Paranormal Activity 2: based on the film Paranormal Activity by Oren Peli, written by Michael R. Perry, Christopher Landon, and Tom Pabst; directed by Tod Williams; starring Brian Boland (Daniel), Molly Ephraim (Ali), Katie Featherston (Katie), Sprague Grayden (Kristi), and Micah Sloat (Micah) (2010): Watching the first three Paranormal Activity movies out of sequence over a 4-year period really made things extra exciting.
While watching this second installment, it took me about half the movie to figure out when the third movie occurred (18 years before the other two) and who it involved (the sister-protagonists Katie and Kristi as children and their family). Much of the second movie takes place before the first movie and focuses for the most part on Kristi, the demon-plagued sister of the demon-plagued woman in part one, Katie. I'll give the (now) tetralogy bonus points for wild and wooly non-linear narrative order, especially as four different directors and about eight different writers worked on the first three installments.
While this movie begins to offer some explanations for the occasionally self-destructive behaviour of the sisters-as-adults, it isn't until the third film that one finds out why two characters plagued by verifiable, hostile supernatural activity are so goddamned awful at finding ways to combat it.
As a crucifix proves pretty useful towards the end of this film, I'd expect the rational Dad and the most reasonable person in the film given the circumstances, Kristi's step-daughter Ali, to be wearing clothes made entirely of crosses, rosaries, and handguns when we catch up with them at the end of the movie. Seriously, folks. Paint giant crosses on your doors and windows. And stop going to that one occult site on the Internet that didn't really help Micah in the first movie. There are five million websites devoted to ghost- and demon-busting on the Internet. Jesus, these people are terrible at using search engines!
Thematically, these omissions of reason make a fair amount of occasionally frustrating sense. The adults in the three movies aren't very bright (the teenagers and the older nanny are much smarter), have absolutely no religious beliefs, and are apparently incapable of expanding their demon-busting beyond the Exorcism for Dummies level.
This is a portrait of a terminally stupid and ignorant segment of the American population pretty much doing everything either wrong or in half-measures when confronted by real evil and exposed to real fear. You can apply that to the real-world political situation as you see fit, but while it may be accidental, it's also quite telling -- and makes some of the characterization absurdities seem much less absurd. These people don't know where or when to shoot and can't shoot straight when they do open fire.
Nothing in this second movie approaches the great oscillating-fan shots of the third movie, or the 'standing around' sequences in the first one. The scariest things in this movie are actually an automated pool vacuum and a hot tub. Make of that what you will. Lightly recommended.
The Guardians of the Galaxy: The Power of Starhawk: written by Steve Gerber, Roger Stern, and Stan Lee; illustrated by Al Milgrom, John Buscema, and others (1975-77; collected 2011): Marvel's original Guardians of the Galaxy hailed from the 31st century, something I'm pretty sure the movie is going to avoid in favour of the more contemporary version of the team. Oh, well. This volume collects some of the grooviest science fantasy comics of my youth, most of them written by the inimitable Steve Gerber and pencilled by Al Milgrom.
Chronologically, this is the second collection of the team, picking up the story after they've liberated the solar system from Marvel's most underwhelming interstellar empire, the Brotherhood of the Badoon, with the help of the 20th century's Defenders. After quickly winning the peace by striking a bargain with the Sisterhood of the Badoon (the lizard-like Badoon having split into two competing cosmic empires along gender lines; the women are a lot nicer), the Guardians find themselves out of place on Earth.
This anomie makes sense as the team comprises a genetically engineered pair of men who are the last survivors of the Jupiter and Pluto colonies; the mysterious space-faring Starhawk; Major Vance Astro, a thousand-year-old American astronaut condemned to life inside a metal shell so that he doesn't disintegrate; the last survivor of the dominant species of the Alpha Centauri system; and, almost immediately, the last surviving genetically engineered woman from the Mercury colony.
Under the direction of Starhawk, they take to space in the starship Captain America to travel to the centre of the galaxy and confront a nihilistic super-planet shaped like a person and dubbed The Topographical Man. It's several light years across and has suns about to go supernova at each wrist. Along the way, they fight one of the Topographical Man's energy-gathering animalcules, a planet-sized, energy-eating space frog. And then things really get weird. Steve Gerber was fucking bananas in the best possible way.
Steve Gerber's ability to write really, really weird stories seems even more remarkable given the context -- this was the mid-1970's, after all. A story arc that involves the giant astral projection of a woman having sex with the possessed body of the Topographical Man...well, it's not something that would happen with any other writer. Roger Stern takes over for the last couple of issues collected here and does a pretty good job of following Gerber's lead. All in all, this really is a weird and enjoyable comic book. Though I'm still not sure how people settled on Jupiter, genetic engineering or not. Gerber didn't come up with that implausibility; he just has to deal with it. Recommended.
