Happy Birthday to Jack "King" Kirby

Today would have been the 95th Birthday of Jack Kirby, the greatest comics creator of the 20th Century.

Kirby's family is supporting The Hero Initiative, a non-profit that helps support veteran comics creators facing tough financial times (there isn't much of a retirement or healthcare plan for freelancers).

We recommend checking out The Hero Initiative website and maybe donating a bit to the fund.  Make Jack proud.

The Wonder Woman/ Superman Kiss

Apparently even the ladies on The View have weighed in on Wonder Woman and Superman having passionate smoochy-time in the pages of Justice League coming on Wednesday.

Sigh.  I suppose that means that, as a blog that likes to talk about both of these characters, I should also put in my two cents.

credit to Diane Nelson for remembering her company owns half of telecommunications and getting this stunt some publicity

The problem is that I gave up on the Geoff Johns/ Jim Lee Justice League comic 6 issues ago, so I have no idea what led to the smoochies on the actual page - so I won't comment on that.

Here's what I will comment upon:

Trek Watch: s1e3 - Where No Man Has Gone Before

There's really endless commentary out there on Star Trek, but I really do want to watch the whole original series in order, so you may see some comments from time to time.

Technically, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is episode 3 of Season 1.  It features a young and terribly fetching Sally Kellerman as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner.  Rumor has it this is the episode that the filmmakers may be basing part of the plot on for the next film.  I have no idea if that's true, but the episode is a pretty great Trek story, even if Sulu isn't on the bridge, Scotty is a bit part, and there's no Dr. McCoy to be seen.  And absolutely no Uhura, which is ALWAYS a mistake.

In fact, this episode was intended to be the pilot, but as so often happens - the episodes were aired out of order making this Episode 3.

confession:  I'm still envious of Shatner's haircut from Trek.  That and "The Draper".  Man, I could never really pull either off.

Some Trek nerd actually knows how this game is played

The Enterprise enters a strange field at the edge of the galaxy that imbues Kirk's pal, Lt. Commander Gary Mitchell, with awesome mental powers.  And we face the age old dilemma of a man losing his humanity as he gains super powers.  

I'm shocked at how strong the show was coming right out of the gate as fairly potent sci-fi, even if they have to resort to fisticuffs to solve the problem.  

Also, they were still figuring out the uniforms.  Command is in gold, science is in blue, but they have funky collars and Spock is in command gold.  Do not approve.

SPACE MUTANTS!!!

The formula isn't there quite yet, but the solid foundation for the Enterprise is taking shape quite nicely.

Noir Watch: Killer Joe (2011)

So.  No one will be seated during the amazing chicken leg sequence!

I can't recommend KiIller Joe (2011) for a general audience, so let's get that out of the way first.  The movie made the hard choice to (a) get made and (b) not water itself down, and that meant an NC-17 rating. I can't even remember the last time I saw a movie with this rating, but even R-rated movies generally have a few swears these days and its mostly intended to keep people from bringing their kids with them to the 9:00 show of the latest Scorsese picture.  Basically, nobody really has the guts to do a Hard R movie these days (except the Hangover guys, I guess) and so an NC-17 should be box office death.

The movie is based upon a play by Tracy Letts which ran off-broadway some 14 years ago.  Its been adapted here to the big screen by Letts and directed by William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, The French Connection and a host of other films, but the last movie of his I saw was Blue Chips (which I actually quite enjoyed).

It's a deep-fried southern noir in the darkest corners of white trash America, and reads somewhat like one of those news stories you can both believe occurred - predicated on the notion that all of the players were unsympathetic, near-illiterate dopes whose grasp was further than their reach when it came to planning - and still find the fact that someone ever started this plan to begin with stupefying.

But, like I say, it feels a hell of a lot like a true-crime story, in its way.

Signal Watch Watches: Man or Gun (1958)

It's hard to describe what this movie is about without making it sound like a movie full of crazy people, but maybe that's the remarkable thing about this flick...  the movie actually makes the idea work.

Man or Gun (1958) finds a drifter coming to a rowdy frontier town - one who won't say who he is - who seems to have a seemingly supernatural power with a gun, leaving the townsfolk to ask "is it the man or the gun?"  And, of course, a whole lot of people get shot in that bloodless manner of a 1950's western.

