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Saturday, June 04, 2005 ( 6/04/2005 02:10:00 PM ) Bill S. "SOMETIMES, THE MOMENT IS NOT WHAT YOU NEED" – That phew! sound you heard was me finishing the twelfth volume of Takami & Taguchi's Battle Royale, the newest translated entry in Tokyopop's manga series. The book primarily focuses on an extended battle-to-the-death between good guy athlete Sugimura and the psychotically implacable Kiriyama. Visceral and ultra-vicious, the fight also has the most impact of any in this body count series simply because its protagonist is someone we've gotten to know over the previous entries – as opposed to being quickly introed just to be dispatched a few pages later. Who'd have thought that such a splattery story could so effectively make you feel bad this late in the game? Three more volumes to go, and I'm dreading/anticipating 'em all. That's good, nasty comix storytelling. . . # | ( 6/04/2005 11:15:00 AM ) Bill S. A QUICK SECOND THOT ON SIDNEY SHORR - My recollection about the 1981 Tony Randall sitcom, Love, Sidney, was adjusted this a.m. when I took a quick trip to TV Tome and read the site’s summary. The show, which featured Randall as a lonely artist who befriends a soap opera actress (the ever-wonderful Swoosie Kurtz) and her daughter, never explicitly indicated that Sidney was gay, though the successful TV-movie which inspired and preceded it (Sidney Shorr: A Girl's Best Friend) made no bones about the character's sexual orientation. (Apparently, back then, what was considered acceptable in a TV-movie was less so once you transfered the character to a 30-minute sitcom.) In first remembering the series last night, though, I recalled Sidney's gayness as an integral part of both the movie and series. Which only goes to show how time can dampen the effects of corporate cowardice. . . # | ( 6/04/2005 06:59:00 AM ) Bill S. IN PRAISE OF "ECCENTRIC UNCLES" – As part of Gay Pride Month, TVLand is airing "Tickled Pink," a tribute to openly & ambiguously gay & lesbian series leads, coded characters and alternative icons from television history, with some of the usual poofter suspects (two of the Queer Eye guys, Bruce Villanch, Frank de Caro – I miss his fey film quip segments on The Daily Show – etc.) offering their own wry takes on the topic. An amusingly lightweight hour, but no Celluloid Closet. My favorite moment was a salute to the glory that was Paul Lynde. But if you're gonna mention Tony Randall's Felix Unger as a figure young gay audience members identified with, where's his lead on the 80's Love, Sidney? And, for that matter, where was Billy Crystal's Jodie Dallas? # | Thursday, June 02, 2005 ( 6/02/2005 04:19:00 PM ) Bill S. "BEEN HOPIN' THAT YOU'D DROP IN" – It's June, so what better time to watch a holiday comedy on cable? We caught a showing of the Will Ferrell vehicle Elf the other night: a sweetly silly, if overly slapdash, flick, though Ferrell's largely one-note performance grew wearisome by the end. (Perhaps if they'd given us one more scene like the one where he and Zooey Deschanel sing "Baby, It's Cold Outside," I'd have been more tolerant of Buddy the Elf's grating childishness.) Where the movie most falls down are in its unbelievable antagonists, though: James Caan's curmudgeonly children's book editor (who signals his heartlessness by improbably okaying the shipment of the company's big Christmas release even though the last two pages are missing) and the left field addition in the film's last act of Central Park mounted police as an imposing menace. (Perhaps you need to be a New Yawker to get that last 'un.) Decent use of comic actors like Andy Richter and Amy Sedaris in smaller roles, tho – and the movie's mandatory non-p.c. scene featuring the pugnacious dwarf writer Miles Finch provided the movie's biggest laff. I'll also personally cherish any opportunity to see Bob Newhart in something new these days. Even if he has been diminished by elvish special FX, the man remains a comedy giant. I, too, see from IMDB that Ray Harryhausen provided a voice for one of the movie's stop motion creatures. Okay, that's pretty cool. # | Tuesday, May 31, 2005 ( 5/31/2005 07:49:00 AM ) Bill S. "I'M MISSING THE PARTY FOR A GIANT HAMSTER?" – In general, I've enjoyed Judd Winick's funnybook work (Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius) more than I have the buckets of mainstream superhero comics he's scripted over the past five years, which is one reason I'm pullin' for the success of his new Cartoon Net creation, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee. A Buffy Lite romp featuring a pre-teen who battles the monsters and demons who live, unseen, alongside us, Juniper Lee sneak premiered last night on TCN before taking its regular slot early Sunday Night. If last night's episode, written by Winick, is any indication, then it'll make an entertaining addition to the lineup. As with Buffy, the show's heroine (voiced by Lara Jill Miller) is a preternaturally strong young girl who chafes at her role as Great Protector. "While I'm fighting giant demonic frogs," she grouses to her grandmother, who at one time was the defender called the Te Xuan Ze, "my friends are going to movies and parties and the mall. . ." Fighting demons is a family responsibility that carries down from generation to generation, we