James Earl Jones Merges With the Infinite

Actor, icon and voice, James Earl Jones has passed.  He was 93.

There will be plenty written about Jones over the next few days.  As there should be.  

James' history is that of the 20th Century.  He made his debut on the stage and found his way to the big screen.  He went from obscurity to becoming the voice of one of the most complicated villains on the Big Screen in popular entertainment, to a Snake Cult wizard, to a King we all think of as Dad, to a spirit guide for Kevin Costner.

I still get choked up at everything the man does in Field of Dreams.  It's a perfect performance in a perfect movie.  He gave the perfect speech about baseball, and for that alone, we should be grateful.

Jones' IMDB page is interesting - he looks like a journeyman actor given his number of credits.  But he was a legend to many of us.  And for all those guest roles, he was still doing stage work.  

Jones was one of the first actors whose names I knew, alongside the rest of the Star Wars cast.  I never saw him where he was anything less than great in part after part, and I've missed him since he retired. 

Here's to someone who's been there since I first knew what a movie was, and gave us some of the greatest characters we had in film in my lifetime.  

It Blew Watch: Dante's Peak (1998)

Watched:  09/08/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Roger Donaldson

Selection:  Jamie

Here's the thing about writers freaking out about AI.  Studios have been trying to crush the artistry of scripts into predictable, soulless little packages since there was a great train robbery and someone said "yes, but what if it was a great carriage robbery?".  After all, studios are a business, not a local playhouse laboring under the idea that letting the local veterinarian have the solo in Pippin is "art".  And studios want as much guarantee of profit on an investment as possible.  

To this end, producers have routinely beaten writers until those writers produce a script that hits all the same points as the movie that made a ga-jillion dollars, maybe even a decade prior, essentially not understanding how Find/ Replace works in Word, if that's all they want to do.  AI can't take the abuse studios want to dole out, so maybe writers ARE safe- even as AI could produce a pitch that sounds convincingly real.  And would absolutely write this script without blinking a digital eyeball.

But in the 1990's, AI was limited to fantasy in Terminator movies.  And so it was in the 1990's that we received an endless roster of disaster, monster and other movies that were all basically The Abyss's lovechild with 70's disaster movies.  This is how we get scrappy, quirky travelling teams of misfits looking up to our normal, handsomer leader.  We get corporate meddlers who won't listen to pure-hearted scientists/ roughnecks, and then a finale with 45 minutes of consequences of not listening to Ed Harris/ Roy Scheider/ etc... at the start.  

Drama Kid Watch: Theater Camp (2023)

Watched:  09/07/2024

Format:  Hulu?

Viewing:  First

Director(s):  Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman

From 8th grade through high school graduation, I was a drama kid.  And for seven weeks between my Junior and Senior year, I attended drama camp at  UT Austin.  There's a story there about how - at that camp - I realized I was, in fact, a bad actor and realized this was a high school hobby and not a career-path.  That insight was something for which I am eternally grateful, but acting, set building, lighting, etc... is what I did in high school after realizing I didn't want to play sports anymore (which I was 1000% sure even in middle school that I was not very good at).

So, while I have *that* experience, I was not part of the culture of drama kids who started much younger.  Or, certainly, New York theater kids who go out into the woods for the summer to hone their craft.  

I only know Molly Gordon, who co-writes, co-stars, co-directs from a small role on Winning Time and her outstanding performance on The Bear. Co-Star Ben Platt spent his past couple years making people mad by making a movie out of his award winning performance from Broadway in Dear Evan Hansen.  And Co-Director is nepobaby Nick Lieberman (you can look him up).  

Based on a short film involving the same people, Theater Camp (2023) is about a mix of counselors and campers at an all-summer theater camp (surprise!).   The owner of the camp (a too-briefly seen Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma and her son, American Vandal's Jimmy Tatro, is thrust to the fore to run the business side.  And the camp is failing.  Badly.

Meanwhile, the show must go on, including an original work by Amos and Rebecca-Diane (Platt and Gordon) about their fallen leader.  