The drifter no sooner arrives than stumbles upon (of course) a powerful family that rules and harasses the townfolk, making the tiny berg unsafe for women and children.  Powerful enough that one of them is wanted for $2000 and is still living publicly in the town - until he crosses paths with the drifter, that is.  The drifter won't give up his name, and comes to first be called "'Maybe' Smith", and falls under the watchful eye of Audrey Totter as Fran Dare (that, people, is a hell of a name).  Fran sees a chance to use the man or gun to push back against the dastardly Corleys.

I actually quite liked the movie for a small western that I'd not heard much about.  It's a story about superstition versus reality versus what you see with your own eyes.  And, in no small way, its about whether guns are any way to answer a dispute in a civilized world, even when you're trying to make a better world against others waving guns in your face.

Macdonald Smith does a good, straighfaced hero - even is he feels a bit long in the tooth for the role, and Audrey Totter is in top form as the woman running the local saloon who has a lot invested in the stranger.  Unlike FBI Girl, it felt like the director knew what he had in Totter and let her show her range a great bit more.

Anyway, not groundbreaking, but one of those movies you're a bit surprised how enjoyable it was when you really haven't heard anything about it before.

Neil Armstrong Merges with The Infinite

Astronaut Neil Armstrong, possibly the most well known of all astronauts, has passed at the age of 82.

Armstrong was part of the Apollo 11 team that reached the moon, and was the first human to cross the great void and touch foot to moon soil.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Armstrong's family on his passing:

While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.

For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request: Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.

That's a pretty damn good epitaph.

Godspeed, sir.

Well, I found MY candidate

My choice for POTUS?

of course, it can't go worse than the guy I voted for in the gubernatorial election 2 years ago...

Noir Watch: FBI Girl (1951)

I'm going to spoil the ending, but there are two great things in this movie.

• Lots of Audrey Totter
• Raymond Burr in a moving speedboat shooting at Cesar Romero who is shooting back from a helicopter.  Heck.  Yes.

Oddly, the movie doesn't really live up to either (a) containing Audrey Totter nor (b) the exciting Burr/Romero sequence I've described.

In the post WWII-era FBI director J. Edgar Hoover did a fine job of getting Hollywood in line and making sure movies about the FBI almost invariably celebrated the DOJ as a machine so powerful that even when infiltrated or somehow compromised, the power of righteousness would prevail.  And, if you were a red-blooded movie exec looking to stay away from HUAC, you could do worse than promoting J. Edgar's little club.

nothing like what you see of Audrey Totter here ever happens in the movie

FBI Girl (1951) spends no small amount of energy establishing the flawless nature of the FBI's fingerprint department - something criminals and lawmen alike in mid-century crime fiction seemed to worry about.  I've never understood how the whole fingerprint mechanism worked before computers, and this movie does nothing to shed light on why it was even an issue for criminals (I mean, with a million prints on record, and requests coming in all the time, how do you even know where to start with a comparison?).

On Lance Armstrong and Pyrrhic Victory

Well done, anti-doping agency.  

You know, its too bad if Lance Armsotrong did dope.  It certainly left a lot of questions around his 7 Tour victories.  But here's kind of what I think:

It's a bicycle race.

Hello, Babies

On Wednesday evening I finished listening to God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater via audiobook.  I had read the most quoted part of the book on a poster by a local artists of some renown, a Mr. Tim Doyle (who once owned and managed a comic book shop in a mall beneath a dormitory), and the quote stuck with me the way some of these things do.  What the poster said was this:

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.

It is the blessing Eliot Rosewater plans to bestow upon a pair of twins born to an arsonist of ill-repute who has asked him to lead the proceedings at the twins' baptism.

Just so you know, I have been asked to officiate a wedding this coming winter. Should I be asked to officiate a baptism, the above quote shall be included in my remarks.  Other excerpts will be taken from The Bible, Ray Bradbury, and Kanye West.

Anyway, I finally consumed the book recommended to me long ago.  Thank you for the suggestion.

But now I feel like I need to read Slaughterhouse Five again.  Or all the Vonnegut novels I've read.  Again.

So it goes.

At any rate, a fine book and an interesting read as the presidential election blares out of every orifice of media and we all pound our chests about our understandings of who gets ahead and how and how we choose to look at one another as a matter of policy and, according to this novel, a matter of sanity.