Now reading: The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Now listening: Keys to Ascension, Yes
Last DVD watched: Doctor Who: The Dalek Invasion of Earth
This Isn't Political
posted November 5 2008
...but it is about the election.
An oft-shown scene from Barack Obama's victory celebration last night was people of all races and religions standing shoulder-to-shoulder in Chicago, and many of them, a great many of them, weeping with joy.
What I want to know is, who the hell weeps with joy? How freaking happy do you have to be about something to cry over it? I have never, in my life, been happy about anything enough to elicit little more than a momentary smile, much less a euphoric gush from my tear ducts. Seriously, what kind of blissed-out human being do you have to be to muster tears of JOY? And who really experiences joy anyway?
Never mind WHAT you're crying tears of joy about. It could be that some dude you'll never meet just got a really sweet job or it could be that you just had a really awesome strawberry Pop Tart. Never mind the cause of it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the bizarre emotional response itself.
I'm a cold-hearted bastard, I'll give you that. I am on record in that I hate flowers and butterflies, so maybe joy isn't really my thing. I also have clinical depression, so that more than likely ties in, too.
But the question remains, gentle friends: How in the hell does one find oneself crying with happiness? How do I achieve this bizarre, emotionally incongruous state?
I implore you, somebody, please, do something so incredibly unbelieveably spectacular that I have no choice but to weep pleasantly in response. I beg of you, have this effect upon me. Please.
Five Wishes for Doctor Who
posted on October 31 2008
I advise skipping this column if you don't watch or have never watched Doctor Who.
Had to get the Halloween message in, and that was going to be all I wrote for today, but then I learned the disappointing news that David Tennant, the present Doctor on Doctor Who, is leaving the show after the five sporadic episodes scheduled for 2009 (including, I believe, the Christmas 2008 episode) rather than hanging on for another full season as previously believed.
Now, Doctor Who fans know that if a Doctor is leaving, that means the Doctor has to die. It's how the story works: A Time Lord (which is what the Doctor is) changes bodies when he dies. He's supposed to only be able to do this 13 times. When the present Doctor, the Tenth, dies, we'll be on the Eleventh Doctor. This leaves us only two more and at the rate they're turning over, it won't be long until some terrible plot contrivance will be necessary to prolong the show, which is still favorable to ending it once and for all. (There is a loophole, but it can't be used given the present state of the show's overall "mythos"...a plot contrivance will definitely be needed.)
Anyway, there are five episodes left, and of course they're all shrouded in mystery and surrounded by rumor, but here are my hopes for the future of Doctor Who.
1. That the Tenth Doctor gets a proper multi-Doctor story. A multi-Doctor story is when, since the show involves time travel, the present Doctor meets one of his past incarnations, meaning that a prior Doctor actor returns to the show for an encore. There have been rumors, which I doubt, that the most famous Doctor, Tom Baker (he of the iconic scarf) will return for a guest appearance. Another rumor had it that the short-lived Eighth Doctor, Paul McGann, would pop by for an appearance (and, hopefully, an explanation of how his Doctor was killed, which was never shown or spoken of due to the 9-year break between the Eight's single appearance and the Ninth's debut). If they could manage both in one episode, that'd be great, but I don't think one hour would be enough time to cover all of it, and I think two separate multi-Doctor stories is pushing it. We'll see. Personally, I would love it if we could get a valedictory appearance by all the surviving Doctors. I'd especially love seeing the Sixth and Seventh, who both were deprived of the heroic demises that the other Doctors enjoyed.
2. More Cybermen, less Daleks. I love the Daleks. Absolutely love, love, love the Daleks, but they've been prominently featured in every season since the 2005 return. I don't want them gone for long, but I think a season off would do them wonders. The Cybermen are slated to be in the Christmas episode this year, but I think making them a "major villain" for a season (even if it's only the 5 special episodes that see the end of the Tenth Doctor) would be a nice change. The Daleks were the major villains for seasons 1, 2, and 4, and in season three they still appeared in two episodes despite the Master being the big villain.
3. More old villains. We've seen the Macra briefly, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans and the Master. It doesn't get more obscure than the Macra, but still, how about delving deeper? I'd like to see the Yeti most of all, and I also wouldn't mind any of the other old baddies. A trip to E-Space would be cool, too, particularly since (in strict show continuity) that leaves it wide open for the return of the Doctor's Time Lady companion, Romana, last seen on TV in that parallel dimension.
4. Don't go gimmicky with the new Doctor. While I doubt we'll ever see another old Doctor a la the original or even the Third, don't make him ridiculously young. Somebody in his thirties, like David Tennant is, would be fine. Don't go changing him dramatically by changing his race or making him a woman in his next incarnation. The way it is has served us well all these years, and the enormous popularity of David Tennant should be testament to that.
5. A stable Doctor and a stable companion. Change is a constant on Doctor who, but we haven't had a really long-lasting companion. The last two, Martha and Donna, both only lasted a season each and Rose lasted for two. Maybe a companion with no intention of leaving is in order. If the new Doctor can be persuaded to stay, so much the better. I enjoy a stable Doctor/companion team: The Sixth Doctor and Peri, for instance, were together almost the entire tenure of the Sixth and the Seventh and Ace also made a great team. Look, too, to the Second Doctor and Jamie, who also shared a similar long run with each other. I'd mention Tegan and the Fifth Doctor but Tegan really drags the Fifth Doctor's run down for me so I'm not looking for somebody like that (Tegan, for the unaware, was a whiny, tiresome sidekick). I particularly favor the idea of finding, somehow, another Time Lady and having her come along, which is why I mention finding Romana in E-Space. Finding the Doctor's genetic sorta-kinda offspring Jenny from last season would also be good, and so would finding the long-lost granddaughter Susan (or at least telling us whatever happened to her after she left in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth").
Anyway, none of the people who look at this site are actually Doctor Who fans, so if they read this and are now cross-eyed with confusion, I promise the next column will not be Doctor Who related. Thanks for reading!
A Halloween Message
posted on October 31 2008
I've probably said it before, but Halloween is one of my favorite times (days?) of the year. For just a little while things such as ghouls, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, mad scientists and all sorts of monsters are on everyone's mind, decorating people's yards and all the stores you go to.
Being a committed and lifelong horror fan, this is a good thing, a good feeling I get of a general sense of togetherness. You might not be a horror person, but maybe on Halloween you'll watch a horror movie to feel the mood of the day. But more than that, it reminds people that even in this day and age, when everyone is so jaded, there's still a need for a good old ghost story, still a place for a couple of innocent scares.
So anyway, I wish all of you, my dear friends (and fiends), a very happy Halloween. I hope you have some fun and that maybe, just maybe, somebody throws a fun scare your way. Watch a horror movie for me and remember what Orson Welles said seventy years ago...
"That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there...that was no Martian, it's Halloween."
Now reading: Poetry and Tales, Edgar Allan Poe
Last listened to: 1938's The War of the Worlds broadcast
Last movie: The Bride of Frankenstein
I've Tried to Avoid Getting Overly Political But...
posted on October 9 2008
You've got less than a month left. Please, please, if you care at all about your freedoms and your economy, if you want your money to be yours and not the Congress' or Fannie Mae's, for the love of goodness, please, please, please vote for Bob Barr. We have a chance, a unique chance, to bring about true, honest change to our government, and like always, people are ignoring it. Well, no more. I failed to vote for Michael Badnarik in 2004 and I helped get us into the crap we're in now...I will not fail to vote for Bob Barr in 2008.
Take your country back. Don't let THEM have it anymore. Let Bob Barr get you out of the recession and out of the war. Because whatever face you put on it, when you vote for one of the 2 main parties, it's all the same oppression, it's all the same bullshit. Don't fall for it again, please. Help yourselves this time.
Doctor Who Titles
posted on October 3 2008
I've mentioned before on here my love of a really good title for a book or story. I've told you that my very favorite title ever for any book, movie or story was the title of a John D. MacDonald novel, The Dreadful Lemon Sky, a title that fascinated me as a child seeing the book on my father's shelf and as an adult having finally read the book (twice). But the present topic is my five favorite Doctor Who story titles. Only two of them are actually "Doctor Who specific"...otherwise, you might not even know it was the title of a Doctor Who story.
5. Death to the Daleks. The Doctor and Sarah Jane meet up with the horrific menace of the inordinately evil Daleks on a planet where electrical power does not exist.
4. Nightmare of Eden. The Doctor and Romana solve the mystery behind a deadly new drug and a mysterious alien race.
3. The Web of Fear. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria face the Yeti and the Great Intelligence for the second and final time.
2. The Doctor Dances. The Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack face a deadly swarm of nanogenes which possesses all those who come in contact with it against the backdrop of the Nazi blitz on England in 1941. The story with the best acting and dialogue in the character's 45 year history.
1. The Enemy of the World. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria face the menace of the archvillain Salamander...a man with a face identical to that of the Doctor himself.
Anyway. I was bored so I posted that. Have a nice day.
Revenge of the Stark Existential Horror of Old Video Games
posted in horror on September 27 2008
Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody
I got no money 'cause I don't get paid
I'm glad somebody makes video games
I need to tweak my brain
Sam Cooke, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyway, it's been a good long time since one of these columns, and since I literally have nothing better to do, I'm doing this: Reviewing, from the kind kind folks at Every Video Game, a bunch of old Nintendo-era video games.
We begin our descent into eldritch madness with WWF King of the Ring. It's a wrestling game, so there's really not a whole lot to ask. There are rules, though: If you're going to expect something from an NES wrestling game, it'd better be punching and body slams. And nothing else. At all. Which isn't to say there's anything wrong with the game. A fine selection of WWF legends including Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, the Undertaker, Yokozuna and Mr. Perfect leads off. Also, there's a wrestler called YOU? which I guess is the closest thing they came to Create-a-Wrestler back then. Anyway, I decided to use, in his "The Narcissist" era, Lex Luger, and the computer opponent assigned to me was Bret Hart. Ol' Lex and Bret exchanged a series of punches, the odd kick, a few bodyslams, and one particularly exciting top-rope elbow drop. The game goes on a while, but finally I get the big pin. I'm not sure exactly who was what back then, but I'm retroactively declaring Lex Luger to be Intercontinental champion. Change your wrestling history books.
Next up is Ultraman Club: Kaijuu Dai Kessen!!. We lead off with a cutesy little image of Ultraman running towards some sort of cutesy little monster (this is called "super-deformed"...popular characters rendered almost cartoonishly, with massive heads and wee bodies) and then a story interlude involving...well, who knows, because I can't read Japanese. Anyway, it's a fun looking game, and Ultraman finds himself strolling slowly through a burning cityscape only to run into a big brownish monster whom I promptly named Shitaru (because Shitachu is too stereotypical). Shitaru throws a bunch of I-guess-they're-fireballs at Ultraman and he dies. Ultraman can jump but I can get him to punch or anything, so he's pretty much at Shitaru's mercy and dies, wide-eyed at having been thrust into such a merciless place as this. I swig my beer and move on to the next game.
Next up is Tsuppari Oozumou and I can't even begin to guess what this is going to be. I go in completely blind on this one. Happily, this turns out to be a sumo wrestling game! And I'm good at it! At least, good enough to win the first match. Oh, and the ref (or MC, or whatever) is a rabbit. After the match, there are little (fortunately English-speaking) characters who pop up with word balloons to tell me "Great job" and to tell my opponent (no kidding) "You suck!!". It's great. On to the next match, which I subsequently lose. And then the third one as well. Apparently, this game likes to build false confidence. Anyway, after two more matches (both of which I somehow win!) I call it a day. It's an insanely fun game, one I wish I'd have had when I was a kid. I would've frittered away a whole crapload of my childhood on this thing.
We come now to Darkwing Duck, based on the early '90s Disney toon which I was fond of simply because it was a Disney Duck, but it was also a nighttime avenger, such as it could be being about a duck. The game looks pretty good, the characters are distinct, and I choose to go on a mission agains the presumably nefarious Wolfduck. And that's when old Darkwing gets his ever-loving blue-eyed ass handed to him. Repeatedly. I can't do a flipping thing on this. I really suck at it. I don't think the game's hard; I just think I suck. Or perhaps it's a perfect storm of both. These are the things that keep me up at night. Moving on.
