Tivo Alert (2/26-3/4):
TCM, Monday 2/26, 12:00 am EST: Meet John Doe, directed by Frank Capra. One of those classics that I haven't seen.
TCM, Monday 2/26, 9:30 am EST: 49th Parallel, directed by Michael Powell. I hear Michael Powell is a really good director, so I might try to catch this one. I'd rather see Peeping Tom or Black Narcissus though. This one's about a German U-boat in WWII. With Laurence Olivier, among others.
HBO Family, Tuesday 2/27, 12:40 am CST: Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough. I've never seen this, but it's supposed to be good. That's probably an understatement.
TCM, Tuesday 2/27, 2:00 pm EST: The Bad and the Beautiful, directed by Vincente Minnelli. Another classic I need to see, about Hollywood corruption and such.
HBO Family, Tuesday 2/27, 2:50 pm CST: A Little Princess, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. I usually watch darker movies than this, but I like everything I've seen by Cuaron, so I might check it out.
HBO Signature, Tuesday 2/27, 5:45 pm CST: Missing, directed by Costa-Gavras. I've never seen any Costa-Gavras movies, but he's supposed to be good. This one's about a father searching through Chile for his missing son, hence the title. Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek got Oscar nominations. Weirdly, this is also showing on HBO Family on 3/8, even though HBO lists it as having "Adult content, adult language, violence, brief nudity." Doesn't exactly sound like a typical night out with the kids.
TCM, Tuesday 2/27, 6:00 pm EST: After the Thin Man, directed by W.S. Van Dyke. I've only seen the first Thin Man movie, and it was great. I need to try to see the whole series.
TCM, Tuesday 2/27, 8:00 pm EST: My Man Godfrey, directed by Gregory La Cava. Classic screwball comedy about a wealthy lady who hires a homeless guy to be her butler.
TCM, Wednesday 2/28, 1:45 pm EST: Monsieur Verdoux, directed by Charles Chaplin. "A man woos and murders rich widows to support his invalid wife". That sounds pretty dark for Charlie Chaplin. It's from 1947; I haven't seen any of his non-silent work, so I'll have to check this one out.
TCM, Wednesday 2/28, 4:00 pm EST: The Great Dictator, directed by Charles Chaplin. Chaplin's send-up of Hitler. I always thought this was silent for some reason, but it came out in 1940, so I doubt it. I'll definitely watch this one.
TCM, Wednesday 2/28, 8:00 pm EST: The Train, directed by John Frankenheimer. WWII movie about French resistance fighters trying to stop Germans from stealing art. Was this Frankenheimer's first movie after The Manchurian Candidate? It sounds good.
TCM, Thursday 3/1, 5:00 am EST: The Conversation, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I need to see this; I like conspiracy movies, and I've heard this one's good.
TCM, Thursday 3/1, 9:00 am EST: The Producers, directed by Mel Brooks. I can't believe I haven't seen this, so I'll rectify that here.
TCM, Thursday 3/1, 12:15 pm EST: I, Vitelloni, directed by Federico Fellini. I've never seen any Fellini movies, so this might be a place to start.
TCM, Thursday 3/1, 2:15 pm EST: Wild Strawberries, directed by Ingmar Bergman. I've never seen any Bergman movies either, so this might be a place to start with him.
TCM, Friday 3/2, 4:30 am EST: The Front, directed by Martin Ritt. About the 50's Hollywood blacklist, starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel. I don't know too much about this movie, but it's one I've kind of wanted to see.
TCM, Friday 3/2, 6:30 am EST: Lady for a Day, directed by Frank Capra. I don't know if this is worth watching, but it's one of the Capra movies I haven't seen.
TCM, Friday 3/2, 8:00 pm EST: The Elephant Man, directed by David Lynch. Never seen this, but I dig John Hurt and David Lynch, so I might check it out.
IFC, Friday 3/2, 11:05 am and 6:45 pm CST: The Brothers McMullen, directed by Ed Burns. I've been meaning to see this (along with Burns' other movies) for a while now, so now's my chance.
IFC, Saturday 3/3, 12:55 am and Sunday 3/4, 1:00 am CST: Bus 174, directed by Jose Padilha. A Brazilian documentary about a kid who tried to rob a bus and took it hostage. I've heard it's really good.
HBO Signature, Saturday 3/3, 3:40 am CST: The Lady Eve, directed by Preston Sturges. HBO doesn't usually play this sort of movie, but it's a classic that I need to see, so I'll watch it.
