Sunday, July 22, 2012

Review - Nightwing

There's nothing like watching an old movie.

And in this case, by "Old," I mean 1979.  Nightwing is the story of a man who loves to kill bats, and a couple of indians duking it out with magic.  This movie is almost as old as I am, so let me just sum it up for you.  Youngman Duran, Sheriff of the Maski indian territory, is a man with problems.  His girlfriend is thinking about leaving him, his tribal chieftain is a greedy double dealing backstabber, and the crazy old indian shaman who raised him has decided to end the world.  Oh, and there have been some odd animal mutilations in his territory.  Aside from the overpowering odor of ammonia and the numerous small wounds on the bodies of the dead cattle, there's not much to go on.  Oh, and they've been drained of blood.  And on top of all that, his surrogate father, Abner, the crazy old indian shaman, becomes the first human victim to die the same way as the cattle.


Duran tries to bury Abner, but the body begins to bleed after death, and then the body disappears from the grave overnight.  Duran suspects his tribal elders, priests of the same Fire Clan as Abner, because they feared his power.  But all the elder priests of the Fire Clan are now dead, and they aren't the only ones.  People begin to die the same way as the cattle, attacked by swarms of Vampire Bats, as Duran's girlfriend soon discovers, much to her horror!  :-o


So now Duran has even more problems.  He's got to go rescue his girlfriend, kill the swarm of bats, and counter Abner's final spell, the one that summoned Yehwah, the Maski god of Death, and he's not even a shaman!  And he has to do all this while Chee, the greedy corrupt tribal chieftain, has put a phony warrant out for his arrest to shut him up long enough to allow a mining deal in the sacred indian territory of the Maski canyons.  Which...  is also where the bats are hiding out!  :-o


I've loved Nightwing ever since I was a kid.  It's a horror movie that is steeped in the ancient indian traditions of the southwest.  At least, I think it is.  I don't actually know if any of it is made up or not, because I'm too damn lazy to check, but it feels like it is.  As far as I know, they cast spells using pictograms, rendered in dyes and paints and powders, which are used in this film, and they used to live in pueblos, houses and villages cut into the sides of mountains, and these are featured in this movie as well.  The only other movie I know of that features as much indian symbolism is Manitou, a movie with Tony Curtis, probably either the only, or one of the only, horror movies that Tony Curtis ever appeared in.  In Nightwing, Nick Mancuso played Duran, the lead.  Kathryn Harrold played his love interest, and David Warner plays the doctor who absolutely hates Vampire Bats.

Besides the battle of wills between Duran and Abner (who was powerful enough to fight Duran even while he was dead), there's the whole Vampire bat aspect of things going on.  David Warner does an excellent job portraying the cute fuzzy little devils as...  well... devils.  The climax is both weird and exciting, and the movie certainly doesn't leave many pauses between the action.  The desert southwest is featured prominently, the mythology of the area colors everything that happens, and the characters are well portrayed and acted.  There have been several horror movies with bats made since, but none have been as good.

There are two ways to view this movie.  There is the way portrayed by David Warner, the way of the scientist tracking and killing the Vampire bats.  They've been migrating north, he says, and they are the epitome of evil, they take everything from their victims by way of their life's blood, and give only toxic pools of ammonia in return.  He's destroyed swarms of these things, and he's going to track and kill this one because that's what he does.  He doesn't need money.  He does it because no one else can.  The vampire bats are simply vicious animals that need to be put down before they kill more people, and also because they carry a virulent strain of bubonic plague.  Or there is Duran's way.  Abner summoned the Vampire bats to kill the white man, but yehwah, the Maski god of Death, isn't discriminating.  He's killing everyone, Maski indians included, and Duran just can't let it continue.  Which one is true?


Don't worry gentle readers!  If I find any more old horror movies laying around the internet, I'l let you know!  :-)

Monday, July 16, 2012

Reviews - Transformers 3, Conan

It's summer!  And summer usually means poor TV viewing, so I've been watching a lot of movies lately.

