Comic Con Report, volume 2

This young man is called Guillermo del Toro. I met him Sunday morning at Stuart Ng Books in the Comic Con event hall. I did actually get a photo of him smiling for my camera but the mysterious forces of the visual medium at his command were not at mine so it came out blurry.

But he shook my hand and I was able to tell him that his upcoming film, Crimson Peak, looks gorgeous, which it does. I saw Del Toro appear with Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, and Mia Wasikowska Saturday on the Crimson Peak panel, which has been posted in plenty of forms on YouTube. Here's what looks to me like the best recording (credit to Regina Darlin);

People are doing a much better job at posting panel videos this year. If I'd have known, I wouldn't have wasted so much of my memory card recording videos myself. Anyway, yes, Crimson Peak looks gorgeous and I think if it ends up having the worst screenplay ever written I'm still going to like it. The visuals from the trailer tell me it already has me. But the story does sound intriguing, I like Del Toro's conceptualising it as an old fashioned Gothic Romance with a female protagonist at the centre of a mystery. Jessica Chastain talked about all the detail and character in the set which was essentially a fully built house with a functioning elevator. But you can hear all this from watching the panel yourself.

The panel before Crimson Peak was the one I spent most of my camera's memory card on, Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful 8. The director appeared with almost all the stars of the film except Samuel L. Jackson.

Jackson appeared in a video introduction that included clips from the film and Tarantino talking about using 70mm lenses--the very same lenses that were used to film William Wyler's version of Ben Hur from 1959, one of the widest movies ever made.

The other big piece of news was that Ennio Morricone will for the first time be composing an original score for a Quentin Tarantino film. He contributed an original song, "Ancora Qui", to the Django Unchained soundtrack and Tarantino, who often uses bits of score from older films, is particularly noted for borrowing from Morricone scores but this will be the first time Morricone has scored an entire Tarantino film. As Tarantino noted on the panel, it'll also be Morricone's first Western score in forty years.

Morricone is widely recognised as one of the greatest film composers of all time but with the exception of the score to The Mission in the late 80s, many people seem to feel he peaked in the 60s and 70s, though I quite like his score to Carpenter's The Thing. I do think his scores to Cinema Paradiso and Red Sonja are a bit dull but that may have been due to the material his was working with (Cinema Paradiso is a vastly overrated film in my opinion). However, I absolutely love "Ancora Qui" so maybe what Morricone needed was just the right filmmaker.

Again, the whole Hateful 8 panel is on YouTube from various sources though apparently there was a place near the front set aside for cameras this year giving them a vantage point where the person sitting on the left end of the panel--generally the most prominent individual, Tarantino in this case--was blocked by the podium. So here're some clips I recorded unobstructed except for occasionally by people who just would not fucking sit down in Hall H for some reason.

I had some focusing issues that clear up mostly after 1:30, kind of appropriate since Tarantino is talking about lenses in the clip.

People in the audience were given tickets to claim a prize in the nearby Hyatt hotel, I got this swell Hateful 8 film card:

I got into Hall H right at the beginning on Saturday, rather surprising since I arrived only an hour and a half before they started letting people in. The queue was stretched to the bay but I'd gotten in before when it was much longer. Really, it was a pretty low turnout considering the first panel of the day in Hall H was the Warner Brothers panel which included the presentations for Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman. The stars of both films appeared, though in the case of Suicide Squad everyone just walked up on stage, said hello, and walked off. Hell of a reason to fly in Will Smith and Margot Robbie.

Incidentally, this was the moment when I realised that I'd had Jai Courtney, at left there, mixed up with Jason Clarke, both actors turning in bland and slightly whiny performances in Terminator: Genisys.

After this was what Warner Brothers was desperately trying to sell as the main event, the Batman v. Superman panel. Moderator for all Warner Brothers panels, Aisha Tyler, who generally did a pretty good job, forgot to introduce Jeremy Irons who walked onstage with some jocular hesitation. When handling an audience question about interpreting characters who've been previously played by other actors, Tyler said they'd go down the line with it, starting with Gal Gadot, apparently forgetting Irons was first in line. Irons took the first response anyway, sounding like he'd taken whatever Michelle Gomez had taken on Thursday, dazed and barely conscious.

