I went with my son and daughter earlier this week to see the new animated Marvel movie: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. After seeing it, I realized it was the first comic book movie I'd ever seen. You see, all the movies I've seen up until now have been taking the characters and idea from the comics and making movies out of them, but were not actually comic book movies. Spider-Verse does something more difficult than those other movies--it translates the actual comic book experience onto the big screen. It's one of the best comic movies I've ever seen.
Okay, so about five years ago, Marvel realized they had a number of different Spider-Men floating around in different media. There was the original comic book Peter Parker, of course, but they also had Miles Morales, the teen-aged African-American Spider-Man from their Ultimate universe line of comics. They had the Spider-Ham (bitten by a radioactive pig and given the proportional powers of swine) from the kids-oriented Star Line of comics in the 1980s. And they had various cartoon versions of the characters from over the decades. So Marvel decided to an event where all these Spider-Men came together in one story, along with a bunch of new ones they invented for the occasion-- the female Spider-Gwen, the 1930s Spider-Man Noir, the anime Sp//dr robot, Spider Punk, and so on. This story was called Edge of Spider-Verse and was very popular with readers.
It's that idea of a Spider-Verse that the movie runs with, although the plot is original. When the established Spider-Man Peter Parker dies in inter-dimensional vortex in an early scene, novice Spider-Man Miles Morales has to take his place. Only, he keeps running into strange other Spider-Folks around his hometown of Brooklyn. I won't say too much about what happens, although the main villains are the Kingpin, Tombstone, Prowler (who hasn't been a villain in the comics for a long time, but never mind), and a secret villain I won't reveal as it's a crucial plot point. The main thing is just seeing the interaction of all these Spider-Men.
The animation of the movie is highly urban, as befits Morale's home in Brooklyn, and extremely well-done, with the agility of the various Spider-Folks especially emphasized. The visuals are high quality to the point of awe-inspiring, the Spider-interactions are hilarious, and the plot if fast-paced and intelligent. I rate this movie as Excellent and would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of comics.
I have previously ranked Avengers: Infinity War, the Avengers movies, the Batman movies, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Logan, Man of Steel, the Man-Thing, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, the other DC movies, the Spider-Man movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Superman movies, Thor: Ragnarok, Wonder Woman, and the X-Men movies.
As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent Blue=pretty good Black=Okay Red=avoid
_______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:
Crumb
American Splendor
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Logan (2017)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Man of Steel (2013)
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV
Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)
Friday, December 28, 2018
Thursday, December 13, 2018
What I'm Reading: Re-Start
Re-Start, by Gordon Korman, is the second book by this author I've reviewed on this site. The first, Ungifted, I gave a fairly positive review to here. I like the author fine, but I'm not trying to follow him or anything--this is one of the books my son is reading for his Battle of the Books at school, and he, my daughter, and my wife have all read it and said I would enjoy it. And they're right!
In both books, a troublemaking middle schooler finds himself with an unexpected second chance to do things differently, and tries to take advantage of it. Seems to be a Korman theme! In this case the troublemaker is Chase Ambrose, who has just awoken from a coma a few days before his eighth-grade year starts. Chase fell off the roof of his house and conked his head, and now has complete amnesia concerning everything that occurred before the fall. He doesn't even remember his own mother.
As the days go on, Chase learns that he was pretty much a jerk before. He and his best buddies, Bear and Aaron, were the stars on the middle school football team, which they led to its first state championship in 25 years. They had the run of the school, and took advantage of that to bully nerds and dweebs as much as they liked, and they liked to do it a lot. They even bullied Joel Weber so mercilessly that Joel had to enroll at a private school in another state.
Chase is horrified at the person he used to be, and at the barbaric behavior of Bear and Aaron. Because the doctor said he couldn't play football the rest of the year, he joins the video club and really enjoys it. The geeky members are terrified of him at first, but soon realize he's genuinely changed. What's more, he's really good at camerawork, and within a few weeks has become a valued member of the club. He also joins Shoshanna Weber, Joel's twin sister, on her visits to a local senior citizens' center so they can interview a Korean War vet for a video project she's putting together. (But what would Joel think if he knew the kid who'd bullied him out of school was now hanging out with his sister?)
The football team, however, is really struggling without their star player. Bear and Aaron hatch an evil plan to spoil Chase's newfound friendship with the nerds and remind him of who he really is. Soon Chase will have to make a decision about who his real friends are--only he doesn't remember enough about his previous life to be fully informed about the possible ramifications if he chooses the nerds over the jocks.
This was a great book--tons of humor and a meaningful story. The characters are really well-drawn. Even Bear and Aaron, the villains, are well-rounded, and bad as they are, you can see the attractive qualities in them that led Chase to be their buddy. I did find the ending a little pat--in particular, Chase's dad, who had seemed to tie his love to his son to Chase's performance on the football team, has a real change of heart at the end that comes out of nowhere..
Another strange thing I noticed in the book is that I think it was originally aimed at an older, high school-aged audience. For instance, Chase's dad is proud of his son, the star football player, because he himself was on the last middle school team to go the state championship decades before, and he looks back on that period as the best time of his life. Plus, all the townspeople know who Chase and his friends are because of the football team, which is why they're able to get away with so much. But this doesn't seem right--it's high school football that is the most important thing in so many small towns, and it seems silly for Chase's dad to look back on middle school as the best time of his life. Moreover, Shoshanna wants her video project to win the National Video Journalism Award. This sounds a lot more like something a college application-building high schooler would be interested in than a middle schooler.
That doesn't make anything wrong with the book. I suspect Gordon Korman originally wrote it as a YA, not a middle grade book, and decided to change it. Or maybe the publisher asked him to, since he's known as a middle grade author. Regardless, it's more of an oddity than anything else. The book is still well-written, hilarious, and sometimes touching, and despite it's slightly overly sentimental ending, I would recommend it to any middle schooler, and any adults that might be interested, too.
Sunday, December 9, 2018
What I'm Reading: In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made
In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made, by the late NYU Professor Norman F. Cantor, is billed on the cover as the best and most thorough book of the Black Death ever written. I don't know. It may be the most thorough popular history on the subject ever written, but at not quite 250 pages, there must be thicker scholarly histories. Moreover, the book has a decidedly England-centric perspective on the subject, and I bet there are French or German or Italian histories that cover the Black Death in those countries more thoroughly. Still, I'm sure this is quite enough for your average reader.
The Black Death arrived in Italian ports in December 1347 and had reached the entire continent by early 1350. At least partly an epidemic of bubonic plague--but as Dr. Cantor argues, almost certainly fortified in some areas by simultaneous anthrax outbreaks--the Black Death killed one-third of Europe's population in three years, and in some towns and cities more than half. Europe's population did not recover for 150 years. It was one of the greatest calamities to occur in human history. Along with the Hundred Years War between England and France, it ended the prosperous High Middle Ages in Europe, while in some ways clearing the way for the Renaissance to come.
The chapters in the book are of highly variable quality. The chapters covering the actual history bit are quite good--and the chapter on how the Black Death affected Europe's Jewish population is a special highlight. (I mean, the pogroms against the Jews by a gentile population looking for a scapegoat for the disaster is a lowlight of history, but the event is related with an especially informative and impassioned authorial voice.)
The chapters covering the epidemiology of the disease are far weaker, however, not delivered as confidently and little more than re-wording of others' research, and with very little interpretive force. The chapter on the origins of the Black Plague, which gives a number of pages over to astrophysicist Fred Hoyle's theory that the disease arrived on a meteorite, was a particular eyebrow-raiser.
Still, the whole book is easy and fun to read, full of interesting facts and tidbits and theories, and certainly gives your typical reader all the information you'd want on the subject. Not without its weaknesses, but I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with a curiosity about the Black Death.
