Housekeeping

I have added a few links  to nearly all of the left sidebar categories and trimmed a dead link to Gaming Report. The site was purchased by Scrye Magazine several years ago, then by Comic Buyer's Guide who promptly killed it. Alas, it once was a great one-stop-shop of gaming news.

Here's one of my favorites from the new links. Take a look at this blast from the past. I like to imagine them drinking Manhattans and listening to Xavier Cugat or Esquivel on the hi-fi.

Howard's Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

In the previous post I neglected to mention that the next volume in Del Rey's Robert E. Howard Library is out this coming week.

Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures collects the majority of Howard's medieval-era historical fiction stories, poems, synopses and fragments. Some of the earlier Celtic hero stories are not part of this collection, so there's a hope that they might be included in a future Del Rey volume (or a collection from the Foundation, at least). A list of contents can be found at REHupa.

From the publisher's description:

The immortal legacy of Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Cimmerian, continues with this latest compendium of Howard’s fiction and poetry. These adventures, set in medieval-era Europe and the Near East, are among the most gripping Howard ever wrote, full of pageantry, romance, and battle scenes worthy of Tolstoy himself. Most of all, they feature some of Howard’s most unusual and memorable characters, including Cormac FitzGeoffrey, a half-Irish, half-Norman man of war who follows Richard the Lion-hearted to twelfth-century Palestine—or, as it was known to the Crusaders, Outremer; Diego de Guzman, a Spaniard who visits Cairo in the guise of a Muslim on a mission of revenge; and the legendary sword woman Dark Agnès, who, faced with an arranged marriage to a brutal husband in sixteenth-century France, cuts the ceremony short with a dagger thrust and flees to forge a new identity on the battlefield.

Lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist John Watkiss and featuring miscellanea, informative essays, and a fascinating introduction by acclaimed historical author Scott Oden, Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures is a must-have for every fan of Robert E. Howard, who, in a career spanning just twelve years, won a place in the pantheon of great American writers.

In particular, I'm most interested in "Blades for France" and the other Dark Agnes stories, and finally reading "The Shadow of the Vulture", about the Siege of Vienna. This is the story with the character Red Sonya of Rogatino, whose name and red hair was the basis for the Marvel Comics character Red Sonja.

I'm not too sure about the cover painting, but the samples I've seen of the interior illustrations look great.

Happy Birthday, Two-Gun Bob!

Saturday marks the 105th anniversary of the birth of pulp writer Robert E. Howard. It has become a tradition on this date for Howard fans to read a favorite story and toast to his shade with a favorite beverage.

It's hard to go wrong with any of the stories, and there should be one to suit your preference: sword and sorcery, hard-boiled detectives, weird horror, historical fiction, boxing, westerns, pirates and sword-wielding puritans. One of my favorites that I often choose for a birthday reading is "Worms of the Earth", a story of Bran Mak Morn, last king of the Picts, and a weapon "to terrible to use, even against Rome". It's available in many publications but I would suggest the text found in Del Rey's Bran Mak Morn: The Last King.

For more information on his life and career, start with the following sites:

• Robert E. Howard United Press Association
• The Robert E. Howard Foundation
• Howard Works bibliographic database
• The Cimmerian (no longer updated)

I would also recommend Mark Finn's Howard biography, the Locus and World Fantasy Award-nominated Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard. An expanded edition is due this year from the REH Foundation.

Cult Classic of the Week: Black Sunday (1960)

Much like Kurosawa, Mario Bava made his early reputation by ghost-directing films for more prominent directors. He started as a cameraman and director of photography. His first major directing jobs came when he directed part of Hercules (1957) and most of Hercules Unchained (1958).  Riccardo Freda tricked Bava into taking over directing duties on Caltiki the Immortal Monster, and the producer rewarded Bava's good work by allowing him to choose his own film for his official directorial debut. That story became The Mask of Satan, better known by the American-International Pictures release title of Black Sunday.