The whole panel is on YouTube, you can find it yourself, if you like, I wouldn't want to look like I was in any way recommending people subject themselves to Zack Snyder's usual inability to put two words together. Not that I consider this a reflection of his talents as a filmmaker, though I happen to think he's mediocre at best. Even some truly great filmmakers aren't great speakers, Ridley Scott, for example. Ben Affleck was by far the most articulate person on the panel, and he talked about the film's concept of Gotham and Metropolis being twin cities, across a bay from each other. It sounds like the film, written by Affleck's Argo screenwriter collaborator, is actually taking the dumbest part of Man of Steel, Superman's apparent disinterest in the collateral damage he caused in his battle with Zod, and using it as a central motivation in Bruce Wayne's hatred for Superman. Which is actually a good idea and for the first time I felt like there might be something about this film I might actually like. Though how Gal Gadot's completely ineffective take on Wonder Woman fits into the equation I have no idea.

You know, it's kind of funny that Zack Snyder adapted Watchmen before doing these Justice League films. He watered down the comic that both parodied and celebrated the humanity underneath the DC heroes and now he's basically in charge of the DC heroes, having been announced now as director of two Justice League films. It's almost like Warners and DC are rewarding him for abusing Alan Moore. I have a feeling that after the two Justice League movies we'll be in a place where we really need a Watchman movie, a good one this time.

Also part of Warner Brothers' presentation were panels on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Pan, a prequel to Peter Pan directed by Joe Wright. It sounds pretty intriguing and I liked descriptions of a huge fantasy set created for Neverland, it reminded me of the massive set constructed for the forest in Ridley Scott's Legend. Hugh Jackman seemed particularly enthusiastic.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. presentation wasn't bad, I found myself actually liking Henry Cavill in the role.

I also saw both of the Matt Smith panels I talked about yesterday on Saturday. I was tempted to stay in Hall H all the way to the end because the last panel was just Joss Whedon by himself talking about whatever he wanted but if I'd stayed it would have meant not seeing the event hall all day on Saturday, which was a depressing prospect. So I left and met this Dia de los Muertos lady who seemed excited when I told her about the TARDIS calaveras upstairs.

On the mezzanine, I met a few lovely burlesque angels.

Okay, I'd say I have at least four more entries' worth of things to talk about so tune in to-morrow.

Twitter Sonnet #769

Early marine life lurches over death.
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Pulverised rascals can't convene in store.
Diverse zombies crowd close within the dome.
Leaping frog Vikings kill the wild boar.
Jelly crowns harden in hyper boxes.
Heaven's cotton candy condemns the blink.
Browser belief allows firefoxes.
Oil fishing nets sodden the hope sink.
Logos stand betwixt the people and God.
Nothing along the art alley is odd.

Comic Con Report, volume 1

Eleven and Four, by far the most well represented Doctors at Comic Con, year after year, though this year was the first time I saw them to the almost total exclusion of all other Doctors. Maybe it's because an Eleven costume is generally considered to consist of no more than a bow tie and a coat and maybe a fez. Any outfit which features those first two, I think, is taken as some variation on Eleven which, I think, is probably why this was the first year people were actually taking pictures of me. I wore a bow tie every day except Saturday and it was constantly mistaken for Doctor Who cosplay. Not that I minded. Incidentally, if anyone sees photos of me online, let me know--the experience certainly made me more sensitive to the needs of cosplayers and I started handing out my card to each person I took a picture of, saying I'll be posting pictures this week.

So, for me, it's over, though technically the event hall hasn't even closed yet to-day. But there was nothing more I wanted to see so I figured I'd beat the packed sardines phase of trolley travel and get home early. I'm sorry the Con is over but my feet couldn't be happier. Since I got home to-day, I squeezed myself some fresh grapefruit juice then just sat and stared into space, savouring the feeling of not having anything to do or see.