Next up is Defenders of Dynatron City, which I assume to be another crimefighting game. In this you play a dude who throws his head at evil robots. Really. There are two other characters you could choose, but I went with this one as he seemed most appealing. It's kind of a mess, and a bunch of stuff around the house distracted my attention, and I just decide not to go back to it.
Somehow I find myself losing the will to go on with this. It's too much. But I persevere. I told myself there would be eight games in this column and by hell itself there shall be eight games in this column. I begin to do things like question the very root of civilization and also to wonder whatever happened to the girl who played the robot on that show Small Wonder, and if perhaps the two are connected. I would like to point out that I've only had the one beer so, no, it's not what you think.
Anyway, next up is something called Drac's Night Out. I bristle at this because I just know the game involves Dracula and I just know that when they use "Drac" it's belittling the character, something I do not abide lightly. My next indication that something is terribly amiss is when, after a brief opening display of Dracula riding by in a carriage along with the title of the game, up pops the phrase "featuring the Reebok Pump" and that's pretty much when I shit my heart into my pants. It's a basic game, really; Dracula (seemingly in sneakers) has to get down through his castle (I guess), avoiding angry villagers with the help of buddies like the Frankenstein monster and a ghost. There is, sure enough, a Reebok pump to collect, and if you do you walk much faster. It's kind of fun, I guess, for what it is. Still, the whole Dracula-Reebok connection is beyond me, but hey, it's got to be good marketing.
Next us is Transformers: Mystery of Convoy, mistranslated here as "Comvoy" but I know what they meant. I believe you are taking the role of Ultra Magnus in this case, but there's an outside chance that's supposed to be Optimus Prime. I guess this was never released in the USA. It's one of those one-hit-and-you-die games, which makes it really annoying. One time out I did manage to change into a tractor trailer before I got blown up, but hey, everybody gets lucky once in a while. The sad thing is that I tried this out for way too many times than I should have because I was determined for it to be good. Oh well.
Okay, this is it. The last game of the night. I've been doing all this for well over an hour now. It's got to be something good, but not something obvious. Something interesting, nay, amusing. Or it could be something I've never ever heard of.
And so I pick Aces - Iron Eagle 3, as would any sane man in my position. It's your basic jet-fighter simulating game: Really hard to control unless you're, you know, an actual pilot with 6000 hours of in-flight experience and 80 actual kills. I do pretty well for myself, I think; despite getting frustrated, I play all the way through until my plane gets shot down, and I even manage to take out one of the three bad guys on the level before I die. All in all, I have to say today was a good day.
And Aces makes eight, so there you go! Another fun and happy foray into the bizarre, the mind-boggling, the unnecessarily difficult. Now I'm off to play some NES Monopoly.
Now listening: Rainbow, Rising
Now reading: The Howling by Gary Brandner
Last movie watched: Still The Phantom of the Opera from '62
Five Things on My Mind
posted mindfully on September 23 2008
1. People in certain places get to start voting, like, today. Today. WHY? This is clearly the 21st century. I know because I have a little tiny phone that I can take around with me and I can play Monopoly on. Oh, and because this is a website. Right. Anyway. 21st century. And people can't get to the voting place on one day why? Unless you are in the military and are a serviceman or servicewoman who was sent to do his or her duty in some god-forsaken shithole somewhere, you should vote on the same day everyone else does, or not vote at all. There, I said it. The folks in the service get special privilege because their asses are getting shot at for you, pally.
2. My nephew, who is about 2 and a half, has absorbed so much television that he can, no joke, identify Barack Obama by sight. He likes saying the last name, but for him it comes out "Bob Bama", which is actually pretty funny to say.
3. I love the song from the "Mercenaries 2" commercial.
4. I finally got a copy of the complete audio of the lost Doctor Who saga The Daleks' Master Plan, a 12-part epic (with a prologue episode that aired a month earlier) which is, by Doctor Who standards, nothing short of a bloodbath both on the good and bad side of things and is still one of the Doctor's most monumental confrontations with his most despicable enemies. SPOILER! Only three of the Doctor's companions have ever officially died in the course of the television series. Two of them happen here.
5. I'm still on my major Halloween marathon. This is now leaking over into my reading habits, which consist of a series of volumes collecting short horror stories. Soon I'll begin rewatching the Hammer Dracula series; just tonight I watched the Hammer version of The Phantom of the Opera and yesterday I watched the 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde AND the first Friday the 13th, albeit the latter in an edited-for-TV version which was so chopped-up I feel like I haven't actually rewatched it, but since I don't have the tape or DVD it'll suffice for now until such time as funds permit.
Now reading: The Loved Dead and Other Revisions by H. P. Lovecraft and others
Now listening: Doctor Who Series 1 and 2 Original Television Soundtrack by Murray Gold (with Neil Hannon)
Last movie watched: The Phantom of the Opera (1962, with Herbert Lom)
Six Spooky Songs
posted with spookiness on September 17 2008
Okay, so, I've mentioned before that, for me, Halloween is like a 2-month marathon of horror and the macabre. Right not on my "fucking iTunes" I'm compiling a Halloween playlist, and here are the first six "spooky" songs...or, more accurately, pieces of music...that have made my list, in no order.
Funeral March of a Marionette by Charles Gounod, performed by anybody at all. This is better known as the theme to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and was, possibly, intended as a light piece for children, but the association imbues it with an indelible air of menace. Plus, it's a funeral march of some kind or another, and thus a little spooky.
Suspiria by Goblin. Written for the 1977 Dario Argento horror classic of the same name, by the reliable prog-rock-ish Italian band Goblin, this song is just unsettling, with its strange whispers and ominous tone. Suspiria, incidentally, once topped Entertainment Weekly's list of the scariest movies of all time, and I have to tell you, although nothing in a movie really "scares" me, this is one damned unsettling film. Like Carl Dreyer's 1932 creep-fest Vampyr, it's like watching another person's nightmare, and that's just not a light and fun time. It's been about 3 years, so I'm well overdue for a viewing of the movie, which is in my Halloween movie list. Creepy, and with a memorably violent and gory opening.
Ave Satani, from The Omen. This is a hymn to the Dark Lord himself, Satan. If that's not enough for you, it's part of the "creepy choir" genre. Boogidy-boogidy.
Main Title from Halloween. You know it. You love it. You associate it with All Saints Eve (or, if you're more into the whole Gaelic thing, Samhain, pronounced properly as "Sow-inn" although most folks just say "Sam-hane" and are done with it). The night HE came home, as the movie posters said. A creepy little piano tune by the same man who directed the landmark film, John Carpenter.
Symphony in D minor, Second Movement: Allegretto by Cesar Franck, whatever performance you like. This is a less familiar piece. A sad, haunting piece, this was used as the theme to the landmark horror/surreal radio program Quiet, Please, written by the brilliant, late Wyllis Cooper. If you want to know how to write an unsettlingly weird story, you should be a student of Cooper, that's all there is to it. The series was beautifully headlined by the late radio actor Ernest Chappell. While not strictly a horror series, Quiet, Please created some of the most indelibly unnerving moments in the history radio drama, and I cannot sing its praises enough. It is the only show that has sent a chill down my spine and, in a different episode, moved me to tears. The mournful strains of this piece (played in the show as a piano arrangement, but I mention the original symphonic version) set the eerie tone. I cannot hear this piece without immediately thinking of the opening of the show: The dulcet tones of Ernest Chappell saying "Quiet, please..." and a full seven seconds of silence (unthinkable on radio) followed by another "Quiet, please." The eponymous episode, which was repeated as the series finale, gives a chilling meaning to the phrase. This was more about the show than the music, but oh well. "Michael, Gabriel, Raphael...my angel brothers...Death himself is conquered!" What unparalleled genius.
Swan Theme, from Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. You're thinking "Whaaaat? Swan Lake? Really?" And I say thee, yes. For this was used not only as the opening theme to the film which set the bar for all horror to come, 1931's Bela Lugosi landmark accomplishment of Western civilization known as Dracula but also the following years equally eerie original The Mummy. Thus, it is forever enshrined amongst the glorious strains of horror music. That'll do, Pyotr. That'll do.
So there you go. Just added to the list was Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, best known to you as the eerie, vaguely electronic theme to The Exorcist. I hope to do more of these for you, but we'll see. I'm not one to keep to a promise of a future column, as you well know by now.
Paul Simon's "American Tune"
posted seven years later on September 11 2008
Just as I did this day last year. A remembrance. Words that always somehow remind me of the day, particularly the last seven lines.
Just for today, put aside Obama, McCain and all the rest, and just think about those who are gone. They deserve it, and so do you.
Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home
So far away from home
And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it's alright, it's alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong
And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
High up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying
We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune
Oh, but it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all, I'm trying to get some rest
(written by Paul Simon circa 1973)
Another List: Top 10 Favorite Giant Monster Movies
posted monstrously on September 9 2008
Like the title says, my own personal top 10 list of giant monster movies. Enjoy, discuss, so on.
First of all, honorable mentions go to Space Amoeba, which featured three giant beasts fueled into combat by an extraterrestrial bacterium, and Frankenstein Conquers the World, in which the heart of the original Frankenstein monster grows a big huge beast and winds up fighting the underground burrowing behemoth Baragon (by the way, words beginning with "b").
10. Godzilla, the 1998 American version. Heresy! The widely-reviled Americanized version of the biggest, best giant monster of all time makes my list. There are a few reasons. For one, even if the monster in the movie CLEARLY isn't Godzilla, it's a damned fine monster design, good enough that it was later integrated into the proper Godzilla series in Japan as "Zilla" (although he basically amounted to a cameo). The movie starts quickly, not wasting your name with bullshit before getting to the HUGE FUCKING MONSTER coming out of the harbor and smashing the shit out of the city. The one complaint I have with the movie is that for the love of god it could have been shorter. I mean, seriously. I know WHY they did the "Godzilla hatchlings" scene, because it makes the danger to the protagonist much more personal AND gives them a chance to blow up Madison Square Garden, but the star of the damn show is the HUGE FUCKING MONSTER. So, you know, stick to the point.
9. King Kong, the Peter Jackson version. Glorious retelling of the 1933 landmark. Jackson throws in a lot of dinosaurs and giant bugs and shit on Skull Island to really punch things up; the Kong vs Tyrannosaurus fight is one for the ages. While Kong (and the Tyrannosaurus) aren't necessarily huge on the scale of Godzilla, barely topping 30 feet, they are still pretty amazing. Kong's rampage through '30s New York is a visual treat for monster fans.
8. Terror of Mechagodzilla. You like big monster throwdowns? You like HUGE FUCKING...uh...ROBOTS? Then this is the flick for you. Not only does it feature Mechagodzilla and the flesh-and-blood man himself, but we have the fin-headed prehistoric marauder called Titanosaurus. Ah, joy. The last of the original Godzilla run from the mid-70s, this movie isn't usually loved the way I love it, but, you know, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
I don't know why this particular column is so foul-mouthed. Just my mood, I guess.
7. The Jurassic Park trilogy. In a list of sci-fi or adventure movies, these would rank much higher. However, because the monsters within are based, more or less, on actual scientific and historic knowledge, they don't exactly tower over cities, although the second film, The Lost World, does give us a Tyrannosaurus rampaging through San Diego. My favorite scene in that movie features dinosaurs, but we don't really see them; it's when the hunting party are running through the long grass and, one by one, they're pulled under to their deaths by the velociraptors. The first movie, of course, is the best; my favorite scene there is the finale, when the enraged Tyrannosaurus hurls the velociraptor carcass away and roars its natural dominance to the sky. A close second, but more sedate, scene is the first appearance of the brachiosaurs, when the music swells and the mammoth creature rears up on its hind legs to eat from the very top of the tree and then shakes the earth as its 40 tons return to all fours. I like Jurassic Park III mainly because of the extreme love it gave to Spinosaurus, the largest land predator known to natural history.
6. Rodan. Just cool. Two Godzilla-scale pterodactyl-like creatures go absolutely berserk and fly around Japan busting things up. Their wings are so big that their flaps shatter glass! Winged creatures, in real life, give me the creeps...I freely admit that I have mottephobia, the (highly) irrational fear of moths and butterflies...but at the same time that idea of a HUGE FUCKING FLYING THING creeps me out, I can't help but root for the old boy whenever he pops up.