The Black Death arrived in Italian ports in December 1347 and had reached the entire continent by early 1350. At least partly an epidemic of bubonic plague--but as Dr. Cantor argues, almost certainly fortified in some areas by simultaneous anthrax outbreaks--the Black Death killed one-third of Europe's population in three years, and in some towns and cities more than half. Europe's population did not recover for 150 years. It was one of the greatest calamities to occur in human history. Along with the Hundred Years War between England and France, it ended the prosperous High Middle Ages in Europe, while in some ways clearing the way for the Renaissance to come.
The chapters in the book are of highly variable quality. The chapters covering the actual history bit are quite good--and the chapter on how the Black Death affected Europe's Jewish population is a special highlight. (I mean, the pogroms against the Jews by a gentile population looking for a scapegoat for the disaster is a lowlight of history, but the event is related with an especially informative and impassioned authorial voice.)
The chapters covering the epidemiology of the disease are far weaker, however, not delivered as confidently and little more than re-wording of others' research, and with very little interpretive force. The chapter on the origins of the Black Plague, which gives a number of pages over to astrophysicist Fred Hoyle's theory that the disease arrived on a meteorite, was a particular eyebrow-raiser.
Still, the whole book is easy and fun to read, full of interesting facts and tidbits and theories, and certainly gives your typical reader all the information you'd want on the subject. Not without its weaknesses, but I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with a curiosity about the Black Death.
Friday, November 30, 2018
Scary Movies: Alien Resurrection
Okay, last horror movie from my family's annual October horror moviethon. At my son's strong request, we watched the fourth movie in the Alien franchise, Alien Resurrection. Previously on this site, the first Alien movie was the only horror movie I've reviewed to receive a perfect score, Aliens got a rating of Pretty Good, and Alien 3 scored only a 3 on my 10 point scale. I did note that Alien 3 actually had an interesting premise that it didn't really follow through on--I've since learned that the movie that director David Fincher turned in was rejected by the studio as "not commercial enough" and radically re-edited. Apparently there is a director's cut that's 20 minutes longer and I bet it's a much better movie. Maybe I'll get to it someday!
But for now, on to Alien Resurrection. Unlike Alien 3, a movie with an original and creative premise poorly executed, this one basically returns to the same story well as Aliens, but is quite well-executed. Acting and script are top-notch, with Sigourney Weaver returning as Ridley, Ron Perlman and Winona Rider (!) also having roles, and a script by Joss Whedon (!!).
The movie is set 200 years after Alien 3, and Ridley has been cloned using her human DNA mixed with that of an alien queen, for some reason. She is held on a remote outpost in space where a team of military scientists is using her to breed embryos for new aliens to experiment on. A small spaceship manned by outlaw traders comes in with a delivery of human bodies for the head of the scientific mission. During an incident while the traders are on board, the aliens escape their confinement and start hunting the humans down. Ridley and a select group of the outlaws must battle their way back to the outlaw ship to escape.
So, not a huge leap from Aliens. But what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in tight pacing, Whedon's trademark witty repartee--this is the first Alien movie with a sense of humor--and at least a couple fun innovations on the alien chase scene. (A setpiece where the characters have to swim through a flooded galley while chased by water-breathing aliens is something to behold.) Final ranking? It has some high points but as a whole is only Okay.
Alien Resurrection (1997)
Story/Plot/Characters--Top-notch acting and script outweigh the by-now tired premise. (2.5 points)
Special Effects--Technically accomplished, and a couple scenes are truly marvels, but overall somewhat perfunctorily presented. (1.5 points)
Scariness--Very few frights to be gotten out of the franchise at this point. You know what's coming. (0 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--What was atmospheric in previous movies is by now predictable and stale. (.5 points)
Total=4.5 points (Okay)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Alien Resurrection (1997)=4.5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
But for now, on to Alien Resurrection. Unlike Alien 3, a movie with an original and creative premise poorly executed, this one basically returns to the same story well as Aliens, but is quite well-executed. Acting and script are top-notch, with Sigourney Weaver returning as Ridley, Ron Perlman and Winona Rider (!) also having roles, and a script by Joss Whedon (!!).
The movie is set 200 years after Alien 3, and Ridley has been cloned using her human DNA mixed with that of an alien queen, for some reason. She is held on a remote outpost in space where a team of military scientists is using her to breed embryos for new aliens to experiment on. A small spaceship manned by outlaw traders comes in with a delivery of human bodies for the head of the scientific mission. During an incident while the traders are on board, the aliens escape their confinement and start hunting the humans down. Ridley and a select group of the outlaws must battle their way back to the outlaw ship to escape.
So, not a huge leap from Aliens. But what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in tight pacing, Whedon's trademark witty repartee--this is the first Alien movie with a sense of humor--and at least a couple fun innovations on the alien chase scene. (A setpiece where the characters have to swim through a flooded galley while chased by water-breathing aliens is something to behold.) Final ranking? It has some high points but as a whole is only Okay.
Alien Resurrection (1997)
Story/Plot/Characters--Top-notch acting and script outweigh the by-now tired premise. (2.5 points)
Special Effects--Technically accomplished, and a couple scenes are truly marvels, but overall somewhat perfunctorily presented. (1.5 points)
Scariness--Very few frights to be gotten out of the franchise at this point. You know what's coming. (0 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--What was atmospheric in previous movies is by now predictable and stale. (.5 points)
Total=4.5 points (Okay)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Alien Resurrection (1997)=4.5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Scary Movies: Day of the Dead
Still wrapping up the horror movie reviews from October... Now we come to the third in director/writer/producer George Romero's zombie trilogy, Day of the Dead. The first two (Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, which I reviewed here) are among my favorite scary movies of all time, but I'd never seen this one before. Did it hold up compared to the first two?
Not quite, although it's by no means a terrible movie. Where Night takes place the first evening of the zombie infestation, and Dawn a few weeks into it, as society is crumbling, Day takes place several months later, when society is long gone and most of humanity is dead. This one is set in Florida--an odd choice, since the first two take place around Romero's hometown of Pittsburgh. And except for a few scenes at the beginning in a nearby town, we don't even see much of Florida, because nearly the entire running length of the film is set in a miles-long underground cavern where various government records are stored.
The heroine is Dr. Sarah Bowman, one of a team of about half a dozen scientists working on a cure for the zombie infestation. There's also another a similar number of soldiers in the cavern, there ostensibly to protect the scientists but actually at odds with them under their petty-tyrannical leader, Captain Rhodes.
The head scientist, Dr. Logan, thinks he's close to a breakthrough. He's figured out the zombies can learn, and has even trained one zombie, Bub, to respond to voice commands and listen to music through headphones (!). He keeps his experimental zombie subjects in a fenced-off portion of the cavern, and also runs a disgusting lab where he's generally elbow-deep in blood and innards, trying to figure out how those zombies work.
However, Captain Rhodes thinks it's all a waste of time, and the scientists and their dumb experiments a waste of resources. It's not long before the camps led by Captain Rhodes and Dr. Logan are in open conflict, with that zombie pen just waiting to be opened....
Unfortunately, the monotony of the cavern setting and the reliance on melodramatic yelling matches between the members of the two groups to advance the plot mean this one drags at parts. On the other hand, it has by far the best gore and special effects--make-up artist Tom Savini won a Saturn Award for his work on Day of the Dead, and the awesomely disgusting zombies are still among the best work ever done in horror. This one's not for everyone, but if you like zombies and have a strong stomach (the gore dial here is really turned to the maximum), it's not a bad way to pass an evening.
