friends what I think I’m trying to say is that this is a flick that you should be watching solely for its naked-for-all-to-see incompetence. Actors flub their lines with alarming regularity and keep going. Edits that make no logical sense become a matter of course. Poor camera angles are elevated to an accidental art form. Laugh-out-loud special makeup and creature effects (supposedly from the “creators” of Terminator 2 and Leviathan — yeah, right!) lurk around every corner, while impenetrably lousy lighting does its best to hide all the proceedings from view. Dialogue that would earn an “F” on a third-grade creative writing assignment assaults your eardrums and brain cells. And then, about an hour in, you slowly begin to realize something truly extraordinary —

Don’t ask me how it happens. Definitely don’t ask me why. Shit, don’t ask me anything at this point, because I’ve seen this thing twice and am therefore no longer qualified to comment on any subject whatsoever. What the hell am I on about here? Just this, dear readers — Demon Cop has the power to make you a dumber human being simply for subjecting yourself to it (that’s the “extraordinary” thing I was talking about — whoops, you probably had that figured out already, I shouldn’t assume that everyone — or even anyone — reading this review is nearly as stupid as I am at this point).

Call that what you will — unintentional genius? Nah. There’s nothing within even remote sniffing distance of “genius” going on here. The universe exacting karmic revenge on those lacking the good sense to turn this thing off within the first ten minutes? Possibly — we certainly deserve to be punished on some level. Occult power? Absolutely — Demon Cop is a full frontal assault on all things competent, and a relentless one at that, and that definitely qualifies it as a magickal working of some sort in my book.

So let’s go with that, shall we? Let’s give Karega and producer Hal Miles the credit (such as it is) they’ve earned — this is a singular piece of rancid celluloid garbage so profound that it taps into the very forces of creation itself and causes them to revolt against our entire species in disgust. After all, no life form capable of creating the likes of Demon Cop can survive for long — nor, frankly, does it (and by “it” I mean “we”) deserve to. The die has been cast. We’ve gone too fucking far. We’re doomed. And it’s all Rocco Karega’s fault.

Fortunately, no other members of our fallen lot have ever been foolish enough to release Demon Cop on DVD, apart from a Region 2 bootleg that’s floating around out there somewhere. Some careless souls, however, have uploaded it on various locations around the internet. I’ll let you figure out exactly where for yourself, since I have no desire to be an accomplice in your spiritual and mental demise. Just know that if and when you do find it, you’ll never be the same. You’ll have crossed a threshold you immediately know, in your heart, you never should have. If you still possess any faith in your fellow man, please — I beg you! — leave this thing alone. Quit reading my shell-shocked ramblings right now and forget you ever heard about Demon Cop.  But if you absolutely must play with fire — if you’re willing to play a kind of warped Russian roulette where your very sanity is at stake  — well, I’ll see you, here, on the other side of madness.

Yo, Ese, Dis Be A Review Of “Hip Hop Locos,” Homes

 

Please note : I cannot be held responsible for any typos that may occur during the course of this review. Frankly, some of the terms most often used in 2001 shot-on-video shitfest Hip Hop Locos are ones I don’t even know how to spell, so you’ll just have to bear with me. Also, I should make it clear from the outset that I intend no disrespect toward Hispanic Americans, or anyone else for that matter, here — I’m merely trying to ape the absurdly over-the-top speech patterns of the two principle characters in this flick for the sake of — I dunno, authenticity, I guess. If you find the whole thing hard to understand, well — so is the movie. And trust me, I use the words “homes” and “ese”  far less than they do in the “script” for this thing, where each is employed in, at last count, every single fucking sentence from start to finish. And now that we’ve got all that out of the way —

Hey, homes, whas’is I be hearin’? Vatos be tellin’ me da’choo don’ like Hip Hop Locos, ese. Dey say you be dissin’ dis movie, homes. Dat true, ese? ‘Choo got somethin’ to say, homes, you say it to mah face.

Yo, ese, wha’s you’ problem, homes? Dis movie don’ be hard to understand or nothin’, homes. Da whole plot is right dere on de cover, ese, an’ it gets scrolled across da muthafuckin’ screen at the start, too. You slow or somethin’ ese? Ain’t nothin’ confusin’ goin’ on here, homes.

 

Okay, ese, maybe it looks confusin’, homes, dass true. Lorenzo Munoz Jr, de director o’ dis biyatch, he don’ point his videocamera in logical places. Even though de whole movie pretty much be nothin’ but closeups o’ “rapper”/”star”s Unodoz an’ J10, he don;t show ‘em so clear an’ shit. He uses fucked-up camera angles an’ shit, homes. ‘Choo don’ like it? Muthafuka, watch somethin’ else, homes. ‘Choo can see da sides of da faces an’ necks an’ shit o’ dese guys plenny, ese. Iss all good, homes.

An’ yo, dis be da real shit, ese. Dis be da hip hop lifestyle, homes. Dese muthafuckas got dreams, ese, an’ dey gon’ make ‘em happen. Dey gon’ be hip hop stars. Dey don’ need no talent, homes. Dey don’ need no eqipment, homes. Dey jus’ need’a take what dey ain’t got, dig? ‘Choo don’t like it, ‘choo don’ know da streets, ese.

 

Maaaaan, fuck you, homes. Dis art. Dis ain’ no bullshit, ese. ‘Choo don’ need’a see what be happening ta know what da fuck be happenin’, homes. An’ even if ‘choo don’t get it den — well, like I fuckin’ said, ese, dey ‘splain it to ya in words an’ shit. An’ ain’t no need to spend no muthafuckin’ money on nothin’ here, ese — dis jus’ take a camera out onto da streets an’ see what the fuck happens,  homes. Shit gets fuuuuuucked up, ese, ‘choo know dat’s right!

‘Sides, homes, iss only, what, ese? Maybe 70 minutes long an’ shit? ‘Choo ain’ ‘dat busy, homes — ‘choo can make it t’rough dis. An mebbe you even learn some fuckin’ shit, ese — like, I mean, ezzackly how not to make a muthafuckin’ movie an’ shit, homes. ‘Cuz Hip Hop Locos at least be a — wha’choo call it, ese? — a tex’book ‘zample a dat.

‘Choo wanna find dis muthafuckin’ thing, homes, it ain’t hard — dem vatos at Brain Damage Films done put it out on DVD an’ shit, ese. Prob’ly it gots extra features an’ shit on dat, too. But I ain’t seen it like dat, homes — I caught dis bitch on the Decrepit Crypt Of Nightmares 12-disc, 50 fuckin’ movie box set from dat Mill Creek label, muthafuckin’ Pendulum Pictures, ese. Iss full screen wit mono sound an’ it look an’ soun’ like shit, homes, but fuck it, ese — iss all good an’ shit.

‘Choo wise to whassup yet, homes? ‘Choo gon’ see dis t’ing? Or ‘choo gon’ keep talkin’ shit, bitch, like you some expert ’bout somethin’? Man, choo don’t know notheeng, homes. ‘Choo fucked up. ‘Choo talk too much. ‘Choo donno da muthafuckin’ streets, ese.

 

Anyway, fuck you, homes. Dis da gen-u-wyne- muthafuckin’ t’ing. ‘Choo can’t see dat, homes, you ain’ got fuckin’ eyes in yo’ muthafuckin’ head, ese.