It's movie by theater kids about theater kids, and they even insert some slobs versus snobs camp rivalry that goes nowhere, so you're not there for a gripping story, necessarily.  But the jokes are there, the kids and counselors are both pretty hysterical, and we get lots and lots and lots of drama-kid specific stuff that may click with non-Theater-kids, but is aimed squarely at the theater kids out there, gently poking fun at the culture from a million angles but rarely mean.

The plot about the camp's financial status is.. wonky.  It feels like an SNL sketch tucked into the movie as it seems wildly unlikely a camp wouldn't understand its finances heading into the summer, even if the movie tries to make it all make sense.  But it does give us Patti Harrison as the corporate raider, and she's pretty darn funny.  But - in general, it's not that hard to figure "X campers = Y dollars" and "Y dollars - Z operating cost = y/n ability to run the camp".  So just a little something as to how it's been run every year on a deficit would be... helpful.

The idea of a camp for the weird theater kids is sweet and funny, and I like the notion that there are cliques, like the Fosse kids.  It seems... buyable while also absurd.  But theatre can be absurd.  Watching grown adults ask kids to tap into emotions they can't possibly have experiences is so much a part of my theatrical experience, I was dying inside watching some scenes.  (I was in a play as a 17 year old in the 90's being asked to play a man traumatized by WWII, and... ya'll...).  Not to mention the assumptions made by the theater kids as they deal with each other, and host a dinner to raise money for the camp.  Or the director jealous of the talent of one of the young performers and finding ways to criticize her.

It's a sweet movie, and I liked it a lot.  It's not going to win any awards, but in the era of mid to low-budget comedies not succeeding, it's the kind that should have had more attention and would have made back its small budget.  Once upon a time, this would be a mild summer sleeper hit, like School of Rock.  But it was barely advertised and mostly dumped on streamers.

The biggest problem this movie has isn't the movie's fault.  Once you see Ayo Edebiri show up, the natural response is "hey, let's follow HER."  And she's just playing a small part that is hysterical, anyway, and then funnier with her in it.  (I imagine Molly Gordon was super pumped to get her The Bear castmate in the movie, and a co-star from Winning Time).  

I do not know if some of the older stars were people I was supposed to know.  I didn't know them.  I watch movies and live in Austin - I don't know Broadway.  

Anyway, check it out sometime.  Jamie requested something fun for her Saturday viewing, and this popped up - and it fit the bill.  

Citizen Kane Watch: Citizen Kane (1941)

Watched:  09/04/2024

Format:  Criterion Disc

Viewing:  Third?  Fourth?

Director:  Orson Welles

It's an absolute crime that Orson Welles got so screwed by the studio, the cowardly Academy and Hearst.  At age 26, he makes the most groundbreaking mainstream cinema we've seen since The Great Train Robbery, that changes things forever, rewrites the rulebook, brings some of the finest new actors America will see to Hollywood, all while giving the middle finger to the Jeff Bezos/ Elon Musk of his day - and everyone was too nervous to give the guy his flowers.

Oh, to be young and fearless and brilliant but not realize the very movie you're making will cause you so much grief.

We put on the movie because Jamie reminded me, here as we approach our 29th dating anniversary, that she'd never seen it.  And I don't think I'd watched it since we lived in Phoenix, so 2006 at the most recent.  So it was time.  I do own the 4K set from Criterion, but the 4K disc had issues, and we swapped out for BluRay for the second half.  To be honest - the movie's 4K glow-up looked weird and I likely won't watch that disc again as it looked *too* clean, like they removed the film grain.

There's nothing else like Citizen Kane (1941).  Even The Magnificent Ambersons got taken away and cut up into a studio melodrama - and it's still great, just not Kane.  It's a two-hour montage of technique, breathtaking visuals, stunning performances, cultural criticism, and hurling a spear at the heart of the American myth.  And in 2024, a reminder that nothing is ever new.  We are not living in unprecedented times.

