Monthly Archives: March 2021

Zack Snyder’s Justice League

 

Last week I finished watching the HBO Max premier offering Zack Snyder’s Justice League. A reworking of the feature film release from 2017 of Justice League.

A very brief summation of the history of two Justice Leaguemovies. Zack Snyder helmed the DC Comic feature film adaptations for Warner Brothers he was in postproduction of Justice League when a familial tragedy pulled him away from work and off the production. WB hired Joss Whedon, yes, the now scandal ridden writer/director, to complete the feature. The fan and critical reaction to Snyder’s darker vision of these characters prompted the studio to use the opportunity to have Whedon do reshoots, and rewrites transform JL into a more colorful and lighter-toned movie. Which did not garner the fan or critical reaction the studios had hoped. Sunder’s dedicated fanbase began a campaign to ‘release the Snyder cut’ version of the film but a completed film did not exist. Once HBO Max became the studio’s premier streaming services, they greenlit Snyder to reshoot and rewrite Justice League to the tune of 75 million dollars producing the edition now streaming. Whedon’s Jl clocked in at about two hours and Snyder’s is a hair over 4 in length. Making it a very different beast from the theatrical release.

Is it better?

Yes, but it’s still not a very good movie. This version is tonally consistent, the color pallet matches the tone throughout and while there are moments of levity it is not quippy. Much more time is given the characters, Flash and Cyborg, that were represented mainly as mere supports in the theatrical cut the subtraction of the Ukrainian family who existed in Whedon’s version solely to be rescued strengthens the overall film but aside from Cyborg and Flash the film is long on plot and comic references and short on actual character dependent story.

Far too much of the film’s lengthy run is devoted to the ‘building of the team’ without any real feeling for who most of these characters are and what motivates them. They are iconic to the point of being statuary and without inner lives. They are also terribly inconsistent. Much of one act is devoted to the resurrection of Superman because the rest believe that they simply cannot win without him. When it goes badly resulting in a writer-driven fight between the league and Superman and Superman departs for locals unknown the League carries on as though they never required his immense power.

The effects are mostly good and fights mostly entertaining, but the overall sensation is one that fails to stir the blood, speed the heart, or engage in any real empathy for the characters. While this version is better it’s not really worth the 4 hours it requires.

 

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Weekend Noir: In A Lonely Place

 

This past weekend was a noir watching time for me and a friend. We often watch movies after the end of board and card games and following last weekend movie The Big Combo I wanted to watch The Big Heat on Friday night. That put me in a mood for more Gloria Grahame and on Saturday I rented In A Lonely Place a noir I have heard about but had never actually seen.

The story centers on Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) a Hollywood screenwriter with an explosive temper that often spills over into violence. We are introduced to Dixon when a pause at a traffic light turns heated and he climbs out of his car in the middle of the street to start fighting. After a hatcheck girl that Dixon brought to his home to assist him with a screenplay is found murdered Dixon is brought in by the police for questioning. Dixon tells the police that a neighbor in his open-air apartment complex can vouch for his story and they bring in Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame.) She confirms his account of the evening and following this introduction Dixon and Laurel begin a romantic affair. However, the police are not convinced of Dixon’s innocence, he already has a long record of fights and attacks that only amplify their suspicions. With the police pressuring Dixon and other warning Laurel of his violent outbursts fear creeps into their relationship along with the possibility that Dixon actually did murder the young woman.

In A Lonely Place made for an excellent follow-up to The Big Heat providing a fine example of Gloria Grahame’s range as an actor. The film is also a good vehicle for Bogart to stretch his preforming wings and om scenes where Dixon’s sanity is called into question you can see hints of his upcoming classic portrayal of Queeg from The Caine Mutiny being planted. In A Lonely Place also represented the final collaboration between Grahame and her husband director Nicholas Ray before their separation and divorce. The scripts original ending was too dark for Ray and working with Bogart and Grahame they improvised the final scenes with its ambiguous ending.