I grew up watching horror and science-fiction movies on TV. I was well-versed with the standards shown in late-night and Saturday afternoons. Black-and white Universal monster films, giant bug movies of the 50's, the color Poe films that Roger Corman made for AIP -- it was a rare treat to catch one of those -- Godzilla (of course) and even the oeuvre of Edward D. Wood, Jr. It wasn't until I discovered a copy of Cult Movies Magazine (either # 5 or 6) in a bookstore around 1991 that I really started reading about and studying this strange and wonderful world of movies outside the mainstream, and that included learning about the works of Mario Bava.

It's surprising just how prolific Bava was. In addition to Black Sunday, highlights of his directing career would include Hercules in the Haunted World (1961), Black Sabbath (1963), the first true Italian giallo Blood and Black Lace (1964), Planet of the Vampires (1965), Kill, Baby...Kill! (1966), Danger: Diabolik (1968), and Baron Blood (1972). The filmography on the DVD suggests that the full extent of his fill-in work still continues to be discovered.

Black Sunday answers the age-old question: If you are a doctor, a professional, and you know that the coffin that you find in a crypt has a window on it so that the corpse will forever see the stone cross standing above it, do you just leave the coffin alone if you accidentally break the cross? What if you reach into the coffin to pull off the mask that has been hammered onto the face and, in doing so, you leave behind enough blood on the broken glass to bring the corpse back to life?

Bava intended to film Nikolai Gogol's story "The Vij", but little remains of the original story. Instead we have family curses, cobwebbed castle corridors, villagers with torches and pitchforks, and witches brought back to life, acting more like traditional vampires. Instead of a stake through the heart, they get a stake in the eye!

The atmosphere of the film is a mix of the Universal Monster and the British Hammer movies: lots of old, dark castle and crypt scenes with unexpected gore. It's a bit of a surprise to see a spiked mask hammered onto the face of a witch (with the resulting blood spurts), or tiny scorpions crawling out of a corpse's empty eye sockets. Tame by today's standards, but shocking enough to be trimmed from the AIP release (and you couldn't use "Satan" in the title, either). Bava's familiarity with the camera is on display here. Even at this early point in his career the shots are composed beautifully, and there is a great 360-degree pan around the crypt in the ruined chapel.

This is the film that started Barbara Steele's career in horror films. She's quite popular as the first real "Scream Queen" of horror movies, but I must admit that I'm not that familiar with her work other than The Pit and the Pendulum.

I watched Image's 1999 DVD release of the original Italian director's cut with English dubbing. It includes three pages of liner notes and an audio commentary by Video Watchdog Magazine's Tim Lucas, who is the foremost authority on Bava and literally wrote the book on him.

Update: Kino Lorber released a new edition of this film on DVD and Blu-ray in September 2012.

Cult Classic of the Week: An Introduction

This is one of those new blog features that I mentioned around New Year's Day. My main purpose was to find another way to talk about movies I'm interested in. Also, I wanted a system for making decisions on what movies to watch.

I was inspired to try this because of two items I read recently. At the end of last year, I discovered a fairly new blog on horror and other genre films, From Midnight, With Love. I appreciate The Mike's sense of humor and his writing about film, but my favorite part is his Midnight Movie of the Week posts. A weekly review is a great format and a schedule that I could perhaps keep up with. "Midnight Movie of the Week" is such a perfect title for what I have in mind, but I don't want to steal it.

Second, there was a posting on the Home Theater Forum titled "How do you decide which DVD to watch from your collection?" This might seem like a silly question but I understand exactly what the initial post author means when he asks it. Often when I have the time and the inclination to watch something, I look at the shelves and have "decision paralysis". Usually I'll watch a DVD because it came up in a conversation, or we were reminded of it by a news item (as in the case when we watched Forbidden Planet after Leslie Nielsen passed away), or it's a new DVD that I just purchased. I'm a collector, so I have DVDs of favorites because I enjoy owning them and watching them whenever I like. Deciding which one to watch, however, can be difficult as I tend to revisit some discs and neglect others.

