Pre-Christmas Cat Watch: The Nine Lives of Christmas (2014)

Watched:  11/12/2023

Format:  You know where we watched this, commercials and all

Viewing:  I swear to god, I think it was my third viewing

Director:  Mark Jean

Jamie had a medical procedure this week, and was all nerves and needed something to just coast along on.  Guess what was on?

So, yeah, it was round two or three for me of watching this particular holiday gem.

This movie features my favorite Hallmark-specific star, Kimberly Sustad, and I'll leave it at that.

TKD Watch: The Foot Fist Way (2006)

Watched:  11/12/2023

Format:  Max

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Jody Hill

I saw this back in the day when it was a theatrical release (apparently contributing $40 or so of the $250K take), and while I am sure it was originally hitting the festival circuit in 2006, I saw it in 2008.  

At the time, I took my pal Matt, who had just earned his Black Belt in something other than Tae Kwon Do. But strip-mall TKD was something with which I had a lot of familiarity.  I, myself, tested for a Black Belt circa 2001 after a few years of lessons.*  And, yes, everything in the movie about how these schools operate felt absolutely true.  

Your strip mall TKD dojo is a place where grown adults take instruction and direction from 13 year old kids left in charge of the class, and it's a place where people with jobs spend their time yelling mispronounced Korean words and treating everything with deadly seriousness as they kick targets and punch dummies.

90's 70's Watch: The Brady Bunch Movie (1995)

Watched:  11/10/2023

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Betty Thomas

November of 2023 is about 28 years from when The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) was released.  Which is funny, because the TV show, The Brady Bunch, which this movie spoofs, ran from September 1969 to March 1974, meaning the movie - which was sending up the show was only separated from the final air date by 21 years.  That's some math, but we're~7 years further out now from this movie than we were from the show when the movie arrived.

While the US is too large and has too many people to have a monoculture, due to the nature of broadcast TV, and then early cable, in the 20th Century there was a shared experience for the youth of the United States in the form of mass entertainment.  With a minimum of programming aimed at youth, for millions of us, the politely banal episodic adventures of The Brady Bunch, playing in mid-afternoon reruns, were a common touchpoint.  As were a handful of other shows, to be sure.*

Musical tastes of the time could vary - you might like country or R&B or rock or metal - but you only had so many channels to pick from.  I cannot imagine today's kids have a concept of wanting to unwind after latch-keying oneself into your empty house after a long day at school and watching some TV, and, really, there's maybe two options across your 4 to 30-odd channels (if your folks sprung for cable).

So it was that, thanks to the power of cheap syndication, for about 20 years, The Brady Bunch aired daily, sometimes multiple episodes, as the six kids, two parents and their maid acted like weird, alternate-reality stepford wives and children, making mountains out of mole hills and speaking in an almost otherwordly way that became a common cultural currency for kids to discuss, make fun of, etc....  The tendency of TV execs to want to sanitize the world was so harsh and weird, it was like bleach had killed anything resembling actual life. 

Marvel Watch: The Marvels (2023)

Watched:  11/09/2023

Format:  Alamo Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Nia DaCosta

Marvel has been having some issues, of late, with quality and maintaining a fanbase.  I'm not sure why having a fanbase for sci-fi/ fantasy stuff means eventually that the absolute worst people on Earth feel like their opinions should dictate what the rest of the planet sees and what constitutes a "good" Marvel, Star Wars or whatever movie.  But I suppose it's the same reason that people think they get to tell other people they're the only *real* Americans.

I don't want to define the film Captain Marvel or TV show Ms. Marvel by the audience that manages to mix misogyny and racism into rocket fuel for social media, but I will say - in the event of this year's strike by SAG-AFTRA, it's been tough to get much in the way of promotion out there for The Marvels other than dropping trailers, and that's left a gap in the conversation those folks have filled.  It's more likely we'll see the occasional hit-piece by a major industry publication looking for clicks than Disney doing anything worthwhile to actually promote the film on their own.  We coulda really used the lead cast hitting Hot Ones and Good Morning America.

Look, I agree:  Marvel has put out too much content since Endgame, and that's had a deleterious effect on the overall quality of the material.  Even I have been asking "will this be necessary?" as I hear about each new Marvel thing still in the pipeline.  And sometimes you're watching, say, Loki Season 2, and you're thinking "I literally do not care what happens here" because something like "oh noes, the timelines will all collapse" is both meaningless, up it's own ass of the story being about itself, and insanely old hat to us aging comic nerds who've seen timelines and multiverses collapse and expand over and over for our *entire lives*.  And, yes, Superman will still get printed every month.