Mottephobia does, however, tend to make me root against Mothra.
5. Godzilla: Final Wars. Let me tell you up front that this is not a good movie. Yet I love it all the same. The 50th anniversary movie in the Godzilla saga, this movie sees our beloved behemoth thrown up against virtually ever monster he ever fought, everything from the obscure King Caesar and the giant spider Kamacuras to no less than King Ghidorah himself, with favorites like Anguirus, Ebirah, and Gigan along the way. As I said earlier, even the American "Zilla" makes an appearance, clashing with "The Big G" in Australia. Rodan makes his most visually stunning appearance to date; dispatched to New York, the massive flying beast rockets through the steel canyons of the greatest city on earth with speeds so mind-bogglingly fast that glass shatters as he goes by (the glass breaks from the sonic boom, not the flapping); he then comes to rest atop the Chrysler building, with a full moon backlighting him, and roars his animal rage up to the sky. Absolutely beautiful.
4. Cloverfield. A new way to tell a very old story, with a neat creature design and some amazing action, when the action happens to occur. I won't say too much about it since it's new enough and popular enough that some of you (such as my readership is...hey guys) may not have seen it yet but want to. But overall, thumbs up for the monster design, particularly when the creature is angered.
3. King Kong, the 1933 original. Again, not a "giant" monster in the sense of Godzilla or Rodan or the Cloverfield creature. However, though, the original is still one of the best. Not the first creature to rampage through the streets of a major city (that distinction belongs to what we then called a brontosaurus rampaging through London towards the end of 1925's The Lost World), but the first that did it so amazingly. And you rooted for him like you could never imagine yourself rooting for a monster; some 20 years after seeing the movie, I still don't know who the "good guy" is, but my more mature perspective tells me that there are no good guys or bad guys, there are only people swept up by the tide of destiny.
2. Godzilla, King of the Monsters alias Godzilla alias Gojira. Can you believe that I STILL haven't seen the original, unedited Japanese version of the film even though it's been widely available on DVD for about 3 years? Shameful! But I really haven't, so I'm used to the English-dubbed version into which the late, great Raymond Burr was edited in order to give us an American protagonist. Even if you've never seen a single Godzilla movie all the way through, you probably know the tale: A giant, lizard-like monster, standing about 400 feet tall, rises from the sea to destroy the city of Tokyo. Must destruction occurs. What you may not know is that the whole thing does serve as an interesting tale relating to the atomic bomb which, only 9 years before, we (the USA) had inflicted upon 2 of Japan's cities in order to bring World War II to an end. But Japan, beautiful, brilliant, resilient Japan, they soldiered on and they turned this all into entertainment. The scenes in Godzilla eerily echo some of the scenes out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Never mind the atomic fire the monster breathes; consider the (in the American version, fairly brief) scenes of hundreds of Japanese citizens in makeshift Army triage centers, crying out in pain and agony as they succumb to wounds and radiation poisoning, to the backdrop of a girl's choir. Think of that. Not far removed from being on the receiving end of the most horrible weapon that humanity has devised, and part of the coping progress was the popularity of this film. There's also a sense that the devastation isn't Japan's fault, nor is it one particular person or nation's fault: No, it is EVERYONE'S fault, every single man and woman on the whole planet. So if anyone thinks there's nothing to the original Godzilla film, I say fuck you, you heartless piece of shit.
1. Godzilla: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. What? Really? This movie? I bet you haven't even heard of it! But it's my favorite of the giant monster category. Why? It's got not only Godzilla but also Mothra, Baragon and...joy of joys...the 3-headed King Ghidorah himself. The film follows absolutely no established Godzilla continuity, instead setting itself up as a direct "alternate" sequel to the original movie. In this movie, almost 50 years have elapsed since Godzilla's original rampage through Tokyo, and he has not been seen since. A monster DID rampage through New York in 1998, but while Americans called it Godzilla, Japanese scientists can confirm that it was not (seriously, that's in there; another reference to our "remake"). But Godzilla is coming back, and this time he's even more pissed than viewers are accustomed to. He's not just a mindless monster; he's an utterly malevolent, vaguely demonic beast fueled by the souls of the angry Japanese dead, out to destroy the country for all her sins. But there are three mythical giant monster protectors to come to her aid; the aforementioned trio of Baragon, Mothra, and King Ghidorah. Godzilla has his hands full, and it's the monster throw-down of all time. What makes it even better is that in this film Godzilla is depicted closely to how he was in the first movie; he has no pupils, only dead white eyes like the eyes of a shark (except that shark's eyes are black); his skin isn't a bright lizardy green but a sickly, blackish green. And, again, the beauty of the picture is that Godzilla is abso-fucking-lutely pissed and he has had just about enough of your bullshit.
One day I may write a column not about the movies themselves but about my favorite giant monster "characters". This may even include Biollante, Godzilla's nemesis from 1989's obviously titled Godzilla vs Biollante, the giant plant/beast which is just a bitching looking monster design, even if the movie itself failed to deliver the goods.
So there's another list. Uh, yay?
Things I Wish I Had Written; or, Lament for New Orleans
posted August 31 2008
As yet another hurricane bears down upon New Orleans, a song, Reuben and Cherise, about the fabled city by America's greatest living poet, Robert Hunter:
Cherise was brushing her long hair gently down
It was the afternoon of Carnival
And she brushes it gently down
Reuben was strumming his painted mandolin
It was inlaid with a pretty face in jade
He played the Carnival Parade
Cherise was dressing as Pirouette in white
When a fatal vision gripped her tight
Cherise, beware tonight
"Reuben, Reuben, tell me truly true
I feel afraid and I don't know why I do
Is there another girl for you?"
"If you could see in my heart, you would know it's true
There is none, Cherise, except for you
Except for you
I swear to it on my very soul
And if I lie may I fall down cold."
The masquerade began when nightfall finally woke
Like waves against the bandstand dancers broke
To the painted mandolin
When Reuben played the painted mandolin
The breeze would pause to listen in
Before going its way again
Looking out on the crowd, who was standing there?
Sweet Ruby Claire at Reuben stared
At Reuben stared
She was dressed as Pirouette in red
And her hair hung gently down
The crowd pressed 'round, Ruby stood as though alone
Reuben's song took on a different tone
And he played it just for her
The song that he played was the Carnival Parade
Each note cut a thread of Cherise's fate
Cut through like a blade
Reuben put down the painted mandolin
When Ruby froze and turned to stone
For the strings played all alone
The voice of Cherise from the face of the mandolin
Singing "Reuben, Reuben, tell me true
For I have no one but you."
"If you could see in my heart, you would see its true
There is none, Cherise, except for you
Except for you
I swear to it on my very soul
If I lie may I fall down cold."
Ahoy, old ferryman, the riverboat of Charon ride
Although alive, take Reuben to the other side
For his sweet Cherise has died
It's a long, lonely walk from Hell to the burying ground
Cherise may return but don't you look around
For your glance would cut her down
The truth of love another song must tell
The course of love must follow blind
But Reuben looked behind
Reuben walked the streets of New Orleans 'til dawn
With the ghost of Cherise in his empty arms
And her hair hung gently down
I Saw a Werewolf Drinking a Piņa Colada at Trader Vic's...His Hair Was Perfect
posted, uh, howlingly (I'm out of puns) on August 29 2008
Okay, so, we have a little discussion going on the board about the two big horror movie remakes of 2009: The Wolf Man and Friday the 13th. The latter is more of a "reboot", perhaps, than a proper "remake", or, I don't know what. Anyway, that's not the subject of the present column.
The Wolf Man, due out in April, is directed by Joe Johnston and stars Benicio Del Toro, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Emily Blunt, and will apparently feature music by Danny Elfman. The film is the first-ever remake of the 1941 film of the same title, directed by George Waggner and starring Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Warren William, and what amounted to a cameo by Bela Lugosi. For the trivia-minded, that one had music by Hans J. Salter and Frank Skinner.
Anyway, that's all trivia. The Wolf Man wasn't the first werewolf movie; in fact, Universal Studios itself had made a completely unrelated one 6 years earlier, Werewolf of London, which starred Henry Hull and Warner "Charlie Chan" Oland. It's probably the earliest werewolf movie that still exists; there was apparently one in 1913 simply called The Werewolf, but that's been lost (from what I've read) for almost 85 years. This pretty much sets the stage for all the ones that came for many, many years after.
Chaney's Wolf Man hit theaters in 1941, as Chaney was being pushed as the next big horror star. He was given the role of the Frankenstein Monster in Ghost of Frankenstein in 1942 and that same year took up the role of the Mummy, beginning with The Mummy's Tomb, the third in Universal's Mummy series (although only the second of the connective narrative; they don't really follow on a whole lot from 1931's Karloff classic). And, in '43, he played Dracula, although the movie was called Son of Dracula, nothing in the film suggests that the character is, in fact, the scion of Dracula rather than the man himself; nothing negates the idea, either, so who knows.
That's a classic Why Not? Tangent, by the way.
Anyhow, after the '41 original, Chaney would play Lawrence (more commonly Larry) Talbot, the Wolf Man, a total of four more times. The first was in '43, when the character tangled with the Frankenstein monster (played this time out by no less than Bela Lugosi himself!) in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. The next year, he did double duty, playing him in both House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, both of which featured the Wolf Man alongside Dracula (played by John Carradine) and the Frankenstein monster (played by Glenn Strange). After that, it was a brief hiatus before the classic Universal monsters made their last bow on the screen in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Again, Chaney played the Wolf Man (as he was the only actor to do so) against Strange's Frankenstein monster and, in a wonderful treat, Bela Lugosi's final screen performance as Count Dracula himself. This ended the Universal horror saga (unless one counts the Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy of the '50s) and Chaney, nor anyone else, ever played the Larry Talbot Wolf Man again.
As a brief sidestep, the Wolf Man is unlike Dracula and Frankenstein in that it is not based on a classic novel or story, but rather on the general long-standing myths and legends of, well, werewolves. As such, there is no real "source material" to compare to; The Wolf Man became the gold standard by being the best of the werewolf movies at the time.
Another notable werewolf of the '40s is featured in the Bela Lugosi film The Return of the Vampire from 1944. This was made by Columbia Pictures, not Universal, and although they were obviously working on Lugosi's fame as Dracula, the returning vampire in this film is "Armand Tesla" (apparently they feared that Universal owned the rights to Dracula, which isn't the case; in the United States, nobody does). Tesla has a werewolf assistant, Andreas (played by Matt Willis), who, in a twist, is able to speak comprehensible English whilst in his werewolf form. Andreas the werewolf is also only a werewolf by virtue of being magically controlled by Tesla the vampire.
There has never been a lack of werewolf movies, but there has usually been a lack of good ones. A notable film from the '50s featuring the werewolf concept is 1957's I Was a Teenage Werewolf, starring Michael Landon as the werewolf. This set off a series of movies with the phrase "I Was a Teenage..." something in the title.
1961 saw the next great werewolf classic, Hammer film's The Curse of the Werewolf, based on the 1933 novel Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore. This film starred Oliver Reed as the werewolf, was directed by Hammer mainstay Terrence Fisher, and is the only Hammer film to star a werewolf creature, despite Hammer's proclivity for sequels.
The '60s also gave us one of the most enduring werewolf characters: Count Waldemar Daninsky, always portrayed by Spanish actor Paul Naschy (whose real name is Jacinto Molina). The first film, La Marca del Hombre-Lobo (truthfully translated as "Mark of the Wolfman") is available here on DVD as Frankenstein's Bloody Terror, despite having nothing to do whatsoever with Frankenstein. The overall classic of the Daninsky saga is La Noche de Walpurgis (translated as "Walpurgis Night"), best known, at least in its restored and uncensored version, as Werewolf Shadow, and is the one I'd recommend without hesitation. Other installments include...let's just go with their US names now...the pretty good Curse of the Devil, the pretty bad Assignment Terror, the surprisingly entertaining Fury of the Wolfman, and Night of the Werewolf. In all, there are 12 in the series, one of which is a lost film (meaning no print survives) and most of which aren't available in the USA. All in all, an enduring and colorful part of werewolf film history.
