Animation Watch: Fire & Ice (1983)

Watched:  08/18/2024

Format:  BluRay from Austin Public

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ralph Bakshi

This was the weekend for watching movies I considered viewing during COVID lockdown but never got to.  Certainly Gymkata was part of that, but I'd also bookmarked the 1983 animated adventure film Fire & Ice.  

Ralph Bakshi is a figure that I think those in the know were still discussing in the 1990's, but I'm not sure anyone under 40 in 2024 is really aware of Bakshi, his work or what should have been his legacy.  I'll leave you to Google the man, but he burst out of the counter-culture scene, partnering with R. Crumb and making animated features that were decidedly not all-ages.  His films were famously oversexed, and in the US, our relationship with sexualization battles between raw objectification, cartoonish piety, artistic vision and feminist criticism - leaving Bakshi an unapologetic provocateur.

But he also was trying to make art.  And as such, pushed boundaries and envelopes.  His work used familiar imagery, just off kilter enough to look like part of what you may see in other, more sanitized and popular work, but maybe what was happening in other parts of Toon Town where Mickey would never go.  But his interests also strayed into what one could do with music and image (as all animators get to), and an interest in what animation had the potential to do that live action was not capable of for high fantasy.

Pain Watch: Ember Days (2013)

Watched:  06/21/2024

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sean-Michael Argo

Where to start?

Since high school, intentionally watching bad movies has been a routine part of my film viewing.  I couldn't count how many bad movies I've watched with the aid of MST3K, RiffTrax, Dug, etc... or just putting a bad movie on myself and giving it a go with no professional support.  But the number of these films watched has been... astronomical.  And, in fact, my guilt regarding watching so many bad movies is part of why I've recently taken on my homework task of watching movies by the big name directors I've previously avoided.

And so it is that, thanks to Dug, I've now seen a movie that was not just bad for many of the reasons a movie doesn't work out (flat acting, a wandering script, horrendous editing...), but Ember Days (2013) pioneered new and innovative ways in how it chose to be a very bad movie.  It's one of those movies where you'd love a whole other movie to cover what went into this movie, what the filmmakers were thinking, and how they think of their product now.  

I do not say this lightly:  this is possibly one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  That's a spot which is, honestly, pretty hard to reach (and I'm pretty sure is usually occupied by Monster-a-Go-Go).  And I say this in the same year I watched Showgirls 2: Penny's From Heaven.  

If I have any sympathy for the film, it is most certainly due to the zero-budget nature of the production.  And, yes, I appreciate that a bunch of people outside of Hollywood decided to make a movie, and you shouldn't bag on people trying.  

But I watched it, and I'm here to tell the tale.

What makes Ember Days so magical?

D&D Watch: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

I don't know who that @#$%ing dragon is, because he's not in the movie

Watched:  11/07/2023

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director(s):  John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein

Ok.  So.

Back when I was probably too young to be playing, my brother picked up the basic boxed set of Dungeons and Dragons rules in the fall of 1982.  From probably 1982 to around 1987 or so, we played the game regularly, making our way swiftly to Advanced D&D and the much more fun rule books and catalogs of monsters, spells, what-have-you that comprised D&D in the 1980's.  

We didn't so much quit playing Dungeons and Dragons as move on to other games.  Our interest in the fantasy world and complex rule systems of that game depleting as we found sci-fi games, games based on popular comic books, movies, etc...  

I could not tell you when I last played D&D itself, but I assume probably 7th grade.  And, I don't think I've touched a tabletop RPG since college.  I don't have a problem with them, but we all just sort of stopped making time for them.  Clearly I am into dork stuff that often shares retail space with RPG materials, so it's not that.  I just don't hang with people who game, I guess.

There's a lot of water under the bridge with Dungeons and Dragons itself, which has been sold and resold as a property, and now belongs to an offshoot of Hasbro.  I won't get into the history of D&D here, or why everything is stupidly complicated, but we'll just leave it at: people are complex and companies often make bad decisions.

But a curious thing happened.  

Watch Party Watch: Highlander (1986)

Watched:  07/23/2021

Format:  Amazon Prime Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1980's

Director: Russell Mulcahy

I hadn't watched The Highlander (1986) in years.  It was a movie I saw on VHS as a kid, loved it, and include it's mythology and catch-phrases as part of my Gen-X slang.  I mean, it did give us the phrase "there can be only one", which I think has leaked out into the popular consciousness, even if lots of folks don't know where the phrase came from.

But like The Beastmaster, The Highlander was part of the lingua franca of geek culture for Gen-X nerds.  It had a not-particularly charismatic lead, Connery chewing schenery, a woman throwing herself at the lead for absolutely no reason (and against all logic), swords, trenchcoats, a crazy-ass villain in the form of Clancy Brown as a mad Cossack, and a soundtrack by mid-80's Queen.

And sparks.  So many sparks.

Going in, I knew the movie wouldn't be what I remembered when I was 12, even if the movie was exactly what I remembered from when I was 12.  It's.... fine.  A little slim in the character department in favor of the plot and exposition departments.  And it's also a funny movie because it does feel like it should be the first installment in a series until you think about the plot and realize "nope, this is it."  Not that movie didn't generate three sequels and a TV show.  

I will never understand the idea behind casting Christopher Lambert as a Scotsman.  I will never understand casting Sean Connery as an Egyptian Spaniard.  And yet, I support both.  It's absurd.  And somehow just part of the fabric of the movie.  

I do like how the movie merges present with flashbacks to tell the story - this was not particularly common to sci-fi or fantasy at the time, and trying to imagine someone explaining all of this in realtime in the present would have been deadly.  Clancy Brown makes a hell of an impression as a badguy who has flipped his lid - maybe not new to cop thrillers by 1986, but new to fantasy.  And the bit with the girl MacCloud saved during WWII who is still with him is a brilliant little touch, even if she should have been introduced earlier and their relationship clarified.  I mean, there's a whole movie in that somewhere.

But it's also not something I think anyone should take particularly seriously.  Connery sets the right tone - this is crazy, and we should enjoy it.  The ending is telegraphed nonsense, but still fun.  

Now we'd be treated to someone's plans for a franchise, with massive world building and a wide array of characters.  Here, we get... four Immortals in the modern era?  And no women at that?  (So 1980's).  So I do appreciate that it's both semi-thoughtful, but smart enough to just tell the story and get out.  

Anyway. Highlander.  

Amazing Watch: Sorceress (1982)

Watched:  03/27/2020
Format:  Amazon Prime Streaming
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1980's (oh, how very 1980's.  Specifically, how very EARLY 1980's)

On facebook a friend (Hi, Laura S.) asked if I'd ever seen Sorceress (1982), and I was pretty sure I hadn't.  When I went to look it up on Amazon Prime, I realized I'd once watched the first two and a half minutes of the movie and then gave up.  People - this was a mistake.

The poster above does absolutely nothing to relate anything about the events or actual characters of the movie.  There is a sort of lion-winged thing, a blonde woman and an ape guy.  A snake appears on screen for about five seconds.  But there are two blonde women: that's the entire thing of the movie.  And it seems like that should have made the poster.  The titular sorceress of the film: not shown.