Matt’s Week in Dork! (8/7-8/13)

    Other than getting some solid biking in on a couple of amazingly nice days (finally, summer days like I used to enjoy for the first year and a half I lived in northern Virginia, as opposed to the rainy, humid days the last couple summers have foisted upon us), I didn’t get up to too much.  Did manage to get to the AFI Silver theater a couple times, which was a lot of fun.  Odd little town.  Anyway, the movies…

Miller’s Crossing:  Gangland fantasy at its coolest, Miller’s Crossing takes tough guy Gabriel Byrne through the ringer and back again, as he deals with bull headed mob bosses, thugs, grifters, and bookies.  Plenty Coen Brothers touches in the surreal moments of quiet, and the very odd people interactions.  Some sudden and bloody violence along the way.  And man, Albert Finney with a tommy gun.  Glorious. 

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Tormented:  A boring ghost story.  Cheesy effects.  And that darned lighthouse.  It’s all fodder for the boys in this pretty standard, but good episode.  Another one of those movies that just looks like it was made for MST3K. 

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Lost Continent:  Rock climbing.  Rock Climbing.  Caesar Romero leads a cast of cliché 50s characters on an expedition to a jungle plateau.  Along the way, they sure do a lot of rock climbing.  A LOT.  I hate to admit, I actually kind of like this film, in spite of its entirely too long of a runtime.  And too much time spent climbing the side of the plateau.  

Rock Climbing.

Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin:  I’m just not that into episodes that focus on the Time Lords, or the Doctor’s homeworld.  This kind of ho-hum political assassination thriller is sadly, less than thrilling.  And, it’s not really spoiling anything to mention that the master is involved, and that’s not really a good thing in my book.  It’s kind of fun to see the doctor run around without a companion for a while, but this really isn’t an episode I especially enjoy. 

Doctor Who:  The Invisible Enemy:  “I found the answer…Knife them in the neck!”  Man, I love Leela.  This episode is totally bugnuts.  This is the grand, wild, totally over the top kind of thing that made me absolutely love Doctor Who as a lad, and keeps me coming back as an adult.  Space virus, Innerspace hunting clones, and plenty of the old ultraviolence from my favorite future barbarian.  Love it.

Doctor Who: Horror of Fang Rock:  The Doctor and Leela end up on a fog shrouded island with a fear shrouded lighthouse.  What is lurking in the shadows?  A good, old fashioned monster movie type story, with the usual Who twists.  It also features a really good cast of guest actors.  And some fun savagery from Leela.

Scream of the Banshee:  I don’t know.  Sometimes little movies like this turn out to be really intriguing.  Sometimes, you find a gem.  This isn’t one of those times.  My heart sank when SyFy popped up.  A crappy cast runs through pretty standard haunting paces.  A few ideas could have worked in skilled hands.  Those hands didn’t craft this film.  Flashing lights, bad editing, goofy make-up.  Blah. 

Where's my agent?!

Tesla:  Master of Lightning:  A solid, if brief overview of a fascinating man with brief stops at important moments in time.  Obviously an hour and a half isn’t nearly enough time to get into much detail on either the man or his work.  But it’s not a bad launching place.  Pretty good voice work, too.  Worth checking out.

The Last Starfighter:  In the 80s, you could be anything if you just loved something enough, and tried (or rocked) hard enough.  The Last Starfighter was one of the ultimate escape films.  A young man, living a life of quiet desperation in a dried up old trailer park, who dreams of bigger things, is only really good at one thing, video games.  And just when it looks like he won’t escape the horror and indignity of City College (!), his video game mastery takes him to the battlefront of an interstellar war.  The special effects are pretty wonky, but you’ve got to remember that these were cutting edge computer effects when the film came out.  The movie is fun, but you have to watch it with a child’s eyes, not the common cynicism of today’s internet chat-room nitpicking.  A must for 80s movie fans. 

Night Gallery: Season 1:  A mixed bag of mysterious stories.  Some ghosts, some irony, some weird.  Like most anthology shows, some episodes are quite good, but you’ve got to sit through some blah, too.  I think my favorite stores are probably The House, which was just trippy, and The Doll. 

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Devil Doll:  Oh, man.  They sure have fun with this little cheapy.  Bad acting and butchery of the English language by young starlets create plenty of fodder for jokes.  And the hammy villain is a blast.  Good stuff from Mike and the Bots.  Thankfully, Pearl isn’t in it too much.  Though, just about any Pearl is too much for this viewer.

