2009 July | crabapple cove

on July 28, 2009

in Reviews and Writing

. 6 Comments Tags: Books, Movies, sci-fi.

Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth is a documentary about writer Harlan Ellison. Ellison, who’s name has come up a time or two on this blog, is a well-respected and prolific author of essays, teleplays and short stories. Within the literary and science fiction communities, he’s something of a legend. That being said, however, he’s hardly the household name that he, perhaps, deserves to be. I can well understand how some of you reading this might say ‘I don’t know this Ellison guy… Should I bother with the movie?’ The answer to that question is a resounding ‘Hell, yes.’

First of all, let me just say that if you haven’t read Ellison’s work, you should seek it out. The guy writes like a proverbial sumbitch. He’s really very, very good. Experiencing his work, as I say, is not a prerequisite to enjoying the documentary, however. The simple reason for that is that Harlan himself is enormously entertaining. If there were a competition for World’s Angriest Jew (and, by God, don’t you think there ought to be?), Harlan would be right there in the running. The depth and breadth of his ire (on a wide range of topics) is damn funny — partly because you can’t believe just how incensed he can get and partly because you agree with nearly everything he says. I laughed a lot watching “Dreams with Sharp Teeth”, and by the end, I was thinking I should pull my copy of The Essential Ellison down off the shelf again. The entertainer (and the businessman) in Harlan Ellison would no doubt be very pleased.

Annie Hall

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on July 23, 2009

. 0 Comments Tags: Comedy, Movies, My Comedy Year, nostalgia trip '09.

Woody Allen has fallen out of favor to a degree in the last twenty years, and it’s not too hard to figure why. Sure, there was that creepy scandal back in the day, but more importantly, he’s become extremely inconsistent in his twilight years — so much so that his good films are more the exception than the rule.

I won’t lie: I was a big fan of the Woodman when he was at the height of his powers from the mid-seventies through the mid-eighties. His best work is still, I would argue, really damn good. But even when Allen was kicking ass and taking names (cinematically speaking), he still had his detractors. People would complain, ‘Oh, he’s so whiny and everyone in his movies is overly erudite and SO Upper West Side New York Liberal’. I won’t refute those complaints here because they’re accurate to a large degree. On the other hand, surrendering to those complaints entirely would be throwing out the baby with the bath water. While Allen’s films can be grating (depending on your sensibility), they’re also clever and they manage to strike a remarkable balance between wit and pathos. Though he has fallen out of favor even with yours truly, I wouldn’t trade his better films for anything. And by better films, I mean an off-the-top-of-my-head list like this one:

Sleeper
Annie Hall
Manhattan
Stardust Memories
Radio Days
Zelig
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Broadway Danny Rose
Hannah and Her Sisters
Crimes and Misdemeanors and
Sweet and Lowdown

I don’t care who you are, that’s a pretty respectable list.

For many years (despite my earlier affection), I had taken a semi-unintentional hiatus from Woody Allen. I haven’t seen any of his movies in more than five years. Between my renewed interest in comedy and a 7$ price tag at Target, I decided to break my fast with a viewing of Annie Hall, Allen’s 1977 Best Picture Winner. All in all (and many of you won’t need me to tell you this), it’s a terrific movie. One of its greatest strengths, its brilliantly non-linear structure, is also responsible for some of its occasional wrong notes, however. Linking the jumbled dots of the narrative sometimes results in a clumsily expositional piece of dialogue, but that’s a small price to pay for giving me a story which I am allowed to construct myself in my head as it unfolds. Allen, by delivering his tale in asynchronous order, is clearly trusting us. I for one appreciate that. As for the comedy, “Hall” isn’t often laugh-out-loud funny, but it is able draw us into a compelling and believable portrait of two people and their relationship. It all feels very real and very warm. Watching the film again was pleasantly nostalgic for me — enough so that I’m thinking about tracking down a few of the other titles on the above list and giving them another go as well.

First Blood

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on July 21, 2009

. 10 Comments Tags: 80s-palooza, Movies, nostalgia trip '09.

[80s-palooza Part 17]

First Blood is certainly not a perfect movie. The funny thing is, though, that most of my issues with it revolved around the beginning and the end. Everything those two sections bracket is perfectly entertaining.