The solution? Leave it up to chance! First, I'll roll a d6 to see if the movie is from my DVD collection or from Netflix. Next, I'll check a list of random letters to choose the title. I used the random letter generator at Random.org to make a list of two-letter character strings in Excel. For the second letter of the string, I chose only the more frequently used letters. I didn't think that any film titles would start with "Zq".

There's a certain amount of fudging that will probably go on. I'll look for the film title that's the closest to the random letters, but it is not an exact science. It will depend on what titles are available, and if that film meets my criteria for a cult classic.

I haven't found a satisfying definition for "cult movie". It's a very subjective term. To paraphrase Judge Stewart, I know it when I see it. The definition that Peary used in his landmark book on the subject was a movie that is taken to heart and championed by segments of the movie audience. That's part of it, certainly, but to me that is incomplete. It may have been true in film studies of the 70s and early 80s, but since then I think that a more specific definition is in order, one that includes the relative obscurity or strangeness of the film. Look at the list of movies from his book and ask yourself what you would consider to be a "cult movie". I Married a Monster from Outer Space? Pink Flamingos? Caged Heat? Definitely cult movies. Singing in the Rain? The Searchers? The Wizard of Oz? I'm not so sure.

There are films in my collection that I love, that are considered classics, but not necessarily "cult classics". For this project, I want to shine a light on more obscure titles, the sort that the average person on the street wouldn't know about. So it's a random choice to a point, but then I might need to move one way or another on the shelf, or in the Netflix Instant search box, to find the right title.

Because of the open-ended nature of this project, I'm hoping to avoid the problem of not being able to finish, as was the case with my 100 Films in 100 Days project. I'll do my best to review a movie each week although it won't disrupt the schedule if I need to catch up later. "Review" might be a strong word for it. They may not be as detailed as my Green Slime DVD review, but I hope to cover some history and my own general impressions about the movies that I watch. I might entertain requests, too.

Arrrrr! Treasure from Lulu.com

Another code, this time a pirate treasure theme (maybe a chance to buy a Freeport book) with 20% off any order:

Enter coupon code TREASURE305 at checkout and receive 20% off your order. The maximum savings for this coupon is $100. Offer good towards print costs only - shipping and tax amounts are excluded. You can only use the code once per account, and you can't use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer ends on January, 17 2011 at 11:59 PM so try not to procrastinate!

http://www.lulu.com/static/011311_TREASURE305wv.html/?cid=011311_en_email_TREASURE305

Best DVDs of 2010

I didn't personally see enough of the films or DVDs/Blu-rays released last year to competently comment on the best of the year. I'll leave that to the professionals:

Adam Jahnke's "The Best Discs of 2010"

Adam Jahnke's Best and Worst Films of 2010

DVD Savant Picks the Most Impressive Discs of 2010

2010: The Year They Finally Got Blu-ray Right

And a bonus: DVD Savant's 2011 DVD Wish List

After a couple of years with few real gems, it's heartening to see so many great discs released in the year that streaming video was labeled "the death of the disc".

To any "Best of 2010" DVD list I would add Vampire Circus and The Green Slime (Stuart Galbraith IV's review), but that's just me.

A phrase for the New Year

With the start of the new year, I thought about writing a recap of last year with some ideas for this one, but I could probably write the same post that I did last year at this time without many changes. I do have a few ideas for new blog features that I'm still thinking through.

Instead, I would like to point you towards a posting from Fred Hicks (via Stargazer's World) with a simple but profound message: Play More. Run More. Share More.

Yet another Lulu coupon

I missed the 25% off coupon from Christmas Day, but here's another:

Enter coupon code WINTER305 at checkout and receive 25% off your book order. The maximum savings for this coupon is $50. Offer good towards print costs only - shipping and tax amounts are excluded. You can only use the code once per account, and you can't use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer ends on January, 5 2011 at 11:59 PM.

10 Unconventional Winter Holiday Movies (link)

If you want to watch a Christmas movie, but you are tired of the more traditional fare, Wired Magazine's GeekDad blog posted a link to ten unconventional holiday movies -- titles like Die Hard and Batman Returns. I may have to dig up my VHS copy of the MST3K version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Also, in the spirit of the holidays, take a look at a model of Serenity... in gingerbread.