learn (though, apparently, it's skipped June's parents); with it, comes the ability to see and hear creatures that nobody else can. It even allows her to understand what her pug Monroe is saying: what comes out as barks to everybody else, is English with a Scottish burr to her. Juniper's younger brother, Ray Ray, shares this ability to see the hidden world of demons, and what seems like an endless burden to his sister looks like neverending coolness to him. To Juniper's friends, though, her sudden disappearances and unexplained absences have become so familiar that nobody much questions 'em. Her two friends, sensitive Jody and hard-edged heavy metalist Ophelia (love the skulll-shaped boombox), are both surprised when she actually makes it to Jody's birthday party – though, of course, June gets called away from the festivities when a hippie leprechaun shows up to announce that a new menace is on the loose. Said menace turns out to be a giant fire-breathing hamster that is roaming the forest outside of Orchid Bay City. June dispatches the beast, utilizing a genie who dresses like Elvis and sings like Vaughn Monroe, that's designed to attack big evil creatures. (Not a real big surprise: when the genie, called a Barasafer, is introed earlier in the story, you know he's gonna come in handy later.) Juniper Lee is designed by director Frank Squillace in the solid Colorforms style favored by so many Cartoon Net kids' shows these days – many of the creatures look similar to the beasts in Craig McCracken's Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, in fact – but there's a light edginess to the material that tamps down the ultra-brightness. Even if you don't quite swallow the pop culture refs that Juniper occasionally delivers (would an 11-year-old even know "Flowers for Algernon"?), they're still fun and sparingly used at that. Me, I liked the sequence set at Jody's party, where all three of the pre-teen victims bridle at being subjected to yet another event put together by clueless parents. "It was a pony, magician or a clown – I chose the lesser of two evils," Jody explains when asked about the sour party entertainer ineptly struggling to make balloon animals for the kiddies. Sometimes, getting called away to fight the Forces of E-vil isn't such a bad gig, after all. . . UPDATE: The above has been corrected to indicate the right night for new episodes. # | Monday, May 30, 2005 ( 5/30/2005 11:48:00 AM ) Bill S. QUOTE OF THE DAY – As taken from Musical Mutiny and delivered by the film's one representative of Uncool Adult Authority: "I'll never understand why these kids spend as much money as they do to see a bunch of characters dressed like rag pickers, play some godawful music that's so loud you can't even hear it!" Hey, that's Rock 'n' Roll, man! # | ( 5/30/2005 07:09:00 AM ) Bill S. "I JUST HAVE TO TELL YA, IT'S A MUSICAL MUTINY, MAN!" – I confess: back in the sixties, I used to own a vinyl copy of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. So when Aaron Neathery sent me a care package of tapes which included Barry Mahon's Musical Mutiny (1970) among the offerings, it was the first flick I watched. One of a series of low-budget features lensed by the exploitation filmmaker at a Florida amusement park (Aaron has the goods on the series of kiddie films he also shot at Pirates World), Mutiny is an inept bit of youth culture exploitation built around footage of an Iron Butterfly concert. Takes a special kind of shoddiness to make rock 'n' drug culture look as uninvolving as it does in this puppy, but Mahon easily manages. The movie opens with a shot of a man in a pirate costume walking out of the ocean, the ominous instrumental break to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" playing on the soundtrack. First person he meets (a frizzy-haired biker type) he tells to spread the word, "There's gonna be a We follow the biker as he leads us to a set of underdeveloped subplots: a blond chick singer with a raspy case of Joplinitis and her organ-playing companion; a struggling garage band in rehearsal; a young rich kid with a naggy girlfriend who can't really love him 'til he gets out from under the shadow of his businessman father; and a hippie investment broker who offers vague advice to the aforementioned businessman father (played by Brad Grinter, another area exploitation moviemaker) by phone. Periodically, to inject a bit of Monkees-style wackiness into the proceedings, Mahon also gives us shots of a blond longhair frenziedly running around town. (It's funny, see, 'cause he's running really fast!) Back at the park, Don Williams the Great meanwhile cons the ticket takers into letting everybody into the World for free. Because the Great looks so convincingly piratical, nobody questions his assertion that it's all being done as a publicity stunt. So before long all the area kids and teens are showing up at the gate. Mahon pads (and pads and pads) his film out with shots of hippies and longhairs racing to the amusement park, at one point giving us a good five-plus minutes of dune buggies driving around in circles on a Florida beach. He also includes a nonsensical subplot involving a trio of would-be drug dealers who join the crowd with the intention of selling a new hallucinogen called Doc Hagger's Fantastic Freedom Formula. They set up a table