Venture Bros: Season Two:  More twisted horror for sick minds, with a decidedly retro bent.  Comic homages to heroes and cartoons of yesteryear pepper the usual nasty humor and ultra-violence.  If you enjoyed the first season, you’ll find plenty to enjoy in this one, including a guest visit from the Johnny Quest.  The pathetic sadness of failure still haunts the Ventures, while the aggressive optimism of the more hapless than villainous Monarch keeps their rivalry going.  Molotov Cocktease gets in on some babysitting action.  And who will Dr. Girlfriend finally choose? 

    I also got in a few episodes of The Omega Factor.  After seeing Leela on Doctor Who again, I felt the need to watch some more Louise Jameson.  There’s something about British science fiction from the 70s and 80s that is weird and fascinating.  They just ran with some pretty wacky ideas, and told some fairly unusual stories.  So many shows from this era have a generally unsettling vibe to them, and The Omega Factor is no exception.  That said, watching it made me feel like a little kid.  Even though I never saw this show as a lad, it kind of felt like going back to that young Matt, who watched Doctor Who for the first time, saw The Tripods, and got his first taste of Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes. 

    On the book front, I have finished the last of the Conan volumes, but I’m behind in writing my reviews.  I should get on that this week.  After a strong start, I think the series kind of meanders, and becomes spotty with the artwork.  Still, I’m curious to see where they’ll take things. 

    Thanks to a co-worker, I listened to a bunch of Dr. Hook this week, and picked up the new Battles CD.  Good stuff all around. 

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (6/26-7/2)

    It’s been a busy and very weird week.  Honestly, the last few weeks have been kind of crappy for this Dork, but with plenty of silver lining.  Up first, the films of the week.

Megamind:  Clever, occasionally cute, and a good deal of fun, Megamind isn’t amazing, but it’s worth a watch.  The voice work is good.  It plays well with big comic book myths, especially the Superman type.  And I kind of like it’s meditation on the need of an adversary to define oneself.  Check it out. 

Doctor Who Revenge of the Cybermen:  The long awaited return of the Cybermen has the Doctor and Sarah Jane facing some troubling military types in the future, and some creepy, big headed aliens.  There’s a lot going on in this story, but it pretty quickly comes down to battling the Doctor’s other major enemy.  Not as iconic as the Daleks, they’re still pretty cool. 

Eastern Promises:  The Russian mob is up to no good in London and a local nurse learns more than is good for her.  Meanwhile, upwardly mobile thug Viggo Mortensen is ‘just driver.’  It’s a really good flick, and Viggo is pretty awesome.  And yes, that crazy bathhouse fight is pretty hardcore.  I hope Viggo and Cronenberg keep working together for years to come. 

Transformers: Dark of the Moon:  The girl is less awful than Megan Fox.  I didn’t notice any especially offensive ethnic stereotype robots.  And there are a couple cool stunts/shots.  Otherwise, this is more of the same generic crap.  Soulless, mindless pap from a purveyor of mediocrity.  A true heir to the thrown of James Cameron, Bay makes big, loud, and ultimately dumb films, and his best ideas are lifted from much better films.  And sadly, like a latter day Cameron, his movies lack a charm that would make you forgive their obvious shortcomings.  Like the previous films, I found the visual assault of CG to be a sort of sensory overload, making it hard to follow the action.  Half the time, I couldn’t tell what was flying debris and what was robot.  And in spite of being WAY over long, the movie felt spotty, like important scenes were left on the cutting room floor.  It’s a step up from Revenge of the Fallen in the same way Revenge of the Sith was a step up from Attack of the Clones.  Better than a steaming turd does not equal good.  

Don't know what you're looking at?  Neither did I.

Aquamarine:  Why did I watch this?  I honestly don’t know.  It’s pretty annoying, screechy, and pointless.  The leads are all mostly unlikable and the story pretty lame.  It’s not surprising that this film came and went with little fanfare or lasting interest. 

Making Splash look good.

Doctor Who: Planet of Evil:  A pretty good horror story set on a planet near the edge of the universe, this owes a great deal to one of my favorite movies, Forbidden Planet.  Some great sets and excellent guest actors keep it grounded while the Doctor faces off with another universe. 

Wait Until Dark:  After working pretty consistently since 1951, this 1967 film marked the beginning of a near ten year hiatus from film for star Audrey Hepburn.  Had it been her final film, it would have been a pretty good exit.  Tense, scary, and brimming with great performances from a very small but very talented cast.  Especially cool are the charming small-time hood Richard Crenna and the cold psycho Alan Arkin.  It plays like an attempt at a Hitchcock film, and while not to the level of Hitch’s best, it’s still quite good.  And I suspect that this movie informed a young Brian De Palma quite a bit, as I actually had to check to make sure he wasn’t in some way associated with it. 