I haven't seen it so I can't say much about it, but 1974 brought us The Beast Must Die, which starred horror icon Peter Cushing. The whole premise of the story is that the characters and the audience alike don't know who the werewolf is, and everyone has to figure it out before the big reveal. There's even supposed to be a break where the audience is to discuss their theory as to the wolf's identity. It's on DVD, one of these days I'll see it.
In 1977 author Gary Brandner published a horror novel, The Howling, centered around werewolves, and the following year he wrote a sequel novel, succinctly entitled Howling II. In 1981, Joe Dante directed a film loosely based on the original novel, using the same name, and it's generally pretty well-regarded. However, this unleashed a slew of sequels, most of which had nothing to do with one another. The second one, known here usually as Howling II (but not based on the same-named novel) also bears the names Howling II: Stirba, Werewolf Bitch and Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf. It stars Christoper Lee, although he doesn't like to admit that, and only bears relation to the first in that is said that the main character is the brother of the main character in the original. Following on that came Howling III: The Marsupials, which I have never seen despite it being the only Howling film in my DVD collection (really). From what I know, the basic set-up here is that while in Europe they have werewolves, in Australia they have were-Tasmanian tiger-wolves (yikes). Next up was Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, which is supposed to have remained faithful to the original novel; Howling V: The Rebirth, said to bear more similarity to The Beast Must Die than anything else; Howling VI: The Freaks, which sees a werewolf and a vampire at loggerheads in a traveling freak show; and, at long last, Howling: New Moon Rising, which apparently attempted to tie some of those sequels together. All in all, what started out promising became kind of a big mess.
Also in '81 came An American Werewolf in London, a dark comedy by John Landis. Like The Howling, this started an interesting (and, to me, somewhat disappointing) trend in werewolf movies wherein the creature is far more wolf than man, usually hitting all fours and the whole bit. A kinda-sequel came out in 1997, An American Werewolf in Paris, but it turned out that the main difference was that people liked the first one.
In 1983, Stephen King released a beautifully illustrated short novel, Cycle of the Werewolf, chronicling one year in a town with a werewolf and the beast's appearance with each full moon. In 1985, this was adapted into the movie Silver Bullet, starring Corey Haim and Gary Busey.
1985 was a big year at the movies for werewolves; this also saw one of the more noteworthy and bearable werewolf-related comedies, Teen Wolf, starring Michael J. Fox. There isn't much throat-ripping or foggy-graveyard-stalking, but there is basketball and an '80s teen movie bad guy. It's a classic of the distinctly '80s genre known as "the '80s movie". This spawned a sequel, Teen Wolf Too starring Jason Bateman, and, briefly, a cartoon.
1987's The Monster Squad, which also falls in the unique genre of "'80s movie", featured a werewolf alongside Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, a mummy, and "Gill-Man", meant to be the Creature from the Black Lagoon. After years and years of languishing as a distant memory, this movie came out on DVD recently, but I haven't gotten it or rewatched it, largely from fear of spoiling my childhood memories of it.
1994 gave us another big, promising werewolf feature: Wolf, starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer and James Spader. It's been a really long time since I saw this movie last and except for an amusing scene involving urine I don't really remember much about it, which I think tells you how it turned out in the long run. Disappointing, especially considering Nicholson's presence.
The next big movie to feature werewolves was 2003's Underworld, starring the lovely Kate Beckinsale. The whole set-up here is an ongoing vampire/werewolf war. It already had one sequel, Underworld: Evolution, and another is apparently in productions.
2004 gave us (also starring Kate Beckinsale!), Van Helsing, yet another big "monster mash". Amongst others, a "Wolf Man" features into the story.
Through all this, you'll notice one thing: Never, ever, anywhere, did Lawrence Talbot and/or the story of the 1941 Wolf Man ever come up again. Ever. So, for all that stuff, for all the werewolf movies I've mentioned and for countless others, never once has the gold standard ever been remade before.
But now, finally, the werewolf subgenre has come as close as it possibly can to full circle (unless someone decides to remake Werewolf of London, which I doubt) as the new version comes out next year.
So there you go. Another lengthy genre history lesson for you. Thanks for reading!
Now listening: Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor (performed by Lorin Maazel and the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin
Now reading: Day of the Dead by George A. Romero (the original script, available as a PDF file on the 2-disc DVD edition)
Last movie watched: The Return of the Vampire
Comics: The Top Five Most Disappointing Moments
posted comically on August 27 2008
What the title says. My little list of the five most disappointing moments in comics. This usually means lots of buildup with little payoff. Take a look.
5. Armageddon 2001. Done back in 1991, DC had a whole big plot featuring a future dictator named The Monarch, who was supposed to ruin the future and was supposed to be a superhero of the (then) present. The word somehow got out that The Monarch was going to wind up being Captain Atom (the inspiration being Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen); once it did, DC had to switch it up and it wound up being Hawk of the heroic duo Hawk and Dove. This was a big letdown, as Hawk was kind of a minor character. He was barely ever The Monarch before he became the time-traveling villain Extant, who wound up being a crony for Parallax in Zero Hour, although at least he did get to make his mark: He killed off almost half of the Justice Society of America, including the Hourman. Ultimately, he in turn was killed off by Atom Smasher in the revamped JSA a few years down the line.
4. The Eradicator. This is only my personal peeve. Most people probably don't even care. The almost year-long Death of Superman storyline, which saw four pretenders to the throne pop up, brought forth a character called The Eradicator, the human-like manifestation of a Kryptonian artifact that manifested itself in the Fortress of Solitude once the true Superman breathed his last after his titanic battle with the monstrous Doomsday. The Eradicator was half Superman, half Punisher; although he carried on the Man of Tomorrow's legacy, he did so in spectacularly violent fashion. What could have been an interesting DC comics regular ultimately wound up a scarred freak who gave his life so that the one, true Superman could regain his powers, and attempts to use the character after have been, at best, feeble.
3. The Return of Norman Osborn. In the '60s, when Peter Parker graduated high school, he went to college and met a guy who was destined to become his best friend, Harry Osborn. Harry's father was the fabulously rich industrialist, Norman Osborn. But it ultimately turned out that Norman harbored a terrible secret: He was, in truth, the insane arch-criminal, the Green Goblin. Ultimately, Peter (as Spider-Man) and the Green Goblin had a final battle on the Brooklyn Bridge that resulted in the death of Peter's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, and the Goblin himself, impaled (as in the 2002 movie) by his own glider. Later on, there was a pretender Goblin, and then the Hobgoblin, and then Harry himself became the Goblin, ultimately succumbing to his drug use (both recreational and the drugs that made him the Green Goblin). Later on, it turned out that the Peter Parker we knew and loved had been "a clone" and that a guy named Ben Reilly was "really" Peter Parker; so Peter left New York with Mary Jane Watson and stopped being Spider-Man, allowing Ben to do the web-slinging. But later on still, it turned out that all this was a mind game played by Norman Osborn himself, who (it was said) had never really died, but had waited for years in order to mess with Peter. The clone, Ben, turned out to be really the clone, and the Peter Parker we all knew and love was, as ever, the Spider-Man we rooted for. But to get out of this quagmire, the writers had to undo the fantastic finale of Norman Osborn (it was never planned that way, from the start; it had to be done to end the whole mess), and thus the return of Norman Osborn was just a big cop-out.
2. The Return of Captain Marvel. When, in 2006, Marvel Comics had their big "Civil War", in which heroes fought heroes over a new law that required masked, superpowered people to reveal their identities to the federal government in a "registration" scenario, the big shock was that the extradimensional prison for superpowered beings was being supervised by Captain Marvel, the alien hero (of the Kree race) who had been thought dead since (in real time) 1982. There was a huge buildup; a promotional image was released (it can be found way down on this page) of the Captain's insignia with simply the phrase "The Return"; the initial story that revealed that Captain Marvel was with us yet again was barely 16 pages long. Then, a miniseries followed; a miniseries that revealed that the good Captain wasn't actually back from the grave, or even "displaced in time" (as the character himself thought) but was, actually, a sleeper agent for the shape-shifting alien Skrull empire. So Captain Marvel remains dead. This was supposed to be a huge moment. I remember going to my comic book store and talking to the guys who worked there about it. None of us ever uttered the words "Captain Marvel"; I asked them "What do the customers think about him returning?" and they had their answers, always referring to the character as "he" or "him", knowing full well we all knew what the other meant. It was a beautiful moment that was shattered by the cop-out revelation that ultimately followed, leading up to the present "big event" storyline, Secret Invasion.
1. There were a lot of contenders for this spot. I considered placing the "Peter Parker reveals his secret identity, but oh wait he makes a deal with 'the devil' (Mephisto) to undo it" here, but I'd place that 6th if I was going further than five spots. But the moment that let me, personally, down the most was the very end of Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men. At long last, we had the return of the Phoenix and then, in rapid succession, the death of Magneto. The very, very final death of Magneto. As it turned out, Magneto used his powers to give Jean Grey, the Phoenix, a stroke which killed her; in his rage, Wolverine popped his claws and decapitated Magneto. They even had a panel where Magneto's head, still in his iconic helmet, rolled off down the street. Magneto was gone. Headless. Finished. Dead. After forty years, it was over. The greatest enemy the X-Men had ever faced, the archvillain of archvillains, had died, and (although I personally wished Cyclops had done it) Wolverine had been the man who'd finally had the guts to do what Professor X hadn't. But it was barely four months (Grant Morrison was no longer writing X-Men by then) before they revealed it was a Magneto impersonator, and that the real Magneto was alive and well and even partially rehabilitated from his evil ways, living in seclusion on the devastated mutant island of Genosha. It later turned out that Magneto was driven mad yet again by the events of the House of M storyline (which saw his daughter, the Scarlet Witch, attempt to rearrange reality to her liking), and has been rarely seen since, but what it all comes down to is that I and thousands of other X-fans were robbed and screwed out of what could have been a glorious, spectacular, and definitive finish to the story that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had started in 1963.
So there you go. Another random list that helped me kill some time. Hope you enjoyed it!
A Minor Update
posted about 20 minutes later on August 25 2008
I posted in the last article that my "now listening" was the Final Descent album by Samhain (the second band featuring metal innovator Glenn Danzig, who later produced, with his self-titled band, the early-90's classic "Mother"). Since that time, I have finished listening to that album and have moved on to what I deem their masterpiece, November Coming Fire. I would like to urge everybody who read the last article to somehow, some way find a copy of November Coming Fire and experience, at their finest, Samhain. If you like hard rock music, you will thank me. November Coming Fire is, in my meager opinion, nothing short of brilliant (at least in the realm of hard rock music).
All This Horror Business
posted on August 25 2008
I may have mentioned this last year, but as a horror fanatic I basically start "preparing" for Halloween about this time each year. The weather's not that cool yet, but still, I have preparations to make.
Basically, this entails rewatching my favorite horror movies. There are so many of them that if I don't start now I won't get them all done by October 31. My ideal "Halloween season" includes a rewatching of Romero's original "Dead" trilogy...Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. I have just recently found myself in possession of a copy of the recent straight-to-DVD remake of Day of the Dead, starring Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon and Ving Rhames. Despite the latter's presence, it is not a sequel to Zach Snyder's somewhat respectable remake of Dawn of the Dead. I'll let you know how that works out for me. I hope it works out better than the (uch) questionable "sequel" to Day of the Dead, the also-direct-to-DVD Day of the Dead 2: Contagium ("Contagium", incidentally, is not a real word...I believe they were looking for "Contagion").
Also included in this movie spree is a full survey of the entire Universal Horror Continuity, namely the glorious Frankenstein saga (the 1931 original with Karloff and its sequels Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein and the coulda-shoula-woulda last gasp, House of Dracula) as well as the sorta-kinda Dracula saga (the superb Lugosi original, also from '31, as well as the Dracula's Daughter and the underrated Lon Chaney Jr. vehicle Son of Dracula). By extension, this includes the stand-alone five-part Mummy saga. From there I go into the Hammer Films version of theses sagas (including my beloved Dracula Has Risen from the Grave). I also like to watch the original five Michael Myers Halloween films (I always skip Halloween III: Season of the Witch, because it's just a bizarre sidestep that doesn't belong in the pantheon). Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers features some beautiful acting by Donald Pleasance, the underrated character actor who has since left us.
