Happy 15th Anniversary, Pumpkin

Our wedding song



And, of course, the truest song about coupledom ever writ

Still busy. So, more Quick Draw McGraw.

I'm Busy for a Couple of Days

So, in the meantime, here is Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey.

Noir Watch: Detour (1945)

At some point in your life, set aside 1 hour and 10 minutes to make it through Detour (1945), one of the grimiest, most uncomfortable, brilliantly economical movies you're likely to ever catch.  It's a short bit of distilled noir which kind of meanders for the first third, and then it starts to pick up.  And THEN Ann Savage shows up and holy @#$%.

I don't know what it says about me that I adore Ann Savage in this movie.  There's some matrix I need to devise of "what's wrong with me?" that I need to make with attributes of various Femme Fatales, including Savage in this movie, Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy, Stanwyck in Double Indemnity and Babyface, Marie Windsor in everything...  But Ann Savage is a special kind of nuts in this movie, that veers almost into noir Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf-ish territory sometime in the back 1/3rd of the movie.

Comedy Watch: Let's Be Cops (2014)

Jamie and I watch the Fox sitcom The New Girl.  Shut up.  It's funny.

When I saw the trailer for Let's Be Cops (2014), it looked like more of same, and I wanted to see it, but I also have HBO for a reason.

Truly, this movie is exactly what I thought it was going to be, with, admittedly, less nudity (read: none.  At least by ladies) than I'd figured on.

The premise, two guys who did well in college have been in LA for a long time, and neither is setting the world on fire.  One can't seem to get his break in video game development and the other... it's never clear.  He's living off the money from a herpes medication ad and playing football with 10 year-olds.

Dressed in cop outfits they've worn to a costume party, they realize how folks react to the uniform and badge and hi-jinks ensue.  Damon Wayans Jr. meets a pretty girl, they stumble onto some very real crime, we all learn to respect what cops go through.

It's exactly what it was intended to be - a lower budget comedy that relies on the charm of the characters and actors to carry it through.  It has some good stuff not just from Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake Johnson, but also Natsha Leggero (who I always find hilarious and I'm a little surprised she's not a bigger deal), Rob Riggle and Keegan-Michael Key of Key and Peele.

I dunno.  It'd be an ideal airplane movie or something.

So, Miller is making it a Dark Knight Trilogy? All righty, then.

What do you even say when you see DC has signed up Frank Miller to create a third installment in the vein of Dark Knight Returns/ Dark Knight Strikes Again?  I think you say "DC needs a hit for the 3rd Quarter or Dan Didio will need a new jobby job."

And that's okay.  I'm a little past the point of hoping that DC Entertainment, a division of Time Warner, Inc., is really all that invested in the artistry of comics in 2015, but it's not like comics haven't recycled ideas before.  These sorts of short term stunts have generally paid off for Didio, and he's certainly running out of his usual bag of tricks now that he's exploited all of his predecessor's successes so many times over that he had to throw bags of gold at Frank Miller (or really pray Sin City 2 would do exactly what it did at the box office) in order to get him back at DC writing comics.

Marvel Watch: Avengers (2012)

What are you going to say about Avengers three years later and with 90% of the world's population now well aware of the exploits of Earth's Mightiest Heroes?  We watched it to get caught up for Age of Ultron, but I am realizing it's been a while since I've seen Thor II, and I don't own a copy of either Thor for some reason.  No, really, I like the Thor movie a lot.  They're super fun.

Of all the Marvel movies, I'm still not sure this one is even in my top 4.  It counts on the fact you really don't care that Loki's plan makes no sense whatsoever in order to keep up with the movie, and Loki makes his escape in the opening sequence from the back of a pick-up truck, like there should be banjo music playing.  There are some choices made that maybe weren't the best in retrospect, and there's a lot of standing around on the heli-carrier.  I mean, a lot of it.

The thing is, despite what I think are some scripting problems, editing decisions that could have been made differently, and the fact it features my least favorite of Caps' costumes (I really dig what I've seen in the trailer for Age of Ultron), it's still got so many good parts, you can overlook the deficiencies and still like it quite a lot.  If nothing else, the actors are all very specific and on-point in their performances.  That sort of team-effort in a movie can be what makes the difference making your Star Wars franchise hum versus the endless sea of forgotten franchises that had teams but focused entirely too much on any one character (I still remember being surprised when I read as a kid that Star Wars was Luke's story.  Of course it is, but, you know, I thought of him as one of a bunch of people) or where the actors lacked chemistry.

Anyway, it's big-screen fun, and it really does tie in with the movies before and after so seamlessly - if you ignore the useless army of forgettable villains and their ridiculous scheme.  But it doesn't matter, it does give our heroes something to overcome and come together, and that's what the movie is all about.

Noir Watch: They Drive By Night (1940)

Released in that precarious period as the Depression wore on, but while America hadn't yet stepped up and become involved in the wars brewing across the rest of the planet, They Drive By Night (1940) sits at an interesting crossroads.  It certainly features the sort of crime-story from the pulps of the 20's and 30's, but doesn't delve as deeply into moral ambiguity of the post-war film noir pictures nor a good Chandler or Hammett story.

Even the actors are at an interesting period in their careers.  Raft plays the lead and Bogart takes the back seat as his brother, Bogart becoming Hollywood royalty only a year later with The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca in 1942.  Raft certainly continued on as a popular actor for some time, but only one would remain a household name.  Ann Sheridan was also very popular during the era, but Lupino was just breaking out from the blonde dye and good-girl roles she'd been playing.  And she's really damn good here in a Femme Fatale role that casts the movie squarely into the categorization of film noir, even if it's a bit early for the genre (no doubt a version of this in the 1950's would have allowed Raft and Lupino to knock-boots off screen).

"Bride of Frankenstein" at 80

I think that one time I spent a month doing posts on tumblr, or the multiple time I've covered the movie on this site, might have dropped a clue or two that I'm a fan of the 1935 movie, Bride of Frankenstein.  Yesterday marked the 80th Anniversary of the movie's release, a remarkably long time for a movie to remain vital and immediate, to be continually finding new fans.

To me, the appeal of the movie is obvious.  It's hilarious, horrific, bizarre, melodramatic, self-serious, grotesque, childish and completely dependent on a movie I enjoy almost as much to make any sense.  And it features a completely unnecessary opening framing device, clearly there to please the creative staff and no one else.

If the original Frankenstein film fails to capture the book, this one more or less throws the book away while  also laying claim to it, using small portions and ideas of the book to tell a new and unnecessary story, but somehow a deeply fulfilling one - and in the process makes a double-bill of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, really, the best way to see both pictures and consider it one long project with an interruption mid-way through.  Upon returning from that break, you'll notice a change in tone of the film to a grander sense of scale, weirder characters and poor Colin Clive seemingly more wrecked than in even the first movie, all the while everyone else seems to be having a grand old time putting on a show.

80's Watch: The Hunger (1983)

I don't think I've watched The Hunger (1983) since I was living with pal CarlaBeth back in college, so - wow, almost 20 years ago.  Which means that Jamie, who I started dating at the time, has been saying "The Hunger of David Bowie!" then "I sure do fancy a cheeseburger!" at me in an iffy British accent for almost two decades.

My, how time passes.

Which is exactly what this movie is about, by the way.

I was a bit surprised to see the movie show up on Turner Classic.  I mean, yeah, it's more than 3 decades old, but I have no recollection of TCM previously throwing caution to the wind and going ahead and showing partial nudity or that much blood.  And, this being a vampire movie, boy howdy is there a lot of blood.  And Bauhaus!  Those Andy Hardy movies are way low on their offering of Bauhaus.