In 1940, movies in the US were already undergoing some interesting changes.  We'd had movies like Fantasia in 1940, Walt taking his stab at *art*, but even the good ones were working with the language of stage.  Citizen Kane starts with a curiously framed scene and goes into a full newsreel announcing the death of Charles Foster Kane, laying the groundwork for what's coming.  Linear time be damned, the film is going to start at the end and work in flashback, trying to understand our central character.  Yes, a thousand films would borrow from this novelistic conceit.  

The look is as shocking as German Expressionism, taking cues more from European works that American film.  Not that there wasn't lovely stuff in the US at the time, but the camera thrown at odd angles, the curious lighting, the massive, cavernous sets- it all says "Fritz Lang with a budget" more than it says RKO movie.  And people have borrowed from this movie endlessly, but they never quite commit to the look and feel in the same way that Welles did.  Noir would look at this movie and say "thanks!  Don't mind if I do!" The characters in the film borrow from archetypes and made new ones.  Joseph Cottens' moralistically gray best-friend/ observer of the Great Man's downfall.  The business partner with the big heart who remembers what could have been, if only...  Hell, my girl Jean Hagen borrowed Dorothy Comingore's accent and persona for Singin In The Rain.  

For folks in 2024, seeing what was possible, cinematically, at the time might be a shock.  Or seeing the Mercury Theater players rolled out to the public for the first time, showing movie-goers how it's done.  But, more than that, it's both history lesson and demonstration that time is a flat circle.  You're going to want to cry seeing the thinly-veiled real history repeating itself with a Great Man propelling it - and these days, we see so many pro "Great Man" movies about people doing shit like designing a marginally better car.

There's no real reason to discuss Citizen Kane here at The Signal Watch.  It's *the* movie.  It's the Citizen Kane of movies. You either stop here or we'd all be in for a TLDR post that covers well-documented territory.

What I would recommend is setting aside two hours and watching it.  It's way shorter than an Avengers movie.   

If Hollywood hadn't gotten so weird on Welles, we wouldn't have probably had Lady From Shanghai, and that would have been a bummer.  But who knows what we would have had?  In the meantime, we can watch film chase this one til the end of time.

 

Paralympics 2024

Ezra Frech won Gold in High Jump (and, I think, the 100m)

Like most folks, I suspect, every time the Summer or Winter Olympics came on, I'd see the ads for the Paralympics, and have good intentions and zero follow through.  The only time I remember watching anything was in a bar, but I can't even remember what year that might have been.  

But, coming off the high of the 2024 Olympics, and with no Track and Field to watch,* I figured "hey - more Olympics".  And, "hey, more Olympics" is how the Paralympics is pitched on TV.  And that's not entirely wrong or a bad way to frame it.

Add to that the viral stardom of Olympic track star Tara Davis-Woodhall and her husband, Paralympian runner Hunter Woodhall, and I think people got the poke they needed to remember to tune in. Team USA social media kicked into gear, and Paralympians and Olympians made a lot of noise online about the games (and continue to do so.)  Also, NBC really has made it easy this year to watch if you got Peacock.

So, we watched a good chunk of the Opening Ceremonies, and I watched some Wheelchair Rugby (aka: Murderball).  And then a little other coverage the first night, but we'd been to a play, so it wasn't much.  But I've been trying to watch more.  Especially track and field, because that's how I roll.  But I've watched archery, Blind Soccer, Table Tennis (doubles!), swimming and more.  

The Opening Ceremonies were subdued compared to the bombastic opening of the Olympics, but were lovely, if more traditional in form.  Lots of music, dancing, mascots, marching, pageantry.  Fewer mysterious Joan of Arcs coming down the Seine in a blaze of glory and less Gojira.  More "here is a meaningful dance about being a Paralympian".  

