Noir Watch: The Secret Fury (1950)

Watched:  09/05/2023

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mel Ferrer

What a weird, weird movie.  

And not *good* weird.  

The movie features the great Claudette Colbert and Signal Watch fave Robert Ryan, but the story itself is a mess, leaning almost to camp.  

Part crime drama, all melodrama, The Secret Fury (1950) follows a society woman (Colbert) moments from saying I do to her beau (Ryan) when someone DOES say "I object", claiming Colbert is already married.  To her knowledge, Colbert has never been married, but when multiple witnesses claim she was married - and not that long ago - she now believes she may have gone mad, losing time.

The very premise, however, makes no sense and is based on the notion that people really get married after knowing each other for about 8 hours, which was quite the Hollywood trope for the first 70 years or so.  And it also assumes Colbert wouldn't see whomever murdered someone right before her eyes.  And that Ryan's character would make a completely unbuyable decision to leave Colbert alone with a strange man claiming to be her husband.

Vamp Watch: Daughter of Dracula (1972)

Watched:  09/04/2023

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jess Franco

If the 1970's brought us anything in cinema, it was sexy vampires.  I mean, there's no shortage before.  Ask me about Brides of Dracula.  But by the time we got to the 1970's, we had moved into a weird twilight zone of art film/ exploitation film/ horror film where nudity was rampant and sex was not just implied in knowing cut-aways.

As far as I know, of the Jess Franco movies, I'd only ever seen Vampyros Lesbos.  And, somewhat (in)famously, Franco was one of the foremost purveyors of cheap, wandering "horror" films that bordered on a Cinemax late-night entry and what cable would play on weekends in the 1980's while also absolutely existing as in-no-way-scary horror films.

The movie is one of five directed by Franco in 1972 alone.  Whatever the market was, it was quantity over quality, and I suspect few scenes were actually scripted or anyone really did much to prep for the movies after getting a set of fangs, a Dracula cape and a location.  The movie uses a lot of 1970's film language, from racking focus into a scene (usually onto some natural object) and lots of lingering shots of people walking and not saying much.

PodCast 251: "Drop Dead Fred" (1991) - a SimonUK and Ryan Episode

Watched:  08/28/2023

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  3rd?

Decade:  1990's

Director:  Ate de Jong

For more ways to listen

Ryan and his imaginary British friend delve into their respective inner children and try to figure out who is responsible for all the mess. We take a look at an early 90's cable staple!

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 251: "Drop Dead Fred" (1991) - a SimonUK and Ryan Episode

YouTube

Music:

Drop Dead Fred Suite - Randy Edelman 

SimonUK's Cinema Selections!

The Signal Watch PodCast · SimonUK Cinema Series

Riff Watch: Time Chasers (1994)

Watched:  08/27/2023

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1990's

Sooooooooooo.....

Jamie started scrolling through options and decided we were watching *something* by the RiffTrax or MST3K guys.  She settled on something called Time Chasers, which had been covered by MST3K at some point, but RiffTrax had covered it again during a live show a few years back, and that's what we watched.

Look, if this movie was good, it *probably* wouldn't be a RiffTrax selection.  

Edit: hours after watching this, a making-of YouTube video showed up in my algorithm, and I watched the first part.  It turns out, the movie was written and directed by a 19-year-old.  So, I am impressed in some ways.  I assume no real film school, and a lot of moxie.  And yet...

It's a movie that both really takes the concept of time travel seriously and works through the implications, but also has a plot that requires the characters be utter morons who have *not* thought out the implications - such as, hey, maybe selling your time travel device to a corporation could have consequences.  

It's your usual no-budget, big-dreams, let's use all the things we can borrow from friends, sci-fi indie feature that was a staple of MST3K programming and shoot-your-shot movie-making of the era.  Cast with people who were the best to audition, usually with regional accents, and the actress who looked closest to what a Hollywood actress might look like.  

Like a community theater production of a play that you realize isn't quite working, you still want to cheer everyone on.  Until you realize, no one has told anyone involved that this script needed some work, and you're allowed to leave things on the cutting room floor.  

Anyway, you get the picture.  

The Riff is a lot of fun, and I recommend.  

Arleen Sorkin Merges With The Infinite

Actor and voice actor Atleen Sorkin has passed.