The first act of the film features Vietnam veteran John Rambo’s well-intentioned arrival in an unnamed town in the Pacific Northwest. Immediately upon crossing the border into said town, Johnny is harassed by some cartoonishly villainous cops who get him on a trumped-up vagrancy charge. This is where the trouble begins, narratively speaking. All Rambo wants is a place to crash and something to eat, but local law enforcement treats him like a newly-arrived Charles Manson. (Which is weird since he’s not even all that scruffy-looking. We’re talking about a man who is still recognizably Sylvester Stallone even under all of that hair.) I accepted the bombastic behavior on the part of the police as a pretext to the mayhem that ensues, but the sheer venom the cops hurl at our hero is a little tough to swallow at times. Once the sheriff and his boys drive Rambo into the woods, though, things pick up considerably. In fact, it’s nothing but good fun to watch Stallone –playing an ex-Green Beret– spring trap after trap on not only the local-yokels but also the hundreds of National Guard troops that are brought in once the indigenous coppers drop the ball. It’s this free-for-all (not to mention the show-down that takes place in the town immediately thereafter) that the movie’s really all about. Get to the action and you’re all good for a while. Unfortunately, after the action comes the problem of the finale. Or maybe “finale” is too triumphant a word…

It’s not that the climax of First Blood is as awkward as the beginning, it’s more that there’s a substantial build-up and then things just… stop. If anything, the ending to the picture screams “sequel”. Things are left in such an unresolved place emotionally that you can’t help hoping there will be another entry in the Johnny Rambo saga. I suppose that in itself indicates that the filmmakers must have done something right.

The 80s-Palooza Film Festival to Date:

Three-D Page

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on July 20, 2009

in Show and Tell

. 0 Comments Tags: CGI, Non-reviews, Personal Work.

For a while there, I was maintaining a separate site with some of my 3D model work. Although that site is no more, I thought I’d make a new page on the good ol’ Cove and throw up some of those stills. Check it out…

Three-D @ the Cove.

Lookwell

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on July 15, 2009

. 2 Comments Tags: Comedy, My Comedy Year, Non-reviews, Random, TV.

Lookwell was a pilot made for NBC back in 1991. It was written by Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel and starred the inimitable Adam West as a very confused ex-television star. Looking at it now, I can easily see why the network decided not to turn it into a series. It’s hard to imagine O’Brien and Smigel churning out an additional twenty-some-odd episodes using this initial offering as the springboard. Still, I’m awfully fond of this one episode. I saw it years ago on the now defunct TRIO network (as part of their “brilliant but canceled” series), and I stumbled across it again a night or two ago on YouTube. (Sweet Lord, what isn’t on YouTube these days?)

Anyway, watch the pilot for Lookwell (I’ve embedded it below for your convenience). I think you’ll agree that it wouldn’t have necessarily made a good series, but it is an awfully fun way to spend twenty-two and half minutes.

Appaloosa (Parker) & Lonely Are the Brave

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on July 13, 2009

. 2 Comments Tags: Books, Kindle, Movies, Westerns.

Yesterday, quite by accident, I finished reading Appaloosa by Robert B. Parker and I also watched Lonely are the Brave, a 1962 film starring Kirk Douglas. It struck me not too long thereafter that the two are somewhat of a piece with one another. Cowboys striving against the forces of modernity is a perennial theme in Westerns, but that’s okay because it nearly always works (see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch for further proof). This Grand Theme is certainly used to great effect in both Appaloosa and Lonely Are the Brave.

I can sum up Robert B. Parker’s Appaloosa for you quickly: If you liked the movie, you’ll like the book. It’s actually pretty remarkable the fidelity with which Ed Harris adapted the novel for the screen. Apart from making a few necessary excisions for running time, Harris basically just shot the book. I would say his only mistake was in casting Renee Zellweger as “Allie”. Others have commented (and I agree) that Zellweger is, at the risk of sounding crude, not nearly attractive enough for the role. The character, as Parker has written her, is a smart woman with the feminine wiles to cloud men’s minds. Zellweger can certainly do the smart part, but as for the rest… I’ll leave that up to you. (And, to be fair, I will say that a lot of the blame lies with the costumers and the make-up people — Zellweger looks plainer in Appaloosa than I’ve ever seen her look before.) Happily, in reading the novel, I was free to “recast” the role of Allie in my head, and this I did. (I kept everyone else the same in my “mind movie”: Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen were perfect for their roles.) Of course the theme of marginalization I referred to above is just as present in the book as it is in the film. Two thirds of the way through the story, the forces of money and the modern world (in the form of the villain, Randall Bragg) move in and begin to force our two heroes out of their accustomed roles. The way this situation is ultimately resolved is better left for the reader to discover, but I was satisfied by that climax.

Bottom line: Appaloosa is a terrific book. It’s written in a clean, concise (almost Hemingway-esque) prose style and it goes down real easy. I’d be more than happy to read Parker again. In fact, part of the reason I read the novel was that Parker has written two sequels featuring the same characters. I have every intention of “kindling” those as well.