The overall coverage of the summer games for Paralympics 2024 is maybe a format NBC could consider for the Olympics.  It's almost all highlights - so it's all thriller, little filler - and that's better for me as a viewer than NBC's primetime coverage.  For example, I am bored to tears by Olympic diving.  And yet, every Olympics, I have to watch people flip off a board without somehow first saying "Mom!  Mom!  Look!  Look what I can do!"  But the Paralympic coverage on USA is just whipping around.  "Hey!  Check out this crazy table tennis match!  Now, there's blind long-distance jumping!  Now, 200m foot race!  Oh, look, a 4x50 swim relay!"  I mean, it ain't dull.

Angry Animal Watch: The Meg (2018)

Watched:  08/31/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Turtletaub

A while back, SimonUK and I covered this movie in an episode that gave me false belief for what our numbers were going to be at The Signal Watch PodCast.  Just 16 episodes in, and it really took off, with folks enjoying the lively debate over a movie that featured a large shark and Statham.

I think, on a second viewing, I'm much more sympathetic to Simon's point-of-view.  You can absolutely see what this movie could/ should have been, and instead, it's a bit of a toothless exercise in never giving you quite what you want out of a movie about a large shark causing problems for people.

My suspicion, then and now, is that the film had a heavy infusion of Chinese money - which is how we got Li Bingbing as the costar alongside Statham - a setting off the coast of China, and a movie that met Chinese censorship rules with no problem.  

What this movie needed to do was be a bloody mess.  It was not.  

The closest I can compare is if you had a Friday the 13th movie and Jason just kept wandering through Camp Crystal Lake, and the counselors kept yelling "there he is" and running away, occasionally falling into potholes to their death.  And when Jason came upon a mess hall full of campers he just walked through the middle, doing no harm.

Statham clearly wishes he was in a different film and he and Bingbing have almost zero chemistry for a movie that wants them to have hints of romance - but it just doesn't make sense in the middle of a crisis where people are dying around you to fall for someone, even a someone with great hair and make-up like Bingbing, or a head like a battering ram like Statham.  

The movie continually *hints* that we'll get the carnage some of us were hoping for.  They knock off a pair of whales.  There's menacing shots of a shark in the sea.  But when it comes to bumping off the horrendous Ruby Rose, no dice.  

Because water is largely a void, they also have a very hard time showing how big the shark is, which is largely the point of the film.  And so it can seem the shark is whatever size the shark is in that moment.

There are neat vehicles and ideas in the movie, but the certainty that Statham and Bingbing will be fine shades everything else.  

Weirdly, my favorite bits in this movie include elementary-school aged children, one of them a main character, one of them a boy who is probably more like me at that age than I care to admit, floating stupidly in the water with a popsicle.  

I'm not even sure this is in a top 10 shark movies category.  It's fine.  But it doesn't hold up super well on a second viewing, even years apart.  But it is good "let's sit and talk over this movie" movie.

Noir Watch: Lured (1947)

Watched:  08/27/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Douglas Sirk

Well, this was my second viewing, and my opinion on this movie did not change one iota.  It's a good one.  And I think my prior write-up handles my stance pretty darn well.  I am now more familiar with Sanders and Coburn, and recognize Calleia from other movies.  But, yeah - same is same.

In the comments on the first viewing post, Jamie said she'd watch it with me, and:  mission accomplished.

Still wrestling with Sexy Lucy.

Superman 2025: Jimmy Olsen and the Many Media of the Man of Steel

Superman 2025's Jimmy Olsen, Skyler Gisondo

On August 25th, writer and director of Superman, James Gunn, celebrated the creation of James Bartholomew Olsen with a picture of actor Skyler Gisondo in costume, playing Superman's Pal.  He also included an image that is very, very early Jimmy Olsen, written by Siegel, drawn by Shuster.  

Jimmy really existed as a background character, mostly nameless, at the Daily Star and Planet (so I don't really know how they came up with the specific "first appearance" but whatever).  It would be the radio show that pushed Jimmy as a featured player in Superman's world.  

Actor Jackie Kelk would provide the first voice for Jimmy, making sure that Clark/ Superman would have a conversationalist who wasn't his boss or Lois.  On the show, Jimmy cemented his role as the eager kid on the learning curve who, like Lois, was constantly stumbling into danger.  