When Batman: The Animated Series premiered back in the early 1990's, I was a skeptical Bat-reader, but literally by the end of the credits, I was in.  By the time I saw Batman getting dragged behind Man-Bat through the skyline of Gotham, I was out of my mind.  In many ways, I think the show is the epitome of Batman as a concept, but it also went beyond adapting a comic and movie concept to a cartoon, it restored and built upon the decades of Bat-mythology.  And chief among those addition was Dr. Harleen Quinzel, aka: Harley Quinn.  

We're still reeling from that addition.  And brought to brilliant life through writing, art, animation and the unforgettable voice of Arleen Sorkin.  

Sorkin was probably best known as an actress as Calliope Jones on Days of Our Lives, where she appeared for decades across hundreds of episodes.  

 As much as comic characters could be identified by their silhouettes, cartoon characters need to be specific and memorable to really work - and that was something voice director Andrea Romano brought to fore with BTAS.  But with Harley Quinn, they'd found absolute gold in Sorkin. 

A face of a Bat-villain might drive a certain thought process, but Harley was new, an invention of the show, and maybe the logical extrapolation of what the difference is between comics and animation - suddenly you can do new things with a voice alone.   For comic fans and Batman fans, Sorkin's voice and character would be the magical ingredient.  A kind of Brooklyn-ese taken to extremes.  Funny, crazy, a little sad.  High energy, with the potential for violence.  A crack in the voice here or there could say it all.  An octave jump something else.  

Anyway, as soon as the show hit and Harley appeared, the doors of fandom were thrown wide open to Harley as a new addition, and she was soon appearing in comics as well as the show.  If there was resistance by die-hard Batfans, those voices were drowned out.  Harley became so popular, DC eventually realized they had to transform her.  No more chasing after a killer clown, seeking his love.  She'd become a sort of agent of chaos within the DCU, sometimes on the side of the angels, and sometimes... less so.

The voice of Harley by Sorkin would go on to survive art changes, changes in leadership in WB animation, and make the jump to video games.  She's the voice you hear in your head when reading the comics, and what Margot Robbie borrowed across three feature films as a live-action version of the character.  

Like Kevin Conroy before her, she passed way too young.  But she also will have left millions of people with the memory of her voice, instantly recognizable, and which will be imitated by others for decades to come.

90's Watch: The Fugitive (1993)

Watched:  08/19/2023

Format:  Max

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Andrew Davis

It's hard to convey to The Kids exactly how popular The Fugitive (1993) was upon its release.  I didn't see it for a week or so because it was sold out, but I did finally catch it in the theater, I think with my parents just before I headed off for college.  It went on to get Oscar nominations for Best Picture and other things, but snagged Tommy Lee Jones a Best Supporting actor, cementing Jones in a persona he'd take straight to No Country For Old Men.  

But in the intervening years, I'd argue it's not been forgotten by the original audience, but it's also not a movie I hear people talk about, rewatch as part of any canon, or pass down to The Kids as a pretty good movie.  It had its time as a popular renter and cable staple, but like a lot of movies aimed at a teens-and-up audience of the day, it's just sort of faded as adults don't imprint on movies and make them part of their world-view in the same way as a kid seeing a Star War.  It wasn't part of the character-driven indie movement which would catch fire at this same time, nor was it part of the FX extravaganzas that started appearing in the wake of Jurassic Park, released a few months earlier.  

But, also, even at the time, I thought the movie was just... strange.  These days I have my head wrapped a bit more around how movies work, and I stand with the choices made for this movie.  It's logical and lends a sense of realism to the movie - but, also, the filmmakers decided that our hero would have no friends and no one to talk to for most of the runtime of the film.  So, that weird feeling I had about the movie was really centered on the oddly-loose-fitting fiction-suit that was Richard Kimble.  

Western Watch: Rio Bravo (1959)

Watched:  08/26/2023

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Howard Hawks

Sometimes a movie just works, and there's a reason that folks keep watching it, decade over decade.  Rio Bravo (1959) has a bit of a reputation as Dean Martin's best role, or at least that's what I recall hearing, and I always assumed I'd get to the movie, but just had not.  

Had I known it also stars Angie Dickinson, I would have gotten to it more quickly.  But it surprised me to learn this was Howard Hawks, not John Ford, and that Leigh Brackett had been involved with the screenplay.  So, you've got a lot of things going for the movie right out of the gate.

