Thanos: Titan Consumed (2018) by Barry Lyga: Very enjoyable back-story for Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe does a nice job of gradually making the Mad Titan unsympathetic after depicting his childhood and early adulthood as a time of isolation and sorrow. All this and we find out where and when Thanos gets the Mind Stone! Though Thanos' ultimate plan of killing half of the population of the universe to save it still doesn't make much sense, Lyga at least specifies that we're talking about the sentient population of the universe and not every virus, bacterium, and tree. Recommended.
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| Rorschach |
HBO's WATCHMEN series (which should really be called AFTER WATCHMEN) gives us a White Supremacist Group calling itself The Seventh Kavalry. That's a reference to Custer's doomed Cavalry. The change from 'C' to 'K' in 'Cavalry' is a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
The Seventh Kavalry wears masks based on deceased original WATCHMEN hero Rorschach.
WATCHMEN creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons based Rorschach on a character created by Steve Ditko (himself creator of Spider-man, Dr. Strange, and many others). That character was The Question.
Rorschach's real name was Walter Joseph Kovacs. That 'K' was a nod to Ditko's love of K's.
A fairly astonishing number of Ditko creations had either a 'K' or the K sound created by a hard 'C' in their names.
These characters include but are not limited to the following characters: Vic Sage (The Question, whom Rorschach parodies), Ted Kord (Silver Age Blue Beetle, whom Nite Owl parodies), Peter ParKer, Rac Shade, Mocker, Doctor Strange, Doctor Octopus, Mac Gargan (Scorpion), Electro, Doctor Spectro, Jack Ryder (Creeper), Chameleon, Clea, Clown, Curt Connors (Lizard), Hank Hall (Hawk), Tinkerer, Karcilius... OK, you get the idea. You'll note that the 'K' sound even lurks in The Question and Rorschach.
So the Seventh Kavalry is also a nod to the Ditko 'K.'
Hey, there's a 'K' in Ditko!
Imagine that!
Calypso (2018) by David Sedaris: Sedaris is an extraordinarily gifted comic writer whose observations about family, life, and the FitBit in this volume often move into an understated poignance that never becomes mawkish or overly flippant. The comic essays included here (no short stories this time around) appeared between 2016 and 2018.
The adventures of his family and himself go into some dark places here, including the suicide of a sister whom Sedaris and his siblings (there are six Sedaris children in total) have been avoiding because of exhaustion for years... in David's case, eight. He never lets himself off the hook. He also never loses his almost-trademarked gift at portraying the absurd moments of almost any event, any person.
Most notably himself.
A sequence involving a snapping turtle, a beach house, and a non-cancerous fatty tumour on Sedaris' stomach really has to be read. Maybe with a bit of vomit coming up in one's mouth from time to time. Sedaris doesn't spare us his misadventures in stomach flu, falling off ladders on Christmas Day, and failing to interact in a meaningful way with his emotionally distant and physically and mentally declining nonagenarian father.
I think it's all pretty much dandy, the sort of humour that supplies catharsis and belly-laughs. It's not his finest collection of humourous essays -- that would probably be When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008). But it's a lot of sometimes serious fun. Calypso will certainly delight longtime readers of Sedaris, and it also serves as a fine introduction to his work. Highly recommended.
Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut (2019): written by Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr; loosely based on the novella Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad; directed by Francis Ford Coppola; starring Martin Sheen (Willard), Marlon Brando (Kurtz), Laurence Fishburne (Mr. Clean), Harrison Ford (Lucas), Scott Glenn (Kurtz Convert Lt. Colby)), Robert Duvall (Kilgore), Sam Bottoms (Surfer Lance), Frederic Forrest (Chef), Albert Hall (Chief), Dennis Hopper (Photojournalist), G.D. Spradlin (General Corman), and [Uncredited] Joe Estevez (Stand-in/Partial Voice-over 'Stand-in' for brother Martin Sheen):
Hey, it's Apocalypse Now, so a chance to see it in any cut on a big screen was a treat. And it improves on Apocalypse Now Redux by omitting the dire, momentum-killing 'Crashed Playboy Bunnies' sequence!