Since I missed my weekly Doctor Who blog post on Saturday, I figure I'll start by talking about all the Doctor Who stuff I saw. I did get into the Doctor Who panel in Hall H, surprisingly, since I only got in queue two and a half hours before it started. Which made me wonder gloomily if this was a reflection on the Twelfth Doctor's unpopularity. Indeed, keeping an eye out for Twelfth Doctor cosplay I saw one, just one, guy dressed as Twelve.

Though, as Peter Capaldi said on the panel, rather nicely, the Doctor is not "a guy" by which he meant a Time Lord is something far too unfamiliar to be given such a common term. It clearly reflected Capaldi's impression of the character since he started watching the show when he was six but, more than that, it seemed to me an outgrowth of old fashioned, pre-punk conceptions of peerage. While actual royalty and nobility may not deserve that mystique, I rather love the idea that the Doctor might fill that particular space in the human imagination.

Usually at any panel, I find the writer or sometimes a director has the most interesting things to say, naturally, I suppose. It's particularly true with the ever witty Steven Moffat but I felt Capaldi actually took charge of this panel. The chemistry between him and Jenna Coleman, too, seemed very real and very sweet. Michelle Gomez seemed high. She became very upset when she thought someone said, "That's odd," after she'd joked that she was holding Clara's hand in one take when she kissed the Doctor. "No, that's not odd!" said Gomez. "I think she said, 'That's hot'" said moderator Chris Hardwick. Gomez didn't seem to believe him. Hardwick moderated almost every Hall H panel this year but at least he seems to be doing a lot better at it than the first year I saw him moderate a panel, he seems to be doing a better job at staying out of the way and keeping conversation flowing among the panellists.

Just as I knew it would be, the whole Doctor Who panel is on YouTube so you can judge for yourself;

I did see Matt Smith this year on two, back to back panels, both for zombie movies--Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Patient Zero. Both films seemed potentially good with Patient Zero looking superior and certainly promising the more screen time for Smith.

I have no idea why Natalie Dormer is the only one in focus in this photo but, hey, if the camera was only going to pick one person, I'd probably concur on Dormer. She plays Smith's love interest in the film, a fellow scientist in an underground bunker where they're studying those infected with the virus spreading all over the world, turning humanity into slobbering, vicious cannibals. Until they find Stanley Tucci--an infected who for some reason remains lucid enough to speak and to smoke cigarettes and seems to have calmly and rationally embraced his desire to eat people. Smith plays the scientist in charge of interrogating the zombies in order to find out the location of the original infected, which is apparently necessary to develop a vaccine. To Dormer's right, also appearing in the film, are her Game of Thrones costar John Bradley-West and one of the stars of the History Channel's Vikings, Clive Standen.

Dormer and Smith seemed to have good chemistry, too.

Smith has a much smaller role in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a film based on a novel that presents an alternate version of Jane Austin's classic which speculates on how things might have gone if there had been a zombie plague instead of the Napoleonic Wars. Sam Riley, who plays Mr. Darcy, seemed like a prototypical spacey film actor when he soberly told the audience he felt people in "those times" were used to there being plagues all the time so the zombies wouldn't really be a big deal.

To Riley's left is Jack Huston who plays George Wickam in the film. Smith plays the clergyman William Collins. When asked if he had anything in common with the character, Smith said he and Collins both quite like muffins. When asked what his weapon of choice would be in a zombie apocalypse, Smith also replied muffins. Poison muffins.

These two were cosplaying "The Runaway Bride", one of the Tenth Doctor's Christmas specials, and one of my two all time favourite Doctor Who Christmas specials (the other being "The Snowmen"). I only saw two guys dressed as Ten this year, rather amazing since Ten is usually a close runner up to Eleven. But this year I did for the first time ever see a Sixth Doctor, who is apparently married to and has a child with Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas.

The family that patchworks together stays together, I guess.

Here's a fellow who said he watched the Fourth Doctor when he was first on the air:

And here's a Fourth Doctor fan who I suspect did not:

Finally, I wish I could post photos of the calavera TARDISes I saw in the art show but photography was not allowed. Take my word, though, they were pretty cool.