I very much enjoyed watching this film and throughout its run time never felt absolutely certain of where the filmmakers were taking it. I do feel that this might have been an even better and more powerful film had our viewpoint character been restricted to Laurel with more of Dixon’s nature being recounted second-hand leaving us in the dark even more to what really transpired between Dixon and the hatcheck girl. Still, this is one worth seeking out and watching.

 

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An Intersection of Technology and Grief

 

June 2020 Craig my friend of nearly 40 years died from COVID-19. This was a hard blow and personally the worst effect from the pandemic. We had not seen each other since early March for what we did not know would be our last session of the Space Opera game I ran for my friends and on my smartphone was the last text I had sent him in early February.

In the months after his death, I never found the will, the heart, the closure to delete that text conversation. It sat there with other texts always on that tiny screen.

Yesterday his name vanished from the text conversation replaced by the cell’s number. I am assuming that Craig’s cell phone number has been reclaimed by the network and is ready to be recycled to a new user. It is logical, it is practical, it is required that these things happen, and it is an instigator of fresh grief.

Technology changes culture sometime is massive disruptive ways, the automobile did more than scatter communities it shattered the standard human family, and sometimes in small way we don’t notice fully as they happen. Several times now I have become aware of friends’ and acquaintances’ deaths by a post on their Facebook wall by their families a method both immediate and impersonal. This tiny thing, my friend’s name vanishing from my device, it a passage to another period in my life without his presence, without his bad puns, and without his unlimited generosity. An unalterable fact of life is that it goes on. It does not pause, it does not stop for our loss, our pain, our grief, and it sweeps us along.

Always.

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The Godfather Coda: Completing the Saga

 

I own a Blu-ray of The Godfather and I have watched The Godfather: Part II several times but it wasn’t until last week that I finally sat down and over several installments, the same process I am employing for Zack Snyder’s Justice League, that I watched The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.

1972’s The Godfather is a classic of cinema, a triumph of filmmaking in the face of overwhelming adversity with lasting cultural impact as the film’s 50th anniversary approaches. The sequel deepened our understanding of the Corleone family, its history, and the ruthlessness required to sit atop a vast criminal empire as it corrupts the culture around it and the people inside it.

The Godfather Coda in comparison is a film that feels small. Cleverly staged mass assassinations of crime family bosses are far from new within this franchise and fail invoke much in the way of emotion or stakes. The plot involving Michael Corleone’s quest to absolve his murderous sins by going legitimate through corrupt deals with equally corrupt Roman Catholic officials seems perfunctory and with any real character weight. Familial conflicts, Michael’s son wanting a career in the arts, his illegitimate nephew affair with Michael’s daughter, and his strained relationship with his separated wife Kay, possess the requisite story beats but are executed in an unimaginative manner that any Lifetime movie would exceed. While lengthy in running time the film sprints to its conclusion cramming the death of a pope, the election of a new one and that pope’s assassination all into the story’s final act. Characters act in a manner more suited to movies that any reflection of reality perhaps best example by the assassins sent to kill Michael’s nephew who take the nephew’s current sexual partner hostage for no reason other than to present a ‘more dramatic’ scene when ruthless killers would have simply murdered her silently and then proceeded with their plan. This is mast worse by the fact that the character served no story purpose after that scene only heightening the contradiction of the scene.

Sofia Coppola has earned rave praise for her skills as a filmmaker in her own right. I have seen Lost in Translation it is unquestionable that she has learned much from her father and is a very talented director. As an actress she leaves much to be desired. She had no chemistry with her romantic lead and presented no interior life from her character Mary Corleone. Her character sits at the story’s emotional center exerting a gravity that bends the fates of everyone around her and this casting seriously damaged the film.

For me The Godfather Saga ends with Part II.

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I Must Be Dreaming

 

It’s a cliche and before it became a cliche a character muttering during a fantastic event ‘I must be dreaming’ still never worked for me.

The tired bit has a long and stories track record which even includes Goldfinger as Bond mutters the phrase when he awakes and Pussy Galore tells him her name. Here’s why this particular trope has never convinced me that the character’s reaction is authentic.