TCM, Sunday 3/4, 6:00 pm EST: Witness for the Prosecution, directed by Billy Wilder. Another Billy Wilder movie that I need to see.
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Whew, I think that's everything. Again, I'll probably only watch a small portion of these, but in a perfect world I would have time to watch them all and more.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
I don't think this interview is going to end well...
My current favorite comics panel:
(Click to enlarge, of course)
From The Nightly News #4.
Well, it's not really a panel, because this comic doesn't really have panels. And if it did, this would probably be two panels. But hey, I made the rules, I can break them!
(Click to enlarge, of course)
From The Nightly News #4.
Well, it's not really a panel, because this comic doesn't really have panels. And if it did, this would probably be two panels. But hey, I made the rules, I can break them!
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Apparently, a big schnoz is embarrassing no matter what country you're from
Samurai Saga (Japan, 1959, directed by Hiroshi Inagaki):
This generically-titled samurai movie is actually a very well-done adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Now that's a cool idea! As the movie starts, a (Kabuki?) play is being put on in a Japanese town, but the star singer is afraid to go on because she's been receiving threats from a man named Komaki. Her manager convinces her to perform, but the play is interrupted when Komaki shows up; it's Toshiro Mifune, playing the Cyrano character. He objects to the actress performing due to reasons pertaining to honor and loyalty (the movie takes place at the time the Tokugawa shogunate was taking over Japan; I apologize if I get any details wrong; I'm not especially well-schooled in Japanese history). He's wearing a wide-brimmed hat, but he takes it off when a guy challenges him to let the actress perform; he has a huge nose, and he dares the guy to make fun of it. In fact, he demonstrates several ways to make fun of his nose, then beats the guy up. The local lord, who is in attendance, has all his men storm the stage. Komaki decides to compose a song about how badass he is while he's kicking all their asses. Awesome.
So that's the beginning of the movie. Then we get into the Cyrano plot; he is childhood friends with the beautiful Princess Ochii, and she comes to him to let him know she is in love. But not with him; she loves a young, handsome guy named Jurota, and she asks Komaki to watch out for him. Komaki begrudgingly accepts, deciding he'll never know love with his ugly face. It turns out Jurota is also quite the badass, so they end up getting in several fights together against Tokugawa's men. Jurota also digs Ochii, but when he tries to woo her, she's unimpressed with his expressions of love; the best he can come up with is to repeat "I love you," over and over. So Cyrano, I mean Komaki, comes up with the plan to write poetry for Jurota to read to her. She digs it, of course, so they're in love. There's a few bumps in the road, like when Jurota decides he can go it alone without Komaki's help, but then bombs terribly, causing Ochii to wonder if he doesn't love her anymore. She's really kind of dense if she can't figure out where the tenderness is really coming from, but that's not the point.
Eventually, Komaki and Jurota get called away to war, so they head off to the infamous Battle of Sekigahara, where they are unfortunately on the losing side. They both get wounded pretty bad, and together they try to escape before they get massacred by Tokugawa's army (poor winners!). Jurota realizes that he can't go home to Ochii; she doesn't really love him; she loves Komaki's words that he parrots. So he kills himself, telling Komaki to go home and love Ochii. Komaki makes it home, but he can't bring himself to tell Ochii; he ends up watching over her for ten years, visiting her each year on the anniversary of the battle. Tokugawa's men are still searching for survivors though, and they find him, managing to badly wound him. He makes it to see Ochii one last time, and when he's reading her "Jurota's" final letter, she realizes he has it memorized, and it was him that loved her all along. But it's too late, his wound is fatal, and he dies in her arms. The end. Sad stuff.
It's a classic story, and the filmmakers do it justice here. Toshiro Mifune is the standout, as always. He was quite the performer in his day; if you ask me, he had it all: powerful body language, facial expressions, and voice. He completely took over whatever scene he was in. He really gets the wit of the character across here, showing Komaki as an intelligent and poetic man who is unmatched in battle. There's a great scene just after Ochii has informed him that she loves Jurota. Komaki's getting drunk, and all his army buddies show up and insist that he tell them the story of how he defeated 25 men (it's not some tall tale; this took place a couple of scenes earlier). Jurota's there with the men, but he's the new guy; another guy admonishes him to never mention Komaki's nose. So, of course, while Komaki's telling the story, Jurota keeps butting in, saying things like, "You gave them a nose full," or "you had them by the nose." Komaki gets angrier and angrier as this goes on, but he's realized who Jurota is; he's pledged to make sure he doesn't come to harm. Eventually he roars (if you've seen The Seven Samurai, you should be able to picture him doing this) for everyone to leave, then takes a few breaths, tells Jurota he admires his courage, and has a drink with him. It's a great scene.