Day of the Dead (1985)
Story/Plot/Characters--I don't think you'd say it was Shakespearean or anything, but the Dead movies prior to this one at least had better acting than your typical horror flick. Not here. Decent premise but plot's a little thin. Characters not totally stereotypical but not real well-rounded either. Better than most low-budget horrors but feels perfunctory after the horror magnificence of the first two movies. (1.5 points)
Special Effects--Superb. Best zombie make-up and prosthetics ever, awesome gore. (2 points)
Scariness--Relies too much on gore and melodrama to be really scary, but definitely has its moments. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--Dr. Logan's zombie lab and the zombie pen definitely give this a freaky vibe. A half point off for the endless samey-ness of the caverns, though. (1.5 points)
Total=6 points (Pretty Good)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
Not quite, although it's by no means a terrible movie. Where Night takes place the first evening of the zombie infestation, and Dawn a few weeks into it, as society is crumbling, Day takes place several months later, when society is long gone and most of humanity is dead. This one is set in Florida--an odd choice, since the first two take place around Romero's hometown of Pittsburgh. And except for a few scenes at the beginning in a nearby town, we don't even see much of Florida, because nearly the entire running length of the film is set in a miles-long underground cavern where various government records are stored.
The heroine is Dr. Sarah Bowman, one of a team of about half a dozen scientists working on a cure for the zombie infestation. There's also another a similar number of soldiers in the cavern, there ostensibly to protect the scientists but actually at odds with them under their petty-tyrannical leader, Captain Rhodes.
The head scientist, Dr. Logan, thinks he's close to a breakthrough. He's figured out the zombies can learn, and has even trained one zombie, Bub, to respond to voice commands and listen to music through headphones (!). He keeps his experimental zombie subjects in a fenced-off portion of the cavern, and also runs a disgusting lab where he's generally elbow-deep in blood and innards, trying to figure out how those zombies work.
However, Captain Rhodes thinks it's all a waste of time, and the scientists and their dumb experiments a waste of resources. It's not long before the camps led by Captain Rhodes and Dr. Logan are in open conflict, with that zombie pen just waiting to be opened....
Unfortunately, the monotony of the cavern setting and the reliance on melodramatic yelling matches between the members of the two groups to advance the plot mean this one drags at parts. On the other hand, it has by far the best gore and special effects--make-up artist Tom Savini won a Saturn Award for his work on Day of the Dead, and the awesomely disgusting zombies are still among the best work ever done in horror. This one's not for everyone, but if you like zombies and have a strong stomach (the gore dial here is really turned to the maximum), it's not a bad way to pass an evening.
Day of the Dead (1985)
Story/Plot/Characters--I don't think you'd say it was Shakespearean or anything, but the Dead movies prior to this one at least had better acting than your typical horror flick. Not here. Decent premise but plot's a little thin. Characters not totally stereotypical but not real well-rounded either. Better than most low-budget horrors but feels perfunctory after the horror magnificence of the first two movies. (1.5 points)
Special Effects--Superb. Best zombie make-up and prosthetics ever, awesome gore. (2 points)
Scariness--Relies too much on gore and melodrama to be really scary, but definitely has its moments. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--Dr. Logan's zombie lab and the zombie pen definitely give this a freaky vibe. A half point off for the endless samey-ness of the caverns, though. (1.5 points)
Total=6 points (Pretty Good)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
Friday, November 9, 2018
What I'm Reading: Stories of Daily Life From the Roman World
Stories of Daily Life From the Roman World: Extracts From the Ancient Colloquia, translated and with commentary by Eleanor Dickey, is not precisely what I was expecting, although it was close enough.
What I was expecting was stories from different sources of everyday life in Rome presented in something of a comprehensive manner. The problem was I didn't understand the term colloquia in this context. It turns out the Colloquia are a collection of texts from antiquity that Romans, especially children, used to learn Greek. They're essentially dual-reading texts, presenting common everyday situations (attending school, going to the baths, eating dinner) with one side written in Latin and the other in Greek. The Roman could read the Latin side that he understood and compare to the Greek side to learn the vocabulary used in different situations. It's maybe a little different than a modern-day foreign language textbook, but the same idea.
The reason they're valuable to scholars today is because they describe situations that don't usually come up in ancient literature. How exactly did Romans behave in court, or go to bed, or conduct a transaction at the bank or the market? Because these things were so common and mundane, Plutarch or Cicero, say, never bothered to address them.
Two parts really stood out as interesting to me. The first is the chapter on going to the baths. Because public bathing is foreign to Americans today (but not to Scandinavians or Russians, with their saunas in winter), it was fun to find out about the different rooms for exercising or rinsing, or the way the way they would cover themselves in olive oil and then take the oil off with a scraping instrument called a strigil. Of course I'd heard about the Roman public baths before, but I didn't realize that everybody in Rome bathed nearly every day--even slaves. The rich might have had their fancy bathhouses and the poor cheaper ones, but there was a place for everyone to keep clean.
The other part is slaves. Many scenes in the book describe vocabulary or phrases for ordering slaves to cook your meal, or help you dress, or carry your items while you shop. I suppose those who were rich enough to study a foreign language were also rich enough to own slaves, so slave-owning was perhaps not as widespread as the scenes in the book would lead one to believe. Nevertheless, for a significant portion of the population, dealing with slaves was an everyday matter. (Parts of Xenophon's Conversations of Socrates, which I read last year, also dealt with this topic.)
Dickey has supplemented her translations of the colloquia with her own explanations of the text to fill in the blanks, and has added some well-selected pictures to give us an idea. However, due to the fragmented nature of the colloquia, there are lots of aspects of Roman daily life I might have liked to read about but that didn't come up--religion in daily life, for instance, or the interaction between parents and children. Still, there was a lot of good information here and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in how ancient people really lived.
What I was expecting was stories from different sources of everyday life in Rome presented in something of a comprehensive manner. The problem was I didn't understand the term colloquia in this context. It turns out the Colloquia are a collection of texts from antiquity that Romans, especially children, used to learn Greek. They're essentially dual-reading texts, presenting common everyday situations (attending school, going to the baths, eating dinner) with one side written in Latin and the other in Greek. The Roman could read the Latin side that he understood and compare to the Greek side to learn the vocabulary used in different situations. It's maybe a little different than a modern-day foreign language textbook, but the same idea.
The reason they're valuable to scholars today is because they describe situations that don't usually come up in ancient literature. How exactly did Romans behave in court, or go to bed, or conduct a transaction at the bank or the market? Because these things were so common and mundane, Plutarch or Cicero, say, never bothered to address them.
Two parts really stood out as interesting to me. The first is the chapter on going to the baths. Because public bathing is foreign to Americans today (but not to Scandinavians or Russians, with their saunas in winter), it was fun to find out about the different rooms for exercising or rinsing, or the way the way they would cover themselves in olive oil and then take the oil off with a scraping instrument called a strigil. Of course I'd heard about the Roman public baths before, but I didn't realize that everybody in Rome bathed nearly every day--even slaves. The rich might have had their fancy bathhouses and the poor cheaper ones, but there was a place for everyone to keep clean.
The other part is slaves. Many scenes in the book describe vocabulary or phrases for ordering slaves to cook your meal, or help you dress, or carry your items while you shop. I suppose those who were rich enough to study a foreign language were also rich enough to own slaves, so slave-owning was perhaps not as widespread as the scenes in the book would lead one to believe. Nevertheless, for a significant portion of the population, dealing with slaves was an everyday matter. (Parts of Xenophon's Conversations of Socrates, which I read last year, also dealt with this topic.)
Dickey has supplemented her translations of the colloquia with her own explanations of the text to fill in the blanks, and has added some well-selected pictures to give us an idea. However, due to the fragmented nature of the colloquia, there are lots of aspects of Roman daily life I might have liked to read about but that didn't come up--religion in daily life, for instance, or the interaction between parents and children. Still, there was a lot of good information here and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in how ancient people really lived.