Transformers:  Dark side of the moon was something I watched a few nights ago.  Now, this is not the greatest of movies.  And I got flamed for saying Transformers 2 was ok, but I don't really care, because let's be perfectly honest, here...  It's a movie about giant robots based off of a cartoon about giant robots.  And as someone who grew up watching the original cartoon, there WAS a teenage boy in the series who was good buds with Bumblebee, the snazzy-looking yellow muscle car transformer.  The transformers movies have been EXACTLY what the cartoons were about.  The fight between the autobots and the decepticons.  The cartoon only rarely featured the teenage boy, and frankly, to my way of thinking, he was shown much more than was absolutely necessary.  Much, as I am sure some of you agree, like Shia Lebuffy or whatever his name is, was shown in transformers.  Let me try and explain why this is.

To my way of thinking, featuring giant robots fighting each other in the context of earth as a background is completely sufficient for a cartoon, movie series or TV show.  I personally would not require the addition of a teenage boy to goad the story along, to become a focus for the conflict, or to scream like a girl as many times as humanly possible.  The mere fact that the Autobots represented good and the decepticons represented evil was sufficient for me.  The conflict between good and evil is exemplified in thousands of movies, TV shows, and cartoons to great effect.  I need no further explanation for a faction's actions than to say "This side is good."  or  "this side is evil."  Sure, if the actions they take exemplify the archetypes of good and evil, such as evil killing innocents or good defending same, that just demonstrates what I've already understood from the concept, but I don't need that.  I just enjoy watching the battles.

The addition of a teenage boy, however, was probably done for one reason and one reason only...  To try to appeal to a wider audience of people who could NOT identify with the giant robots based on good and evil alone.  To add a human element to an otherwise completely perfect story about good and evil robots fighting each other.  Of course, when you have giant robots that transform into trucks and cars, you'll need earth as a backdrop (because trucks and cars don't fly well in outer space), and humans are going to come into the equation somewhere.  In the movies, the government responds with a military task force designed to work with the autobots to fight the decepticons wherever possible, which makes sense.  In the cartoons, if I remember correctly, the autobots were pretty much on their own.

So let me sum up.  The transformers series of movies is almost identical to the cartoon in all respects, except for the updating of the technology and special effects.  There was a teen boy in the cartoon that screamed almost as much as Shia Lebouffy does in Transformers 3.  So as far as staying true to the original concept, the movies were dead on.  Shia Lebouffy's acting, well, hey, I don't cast these things.  I personally would have tossed a teenage girl into the role and solidifed the primarily male viewership with some tits and ass, which they tried to do with Shia's love interests, but i think failed miserably.  Simply said, if what you were looking for was giant robots beating the fucking crap out of each other, you were satisfied.  And since I was looking for that, I am satisfied.  If you could cut shia out of the entire movie, I think the movies would be even better, but I think a lot of people agree with me on that one.  Honestly, despite megan fox's acting talents (or lack thereof), I don't think they should have replaced her.  She was nice eye candy, much better than Rosie Huntintin-whitely, or whatever her name is.  At least, that's my opinion on the subject

As for the overall plot, where here's how it goes.  There was some Autobot scientist who had a plan to defeat the decepticons (voiced by leonard nimoy, which was very cool), and his escape ship crash landed on earth's moon ages ago.  The autobots learn of this (with some sneaky prodding by the decpticons), they recover the artifacts within the ship, and then all hell breaks loose on earth as both sides fight to control the technology.  Happily, Optimus does not die like a bitch in this movie like he did in 2.  That's one thing I always liked about the cartoons.  Optimus was always one good goddamn ass-kickin robot.  Decepticons might have all been planes and guns and tanks and shit like that, but Optimus truck-lookin ass whipped them all so bad they were afraid to face him.  You got to respect a guy who can hold his own in a fight.

Conan, well, that movie is a slightly different story.  To anyone who's ever watched the conan movies or read the books, there are tons of monsters, demons and magic in the conan story lines.  That's why I liked them.  The movies done with Arnold schwarzenegger a couple decades ago were quite good in that respect.  Rife with monsters and magic, there was still the human element involved.  The second conan movie (with Arnold) had much more in that department, but the first movie was the story of conan's beginnings and his quest to destroy the demi-god who slaughtered his village.  Basically, it's the story of how conan slays the shit out of the monsters and saves humanity, usually in the form of a hot female sacrifice, which certainly sums up the plot of the second conan movie.

