Finally Watched 'A Christmas Story'

It was one of those astounding facts that turned heads at Christmas parties, but I'd never watched A Christmas Story until last night.  I hardly need to review it here, but the sweet, nostalgic, slightly askew, fond regard in which it's generally held seems about right, now that I've finally seen it.

Picked it up on the double-feature DVD that includes its 2022 sequel, A Christmas Story Christmas.  Maybe I'll watch it before New Year's, maybe I'll save it for next Christmas.  There's only so much sweet, slightly askew nostalgia I can take in one week.

ps: You might want to pick up a pack of these.  I was always a stickler about such when my kids were young.  Still am, for that matter.

pps: As if on cue, this showed up: Could A Red Ryder BB Gun Be Lethal?  15 minutes of interestingness.  Or if you don't have the time, just apply Betteridge's Law and move on.

"Toward the Unknown" – Surprisingly Good!

I'd heard good things about the 1956 film Toward the Unknown, but face it, I had fairly low expectations.  However, it turns out that it's pretty good in a Top Gun–meets–The Right Stuff way.  Made with the full cooperation and assistance of the USAF, the flight scenes are well done, the few special effects (mostly a practical mock-up of the X-2 rocket plane) hold up to modern viewing, and the tacked-on melodrama isn't too melodramatic.  At least, no worse than either of the Top Gun movies.  And while the historical details of the X-2 program are somewhat different than what is portrayed in this film, in several scenes it's close enough to echo some of the actual tragedies of the real program.

So, what's it about?  Here's the one-line summary from IMDB: A shaken Korean War veteran tests the X-2 rocket plane.  OK, that's the plot summary you get – no spoilers.  Let's move on to my summary:  Did you like Top Gun and The Right Stuff?  Then you'll like this one too.

Next Round: Space via X-15.

Sci-Fi Rotten Egg? Maybe.

The upcoming movie The Astronaut – trailer clip here – looks like an adaptation of the rotten old sci-fi novel The Space Egg.  Here, read a synopsis and watch the clip, and decide for yourself.  I wonder if it is in fact an adaptation, or a re-invention of an old hack plot?

With so many good and classic sci-fi stories out there just waiting for adaptation, why bother with this junk?  Ah well, decide for yourself.  Looks pretty rank to me though.

ps: On a better note, looking around for mentions of The Space Egg on the web lead me to the site Stranger Than SF, which of course has a scathing and spoilerific review of that particular book here.  StrangerThanSF seems to be a passion project of a voracious SF reader, and there's a lot there spread around in good, bad, ugly, and indifferent.  Worth your time to poke around.

Finally Watched 'Creature from the Black Lagoon'

And it was pretty good!  I mean, for its time.  Not half as cheesy as I'd expected.  The simple plot was enough to hold things together, and the creature suit still mostly holds up.  Can't ask for much more than that out of this kind of flick.  Here, details at Wikipedia.  Read and run up onto spoilers at your own risk.

For all the times I've been to Wakulla Springs, you'd think I'd have seen it, but no.  It was long gone from theaters and even re-runs and deep re-re-runs by the time I came along.  Picked up a DVD, which as a nice surprise has the two sequels in the series.  

Rating this one is a hopeless exercise.  Either you want to see it or you don't.

Life is Short and Time is Tight. Read the Abstracts.

Over at Books, Bikes, & Boomsticks Tam writes on the problems associated with reading a summary.  Here, it's short, go read the whole thing: Soulless Drones

<insert schmaltzy interlude music here>

OK, we're all back.  For great art, sure, I'll agree that one has to read / listen / watch the entire piece as presented.  However, if you just want to get caught up on the n movies you missed in the Avengers movie series over the past m summers so that you can go to an afternoon matinee and enjoy it with friends – without having to spend a week of catch-up in front of the tube – nah, go ahead and skip to the Wikipedia plot summaries.  You won't have missed much anyway.  Long-series TV shows that start off promising but take a dip in the second year?  Sure, skip ahead with the summaries and see if the third year picks up to determine if it's worth your time to work through the series.  That politics-tainted speculative fiction (i.e., really bad near-future sci-fi) potboiler that everyone's talking about?  Definitely.  You'll want to know a little about what Cousin Hal or Aunt Margaret are going on about at the next family gathering, but you probably don't want to take that 500 page slog.  Again, when it comes to real art don't take any shortcuts, but when it comes to lesser works, go for the bottom line and get on with life.

