Kurosawa Rewatch: Yojimbo (1961)

Watched: 09/12/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Akira Kurosawa

Well, back in May, I watched this movie for the first time.  

It's been a long time since I've watched the same movie twice in the same year.  Or, at least, I don't do it often anymore.  There's too much out there, I guess.  

Anyway - I really liked this one the first time, and that was true again on a second viewing.  

John Cassaday Merges With The Infinite

For years, I've had a Superman comic on my wall in a frame.  It was a curious moment in comics history - and/ or Superman history.  A much ballyhooed signing of a popular television and movie writer to the title Superman had gone south and the writer had basically walked off the book.  A new writer - a local writer! - came in and took over Superman and... saved the day (thanks, Chris Roberson!).  

Roberson's work was great - that's another post - but Cassaday on this cover, as he'd been covering the title for a minute, was perfect.  It was Superman, lit from below, iconic, symmetrical, lantern jawed and strong without seeming impossible - a perfect design in my book.  And to this day, looking at that cover is one of the images I have in mind when I think of the wonder that Superman can be.

John Cassaday has passed at the age of 52.

Cassaday's work is some of my favorites from my adulthood, full stop.  His character work was astounding, his lines clean, his ability to convey emotion and meaning with a gesture insane.  His interiors were gorgeous, but I assume he just made so much more money doing covers, he just had to give it up.  I don't remember the last time I saw Cassaday doing a full comic book.  

Like many who survived the 1990's comics market, I came to him through Planetary - a joint with Warren Ellis that was one of those comics you just waited months for because it took that long to come out.  I won't go into what Planetary was about, but now I wish I had the collections.  Maybe DC will reprint it all.  It was a gorgeous, insane book spanning a secret world under our own and a brilliant concept.

He drew the Captain America I suspect they looked at *hard* when Marvel Studios was pondering how they'd portray Cap (yes, I know about Hitch's work... I stand by my statement).  Chris Evans seems much more the Cap of this post 9/11 run that changed Cap forever than he seemed Ultimate Cap's pain-in-the-ass American fighting man.

And, of course, his Astonishing X-Men is legendary.  His Lone Ranger work should have been far bigger than it was.

It's always a tragedy when someone passes.  And when someone who's work you like goes.  And worse when they're just 52.  

But we're comics-folk, and in fifty years, some comic nerd is going to be waving images of Colossus in his hand, talking about Astonishing X-Men and the great John Cassaday.  Someone is going to have his Superman as their lock-screen.  Someone is going to learn that Planetary was a comic in 2002 before it was a movie series starting in 2040, and they'll stare in wonder at what the human hand and eye could do.

Your work will be missed, sir.  And if the outpouring of grief online is any indication, you will be missed by the talent you worked with, the pros you knew and the fans, who universally attest to your kindness.  Not a bad legacy.

Signal Watch Presents: Vehicles in the Media The League Once Dug

Vehicles.  In movies, television, comics and more.  

Sure, we can like characters - and do!  But they also need to get from place to place.  Captain James Tiberius Kirk would be a Starfleet Captain without the Enterprise, but it wouldn't be OG Star Trek without a groovy flying saucer, some sleek nacelles and a saucer out front scanning... always scanning.

What even *is* the Batmobile?  Why is the X-Wing so @#$%ing cool?  And are you an Airwolf stan, or are you a Blue Thunder sort of lad/ lass?  Is the Munster Koach practical?  Is Zorro's horse a vehicle or a character?

We'll talk our favorites, and we'll hopefully get into some of yours.   We'll talk a bit about the design, how the ship worked in the media in discussion, how it appealed to us, and more!  

I am sure each post will be different - and likely multi-part as we try to cover things like the Theseus' Ship that is The Enterprise.

Also - we're open to ideas.  What do you want to discuss?  How do you want to discuss it?  Let us know.

30's Watch: Merrily We Go To Hell (1932)

Watched:  09/09/2024

Format:  Library Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dorothy Arzner

One nice thing about wandering a shelf of movies is that you may experience "serendipitous discovery" - the thing where you weren't looking for an item, but suddenly you are pretty sure this is what you really needed.  And what I needed was to find out what a movie from 1932 called Merrily We Go To Hell was all about.  

I recognized the male star's name - Frederic March - March was a major star staring at the end of the silent era and continuing for decades.  And the female lead's name rang a bell - Sylvia Sidney - but I couldn't say from where. 

The film was directed by Dorothy Arzner, perhaps the lone female director working in Hollywood during this period.  It was an *incredibly* strange time in the industry as the film business had employed women writers, directors, editors and more for the first twenty years of the industry, but as the Silent Era wrapped, the key roles in film showed women the door, and it's difficult to know what was lost as a result of this change.

Merrily We Go To Hell is a film about two stock 1930's movie characters - a newspaperman with aspirations of writing plays, and a rich society gal - meeting and falling in love.  At first blush, it seems it will be a comedy about heavy drinking in society circles - and it is about drinking.  But it changes tones, becoming very obviously about the evils of spirits and fancy actresses.  And, perhaps more importantly, it's about the "modern" marriage, where women allow their husbands to cheat and carry on, because they're doing so themselves.*

James Earl Jones Merges With the Infinite

Actor, icon and voice, James Earl Jones has passed.  He was 93.

There will be plenty written about Jones over the next few days.  As there should be.  

James' history is that of the 20th Century.  He made his debut on the stage and found his way to the big screen.  He went from obscurity to becoming the voice of one of the most complicated villains on the Big Screen in popular entertainment, to a Snake Cult wizard, to a King we all think of as Dad, to a spirit guide for Kevin Costner.

I still get choked up at everything the man does in Field of Dreams.  It's a perfect performance in a perfect movie.  He gave the perfect speech about baseball, and for that alone, we should be grateful.