Army@Love: The Hot Zone Club: written by Rick Veitch; illustrated by Rick Veitch and Gary Erskine (2007): Rick Veitch's hilarious, bleak look at modern warfare and modern love is great satire that seems almost plausible.
As the endless American occupation of/war with the Middle Eastern country of Afbaghistan goes on and on, U.S. military recruitment levels drop to zero. The domestic economy collapses. People get really pissy. So begins this first collection of Army@Love, the title itself a play on the old Sgt. Rock comic Our Army at War.
Desperately seeking solutions in a world where pop-music success is measured solely by how many ringtones a song sells, the U.S. government decides to rebrand...well, warfare itself. By making it sexy. Really sexy. Periodic retreats allow for orgies of the armed forces. Sex is a recruiting tool. The Hot Zone Club welcomes any military personnel who manage to safely fuck during a firefight, one's success in this endeavour commemorated in a Hot Zone patch on one's combat fatigues. Drugs and alcohol are rampant. Actually, the soldiers are also rampant. Boy, are they rampant.
So too the bureaucrats, the civilian employees, and all the assorted family members, acquaintances, native citizens, and hangers-on. A PR expert and his secretary daily, mechanically work through the Kama Sutra as if it were a How-To guide for Power Point. It's that kind of book.
Quickly, the war becomes a success. It still shows no signs of ending, but now the cool kids are all excited about it. It's a Middle-Eastern Vacation! In this brave new world, soldiers carry their cellphones with them on the battlefield and have mundane conversations while mowing down 'insurgents.' Media coverage of the war is micromanaged and megacontrolled. There's no longer anything resembling 'real' reporting. Just the way the government likes it. Welcome to the Hot Zone. Crisis of confidence averted.
Gary Erskine adds a cleanness of line to Veitch's work that makes this stand apart from much of Veitch's pleasingly shaggy, self-inked pencilling jobs. The writing is sharp, the characters alternately sympathetic and pitiable, the war extraordinarily familiar and almost plausible. Truly one of the great comics of the oughts. If only there were more than 19 issues! Highly recommended.
Hellboy: The Storm and the Fury: written by Mike Mignola; illustrated by Duncan Fegredo and Dave Stewart (2011-2012): The Duncan Fegredo-drawn 'middle section' of the main Hellboy saga (as opposed to the time-and-space-ranging standalones and miniseries, drawn by many) apparently comes to an end here. The last part of the saga begins in December with the first issue of Hellboy in Hell as Mike Mignola returns to the drawing board.
Fegredo really did a marvelous job over the last five years or so on the main sequence, his style similar to Mignola's without slavishly mimicking it. Fegredo really became a master of grotesqueries as he went along, though his Hellboy and others always seemed a bit skinnier to me than some of Mignola's blockier creations.
But it's been a heck of a ride, and probably not an easy one to illustrate: the second act of Hellboy left the more familiar plots of the first act behind, moving Hellboy from being a paranormal investigator with the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence to a wandering hero whose quest never seemed entirely clear because Hellboy himself wasn't clear about it -- or sober for long sections of it.
Mignola and Fegredo supply a handy bit of summary towards the beginning here, voiced by Hellboy himself, before moving to the main action. And what action it is, as Hellboy and his giant hand of doom must stop the end of everything or die trying.
Unlikely allies arise, including Queen Mab and Baba Yaga and a mysterious little girl. Loose ends, signs, and portents set up in the previous 11 volumes suddenly start to make sense, often in startling fashion. There is Ragna Rok and King Arthur and the last weird battle in the West. There is an evil badger and a repentant pig. There's a dragon that bleeds molten gold.
And there's Hellboy, perhaps overmatched but always game for a fight. He doesn't know when to stop punching, and while he was born a demon, he's ultimately humanity's best friend. Or fiend. And boy, can that guy take a punch!
Everything comes to a crashing conclusion which is really only an intermission between one important battle and what will ultimately be the war for humanity. And I'm excited to see what's next. Highly recommended.
Black Friday: written by Curt Siodmak and Eric Taylor; directed by Arthur Lubin; starring Boris Karloff (Dr. Ernest Sovac), Stanley Ridges (Kingsley/'Red' Cannon), and Bela Lugosi (Marnay) (1940): A relatively late Karloff/Lugosi team-up marred by the incredibly stupid decision of the producers to re-cast the movie, putting the little-known Stanley Ridges into the 'monster' role originally intended for Karloff. Lugosi got moved from the Karloff role into a supporting bit as a gangster.
Why? Theories abound. Lugosi was having problems with heroin addiction at the time, and in this B-movie he flubs several lines that nonetheless remain in the final cut. However, it's generally believed that the studio didn't like Karloff's performance as the dual-brained Kingsley/'Red' Cannon figure. So it goes.
Karloff is apparently an Eastern European surgeon with a slight British accent (yes, they didn't change the character name when they moved Lugosi out of the role). His English professor buddy gets run over by a gangster. The gangster breaks his back; the professor breaks his brain.
