Wrestler Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, known to generations of fans as the colorful character The Iron Sheik, has passed.
The Iron Sheik was representative of WWF/ WWE's early smash success via playing out America's psychoses via avatars of various concepts in the zeitgeist appearing in the ring, often to battle the heroes of the WWF. The Iron Sheik was, of course, the threat Americans saw of the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in the post-gas-crisis world.
Vaziri was not, however, actually Saudi. He was from Iran, and I have a very hard time figuring out when and how he came to the States, but it was in the early 70's and tied originally to Olympic wrestling. I think. That he would choose not to villainize Iran in his heel-turn of the 1980s is not a shock.
Like many kids of my generation, I liked the villains as much as the heroes of the WWE, and The Iron Sheik was a favorite. With social media, he resurfaced, pounding out tweets in the broken dialect he employed as his character to cutting and hilarious effect. I think I saw him tweeting just last week, so his passing is a bit of a surprise.
I'm aware of the brow-furrowing concern that media cops have put on wrestling then and now. I get it. But if I may... not once did I think The Iron Sheik was representative of anything but silliness and sweet wrestling moves, and while not fitting a rubric of acceptable, he's still a beloved figure of a certain era of my life.
In memory of the great Tina Turner, this week we put on Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) for our group watch party. This is also the last one for the summer (or longer). Life is resuming, and while I enjoy the experience, my own life and those of the folks who participated, has changed once again.
Anyway, this was a movie I saw at age 10 and in the theater. Subsequently, it played interminably on HBO, I believe, during one of the periods where my parents would pay for premium cable, and I'd seen it a lot during a crucial window in my life. I'm well aware that it's not a patch on The Road Warrior, and in its way, not as fresh as the first Mad Max. And, it's just not as good as Fury Road, which feels like the real distillation of the concepts and final word on the idea of Mad Max - until George Miller does it again.
But it's still a watchable movie and has more ideas per minute than a season of most sci-fi TV. And like all sci-fi that works, it feels plausible and comments back to us about who we are.
This Mad Max film sees Max wander into a town where capitalism has met with the apocalypse and you can't enter unless you have something to trade. Having recently been relieved of his camels(!) and car, Max is recruited to kill the muscle of a brains/ muscle combo by the person who founded Bartertown but has lost control of it to an engineer who is turning pig shit into methane.
Last week we lost world-famous musician and performer Tina Turner.
Turner didn't appear in that many films, but she was in a starring role in the least likely of films, the third Mad Max installment, Beyond Thunderdome. She plays the mayor-figure and matriarch of a town in post-apocalyptic Australia, and she has magnificent earrings.
Opinions vary on Turner in the film, but we've been team-Aunty Entity since we literally jumped into a van full of kids being taken to the movie at the local cinema. But this is also, simply, a pro-Tina Turner household.
Day: June 2, 2023
Time: 8:30 Central, 6:30 Pacific
Runtime: 107 minutes
Cost: $4.29 HD / $3.79 SD
I'm realizing I saw this when I was 10, and, hoo-boy. My parents were paying zero attention to what I was watching as a kid.
Danny (of Superheroes Every Day) and I talk the 2023 critical kryptonite and box office disappointment that is one of Marvel's greatest missteps to date. Join us as we pick up this particular dud and keep turning it over to figure out what worked, what didn't, and how this thing even came out of Marvel Studios.
Here in the U.S., it's Memorial Day, a day in which Americans remember those who died in service to the country and a reminder of the sacrifice many have made.
Let me start by throwing whatever weight I may have to sway your viewing habits (which I assume is zero) into checking out Mrs. Davis, the 8-part TV series currently available on Peacock.
I can provide a cursory description of the show, but it will be just the barest of bones of what the show actually is, as I don't want to spoil anything (yet) and I don't want to mislead anyone.
What I can tell you is that it's somewhat about a nun living in a parallel timeline where 10 years ago an AI came online that can speak directly to people. In the years since its arrival, it's started to end war, famine, poverty, etc... and helped people find personal fulfillment. Maybe.
It also sends people on quests, which, if they succeed means they earn "wings".
Our nun, sister Simone, joined a convent just as the AI was coming into being and hates the AI, which she believes was responsible for the death of her father - a stage magician. As her world is rocked by a rapid series of events, Simone is reunited with a childhood friend, and takes on a mission to take the AI down no matter the cost.
It's an action comedy.
And I love it.
It's also remarkably prescient, given this was filmed some time ago, and released just on the heels of the ChatGPT explosion and very real reconsideration of what AI may do to our cultural landscape, let alone one that speaks directly to an all too willing public. We've all seen sci-fi stuff that seems eerily near-future and predictive, and this is that (in some ways).
I only really know Betty Gilpin from Netflix's wrestling show GLOW where she was amazing and a stand-out even in a cast of stand-outs. But she's quietly one of the funniest actors I can name, effortlessly conveying internal conflicts and spontaneous reactions that are wildly authentic for someone who has been on two fairly over-the-top shows. She's the rock that makes you believe the insanity, all without being a exactly a straight-man to the antics. But definitely our POV of sanity in an insane world.
Or maybe not. In this case, she's just our anchor POV in a world that is clearly mad. She's found her peace living among her sisters, bottling and selling jam. She has a bit of a romantic relationship she keeps to herself.
But the AI needs her, and it doesn't want to be ignored. And when doing things for the AI is the biggest clout-generator on the planet? Man.