Tune in to-morrow, I have a lot more to write about and show. I saw several great panels this year.

Snoopy Surveillance

Image of the Snoopy drone spotted early this morning over the bay.

Comic Con, Late Afternoon

Twitter Sonnet #768

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The space is filled up by sudden Conan.
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Legos are always easy to resist.
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Distant razors play alien hockey.

The Doctor Says Shit

From to-day. In case you're wondering, no, Peter Capaldi couldn't keep himself from cursing on the Doctor Who panel. He was wonderful.

Squirrel Con

Here's a squirrel from the trolley station to-day which in no way proves I was at Comic-Con--but I was!

As usual on Preview Night, I just picked up my badge and Con guide and came home so I don't have to get my badge when I arrive in the morning. They were screening a bunch of pilot episodes of upcoming television series, I thought about sticking around for Supergirl, but I couldn't muster enough enthusiasm for it.

Posts from me between now and Monday will probably be brief and infrequent but expect lengthy Con reports next week. You can't stand still two minutes at Comic Con without seeing something to write about.

This is also the place where people think my regular clothes are a costume. To-day I wore an off-white linen sport coat, brown fedora, brown bow tie, white shirt, brown pants and shoes. A older security guard said, "You look like Doctor Who having a fun time!" I'll take that.

If any of you want me to check something out at the Con to write about later, just let me know.

Burning the Candle with Fire

This was me last night:

I have the most obnoxious neighbours I've had in my life. 'Til 3am they were making noise and I foolishly tried to get to bed at one. I already talked to them a couple nights ago when I couldn't hear True Detective over their racket. I went and knocked on the door across the hall and heard everyone inside shushing each other as though I was going to think they suddenly vanished. The girl who I'd already spoken to a couple days earlier came to the door and I again politely asked for quiet at night and she quickly nodded with blank eyes that told me she didn't care but they were at least quiet for the rest of that night. Then last night, as I said, they were back at it, rebooted.

I bought earplugs but they're so loud they get through the earplugs. I don't know how I'm going to get up at 6am on Thursday for Comic Con. That's an hour after I heard the last of my neighbour's friends finally slam his car door and drive away this morning. I guess I'll speak to the apartment manager to-day and I'll call the cops if I hear them to-night. I honestly don't know how people get to be so inconsiderate. They are quite young. I've passed a few of them in the hall, the guys snicker at me behind my back, one of the girls doesn't even react when I say hello, she passed me carrying two wine bottles in one hand yesterday.

To-day I set aside for getting ready for the Con. I'm trying to think of something to pack for my lunches, I want something that isn't messy or drippy. I'm leaning towards sandwiches but I don't want to spend too much time making lunch in the morning. I'm wondering how good cold boxty is.

The Doctor Who panel is on Thursday, which is strange, it's usually on Sunday. I wonder if there's any point in trying to get in since the whole thing will likely be on YouTube. I'm definitely thinking of giving the Star Wars panel a miss since I've read there'll be no footage from the upcoming film, the only thing people in the audience generally aren't allowed to record. If I got into Hall H for it, I'd likely be sitting near the back watching the panel on big screens anyway. But if it turns out to be easier to get in, I might try it. My suspicion is the Star Wars panel isn't going to be nearly as hard to get into as people are predicting, it doesn't have the kind of fanbase a Twilight has, for example--Star Wars fans don't currently have the sort of addict quality the Twilight fans have which caused them to risk life, limb, and comfortable bathroom accommodations. I still meet plenty of young people who've never seen a Star Wars film and seem faintly afraid of the idea of seeing one.

I haven't actually heard of a panel yet I especially want to see but nonetheless I'm eagerly looking forward to the Con. So many people complain about it--it is smelly and crowded and difficult to navigate but I'm always, always sorry to see it end.