It's also a beautiful movie, with lush backgrounds of cherry blossoms, autumn leaves, and landscapes. I'll have to check out some of director Inagaki's other movies; he also did the Samurai trilogy about Musashi Miyamoto.
So, if you like cool samurai movies, or are interested in seeing Western stories adapted in an Eastern style (see also: Ran, Throne of Blood), try to check this out. I saw it on IFC, so they might rerun it sometime.
This generically-titled samurai movie is actually a very well-done adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Now that's a cool idea! As the movie starts, a (Kabuki?) play is being put on in a Japanese town, but the star singer is afraid to go on because she's been receiving threats from a man named Komaki. Her manager convinces her to perform, but the play is interrupted when Komaki shows up; it's Toshiro Mifune, playing the Cyrano character. He objects to the actress performing due to reasons pertaining to honor and loyalty (the movie takes place at the time the Tokugawa shogunate was taking over Japan; I apologize if I get any details wrong; I'm not especially well-schooled in Japanese history). He's wearing a wide-brimmed hat, but he takes it off when a guy challenges him to let the actress perform; he has a huge nose, and he dares the guy to make fun of it. In fact, he demonstrates several ways to make fun of his nose, then beats the guy up. The local lord, who is in attendance, has all his men storm the stage. Komaki decides to compose a song about how badass he is while he's kicking all their asses. Awesome.
So that's the beginning of the movie. Then we get into the Cyrano plot; he is childhood friends with the beautiful Princess Ochii, and she comes to him to let him know she is in love. But not with him; she loves a young, handsome guy named Jurota, and she asks Komaki to watch out for him. Komaki begrudgingly accepts, deciding he'll never know love with his ugly face. It turns out Jurota is also quite the badass, so they end up getting in several fights together against Tokugawa's men. Jurota also digs Ochii, but when he tries to woo her, she's unimpressed with his expressions of love; the best he can come up with is to repeat "I love you," over and over. So Cyrano, I mean Komaki, comes up with the plan to write poetry for Jurota to read to her. She digs it, of course, so they're in love. There's a few bumps in the road, like when Jurota decides he can go it alone without Komaki's help, but then bombs terribly, causing Ochii to wonder if he doesn't love her anymore. She's really kind of dense if she can't figure out where the tenderness is really coming from, but that's not the point.
Eventually, Komaki and Jurota get called away to war, so they head off to the infamous Battle of Sekigahara, where they are unfortunately on the losing side. They both get wounded pretty bad, and together they try to escape before they get massacred by Tokugawa's army (poor winners!). Jurota realizes that he can't go home to Ochii; she doesn't really love him; she loves Komaki's words that he parrots. So he kills himself, telling Komaki to go home and love Ochii. Komaki makes it home, but he can't bring himself to tell Ochii; he ends up watching over her for ten years, visiting her each year on the anniversary of the battle. Tokugawa's men are still searching for survivors though, and they find him, managing to badly wound him. He makes it to see Ochii one last time, and when he's reading her "Jurota's" final letter, she realizes he has it memorized, and it was him that loved her all along. But it's too late, his wound is fatal, and he dies in her arms. The end. Sad stuff.
It's a classic story, and the filmmakers do it justice here. Toshiro Mifune is the standout, as always. He was quite the performer in his day; if you ask me, he had it all: powerful body language, facial expressions, and voice. He completely took over whatever scene he was in. He really gets the wit of the character across here, showing Komaki as an intelligent and poetic man who is unmatched in battle. There's a great scene just after Ochii has informed him that she loves Jurota. Komaki's getting drunk, and all his army buddies show up and insist that he tell them the story of how he defeated 25 men (it's not some tall tale; this took place a couple of scenes earlier). Jurota's there with the men, but he's the new guy; another guy admonishes him to never mention Komaki's nose. So, of course, while Komaki's telling the story, Jurota keeps butting in, saying things like, "You gave them a nose full," or "you had them by the nose." Komaki gets angrier and angrier as this goes on, but he's realized who Jurota is; he's pledged to make sure he doesn't come to harm. Eventually he roars (if you've seen The Seven Samurai, you should be able to picture him doing this) for everyone to leave, then takes a few breaths, tells Jurota he admires his courage, and has a drink with him. It's a great scene.