So Karloff replaces part of his friend's brain with gangster brain. Or maybe all of it. The movie is a bit shifty on the whole issue of how much brain goes where. In any case, I assume Karloff used the screw-top brain surgery method on his pal, given that he's back to looking completely normal two months later.
Soon gangster and English professor war for possession of the same body. One of the side effects of the brain surgery appears to be the ability to control one's hair colour. Man, brain surgery is awesome! I wish I could have brain surgery so that I could figure out why this movie is entitled Black Friday.
Screenwriter Curt Siodmak would return to this sort of exercise in human duality in the much better Donovan's Brain. Here, it's pretty hard to believe that the professor can go on a killing spree. I might be able to believe that Karloff could beat the hell out of half-a-dozen hardened criminals. With Ridges in that role, one can only assume that having half your brain replaced gives you super-strength. Ridges is OK in the role -- he's just a disappointment compared to what Karloff might have done with it. Lugosi is completely wasted, never sharing a scene with Karloff, and never convincing in any way as a gangster. Lightly recommended.
Videodrome: written and directed by David Cronenberg; starring James Woods (Max Renn), Sonja Smits (Bianca O'Blivion), Deborah Harry (Nicki Brand), Les Carlson (Barry Convex), Jack Creley (Brian O'Blivion) and Peter Dvorsky (Harlan) (1983): David Cronenberg's career-long obsessions with bodily transformation, sex, and altered states of consciousness pulsate through this movie.
James Woods is razor-sharp as a Toronto television programming director at a thinly veiled version of early 1980's City TV (here 'Civic TV', complete with boss 'Moses' [Znaimer?]). One of Cronenberg's unexpected strengths as a film-maker has been getting career performances out of actors in what would once have been considered second-tier genre movies: Viggo Mortensen, Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, and Jeremy Irons have all benefitted from the Cronenberg touch, as does Woods here. Blondie's Deborah Harry holds her own in scenes with Woods, but it's clear he's the star of the show.
One of the in-jokes in Videodrome involves the early City TV's fondness for late-night 'Baby Blue Movies', softcore porn the Toronto station showed to boost ratings after the kiddies had gone to bed. Woods is basically searching for new sources of these things when he comes across Videodrome, a mysterious television signal emanating from deepest, darkest...Pittsburgh.
Videodrome broadcasts violent sexual fantasies that may or may not be staged. Woods has to find out who's really making and distributing this stuff. And woven through his investigation are the theoretical musings of the self-named Professor Brian O'Blivion, a guru of the new media with more than a passing resemblance to Cronenberg's old college professor Marshall McLuhan. The reclusive O'Blivion -- who can only be interacted with through cameras and TV screens -- has a daughter (Sonja Smits) who runs the Cathode Ray Mission for the homeless and the indigent who have been cut off from TV's cool, transforming light.
But there's a really big problem. Weird things are alive, and yet another conspiracy against the human race is in the process of unfolding. Behind the TV screen there are some forms of consciousness stalking the abyss, warring ideologies on the electromagnetic frontier with contrasting plans for humanity.
And then James Woods grows a giant vagina in his stomach and things get really weird. And the vagina plays VHS tapes. Sweet!
In its concerns with bodily transformation, strange new vistas of reality, and ideologies grown real and conscious and hungry for new minds to conquer, this is perhaps Croneberg's most Lovecraftian movie (the giant vagina sort of seals the deal). It's not a perfect movie, but it's a darned impressive one.
Is it ahead of its time? Yeah, yeah it is. Just imagine that Facebook, Skype, texting, and endless cellphone usage are all iterations of that devouring digital leviathan Videodrome and you'll start to get the idea. And only the new flesh can save us from an increasingly brutal and dehumanizing culture. Highly recommended.
The Boys Volume 2: Get Some: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Darick Robertson and Peter Snejberg (2007): The Wrath of Ennis turns to teen sidekicks, millionaire playboys who are really dark-night avengers, and the former Soviet Union in the second collection of The Boys.
Here, the covert group seeking to stop superheroic abuses of power sets its targets on the Tek-Knight and his former partner Swingwing during an investigation into the mysterious death of a gay teen. Celebrity culture takes its punches here, as does the often hypocritical world of celebrity charity endorsements. Well, that and dressing up in a high-tech costume to fight crime. And asteroids with vaginas.
After that, the Boys truck off to Russia to find out what a mysterious corporation, a Russian crimelord, a hyper-patriotic Russian politician, and a drug that creates unstable superheroes have in common. And by unstable, I mean physically unstable: these heroes have heads with a tendency to explode.
Loveable former Soviet hero Love Sausage helps the Boys uncover a conspiracy between capitalism and Russian patriotism, one that could plunge the entire planet into World War Three. All that and Little Hughie discovers the joys of alcohol made from Soviet-era brake fluid. MMM!!! Recommended, not for the squeamish or easily offended.