Twitter Sonnet #767

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Baseball boomerangs redeem doubtful Feds.
Always waffles limit the mitts on watch.
Open navy voucher cheeses spoil.
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Following the Clues

I don't know about you but I want to see Velcoro and Bezzerides get together. I guess that would be cliche but they have nice chemistry, they're both fanatics. I mean, can you imagine? Anyway, episode three of True Detective's second season was pretty good, mainly for concentrating mostly on plot stuff this time, but good plot stuff--I am curious to know who killed Caspar and how the corrupt bureaucracies of the police force and the city government play into it. On that note, the show also continues in its entertaining interviewee series by providing a wife for the eccentric mayor who looks like she could be from the U.S. version of Absolutely Fabulous.

Also at the mayor's home is a white guy pretending to be black who throws a topless prostitute off the balcony into the pool. I was missing the gratuitous nudity from season one.

In another return to season one form, the episode begins with a distinctly Twin Peaksian scene where Velcoro, like Agent Cooper at the beginning of season two after the season one cliffhanger where he was shot, lies on the floor with his gun wound having a bizarre vision. In Velcoro's case, it's a Conway Twitty impersonator lip syncing Twitty's cover of "The Rose". In my day, it was Jimmy Scott doing material by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch! You kids and your country music. Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!

Which is a good enough segue, I guess, to mentioning I stayed up too late watching Blue Velvet again a few nights ago. I was still feeling dirty after Terminator Genisys and wanted a sincere work of art. I'd been thinking about it, too, because of the difference between the scene where Isabella Rossellini shows up naked on the street and Cersei's "Walk of Shame" on Game of Thrones. I remember reading or hearing about both Lynch's and Rossellini's influences for the scene several times, how Rossellini thought of a photo of naked child crying from the Vietnam war and how Lynch had been thinking of seeing a naked woman in the street when he was a child--how there was nothing sexy or fun about it, that it was a sign that something was deeply wrong, disordered. And that's what they accomplish in Blue Velvet, especially once they go back to Sandy's house and Jeffrey and Dorothy are standing there holding each other while Sandy nervously calls for her mother. There's none of this energy in the Game of Thrones scene but it reminded me of Blue Velvet in another way--Jeffrey confronting mysteries of sexuality, an innocent kid who doesn't yet know or acknowledge dimensions to sex beyond mothers and fathers in missionary position. That's the critics of Game of Thrones who feebly put up a front that insists the Game of Thrones scene wasn't the burlesque it was.

This morning I read the new Sirenia Digest, a very good story called "Dead Letter Office", a title that reminds me of "Bartleby the Scrivener". But the story bears little resemblance to the Melville story--I actually think "Dead Letter Office" is Caitlin's most political story though I don't know if she intended it to be. It could just be my impression that was mixed with recently having read about Greece's economic troubles. "Dead Letter Office" portrays a dreamlike reality where certain eternal beings tend to sleeping citizens. One sleeper awakens and wants water but there is no water--it's implied that the beings who are normally awake don't need such things. So there's a classism set up, the haves and have-nots--I'm reminded of the Morrissey lyric, "Haves cannot stand have-nots," from "I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero". Which makes me think of the dynamic between Germany and Greece.

On the one hand, I am basically a socialist, I think if every human being in the world isn't provided with basic necessities, the system is wrong. But I don't like the Germans being called Nazis here--there's a difference between Germany not bailing you out of debt you accrued on your own and Germany invading you and putting a portion of your population in concentration camps. Both countries signed up for this Capitalism thing and like the bible says, live by the sword, die by the sword, but it still is news, as Billie Holiday said--"God bless the child who's got his own." And Satan fuck the rest, I suppose. Though the bible also has the parable of the vineyard, where Jesus says everyone who works the field should be paid the same no matter how much time or effort was put in. Good grief, quoting the bible, what's happening to me?

Anyway, I hope Greece survives but I don't see why it should be Germany's responsibility or anyone else's, particularly when Greece has consistently failed to implement any measures against its downward spiral. So raise taxes, maybe just for the wealthiest. I guess as an American I can't really talk since my country's been living in massive debt for years. I guess debt matters a lot more when you don't have nukes.