It's also a beautiful movie, with lush backgrounds of cherry blossoms, autumn leaves, and landscapes. I'll have to check out some of director Inagaki's other movies; he also did the Samurai trilogy about Musashi Miyamoto.
So, if you like cool samurai movies, or are interested in seeing Western stories adapted in an Eastern style (see also: Ran, Throne of Blood), try to check this out. I saw it on IFC, so they might rerun it sometime.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Omissions
I either missed these, or they weren't on the shipping list I looked at. Whoops!
Update to New comics this week (Wednesday, 2/21/07):
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I think that's the only thing I missed. More content tonight, maybe.
Update to New comics this week (Wednesday, 2/21/07):
HEARTBREAK SOUP PALOMAR VOL 1 TP $14.95It's the Love and Rockets digest-sized collections! I've been wanting to read the series, but those hardcover collections are pretty damn large and imposing. This seems like a perfect alternative.
MAGGIE THE MECHANIC LOCAS VOL 1 TP $14.95
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I think that's the only thing I missed. More content tonight, maybe.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Love is in the air, a tad late for V-Day
My current favorite comics panel:
From Nana, by Ai Yazawa, out of Shojo Beat magazine. I love the shadows on the pier they're standing on, and the way Yazawa draws the wind blowing through her dress. And it's sweet. Awwwww!
From Nana, by Ai Yazawa, out of Shojo Beat magazine. I love the shadows on the pier they're standing on, and the way Yazawa draws the wind blowing through her dress. And it's sweet. Awwwww!
This one's for RAB
RAB popped in on the comments thread of a recent "Tivo alert" post that I did to recommend Tommy. Well, I just watched it today, and although I probably won't have anything to say that he doesn't already know, here's my thoughts:
Tommy (1975, directed by Ken Russell)
A review in five words: Fucking bizarre, but good music!
Okay, I'll elaborate. For anyone who doesn't know, Tommy is the movie version of The Who's rock opera about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who "sure plays a mean pinball". It's pretty weird; my wife, who watched some of it with me but fell asleep for a good portion, said it probably would have been better if we had partaken of "mother nature" first. Actually, I liked it more than she did, but I do have an affinity for weirdness. I'm getting ahead of myself though.
Okay, the titular character is the son of Ann-Margaret (hawt!) and some British guy who dies in the war (WWII, I assume). She ends up getting together with Oliver Reed, playing a guy who runs a holiday camp. After they all come home together, there's a strange bit that I didn't really understand (it seemed like a dream, but I guess it was supposed to be real), where Tommy's father returns, and when he walks in on the two of them (Oliver Reed and Ann-Margaret), Reed whacks him over the head and kills him. Tommy sees it, and the two of them repeatedly scream at him that he didn't see or hear anything. I guess he took that too literally, because he gets struck with psychological blindness, deafness, and muteness (is that a word?).
So, Tommy grows up to be Roger Daltry, and his mom doesn't know what to do with him. She takes him to a Marilyn Monroe-themed church where people apparently go for healing. It's where the movie really starts to get surreal, with nuns that wear Marilyn masks, Eric Clapton preaching with a guitar, and a sacrament that consists of pills and whiskey. There's a statue of Marilyn in her iconic "dress flying up" pose, and sick people are coming and touching it for healing. Ann-Margaret tries to get Tommy to touch it, but he knocks it over and breaks it. Whoops.
(Quick aside here: I assert that Anna Nicole Smith is NOT our generation's Marilyn Monroe. My wife said something of the sort recently, and I disagreed. Sure, people of that generation probably thought of Monroe as a drunken bimbo who couldn't really act, but surely she wasn't that bad. I dunno, maybe future generations will think of Smith in a similar way, but I sure hope not.)
Oliver Reed decides to take a different tack to cure Tommy: get him laid. He takes him to a brothel, where Tina Turner, playing a character called the Acid Queen, dances around and straps him into a freaky hypodermic needle version of an iron maiden. Goddamn. I don't even know how to describe it, it's so crazy. She's singing and dancing the whole time, and the camera is doing trippy things like zooming in and out rapidly. The iron maiden keeps opening with Tommy transformed into things like his father, a Jesus-figure covered with stigmata from the needles, and a skeleton with snakes crawling all over it (in what is not the first bit of phallic imagery, one of them is coming out of the skeleton's crotch).