    I also watched a few episodes of the 70s kids’ show Space Academy, which is fun, but not very good.  So far, of that batch of TV series (Jason of Star Command, Ark II, and some others), Space Academy is the lesser.  But oddly enough, Jonathan Harris isn’t that bad.  Usually I can’t stand that guy, but he’s OK here. 

    Also watched a little more Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  Dang that show is nutty.  Good stuff, though.

 
    Outside of watching some movies, I went with some friends to a local bar.  This is not my usual way to spend time and money, but I’m trying to do more new things.  The whole situation was a bit surreal.  After a long day at work, my roommate and I took a bus, with the intention of switching to another bus that would go right by the bar we were heading to.  After missing the intended first bus, we walked a little out of our way and got a second option.  OK, all’s well.  But ten minutes later, while waiting at a light, the loud motor behind us started to get louder.  Then it started making an awful sound, like the screaming of a thousand souls at the gates of hell.  And that’s when the smoke started.  Then the sound died, but the smoke kept up.  After the light finally turned green (dang but that intersection is poorly set up and timed), we got off at the next stop and got out of Dodge.  Blah.  After a good walk in the sun, which was actually fairly pleasant, we arrived at the bar, or pub, I can never tell.  A couple rum & Cokes later and we were on our way.  I just don’t get the bar atmosphere.  I never have.  I’ve been to a number of very different bars over the years, and I’ve always felt like an outsider.  At any moment, someone is going to ask me about the ‘big game’ or some such thing, and I’m gonna be like a spy in East Germany who doesn’t  have his papers.  Unable to answer and hoping for a quick death.  The actual bar itself seems set up to keep you from socializing, putting you all in a line like some feeding trough or cafeteria table.  But venturing out to the tables feels like you’re looking for trouble.  The crowd was a calm group of business types, with one group of Barbie Doll type college girls and a semi-butch lesbian couple.  Upon leaving, I said something thoroughly inappropriate, which someone interpreted as me being drunk.  But that’s just my sense of humor.  Another walk in the sun and we were home.   I keep wanting to expand my social circles and experience, but as much as everyone seems to sing their praises, I just don’t think bars are the place for me.  Even mellow ones where the pop-collar douche bags are absent.

 
    On the music front, I’m still enjoying quirky female vocalists.  This week, I’ve been especially in to St. Vincent.  And I’m finally giving Florence and the Machine a more serious try. 

    I read the next volume of the Conan comic series.  And I finally finished Reality is Broken.  Excellent book.  I’ll be writing up something more about it in the coming days.  In the meantime, go out and get a copy.  Read it.

    Really getting a hankering to do some more gaming, too.  Though I’ve got a specific idea for my next go round, what comes later is still up in the air.  A few options have been swirling around my noggin.  The standard option is to try to get a weekly or biweekly game with a regular crew of about 4 people.  It’s a nice option and can work very well.  But the reality of adult life can make this difficult.  Kids, jobs, and all sorts of other demands can make a regular game night very difficult.  But there are other options.   Maybe an Ars Magica campaign with a crew of 4 to 10 players, who can come or not without effecting the progress of the game.  I’ve seen it work before.  Or, simply playing various games every couple weeks.  Maybe some board games one night, and a one-shot RPG on another.  We’ll see. 

-Matt

Fright Night Posters

Am I actually starting to look forward to this Fright Night remake?  After the first trailer, the R rating, and these four character posters...yep, my butt is gonna be in the theater opening weekend.  Crazy.  Love the Doctor Who Hunter.

--Brad

Matt's Week in Dork (6/5-6/11)

    Kind of a light week on dorkness.  Only a few movies and some reading.  Otherwise, pretty lackluster.  So, first, the handful of movies I watched:

Doctor Who: The Androids of Tara:  This fourth story in the Key to Time finds the Doctor and Romana mixed up in some courtly politics on the planet Tara.  Android replacements and a battle to take the thrown, not to mention a woman who looks just like Romana, make for dangerous territory.  Classic TV actor Peter Jeffrey is fantastically diabolical as Count Grendel.  Plenty of twists and turns make for some entertaining fun.

 
Doctor Who: The Time Warrior:  With a spiffy new opening, Jon Pertwee begins his final season as the good Doctor.  He also meets a young woman who will become very important to Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Smith, a plucky reporter looking for a good story.  A Sontaran, medieval thuggery, and Boba Fett the archer are all in the mix for a solid, if not especially memorable tale.  They do get their money’s worth of location shooting, though.