Jones' IMDB page is interesting - he looks like a journeyman actor given his number of credits.  But he was a legend to many of us.  And for all those guest roles, he was still doing stage work.  

Jones was one of the first actors whose names I knew, alongside the rest of the Star Wars cast.  I never saw him where he was anything less than great in part after part, and I've missed him since he retired. 

Here's to someone who's been there since I first knew what a movie was, and gave us some of the greatest characters we had in film in my lifetime.  

It Blew Watch: Dante's Peak (1998)

Watched:  09/08/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Roger Donaldson

Selection:  Jamie

Here's the thing about writers freaking out about AI.  Studios have been trying to crush the artistry of scripts into predictable, soulless little packages since there was a great train robbery and someone said "yes, but what if it was a great carriage robbery?".  After all, studios are a business, not a local playhouse laboring under the idea that letting the local veterinarian have the solo in Pippin is "art".  And studios want as much guarantee of profit on an investment as possible.  

To this end, producers have routinely beaten writers until those writers produce a script that hits all the same points as the movie that made a ga-jillion dollars, maybe even a decade prior, essentially not understanding how Find/ Replace works in Word, if that's all they want to do.  AI can't take the abuse studios want to dole out, so maybe writers ARE safe- even as AI could produce a pitch that sounds convincingly real.  And would absolutely write this script without blinking a digital eyeball.

But in the 1990's, AI was limited to fantasy in Terminator movies.  And so it was in the 1990's that we received an endless roster of disaster, monster and other movies that were all basically The Abyss's lovechild with 70's disaster movies.  This is how we get scrappy, quirky travelling teams of misfits looking up to our normal, handsomer leader.  We get corporate meddlers who won't listen to pure-hearted scientists/ roughnecks, and then a finale with 45 minutes of consequences of not listening to Ed Harris/ Roy Scheider/ etc... at the start.  

Drama Kid Watch: Theater Camp (2023)

Watched:  09/07/2024

Format:  Hulu?

Viewing:  First

Director(s):  Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman

From 8th grade through high school graduation, I was a drama kid.  And for seven weeks between my Junior and Senior year, I attended drama camp at  UT Austin.  There's a story there about how - at that camp - I realized I was, in fact, a bad actor and realized this was a high school hobby and not a career-path.  That insight was something for which I am eternally grateful, but acting, set building, lighting, etc... is what I did in high school after realizing I didn't want to play sports anymore (which I was 1000% sure even in middle school that I was not very good at).

So, while I have *that* experience, I was not part of the culture of drama kids who started much younger.  Or, certainly, New York theater kids who go out into the woods for the summer to hone their craft.  

I only know Molly Gordon, who co-writes, co-stars, co-directs from a small role on Winning Time and her outstanding performance on The Bear. Co-Star Ben Platt spent his past couple years making people mad by making a movie out of his award winning performance from Broadway in Dear Evan Hansen.  And Co-Director is nepobaby Nick Lieberman (you can look him up).  

Based on a short film involving the same people, Theater Camp (2023) is about a mix of counselors and campers at an all-summer theater camp (surprise!).   The owner of the camp (a too-briefly seen Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma and her son, American Vandal's Jimmy Tatro, is thrust to the fore to run the business side.  And the camp is failing.  Badly.

Meanwhile, the show must go on, including an original work by Amos and Rebecca-Diane (Platt and Gordon) about their fallen leader.  

It's movie by theater kids about theater kids, and they even insert some slobs versus snobs camp rivalry that goes nowhere, so you're not there for a gripping story, necessarily.  But the jokes are there, the kids and counselors are both pretty hysterical, and we get lots and lots and lots of drama-kid specific stuff that may click with non-Theater-kids, but is aimed squarely at the theater kids out there, gently poking fun at the culture from a million angles but rarely mean.

The plot about the camp's financial status is.. wonky.  It feels like an SNL sketch tucked into the movie as it seems wildly unlikely a camp wouldn't understand its finances heading into the summer, even if the movie tries to make it all make sense.  But it does give us Patti Harrison as the corporate raider, and she's pretty darn funny.  But - in general, it's not that hard to figure "X campers = Y dollars" and "Y dollars - Z operating cost = y/n ability to run the camp".  So just a little something as to how it's been run every year on a deficit would be... helpful.

The idea of a camp for the weird theater kids is sweet and funny, and I like the notion that there are cliques, like the Fosse kids.  It seems... buyable while also absurd.  But theatre can be absurd.  Watching grown adults ask kids to tap into emotions they can't possibly have experiences is so much a part of my theatrical experience, I was dying inside watching some scenes.  (I was in a play as a 17 year old in the 90's being asked to play a man traumatized by WWII, and... ya'll...).  Not to mention the assumptions made by the theater kids as they deal with each other, and host a dinner to raise money for the camp.  Or the director jealous of the talent of one of the young performers and finding ways to criticize her.

It's a sweet movie, and I liked it a lot.  It's not going to win any awards, but in the era of mid to low-budget comedies not succeeding, it's the kind that should have had more attention and would have made back its small budget.  Once upon a time, this would be a mild summer sleeper hit, like School of Rock.  But it was barely advertised and mostly dumped on streamers.

The biggest problem this movie has isn't the movie's fault.  Once you see Ayo Edebiri show up, the natural response is "hey, let's follow HER."  And she's just playing a small part that is hysterical, anyway, and then funnier with her in it.  (I imagine Molly Gordon was super pumped to get her The Bear castmate in the movie, and a co-star from Winning Time).  

I do not know if some of the older stars were people I was supposed to know.  I didn't know them.  I watch movies and live in Austin - I don't know Broadway.  

Anyway, check it out sometime.  Jamie requested something fun for her Saturday viewing, and this popped up - and it fit the bill.