This year, I also want to work in Jesus "Jess" Franco's splendid 1970 Count Dracula, the movie that makes me cry simply because it almost, by a hair's breadth, featured Christopher Lee's iconic portrayal of Dracula against Vincent Price as Van Helsing (Herbert Lom, who performed very capably, ultimately wound up in the role) and also, if my stomach will permit me, a viewing of Cannibal Holocaust, which is a true horror film in the sense that it is quite horrific (if I ever meet Ruggero Deodato, I will punch him in the mouth for what he did to that beautiful turtle in that movie).
It is, relatively speaking, a long way until October 31st and like every year it's quite the film marathon for me to get there. My ideal finale to all this is to view Lugosi's Dracula on October 31st itself, with a listen to Welles' brilliant The War of the Worlds on October 30 (celebrating its 70th anniversary this year) as well a viewing of the original Halloween.
Horror is a big thing for me; I like to think that I'm a writer or horror stories (I worship at an altar called The Dunwich Horror, a story by the grand master himself, H. P. Lovecraft ["Some day you folks'll hear a child of Lavinny's a-callin' its father's name"]) and therefore I take this stuff very, very seriously. You can see, I hope, why this is all of the utmost importance to me. I hope to start as soon as tomorrow with a viewing of the 1961 Oliver Reed classic Curse of the Werewolf, a film I have not viewed in nearly 15 years or more, probably closer to 17.
Anyway. Some pondering on horror, the genre I love best. It's never too early to prepare for Halloween; the ghouls and the restless spirits do not wait for October, and neither should you or I.
Now listening: Samhain, Final Descent
Now reading: The Waste Lands, Stephen King
Last movie viewed: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
My Response to the Obama/Biden Candidacy
posted politically on August 24 2008
Vote Barr/Root in 2008!
Criss Angel: Mindfella
posted magically on August 6 2008
I'm watching the new episode of Criss Angel: Mindfreak, and this episode is dedicated to converting Criss's "skeptics". These guys got themselves on TV by holding forth the opinion (apparently on websites) that Criss Angel isn't really doing the things he says he does. One guy declares that he thinks he could figure out how he does it. Another guy says that the tricks are done with mirrors and wires. These guys got on TV...
For figuring out why they're called "magic tricks".
Congratulations, idiots. You've grasped the basic concept of a showman!
Next step: Coming to terms with the fact that cookies aren't really made by elves that live in a tree.
Talking Comics: Squadron Supreme
posted supremely at 6:25 pm on July 25 2008
A lot of you have probably seen the trailer for Watchmen by now, and I'm sure some of you have read the book. What you probably know is that it's the ultimate "deconstruction" of the superhero genre. It takes the characters down from their virtuous archetypes and portrays them as normal, highly fallible human beings. Watchmen has been discussed far and wide, probably better than I ever could. One of the great things about the book, most readers agree, are the philosophical questions raised, questions which to this day I haven't quite answered satisfactorily in my head.
A similar work that came out roughly around the same time was Marvel's Squadron Supreme, which like Watchmen was a 12 issue series dealing with a group of characters that were disguised and altered versions of preexisting characters. In the case of Watchmen, they were the somewhat obscure Charlton Comics characters which DC had acquired; for instance, Nite-Owl was based on the Blue Beetle, Dr. Manhattan on Captain Atom, and Silk Spectre on the Phantom Lady.
Squadron Supreme took its springboard off a group of characters intentionally created as disguised versions of the Justice League, for use as opponents to the Avengers. The impervious leader of the Squadron, Hyperion, is clearly patterned on Superman; the playboy-turned-avenger Nighthawk on Batman, and the immortal goddess-like Power Princess on Wonder Woman, and so on.
In the capable and dedicated hands of the late Mark Gruenwald, these characters were shaped into something greater than their original intent (again, as short-lived JLA parodies for the Avengers to face). Since the Squadron was known to live on an Earth separate from the one of the Avengers, and the characters were not part of the regular Marvel Universe, Gruenwald could do whatever the hell he wanted to do with them. And so he did.
The series begins with the Squadron, seeing their world in nearly irreperable disarray, deciding that the only way to set things right with the world was to control it. So the Squadron simply announce that they're taking over the United States; who could stop them even if they tried? While some members have reservations, only Nighthawk protests to the point that he resigns; he sees this as tyranny with pretty face. Ultimately, it turns out he's right.
One of the more interesting characters is Tom Thumb, a little person who possesses possibly the greatest scientific intellect on the planet. Thumb is enthusiastic about this new direction; he sees this as a chance to use science to cure all the world's ills. I don't know Gruenwald's intent for the character, as he is invariably portrayed symphatically, but upon my current rereading of the series I found Thumb to the be the most profoundly evil character in the entire series. So convinced that what he's doing is right, he never even stops to think of how horribly he is using his intellect. Gruenwald doesn't explore it; when the character leaves the stage, he does so sympathetically. But Thumb is a man, perhaps driven by his feelings of inferiority to all the "normal-sized" people he's surrounded with, who rarely take him as seriously as they do one another, that he creates appaling machines of tyranny that undermine the basic human situation. First, he creates the Behavior Modification machine, which they use to erase criminal behavior from the minds of evildoers. The morality of this machine's use is a central point of the series; however, for some reason Gruenwald never seems to blame Thumb for the hideousness of this device, and, again, the character ultimately escapes his just retribution. Later, Thumb creates the Hibernacula, which is basically cryonic preservation--freezing a body until such a time that the cause of death can be cured or reversed. Thumb's unstated motivation for this? His own cancer. Again, Gruenwald (either puzzlingly or cleverly) chooses to depict Thumb as a sympathetic character; as you can see, it's not so far a leap to see him as immoral and self-serving.
The Nighthawk-Hyperion relationship is, naturally, very similar to the Batman-Superman relationship; Hyperion doesn't truly know what it means to be a human (there's a throwaway line towards the end of the series that states that Hyperion, genetically, is human enough to have children) whereas Nighthawk, with no powers, knows it all too well. Nighthawk, tellingly, does what Hyperion doesn't realize the Squadron is doing all along and compromises all his principles in order to stop the Squadron, his former friends; he teams with the Master Menace and the former Institute of Evil to find a way to undo the Behavior Modification and to bring down the Squadron from inside.
Just as Tom Thumb is a character so intrisically vile and yet is consistently and perfectly portrayed as good, the Hyperion-Nighthawk relationship is also a brilliant contrast study. As Hyperion does good through evil, so does Nighthawk; you'd think this would put them on the same track, but it doesn't. What we know all along, though, is that Hyperion's evil is the greater of the two; Nighthawk compromises a few personal morals whereas Hyperion blatantly and arrogantly ignores the morals of an entire world, convinced that "they'll come around when they see the good we've done". Tellingly, the last time the Squadron is faced with the public, there are still people protesting their so-called "good works".
Hyperion's singlemindedness leads him not only to lose a number of friends, both to death and to irreperable differences, but to the loss of his own sight. At the end we have a character brought utterly low...he may have found love, but here is a blind man with any number of dead friends and the realization that his grand scheme has been a pile of lies and crimes.
I guess what ultimately comes to light from Squadron Supreme is pretty similar to what we walk away from after having read Watchmen: In the world of good guys and bad guys, there are no good guys, only varying degrees of bad guys. Watchmen ends on a note of uncertainty whereas Squadron Supreme ends on a note of optimism that we, the readers, deserve but none of the characters do: The birth of a new life. Here, too, though, there is an uncertainty not as obvious as the one in Watchmen: This child, being the child of a member of the diehard Squadron Supreme which took over the world to enforce its vision of right, could very well wind up being the one to begin the vicious cycle all over again.
As I said before, I can't speak to Gruenwald's intent; given that it's written in the breezy fun Marvel style of the era, he may have just wanted to tell a memorable superhero story. Maybe he didn't see things the way I see things in his story. I hope he realized that the brilliance of his finished product was all the different ways you could view it when you were done. You can see it as a morality play; as an immorality play, as I do; or, again, you could see it one hell of a good superhero story.
Now listening: The Grateful Dead live on 6/9/91 from Hebron, OH
Now reading: The Waste Lands, Stephen King
Last movie: The Dark Knight
15 Easy Batman Facts for People Who Don't Read Comics
posted darkly on July 18 2008
So I thought since everyone and their cousin Nancy is seeing The Dark Knight this weekend (apologies if you actually have a cousin Nancy), I figured that I, who have spent countless potentially productive hours reading comic books, would kill some time and share with you a few fun and interesting Batman facts to enhance your enjoyment. Although I have already seen the movie twice, and recommend it wholeheartedly, there is nothing remotely resembling a spoiler herein, so read away.
1. The stuff you might know: Batman was created by Bob Kane, with a hearty assist by writer Bill Finger, and he first appeared in the 27th issue (dated May 1939) of Detective Comics; he was one of several features in the comic, but he was the cover feature. His boy sidekick, Robin, was introduced almost a year later, in issue 38. Detective Comics remains in monthly publication today, and having started in 1937, is America's (and possibly the world's) longest continually published comics periodical.
2. Although Batman is usually depicted as having a code against killing criminals and enemies, that wasn't always the case. In the first year or so of stories, Batman is seen killing (almost indiscriminately!) evildoers of all kinds, and is also briefly seen to carry a gun. Robin, despite being an 8 year old boy (as that early depiction had him; he was later pushed up to about 12), also did not have this code; in at least one issue the Boy Wonder throws some wrongdoers to their deaths off the roof of a building.
3. Batman was first depicted onscreen in 1943 in a serial feature (a series of short films, usually 12 to 15 episodes, all tying together to make one story). He was played by Lewis Wilson. Another series, entitled Batman and Robin, unconnected to the first, followed in 1949. Therein the character was played by Robert Lowery.
4. Batman's first recurring major recurring nemesis was Professor Hugo Strange. The most famous, the Joker, originally appeared in the first issue of Batman's solo comic (obviously titled just "Batman") in the Spring of 1940.
5. Notably, the Joker has been played onscreen by the late Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill...yes, THAT Mark Hamill (who provided the character's voice in Batman: The Animated Series in the 1990s, as well as the associated theatrical animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm), and, of course most recently, the late Heath Ledger.
6. The Batman's "number two" nemesis, the Penguin, debuted in the 58th issue of Detective Comics, in 1941. Lacking what the Joker does not...a set "real name", Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot...the modern comics portrayal of the Penguin usually has it that he is the one recurring "Bat-villain" who is sane.
7. Although now considered a primary Bat-villain, Two-Face was barely a featured player for the first 20 or so years of his existence. During the family-friendly "Adam West Era" of the '60s, the character, due to his grotesque deformity, didn't appear at all, but was resurrected when the comics took a turn towards darker material in the '70s.
8. There have been, to date, three characters to officially use the alias of Robin. The first, Dick Grayson, was eventually aged into young adulthood, when he gave up the title and became the adult hero Nightwing. The second, Jason Todd, had a short and troubled existence and was ultimately murdered by the Joker. The third, Tim Drake, presently holds the title, although he was briefly replaced by the only female Robin, Stephanie Brown. In Frank Miller's "possible future" story The Dark Knight Returns, set when Batman is in his 50s, there is another female Robin, Carrie Kelly, although whether she winds up "actually existing" in the character's official history remains to be seen.
9. Besides Bruce Wayne, two characters have briefly taken up the identity of Batman. The first was Jean-Paul Valley, the anti-hero previously known as Azrael, who given the identity by Bruce Wayne when Wayne was grievously injured by the villain Bane, and was thought to have been permanently disabled (although, naturally, he recovered). The second was the original Robin, Dick Grayson, who took the title once he'd reached adulthood when Bruce Wayne briefly opted to retire.
10. Batman and Superman are often depicted as being good friends in the comics series; they have shared their secret identities with one another, and often team up to face menaces together. However, there have been times when they have been at odds. In the legendary 1986 story The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller (of 300 and Sin City they fight and although ultimately the battle ends in a stalemate, when the aging Bruce Wayne suffers a heart attack, it is shown that Batman (with help from the Green Arrow and some kryptonite) is able to beat Superman despite the latter's otherworldly strength and invulnerability.
11. Batman has a number of "nicknames", similar to how Superman is referred to as the Man of Steel. These included the Dark Knight, the Caped Crusader, the World's Greatest Detective, and the Dark Knight Detective. Teamed with Robin, they are often referred to as the Dynamic Duo.
