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Friday, November 11, 2022

Kevin Conroy Merges With The Infinite




Here at The Signal Watch, we're absolutely heartbroken to hear that actor Kevin Conroy has passed.  

Conroy voiced Bruce Wayne/ Batman across innumerable cartoons, video games and other projects.  For generations of Bat-fans was the definitive portrayal of the character.  

Thursday, November 10, 2022

Noir Watch: Call Northside 777 (1948)




Watched:  11/08/2022
Format:  Criterion Channel
Viewing:  First
Director:  Henry Hathaway

Criterion Channel is currently featuring a load of films they're calling "Film Noir" from 20th Century Fox, and I wanted to finally give Call Northside 777 a whirl.  

As much as I enjoy a film noir from a poverty row studio, Tuesday we made the conscious decision to see something a bit more prestige, and which had been on my punchlist for a while - a noir that starred Jimmy Stewart, who I usually associate with noirish-thrillers later in his career when he shows up in Vertigo, etc... under Hitch.  

The thing, though, is that despite the fact that I've seen Call Northside 777 (1948) referred to as film noir for two decades, much like The Damned Don't Cry, I don't think this movie actually qualifies as film noir.   It certainly *looks* like noir.  Cinematographer Joseph MacDonald, who also shot one of the noir-iest noirs - Pickup on South Street - gives John Alton and James Wong Howe a run for their money (My Darling Clementine similarly has some noir-ish stuff for a western).  But...  there's no femme or homme fatale.  There's no one in over their head because they followed an ill-advised path/ chased a skirt.  There's no one who has crossed paths with the wrong person and is now in an existential crisis.  

Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Al Watch: Weird - the Al Yankovic Story (2022)




Watched:  11/07/2022
Format:  Roku Channel
Viewing:  First
Director:  Eric Appel

Is this the greatest rock biopic ever made?  Or simply the greatest film ever made?

I literally have no idea how to discuss this movie.  To discuss it is to explain the joke, and explaining a joke is... a bad idea.

All I can tell you is:  watch this movie.  If you ever had any love in your heart for Al Yankovic, this feels like somehow you get the giddy chaos of Al's greatest work distilled, amplified and refracted back at you in the form of a 2 hour movie that stars Daniel Radcliffe as Al, Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento and Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna.  I've seen Radcliffe do comedy, and he's really solid.   Seeing ERW turn her considerable talent to comedy was an absolute delight.

If there's no other reason to watch the movie - and there are literally hundreds - watch the movie for the pool party at Dr. Demento's house.  

The movie never loses steam, which is just kind of what I assume will happen as comedies eventually need to trade gags for plot to have a satisfying narrative conclusion.  It never takes its foot off the gas, gripping your hand like a Thelma to the audience's Louise and heads right for the cliff.  

It's a thing of beauty.  We're lucky to have it.

Anyway, I guess I'm saying: watch this movie

So it Begins Watch: We Need a Little Christmas (2022)



Watched:  11/6/2022
Format:  Hallmark
Viewing:  First
Director:  Kevin Fair

I watched this because it stars Erica Durance, full stop.  This is an Erica Durance stan site.  

Look, if all goes well, we're going to podcast a Christmas movie or two this year and I'll talk more about Hallmark Christmas movies.  They're not something you watch or discuss individually, but watching them is a longterm investment in observing an ever-evolving living organism of Christmas cheer.  Collectively, they're something that mutates to respond to the environment and to best dominate the landscape.  Thus, talking about any individual Hallmark movie is missing the point - you have to be talking about all Hallmark Movies or none at all.  

We also will talk about what the movies are for, and how you watch them.  And this movie served that purpose pretty well this weekend.  

To that end, I had it on, I put on the movie and occasionally looked up to see what was happening as it unspooled.  I performed household tasks in need of doing  - like changing lightbulbs and cleaning and doing dishes and dealing with recycling.  I was in and out of the house during all of this, and thanks to ample commercial breaks (this was recorded off cable) and the friction-free plot that just kept happening with no real conflict to mar the story, I'm pretty sure I followed the movie just fine.  I saw a lot of great, large kitchens and Erica Durance in a wide-array of outfits.

In these films, characters always state their motives and feelings in clear terms, including "I don't know what I'm feeling".  Because these are movies about things that cause feelings.  Sadness.  Melancholy.  Stress.  But always curving toward happiness and joy derived from Christmas, new friends, and new love.  

As I say - I watched this because it stars the lovely Erica Durance, who played Lois Lane on several seasons of Smallville.  Here, she's a recently widowed woman who has moved she and her young son to a new town to open a new interior design business (away from friends and family?  Now?  It doesn't all add up.).  And - showing that Hallmark movies have dared to make the formula a bit different - it's about Durance meeting a new neighbor who went through similar (or worse) experiences decades prior, and how Durance and the neighbor - played by Lynn Whitfield, who you've seen in like 15 things at least - find friendship and mutual understanding despite their lack of any differences of opinion on anything of consequence.  

The drama plays out in microbursts, which seems to be the new thing for the Hallmark movies.  There's no single issue or misunderstanding, it's more like little episodes as characters get to know each other.  It's kind of a weird style of storytelling that I can only really point to older novels or a few 80's or 90's movies to compare it to.

Yeah, a possible suitor for Durance is introduced, but the movie also knows it is *too soon* for romance to be more than a possibility by movie's end.  Thus, he's an endlessly polite and patient dude who also does the things dudes do when they hope it will get them in good with Erica Durance - like dropping all of their Christmas plans to do a 5 hour turn around trip.  It's a shocking amount of restraint in comparison to how these movies worked a decade ago.  Like I said - evolving organism.  

So it includes Hallmark staples

  1. Single Mom
  2. Kid unnaturally concerned with the feelings of adults
  3. Attempt to recreate Christmases past
  4. Weird Christmas events that don't happen in nature (Christmas camp for kids?)
  5. Local man who everyone in town adores but who is unattached
  6. Solider/ Veteran 


Sunday, November 6, 2022

Checking In and Sportsball Happenings

your world champion Houston Astros!



Hi all. 

With Halloween over and the World Series now concluded (featuring the Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies), Longhorn football in late season, AND the Major League Soccer Cup match... we've been TV busy this weekend.  

At League HQ, Halloween is a marathon as we queue up movies starting in summer - resulting in 9 episodes discussing at least 12 movies covered on Ye Olde PodCaste.  You're welcome.  On top of that, we also watch other Halloween movies during October, including hosting a few Friday Watch Parties.  

There's also Halloween TV things to see, and increasingly YouTube videos, so much media has been consumed.

All of which is weird - because I'm actually not a huge horror nut.  It's just how things seem to play out.

These days I generally don't post much about TV and sports here, but with Halloween on Monday - this week we watched new episodes of one of my favorite shows,  Documentary Now!, and the surprising return of Sherman's Showcase, which I assumed was canceled as it had been a while since new episodes appeared.  

One thing I checked off on Saturday was the MLS season.  Major League Soccer is, of course, fairly new to me.  Last week, Austin FC - my entry point to the league - lost to LA FC in the Western Conference Championship.  While of course one hopes that that your team will win, Austin FC's second season went shockingly well, and I'm new to all this, so how upset can you be?  

The MLS Cup, which was Saturday afternoon, is essentially the Superbowl for American soccer.  And as it's soccer, I think I saw one ad for it?  LAFC wound up beating Philadelphia in a penalty kick shoot-out.  It was a great game, and it was nice to watch one where I wasn't pulling super hard for anyone.  If you were looking to check out a game this year, it was a good one!  

Anyway - I guess I'm into soccer now?