Fossilised Fear Takes the Train

I'm starting to get the impression that people were a little frightened of human evolution in the 1970s. First The Creeping Flesh and now I've seen 1972's Horror Express, another Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee movie that focuses on a threat posed by a reanimated ape man--in this case at least a fossil rather than bone. As Christopher Lee's palaeoanthropologist character explains when asked what a fossil is, it's "Stone!" A particularly good effort for Cushing and Lee, it's also a wonderful train film, something I happen to be a sucker for.

Lee actually not only gets to play the hero he even has at least a hint of romantic subplot--though it never really amounts to much more than heavy flirtation--with a beautiful countess named Irina (Silvia Tortosa).

Like much of the cast, she's Spanish because the movie was shot in Spain though it's set on a train travelling through Russia from Manchuria where Lee has made the discovery of a lifetime: a well preserved fossil of an ape man which he puts in a crate that immediately inspires alarm from an Eastern Orthodox priest named Pujardov (Alberto de Mendoza). Which is a nice change of pace when these movies usually use Catholic priests.

Cushing plays Dr. Wells, a colleague of Lee's Professor Saxton who's damned curious about what's in that crate and tries to coax the secret out of the solemn and severe Lee. Though Cushing's not single minded in this pursuit, being somewhat displeased learning he has to share a cabin with Lee instead of being able to offer a spare bunk to a mysterious beautiful woman (Helga Liné) who comes in to sob on his shoulder.

The priest's warnings about Satanic sorcery being hidden in Lee's crate start to gain credence after a series of people turn up rather grotesquely dead, blood tears streaked from bleached eyes, one of them turning up in the crate where the fossil's supposed to be.

Later in the film, a Cossack captain played by a rather amusingly over the top Telly Savalas boards the train on suspicions of rebellious activity on board. The film is a nice series of inventions like this and it's a lot of fun.

The Terminator In the Cubicle

I decided to catch up with the Eleventh Doctor last night, credited as "Matthew Smith" in the opening of Terminator Genisys. I'm sorry I did. As the Tenth Doctor would say, I'm so, so sorry. All the trailers made the movie look like a cheap, cynical exploitation of the franchise and that's exactly what it turned out to be. I think it says something when a movie has a credit for Hans Zimmer as "Executive Music Producer". I suspect there are more fingers than pie in this movie which would explain why its massive budget yielded special effects not half as convincing as those from Terminator 2.

There is a kind of grim, poetic symmetry--the series depicts a future taken over by machines and now the franchise seems to have been taken over by machines. What does it mean when Obi Wan Kenobi says Darth Vader is "more machine now than man"? Vader has lost his heart, he ruthlessly pushes forward a clean, cold Empire not for people but for the Empire's sake. Similarly, what was once a personal vision of James Cameron's is a cold mill pond for film school kids and flunkies who've paid their dues to go to develop from unimaginative tadpoles into gassy frogs. This isn't a movie about expressing feeling or ideas, Terminator wasn't chosen by these people because it was a story that expressed their point of view. It was chosen because of its proven marketability and availability.

The film continually rehashing bits from the first two films, revisits them in novel ways like having an older Schwarzenegger battle a younger Schwarzenegger, having the good Terminator sent back to rescue the child Sarah Connor instead of the child John Connor. Sarah talks about her whole life being about preparing and running the way child John did in Terminator 2--the superficial elements of the first two films' stories are continually called back to but without the dreams that motivated their creation.

Genisys begins with footage of the world being destroyed but the regular people shown having a picnic have a stock advertising footage quality rather than Sarah Connor's visions in Terminator 2 which conveyed her sense of urgency and hopelessness. To be sure, the absence of Linda Hamilton is a strong reflection of what's missing in Genisys though Emilia Clarke isn't as bad as I thought she was going to be. Clarke might be a decent action star in a different film but here her lack of grim, angry internal struggle between fatalism and determination completely flattens the character. Lena Headey achieved this in her own way on the too soon ended Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, she gives a more interesting performance on Game of Thrones than Clarke, too, for the same reason--her Cersei's sense of being bitterly abused by life while possessing the drive to keep trying is far more interesting than the relatively default fantasy heroine Daenerys generally works out to be.