Never once in any dream that I can remember have I ever considered for a moment that I was dreaming. No matter how fantastic or mundane or improbable the events, locals, or characters that appear in my dreams at the moment they occur they accepted as established reality. Recently I dreamt that I was attending some event and the governor of California was there, not Newsom just some generic guy, dressed in the terrible plaid jacket with stripped slacks. I was about to comment that his style was worse that the mayor of Amity in Jaws but then noticed that Murray Hamilton, who0 played the mayor, was not only sitting right beside me but wearing an identical outfit.

I do not associate with either high ranking politicians or actors and Hamilton dies in 1986 but none of this caused even the slightest hesitation in my acceptance of this reality. It is dream-logic and as you experience it is it solid and unquestioned.

The ‘I must be dreaming’ utterance is a weak shortcut to try and pull out of the character some emotional experience to their current situation. Writers would be better off if at the moment that are tempted to type those words if they stopped and searched for a more intimate and personal way to express the character’s wonderment.

 

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We Are Westview NJ

 

In Disney +’s first Marvel Cinematic Universe television series WandaVision Wanda Maximoff after a life of trauma and her world shattered by grief explodes with a power she never conceived of having transforming the dying town of Westview New Jersey in her escapist fantasy of reality where life became an endless procession of sitcom episodes. Actual reality intrudes forcing Wanda out of her delusional and her artificial reality.

The series sits as a perfect metaphor for the Republican party’s current madness and sadly we are the imprisoned citizens of Westview forced into another’s delusion of reality, trapped by their fears and inability to face facts that are too painful to admit.

The litany of GOP lies, and delusions is extensive; the January 6th attack and insurrection was the product of Antifa masquerading as Trump supporters, systemic voter fraud stole the election, mask mandates are tyranny, COVID-19 is an inconsequential flu, racism only exits against white people, thoughts and prayers prevent mass shootings, Christianity is oppressed and in danger of vanishing, and many many others. For some these are calculated lies used to seize and maintain power for far too many these are their reality, and it is a reality as valid as Wanda’s sitcom life.

Unlike the residents of the fictional Westview there is no outside force or agency coming to our rescue. We have the reclaim actual reality for ourselves. The GOP must be driven from the lever of power until they have expelled the delusions from their system. This did not begin with Trump and it did not end with his defeat. The long road to sanity’s recovery still is ahead of us.

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The Big Combo: Fante’s and Mingo’s Liminal Relationship

 

Saturday night a friend and I watched the 1955 noir film The Big Combo. The film stars Cornel Wilde as Police Lieutenant Diamond who is obsessed with charging and jailing a local organized crime boss, Mr. Brown, played by Richard Conte while having unrequited love for Brown’s mistress Susan Lowell. Combo in the title is a shortening of Combination one of many names assigned to organized along with Commission, and such, when for whatever reasons the title ‘mafia’ is avoided.

The film’s limited budget gives it a decidedly B picture feel and the dialog from time to time to too on-point with characters delivering clumsy exposition, but the twisty narrative delivers nicely with the final reveals of the plot playing out well.

This is a movie where the supporting cast have the most memorable characters and performances. John Hoyt, perhaps best remembered as the Enterprise’s original doctor in Star trek’s first Pilot The Cage, has but a single scene as a retired Swedish Sea Captain but fills his few moments on screen with life and vitality.

However, the support characters that fascinate me the most in The Big Combo are a pair of hitmen, Fante and Mingo, playing to perfection by Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman respectively. The pair are inseparable, traveling together, eating together, and sharing a tiny apartment. Fante is the judicious, calculating and older member of the duo while Mingo’s character is brash, juvenile and more likely to react without considering the consequences.

While the characters are never ‘coded’ as gay by any of the usual traits used by cinema of the period, no lisps, no perchance for extravagance, no perfumed cards or elaborately stylish outfits, the pair’s relationship can clearly and be easily interpreted as a close, bonded pair or lovers. This is even more evident when Fante’s leaves Mingo utterly shattered emotionally so much so that all traces of criminal loyalty vanish. Never is there an overt action that would support the interpretation of the characters as gay but neither are there any of the easily dropped clues such as ogling women or discussing girlfriends and dolls that would have countered such a conclusion. Fante and Mingo live in the liminal space between what is suspected and what is confirmed, shadowy, hidden, a perfect film noir relationship.