Friday, November 2, 2018
Scary Movies: The Haunting
Ach! Behind by three scary movies! Okay, last time I promised I would review a bad one and a good one, and I did the bad one. This time, we'll do a good one, The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise in 1963. This was remade just this year, and the reviews are terrible. I think I'll stick with the older version.
You see so many b-movies when you're a horror fan, it's refreshing every once in a while to see a movie that actually had a budget, A-list actors, and a real director (the film Wise directed just before this was West Side Story, and the one right afterwards was The Sound of Music--although he also directed The Day the Earth Stood Still and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so this may not have been as big a departure for him as it appears at first).
The plot, based on a short story by Shirley Jackson, is pretty simple. Dr. John Markway is a paranormal researcher, and Hill House in rural Massachusetts has the reputation of being the most haunted house in New England. He decides to spend a week investigating the house, and invites several guests who have past experiences with supernatural phenomena, although only two arrive--including Theodora, a psychic who can sometimes read minds, and Eleanor, who had a run-in with a poltergeist as a child-- as well as Luke Sanderson, the nephew of the house's owner, who stands to inherit the place and is completely skeptical.
I don't suppose it's a surprise to learn that bizarre things start happening almost immediately. Does Luke Sanderson become a true believer in ghosts? Does Dr. Markway get material for his research? Do any of the characters have secrets that come out in the course of the film? I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying the answer is yes to all three of those.
I will say, unlike many other movies of this era, the movie doesn't cheat by trying to explain away the various ghostly events at the end. It is also genuinely scary, or at least creepy. My daughter (age 9) watched it with me and though there's no gore, or really anything inappropriate for a kid, she said she might have trouble going to sleep that night. I can't blame her--the scares in this movie are really effective.
The Haunting (1963)
Story/Plot/Characters--Great script, great acting, great pacing. I might have wanted a little more development of the characters. Theodora seems really fascinating but we hardly learn anything about her, and Luke Sanderson is two-dimensional. But that's quibbling--Eleanor is well-rounded, and Dr. Markway turns out to have some surprises. (3 points)
Special Effects--Not really a special effects movie, but what's used is done well. (1 point)
Scariness--It's a little hard to pinpoint what's so effective here, because not a whole lot actually happens--strange noises, things moved around when people aren't looking, but it's all done so well that the suspense builds throughout the film. Very scary for a movie from 1963. (1.5 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--This is almost the definition of atmospheric-- a haunted house in a rural New England setting. (2 points)
Total=7.5 points (Excellent)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
You see so many b-movies when you're a horror fan, it's refreshing every once in a while to see a movie that actually had a budget, A-list actors, and a real director (the film Wise directed just before this was West Side Story, and the one right afterwards was The Sound of Music--although he also directed The Day the Earth Stood Still and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so this may not have been as big a departure for him as it appears at first).
The plot, based on a short story by Shirley Jackson, is pretty simple. Dr. John Markway is a paranormal researcher, and Hill House in rural Massachusetts has the reputation of being the most haunted house in New England. He decides to spend a week investigating the house, and invites several guests who have past experiences with supernatural phenomena, although only two arrive--including Theodora, a psychic who can sometimes read minds, and Eleanor, who had a run-in with a poltergeist as a child-- as well as Luke Sanderson, the nephew of the house's owner, who stands to inherit the place and is completely skeptical.
I don't suppose it's a surprise to learn that bizarre things start happening almost immediately. Does Luke Sanderson become a true believer in ghosts? Does Dr. Markway get material for his research? Do any of the characters have secrets that come out in the course of the film? I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying the answer is yes to all three of those.
I will say, unlike many other movies of this era, the movie doesn't cheat by trying to explain away the various ghostly events at the end. It is also genuinely scary, or at least creepy. My daughter (age 9) watched it with me and though there's no gore, or really anything inappropriate for a kid, she said she might have trouble going to sleep that night. I can't blame her--the scares in this movie are really effective.
The Haunting (1963)
Story/Plot/Characters--Great script, great acting, great pacing. I might have wanted a little more development of the characters. Theodora seems really fascinating but we hardly learn anything about her, and Luke Sanderson is two-dimensional. But that's quibbling--Eleanor is well-rounded, and Dr. Markway turns out to have some surprises. (3 points)
Special Effects--Not really a special effects movie, but what's used is done well. (1 point)
Scariness--It's a little hard to pinpoint what's so effective here, because not a whole lot actually happens--strange noises, things moved around when people aren't looking, but it's all done so well that the suspense builds throughout the film. Very scary for a movie from 1963. (1.5 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--This is almost the definition of atmospheric-- a haunted house in a rural New England setting. (2 points)
Total=7.5 points (Excellent)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Scary Movies: House of Wax
As usual in October, I'm running a little behind on my horror movie reviews! Okay, we've seen a good one and a bad one in the past couple weeks. Let's start with the bad one!
The House of Wax stars Vincent Price as Dr. Henry Jarrod, a sculptor who creates wax figures for a wax museum in New York. Dr. Jarrod is a real artist and creates sensitive representations of historical figures such as his masterpiece, Marie Antoinette. But his partner is a hard-nosed businessman, and wants Dr. Jarrod to sculpt figures from crime scenes, like the public wants. When Dr. Jarrod refuses, his partner burns down the museum for the insurance money. Dr. Jarrod seems to die in the fire as well.
A year later, a new wax museum opens up across town. The owner has badly burned hands and is confined to a wheelchair, but he is a genius at designing wax figures with the help of his assistant, Igor (played by Charles Bronson!). Around the same time the museum opens, Dr. Jarrod's former partner disappears, while a wax figure that looks a lot like him appears in the new museum. Soon after, the partner's girlfriend also disappears, while a Joan of Arc wax figure who could be her double becomes the museum's new hit exhibit. Can you guess the secret of these new wax figures, or who the proprietor of the new museum really is?
I bet you can guess from the very first minute. This was not a subtle movie, and it has a number of weaknesses. First, apparently at it's original showing in 1953, the movie was displayed in 3-D, and there are at least two long scenes in the movie that have little to do with the plot but must have been meant to demonstrate the 3-D technology. One of these, of an annoying man with a grating schtick and playing with a paddleball to advertise the opening of the museum, goes on for at least five minutes and is really unbearable. But these scenes are just indicative--practically every element of the movie screams amateurishness. Not like a low-budget B movie where the people involved have passion but no idea what they were doing--this was Warner Bros. Production values are perfectly adequate, it's just a film where nobody cared or gave much effort.
The main exception is Vincent Price, whose performance as both the sensitive Dr. Jarrod, and later the deformed and revenge-crazed proprietor of the new wax museum, is really superb. In fact, Vincent Price is the only thing that makes this movie watchable. At the time, this movie established his reputation as a master of horror.
There are also a couple effective scenes--the shots of the wax figures melting in the fire, with Dr. Jarrod trying in vain to put out the flames destroying his beloved Marie Antoinette, are really done well. Later on, a scene of the deformed man chasing a woman through the streets of New York is pretty spooky, so long as you don't stop to wonder why multiple streets in SoHo have absolutely no pedestrians or trafffic. (I've been in NYC in the middle of the night--there are people out even at 3AM!)
In the end, though, I can't really recommend this movie, unless you have a special love for Vincent Price. Even then, you'd be far better off watching, say, one of the Edgar Allen Poe movies he did with director Roger Corman, or practically any of the dozens of other horror movies he starred in.