12. Batman has had a number of love interests in the comics. In an alternate universe called Earth-2, Bruce Wayne ultimately settled down with Selina Kyle, who is secretly Catwoman. They both realized their mutual attraction and ultimately married (in this alternate world) when they retired. In the regular world, Batman has also had flirtations with Catwoman but usually refuses to be with her until she gives up her criminal ways. Bruce Wayne has also been associated with reporter Vicki Vale, as seen in 1989's Tim Burton film, although she has been in the comics dating back to the 1948; socialite Julie Madison, his first main love interest, dating back to his 4th appearance; bodyguard Sasha Bordeaux (who later becomes one of the leaders of the international spy organization Checkmate); Rachel Caspian, who appears in the storyline Batman: Year Two and shares some fleeting similarities with the movies' Rachel Dawes; socialite Silver St. Cloud, one of the few to put together on her own that Bruce Wayne and Batman are the same man; psychic doctor Shondra Kinsolving, who aided in Bruce's rehabilitation after his back was broken by Bane; and Talia al Ghul, the daughter of recurring villain Ra's al Ghul.
13. The Joker has been thought dead a number of times in the comics, always ultimately being revealed to have escaped death. His most significant "deaths" include his second appearance, which was originally slated to be his final appearance until an editor suggested otherwise; his seeming electrocution and subsequent plunge from a skyscraper in Detective Comics issue 476, a story which influenced the 1989 movie; and, following on the heels of his murder of the second Robin, his shooting and subsequent fall from a helicopter in Batman issue 429.
14. Batman is a main member of the Justice League of America and is considered one of the "Big Seven" of DC Comics heroes. That seven also includes Superman, Wonder Woman, the Green Lantern, the Flash, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter. Interestingly enough, Batman is not a founding member of the original Justice League, which featured all of those heroes EXCEPT Superman and Batman.
15. When the heroes of DC Comics met the heroes of Marvel Comics (which features characters including Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Hulk), Batman is forced to fight Captain America. Captain America ultimately concedes defeat, acknowledging Batman as the superior fighter.
So there you go. Hope you enjoyed them, and if you see the movie, you can maybe nod your head and say "Yeah, that's just like the comics" without having to have spent the last 20 or so years reading those comics like I did. Enjoy!
Top 25 Metal Bands
posted on June 20 2008
I read this list on Yahoo today, where this guy gives his opinion of what the top 25 metal acts of all time are. I disagree with a lot of it, but I'm not here to pick apart that guy's list, except to say that (A) just because someone was influential on a particular style of music doesn't mean he was IN that style of music (he includes Hendrix on his metal list; like his contemporaries, my beloved Grateful Dead, I believe Hendrix is almost a genre unto himself, almost all of it good) and (B) you don't HAVE to include acts nobody's heard of to prove you know more about music than your readers. Although, chances are, I'm doing that, but I'm not rubbing it in (and, incidentally, I know of Procul Harum, douchebag). Also, he left off Megadeth, which is unforgivable. Yes, I just said he had a bad opinion. Well, you know, so what.
As a preface, I want to say that metal suffers from something that I haven't found in a lot of other genres; over-categorization. You can't POSSIBLY like Slayer and Mortician; Mortician is "brutal death metal" and Slayer is merely "thrash metal". Old Anthrax is "speed metal" and Iron Maiden are "power metal" and Manowar is "epic metal" and whatever other crap. Horseshit, I say. It's all metal; the only ethos (praise be to Motorhead) is EVERYTHING LOUDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE. Rock hard, rock long, rock out. We're all on the same boat, otherwise.
(Incidentally, Slayer is on this list; Mortician, bless 'em, are not. I dig Mortician because after listening to one of their albums straight through I feel like I've just been standing by a jet turbine for that length of time and am usually noticeably more tired than I was beforehand; as far as great art, well, no, they are not. Then again, there are those who will argue that metal is never great art; I think these people are douchebags, too.)
I'm only doing 20, personally. For one thing, I can't think of 5 other bands; secondly, well, it's my page, I can do whatever I want, and only like four people will read it anyway.
Here endeth the prologue; commence with the listing.
20. Manowar. No, really. Although you'll get less cheese in a block of Velveeta than you will from one of their albums, Manowar is here for a reason you'll see a lot on this list: For doing what they've always done and fuck all y'all. Once actually on record as the loudest band on the planet, Manowar, for all their ridiculous anthems about running into battle wearing a loincloth and hefting a 10-foot-long broadsword, Manowar will pound your puny fucking head into the ground with their brand of shameless over-the-top metal madness. Sadly, on at least one occasion, they've ACTUALLY worn loincloths on an album cover.
19. Blind Guardian. Blind Guardian are often called "epic metal" and I think the reason is that they do songs that tell tales of epic battles, of the struggle between good and evil, tales of ancient civilizations and myths. They've done songs on topics ranging from The Lord of the Rings (doing a whole album, Nightfall in Middle Earth, based on the Rings-related Tolkien novel The Silmarillion) to the dying thoughts of Judas Iscariot. Their influences range, noticeably, from Iron Maiden to classical operatic composer Richard Wagner. One of their finest moments is a literally thrilling 14-minute epic song about The Iliad, from the perspective of the losing Trojans, which is so good that I'm going to go get it and listen to it to finish writing this column.
18. HammerFall: You are missing out when you are missing HammerFall. HammerFall is, and I say this with love and affection, full-bore, ham-fisted, lift-your-arms-and-yell-to-Odin metal, and they love it, and you love them for loving it. They love metal, they love their fans, they love doing what they do, and it shows, literally, in every second of every album they've ever done. Guitar Hero III players: You know DragonForce, at the end? "Through the Fire and Flames"? HammerFall was already rocking that sound the world over when that band, then known as Dragonheart, had their demo on Napster (I know, because I downloaded it!).
17: Deep Purple. Only this far down because they are more "proto-metal" or "anthro-metal" than true metal. However, their influence is undeniable, and they reamin a totally awesome band despite a mind-boggling number of line-up changes. Ritchie Blackmore, man, even if he's not with the band now, what a guitar player. Deep Purple's roots reach deep and far throughout metal even today.
16: Danzig. Just Danzig; more to come later here, too. Again, Danzig's got to get some credit for just keeping it going the way he's always done, despite a few tinges of a sort of Nine Inch Nails thing creeping in once in a while. Not his best work, though, despite the success of "Mother" and the moments of greatness on the album "4"; this should be a hint as to what you'll see later.
15: Death. From the early, "you're not man enough for THIS shit" grinding metal to the later, introspective, more sprawling metal (still with the rumbly, growly vocals, though), Death is hard to deny. Whether "death metal" is your deal or not, there's no denying that when Death founder and leading light Chuck Schuldiner died of cancer a few years back, metal lost a very good friend.
14: Iced Earth. Founder and leader Jon Schaffer loves metal. He loves it so much he once hurt himself headbanging to the point that he needed SURGERY. Fuck you, this guy is metal. He goes through line-up changes about as often as Danzig does, but he always finds the best. When his long-time vocalist, Matt Barlow, left for personal reasons, he got no less than Tim "Ripper" Owens, who'd been the lead singer for Judas Priest during Rob Halford's absence. This band is metal to the core, with clear influences going back to Iron Maiden. Schaffer writes the vast majority of the band's work and can pull off epic song cycles or straightforward thrashers with equal skill. I once called Iced Earth "the best metal band you're not listening to." If you want metal, it's past time that you started listening.
13:Ozzy Osbourne, the solo works. It's obvious, isn't it? The Godfather of Metal (he prefers the appellation "Prince of Darkness") rocks out. Not as groundbreaking and flawless as his Sabbath stuff, but still some of the finest stuff going.
12: Helloween. Mock them if you will, deny them if you dare, but nothing says clenched-fist metal power like a Helloween album. From the epic, operatic tracks of early albums including both of the original "Keeper of the Seven Keys" releases, to the crunchier but equally epic newer stuff like "The Dark Ride", Helloween is keeping a nice, shiny polish on the metal.
11: The Misfits/Samhain. Glenn Danzig's two bands prior to the one named after himself. However, I feel these two bands are sufficiently different from the later "Danzig" band to put them here, and I didn't want to cop out and just put "everything Glenn Danzig's ever done" as one entry. So I did it as two. Everyone reading this probably knows the Misfits, if by the t-shirts only. The Misfits were a pioneering punk band, rocking out in suburban New Jersey and writing catchy punk songs about B horror movies and sometimes dancing with darker, grosser themes (the infamous song "Bullet", in which ol' Glenn implores Jackie Kennedy to give him oral pleasure now that John Kennedy's head is all over the street). But, seriously, some catchy, catchy songs. Samhain was a littler harder, a little more metal. Their albums are sometimes hard to find, going out of print for years at a time. Because of this, I once read somebody's opinion (I don't know who) that "the legend of Samhain was better than the actual band". Not so at all. Having heard the whole discography (something said opinion giver didn't believe people had done), I believe that Samhain is some damned good stuff. I just don't know if you call it metal, punk, hard rock, or what.
10. Slayer. Metal that kicks your ass. Metal that doesn't like you, you pencil-necked geek. From masterpieces such as the Reign in Blood album to just damned good albums as God Hates Us All, Slayer just keeps kicking ass. And they can still scare your mother after almost a quarter of a century.
9. Dio. The Voice of Metal. Now, there's a few claimants to that title, and they are all coming up on this list, but Dio, to me, wins the title. I can hear his SPEAKING voice and think of metal. And what songs he's given us in his solo work: "Last in Line", "Rainbow in the Dark", "I Could Have Been a Dreamer", "We Rock", and the anthemic, iconic "Holy Diver". Pure metal goodness. It sounds good, and it's good for you. Dio is sadly one of the only people besides myself who like to remind the world that it was he who brought "the horns" \m/ into metal music. Now, though, they've lost the power of rock. I'm fairly certain I've seen Hannah Montana throw the horns, and I know for a fact that Jennifer Love Hewitt throws them in a commercial for underwear. Someday, we shall have our horns back, and we shall throw them up in salute to Ronnie James Dio, as they were meant to be used.
8: Led Zeppelin. Why so far down? There was just so much of what they did that doesn't fit the definition of metal, but when they ventured into metal territory..."Kashmir" and, most influentially, "Immigrant Song"...they did it great. Plus, there wouldn't really be much metal without them. But because they're not "strictly metal", I felt I had to let them slide down here. This says nothing about Zeppelin as a rock band; this is just saying that their whole oeuvre is not metal. But no one can deny the integral, irreplaceable part they played in laying out metal's road map.
7: Anthrax. What a great band. Anthrax is so much fun to listen to. Pure fun, but they rock, too. They're witty, they're wild, it's all great stuff. The outsized personality and skilled rhythm guitar of Scott Ian, the rocking drums of Charlie Benante, and a string of great vocalists...notably Joey Belladonna and his immediate replacement, John Bush...and it's all just so damned good. Not that it helped them on the list, but I have to give them serious credit for writing a song about Judge Dredd ("I Am the Law").
6. Motorhead. "Ace of Spades". There. I said it. One of the rockingest songs EVER. Hard, fast, dirty, grumpy metal. You love it, you can't get enough of it. A Motorhead concert is quite the experience, too; If it hits 40 minutes, it's an epic. They play you like 18 songs without any frills, just rocking them out, Lemmy will mutter some stuff at you (in the case of when I saw them, he muttered about a chick here in Maryland that he used to bang when he was in town, and briefly contemplated seeing if he could find her). Motorhead is metal, but even purer, Motorhead is rock and roll.
5: Metallica. I could've cheated and said "Early Metallica" and put them at number 2 or 3. But that IS cheating. I also have to say I don't agree with the people who say that the band stopped being good when Cliff Burton died; that's ignoring And Justice For All and the untitled/self-titled Black Album, and you can't do that and be taken seriously. I mean, the Black Album gave the world "Enter Sandman", for pity's sake...not to mention "Sad But True", "The Unforgiven", and so on. And Jason Newsted is a hell of a bassist. But after that, well, things get pretty dodgy, and of this writing it's hard to say whether the upcoming album is going to change that or stay that unfortunate course. This isn't to say they were ALL bad, it's hard for a good band with the bulk of its core personnel to suddenly not be a good band anymore, but it's...let's say...a serious slump period for the band. Even still, top 5'ers easy. It's the net choice that'll be controversial...
