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Goth Chick News: Full On Fan-Girling Over MST3K

Goth Chick News: Full On Fan-Girling Over MST3K

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MST3K-small

Though in my early Goth Girl days I was admittedly too enthralled with my beloved (and sometimes cheesy) horror movies to ever consider hacking on them, my teenaged years did find me gaining an appreciation for snarky commentary during movies.

So it will be no surprise to anyone that discovering Mystery Science Theater 3000 meant Joel, Servo, Crow and Gypsy became my early mentors, playing a big part in creating the sarcastic, mocking and malicious critic who sits before you and would ultimately find a safe haven in the page of Black Gate.

In a word – I was hooked.

Years later I now own every episode of every season, in multiple formats. And I waited in a two-and-a-half-hour line to spend a total of 30 seconds saying “hi” to Joel Hodgson at a con – right behind a guy hauling around a life-sized “Crow” which I coveted to the point of violence.

So clearly, I’m not alone.

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Kong: Forget Jurassic Park; Book Your Next Family Vacation to Skull Island!

Kong: Forget Jurassic Park; Book Your Next Family Vacation to Skull Island!

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kong skullOkay, I loaded the family up in the van today and we went to see the big ape, the Eighth Wonder of the World tearing it up at the box office.

It delivered pretty much what we all wanted and expected, from the youngest son on up to the oldest boy in the family (that would be me, the boy pushing 45). That is to say, there isn’t going to be any “Oscar buzz” around it (like there is with Logan), but big-budget popcorn B-movies don’t get much better.

A lot of people were excited to see Tom Hiddleston in this movie, and then disappointed to see his performance wasn’t much like Loki: he’s the fairly bland leading man, but he executes the role fine. Likewise for Brie Larson, the anti-war photojournalist who tags along on a hunch that there’s more going on in this expedition to an uncharted island than some mundane mapping (boy is her hunch right!). Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman have more memorable parts, but those, too, are pretty one-dimensional types. The real stand-out, as you’ve probably heard, is John C. Reilly as the WWII fighter pilot who has been stranded on the island for 28 years.

Enough said about the human cast, because, really, they’re all just bit parts to the Main Attraction: Let the Kaiju Main Event begin!

Kong: Skull Island is a lean, mean movie that barely hits the two-hour mark. Can you believe this Kong is more than an hour shorter than Peter Jackson’s outing with the Primary Primate back in 2005? It cuts out what some critics considered a meandering, overlong first act in Jackson’s film, getting straight to the action and then not letting up – right up to the closing shot that zooms in on Kong’s pupil as it reflects the towering rock formation in the center of Skull Island. It also does not grind the action to a halt to capture the big ape and haul him off to New York: this is all Skull Island, baby. The Island “where evolution is not finished,” and its many, many weird denizens.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Talking About Poirot

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Talking About Poirot

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Poirot_OneI mentioned last week (which you know, enlightened reader, because you love this column. You probably bookmarked the link as a memoriam to me. Anyhoo…) that I discovered the Nero Wolfe books through the A&E television series starring Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton. I’d just never read any of the books, even though the series had been around for decades. And now it’s my favorite mystery series of them all (sorry Holmes and Pons).

Well, some thirty-ish years ago (maybe a little more), I read a couple of Agatha Christie books. I remember that one was definitely a Poirot. I didn’t care for them and that was that. So, while Christie (alongside The Bard) is reckoned to be the best-selling fiction author of all time, she was absent from my not inconsiderable mystery library.

Then, a few years ago, I began watching the Hercule Poirot television series starring David Suchet (here’s a trailer). And I really, really liked it. From 1989 through 2013, Suchet filmed 70 Poirot stories! So, I decided to give Christie’s writings a chance again. Well, Poirot, anyways: I’m not sure you could pay me to read Miss Marple. Thus, I bought Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories and had at it. As I write this, I’m on story 19 of 51.

First thing I noticed is how short these things are. Yes, I know they’re called ‘short stories,’ but while I haven’t tried counting words, most of them are between 8 and 16 pages long. And that’s on big ol’ 6” x 9” paper. Also, she was really cranking these out. A new Poirot was appearing almost weekly in The Sketch magazine.

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Oz’s Bag of Holding, TV Edition: Ash vs Evil Dead, Barney Miller, Parks & Recreation: What do these Sitcoms Have in Common?

Oz’s Bag of Holding, TV Edition: Ash vs Evil Dead, Barney Miller, Parks & Recreation: What do these Sitcoms Have in Common?