Athens: The Dawn of Democracy:  Bettany Hughes is back to bring the ancient world alive once again.  This time, she turns her focus upon the city-state of Athens.  She attempts to dispel some of our rose colored illusions, while still revealing an amazing people in a wild time.  The duality of freedom and oppression.  The amazing expansion of science and philosophy, side by side with shockingly primitive superstitions and human brutality.  As with her other documentaries, Hughes’ passion for the subject draws you in and makes you want to know more, while being frustratingly brief.  A good companion to her other Greek themed documentaries. 

Super 8:  Like finding a forgotten gem in a video store, Super 8 harkens back to the kid adventure films of the 80s, like The Goonies, The Explorers, Space Camp, and so many others.  Filled with interesting characters and thrilling action, it’s got a lot of heart to back it all up.  And it sports a great cast of kid actors, each putting their stamp on various genre regulars (the Fat Kid, the Nerdy Kid, the Sensitive Kid, etc.).  Put aside your cynicism, and remember why we love movies.

The Philadelphia Story:  A great cast and great script make this worthy of its classic status.  The three leads are all at the height of their comic power and the complicated story of love, expectation, class, divorce and marriage is fertile ground.  When I’m not watching Jimmy Stewart, I sometimes forget how awesome he was.  Hepburn and Grant are always with me, but Stewart fades from my mind a lot, perhaps obscured by his pop culture image (the good guy from It’s A Wonderful Live).  But he has an unmistakable star power, tinged with an undercurrent of bitter rage that lends him depth missing from some others of his age.  The whole film is a bit crazy, but a lot of fun and well worth a watch.

    I also caught a couple episodes from the first few seasons of The Simpsons.  Man, I love that show.  Seeing some of them, it’s like every line, ever scene is a classic.

    In an unusual turn, I actually played a video game called I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1.  A full frontal assault on the senses, it’s a good deal of fun, so long as you don’t collapse with seizures.  The play grid begins to strobe, geometric shapes and green blobs come a calling, and…is that a photo of a cat?  All the while, the video game’s title song is blaring at you.  Somehow, it all comes together to be a crazy Smash TV style bit of fun, though I don’t think a properly functioning human could play this for more than 15 or 20 minutes before they start getting a little punch drunk.

    On the book front, I read volume 3 of Conan, The Tower of the Elephant.  And I made some headway in Reality is Broken, which I’m really, really enjoying.  With so much anti-science, anti-modernity in the media, and with so many neo-Luddites wandering around talking about the sky falling because somebody likes video games or uses a cell phone, it’s  an extremely refreshing breath of fresh air to read about someone who not only loves technology, but is coming up with valid and usable uses for it that could improve everyone’s quality of life.  Not just a commentary on how pointless negativity and fear of technology can be, like Everything Bad is Good for You, but a real call of action for making ourselves and our world work better for everyone.

    On the music front, I’ve been enjoying Kate Nash quite a bit.  And I picked up a good collection of Lightnin Hopkins.  I’m not a huge blues man, never was.  But I’m still enjoying it.

-Matt

Dork Art: Doctor Pooh

Okay, so you have just under two days to order this awesome bit of dorkery from the bonkersly brilliant folks over at Qwertee.  I've never been much of a Pooh fan (I know, I know I have no soul) so I'm gonna give it a pass, but as a rapidly growing & ravenous fan for all things Tom Baker...it is tempting.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (5/22-5/28)

    This was an excellent week for this dork for many reasons.  As always, let me start with the movie reviews.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides:  More rip-roaring adventures on the fantastically weird seas.  If you enjoyed the first three, you should find plenty to like here.  Depp and Rush take the front seat here and they’re good.  Even Penelope Cruz, who I haven’t liked since first seeing in Belle Epoque (an otherwise great movie), is far less grating than usual.  My one major complaint is that the romance between the young missionary and the mermaid is completely uninteresting and serves to detract from the rest of the film.  The screen time would have been better served with more time for the villainous Ian McShane.  Overall, a nice addition to the series.

Doctor Who: The Mutants:  Again I’m glad to see Jon Pertwee in a story that takes him away from Earth.  This time, in the far future, he’s dealing with a fading human empire and a weird, primitive world plagued by mutants.  There are some very strange ideas, and the reveal is pretty cool.  Well worth viewing, and as they get away from the mostly Earth-bound years of Pertwee, the stories start to feel more like what you’d expect from the Tom Baker years.  A great supporting cast help this story out, as well.