Taking this a step further, who doesn't cull through the titles, then skim through the half-dozen abstracts, then really read only one or two papers each month in their favorite journals?  There just isn't time enough to keep up in a field any other way.  

Unexpected Good News: A Movie of Weir's "Project Hail Mary"

The trailer just dropped today, with a release date of 3/20/26.  link here  You go watch now.

My review of the book (from 2021; has it really been that long?) here.

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked.

"Oppenheimer" (the movie) Dissected

When Oppenheimer came to theaters, I was looking forward to a glorious movie and a glorious theater experience.  In short, the shiny new theater I picked presented such a customer-hostile environment that I walked out before even buying a ticket, and bought a copy of the disc a few months later.  Then I watched it, and was appalled by the lack of character development on the interesting historical figures, while the director instead chose to linger for a third of the film's runtime over a dull, neurotic girlfriend.  In short, this film was a beautifully made complete waste of time and right now that disc is wasting my shelf space, but only because I haven't yet thrown it out.  I haven't written a review until now either, because the film's lack of cohesive content made commentary difficult.  There really wasn't much to say about it beyond a simple "don't bother" delivered months after it had left theaters, so I didn't bother.  Giving this thing any kind of n-stars movie rating would be akin to reviewing one of those semi-funny AI generated Star Wars / Miami Vice mash-up videos.  Sometimes interesting visuals, but really nothing beyond that.

Anyway, here's a writer's take on the film, and it's not pretty (link, just under one hour).  If the hour length  gives you a case of the TLDWs, here's her summary:

• Unnecessary Complexity
• Inconsistent Pacing
• Inadequate  Context
• Failure to Establish Thematic Framing

Whew.  The poor woman actually watched the damn thing three times (that's nine hours!) to bring us this analysis.  I wish there was an obvious link from her review video for some sort of coffee fund donation, because that kind of dedication deserves more recognition.

Spaceballs 2?!?!

A definite maybe for 2027.  Mel Brooks has been known to tell jokes and pull pranks before, but this is looking pretty solid.  Teaser trailer here (with a cameo by Brooks himself), and a mention on Wikipedia here.

I give it an 80-20 chance of happening.  But wouldn't it be great to have a reason to go to a movie theater again?

The Return of "Coyote vs. ACME"

Maybe.  Perhaps.  Seems likely.  Article at Living Life Fearless.

Suspended sentence?  I'm still waiting to hear the release date.

UPDATE: Looks like it'll be released sometime 2026.  Details at... Sports Illustrated?

In Praise of Physical Media

There are a lot of people out there who love-love-love video streaming.  Great.  I'll largely stick with physical media though, because (a) I'm at the tail-end of this internet train spur so service is highly unreliable, and (b) what if an old favorite move or series gets politically unpopular or is simply ground under the wheels of corporate maneuvering?  Either way with option (b), it's gone-baby-gone and there's nothing to bring it back.  Also, streaming services don't seem to maintain a decent back catalogue.  From what I've seen, they're more like the modern equivalent of Blockbuster Video, where it's easy to find the latest in the "Robo-Death Lust IV" type movies but just try to find Kagemusha or something from back when Woody Allen was still funny and relevant.

Anyway, Giant Freakin Robot has an article today on the matter, mostly as it relates to The Expanse series.  Go and read.

The downside of buying physical media is that you've got to devote shelf space to it, and sometimes you get stuck with prize turkeys.  Speaking of which, anybody want a blu-ray copy of Oppenheimer?  Ugh, I thought so little of that movie when I finally saw it that I didn't even bother to review it.

'Forbidden Area' Adaptation on Playhouse 90

Last October I blogged about reading Pat Frank's novel Forbidden Area, and mentioned that there was a TV adaptation written by Rod Serling.  Found it, at long last!  Link.  (note: doesn't play on Safari, works fine on Firefox)

It's... eh.  The super-genius female lead in the novel gets demoted from being a key member of the Enemy Intentions Group to merely its secretary, and finally has a dramatic meltdown in the arms of Charlton Heston.  The central cause of why the B-99 bombers keep blowing up is tipped off way too early.  There's some two-fisted drama in the last 20 minutes that hasn't aged well.  Apart from all that, it's a decent adaptation of the fair-to-good source novel.  At an hour and a quarter length, it's probably time better spent than on what's in the theaters these days.