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ashAnswer: They’re all in my bag of holding. I will now draw them out and discuss them.

Parks and Recreation

Parks and Recreation (2009-2015) has no reason to be mentioned on a site devoted to fantasy, but I’ll rationalize my inclusion of it here by pointing out that the character Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) is a legit connoisseur of science fiction and fantasy, frequently making allusions and drawing analogies to Star Wars or Star Trek or The Lord of the Rings that fly over his colleagues’ heads. We’ve all been there, surrounded by coworkers (or classmates, or family members) who do not share our outside interests and passions. (Then we found the Internet. And, if we were really fortunate: conventions.)

In one episode, coworkers encourage Ben to take a break for a day, to cut loose and totally indulge himself at the mall. While they’re getting facials and manicures, he purchases and dresses up in a Dark Knight costume.

The refreshing thing about Ben is that he is not written as the stereotypical sitcom caricature of a nerd. He is somewhat socially awkward but smart and sharp, on top of things. He’s actually a more “normal,” down-to-earth, audience-POV person, surrounded as he is by flamboyant and eccentric characters. He is respected and, in one case, adored (he becomes the love interest of Amy Poehler’s lead character Leslie Knope).

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Peplum Populist: Colossus of the Stone Age (Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules)

Peplum Populist: Colossus of the Stone Age (Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules)

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colossus-of-the-stone-age-maciste-contro-i-mostri-italian-posterHere’s a pleasing discovery: Amazon Video has a widescreen print of the 1962 sword-and-sandal (peplum) film Colossus of the Stone Age available under its U.S. television syndication title, Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules. And the print is a good one. It’s not the level of a professional 4K restoration like the Phantasm Blu-ray that came out in December, but considering sword-and-sandal movies often look like someone dragged the film along the sidewalk on the way to the telecine department, Colossus of the Stone Age is damned near pristine. It isn’t part of the Amazon Prime library, however, so subscribers have to shell out $1.99 to rent it, or an extra 51¢ to own it. There’s a version streaming on Amazon Prime under the same title, but it’s the standard cropped and dragged-across-the-pavement type.

So as far as pepla available in English, Colossus of the Stone Age looks fantastic. But is it any good?

Perhaps the better question is, “Is it worth watching?” For this type of low-budget fantasy production, the question of quality is often separate from the question of whether to spend time with it.

But my answer to both questions is “no.”

The appeal of a peplum movie set in the Stone Age and the promise that it will have fire monsters is tempting, and the quality widescreen presentation is a legitimate bonus, but Colossus of the Stone Age (the U.K. theatrical release title) is one of the more tatty and flavorless examples of this genre. Pepla at their best have bizarre imagination, creative production designs and visuals, and robust action scenes. At their most mediocre they have heroes who don’t do anything and long scenes of extras running around in fields or through cheap cavern sets while clumsily swinging sticks at each other. Which is a sentence that works as a summary of this movie.

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Goth Chick News: A Fan Girl Meltdown Over Amazon’s Good Omens

Goth Chick News: A Fan Girl Meltdown Over Amazon’s Good Omens

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good-omens-smallI can say with certainty that I almost never get worked up over film adaptations of books, with good reason; they rarely live up to their source material.

But today I make an exception.

I might actually squee… Well probably not, but still.

Amazon Studios recently announced a six-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s novel Good Omens which will debut in 2018.

Insert small squee here.

I first picked up the book Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch in an airport bookstore in 2006. I then proceeded to laugh out loud on my flight from San Jose to Chicago, and laughing out loud at a book is something I haven’t done since my first reading of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Later I picked up of the audio version which I listened to in the car and nearly drove off the road. Finally, in January of 2015 I acquired the BBC Radio 4 dramatization, performed with a full cast and fell in love all over again.

There is no better cure for a bad day then listening to a few chapters of Good Omens.

But what is just so darn amusing about the story?

For me it has all the elements — demons, angels, witches, the Antichrist — all wrapped in a story that boldly showcases the absurdity of it all in the most biting and British of ways.

The book is set “today” but the show will be set in 2018 and in both, the world is on the brink of an apocalypse. But follies ensue when Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a demon, aren’t all that enthusiastic about the end of the world, having grown quite comfortable with their lives on earth. Also, they may have misplaced the Antichrist. And he may just be an ordinary boy who wants to stay in his small town with his gang of friends.

I’m snickering just typing that.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Mister Bean as Simeonon’s Maigret?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Mister Bean as Simeonon’s Maigret?