Doctor Who: Frontier in Space:  Wow.  This story just keeps going and going.  And then it has another few episodes.  It’s not bad, and I think had I watched it an episode a week, I’d have liked it a lot.  But, watching it in one go is a slog.  I could have dealt without the Master, frankly.  But the rest of it is pretty good.  It’s just really, really long.

Attack the Block:  What happens when a bunch of nasty ape-dog things drop on some projects in London?  The local hoodlums may just have to step up to the plate and learn how to be men.  This movie balances humor with horror extremely well, mixing in a good dose of excitement and some genuine characters.  Yes, you’ve got to deal with accents and slang.  Deal.  It’s worth it.

Hobo With a Shotgun:  If you dig the shocking and degenerate antics of the early days of Troma, you’ve got to check out Hobo With a Shotgun.  Feeling like it was made in 1985, with some John Carpenter style synth music, plenty of goofy gore, and some delightfully off key dialog, it’s a blast for fans of that certain vibe.  If you’re easily offended, well, what are you doing even thinking about watching this?  Otherwise, check out some madness from our neighbors to the north.  And yes, Rutger Hauer has still got it.

Cadfael: The Virgin in the Ice:  More medieval investigations from the good Brother Cadfael.  Is his young friend Brother Oswin a murdering rapist?  Who is the mysterious woodsman?  And can a band of murderous bandits be stopped?  All will be revealed with a little sleuthing, a touch of politics, and some fancy sword work.  Sadly, Sean Pertwee’s short tenure as Hugh Beringar is over by this episode, being replaced here by Eoin McCarthy.

Kung Fu Panda 2:  As with the first film, this manages to be both a fun kids film and a solid homage to classic martial arts cinema.  Like Jet Li in Tai-Chi Master, Po must learn Inner Peace before he can triumph over evil.  Lots of fantastic fighting, beautiful animation, and surprisingly witty humor (mixed with some more typical slapstick) make for a fine family film that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

Undercurrent:  Katherine Hepburn is the tomboyish daughter of a fun old scientist.  When a dashing industrialist sweeps her off her feet, life seems pretty grand.  But the shadow of a long lost brother haunts her new love.  Who is this mysterious and hated man?  As Hepburn struggles to find out, we see a great deal of tension as hidden histories come near the surface.  Is Mike dead?  Was he a thief?  A monster?  The actual reveal interesting, I guess.  But in truth, the finale is kind of limp and overlong.  Part of the problem is that Hepburn starts out as an interesting, potentially strong character, but devolves into a screeching damsel.

    So I managed to get out and see four movies this week, which is a rare treat indeed.  One of those was the special showing of Attack the Block, which my fellow Dork, Brad and I saw in DC at the pretty nice little Regal theater right by Chinatown on 7th Street NW.  It was fun to take a trip into DC via the metro line, where the people watching is always a lot of fun.  In spite of living so close, I don’t actually get in to DC that often, and usually by car late at night for some midnight show at E Street.  The other especially cool viewing was of the soon to be cult classic Hobo with a Shotgun which Brad and I got to see at the West End Cinema on 23rd Street NW.  A fun little hole in the wall theater with a very friendly guy working the counter.  It looks like their general fodder is a touch high-brow for me, but I’ll keep my eye out for upcoming stuff.  I’d like to go back.  And, I got some free popcorn on the way out, which was an extra pleasant ending to a cool film.

    I’ve also been enjoying a bunch of music.  Thanks to my old chum Joe, I picked up Oh Land’s US debut CD.  And I’ve been listening to a bunch of Goldfrapp, too.  Kind of a retro-80s vibe to the music this week.  And Garfunkel and Oats put out a new song, too.  Oh, those girls are so perverse.

    Sadly, I did not finish any books this week (close, though).  I did read a bit of the 70s Conan newspaper strip.  That was fun, though it's the goofy Marvel-style Conan I'm not as much of a fan of.

-Matt

The Passing of Elisabeth Sladen (1948-2011)

    I was greatly saddened this evening to find out that Elisabeth Sladen had passed.  She is hardly the first beloved Doctor Who cast member to die, but she was special.  She was my first companion, with my fist Doctor when I tuned in to the story Robot at random one Saturday afternoon in the early 80s.  And from that moment on, she has always represented the spirit of Doctor Who for me.  Its heart.

    She put a stamp on the show almost as profound as Tom Baker himself.  And it only made sense that she would show up in the new series and be just as well loved as ever.  Following that success, she starred in four seasons of the very fun Sarah Jane Adventures, a more kid friendly spin-off of the new Doctor Who.

    Smart, curious, beautiful, and ultimately strong, Sarah Jane was and is a great character in the halls of science fiction, portrayed by a charming and graceful actress, who will be missed.

-Matt