I Felt a Great Disturbance in the Force

James Earl Jones, RIP at 93.  Find the article yourself at your favorite news outlet.

I don't usually tag the Star Wars series as scifi, but hey, what else fits better here?

Richard III (1995 version) – Yes, Watch

It's Shakespeare's play re-set in 1930's England with Ian McKellen as the villainous Richard of Gloucester murdering everyone between him and the throne and then going fascist – not terribly distant from what might have happened if Edward VII had not abdicated, though perhaps without some of the murder to get there since he was already there.  Here, watch the trailer and see for yourself.  It's a reasonable representation of what the movie holds:

Be sure to embiggen this trailer to watch.  It's much better that way.

There are lots of touches that bring this film to life.  Foremost, the post-WWI yet-not-quite-WWII feel of the technology stands out.  For example, when the dowager queen departs for France it is not by ship but instead aboard a de Haviland Dragon Rapide, a wonderfully-named short-haul airliner that was more or less the last of the biplanes.  Cigarettes everywhere, in keeping with the style of times.  It's an immersive experience, just close enough to living memory that it doesn't seem as foreign as the velvet pantaloons usually associated with Shakespeare productions.

Now for the one down side, the sound mix is abysmal.  Between the mix, the archaic dialect, and too many muttered lines, ten minutes in I was completely lost.  Fortunately the disc had an English subtitles option, so things worked out.  Compare to 1996's Romeo+Juliet, where both the actors' speech and the sound mix were clear as a bell, leaving the archaic English as a treat to work out on the fly.  That combination brought Shakespeare's original words crackling back to life.  Here, just turn on the subtitles from the start, sit back, and enjoy the movie.  It's not quite as good, but it will do.

Bottom Line: 4 out of 5 stars.  The sound mix could have been better, but the rest is as good as films get.

50 Years of Blazing Saddles

Short article over at NPR.  Looking back in time, it's odd how much trouble this movie initially had from the critics.  Some people can't comprehend a joke.  If you've never seen it, now's the time.

The Curious Case of Coyote v. Acme

It appears there was a movie actually made, that now is on the verge of being entirely canned, centered on the premise of Wile E. Coyote suing Acme Company over defective products.  Based on a short 1990 humor piece in the New Yorker (link), somebody thought it would be a good idea to expand the concept into a feature-length film.  Hm.  Honestly, that part has me a bit skeptical, but according to an article at The Wrap it did well in test screenings.  (when done here, read the rest of the linked article, it gives quite a bit of background)  Now it seems that a clique of studio execs, infected by the "developed by our predecessors, gotta hate on it" bug and having never bothered to actually watch the film, after shopping it around at an inflated price, have decided to trash it for the tax write-off.

This is either the best decision-to-dump since Batgirl or the worst since Firefly, and frankly, I don't have the data to decide which.  However, now that the ruckus has ensued, I want to see it.  (Heh, now there's a marketing ploy, and a new sort of twist on the Streisand Effect.)  Still, if this thing disappears into the memory hole over a cheap tax dodge, Warner Brothers will have earned the enmity of creative minds across the planet.

Book Mention: Titanium Noir

It's a hard-boiled detective story set in the near-ish future – at least, maybe a couple hundred years have passed but things aren't all that different – where some of the ultra-rich set have access to a life rejuvenation medical treatment that essentially resets a body's biological clock to the late teenage years and lets the recipient go on to live another life's worth of years.  A side effect is that the recipient grows another 20% or so.  Couple this with the name of the treatment regime being "Titanium 7," and you end up with these ultra-rich being sort of conspicuous and being called Titans.  Hence the name of the book.

Well, all is dandy until a Titan turns up dead.  It superficially looks like a suicide, but things aren't as they seem or else we wouldn't have a novel here.  So normal working joe of a private investigator gets pulled into the case by the police because he's worked with the Titans before and has a track record of playing well with them.  Mysteries are explored, dead ends are probed, interesting situations unfold, pretty much everything you'd want in a noir detective novel.  There are certainly some interesting characters, especially the gangster "Doublewide," so called because his off-brand life extension treatment added to his width and not so much to his height.  Too bad Sidney Greenstreet isn't around to play Doublewide when this gets made into a movie, which I sincerely hope happens and the sooner the better.  Paging Quentin Tarantino, paging Quentin Tarantino... Yeah, he'd do well coming out of retirement to film this one. 