Well, nothing seems to be curing Tommy, so his mom and step dad just go about their lives, leaving him with a series of abusive babysitters, including Kieth Moon as his sexually abusive Uncle Ernie (I'm going to have to resist the urge to shout "Fiddle about!" at people tomorrow). The ultimate babysitter is the mirror, which Tommy stares into for hours and sees trippy visions. At one point, he wanders off, stumbling through a junkyard, where he finds a pinball machine, and hey, he's pretty good at it! We cut to what appears to be a pinball competition (was there such a thing? I think pinball used to be a big deal, but did they actually have competitions?), where he competes against Elton John, playing a guy on stilts with gigantic clown shoes who plays a keyboard mounted to a pinball machine and sings "Pinball Wizard". Fun!
Well, being awesome at pinball makes Tommy rich and famous, but he doesn't have any clue what's going on, since he can't, you know, see or hear. Ann-Margaret is apparently feeling guilty for taking advantage of him, and she has a song where she keeps trying to change the TV channel so she doesn't have to see him. She keeps trying to change it to commercials for baked beans or chocolates, but it keeps changing back to him, at a televised pinball competition, I guess. She eventually throws a bottle of champagne at the TV, which explodes with foam, covering her in bubbles. Then baked beans pour out and cover her, followed by chocolate. She spends a few minutes writhing around in the mess, splattering it all over the room, then dry humps (if you can call it that when she's covered with goo) a long, phallic pillow. My wife said it seemed like the director was taking a break from the plot to indulge his sexual fantasies. That seems pretty appropriate.
So then Oliver Reed discovers a doctor who can cure Tommy. He's played by Jack Nicholson, who sings (I don't think I mentioned this; there's no spoken dialogue in the movie; everything is sung) that there's nothing physically wrong with him, it's something psychological. Ann-Margaret can't figure out why Tommy won't see or hear her, and she sings to him about how she's upset that he can seem to see the mirror, but not her. Then she throws him into the mirror, and he breaks through, falling into an apparent metaphorical ocean. He's cured! He gets to sing "I'm Free" and run in front of a blue screen-projected ocean!
Everyone's pretty excited that Tommy's cured; it makes front-page news and everything. So then he ends up starting his own religion, with himself as the messiah. I'm honestly not sure if this is supposed to be a satire of organized religion, or a hippy, free-love message. Tommy is pretty welcoming, wanting everybody to come into his house, but Oliver Reed seems to be taking capitalistic advantage, selling holy trinkets and stuff. It's all a fun spoof of Christianity, and probably got people upset back in the 70's. It would probably cause riots if it came out today. Anyway, they sell T-shirts with Tommy in a Christ-like pose, with a halo of pinballs. His big symbol is a cross made of a "T" topped with a pinball. (There's also a weird aside about a young girl who joins the church against her parents' wishes and ends up marrying a kid dressed like Frankenstein's monster. I have no idea what that was all about.)
Tommy ends up taking his followers to a camp similar to the one from the beginning of the movie. He preaches to them from the top of a mountain of giant pinballs, then he has them wear dark glasses, earplugs, and a mouth plug, so they can go through what he went through. Plus, he has them all play pinball. I guess they don't like it though, because they start singing "We're Not Gonna Take It" and smashing the pinball machines with their T-crosses. They also kill Ann-Margaret and Oliver Reed, but Tommy survives. He heads off into nature, and the movie pretty much ends there.
Well, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I tend to like weird stuff. I especially liked the satirical look at religion. I sure didn't understand all of it, but I dug the music. And now I understand the "see me, feel me, touch me, heal me" line from Who songs. Good times. Thanks for the recommendation, RAB, and please let me know if I'm off base about anything.
Tommy (1975, directed by Ken Russell)
A review in five words: Fucking bizarre, but good music!
Okay, I'll elaborate. For anyone who doesn't know, Tommy is the movie version of The Who's rock opera about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who "sure plays a mean pinball". It's pretty weird; my wife, who watched some of it with me but fell asleep for a good portion, said it probably would have been better if we had partaken of "mother nature" first. Actually, I liked it more than she did, but I do have an affinity for weirdness. I'm getting ahead of myself though.
Okay, the titular character is the son of Ann-Margaret (hawt!) and some British guy who dies in the war (WWII, I assume). She ends up getting together with Oliver Reed, playing a guy who runs a holiday camp. After they all come home together, there's a strange bit that I didn't really understand (it seemed like a dream, but I guess it was supposed to be real), where Tommy's father returns, and when he walks in on the two of them (Oliver Reed and Ann-Margaret), Reed whacks him over the head and kills him. Tommy sees it, and the two of them repeatedly scream at him that he didn't see or hear anything. I guess he took that too literally, because he gets struck with psychological blindness, deafness, and muteness (is that a word?).
