Atomic Blonde is an aggressive title for a movie. By that, I mean it’s the type of title that can make a viewer immediately prejudge a film. I’m guilty of that. My expectations going into this film were that, at best, it would be a mildly entertaining, yet brainless, action flick. I was hoping for a shitty film, but was prepared for a just a plain old bad one. But, just as one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the same applies to film titles. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Atomic Blonde”
Cocksuckers Ball: Courts to the Rescue
A three-judge federal panel on Tuesday voided North Carolina’s congressional map, on the grounds that the gerrymandered districts were ‘motivated by invidious partisan intent.’ In other words, the Republicans in North Carolina engineered congressional districts following the 2010 census in order to ensure most of the state’s districts were won by Republicans. Redrawing districts to partisan advantage has been a legal grey area ever since the advent of partisan politics in this country. But the panel has now set precedent that such practices are unconstitutional, and that’s a good thing. Continue reading “Cocksuckers Ball: Courts to the Rescue”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Summer City
This flick is a bad one. This is one of those zero-budget plodding messes that would have found a ready home on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It’s one of those flicks that lacks most endearing characteristics, and only survives because it featured a future Hollywood star.
Summer City, from way back in 1977, is the first feature film on Mel Gibson’s IMDb page. He’s one of four main characters, all friends, who head out from 1950s Sydney for some fun and sun at an Australian beach.
How do I know the movie takes place in the 1950s? Director Christopher Fraser and producer/writer Phil Avalon helped us viewers with that, by providing an opening credits stock footage montage of scenes from the 1950s. This extensive sequence is amazing, because so much of the footage seems to have been chosen at random — the only prerequisite being that it looks like it was shot in the ’50s. How else to explain the repeated use of footage of a long-distance runner in training? It has nothing to do with the plot. This movie is about surfing blokes. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Summer City”
What Rotten Luck
The United States has just about the only government left in the world that is hostile to the realities of global warming. The scientific consensus, that the globe is warming due to human activity, has been embroiled in party politics. There’s no false equivalency here, either. Turning global warming into a political fight is solely the responsibility of the Republican Party. Resistance to action to combat global warming is almost exclusively a Republican disease, and it affects everyone from donors, to legislators, all the way down to conservative voters. This is a huge problem considering that, until recently, the United States was the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, which are responsible for global warming. Continue reading “What Rotten Luck”
Shitty Movie Sundays: The Beastmaster
Filmmaker Don Coscarelli is known to horror fans as the man behind the Phantasm film series. While that series has spanned decades, all cinematic auteurs like to try new things on occasion. Sometimes, when they do, the result is shitty gold.
The Beastmaster, from 1982, is Coscarelli’s homage to the Italian sword-and-sandal flick, and also an opportunity to feed on the leavings, remora-style, of the Conan films. In fact, Coscarelli and producer Paul Pepperman took a book about a Navajo soldier who talks to genetically altered animals on an alien planet, and turned it into a Conan ripoff. There are no Native Americans and no alien planet in this flick. Instead, we get Marc Singer, in what would have been his defining role were it not for V, as Dar, a hunky tribesman who is the long-lost son of a deposed king. After Dar’s village is attacked by a horde and everyone is killed, Dar sets off on a journey, to somewhere a little vague, with something of an idea about what he’s going to do when he gets there. Focus isn’t really Dar’s strongest characteristic — wearing as little clothing as possible without being pornography is. Also, he can talk to animals. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Beastmaster”
No Context Comics: Her Face Explodes!
Shitty Movie Sundays: Freejack
Freejack is one of those movies that potential viewers might remember. They will vaguely remember a time when Emilio Estevez was a leading man, and they might recall that he was in a movie once called Freejack. They probably won’t remember what the movie was about, but they could remember that Mick Jagger, yes, that Mick Jagger, had a role. But, us shitty movie fans, we happy not-so-few, remember this as an ambitious and silly sci-fi action flick. We also remember that not only did Mick Jagger have a prominent part — his gloriously shitty performance stole the film. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Freejack”
No Context Comics: Cold. Blooded.
By the way, Stan Lee wrote this.
October Hammershow: The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Here we are. October 31st. Halloween. The end of the October Horrorshow. The final film in this look back at Hammer Film Productions is a departure from type. If there’s one thing I’ve picked up on from watching 31 Hammer films in a row, it’s that Hammer basically made the same film over and over and over again. That’s not negative criticism on my part. Hammer had a style, in the same way that a musician like John Lee Hooker had a style or an artist like Willem de Kooning had a style. Listen to an album or see a painting hanging on a wall and it becomes immediately clear who is responsible. Hammer films followed a theme. They developed over time into something that was very much their own. Towards the end, though, they began to switch things up in search of a new formula. Such is the case with today’s film. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Satanic Rites of Dracula”
October Hammershow: The Kiss of the Vampire
Hammer saw much success with its version of Dracula in 1958. Of course they wanted to cash in further. For reasons beyond the scope of this review, they couldn’t nail down Christopher Lee for a sequel until 1965. But that didn’t stop Hammer. In 1960 they released The Brides of Dracula, which featured neither Dracula nor any vampire that appeared with him in the previous film. It was misrepresentation, plain and simple. In watching it, it becomes clear Brides was meant to be a Dracula film, with Lee in it, but the script had been reworked to put a different baddie in the lead. The Kiss of the Vampire has similar origins, although with this film Hammer had the decency to release it without a false pedigree. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Kiss of the Vampire”