Movie superheroes still have to have an antagonist, and they still have to wind up in a big crescendo of a finale, but we've seen this dozens of times in the past fifteen years.  You can polish it, put a new coat of paint on it, but eventually it's someone in a slugfest with their evil opposite who has the advantage on paper (but not the heart of a hero).

So what you have left is what you can do with characters.

And that brings us to The Marvels (2023), Marvel Studios' latest offering.  

The movie has mediocre reviews and is tracking to open badly.  I haven't read the reviews, because (a) I already had tickets and was going, and (b) I kinda wanted to write this before I saw what Chris Spectacles of the Akron Observer thought of the film.*  And I didn't want this review to be me addressing the concerns of reviewers.  

I saw it in a 2/3rds full theater on opening night, and with not a child in sight.  I will say the following up top:  

First - there's no post-post-credits sequence to wait for.  Go home after the first couple of them.  This is not a trick.

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.  

Marvel Watch: Captain Marvel (2019)

Watched:  11/05/2023

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  I dunno.  4th?  5th?

Director(s):  Anne Boden and Ryan Fleck

This is a kind of weird movie, and it's amazing it holds together.  It takes place in the late 90's, is very concerned with events of 6 years prior, hints at things that will impact Marvel in the future, and introduces two warring species, a 2-eyed Nick Fury and the origins of the Avengers Initiative.  It's got a *lot* of ground to cover.

But at the center of all that is a story about a former pilot who has been told over and over again to stay in line, that she's a mess if she doesn't have people telling her what to do, and that she lacks self-control/ is too emotional.  Ie: this is a movie working as a gigantic metaphor that is constantly saying "get it?  You see what we did there?"  And, of course, this created a cottage industry of very angry YouTubers who are still out there, four years later, getting clicks talking about how this critically and commercially successful movie is bad, actually.* 

Anyway, I like it.  It's a tight sci-fi actioner with a well-developed lead, well-considered supporting characters and a very interesting take on Young Fury.  I dig Larson's cocky test-pilot je ne sais quo, and the moments as she's realizing her own power (which comes in levels through the third act).  

Let's not forget this movie has Annette Benning, which should get it a high-five anyway, but she's having a lot of fun with the part and you'll kind of wish you got way more time with her Mar-Vell/ Lawson.  And, really, a gigantic, embarrassingly rich cast, including Lashana Lynch, Clark Gregg, Jude Law, Gemma Chan, Lee Pace, Djimon Hounsou, and the great Ben Mendelsohn.  And plenty more!  

A while back, we podcasted this one, and I'm sure it was a restrained and well-pondered podcast since I think we did it like an hour after getting back from the movie.  

By the way, I've never really gotten into Captain Marvel in the comics, but have tried to catch up here and there.  But she is, to me, a highlight of the MCU.  

Anyhoo, that's all the homework I'm doing before seeing the new movie, The Marvels, this coming week.  

*Like, people are still making these videos in 2023, which means not only are they still fired up over a single movie, there's people *watching* these videos.  Which.  Man.  You're allowed to not like a thing, but if you're still worried about it 4 years on, the problem isn't the movie.

G Watch: Godzilla (2014)

Watched:  11/04/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second, I think

Director:  Gareth Edwards

In a couple of weeks, Apple+ is dropping their decade-spanning, genre-mixing show about the Monarch organization, which is the group that.... something something.... in a world of giant beasties, based on Godzilla (2014) and the series of attached movies.  I've heard where/ when in the movie timeline the show takes place - just after this movie, and it had been a while, so I finally rewatched the first of the Monsterverse films to remind myself what the hell happens in the flick.

I remember going into Godzilla (2014) with some trepidation.  The last American-made Godzilla movie I'd seen was the 1998 trainwreck that just piled on all the worst habits of 1990's-era blockbuster entertainment, and then curb-stomped you with them.*

The trailers for the 2014 edition certainly looked cool, but the fact is that at the time of the film's release, Hollywood was doing this thing where they would come up with cool stuff for trailers and then maybe make a movie that tied those scenes and lines together.  

It was promising a movie for all-ages, including adults - casting thinking-person's stars like Bryan Cranston, Juliet Binoche, Ken Watanabe, David Strathairn and Sally Hawkins (a curious trend that has continued through Godzilla v. Kong with Rebecca Hall as our lead).  So it was literally *buying* gravitas with the casting choices.  Which was maybe needed after the 1998 debacle.  