Anyway, I am just scratching the surface, but the tone, zig-zagging narrative, willing embrace of total chaos in storytelling - while telling an air-tight, somewhat moving story... man. That's hard to do. All while making me occasionally laugh like a loon (often just Gilpin's "what now...?" expressions get the biggest moments for me). If you told me this is where the show was going from the first episode to the last, I would have been deeply confused, but yet it does it all, seamlessly. And hilariously.
I'll do another spoileriffic post later, but as we enter the long weekend, I wanted to put an offering on the table.
I went into this film with low expectations and finished it absolutely knocked over by the script, direction and actors - not to mention the camera work, attention to costume, etc... It's a dynamite package of a movie, and one I'd recommend for folks thinking of character detail done economically.
The movie takes place in near real-time as an escaped psychiatric patient steals a gun on a charter bus and then winds up taking a bar and its patrons hostage while things escalate outside. It's part of the noir subgenre of hostage-dramas that probably started before The Petrified Forest, but found footing there and worked it's way into a thousand scenarios (check our Key Largo if you haven't prior).
The cast is mostly folks who were not mainstream stars in 1950, though some became household names. In it's way, it's an ensemble picture, and feels influenced by theater of the first half of the 20th century, not least of which is the Pulitzer prize winning Time of Your Life. Only interrupted by a psychotic gunman.
In the fall of 1996 I was at a party at Jamie's apartment, and someone said something about Tina Turner being passe, and - in the way only the right number of cocktails can steer you - I found myself giving an impassioned speech about the history, legacy and import of Tina Turner, and that we were lucky to share the planet with her.
I swear to god, I hadn't thought that hard about Tina Turner since sorting through the lyrics to Private Dancer as a kid. I hadn't ever even see What's Love Got To Do With It? because the idea of watching an entertainer I enjoy get beaten by fucking Ike Turner was in no way appealing. I should have seen it (still haven't for same reason. Fuck Ike Turner.)
I guess the speech stuck with Jamie, because a few months later she produced Tina Turner tickets for us to see her at the Alamodome in San Antonio. And, friends, that show was amazing.
The crowd was made up of all demographics. I had never seen the concept of "dress" before, but it was on full display there (I was a dopey 22 year old in college-kid concert clothes) and I immediately got it and was aware I was improperly attired. Folks from the aged to children were in attendance. And Jamie had bought seats at about the 13th row, dead-center facing the stage. The view was phenomenal.
I still think about that show and Nutbush City Limits maybe once a month. And GoldenEye, because, I mean, y'all know me and Bond and Bond themes, and it was wildly sexy, to boot.
In 1984 when Turner exploded back into the pop culture consciousness with the single and video for What's Love Got To Do With It?, I was 9 and pretty much unaware of who she was. I think she'd been on MTV for a while when my dad made mention of "Oh, Tina Turner" and I got that she was not a new act and this was, in fact, a sort of return to prominence for the artist. I sort of vaguely had ideas of what her stage show and persona had been via descriptions from people, but this was all years before YouTube, and so it wasn't until the film came out that I got what she'd been with Ike when TV ran clips.
And then, of course, YouTube had clips pretty early on.
Man, she's just amazing
Admittedly, maybe I should have watched that movie because it wasn't until the 2021 documentary Tina was released that I got the full picture of Turner's life, and of the abuse and career devastation that followed until 1984. I highly recommend the doc, which we discussed when it was released.
Turner was so popular that I never bothered to buy her records until the aforementioned concert. She was just on the radio all the time or on VH1 and MTV. I find it odd that she doesn't get the same play as other 1980's and 1990's artists on oldies stations as she was so a part of the soundtrack of everyday life for so long, and I don't quite get how she's been shelved to the point where I'm not sure folks ten years younger than me get who she was and the scope of her stardom. But she'd also pivoted out of the world of R&B to rock in the 1980's, and that's probably a whole other discussion about rock's legacy.
I'm the guy who thinks she was awesome in Thunderdome, and was welcome wherever she showed up. If I can recommend one record to get, or put on your streaming service of choice, it's Simply the Best. Which is a greatest hits which prominently features one of her best hits, The Best.* Which has been my favorite Turner song for 25 years now. Wowsers.
I can't put my finger on exactly what I liked about Turner. Clearly the stage show I saw cemented her in my mind. But her voice was perfect for both rock and R&B. Her presence was elegant and exuberant at the same time. She was gorgeous and could dance like mad. Really, she was one of the most complete packages of American musical performance talent I can think of.
Turner married a Swiss gentleman quite some time ago, and the pair retired to Switzerland in more recent years. Tina did her farewell tour and sort of stuck to it. I salute that.
On Friday night I watched the mostly panned Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, and on Saturday spent an ungodly amount of time discussing the film with Danny for the Superheroes Every Day podcast. Spoiler: it wasn't my favorite movie. And so it was that here, deep in Marvel Phase 5, that I finally saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023).
You'd have to listen to the podcast and read between the lines on other posts to know how I feel about Marvel these days. It's an affection, but one that knows where we're at in the scheme of creation and the realization that what always worked will not always work, and that they're now on to properties that have always struggled within the Marvel portfolio, while still not dishing up a Fantastic Four movie that we all know is coming.
As has been largely agreed upon, James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy solidified the lessons of Iron Man (and to a lesser extent, Thor) and re-positioned how Marvel designed its films into action-comedies with heart. GotG somehow, against all odds, managed to make you care about a tree with one line of dialog, an asshole space-raccoon, a manchild with knives, a mass-murderer, and a slacker with delusions of grandeur. Plus a redneck pirate! The heart part was a bit surprising as we watched our leads kill a ship full of pirates, etc... Not the usual side of superheroes.