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A Bad Year

 

One year ago my planned book launch event at Mysterious Galaxy had already had its attendance limited to the growing pandemic and we were just one day before California and very quickly following the United States and the world shutting its doors and going into lockdown.

My novel Vulcan’s Forge was released from Flametree Press March 27th, 2020 and I can speak with some authority that having your debut book hit the shelves the week the world goes into lockdown is terrible for sales. IT sort like if a sprinter at the starting gun discovers after hitting the ground with his face that someone has ties his laces together. Yeah, you’re in the race but you are not going to win it.

Of course, things were going to get worse. The lockdown shuttered all of our social lives and in June of 2020 my friend of 40 years died of COVID 19. here in 2021, we have lost in the United States alone more than half a million people to this pandemic and in the scale of such disasters poor book sales are less than inconsequential.

Still, I recognize that things could have been worse for me. I never lost an hour of employment and my wife and I have not contracted the disease and are now vaccinated against it.

The year did not have to be this disastrous and it is now upon us to rebuild our lives, rebuild our communities, and honor those who were cruelly taken from us.

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Incomplete Observations on Vampyres (1974)

 

Among the curated horror movies currently available on SHUDDER is the mid-70s ‘erotic’ (read, naked women) horror flick Vampyres.

Hailing from the UK, Vampyres centers on a pair of lesbian vampires living in a dilapidated country manor, the same used for the exterior shots of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and many Hammer productions, where, with carnal seduction, they lure unsuspecting victims.

One weeknight after I have finished my writing for the evening, I usually like to relax by watching videos before bed and I have watched at least the first act of Vampyres and witnessed perhaps the worst serious sex scene committed to celluloid. I literally laughed out loud when the couple began ‘making out’ because it looked so clumsy, so fumbling that I was immediately remined of the comedic version of the scene in Syfy’s series Resident Alien, and yet this was supposed to be titillating rather than laughable.

What is crystal clear is that the film has no characters. Oh, actors come in, deliver lines, and fumble at each other nude bodies, they do not portray any sort of actual person. “Ted” in the first act picks up one of the vampires, Fran, while she pretends to be hitchhiking. We are supposed to believe that she seduces him but without any convincing dialog it’s just two people who decide to go to her house and screw. Ted has no motivation beyond his supposed attraction to Fran. He wasn’t coming from anywhere, or going to any place on his drive, he exists only to have scenes with a vampire. Scene after scene is devoid of any motivation on the character’s part. People do things to achieve goal that serve their needs the exterior reflecting the interior here they just get wine glasses, drink, and screw without anything beyond the walls of the set existing.

I can see why I have never heard of this movie.

 

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A Most Disappointing Continuation

 

This contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy season 2.

 

Last week I posted about how I dislike cliffhangers prompted by the season one cliffhanger from The Umbrella Academy, a series that I had very much enjoyed and found a non-ending frustrating.

I watched the season two opener and my reaction transformed from frustration to irritation. Season 1 centered on two major plot threads, an end of the world apocalypse in seven days and the secret behind Vanya’s lack of superpowers. They resolve when her powers induced the end of the world with the moon’s destruction but all of our central characters, including Vanya, escape into the past to continue their quest to save the world from the apocalypse they failed to prevent. Okay, the story’s not over and we continue this fight, right?

Wrong.

The characters are scattered from 1960 through 1963 Dallas, with 1963 being the time of an all-out Soviet invasion and nuclear war. Five, the character who brought scattered them through time, is informed that they had to stop this nuclear war and they have just ten days to do it and he’s plopped down in Dallas with that ten-day countdown. Oh, and Vanya’s forgotten who she is and what she can do.

So, the story has not resolved in any manner the central plot from season one but has recycled the plot into a ‘new’ apocalypse with another very limited window to prevent it and no actionable information and it has reset Vanya back to her starting position.

What the fuck kind of story telling is this?

I ant complete stories, not cheats and handwaving like a bad roleplay game adventure that suddenly changed gamemasters. Finish one story before starting another and when you do start another crib something other than the plot you failed to complete.

 

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