Links of the Week

Some links that I found interesting in the past two weeks:

Dungeons & Dragons alignments in the Doctor Who universe.

Dungeons & Dragons alignments in the Batman universe.

An Apple engineer recreates the functions of the Antikythera Mechanism... out of Lego.

The best tic-tac-toe moves for any situation.

The evolution of human flight in film.

21 scandalous secrets revealed on WookieLeaks.

Equation: Formula for Calculating a Skycraper’s Sway (and the pendulum that keeps it in place).

Cheap DIY Camera Systems Perform Amazing Photographic Feats.

Coding for the masses.

The flight manual for the Harrier Jump Jet.

The 1982 Tron Holiday Special.

Night-time photos of Earth from the International Space Station.

More incredible photos from the ISS, including some of the most inspiring... and most creepy.

A year-end coupon code from Lulu.com

Another coupon code was sent out from Lulu this week, this time for 20% off an order. The code is REMARKABLEYEAR305 and it expires on December 31, 2010 at 11:59 PM EST. I might try to get the new issue of Fight On! or one of the Robert E. Howard publications that I haven't picked up yet.

Various opinions on net neutrality

I try to avoid writing about political issues on this blog. This should be a space to get away from that and talk about games, movies and other fun things. The idea behind what is known as "net neutrality" shouldn't be a political issue but it has become one.

For better or worse, the internet is an important part of our lives, and if you are interested in this medium (since you are reading this blog, I assume that you are) you owe it to yourself to research this issue and the ramifications.

This has been a hot story this week due to the upcoming FCC vote and the Comcast-Netflix conflict. Here are a few recent stories:

FCC Announces Net Neutrality Order for December Meeting
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/net-neutrality-order/

Comcast Busted: New Tolls for Netflix Aren't All You Should Worry About
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/comcast-busted-new-tolls-_b_789786.html

FCC chief backs some rationing of Internet traffic
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101201/media_nm/us_fcc_netneutrality

Julius Genachowski, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission: Preserving a Free and Open Internet
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julius-genachowski/preserving-a-free-and-ope_b_790553.html

FCC Chairman Announces Fake Net Neutrality Proposal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-silver/fcc-chairman-announces-fa_b_790307.html

Leslie Nielsen, RIP

We were saddened to hear the news late Sunday night that actor Leslie Nielsen had passed away.

I first knew of him as a serious actor, in The Poseidon Adventure, Disney's The Swamp Fox and especially Forbidden Planet (which Mrs. Kaiju saw for the first time last night).




Then in 1980, Airplane was released... My family and I used to watch that all the time, on broadcast and cable TV. It was one of the first VHS tapes we ever purchased, along with Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It's difficult to explain exactly how much influence Airplane had on comedy in the movies, and how important it was in the forming the sense of humor of a generation. I consider it one of the top comedy films ever, right alongside Blazing Saddles, and much of that reputation is because of Mr. Nielsen's performance.

I remember watching his TV series Police Squad! when it first aired, and I recall seeing the two VHS tapes (three episodes each) in the local Camelot Music record store several years later but I never got them. When DVD arrived I hoped for an eventual release of the series on that format, which happened in 2006. If you enjoy The Naked Gun, it's worth tracking this disc down.

I liked the first Naked Gun movie, but didn't care for the other two. I must admit that I haven't seen much of Mr. Nielsen's later work past Dracula: Dead and Loving It, in movies like Spy Hard, Mr. Magoo and the Scary Movie series.

The reaction on the 'net has been interesting. Many condolences and thanks, as is usual for a celebrity who has died, but this time I've seen repeated lines from Airplane or The Naked Gun used in Facebook statuses, Tweets, and article comments. I don't see it as being disrespectful; on the contrary, I think it's a testament to the sense of humor that he had, and that many, many people share, and how much his work has meant to so many. I don't believe that he would have been offended, in fact it's probably the sort of tribute he would have loved.