4: Megadeth. I believe the ejected black sheep of Metallica to have ultimately outshone his erstwhile comrades. This is where I remind you that this is my opinion only, and one you are more than free to disagree with. Dave Mustaine is another Certified Metal Genius, and though he has lived so long in the shadow of his former bandmates, in many ways he has outdone them. For one thing, as incredible and mind-blowing as Kirk Hammett is a guitar player, Mustaine is an Angry Metal Guitar God, thrashing and grinding and rocking in ways that sometimes seem like brand new sounds. Plus, I put him here because I tend to be a sucker for the underdog. Since his apparently successful sobriety (after many years of trying), Mustaine has become a Christian, but whether or not it's seeped into his music yet (he's really only done one album since his conversion) is actually a matter of debate; he hasn't gone "Christian rock" as of this writing, so, you know, whatever.
3: Judas Priest. I mean, wow. If nothing else, that voice. I know I gave Dio the title of the Voice of Metal, but, you know, in all truth he has to share that with Rob Halford. Just pure metal, through and through. Never mind the fact that he proved that homosexuals can rock every bit as hard as heterosexuals, thereby breaking down some stereotypes, he's just a mind-blowing vocalist. Those screechy high notes, the passion and conviction in every note. And this isn't to take anything away from the rest of the band, but if ever a band was (justly) overshadowed by its frontman, it was Priest. The aforementioned Ripper Owens did a valiant and commendable job keeping the faith through Halford's years away, but when Halford came home, it was perfection all over again. "Breaking the Law" is an essential song of any genre, "The Hellion/Electric Eye" is a true classic of metal. And I think we've all heard enough about the glory of British Steel for me to just namecheck it and leave it there.
2: Iron Maiden. I can't say enough about Maiden. Mind-blowing. Epic. Pure, unadultered, truer than true metal. The best. Why not number one? Because of Sabbath. I'll say that now. But, I mean, it was such a hard call for me, but I had to put the trailblazers first. Still, Maiden is so incredible I can hardly stand it. Powerslave still owns as one of the best albums of any kind ever. Number of the Beast ranks high in any list of metal albums. Piece of Mind, Killers, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, Somewhere in Time, Fear of the Dark, Brave New World...I mean, wow. And don't forget the live stuff! Live After Death is an essential live rock album, and is THE essential live metal album (there's that damned distinction again). I can't say enough about Maiden, so I will just stop now.
1: Black Sabbath. You know it. The pioneers, the gods, the champions, the genesis of Metal As We Know It. There's nothing to say about Sabbath that hasn't been said except that they are the only band that could possibly contain two of the best metal vocalists ever: First Ozzy, then Ronnie James Dio. Plus, no lie, there was a weekend when Dio quit and Rob Halford stepped in for a show or two and he was the lead singer. How metal is that shit? Add in Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan for a further album (Born Again), and it's just mind-blowing. Now, of course, then there were the "down years", when it was basically Tony Iommi's solo act (although it's not bad stuff, it's just not up to the legendary par of the Ozzy years, and then the momentous Dio years), but that didn't stop them. Reunited at last, they did it all as good as ever. You can see the Mob Rules album line-up of the band (Dio, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Vinnie Appice) out there now as Heaven and Hell, and, as mentioned before, Ozzy is still doing his thing, too.
I left off Kiss, you'll see, where others might put them there. I dearly love Kiss, but Kiss isn't a metal band. They are rock and roll, pure and simple and wonderful. There's a distinction. Onstage Kiss (particularly Gene Simmons) looks about as metal as anything can look, but they are rock and roll. Hard rock, certainly, but I don't really know of any great number of Kiss songs I could call metal. Kiss are rock and roll, and they should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if justice is ever to prevail in our land.
Whew. A list! I used to put these things up all the time. They're fun to write, but this one took forever. That 14-minute song didn't even last me near enough. Even though this was a metal column, I should've put some Grateful Dead on.
This, That, the Other
posted on June 12 2008
One more day 'til The Incredible Hulk. But, for a change, this post isn't about that at all.
It's not about much. I was just doing a little thinking about writing...not about the writing projects I'm currently engaged in, but about writing in general, and here are some thoughts (exceedingly brief, I should think!) on that.
I have never, ever been good at writing in the first-person perspective. Ever. I can't do it. I tried recently when I was working on a private detective story; that genre lends itself nicely to that format, but I couldn't pull it off. I tend to do 3rd person omniscient (as a reminder, that's when you can, at any time, be privy to the thoughts of any of the characters in the story); I usually set out to do 3rd person objective, which is a very boom-boom-boom factual way of telling the story, without entering a character's thoughts (only the characters' words and actions are recorded) but I cheat so early on that it winds up almost always being 3rd person omniscient. I will sometimes leave out a few characters' perspectives, so as to leave open some things.
My great love, strangely, is second-person perspective, present tense. I call this the "baseball announcer talking to a baseball player" method; imagine, if you will, that the announcer is telling Melvin Mora what exactly Melvin Mora is doing at that moment: "You swing the bat, and you miss. That's your second strike. You're feeling tense, now, knowing that a lot rides on this next swing...the whole game, maybe the whole season." In the odd instance I see a novel through to its end (I don't like using the term "novel" for my own writing, but I just wanted to point out that I rarely ever work in short-form; as you can tell, I'm long-winded), I invariably write in the present tense; I should like, on at least one occasion, to write in present tense second person perspective.
Another thing I'm curious about trying, stylistically speaking, is the epistolary format. An extremely well-known example of this is Dracula; it's a series of letters, and the odd newspaper clipping, that, pieced together, tells the whole story. In that instance, at least, this is sort of like doing "first person omniscient", if that doesn't make your head explode thinking about it. Anyway, obviously that particular novel is a huge influence on me. There's also the "false document" (I learned that term on Wikipedia, by the way), such as Robinson Crusoe, a book which, like Dracula, I first read when I was about 8 or 9. This is written as a true autobiography, but, of course, the character of Robinson Crusoe fails one of the two criteria for an autobiography: He is not real (the other criterion is that the stories told must be true). A variant, but similar in a lot of ways...not quite simple "first person", but not quite as vast as the epistolary novel.
I'm also intrigued by the cinematic equivalent of these two forms, which I've heard referred to as the "tape" or "found footage" movie. This came greatly into the public consciousness with The Blair Witch Project and was done better recently with Cloverfield. This is when the entire movie is supposed to be a home video taken, in first person, by one (or several) of the main characters. In the case of Cloverfield the same character operates the camera through virtually the entire film; this limits the perspective greatly, to dramatic effect. Ruggero Deodato's stomach-churning 1980 movie Cannibal Holocaust is sort of the beginning of this genre; portions of that film are supposed to be the lost footage of a group of documentarians who, as you can guess by the title, may have run afoul of a less-than-civilized tribe. It's also effective for any number of reasons, and it's a movie I still find myself waking up thinking about, from time time to time. One day I shall tell you of Cannibal Holocaust. Though I haven't seen it yet, George Romero's fifth (and final?) "Dead" film, Diary of the Dead, is also done in this "found footage" style. It seems to be favored by people making horror films, in that anything can happen, but I can imagine a fairly heartwrenching love story being told in this manner.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is that I would like to do something of an epistolary novel...a little different. The obvious perspective would be the "found journal" approach...like you're reading a real person's diary, except it's not real, of course. What I'd like to do is, perhaps, kind of take all these forms, including the "found footage" film concept (the "found transcript"?) and mash it together to tell a story. I will also probably go a horror route with that, as I tend to do with a lot of my writing, and I can see myself coming up with a suitably unsettling finale (Blair Witch really delivers in this regard, even if the rest of the film tends to drag, and Cannibal Holocaust, with its framing story, winds up faltering...that is, if you're quite paying attention to the framing story after seeing the coda of the "found footage"). I could see this being a place to tread carefully; you could leave a book feeling unfinished if you cut it off too soon. It's something I want to do, but I want the right story to come to me for it first. The closest I've come thus far was using a few fabricated newspaper clippings as connecting pieces in a story I've put aside for the time being.
Anyway. Those are just some thoughts...thoughts about thinking, you could say...that I needed to get out there.
Now listening: Neil Young, Live at Massey Hall 1971
Now reading: Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot (which is a found/false document story, by the way)
Last DVD watched: Doctor Who: The Visitation
This Should Be My Only Political Post Until November
posted at 2:55 am on June 8 2008
Why I'm supporting Bob Barr. Thoughts, exceedingly brief I should think, on why Bob Barr and his running mate Wayne Root are what I'd like to see in office.
First, Bob Barr is for the rights of the individual. This includes all of those that so-called Patriot Act took away from you. Bob Barr wants to restore all the rights over your person, your property, and your privacy that were taken away to be given back, restoring America to how it should be.
Secondly, and as importantly, they want to eliminate "the Nanny State". First the government assaulted your freedoms out in the world, and now they're doing it in your home. It's time to give back personal freedom and, as a consequence, personal responsibility; the government was never meant to be our babysitters, or, in the big picture, our overlords.
Third, under Barr/Root the idea of the preemptive strike will go away. Our military will once again be for protecting American citizens. The concept of "World Police" will go away. Not only can we think of what this will do in terms of preserving the maximum number of lives of our brave Military volunteers (although, by nature, their occupation is an altogether hazardous one, for which they deserve the kind of thanks we can never hope to adequately provide); consider what this will do to turn back towards the positive at least a portion of the world's thoughts towards us (although, of course, some places will always hate us...that's the way the world has always been).
Fourth, getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service. There are ways for a government to collect taxes, such as a federal spending tax, rather than allowing a government bureau virtually unfettered access to the money you have earned. To insure that, once accomplished, this would remain so, the plan is to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, which allows the government to levy an income tax regardless of considerations towards States or census results.
Fifth, Barr/Root is actual change...a break from the establishment. While something must be said for what Barack Obama hopes to achieve in terms of racial perceptions in America, politically he offers no real change from the current Republican/Democrat power stranglehold.
If nothing else, I want to vote Libertarian this year because I want it somewhere on the record that I stood up and said, "You don't get to treat us like this anymore." Although I of course encourage you to vote regardless of the candidate you ultimately pick, I invite you to at least take a minute and think about the chance to do that.
That's it, no more election talk here. Next time: Probably something nerdy.
Oh, and I've decided, for my own sake if not for any fleeting interest you might have, that I'm going to put a few "current facts" regarding my interests at the end of my posts from here on out, if I think of it. Maybe you'll find something that catches your interest too:
Now listening: Rick Wakeman, Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Now reading: John Peel, Doctor Who: The Mutation of Time
Last movie watched: Cloverfield
More Overly Long Thoughts on the Summer's Comic Book Movies
posted at 2:29 am on June 4 2008
So we're a little over a month past Iron Man and a little over a week away from Incredible Hulk, leaving us about a month or so out from The Dark Knight. Having never read past the first collection, I don't feel qualified to weigh in on Hellboy II: The Golden Army except to say that, whereas the first one was remarkably faithful to Mike Mignola's art in a visual sense, this one seems to be thoroughly stepped in Guillermo del Toro's own Pan's Labyrinth as much as, or more than, Mignola's original concepts, leaving me less than optimistic about del Toro doing The Hobbit and, dearer to my heart, Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, never mind what happens if he turns out to do Doctor Strange as his IMDB listing seems to think. But I have digressed.
Iron Man was nonstop, full-forward entertainment. Just a great cast overall...Jeff Bridges the very embodiment of White Male Corporate Oppression (thanks to Sonic Youth for the hyperbole, Robert Downey Jr. just nailed the lighter side of Tony Stark (not the drippy, morose recovering alcoholic version), and, at risk of sounding fruity, Gwyneth Paltrow was nothing short of charming as Pepper. Add John Favreau going 2-for-2 as the Marvel superhero "civilian" sidekicks in his tiny role as Happy Hogan (following up his turn as Foggy Nelson in Daredevil). Spoiler warning ahoy...there was a sheer thrill of seeing Sam Jackson, the model for Ultimate Nick Fury, playing the character onscreen, if only for 20 seconds, and uttering the phrase "the Avengers initiative". Now, as for the movie itself, it did the unthinkable: It overcame the cardinal comic book movie sin of "always use the archenemy first"...a crime committed by the first Hulk film, amongst its many...and it made the origin story, which granted isn't anywhere near as familiar to "the mainstream audience" as Krypton exploding, the Waynes being gunned down, or even the radioactive spider bite...and made it one of the most interesting parts. Throw in a big metallic throwdown and you have the solid start to at least one (if not two) movie franchises.