Leaving the movie, I remember a vague sense of disappointment, but wasn't blogging at the time, so there's no record of what I was thinking.  In the 9 years since I've re-watched the movie, I'd kind of forgotten what the deal was.  Certainly I remembered them bumping off Binoche in the film's first five minutes, and that Cranston similarly exits the film in the first act, when I thought he was going to be our lead.  

Godzilla Day Watch: Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)

Watched:  11/03/2023

Format:  Amazon 

Viewing:  Second or Third

Director:  Masaaki Tezuka

So, I'd seen this one before, and as near as I can tell, it's a favorite of the Millennium Era (spoiler, y'all.  I kind of dig all eras for their own reasons).  And that's not a bad take.  The suit in this one is pretty rad and toyetic, Godzilla is in "unstoppable natural force" mode, and the story is just absolutely bananas in the best way.  And, man, so much monster-fighting.

Our story - Mothra and a pair of Faeries (is there any other kind from Infant Island?), show up to tell one of their old contacts from the original Mothra movie that Mothra wants the JXSDF to return 1954 Godzilla's bones to the ocean.  Where are 1954 Godzilla's bones?  Inside of MechaGodzilla.  Why?  REASONS.  Apparently that's what they used as the support structure.  

So, yes - (a) the Godzilla you've known since Godzilla Raids Again is NOT OG Godzilla (which makes sense since he's very dead at the end of the first film.  And (b) there are mystical forces at play that want those bones in the ocean, and those forces talk to the Faeries and Mothra.  

Of course there's a very earnest and hard working mechanic who met Mothra who, by day, is on the flight crew for MechaGodzilla.  There's a bunch of other characters, but I'll be honest - they kind of don't really matter.  This is about Current Godzilla wanting to fight the bones of his counterpart, Mothra showing up and self-sacrificing, and MechaGodzilla being haunted.  It is a ride.

I won't hard sell you on this movie - it's part of a series and I didn't mean to watch it.  But we pulled together a last-minute watch party and I intended to watch Godzilla versus Astro Monster, but apparently that got pulled from Prime on Nov. 1 and I panicked.  

If you're going to panic, there are worse movies to decide to watch.

PodCast 258: "Batman" (1989) - a Kryptonian Thought Beast PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan

Watched:  09/30/2023

Format:  Max

Viewing: Unknown

Decade:  1980s

Director: Tim Burton

For more ways to listen

Jamie and Ryan go back to a simpler era of superhero movies where a hero didn't have to turn their neck to stop crime! It's the world's greatest detective in a rubber suit, and busily recreating film language for the next few decades. We talk the 1989 smash that changed how the world saw superheroes and made everyone take a guy in a pointy hat very seriously, indeed!

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 258: "Batman" (1989) - a Kryptonian Thought Beast PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Batman Main Title - Danny Elfman 

Batdance - Prince

DC Movies and TV

The Signal Watch PodCast · DC Cinema and TV

HalloWatch: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Watched:  10/31/2023

Format:  Max

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Frank Oz

It seems unfathomable that I've never done a post on Little Shop of Horrors (1986) but a quick glance my history here, and I haven't.  We did watch it back in 2020 during Halloween season, but I seemed to think we were about to podcast the movie.  We did not.

So, the way I first saw the movie was a tad unlikely.  Some kids at my school figured out there was a pay phone outside, and they called in a bomb threat with about two hours left to go in the day.  So, we stood around in the drizzling rain until the buses came, and then we just went home without our books or homework.  

Over dinner, The Admiral realized I had nothing to do, found the next movie on, and he and I jumped in the car and drove over to Showplace 6 to see Little Shop of Horrors.  I was delighted.  Loved the movie.  Sci-fi/ horror/ comedy/ musical?  Slam dunk home run.

We were a family that attended a lot of musicals and theatrical productions, so the language of a movie musical was no real surprise to me, but I'd never seen anything that also squarely jived with a comedic sensibility of the time in that format, and which featured some of my favorite comedians.

Of course, Rick Moranis as Seymour, but cameos from Bill Murray, Steve Martin, John Candy and more.  And, of course, a giant, singing, talking plant bent on world domination.  The music was reminiscent of what I was listening to on Oldies stations (I missed the gag about our chorus' names until college), and it's kind of banger after banger.  We forget Howard Ashman and Alan Menken did this off Broadway before they were the Disney-famous Howard Ashman and Alan Menken.