So, Tommy grows up to be Roger Daltry, and his mom doesn't know what to do with him. She takes him to a Marilyn Monroe-themed church where people apparently go for healing. It's where the movie really starts to get surreal, with nuns that wear Marilyn masks, Eric Clapton preaching with a guitar, and a sacrament that consists of pills and whiskey. There's a statue of Marilyn in her iconic "dress flying up" pose, and sick people are coming and touching it for healing. Ann-Margaret tries to get Tommy to touch it, but he knocks it over and breaks it. Whoops.
(Quick aside here: I assert that Anna Nicole Smith is NOT our generation's Marilyn Monroe. My wife said something of the sort recently, and I disagreed. Sure, people of that generation probably thought of Monroe as a drunken bimbo who couldn't really act, but surely she wasn't that bad. I dunno, maybe future generations will think of Smith in a similar way, but I sure hope not.)
Oliver Reed decides to take a different tack to cure Tommy: get him laid. He takes him to a brothel, where Tina Turner, playing a character called the Acid Queen, dances around and straps him into a freaky hypodermic needle version of an iron maiden. Goddamn. I don't even know how to describe it, it's so crazy. She's singing and dancing the whole time, and the camera is doing trippy things like zooming in and out rapidly. The iron maiden keeps opening with Tommy transformed into things like his father, a Jesus-figure covered with stigmata from the needles, and a skeleton with snakes crawling all over it (in what is not the first bit of phallic imagery, one of them is coming out of the skeleton's crotch).
Well, nothing seems to be curing Tommy, so his mom and step dad just go about their lives, leaving him with a series of abusive babysitters, including Kieth Moon as his sexually abusive Uncle Ernie (I'm going to have to resist the urge to shout "Fiddle about!" at people tomorrow). The ultimate babysitter is the mirror, which Tommy stares into for hours and sees trippy visions. At one point, he wanders off, stumbling through a junkyard, where he finds a pinball machine, and hey, he's pretty good at it! We cut to what appears to be a pinball competition (was there such a thing? I think pinball used to be a big deal, but did they actually have competitions?), where he competes against Elton John, playing a guy on stilts with gigantic clown shoes who plays a keyboard mounted to a pinball machine and sings "Pinball Wizard". Fun!
Well, being awesome at pinball makes Tommy rich and famous, but he doesn't have any clue what's going on, since he can't, you know, see or hear. Ann-Margaret is apparently feeling guilty for taking advantage of him, and she has a song where she keeps trying to change the TV channel so she doesn't have to see him. She keeps trying to change it to commercials for baked beans or chocolates, but it keeps changing back to him, at a televised pinball competition, I guess. She eventually throws a bottle of champagne at the TV, which explodes with foam, covering her in bubbles. Then baked beans pour out and cover her, followed by chocolate. She spends a few minutes writhing around in the mess, splattering it all over the room, then dry humps (if you can call it that when she's covered with goo) a long, phallic pillow. My wife said it seemed like the director was taking a break from the plot to indulge his sexual fantasies. That seems pretty appropriate.
So then Oliver Reed discovers a doctor who can cure Tommy. He's played by Jack Nicholson, who sings (I don't think I mentioned this; there's no spoken dialogue in the movie; everything is sung) that there's nothing physically wrong with him, it's something psychological. Ann-Margaret can't figure out why Tommy won't see or hear her, and she sings to him about how she's upset that he can seem to see the mirror, but not her. Then she throws him into the mirror, and he breaks through, falling into an apparent metaphorical ocean. He's cured! He gets to sing "I'm Free" and run in front of a blue screen-projected ocean!
Everyone's pretty excited that Tommy's cured; it makes front-page news and everything. So then he ends up starting his own religion, with himself as the messiah. I'm honestly not sure if this is supposed to be a satire of organized religion, or a hippy, free-love message. Tommy is pretty welcoming, wanting everybody to come into his house, but Oliver Reed seems to be taking capitalistic advantage, selling holy trinkets and stuff. It's all a fun spoof of Christianity, and probably got people upset back in the 70's. It would probably cause riots if it came out today. Anyway, they sell T-shirts with Tommy in a Christ-like pose, with a halo of pinballs. His big symbol is a cross made of a "T" topped with a pinball. (There's also a weird aside about a young girl who joins the church against her parents' wishes and ends up marrying a kid dressed like Frankenstein's monster. I have no idea what that was all about.)