in the middle of the amusement park (now there's a good bit of family friendly p.r.!) and attempt to cajole unwilling concertgoers into sampling some. We keep waiting for some hippie patsy to show up and take a swig – for some stoner humor or a psychedelic hallucination scene or something – but it doesn't happen. Barry Mahon, master of the bait 'n' switch. . . But the highlight of the flick is the concert: filmed with such a consistently wrongheaded sense of where to place the camera it's like watching someone use a videocam on vacation for the very first time. First song in Iron Butterfly's set, Mahon keeps the lens on the drummer through most of the number, never once showing us keyboardist/manly vocalist Doug Ingle (the pride of Pekin, Illinois!) and resolutely holding the shots above any of the instruments (because who wants to see the musicians actually playing the song, right?) The boys get to lip sync three tunes off their hit album before the park's grumpy owner – upset to learn that all these free-loading kids have crashed the gate and are listening to music for free – halts the show by telling the band's manager he won't pay the $15,000 owed the group. Not to worry, though: three local bands (Fantasy, Grit, and the New Society Band) fill in with a song apiece. One of these appears to be comprised of that blond chick singer, her organist and the practicing band of garage-istes we saw earlier in the film, though how they got together is something that Mahon apparently didn't think was worth explaining. All three groups are fairly unmemorable (no hidden Nuggets here!), though one of them gets to play their unplugged electric instruments on a merry-go-round. Through it all, Mahon intercuts the music with shots of happy patrons on Pirate World rides, and, admittedly, some of them do look like fun. But what possessed him to shoot Grit's guitarist from behind, so we only see the start of his balding head but don't get to see him doing any finger work? Happily, the hippie investment adviser (remember him?) arrives on-scene to save the day, writing a check for $15,000 to the band's manager and inspiring the group to rush back onstage and perform the full sixteen-minute version of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (arguably, the first great instance of dunderheaded "heaviness" in pop-rock history). Mahon pulls out all stops for this 'un, actually filming all four members of the group in upper torso medium shot, panning over the desultory outdoor crowd and inserting ecstatic head shots of individual fans unconvincingly grooving to the music, filming two hippie chix as they inexpertly wiggle their uncovered torsos for the camera and occasionally interspersing it all with shots of five or six psychedelic posters that he probably picked up in a Florida head shoppe. After eight minutes of this, you're beginning to wish you had a swig of Doc Hagger's Fantastic Freedom Formula – but 1970 is a lifetime away, and our would-be drug kingpins are most likely selling time shares on the coast of Mexico now, anyway. Musical Mutiny concludes with the Butterfly's big one-hit: as the concert ends, we realize that we've never seen any of the group off stage. (Did they, I wonder, even know that they'd be appearing in this movie when they signed up to a show at Pirate World?) The crowd's filmed trudging off to the Pirate World parking lot; our young rich kid decides to sign the group with the blond singer to his new label and both he and his nagging girlfriend ride off into the sunset on a garbage truck with "You Are What You Eat" emblazoned over the cab. The owner of the amusement park hasn't made any money that I can see, which may explain why the place is no longer in business. Don Williams the Great walks back into the sea, satisfied that his Musical Mutiny has brought joy to hundreds. Now that's left is for the frenetic longhaired runner to appear one last time on camera, to open a large piece of paper with the words "The End" written on it. (Bet ya never saw that coming!) Barry Mahon went on to produce a couple more cheapie kidflicks, including one with the wonderful title of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. If any of the movie's full cast of non-actors went onto make another picture, I don't know about it. To the best of my knowledge, the next time Iron Butterfly would be heard in a movie was for a campy dream sequence in one of the Nightmare on Elm Street flicks. That seems right in oh so many ways. . . NOTE: For those with a batch of their own Freedom Formula, Musical Mutiny is available as a DVD-R from Something Weird. # | Sunday, May 29, 2005 ( 5/29/2005 06:45:00 AM ) Bill S. "BARBARELLA, YOU GET THE PICTURE!" – Bravo has gone the VH-1 route with its two-hour Ultimate Super-Heroes, Villains and Vixens clip docs. Caught the entry devoted to Top Twenty Super-Vixens yesterday, and I definitely have to state that I've gotten thoroughly bored with watching the likes of Hal Sparks and Patton Oswalt trot out the same tired one-line snarks. Sorry, but you guys lost the element of surprise 'round about the third or fifteenth "I Love the – " show. Plus, any listing which claims that Emma Peel and Felicity Shagwell are on comparable levels of super-vixenity is completely suspect in my eyes. # | |
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