So is Titanium Noir any good?  Yeah, I think so.  Like any decent sci-fi, it holds up a funhouse mirror to today so that we may better reflect upon current matters.  First there's the Titanium 7 rejuvenation treatment that's effectively a form of transhumanism so far unexplored in the genre.  With such extensive resetting/rebuilding of a body, is this even still the original person?  Not always entirely it seems.  Then there's the ultra-rich being set apart from the rest of us.  How does that work out?  There are always edges of the two groups that are going to rub.  What about the Titan wannabes?  That's well explored too.  Finally, is it fun to read?  Not my usual whisky, but yeah, it was fun.

Break out of your summer reading heat dome pattern, give this one a try.

Cloverfield Turned 15 This Past Week

Like the over-achieving love child of Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield took over the theaters 15 years ago this past week.  Has it really been that long?  Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, that flick felt like old home week to my still-jangling nerves.  Great fun for a Saturday afternoon popcorn muncher.  Article at syfi.com.

Plus 15 years?  Already?  Is that what I look like at 43?  Its... its... horrible!

Movie Review: The Color Out of Space (Die Farbe)

Here's a 2010 adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space that better depicts the atmosphere of the original story than the 2020 adaptation that stared Nicolas Cage (reviewed here along with a more complete outline of the story).  Even so, this too is a heavy adaptation that jumps across the Atlantic to a remote farming region in Germany.  The story also jumps around in time between the late 1930s, to just after WWII, and into what looks like the early-mid 1970s.  This is in contrast to the original setting of Somewhere Up In New England, the 1880s, and the late 1920s.  OK, wherever, whenever, whatever.  It doesn't matter much where and when you're located, having a meteor carrying The Colour land in your back 40 always seems to be a harbinger of madness and ultimately doom.

The downside of this movie is that it started as a student film that graduated into an indie movie.  You know that drill: off-kilter pacing, a basic but serviceable cast, limited effects budget.  The parts in English are over-dubbed, while the bulk of the story is in German and subtitled.  The upside is that instead of the modern gore-fest in the 2020 adaptation, The Colour's effects are much as described in the story: the life and color are slowly drained from the afflicted farm and family, leaving ashen husks.  Really, this is a much better way for a filmmaker to go, regardless of budget.  Finally, I have seldom seen a special effect available only in a B&W film used so effectively.  (No, no spoilers here.  You'll have to watch it.)

So which film version is better?  The 2020 version has its charms – better pacing and acting to name two – but this 2010 version sticks more closely to the atmosphere of the original story.  I'll give both three out of four stars, but this one is a nose ahead of the more modern adaptation.

I'm still holding out hope for a version that is set in the original's place and times that just tells the damn story as written, but I suppose that's too much to ask.

Final note, this film may be hard to find in the usual places.  The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society keeps the DVD in stock however.  Here's a link.

Brief Movie Review: Top Gun Maverick

All the good stuff you've heard is true.  It starts with the best elements of the first movie, then in the first segment adds a healthy dose of The Right Stuff – specifically, the part where Chuck Yeager briefly pokes an NF-104 into the top of the atmosphere.  Even so, there's just the right touch of humor.  Pitch-perfect.  After that, there's a hell of a lot of the fun in the same vein as the best from the Raiders of the Lost Ark series.  TGM even pulls off the generational hand-off that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull flubbed so badly.  In short, there's a lot for the movie geeks to love here, which explains why Quentin Tarantino has such high praise for this flick.

This movie tells a thrilling story, has interesting characters who develop just a little, and has no real missteps.  While it doesn't carry the heavy story of a Casablanca or LoTR, it pretty much defines the term "movie magic."  3.5/4 Stars

What took me so long to see it?  Don't you make the same mistake.

Movie Review: The Northman

TLDR: Hamlet, with Vikings and an otherworldly edge.  Bloody as all hell.  Not for the faint of heart.  If you think you can stomach it – and they consciously toned down some of the Viking Fun & Games – see it.  4.5/5 stars.  Trailer Link

Why not 5/5 stars?  At times it was difficult to tell one viking from the other because everyone was so covered with filth and blood.  Occasionally this muddied the story line, but hey, that's what a re-watch is for.  See the movie, watch the special features, then re-watch with the commentary track.  There's a lot to unpack here.