The House of Wax (1953)
Story/Plot/Characters--Dull script with merely functional dialogue. Insipid characters. Story was a potentially interesting mystery, but all the mysterious aspects were fumbled. Inclusion of pointless, time-wasting scenes. Vincent Price's acting is the only saving grace here. (1 point)
Special Effects-- Great make-up job on Vincent Price after the fire, and the fire in the wax museum was well done. (1 point)
Scariness--Not scary. My nine-year-old daughter watched this with no problems. (0 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--Some nice spooky atmosphere in the wax museum at night, and the New York night scenes. Some surprisingly freaky bondage-type stuff in the finale, as the endangered young lady is about to have boiling wax poured over her writhing handcuffed body. (1 point)
Total=3 points (Avoid)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
The House of Wax stars Vincent Price as Dr. Henry Jarrod, a sculptor who creates wax figures for a wax museum in New York. Dr. Jarrod is a real artist and creates sensitive representations of historical figures such as his masterpiece, Marie Antoinette. But his partner is a hard-nosed businessman, and wants Dr. Jarrod to sculpt figures from crime scenes, like the public wants. When Dr. Jarrod refuses, his partner burns down the museum for the insurance money. Dr. Jarrod seems to die in the fire as well.
A year later, a new wax museum opens up across town. The owner has badly burned hands and is confined to a wheelchair, but he is a genius at designing wax figures with the help of his assistant, Igor (played by Charles Bronson!). Around the same time the museum opens, Dr. Jarrod's former partner disappears, while a wax figure that looks a lot like him appears in the new museum. Soon after, the partner's girlfriend also disappears, while a Joan of Arc wax figure who could be her double becomes the museum's new hit exhibit. Can you guess the secret of these new wax figures, or who the proprietor of the new museum really is?
I bet you can guess from the very first minute. This was not a subtle movie, and it has a number of weaknesses. First, apparently at it's original showing in 1953, the movie was displayed in 3-D, and there are at least two long scenes in the movie that have little to do with the plot but must have been meant to demonstrate the 3-D technology. One of these, of an annoying man with a grating schtick and playing with a paddleball to advertise the opening of the museum, goes on for at least five minutes and is really unbearable. But these scenes are just indicative--practically every element of the movie screams amateurishness. Not like a low-budget B movie where the people involved have passion but no idea what they were doing--this was Warner Bros. Production values are perfectly adequate, it's just a film where nobody cared or gave much effort.
The main exception is Vincent Price, whose performance as both the sensitive Dr. Jarrod, and later the deformed and revenge-crazed proprietor of the new wax museum, is really superb. In fact, Vincent Price is the only thing that makes this movie watchable. At the time, this movie established his reputation as a master of horror.
There are also a couple effective scenes--the shots of the wax figures melting in the fire, with Dr. Jarrod trying in vain to put out the flames destroying his beloved Marie Antoinette, are really done well. Later on, a scene of the deformed man chasing a woman through the streets of New York is pretty spooky, so long as you don't stop to wonder why multiple streets in SoHo have absolutely no pedestrians or trafffic. (I've been in NYC in the middle of the night--there are people out even at 3AM!)
In the end, though, I can't really recommend this movie, unless you have a special love for Vincent Price. Even then, you'd be far better off watching, say, one of the Edgar Allen Poe movies he did with director Roger Corman, or practically any of the dozens of other horror movies he starred in.
The House of Wax (1953)
Story/Plot/Characters--Dull script with merely functional dialogue. Insipid characters. Story was a potentially interesting mystery, but all the mysterious aspects were fumbled. Inclusion of pointless, time-wasting scenes. Vincent Price's acting is the only saving grace here. (1 point)
Special Effects-- Great make-up job on Vincent Price after the fire, and the fire in the wax museum was well done. (1 point)
Scariness--Not scary. My nine-year-old daughter watched this with no problems. (0 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--Some nice spooky atmosphere in the wax museum at night, and the New York night scenes. Some surprisingly freaky bondage-type stuff in the finale, as the endangered young lady is about to have boiling wax poured over her writhing handcuffed body. (1 point)
Total=3 points (Avoid)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
Sunday, October 21, 2018
What I'm Reading: A Single Happened Thing
Ack, I'm falling behind! Before I rate some more scary movies, I want to briefly review A Single Happened Thing, by Daniel Paisner. This book follows New York City book publicist David Felb, who has a boring, normal, and kind of disappointing life until one evening at a meaningless late-season Phillies game in Philadelphia. The game happens to have the longest single at bat ever recorded--that's the Single Happened Thing of the title--and somehow that expansion of time, as it were, allows a long-dead player from baseball's distant past to slip through into our time.
The player is Fred "Sure Shot" Dunlap (a real person, by the way), who had one of the greatest seasons in baseball history for the short-lived Union Association League in 1884, was forgotten not long after, and died penniless in 1900. For some reason he takes a liking to David, or at least thinks David can help him, and after a strange encounter at the baseball game, tracks David down to his hotel the next morning, and then meets him again as David takes the train home to New York.
Dunlap disappears after that, but in David's gushing to his wife and family about the bizarre encounter, his wife decides he's delusional and insists he starts seeing a psychiatrist. In fact, Dunlap becomes a wedge in their marriage, as David refuses to back down from the reality of his experience, even as his wife is certain that he could not possibly have met a...what? ghost? Long-dead person resurrected?
However, David's teenage daughter Iona takes his side after a strange man shows up at her softball practice one day and teaches her an unusual side arm throw that makes her the star pitcher of her school league. Who else could the strange man have been but "Sure Shot" Dunlap?
While the baseball forms a framework for the novel, it's in the subtle divisions and alliances of a troubled family that Paisner's novel really resides. It's really beautifully written and pretty fun to read--maybe more so for a baseball fan, but I think any thinking adult would appreciate the careful descriptions of a slowly fraying marriage and the ups and downs of parent-child relationships in light of that. A Single Happened Thing is highly recommended.
The player is Fred "Sure Shot" Dunlap (a real person, by the way), who had one of the greatest seasons in baseball history for the short-lived Union Association League in 1884, was forgotten not long after, and died penniless in 1900. For some reason he takes a liking to David, or at least thinks David can help him, and after a strange encounter at the baseball game, tracks David down to his hotel the next morning, and then meets him again as David takes the train home to New York.
Dunlap disappears after that, but in David's gushing to his wife and family about the bizarre encounter, his wife decides he's delusional and insists he starts seeing a psychiatrist. In fact, Dunlap becomes a wedge in their marriage, as David refuses to back down from the reality of his experience, even as his wife is certain that he could not possibly have met a...what? ghost? Long-dead person resurrected?
However, David's teenage daughter Iona takes his side after a strange man shows up at her softball practice one day and teaches her an unusual side arm throw that makes her the star pitcher of her school league. Who else could the strange man have been but "Sure Shot" Dunlap?
While the baseball forms a framework for the novel, it's in the subtle divisions and alliances of a troubled family that Paisner's novel really resides. It's really beautifully written and pretty fun to read--maybe more so for a baseball fan, but I think any thinking adult would appreciate the careful descriptions of a slowly fraying marriage and the ups and downs of parent-child relationships in light of that. A Single Happened Thing is highly recommended.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Scary Movies: The Raven
It's October, and time for the annual Bruner horror movie festival! Our first movie this year is The Raven, the third Roger Corman-directed Edgar Allan Poe movie we've watched (last year I reviewed Tales of Terror and somehow neglected to review The Pit and the Pendulum). It will also probably be the last for a while, because we've now exhausted the Poe movies on our DVD collection.
The Raven is a horror-comedy, starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff (!), and a very young Jack Nicholson (!!). The main character is Dr. Erasmus Craven, a magician of some power who lives a quiet life of drinking warm milk before bed and worrying over his teenage daughter, Estelle. He also mourns his late wife (Estelle's stepmother), Lenore. One evening, a raven taps on the window to his study, and when Dr. Craven lets it in, is surprised to find the raven speaking to him.
The raven is actually Dr. Bedlow, who was transformed into the raven in a wizard's duel with the evil Dr. Scarabus, and has come to Craven for help because they met at a wizard's convention some years back. The restored Dr. Bedlow sees a picture of the late Lenore and tells Dr. Craven he saw her at Scarabus's house that very evening. Bedlow and Craven decide to pay Scarabus a visit--Bedlow wanting revenge for losing the duel, and Craven to find out if Scarabus has somehow imprisoned the spirit of his beloved Lenore. What they find at Scarabus's castle will surprise them both, and viewer as well.