Now, the recent conan remake is a little different.  They make a big deal about how conan was born in battle and he manages to kill a bunch of evil-looking raiders when he's like 12 or something, and then all of a sudden, things seem to change.  His father's trying to teach him the ways of the sword and conan's failing and getting his ass kicked.  Now I understand that conan's supposed to have respect and love for his old man, otherwise, he's not going to feel a thing when the old man gets killed (conan's old man always gets killed, otherwise, conan doesn't go off into the world to learn how to kick ass and become a thief and have other adventures), but why would you apparently show what a badass the kid is and then immediately slap down his legend again by saying conan's not smart enough to learn how to handle a sword?  Just confusing, if you ask me.  Then they leap forward to conan's adult life (where he's apparently had tons of adventures already), and sort of rewrite who he's after for killing his people.  In this case, it's just an evil warlord.  There's little or no magic involved, no demons are summoned, there's no giant serpents, and conan doesn't kill any monsters.  Nope, it's just good old fashioned human on human violence.

See, here's the point of the conan movies, and where i think the movie would have done superbly well, is that conan's best efforts fail and the demon, evil god, or dark sorceror manages to GAIN whatever power he was after, or comes to our world.  And then conan has to kill the shit out of him anyway.  And conan does.  And that's what made conan  great.  He was one helluvan ass-kicker.  This conan?  Not so much.  This conan has a hard time fighting off one old scarred up warlord.  And he gets his ass kicked by the guy several times.  Not just once.  SEVERAL TIMES.  Doesn't really make much sense to me.  Bah.  Poor remake, if you ask me.  And very little magic and almost no monsters...  certainly no monster deaths.  There's one monster, looks like some giant squid type thing, but it doesn't die at all.  The real conan would have killed the thing just for killing's sake.  Not this conan!  He's more monster-friendly, I guess.

In other news, there ARE things to watch on TV.  In order on sunday nights, I watch The Glades on A&E at 9, then Longmire right after it, then I pop over to HBO for True Blood and Newsroom.  The Glades is a cop show, as is Longmire, just different locations.  One is set in the everglades area in florida, and the other is set in.. wyoming, maybe?  There's a lot of open land, what they'd call Big-Sky country, I guess.  Anyway, both cop shows, different focuses.  The Glades is more of a borderline comedy, because the main character tends to have fun solving crimes and catching the bad guy, and Longmire is more serious, it's main character being more along the lines of Jesse Stone in the Tom Selleck series of murder-movies.  True Blood is about vampires, werewolves and supernatural beings of all kinds trying to co-exist with humans (but mostly vampires), and Newroom is a look at what happens behind the scenes of a news show that's trying to actually report the News.  Facts, not what is supposed to bring in viewers.

I watch The Glades mostly because the main character seems to be an instinctual crime-solver.  He makes leaps of intuition that lead him to the bad guy and then has a blast of a time anticipating and countering the bad guy's moves.  Longmire I've only seen a couple times, and I'm really only watching it at this point because it's got a lot of decent actors in it.  I haven't seen it enough to get invested in the characters yet.  True Blood i mostly watch for Anna Paquin.  Enough said.  Newsroom, now that one surprised me.  I thought it was going to be serious.  And it honestly plays itself off that way.  But I end up laughing my ass off during most of the show.  The situations these poor newspeople end up getting themselves into are just too funny not to laugh at, and the one liners and dialogue is exceptional.  They've got a couple decent actors in main spots, but most of the cast is unknowns (to me, at least) who end up doing an excellent job portraying a quirky, but very competent group of morally good people trying to put out a decent news show.  It's still funny as hell.

As a quick aside...  Ever notice how it's always the professions in our society who need the most good press, that are always the stars of movies and TV shows?  Think about it.  Isn't there a joke about what you'd call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean being a good start?  And aren't cops beating up innocent people always making the news headlines?  And politicians seem to be universally corrupt as far as the news goes, and in the movies there's always that one guy who's trying to just fight for the people?  And yet who is always the hero of the story?  A good cop.  An honest politician.  A lawyer who's not morally corrupt.  And now news people and journalists are in such bad regard as a profession that we see a story about a newscaster who's NOT just a gossip-chasing fear-peddler and it's...  well....  news.   lol

Friday, July 13, 2012

Rich Folk and Animal Crackers

So I'm mulling about in my house after getting back from my sister's house, and the temps are well into the 80's and 90's around here.  And I don't have a pool, because I am one-relative-who's-in-jail away from being poor folk.  Now I'm not saying that I have relatives who should be in jail, or are going to be, I'm just saying, rich folk don't go to jail often, for whatever reasons.  Wink wink nudge nudge say no more.