Where Appaloosa takes place in the sunset years of the American West, Lonely Are the Brave takes place in the early 1960s, long after the true west had gone to its grave. The character played by Kirk Douglas is a sad anachronism, a man who doesn’t realize he’s about a century too late to the party. Our hero runs afoul of the local authorities in a New Mexico town and most of the movie is an extended chase with Douglas on one side and local sheriff Walter Matthau on the other. I’m hesitant to say too much more about the plot for fear of spoiling it; it’s just one of those things you have to see unspool from beginning to end to truly appreciate. That being said, here are some factoids to further entice you:

Lonely are the Brave was adapted for the screen by former blacklist-ee Dalton Trumbo — one helluva fine writer who also did the script for Kirk Douglas’ Spartacus.
Speaking of Douglas, this is one of his best performances. He’s utterly convincing in the role of Jack W. Burns, that sadly misbegotten cow-poke.
Lonely Are the Brave is one of Steven Spielberg’s favorite movies. In fact, it would seem that he’s largely responsible for this recent DVD reissue. He sings the movie’s praises in a retrospective documentary found on the disc.

Marginalization, anachronism, these are meaty themes, and maybe I relate to stories featuring those themes because I sometimes feel I was born too late myself. But that’s fodder for another post somewhere down the trail. ‘Til then, read Appaloosa and watch Lonely Are the Brave.

Monty Python’s Meaning of Life

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on July 12, 2009

. 2 Comments Tags: 80s-palooza, Comedy, Movies, My Comedy Year, nostalgia trip '09.

[80s-palooza Part 16 (unofficial entry)]

It’s amazing the degree to which comedy imprints itself onto my psyche. Monty Python’s Meaning of Life came out in 1983 and I probably haven’t seen it in more than twenty years. Nevertheless, I remembered absolutely every punch line right before it was delivered. This is, of course, problematic since so much of the laughter response relies on surprise — ergo, no surprise, no laughter. This is a phenomenon I don’t typically experience with other genres of movie because (I suppose) their rhythms are different; their intended effects are not so predicated upon amazement. As you may recall, I had a similar reaction to Ghostbusters, and so these two laughter-free experiences have caused me to concoct a little theory (shallow though it may be): Watching comedy you’re familiar with is like returning to treasured albums from your record collection. You’re never going to get the same effect you got the first time you listened to the songs, but there’s a certain transcendent comfort in going back to that place for a while. When I load up a movie like Caddyshack or Stripes, I’m doing it not so much to laugh, but for the experience of visiting those characters again and of returning to a place in my life long since gone. (Maybe that sounds a little more melancholy than I might have intended, but you get the idea.)

Anyway, as I watched Monty Python’s Meaning of Life again a couple of nights back, I couldn’t help but wonder “Am I not laughing at this because it’s not funny or because I know it by heart?”. I think the preceding paragraph more or less answers that question, but there is an important fact here which I shouldn’t dodge: “The Meaning of Life”, while clever and funny, is probably the weakest of the Python’s three features. So much of its humor is reliant upon shock (look no further than the “Mr. Creosote” episode for confirmation) that it doesn’t age as well, perhaps, as Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I say this with some confidence, but there’s only one way to be sure: I plan on watching both of those flicks again soon too (not to mention the episodes of the TV series as soon as I can lay my hands on them).

At any rate, all of this indicates to me that I need to find some comedy I’ve either never seen or have forgotten about if I am to get the full effect out of My Comedy Year. I have a few ideas on that subject, but suggestions would be welcome…

The 80s-Palooza Film Festival to Date:

And Here’s the Kicker

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on July 11, 2009

. 0 Comments Tags: Books, Comedy, My Comedy Year, nostalgia trip '09.

My father, brother and myself were always pretty tight, and I think part of the glue that held us together was a shared loved of comedy and a similar sensibility in terms of what we found funny. Throughout the 80s and part of the 90s I was a bit of Comedy Nerd. I watched a lot of funny movies and I was familiar with most of the stand-ups working at that time. Starting in the mid 90s, I went through some life changes that took me away from comedy. I still loved to laugh (and to make others laugh), but I had fallen from the True Faith. Reading And Here’s the Kicker by Mike Sacks has served to reignite some of that earlier passion.