This movie was fun from start to finish, well-paced and never flagging in interest. I can't say the humor was hilarious or the scares were very frightening, but the various wizards' duels, unexpected magical transformations, and double crosses kept my interest and my childrens' as well. We'll rate this at the high end of Okay on the rating scale.
The Raven (1963)
Story/Plot/Characters--Fine acting and a great script with extra points for originality. Characters were somewhat stereotyped, but overall well-done. (3 points)
Special Effects-- Dated, although they must have been something in 1963. (1 point)
Scariness--Well, zero. Not scary at all. As a horror-comedy, maybe I should be rating this on humor, then. A nice jovial atmosphere, but specific jokes were pretty lame--this was no Young Frankenstein. (.5 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--Scarabus's castle was pretty cool, with its elaborate, floating fire braziers. (1 point)
Total=5.5 points (Okay)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Day of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
The Raven is a horror-comedy, starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff (!), and a very young Jack Nicholson (!!). The main character is Dr. Erasmus Craven, a magician of some power who lives a quiet life of drinking warm milk before bed and worrying over his teenage daughter, Estelle. He also mourns his late wife (Estelle's stepmother), Lenore. One evening, a raven taps on the window to his study, and when Dr. Craven lets it in, is surprised to find the raven speaking to him.
The raven is actually Dr. Bedlow, who was transformed into the raven in a wizard's duel with the evil Dr. Scarabus, and has come to Craven for help because they met at a wizard's convention some years back. The restored Dr. Bedlow sees a picture of the late Lenore and tells Dr. Craven he saw her at Scarabus's house that very evening. Bedlow and Craven decide to pay Scarabus a visit--Bedlow wanting revenge for losing the duel, and Craven to find out if Scarabus has somehow imprisoned the spirit of his beloved Lenore. What they find at Scarabus's castle will surprise them both, and viewer as well.
This movie was fun from start to finish, well-paced and never flagging in interest. I can't say the humor was hilarious or the scares were very frightening, but the various wizards' duels, unexpected magical transformations, and double crosses kept my interest and my childrens' as well. We'll rate this at the high end of Okay on the rating scale.
The Raven (1963)
Story/Plot/Characters--Fine acting and a great script with extra points for originality. Characters were somewhat stereotyped, but overall well-done. (3 points)
Special Effects-- Dated, although they must have been something in 1963. (1 point)
Scariness--Well, zero. Not scary at all. As a horror-comedy, maybe I should be rating this on humor, then. A nice jovial atmosphere, but specific jokes were pretty lame--this was no Young Frankenstein. (.5 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--Scarabus's castle was pretty cool, with its elaborate, floating fire braziers. (1 point)
Total=5.5 points (Okay)
______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)
Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Day of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Okay
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
What I'm Reading: The Mote in God's Eye
Now this is a great science fiction novel, and simultaneously an illustration of the limits of genre fiction. The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, succeeds at every level as an SF story. The primary character in a very large cast is Captain Blaine of the Imperial Space Navy, who leads an expedition to the Mote, a remote corner of the galaxy where humans, whose empire spans hundreds of worlds, have detected the first intelligence alien species they've ever encountered.
Upon arrival in the system, the humans encounter the Moties, as they come to be known. The Moties are shorter than humans and furry, but essentially human-like, with some notable biological differences--a large, strong left arm and two slender but dextrous right arms, for example. The Moties have tens of thousands of years of history and incredibly advanced technology, but have never expanded beyond their home planet and moons due to a weird circumstance. In this book, faster-than-light space travel is only possible through wormholes that have a single destination--and the only wormhole in the Motie's system leads straight to the heart of a supernova. Every attempt they've made to explore deep space has ended in disaster.
The Moties are friendly enough, eager to learn about humans, and seemingly open about themselves. Theirs is a peaceful society, although rather caste-bound. Different types of Moties have different jobs--engineers, doctors, farmers--not just by avocation or ability, but because they're actually genetically-engineered for the role. Farmers have thick fingers for dealing with soil but aren't too bright, porters are huge and muscle-bound but positively stupid, doctors have long, delicate fingers for surgery, messengers have well-developed legs for running and an ability to memorize long messages. The ones of most concern to humans are the mediators, who are intelligent and good with languages (they pick up English in a matter of days) but utterly unable to make decisions on their own. It is the mediators, whose job is to settle disputes between conflicting parties, who are responsible for the centuries of peace that have passed on their planet, and also who befriend the human visitors.
Yet the mediators have a reticence to discuss certain topics, and although their world has avoided war for centuries, there are strange holes when they discuss their history. Not that they're covering anything up--but that they don't know. Carefully recorded histories going back millenia, but with gaps they can't explain. It turns out the Moties have a secret--one that will affect their relationship with the human race in an unforeseen way.
Like I said, this is a great science fiction novel, a realistic account of what an encounter between humanity and an intelligent alien species might be like. It's a long book (nearly 600 pages) but fascinating on almost every page, with tons of great details about the Moties, the human ships, space travel, and the nature of the human empire hundreds of years in the future. I heartily recommend it for SF lovers.
But not for anybody else. Because as great as it is as science fiction, it's highly mediocre by the standards of mainstream literature. The writing is professional and effective, but rarely more than functional. Dialogue too is functional, and though a couple characters have stereotypical accents (Scottish, Russian), everybody pretty much speaks the same way. No characters are fully-rounded people, and beyond Captain Blaine and one or two others, most are strictly two-dimensional. A romance between Captain Blaine and a female anthropologist on his ship, Sandra Fowler, is almost comically bad.
So this is no Ray Bradbury or Robert Heinlein, transcending the genre of SF with gorgeous writing and brilliant characters. It's rare to encounter a book that so fully exemplifies the merits of its genre, but without fulfilling any literary aspirations beyond the genre conventions, or even trying to.
Thursday, August 16, 2018
Ranking: Man of Steel
Man of Steel came out in 2013, and if I remember, it was critically panned at the time. I watched it recently with my son, and we enjoyed it pretty well! Not the greatest comic movie I've ever seen but perfectly entertaining. I rank this one at the high end of Okay.
It retells the origin of Superman, with the villain being General Zod and his fellow Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone. It worked fine on both scores. Where I think a lot of critics disliked the movie is because it did not have Christopher Reeve, the Superman from the 1970s-80s movies, who brought a palpable warmth and sense of goodness and dignity to the role. Superman in this movie (and in the DC shared-universe movies since) is played by Henry Cavill, a buff man who certainly looks the part of Superman, but comes across as rather bland. Nothing wrong with him, but he doesn't seem to bring much personality to the role. Nevertheless, the movie is fine to watch if you want to pass a couple pleasant hours.
I have previously ranked Avengers: Infinity War, the Avengers movies, the Batman movies, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Logan, the Man-Thing, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, the other DC movies, the Spider-Man movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Superman movies, Thor: Ragnarok, Wonder Woman, and the X-Men movies.
As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent Blue=pretty good Black=Okay Red=avoid
_______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:
Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Logan (2017)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Man of Steel (2013)
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV
Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)
It retells the origin of Superman, with the villain being General Zod and his fellow Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone. It worked fine on both scores. Where I think a lot of critics disliked the movie is because it did not have Christopher Reeve, the Superman from the 1970s-80s movies, who brought a palpable warmth and sense of goodness and dignity to the role. Superman in this movie (and in the DC shared-universe movies since) is played by Henry Cavill, a buff man who certainly looks the part of Superman, but comes across as rather bland. Nothing wrong with him, but he doesn't seem to bring much personality to the role. Nevertheless, the movie is fine to watch if you want to pass a couple pleasant hours.