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Maigret_AtkinsonGeorges Simenon wrote seventy-six novels and twenty-eight short stories about French police commissionaire Jules Maigret (May-gray) between 1932 and 1973. Maigret’s career paralleled that of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, who appeared in thirty-three novels and thirty-three novellas/short stories from 1934 to 1975.

There have been many film and television adaptations of Maigret in various countries over the decades. Rupert Davies starred in a popular British television series in the sixties and Michael Gambon played the policeman in a Granada series in the eighties. Now, I’ve never read a Maigret story or seen any of the films or television shows, except for the two I’m going to talk about in this post. So, I don’t have a frame of reference for the two new films, other than the actual movies themselves. They may be nothing like the original character, in the vein of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes; or they could be spot on: though that seems unlikely.

A British company cast Rowan Atkinson as Maigret and filmed a pair of television movies that were aired in 2016: Maigret Sets a Trap and Maigret’s Dead Man.  Two more are on the way: Night at the Crossroads and Maigret in Montmarte.

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Why Must Han Solo Die? Revisited

Why Must Han Solo Die? Revisited

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force awakens

[SPOILERS AHEAD! (But if you still haven’t seen the new Star Wars films yet, you probably don’t give a damn, right?)]

On July 28, 2014, right here on Black Gate, I predicted that in the new Star Wars film (Part VII: The Force Awakens, released December 18, 2015), Han Solo would die. I also offered some further conjecture about where this would take the plot.

I thought it would be fun to revisit my predictions and see how they panned out. You can read the original brief post HERE, so you can keep score with me.

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One Million Years B.C. on Blu-Ray—Because You Love Dinosaurs Too

One Million Years B.C. on Blu-Ray—Because You Love Dinosaurs Too

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one-million-year-BC-blu-ray-coverOne Million Years B.C. was released this week on Region A (North America) Blu-ray for the first time, drawing us one step closer to a complete set of Ray Harryhausen movies on Hi-Def. We still need The Valley of Gwangi, which Warner Bros. owns — and they’re stingy about catalogue titles, especially if they’ve already released them as part of the Warner Archive MOD series. (Edit: Warner Archive is releasing a Blu-ray that will be out in a few weeks! So never mind. Thanks to Joe H. in the comments for pointing this out. Yes, there will be a review on March 18.)

But no more of that. I’m here to celebrate the stop-motion dinosaurs of 1966’s One Million Years B.C., which is a crossover of two of my main movie loves: special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen and Britain’s Hammer Film Productions.

Hammer and Harryhausen

I once read a customer review on Amazon for the One Million Years B.C. DVD that remarked at the end, “If you’re buying this, you’re buying it for Raquel.” I wonder if the reviewer nodded off during stretches of the film and somehow failed to notice that there are dinosaurs all over it? Dinosaurs created by special effects legend Ray Harryhausen!

I’m not casting aspersions on the appeal of Raquel Welch; she has a enough screen presence to fill in a rock quarry and was a massive part of the movie’s marketing and initial global success. She adds a tremendous amount to the film and helps hold up the human action between stop-motion sequences. Yes, she is stunningly gorgeous on screen to the point that she almost seems unreal. But Raquel Welch has never been as popular as dinosaurs. Sorry, there’s no contest.

Let’s be honest: if One Million Years B.C. had no stop-motion Ray Harryhausen dinosaurs, it would be remembered today for the famous Raquel Welch image and that’s it. People wouldn’t still be watching the film or buying new releases of it more than fifty years later. The film itself would be a side-note, something discussed in terms of Welch’s career and popular 1960s sex symbols, but not anything viewers today would sit down to enjoy in full. Harryhausen’s effects make One Million Years B.C. a perennial.

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It’s A Group Effort

It’s A Group Effort

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stargate_sg-1I think we can all remember a time when, with the possible exception of soap operas, TV shows had one lead character. Even when it was a sitcom, and the lead character was married, there was still only one lead. Often these shows were easy to spot because they identified the character in the title of the show. I Love Lucy. The Dick van Dyke Show. The Rifleman.

The first show I remember having an ensemble cast is Hill Street Blues (1981-1987). It was also the first show I remember having ongoing narratives that spanned episodes, something else we see a lot of today. It was closely followed by St. Elsewhere (1982-1988). More recently, sort of between then and now, we’ve got The West Wing, Sports Night (thank you Aaron Sorkin) and the CSI and NCIS franchises. Though we could argue that in these last two shows what we have is an anchor character, in the person of the better known actor, surrounded by the rest of the ensemble.

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