Tommy Bond played Jimmy in the original serials, but the one who kind of *made* Jimmy was Jack Larson.  His Jimmy was an eternal 18 year old who acted 10, making the bow tie and a sweater vest or jacket his signature look  - something Jimmy still sports these days as a sort of hipster.  

The character was so popular with kids, we wound up with a comic series that ran for 20 years, Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen.  And if you want to see how a comic book series can change drastically over two decades, check in with that comic and Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane.  (Especially Lois Lane, to see the changes in attitudes about women and their place in culture and the newsroom.)  

Angry Animal Watch: Lavalantula (2015)

Watched: 08/25/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mike Mendez

From the same studio that mixed fish and wind, this seems to have been a second stab at the success derived by mixing Animal + Natural Disaster, ie: the Sharknado franchise.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lavalantula (2015) is that it's a mini-Police Academy reunion - a thing nobody was asking for, but it was nice to check in.  A curiously sweaty Steve Guttenberg anchors this film, but you can expect to see Michael Winslow (the sound fx guy), Marion Ramsey (the squeaky voiced lady - RIP), and Leslie Easterbrook (the blonde training commander) appear.  But no Kim Cattrall, oddly enough.  

In non-Police Academy casting, the film co-stars Nia Peeples* as Guttenberg's ass-kicking, defiantly shirt-free wife, and Patrick Renna, who was in The Big Green with Guttenberg back in the 1990's when he was a kid (you will remember him from The Sandlot).

The basic idea is that, uh-oh, LA is sitting on lava tubes that erupt and start spewing out large spiders that spit flame.  

And that's it.  I mean, Gutternberg and friends need to end the invasion, but that's it.  Spiders.  It's plenty.

Guttenberg plays a washed up 1990's superhero action star who has to traverse Los Angeles during this 8-legged calamity to find his teen/20-something son, who he failed to take to a Dodgers game and who ran off to ride dirt bikes with his friends. 

The FX are...  there.  But this is a movie that knows what it is, and does ok at that.  If you want to see a movie that seems like they blew their entire budget on Police Academy alums, this is it.  But there's also some fun sequences, and no one is taking this seriously.  It co-stars Ralph Garman as a Hollywood Boulevard costume guy and features the Brea Tar Pits with fire CG'd everywhere.  That's the sort of movie it is.

Tackleberry would be so pissed he missed this

Anyway, it was good to see old Police Academy friends, and had they made more Lavalantulas, maybe we could have seen more.

But the movie never quite feels as insane as Sharknado did that first time, which was absolutely catching lightning in a bottle - and then upping the ante by a factor of 10 with each sequel.  And I felt robbed that Easterbrook was in the movie for only a couple of minutes.

*I've never really thought the last name "Peeples" is weird until this very moment, but "Peeples" sounds made up, and yet is not.  Peeples.

Didn't Care For It Watch: BUtterfield 8 (1960)

Watched:  08/23/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Daniel Mann

Selection;  Jamie, but following my thread that we should try this movie sometime from a week ago

Look, I'm the first person to start lecturing people about how you need to watch a movie from two points of view - (1) the context you bring to it, and (2) the context in which it was made and released.  You sorta need to think of it like watching the customs of another country and trying to incorporate their point of view to appreciate a visit there.  So, it's part and parcel of watching classic film that one will see outdated concepts, racism, sexism, etc...  Our forebears' ways are not the ways of our current norms.

And, yet...  BUtterfield 8 (1960)  is a rough ride.  

It's the sort of thing we'd treat like a punching dummy or pinata in film criticism by the 1990's - so by 2024, it feels super strange.  The culture that spawned the film is on life support or hospice - with some geniuses still thinking this era was somehow golden.  But, yeah, it's essentially a movie in which all the bad habits of virgin/ whore dichotomies are the skeleton upon which the story hangs and this story very much about women is always secretly about the needs of one man - and a horrible man at that.