I have previously ranked Avengers: Infinity War, the Avengers movies, the Batman movies, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Logan, the Man-Thing, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, the other DC movies, the Spider-Man movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Superman movies, Thor: Ragnarok, Wonder Woman, and the X-Men movies.
As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent Blue=pretty good Black=Okay Red=avoid
_______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:
Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Logan (2017)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Man of Steel (2013)
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV
Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Ranking: Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers: The Infinity War is what the Marvel movies have been building up to for many years. Hints about the villain, Thanos, have been seeded in movies going back at least to the first Avengers movie in 2012, and maybe farther (?).
Thanos is a titan, a sort of celestial being whose daughters, the good Gamora and the evil Nebula, have played big parts in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. He's trying to collect the six Infinity Stones, jewels of immense power that embody certain fundamental aspects of the universe--power, reality, time, space, mind, and soul. Once he finds them all and inserts them in his glove, the Infinity Gauntlet, he'll have complete control over every aspect of the universe. His plan once he's achieved this? To kill half of all things, thus eliminating poverty, misery, and famine, for the remaining living beings will have plenty of resources. After that, he'll simply retire to a nice planet and watch the sun rise in the mornings.
We've seen many of the infinity stones in Marvel movies before--the Mind stone, for instance, is embedded in the Vision and gives him life. The Time stone is part of Dr. Strange's Eye of Agamotto, a magical artifact. And so forth. Much of the movie concerns the Avengers and their attempt to keep Thanos from acquiring the stones.
And to stop him, they need help--a lot of help! In fact, nearly every hero introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe makes an appearance, including the Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther, and many others. And did all these heroes succeed in stopping Thanos? Um, no, actually. But they'll get another chance next summer in Avengers: Infinity War, Part Two.
This was a fun movie, and I admire the way it managed to give nearly every Marvel character something meaningful to do. After a while, though, it was all too much. I mean, it didn't feel quite as disjointed as one might think, considering all the characters--but it was still pretty disjointed. I think we'll rank this one as only Okay.
I have previously ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, the X-Men movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Spider-Man movies, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Logan, the Man-Thing, Thor: Ragnarok, and Wonder Woman.
As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent Blue=pretty good Black=Okay Red=avoid
_______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:
Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Logan (2017)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV
Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)
Thanos is a titan, a sort of celestial being whose daughters, the good Gamora and the evil Nebula, have played big parts in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. He's trying to collect the six Infinity Stones, jewels of immense power that embody certain fundamental aspects of the universe--power, reality, time, space, mind, and soul. Once he finds them all and inserts them in his glove, the Infinity Gauntlet, he'll have complete control over every aspect of the universe. His plan once he's achieved this? To kill half of all things, thus eliminating poverty, misery, and famine, for the remaining living beings will have plenty of resources. After that, he'll simply retire to a nice planet and watch the sun rise in the mornings.
We've seen many of the infinity stones in Marvel movies before--the Mind stone, for instance, is embedded in the Vision and gives him life. The Time stone is part of Dr. Strange's Eye of Agamotto, a magical artifact. And so forth. Much of the movie concerns the Avengers and their attempt to keep Thanos from acquiring the stones.
And to stop him, they need help--a lot of help! In fact, nearly every hero introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe makes an appearance, including the Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther, and many others. And did all these heroes succeed in stopping Thanos? Um, no, actually. But they'll get another chance next summer in Avengers: Infinity War, Part Two.
This was a fun movie, and I admire the way it managed to give nearly every Marvel character something meaningful to do. After a while, though, it was all too much. I mean, it didn't feel quite as disjointed as one might think, considering all the characters--but it was still pretty disjointed. I think we'll rank this one as only Okay.
I have previously ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, the X-Men movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Spider-Man movies, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Logan, the Man-Thing, Thor: Ragnarok, and Wonder Woman.
As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent Blue=pretty good Black=Okay Red=avoid
_______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:
Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Logan (2017)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV
Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)
Saturday, July 21, 2018
What I'm Reading: Full of Beans
Beans lives in Key West, Florida, during the Depression, where every kid and adult seems to have a nickname. In fact, that's about all they have, because the Depression has hit Key West hard, and there are no jobs or money available. The cigar-rolling factories have laid off most of their workers, including Beans's dad, who's gone up north in search of work. So when local rum runner Johnny Cakes offers 11-year-old Beans a dollar to help deliver illicit liquor around the neighborhood, Beans takes him up on it. After all, he's not really hurting anybody, is he?
But then Johnny Cakes offers Beans some real money, if he's willing to do something Beans thinks is really wrong. And now Beans has a decision to make, because his dad hasn't found a job up north yet, and there's a new baby in the house, and his family could really use some cash.
That's the premise behind Jennifer Holm's Full of Beans, a great book with lots of local color. Holm definitely did her research, because there are tons of fascinating details about life in Key West in the 1930s--everything from the leper colony living on the island to the Shirley Temple movies playing at the local cinema, and of course, the visiting New Deal representatives from Washington, who are trying to clean Key West up and make it into a tourist destination despite the impoverishment (and highly skeptical attitudes) of the local population.
I hope I didn't make Beans's situation sound too grim, because this book is pretty hilarious throughout. From his gang, the Keepsies (so-called because they're the best marble players in Key West, and they play for keeps), to the crazy people who live in the neighborhood, to the addled ways the New Deal representatives try to improve the community, there are plenty of funny characters and situations. It's aimed at late elementary school students and perhaps middle schoolers, but I think this book has enough humor and historical detail to interest all kinds of readers.
But then Johnny Cakes offers Beans some real money, if he's willing to do something Beans thinks is really wrong. And now Beans has a decision to make, because his dad hasn't found a job up north yet, and there's a new baby in the house, and his family could really use some cash.
That's the premise behind Jennifer Holm's Full of Beans, a great book with lots of local color. Holm definitely did her research, because there are tons of fascinating details about life in Key West in the 1930s--everything from the leper colony living on the island to the Shirley Temple movies playing at the local cinema, and of course, the visiting New Deal representatives from Washington, who are trying to clean Key West up and make it into a tourist destination despite the impoverishment (and highly skeptical attitudes) of the local population.
I hope I didn't make Beans's situation sound too grim, because this book is pretty hilarious throughout. From his gang, the Keepsies (so-called because they're the best marble players in Key West, and they play for keeps), to the crazy people who live in the neighborhood, to the addled ways the New Deal representatives try to improve the community, there are plenty of funny characters and situations. It's aimed at late elementary school students and perhaps middle schoolers, but I think this book has enough humor and historical detail to interest all kinds of readers.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Ranking: Logan
I'm falling behind on ranking my comic book movies! I have two I haven't gotten to, and I haven't even seen Ant-Man & the Wasp yet. So let's start with the oldest one, Logan, which my son and I watched on DVD last weekend.
You know Logan, right? The real name of Wolverine, the gruff, unshaven guy with claws, unbreakable bones, and an ability to heal from wounds almost instantaneously? In this movie, the year is 2029, and mutants like Logan have been hunted down (perhaps as a result of the events in X-Men: Days of Future Past?) and are either dead or living in hiding. Logan lives in El Paso where he keeps a low profile, driving a rental limo for money. When he has time and spare cash, he visits Professor X, the telepath and former leader of the X-Men, now a doddering old man who suffers from epileptic fits that make his psychic powers go out of control. Professor X lives in an abandoned factory out in the desert with his caretaker Caliban, an albino mutant who can't go out in the sunlight.