“Kicker” is a collection of interviews (all conducted by Mr. Sacks) with twenty-one comedy writers. Some of the humorists included in the collection are out-and-out giants — people like Buck Henry, Harold Ramis, Merril Markoe, David Sedaris, Robert Smigel, Dave Barry, Dick Cavett, and Larry Gelbart. Of course, there were a few names I didn’t know right out of the gate, but as soon as I read their bios, I knew that their inclusion was a smart choice. Trust me, there’s not a runt in this whole litter. Sacks’ interview style fits the subject matter terrifically, as well. He’s done his research and some of his questions and responses are humorous in their own right. I was a little worried when I saw that the publisher was Writers Digest Books, however, because I feared that the editors might try and steer the book too far into how-to territory (and I’ve sworn off Writing How-tos for all of calendar year 2009). I needn’t have worried, as it turns out. There are brief interludes of writing advice for humorists, but these run no more than a page or two each and are relatively innocuous. The real meat here is the interviews and it’s, well, pretty damn meaty. I found myself energized by the experience of reading And Here’s the Kicker to the degree that I wished I could forget about it and read it again. Hell, I might read it again anyway just for shits and giggles. Another (perhaps unsurprising) side effect was that I found myself wanting to get more comedy into my life. This I plan to do.

In fact, join me in celebrating My Comedy Year: July 11th, 2009 through July 11th, 2010.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

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on July 10, 2009

. 2 Comments Tags: Blu-ray, Comedy.

I’ve listened to “Smodcast”, Kevin Smith’s podcast with producer Scott Mosier, religiously since its debut a couple of years ago. If you’re at all familiar with Smith’s movies, then you’ll find the podcast to be of a piece with that material. It’s an hour of scatological, digressive conversation, and it’s just perfect for a long commute (particularly if you’re a sophomoric nitwit like myself). I’ve fallen a little behind in my listening lately so I only recently took in two episodes from way back in December of 2008. These shows ended up being two of the better installments, actually. They were recorded not too long after the release (and subsequent box office flame-out) of Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Over the course of two hours we get to vicariously experience a man’s near total breakdown. Smith is unapologetically heartbroken about the way the movie performed, and he’s also (by his own admission) high as a kite during both recording sessions. It makes for some pretty compelling content and I found myself sympathetic to Mosier and Smith’s complaints that the movie was poorly marketed and didn’t deserve the lackluster reception that it got. Though I’d always been interested in catching up with “Zack” eventually, the podcasts prompted me to move the flick up to the top spot in my Netflix queue. Despite the comments which follow, I think the two filmmakers are right: with Smith at the helm and Seth Rogen in the lead, they probably should have had a more lucrative opening weekend than they got. There is, however, an important fact that Smith and Mosier (not surprisingly) do not touch upon. Sadly, this fact completely explains the film’s less-than-stellar final tally…

Zack and Miri Make a Porno sucks.

Almost immediately, I knew that I was in for a mediocre effort at best. There’s just something tonally “off” about “Zack and Miri”. Very little chemistry exists between the two leads and the jokes, for the most part, just lay there. Couple that with a thoroughly unconvincing love story and a painfully obvious attempt on Smith’s part to steer the movie into stereotypically Rom Com territory, and what you end up with is a forgettable ninety-odd minutes. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not railing at the Movie Gods to give me back that time, but this film is still far from good.

So, who’s to blame for the misfire? No one but Kevin Smith. The script is ham-fisted and over-eager and the direction manages to make a highly competent cast look lost. But why am I throwing salt into the wound now more than half a year after the release? I’m laying blame for one simple reason: I’m nervous about what lies ahead. For the first time in his career, Smith is helming a film he didn’t write (a comedy with Bruce Willis due out, presumably, next year). I get the sinking feeling that this flick (currently titled A Couple of Dicks) may suffer from some of the same awkwardness as Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Smith has always freely admitted that he is, at best, a middling director and that his primary strength is as a writer. And so I’m a little puzzled as to why he would choose to take a gig wherein he’s exercising one of his secondary (or tertiary) skills. I like Smith; I always have. I’m just wondering if maybe he’s finally run out of gas.

Milking it for All it’s Worth

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on July 9, 2009

. 6 Comments Tags: Non-reviews, Random, Rant.

Let me begin with a disclaimer: I bear the Milk People no ill will. Quite the contrary, actually. They’re doing fine work keeping us all stocked-up with lactose-y goodness, and the advertising campaign they’ve maintained to great effect for over fifteen years is a stroke of unadulterated brilliance. So don’t misconstrue anything I’m about to say as an attack on the good folks in the dairy industry. If they were to suffer any collateral damage from the comments which follow, it would sadden me tremendously.

All of that being said, it’s time for fuckers to stop appropriating the “Got Milk? campaign for their own dubious (and decidedly unfunny) purposes. If I see one more bumper sticker which reads “Got Kittens?”, “Got Lima Beans?”, or “Got Porn?” I’m liable to swerve wildly in a fit of pique. It’s not funny; it was never funny, so cut it out.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I just figured it was time for somebody to finally speak up.

The Big Three

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on July 8, 2009

. 3 Comments Tags: Kids, Non-reviews.

Happy third birthday to Kenny and Luke…

“I’m a Mac”

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on July 7, 2009