But that's Terminator 2. The first Terminator was more of a young man's sexual fantasy, its story, which Genisys seems slightly embarrassed for having to deal with, contains several components that seem like metaphors for a male nerd's life--from Reese falling in love with a photograph to turning up naked in the world along with a more physically perfect and more emotionally closed off (and therefore more masculine) competitor. In Genisys, the subtext is Reese having to prove himself to "Pops", Schwarzenegger's Terminator protector of Sarah, now her father figure. Instead of the intimate weirdness of the first film, the characters in Genisys settle into a sitcom formula that talks down to the audience. The makers of Genisys insert many indications of their low estimation of the audience's intelligence, like Kyle and Sarah whining when Pops lapses into technical jargon and both of them having awkward lines acknowledging the necessity of being naked for time travel. Incidentally, this movie is also much more afraid of butts than the first films, every shot of a naked man's back has the buttocks scrupulously hidden by cgi shadow.

As usual, many critics complain about the film being hard to understand but it's not. It's just very, very badly written. Almost every scene has a character doing or saying something that makes no sense. A scene where an adult John Connor shows up suddenly to meet Sarah and Kyle begins with them hugging him and laughing in surprise and joy before a couple minutes later when it occurs to them he might be a T-1000. John and Kyle spend more time talking about beer than briefing Kyle on the situation in 1984--even after Kyle mentions that he doesn't even know what a waitress is.

Matt Smith isn't the only thing borrowed from Doctor Who, the second half of the film lifts much of the plot from the sixth episode of Smith's third season as the Doctor, "The Bells of Saint John", focusing on Skynet as a social media and phone network though without any of the subtext of "Bells of Saint John" and certainly none of the writing quality. Whatever Doctor Who writers are being paid it's not enough. Even all the audio plays are better than Terminator Genisys.

Twitter Sonnet #766

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Watchful undulations saved the receipt.
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Stethoscope patrons tackle techno bugs.

Satan has Decreed Christopher Lee for All Eternity

It's one thing to know Christopher Lee appeared in over two hundred films but I think I've gotten to the point of scaling that Mount Everest where I've looked down and been staggered just by the measure incarnate. I've been going through his movies lately, I have at least six more lined up, two more I've watched and haven't written about yet. The weird thing is, I can remember doing this in years past, like two years ago I went through a big batch of Christopher Lee films, and a few years before that. It's been over a decade since I saw him in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, I haven't scratched the surface of all the Italian or German films he was in, I haven't even seen all his Hammer films from Hammer's heyday. I haven't even seen his James Bond movie, largely because I'm not much of a James Bond fan, especially when it's not Sean Connery. And still, I'd say I've seen at least forty Christopher Lee movies. The idea that I'll come to the end at some point kind of seems absurd, I can't quite believe death will stop him. It never has before.

A few days ago I watched the final film in which he officially appeared as Dracula, 1973's The Satanic Rites of Dracula, another Hammer Dracula film that's not especially remarkable but not bad. Featuring Peter Cushing as Van Helsing again, it's set in the modern day and has the usual plot points of seductive brides and entranced heroes. There is a nice gritty quality to the cinematography in this one and some cold, Kubrickian moments, as in this scene where Van Helsing confronts Dracula for the first time.

Apparently in an effort to disguise his identity, Dracula speaks with a heavy accent, Lee amusingly doing a pretty good job of imitating Bela Lugosi even though it doesn't quite make sense for the story.

The film has two stand out supporting performances--future David Lynch regular Freddie Jones as an ever shuddering scientist trying to engineer a plague and a very young Joanna Lumley as Van Helsing's granddaughter.

Oof, bright orange and navy blue, I want to say that's a bad choice for a redhead but I don't think that would look good on anyone.

It would have been nice seeing her and her grandfather having a catty back and forth but despite Lumley being incapable of sounding like anything but a worldly and intelligent woman she's forced to play the standard damsel in distress. She makes tea for the boys and then wanders into a basement to get attacked by Dracula's brides.