Tommy ends up taking his followers to a camp similar to the one from the beginning of the movie. He preaches to them from the top of a mountain of giant pinballs, then he has them wear dark glasses, earplugs, and a mouth plug, so they can go through what he went through. Plus, he has them all play pinball. I guess they don't like it though, because they start singing "We're Not Gonna Take It" and smashing the pinball machines with their T-crosses. They also kill Ann-Margaret and Oliver Reed, but Tommy survives. He heads off into nature, and the movie pretty much ends there.
Well, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I tend to like weird stuff. I especially liked the satirical look at religion. I sure didn't understand all of it, but I dug the music. And now I understand the "see me, feel me, touch me, heal me" line from Who songs. Good times. Thanks for the recommendation, RAB, and please let me know if I'm off base about anything.
Silly predictions of an obvious nature
Thanks to Chris Butcher for providing the information for
New comics this week (Wednesday, 2/21/07):
DMZ #16 (MR) 2.99
I'm always excited for this book. Explosions and assassinations abound. Exciting!
EX MACHINA INSIDE THE MACHINE VOL 1 (MR) 2.99
I'm not sure what this is exactly. Some kind of "Official Handbook"? A summary of the story so far? I'll take a look and decide if I want it. Unless my shop has already set it aside for me, then I'll get it.
LOCAL #8 (OF 12) (MR) 2.99
It's been a while since the last issue. Does this mean it will be on a more reliable schedule? Somehow I doubt it. This issue takes place in Wicker Park, a neighborhood of Chicago, just down the street from me (If I go down the street for an hour or so). Maybe I'll recognize some landmarks. I'll at least show it to my friend that knows the city better than me; I'm sure he'll recognize stuff.
NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER VOL 7 TP (C: 1-0-0) 9.99
I am really behind on this series. That is, I haven't even bought volume 1. Someday!
NIGHTLY NEWS #4 (OF 6) 2.99
Ooh, cool. I love this series. I predict more subversiveness this issue, and probably some murder.
POWERS #23 (MR) 2.95
I do usually enjoy this book. Who knows when this storyline is going to wrap up, though.
SPIRIT #3 2.99
Ah, more Darwyn Cooke goodness. I predict fun!
TESTAMENT #15 (MR) 2.99
Cool. Have I mentioned that this comic is weird. Because it is. I was disappointed with Liam Sharpe's art last issue; it seemed really rushed. Hopefully this issue will be better.
VAGABOND VOL 24 TP (MR) 9.95
Whoo, who knows if I'll ever get caught up on this series. I have volume 1-3. It will take me a while, that's for sure.
-----
Looks like that's it. More content later, maybe.
New comics this week (Wednesday, 2/21/07):
DMZ #16 (MR) 2.99
I'm always excited for this book. Explosions and assassinations abound. Exciting!
EX MACHINA INSIDE THE MACHINE VOL 1 (MR) 2.99
I'm not sure what this is exactly. Some kind of "Official Handbook"? A summary of the story so far? I'll take a look and decide if I want it. Unless my shop has already set it aside for me, then I'll get it.
LOCAL #8 (OF 12) (MR) 2.99
It's been a while since the last issue. Does this mean it will be on a more reliable schedule? Somehow I doubt it. This issue takes place in Wicker Park, a neighborhood of Chicago, just down the street from me (If I go down the street for an hour or so). Maybe I'll recognize some landmarks. I'll at least show it to my friend that knows the city better than me; I'm sure he'll recognize stuff.
NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER VOL 7 TP (C: 1-0-0) 9.99
I am really behind on this series. That is, I haven't even bought volume 1. Someday!
NIGHTLY NEWS #4 (OF 6) 2.99
Ooh, cool. I love this series. I predict more subversiveness this issue, and probably some murder.
POWERS #23 (MR) 2.95
I do usually enjoy this book. Who knows when this storyline is going to wrap up, though.
SPIRIT #3 2.99
Ah, more Darwyn Cooke goodness. I predict fun!
TESTAMENT #15 (MR) 2.99
Cool. Have I mentioned that this comic is weird. Because it is. I was disappointed with Liam Sharpe's art last issue; it seemed really rushed. Hopefully this issue will be better.
VAGABOND VOL 24 TP (MR) 9.95
Whoo, who knows if I'll ever get caught up on this series. I have volume 1-3. It will take me a while, that's for sure.