Now, coming up next is The Incredible Hulk. As far as I'm concerned, a lot rides on this for Hulk fans. For one, the Jade Giant needs a whole crapload of redemption in the eyes of the movie-going public after the Ang Lee version; here, one assumes from the trailer, the Hulk is a monster of action, as opposed to a man of introspection who just happens to have a big nine-foot-tall green monster inside him. That movie offered fleeting glimpses of what the Hulk could be, and then frittered it all away on a poorly lit, ill-conceived metapsychological final fight with a cloud made out of Nick Nolte that was loosely...and I mean LOOSELY...based on the comics' Absorbing Man. Factor in the gamma-irradiated poodles and the merciless running time...and the sad waste of a perfectly good Bruce Banner/Betty Ross combo in Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly...and you have a lot to make up for.
The hope here is that it's Edward Norton and Louis Letterier (the director) to the rescue. Brushing aside the previous attempt, we have a Hulk, judging from the trailer, steeped in equal parts Bill Bixby TV series and the comic book series (including a scene lifted almost verbatim from the Hulk's appearance in The Ultimates 2 comic). The most recent trailer had a moment that gave me a chill...amidst the chaos, the fight scene clips, lots of shots of William Hurt and Tim Roth coming up with an anti-Hulk scheme, there is, as the title pops up on screen, just a couple of seconds of "The Lonely Man"...the instantly recognizable, world famous "sad walking away music" from the closing titles of the TV series. Factor in that this movie rectifies the "use the archenemy" sin committed by the first one in the form of the Abomination, the fact that it sets up a true Hulk film franchise and (spoilers again!) may also play a role in developing that "Avengers initiative" and you have what is, for Hulk fans, an important couple of hours.
But here's the big enchilada, the seemingly unstoppable force, not coming until the despairingly hot middle of summer...The Dark Knight, the second part in the reinvigorated Batman movie series. The first one, Batman Begins, neatly sidestepped the old "use the archenemy" rule by using Ra's al Ghul (or a variation thereof), who is often treated as "Batman's true archnemesis" in the comics despite that not really being the case (although he does have the wonderful character tic of always referring to Batman merely as "detective"). For good measure, it added in some gangsters and a suitably scary Scarecrow (without bumbling things up and making them too hard to follow, as many a multi-villain comic book has done...I'm looking at you, Joel Schumacher Bat-films, and you too, Daredevil). Add the fact that, at long last, the Batman's cape wasn't made out of rubber and could actually swoop and move (an important visual aspect of the character), some great actors, and you had a good flick. Usually, I think a series can only go downhill from such a great starting point. That's not the case this time.
My one and only fear is that the character of the Joker will wind up completely overshadowing Batman here. This is for any number of reasons, at least in the hype running up to the movie. The main reason, of course, is that the Joker was played by Heath Ledger, who unfortunately passed away after filming wrapped. Not only is the curiosity of seeing a promising young actor's final completed performance drawing a lot of interest, but so are the dark notions going about that Ledger, seemingly something of a method actor, drove himself partially insane getting into character.
It occurred to me the other day, though, talking about plans to go see the movie when it comes out, that I was less than enthused about Ledger's casting initially. Have I fallen into the trap that I'm suddenly being overly kind because the poor man is gone now? Has the fact that he died somehow changed my expectations about his performance? Well, not entirely: The trailers have done a lot to favorably color my perception of his performance. But there has to be an aspect of that somewhere. And I worry that I won't lose myself in the movie the way I should lose myself in it because I'll be thinking, "Oh, look, there's Heath Ledger, he's all gone now..." or will I be able to give myself over and say "Oh, look, the Joker is crazy and scary." Please, movie people, let him be scary. That's all I want.
This movie also sets up for Two-Face in the character of Harvey Dent; rumors abounded a while back that another villain I won't name yet is being set-up in some way in this one, but I won't mention either villain or actor attached just in case, but I will say that I hope it's true to some degree. At any rate, the trailers have made it clear that Aaron Eckhardt is playing Harvey Dent, and we all know that Harvey Dent winds up Two-Face.
Batman Begins also had, in a very quiet way, a lot of "for the comics fan" easter eggs...the biggest one was the presence of '90s-vintage Bat villain Mr. Zsasz, seen briefly on trial and also featured in the Arkham Asylum escape during the climax of the film. Again, they did a great service to Batman by making the cape fluttery and flexible; looking at Batman art by any of the greats...particularly, in my head, the still-mourned Marshall Rogers, who drew what is probably "my" definitive Batman...you see that the cape is an enormous aspect of the character's visual language.
In a lot of ways, I fear the most for The Dark Knight because in my head it's the one of the three big superhero flicks of the year that was a foregone conclusion; it's almost bound to be good. But for that reason I think it's going to get the most crap, critically speaking. The Incredible Hulk, on the other hand, has nowhere to go but up considering the previous film incarnation.
As an aside, I want to say that I prefer it when comic book movies don't use numbering for their sequels, as the Batman films have avoided. To this day I still wish that Spider-Man 2 had indeed been released as The Amazing Spider-Man, as had once been planned, and I would've jumped for joy if Spider-Man 3 had been The Spectacular Spider-Man. This is why I advocate a second Iron Man film being called The Invincible Iron Man. This leads me to say that I'm happy that they're considering the next Superman movie to be titled simply The Man of Steel (although naturally I prefer the Man of Tomorrow as a nickname for Superman, it's fallen into disuse and is generally only trucked out by nerds like me).
Sadly, this is one of those posts that doesn't end so much as stop so...yeah. Good times.
My Latest Nerd Hobby
posted sleeplessly at 5:09 am on May 2 2008
I've got a lot of nerd hobbies. Look at the page, you can count them, if you can count that high. And I've recently dived into a new one whole-hog.
I think everyone who reads this page remembers flipping through the channels on Saturday night and going by PBS and seeing Doctor Who. It was always the same guy, the dude in the really really long striped scarf doing who knows what (no pun intended) surrounded by all manner of rubbery creatures and some '70s-looking British girls.
Being a lifelong sci-fi guy, I always wanted to get into Doctor Who, and as chronicled here previously, I can look past the most abysmal special effects (find ANY post about Godzilla to confirm this). But I always felt like I was walking into the middle of the story. It isn't really "new-viewer" friendly. You had to kind of pick it up as it went, I guess.
I tried, though. I recall getting one or two of the Doctor Who novels out of the library, and never finishing them; if the show felt like something for the insiders, boy, those novels could leave you WAY back in the dust.
But I've had a lot of free time on my hands and I've only recently entered the Wonderful World of DVR, so with the help of my handy-dandy satellite provider and some fine channels, I was able to get into the Doctor Who revival currently airing on the Sci-Fi channel. It's a little more open; hell, one episode I've seen even had a "previously on Doctor Who" segment! It was really nice. And they still have a certain measure of rubbery monsters; one story I saw mocked them by having the monsters disguise themselves as humans, but the disguise process left them ridiculously gassy, so you had an alien pretending to be the British Prime Minister farting all over the place. This, to me, is very, very British humor. Take THAT, Ricky Gervais.
Anyway, now that I've caught on to the whole "deal" of Doctor Who, I'm able to go back and really enjoy those old shows. And I really have been. Unfortunately, PBS also airs the revival series these days (since I've been actively searching for Doctor Who shows to watch, that's all I've seen on, anyway) so it's a bit harder to find those old ones.
Anyway, I'm going to, for the sake of my own boredom, give you a quick rundown...exactly the kind of thing I would have needed back when I was 10 to really sit and watch those old shows.
Here you have a guy named the Doctor. Not Doctor Who, though! He's never called "Doctor Who" on the show. The "Who" comes from the fact that he always just introduces himself as "the Doctor". He travels around in a time machine/spaceship called the Tardis; it looks like a "police call box" (essentially a big wooden phone booth) because its camouflage device is broken. It can go anywhere in time or space or both, but it's kind of a tricky thing. The Doctor usually has a sidekick, called his "companions"; these are usually people from earth somewhere in the 20th century, but I'm told (by Wikipedia) that that isn't set in stone. The Doctor takes his thirst for knowledge and his sense of right and wrong throughout the universe and history, setting right what's gone wrong.
A very nerdy, sci-fi concept, but there you go. Now here's where it gets tricky! The Doctor is an alien, not a human (despite his appearance). He's actually from a planet called Gallifrey and is a Time Lord (that seems to be what his species is called). When a Time Lord's body is injured to the point of "death", it regenerates; this helps the writers explain why 10 different people have played the Doctor.
The guy we used to see on PBS all the time was an actor named Tom Baker; his version of the character, in the big striped scarf and sometimes a floppy hat, with big curly '70s hair, is pretty definitive, largely because (A) he was on the show longer than any other actor and (B) for years, his episodes were the only ones PBS showed (I have recently found this out, I wouldn't have known that). Tom Baker was also in the movie version of the '50s horror comics The Vault of Horror, making him a very cool guy. He was actually the fourth doctor, though!
The first two were in black and white; I don't remember PBS every playing black and white episodes, but I'm told they did. A lot of those, it seems, are missing because the BBC, who originally aired these shows, had this policy in the early '70s of just kinda throwing away shows it didn't think it was ever going to air again. This eventually wound up harming the BBC home video division in the future, as Doctor Who is seemingly a ridiculously lucrative franchise. There was another guy, the Third Doctor (this is how they're distinguished, simply by number), and then came Tom Baker and his scarf. Out he went and here came the Fifth through Seventh Doctors and then, in 1989, the BBC pulled the plug. Doctor Who had gotten too unwieldy to produce, and it was thought its best days had passed, and so it seemed the Seventh Doctor would be the last. This, too, is where my fleeting bits of familiarity with the series ended; I can recall seeing Seventh Doctor tapes when I used to work in a Suncoast (the distinctive Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy, a face I'm sure lots of former VHS-era Suncoast employees would recognize from stocking and organizing the Doctor Who mini-section).
Apparently, and of this I was entirely unaware, there was an attempt to get the whole thing rolling again in 1996 with a TV movie that aired on Fox here and, of course, the BBC there in England. This was the Eighth Doctor, and the movie even had Eric Roberts as the Doctor's enemy, the Master. Who can ask for more than Eric Roberts?
I guess a lot of folks, because that was the poor Eighth Doctor's only appearance. And again, dormancy and an endless line of hard-to-follow paperback novels awaited the good Doctor.
Revival came again in 2005, with the aid of actor Christopher Eccleston, best known here in America for a guest-stint on Heroes and his role as Nicole Kidman's husband in The Others. Without revealing whatever happened to the Eighth Doctor (and, in fact, hardly mentioning it), the Ninth Doctor stormed TV screens and the series was back.
This, now, is where I come in. The Ninth Doctor lasted only one season before Eccleston decided to go back to feature films (look for him as Destro in G. I. Joe). Bring in actor David Tennant, as the Tenth and current Doctor. Basically, all the cool sci-fi aspects aside, two things sucked me well and truly into Doctor Who: One, Tennant's eccentric, nuanced performance (his Doctor is sometimes extremely goofy, but when angered he can actually be scary) and, secondly, I happened to begin watching with a three-part story arc that ended the last season which involved the last living humans from the year 100 trillion, a seemingly rigged Prime Minister election, and the Doctor's old enemy, the Master leading a horde of 6 billion flying spheres. It was an AMAZINGLY absorbing sci-fi saga; and, somehow, I was able to join more or less right in, pick it up, and off I went.
And that was that.
Now I can't get enough Doctor Who. I'm just about caught up on every revival-series episode save for the few that reside on my DVR; I've been getting some of the old collections from Netflix, starting with the familiar territory of Tom Baker and cautiously reaching further back to those black-and-white days at the beginning), and I've been listening to Doctor Who "audio dramas" (what, once upon a time, would have been called "radio shows"). I got one, called "Zagreus" which features Doctors Five through Eight (remember, this all involves time travel), voiced by the actors who played t