It's Two Screams In One

What can you do once you've screamed? Well, you can scream again according to 1970's Scream and Scream Again. Maybe the first time you screamed at Christopher Lee, then at Vincent Price, and finally at Peter Cushing. Actually, you're more likely to have screamed at Alfred Marks or Marshall Jones who take the bulk of the screen time while the three actors you've actually heard of, despite getting top billing, appear in only a few scenes. Supposedly this movie was based on a single story but its disjointed and aimless narrative feels remarkably like two unfinished films stitched together into one while the three big names appeared in random scenes whenever they were available.

There are two apparently unrelated movies the footage continually switches between--a vampire murder mystery in which Vincent Price appears in one early scene, and the story of a totalitarian society in some unnamed country which features a cameo from Peter Cushing.

Instead of a swastika, these pseudo-Nazis have adopted three arrows as their symbol, all pointing up, so at least they're optimists. Marshall Jones plays an official who captures people and interrogates them using harsher methods than even Peter Cushing approves of. Jones dispatches friend and foe alike using a Vulcan nerve pinch.

Meanwhile, in England, a series of women are being murdered by a hip young club going vampire. The story largely follows a police inspector played by Alfred Marks as they set up a sting operation which is followed by a mildly interesting chase scene.

There's a scene seemingly totally unrelated to anything of Christopher Lee as someone of importance who receives a phone call that evidently disturbs him. The end of the film does tie things together, actors from both stories meet, but the explanation for the division of narrative is pretty thin. Still, the final scene is a nice showcase for Vincent Price as a mad surgeon confronted by Christopher Lee as . . . someone important, it's never clear in what capacity.

The Beige Actor

Cinema has a long history of pirates, from Douglas Fairbanks to Errol Flynn to Tyrone Power to Robert Newton to Johnny Depp. It might often be asked which is the best, which is the most charming, the most roguish. I can tell you who's the most annoying--that would be Burt Lancaster in 1952's The Crimson Pirate. This may be entirely due to my personal taste--gods, I hate Burt Lancaster. This has all the earmarks of a good pirate film otherwise--great locations, costumes, ships, and impressive acrobatics from the leads. Though Lancaster (if you hate him like me) isn't the only problem--the film is also a disastrous attempt at mixing comedy and adventure.

Oh, that fucking grin. Ever since I first saw him in 1958's Separate Tables I've made an effort to avoid this oozing vessel of self adoration. No matter what he's doing, what kind of guy he's playing, I look in his eyes and the thought I see is, "Oh, what a very good actor am I."

And he's so bad, particularly here. From the moment he gives a rousing speech to his crew, his type writer American accent spitting "ye" and "swabs" sounds like Dave Chappelle doing his impression of a white guy. He's that kind of stereotypical bland with apparent absolute self-confidence on top. Oh, and that fucking grin.

According to Wikipedia, he actually called it "the Grin". Me too, except with the addition of "the Fucking" or "the Shit-Eating." I wouldn't have watched this movie except I've been interested in pirate movies lately and movies with Christopher Lee.

This was well before he was a star but at least he has a few lines as second in command to the main villain, Baron Gruda (Leslie Bradley). The movie's plot follows Captain Vallo (Lancaster) and his first mate Ojo (Nick Cravat) attempting to play both sides against the other, swindling both the Baron and the rebels fighting the colonial government of the fictional Caribbean island of Cobra. But Vallo falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the rebel leader, Consuelo (Eva Bartok), and like so many other pirate movies, many much better than this one, it falls into the trap of insisting on its lead pirate secretly having a heart of gold and not really being much of a pirate at all. Of course, the film starts off with these legs already amputated since Lancaster never seems remotely like a pirate, it's only weird his crew treats him like one.

Lancaster and his long time collaborator Cravat do exhibit some impressive acrobatics as they avoid king's guards on the island and on the ship, but the film's plan of also being a comedy drains a lot of the tension out of these scenes making them feel more like impressively executed but rather unfunny slapstick routines. There's also almost no sword play.

Twitter Sonnet #765

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