This clip from Monday's NBC Nightly News is one of the best tributes in the media so far:

Frank: It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girl dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.

Jane: Goodyear?

Frank: No, the worst.

Thanks for all the laughs, Mr. Nielsen.

Cyber Monday deal from Lulu.com

Another coupon code from Lulu.com, good only until midnight tonight -- 25% off your order using code CYBER305.

 

http://www.lulu.com/static/112910_CYBER305wv.html

 

 

Ingrid Pitt, RIP

While checking the Doctor Who News Page yesterday, I saw the news that Ingrid Pitt had passed away. She had just turned 73 on Sunday. For the generations that grew up watching horror films in the 1960s and 70s, she became as iconic -- and as identified with the British horror of Hammer and Amicus Studios -- as Lee's Dracula or Cushing's Frankenstein.

Her real life story was as remarkable as any movie. Born in Poland, her father German and her mother Jewish, she and her family were held in a concentration camp. She survived the war, married an American soldier in the 1950s and moved to America, and worked as a waitress while trying out for parts as an actress.

Her film debut came as a minor role in Doctor Zhivago. Soon after, she had a speaking role opposite Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare.

In the late 1960s and early 70s, Hammer Studios (and others) tried to press the easing censorship rules by adding more sex appeal to their Gothic horrors. Ms. Pitt's first breakout part in the horror field was The Vampire Lovers (1970, directed by Roy Ward Baker, who died in October). She later starred in Hammer's Countess Dracula.

Aside from her famous horror film roles, she also appeared in many other movies and television programs (twice on Doctor Who) in the UK and the US. She formed a successful touring theater company, and wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction books, magazine articles, screenplays, and a weekly column at Den of Geek.

I don't remember which film I first saw her in. It was probably Where Eagles Dare. Rather than any one particular role, I will continue to remember Ms. Pitt mainly as being representative of that era of movie-making, when corseted vampires crept about through Gothic landscapes and spoke the Queen's English with the slightest Eastern European accent. Thank you, Ms. Pitt.

Our cat Java does her best Ingrid Pitt impersonation.

A quick Hammer DVD List update

My main interest regarding England's Hammer Studios has always been their horror output, and that was the focus of the Region 1 DVD list. I've since added others, including their suspense films and Robin Hood movies, to name a few examples.

The latest update adds VCI's great double-feature film noir sets, and also The Old Dark House. I did not realize that it was on the William Castle Collection set.

The American remake of Let the Right One In is also included, as it was released by the "new" Hammer Productions. It's due on DVD and Blu-ray in February.

Delays

Various real-world responsibilities have keep me from posting recently. Hopefully there will be new posts here this week.

The Green Slime: a DVD review

I made some brief comments about The Green Slime and the Warner Archive program in an earlier post when the title was first announced. We received the new DVD last Tuesday and watched it that night.


In the future, Commander Jack Rankin (Robert Horton) is called back from retirement. A rogue asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, and Rankin is charged with leading a team of astronauts to set charges and destroy the asteroid. The staging for the mission takes place at Space Station Gamma III, under the command of Rankin's old friend Commander Vince Elliot (Richard Jaeckel), who is now engaged to the station's doctor -- and Rankin's old flame -- Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi). This love triangle plays out against a backdrop that includes the tense but successful mission to the asteroid, and shortly thereafter the discovery that something was brought back attached to a space suit...


The Green Slime was a co-production between American, Italian and Japanese studios: MGM, RAM Films and Toei. It is often considered as part of the "Gamma" films, including the Italian science fiction films War of the Planets and Wild, Wild Planet. Reportedly, MGM gathered together the actors, while Toei offered the studio, crew, set construction and special effects. Although filmed in Japan, the entire cast was foreign actors. Background extras were recruited from the US Air Force base near Tokyo.


This is important for the feel of the film, as it has a definite sense of a military organization and mission. In this way it is in the same tradition of "quasi-military force" science fiction as Forbidden Planet and Star Trek. Robert Horton was best known for Westerns, but Richard Jaeckel distinguished himself the year before as Lee Marvin's second-in-command Sergeant Bowren in The Dirty Dozen.