So i figure, what the fuck.  I'll have a bag of animal crackers, so I can feel like a rich person.

Now, before you get all uppity about it, you young folk today don't know what it was like back in the old days.  When animal crackers first came out, they were like $100 a bag.  Of course, that was back in the old days, when $100 could buy you a house, a car, and a russian girlfriend and still have enough left over for a root-beer float at the soda stand.  Nowadays, the miraculous, seductive and secretive means by which animal crackers are made is much cheaper.  I think they got kids over in china working their fingers off baking them, or however they are made.  I sure don't know.  I am just glad us poor folk can afford to buy them now.

No, don't start arguing with me.  I'm talking about good, old fashioned original animal crackers.  Not animal cookies.  Not crackers, like saltines.  ANIMAL CRACKERS.  They taste like jesus sauteed over an open flame and served to a starving religious man.  Only without the meaty part.  I don't know whether technically they are a cookie or a cracker, because there's no salt on them and they taste like the nectar of the gods to me, but there it is.  They are called animal crackers because they come in animal shapes, so I can pretend I am eating an elephant or a giraffe or a llama when i eat one.  I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't just go eat a llama, I mean, they are pretty plentiful down south america way, but there it is.  Animal Crackers.

So I'm sitting here eating my bag of animal crackers, and it comes to me...  Shit!  Do rich folk hold up one pinky when they eat animal crackers, like when they drink champagne or wine or whatever?  I asked my nephew, but he told me he didn't know and to quit bugging him because he was jacking off to japanese anime, and then I decided to google that shit.  So I asked the Google:  Do rich people hold up one pinky when they eat animal crackers?

And you know what the google said to me?

It said:  Did you mean: do rich folk hold up your pinky when they eat animal crackers?


And I bout damn near laughed my arse off.  Google, you knucklehead!  Why the fuck would rich folk hold up MY pinky when they eat animal crackers?  That's good-goddamn-ridiculous!  I mean, even if that was the custom, to hold up some poor person's pinky when they ate animal crackers, wouldn't they pay someone to do that for them?  I mean I'm pretty goddamn sure I ain't never seen no Warren Buffet or Bill Gates coming with a bag of animal crackers in his hand and asking "Hey, you mind if I hold up your pinky whilst I devour this entire bag of animal crackers?" in the same sort of voice they'd ask "do you happen to have any Grey Poupon?"  Because i'd bout damn near shit a brick if anyone came up to me and asked me that.  I mean that's just durn silly!  And while they can probably afford to hire people to hold up my pinky, who keeps someone around just for that?  I don't think I've ever seen a rich person even touch one of us poor folk, let alone hire someone to hold up their pinky.


But I don't want to get bogged down in the Google's asininity.  Apparently they aren't quite rich enough to get that whole "holding up a pinky while eating animal crackers" thing.  Not cultured enough, apparently.  A little too nouveau-riche, if you get my meaning, wink wink nudge nudge say no more.  Is there like a european version of the Google I can ask?  The old country version of the Google, where the Google first began, they'd probably know.  So how do I ask the old-country-Google?  is it pronounced like Google' over there, with like a cute little accent mark over it, pronounced GoogLAY?  Probably.  Damn snotty frenchmen probably copyrighted that shit as soon as there was an EU to copyright shit in, and now it's pronounced GoogLAY.  They're just pissed because they lost the dot com wars of the 90's. Damn beret-wearing sonsofbitches.


And don't even get me started on sweden!


So, I tried it.  I tried holding up one pinky while eating a whole bag of animal crackers.  It's not easy.  I dropped a bunch.  My hand is sore now.  And I nearly knocked over my water bottle with my extended pinky while trying to adjust the volume on the japanese anime, but I guess that makes sense.  If being rich was easy, everyone would be doing it, right?


Right.

Happy Halloween!

And OHMRAT 2023 ends just as it began.  With a quiet whimper.  Sadly, I had no time this month.  Too busy trying to stay alive.  But, I did ...