I'm also aware that John Wayne is now considered a terrible human by folks younger than myself, but if you want to be mad about (a) things that are likely a myth, and (b) every opinion and attitude of generations prior that do not match your own - we're going to be here all day.  

For going on a decade, I've compared the superhero film to the Western.  It's a broad category encompassing a lot of movies that share common elements, but it's also a dubious and overly broad categorization, and no indicator of quality one way or another.  Plenty of terrible superhero films are released, just as plenty of terrible westerns were made, but there are also great, thoughtful superhero film just as there are phenomenal movies made featuring characters who wear hats and six-shooters.  

Predator Rewatch: Prey (2022)

Watched:  08/25/2023

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Dan Trachtenberg

With the recent announcement that the direct-to-Hulu film, Prey (2022), was coming soon to BluRay and 4K, I wanted to re-evaluate how much I liked the movie, which I had a fondness for on a first viewing.  

On a second viewing, I liked it even more.  There's nothing in the film I thought didn't work.  Lovely stuff.  You can't have this movie without prior Predator films, but it exists as maybe as an exercise in merging more filmic elements with the action film and one enhances the other.  As an 80's-kid, Predator stands tall in my mind alongside Aliens as the merging of sci-fi and high-octane action.  

I'd refer to my first post on the film for a lot of the nuts and bolts of what I thought about the movie.  I won't say that changed much since (checks link) last August.  After a year away, and not watching a movie just to follow it, I want to add additional respect for the cinematography in this movie, the overall acting of the cast, and the soundtrack - which is quite good.  

But, really, it's insane that Amber Midthunder is not slated for a million more things immediately.  She's so fucking good in this, acting more than half the movie against a dog or by herself, and delivering the character in understandable, definitive terms.  When she is with other actors, every bit of it works - and that's a testament to director Dan Trachtenberg and the mostly unknown cast pulled together for the movie.  Anyway, I'm now officially a fan.

There's plenty to say about the story and structure of the film that makes it inherently more interesting than a lot of similar films, from the movie's underdog of a hero to the multitude of threats present in the movie.  But I am sure you can fill in those blanks yourseld.

Anyway - I can currently see the film any time I want on Hulu, so the purchase of a disc may not be in my immediate future, but I'll also be keeping my eye open to see what bonus features get included.  I don't think I did a 2022 movie wrap-up, but it was certainly one of my favorites from last year, and a review tells me that opinion has only doubled-down.

Bob Barker Merges With the Infinite

Bob Barker - the man, the myth, the pal for millions of us having a sick day from school or work - has passed at the age of 99.  

Not a soul in America living in the back quarter of the 20th Century hadn't seen Barker at one point or another, appearing daily on The Price is Right, possibly America's real favorite game show.  Among a hundred different games on the program, and surrounded by "Barker's Beauties", Bob was our genial uncle, walking contestants through the motions and managing chaos with a light chuckle, a peculiarly thin microphone and a voice gifted by the gods. 

Barker was a kind of gentlemen that no longer exists, a part of a different age.  The Kids will have only known the modern, post-modern gameshow host, maybe minus the soon-to-retire Pat Sajack, the guy who can't believe he's hosting a gameshow and refuses to take it seriously.  And while I don't think Barker had any illusions about what he was doing, he was never above it.  

Anyway, never write off a sharp suit, a good haircut and an unflappable demeanor.  

Have your pets spayed or neutered!

Cubs Watch: Rookie of the Year (1993)

Watched:  08/20/2023

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Daniel Stern

So, every year before baseball starts, I tell myself "I gotta watch The Sandlot and Rookie of the Year", and then, I do not watch them.  I've never doubted they're fine movies, but both came out when I was not really watching non-animated kids movies, and baseball wasn't my jam at the time.

But movies were part of my interest in baseball.  I loved Field of Dreams and Eight Men Out (you have John Sayles to thank for my interest in the sport).  A League of Their Own is one of my "I'll sit and watch this" movies when it comes on TV.  

Anyway, I kind of had an idea of what this movie would be - and it was not that.  It's actually really funny and goofy in a way that sells the absurd concept, bordering on cartoonishness.  In a good way.