-----
Looks like that's it. More content later, maybe.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Lancelot Links: no secret chimp here
Actually, I never even watched that show, but a friend of mine has it on DVD, and for some reason it makes me laugh whenever I see it. Anyway, on to the links:
Vern, my favorite film critic, has a review of Ghost Rider up. I don't especially like the comic character, but the previews make the movie look fun, in a stupid way. But according to Vern, it's not even good in that aspect. Here's a quote in which he takes issue with the filmmakers not taking the story seriously enough:
"What I'm saying is you have to have the courage of your convictions. There are nerds all around the world, apparently, who like this comic strip, they take the burning skeleton stunt jumper guy with a spikey jacket seriously, and if they're gonna be filling your bank account you shouldn't make fun of them. And at the same time there are people like me who are going to the movie exactly because it looks so stupid, and we would rather see you take it seriously too because then it would be alot funnier than this bullshit. Treat it seriously and everybody wins. If you think the premise is too stupid to do with a straight face then for God's sake don't make the fucking movie, you assholes."
Good stuff. He also has a good review of Alejandro Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain, which I really have to see, along with El Topo.
CBR has an interview with David Petersen about his series Mouse Guard. The big news: the second six-issue miniseries starts in July.
Mitch Montgomery (who I know from the excellent comment threads on Geoff Klock's Blog) reviews what sounds like an awesome play called The Jaded Assassin. It sounds like a stage version of Kill Bill or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and if I lived anywhere near New York, I would definitely go see it. Check out the promo image:
As seems to be the trend with these link posts, I'll add more as I find it, so keep watching!
-----
UPDATE: Yeah, I moved this post to the top of the blog again. Who cares about continuity? Not me!
Over at The Comics Reporter, Bart Beaty has a cool look at Why I Killed Pierre by Alfred and Oliver Ka. It was one of the prize winners at the French Angouleme festival this year. He's been discussing several of the winners recently (there's links in his post). Very interesting stuff.
A site called The Open Critic has a series of reviews of Hideshi Hino manga. Cool. (via The Comics Reporter).
Jim Mahfood painted the mural that can be seen in the coffee shop on The Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central. I've only watched a few minutes of the show, but if I watch it again, I'll be looking for this. Go Jim!
-----
UPDATE 2 on 2/19:
Greg Hatcher offers a dissenting opinion on Ghost Rider (about halfway down the page), along with some other stuff.
Vern, my favorite film critic, has a review of Ghost Rider up. I don't especially like the comic character, but the previews make the movie look fun, in a stupid way. But according to Vern, it's not even good in that aspect. Here's a quote in which he takes issue with the filmmakers not taking the story seriously enough:
"What I'm saying is you have to have the courage of your convictions. There are nerds all around the world, apparently, who like this comic strip, they take the burning skeleton stunt jumper guy with a spikey jacket seriously, and if they're gonna be filling your bank account you shouldn't make fun of them. And at the same time there are people like me who are going to the movie exactly because it looks so stupid, and we would rather see you take it seriously too because then it would be alot funnier than this bullshit. Treat it seriously and everybody wins. If you think the premise is too stupid to do with a straight face then for God's sake don't make the fucking movie, you assholes."
Good stuff. He also has a good review of Alejandro Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain, which I really have to see, along with El Topo.
CBR has an interview with David Petersen about his series Mouse Guard. The big news: the second six-issue miniseries starts in July.
Mitch Montgomery (who I know from the excellent comment threads on Geoff Klock's Blog) reviews what sounds like an awesome play called The Jaded Assassin. It sounds like a stage version of Kill Bill or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and if I lived anywhere near New York, I would definitely go see it. Check out the promo image:
As seems to be the trend with these link posts, I'll add more as I find it, so keep watching!
-----
UPDATE: Yeah, I moved this post to the top of the blog again. Who cares about continuity? Not me!
Over at The Comics Reporter, Bart Beaty has a cool look at Why I Killed Pierre by Alfred and Oliver Ka. It was one of the prize winners at the French Angouleme festival this year. He's been discussing several of the winners recently (there's links in his post). Very interesting stuff.
A site called The Open Critic has a series of reviews of Hideshi Hino manga. Cool. (via The Comics Reporter).
Jim Mahfood painted the mural that can be seen in the coffee shop on The Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central. I've only watched a few minutes of the show, but if I watch it again, I'll be looking for this. Go Jim!
-----
UPDATE 2 on 2/19:
Greg Hatcher offers a dissenting opinion on Ghost Rider (about halfway down the page), along with some other stuff.
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