Kinji Fukasaku was known as a dependable director. For the majority of his career he worked at Toei Studios directing yakuza films. Although he delivered what the studios expected, he was still able to innovate and express his own ideas through his films. For The Green Slime, he wanted to deliver a Vietnam-era parable, about a nebulous fight against an enemy that could not be contained or controlled. Some of that shows through, but the ongoing struggle between the producers and the director over scheduling and costs held back the extremes of Fukasaku's vision. Five years later, he would direct the first in a series of films based on the memoir of a Hiroshima yakuza boss, and would be critically acclaimed around the world: Battle Without Honor and Humanity.


What we do find as a result of this international collaboration is a claustrophobic, paranoid, and almost Lovecraftian struggle against a foe that does not stop, that takes on energy from its surroundings and the very weapons used against it to reproduce.


Rankin and Elliot are fighting over Dr. Benson, but also fighting for command of the situation on the station -- literally and metaphorically. There are spacious areas on board the station (see the celebration scene), but we're still in an enclosed and self-contained space with nowhere to run. Even the sickbay isn't safe.


The hunting of the Slime through the dark and empty corridors of Gamma III is a precursor of military sci-fi and horror films like Alien, Aliens, and The Thing. The shots of the aliens swarming on the outside of the station and trying to break into the docking bay are reminiscent of the Martians in the dream recording from Quatermass and the Pit -- a nameless multitude marching on.


Considering the budgets that were available to films of this era, the special effects are quite good. The model work is excellent. The ship models are filmed against a starfield backdrop which gives it a slightly less-than-realistic feeling, but this technique also avoids the problem with matte lines that plague effects work from other contemporary films. The sets are expansive and spacious. It's remarkable to think that all of the locations were built for the film.


The master used for the DVD is a newly-created anamorphic 2.35:1 master scanned from a "beautiful" inter-positive print. For those of us who have only ever seen the movie on cable TV or videotape, the most obvious change is the widescreen presentation. Watching in the proper aspect ratio lets us see so much more of the frame, and therefore more of the action. It's still claustrophobic at the right times, but now it isn't the artificial 4:3 format that causes it.


Colors on the DVD are bright and good, and the blacks deep, so that details in shadow are still visible. Good examples are the service tunnel and darkened corridor sequences. The colors don't pop quite as much as I expected, but still comparable to other similar films of this era. Some speckles are noticeable, along with the occasional scratch in the film, but nothing glaring. The only odd film effects are two quick shots of astronauts outside the station, where the matte effect seen at DVD-resolution levels gives the actors a greenish glow. Overall, this is, without a doubt, the best that the movie has looked since the theatrical release.


The audio track is Dolby Digital mono. No special features are included. I understand that extra features mean additional expenses, although a good print of the trailer would have been a great treat.

I noticed something interesting when viewing this again for the first time in at least ten years: I felt sorry for the alien creatures. Their home asteroid was destroyed, some of their cells were carried to a strange and alien environment, and they just tried to survive and reproduce according to their instincts.

Any fan of Japanese science-fiction/fantasy films would enjoy The Green Slime. The film sits at the intersection of several noteworthy and historic trends. It's part of the career of an internationally-famous and inventive director. It was one of the first major international film co-productions. The effects were created by former employees of Toho Studios and Eiji Tsuburaya's effects crew. The theme song of the American version was written by the composer of the music for Barbarella and Happy Days. It deserves to be part of any cult movie fan's collection.


War of the Planets and Wild, Wild Planet are also new releases from the Warner Archive. I haven't seen either one before, but I definitely plan to pick them up in the future.

Upcoming posts

I received my DVD of The Green Slime in the mail yesterday, and Mrs. Kaiju and I watched it last night. Unfortunately, I won't be able to post a proper review until the weekend.

Other future postings will include more upcoming DVD news, a look at the "Red Box" D&D 4th edition starter set, and an overview of the state of manufactured-on-demand DVD releases from the major studios.