However, it keeps the other major addition, the French Plantation sequence, to mixed effect: it's the one part of the film that plays as potentially supernatural, which is not really in keeping with the rest of the movie. However, there are also cues throughout the sequence that it might not really be happening at all -- not least of which is the sudden transition from Willard's opium scene to the boat back on the fog-saturated river.
Brando is great, and on a big screen, almost life-sized! One of no more than a hundred of the greatest movies ever made, all done without CGI! Highly recommended, though you could replicate it by simply omitting a couple of scenes from Redux on a rewatch. The surfboard-stealing scene is also a hoot, though also in Redux. Highly recommended.
The Godfathers of Hardcore (2017): written and directed by Ian McFarland, co-written by Tony Fernandez; featuring Roger Miret and Vinnie Stigma of Agnostic Front: Fascinating documentary on seminal New York Hardcore Punk band Agnostic Front, still touring and recording now after 35 years in the business. The film focuses on founding guitarist Vinnie Stigma and current (for at least 25 years) lead vocalist Roger Miret.
Stigma is fascinating and outspoken. It's Miret who does all the stuff that keeps the band going in terms of bookings and financial work, however, and his self-imposed overwork seems to lead to a heart attack documented late in the film.
But he keeps on going -- as the film notes, Agnostic Front had played over 400 shows between the completion of filming and the release of the movie, all this after Miret had a wireless heart monitor implanted to monitor his still undiagnosed heart problem. Makes a fine bookend to Crave's 2019 4-part PUNK miniseries. Recommended.
The War of the Worlds (1953): Produced by George Pal; directed by Byron Haskin; based on the novel by H.G. Wells; [Cast and Crew]: For all its flaws, this adaptation of H.G. Wells' seminal novel of alien invasion is far superior to the Spielberg/Cruise film of a few years back.
Producer George Pal was a great devotee of science fiction and fantasy, from the earlier Destination: Moon (1950) through The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) all the way to his final production, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975).
Visual effects technology circa 1953 pretty much ensured that the Martian ships would fly rather than walk as tripods, though they do have (mostly) invisible electromagnetic 'legs' that can be seen in a couple of scenes. The focus of action moved from turn-of-the-century England to the Western United States, with the invasion going on world-wide just as in the original.
The movie does an impressive job of ratcheting up the fear as the Martians shrug off all attempts to stop them and stomp all over humanity, and specifically the American war machine. The cast is solid. We even have Gene Barry as a scientist-hero and his love interest has an advanced degree in mathematics. Compare this to Tom Cruise as a lunkhead, deadbeat Dad and one weeps for humanity.
Scenes of a rioting Los Angeles, followed by a burning, depopulated LA, still work really well, as do most of the shots of those pesky Martians incinerating soldiers and weapons and even a trio of ordinary Americans waving a flag of peace. Burn, puny humans, burn!
The design of the aliens themselves is also superior to that in the Spielberg movie, though not faithful to Wells' octopus-like blancmanges. As in Spielberg's movie, the Martians' vampirism has been eliminated (yes, I know the Martians use people for fertilizer in the Cruise movie, but that's still not vampirism). This is a shame. Wells' novel was also an allegory of colonialism, with vampirism as a pretty transparent metaphor for what Europe was doing to all the non-European people of the Earth. Recommended.
A Star Is Born (2018): Directed by and starring Bradley Cooper: [Cast and Crew]: Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga do a solid job of resurrecting this Hollywood chestnut in its fourth iteration. It's not the sort of movie I seek out, but I enjoyed it. And the songs by both Cooper's and Gaga's characters are excellent. An unrecognizable Andrew Dice Clay does nice work as Gaga's character's father. Sam Elliot is a hoot as always. Recommended.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018): [Cast and Crew]: Mostly fictional band biography of Queen (and specifically Freddie Mercury) has an awfully familiar, homophobic sub-text which sometimes becomes blatant enough to just be text. Remember kids: gay sex is bad and gay men should just hold hands. Also, all the evidence suggests that Mercury actually was bisexual given his choice of partners throughout his life. Oh, well. Mr. Robot's Rami Malek is excellent as Mercury -- he and Freddie both deserved a better movie. Also, how the Hell does a Queen biopic leave out the Flash Gordon soundtrack? Weird. Not recommended.