A Mexican lady and her 8-year-old daughter, Lara, have somehow tracked Logan down and asked him for help, but he doesn't have time or inclination to help random people, even though the sight of the girl somehow makes him uneasy. It turns out they're being hunted by the Reavers, a pack of humans enhanced with robotic body parts, who want to capture the girl and bring her in. When they figure out Logan is connected, they raid Professor X's place, and Logan must fight. It turns out the girl has claws and a healing factor, too, as well as an attitude almost as bad as Logan's, and together they manage to escape in the limo, with Professor X in the backseat.
Now the girl and Professor X want Logan to drive them to a refuge for mutants in Canada. Logan doesn't believe the place really exists, but he doesn't have anything left for him in El Paso, and he does feel a strange connection to this young girl with powers so similar to his, so they set off on a road trip. What is the girl's story? And can they make it to the alleged refuge before the Reavers catch up to them?
This was a pretty good movie, but not for kids. With plenty of bad language and really bloody violence, it earns its R rating. For those who know Wolverine in the comics, think less John Byrne and more Frank Miller. So I can't exactly recommend it for kids, but for teens and adults, it's highly entertaining, well-scripted and well-acted. In my ranking system, it comes out as pretty good.
I have previously ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, the X-Men movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Spider-Man movies, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the Man-Thing, Thor: Ragnarok, and Wonder Woman.
As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent Blue=pretty good Black=Okay Red=avoid
_______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:
Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Logan (2017)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV
Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)
You know Logan, right? The real name of Wolverine, the gruff, unshaven guy with claws, unbreakable bones, and an ability to heal from wounds almost instantaneously? In this movie, the year is 2029, and mutants like Logan have been hunted down (perhaps as a result of the events in X-Men: Days of Future Past?) and are either dead or living in hiding. Logan lives in El Paso where he keeps a low profile, driving a rental limo for money. When he has time and spare cash, he visits Professor X, the telepath and former leader of the X-Men, now a doddering old man who suffers from epileptic fits that make his psychic powers go out of control. Professor X lives in an abandoned factory out in the desert with his caretaker Caliban, an albino mutant who can't go out in the sunlight.
A Mexican lady and her 8-year-old daughter, Lara, have somehow tracked Logan down and asked him for help, but he doesn't have time or inclination to help random people, even though the sight of the girl somehow makes him uneasy. It turns out they're being hunted by the Reavers, a pack of humans enhanced with robotic body parts, who want to capture the girl and bring her in. When they figure out Logan is connected, they raid Professor X's place, and Logan must fight. It turns out the girl has claws and a healing factor, too, as well as an attitude almost as bad as Logan's, and together they manage to escape in the limo, with Professor X in the backseat.
Now the girl and Professor X want Logan to drive them to a refuge for mutants in Canada. Logan doesn't believe the place really exists, but he doesn't have anything left for him in El Paso, and he does feel a strange connection to this young girl with powers so similar to his, so they set off on a road trip. What is the girl's story? And can they make it to the alleged refuge before the Reavers catch up to them?
This was a pretty good movie, but not for kids. With plenty of bad language and really bloody violence, it earns its R rating. For those who know Wolverine in the comics, think less John Byrne and more Frank Miller. So I can't exactly recommend it for kids, but for teens and adults, it's highly entertaining, well-scripted and well-acted. In my ranking system, it comes out as pretty good.
I have previously ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, the X-Men movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Spider-Man movies, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the Man-Thing, Thor: Ragnarok, and Wonder Woman.
As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent Blue=pretty good Black=Okay Red=avoid
_______________________________________________________________________________
Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:
Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Logan (2017)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV
Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)
Sunday, July 15, 2018
What I'm Reading: Conversations of Socrates
After his execution in 400 BC, lots of Socrates' friends and students wrote accounts of him, but the writings of only two of those authors survive today: Plato, with more than 20 dialogues "starring" his old teacher, and Xenophon, with four accounts (although Xenophon also has other surviving, but non-Socratic, works). (I've previously written on some of Plato's works here, here, and here.)
Xenophon's four accounts are collected in the book Conversations of Socrates. The first is the Defense of Socrates, which is the briefest one and consists of Xenophon defending the arrogant tone Socrates took at his trial. As Xenophon explains it, Socrates believed the gods had already ordained he should die following the trial, and moreover believed the best time for a man to die was at the very beginning of old age, as he was, when he has all the accomplishments of his life to look back on, but the infirmities of age have not yet occurred. So in Socrates' mind, there was no reason to mount a standard legal defense begging the jury for his life, but felt free to make a vigorous justification of his life and actions, no matter what impression on the jury his words might make.
His second account is the Memoirs, and is the largest part of the book. The Memoirs consists of four parts, each with about eight to ten chapters, each chapter containing a little anecdote about the life of Socrates or a conversation he had. Most of these anecdotes or conversations have something of a moral or instructive purpose--Socrates explaining how to be a good friend, or telling a young man how to become a good orator, or similar. I think my favorite is his conversation with his son, Lamprocles, who I suppose is ten or eleven, and has gotten in an argument with his mother. Rather than yelling at or chiding his son, Socrates leads him through one of his little questioning dialogues (i.e., the Socratic method), using his son's own answers to help him reach the conclusion that he should be respectful of his mother.
The third account is the Dinner-Party, about a boozy get-together Socrates took part in with a number of friends on a holiday where they discuss the meaning of love. This is similar enough to Plato's Symposium that they clearly describe the same evening, yet Xenophon's recounting includes a somewhat different cast of characters and the content of the conversations are fairly different as well. Moreover, though Xenophon claims to have been present (I believe Plato merely claims to have heard about the dinner second-hand), the cast of characters is such that he would have to have been a small child, and it seems unlikely the adults would have let him stay in the room for their drinking and sometimes bawdy conversation. But it's fairly entertaining, and at a couple points we get the rare spectacle of his friends making fun of Socrates for his questioning method of conversing--replying "Certainly" in unison to a string of his questions even when that answer doesn't make sense.
The final account is the Estate-Manager, which is in two parts: in the first, Critobulus discusses with his friend Socrates his plan to buy a farm and how he should run it, and in the second, Socrates recounts the time he spoke to Ischomachus, a wealthy man, about the best way to run a farm. The topic may sound a little dry, but it is actually fascinating for it tells the reader a lot about how Greeks lived their day to day lives. Especially interesting is that Ischomachus considers having a good wife to be the most important aspect of managing an estate, and explains how he and his wife divide up their duties in the house and decide, for instance, where to store excess grain or how to reward a slave who does a good job.
The translator of the book, Robin Waterfield, brings up a question that I would like to discuss a bit. He points out that Xenophon's Socrates is somewhat different than Plato's Socrates--less purely philosophical, more concerned with giving good advice to his friends than in considering abstract concepts, perhaps earthier in his vocabulary. He suggests three explanations for this. The first, and the one that a lot of critics have gone with, is that Xenophon is somehow "wrong" in his description of Socrates, and Plato is "right," and thus we can pretty much dismiss Xenophon.
The second explanation, and the one I prefer, is that Socrates was a sophisticated speaker who talked with different people in different ways. To a young, educated aristocrat like Plato, he would talk about the nature of reality or the definition of justice or similar things. To a veteran soldier and landowner like Xenophon, he would discuss more practical matters like managing a farm or running for office, and using a more down-to-earth conversational style. It's not like Plato and Xenophon describe a vastly different man--they clearly are both writing about the same person, who could adjust his style and subject-matter for his audience.
The final explanation is that these are works of fiction though using an actual historical figure, so if Plato writes him one way, and Xenophon another, it has nothing to do with the real person because they're just stories. Note how in the Dinner-Party Xenophon claimed to have been present though that would have been highly implausible, or that both Xenophon and Plato describe the same party but none of the details reconcile. Or note how in Plato's later writings, especially the Republic, Socrates makes smooth, elaborate, chapter-long arguments in speech that seem rather unlikely to have actually occurred. Waterfield also points that Aristotle, who knew Plato personally, classifies the various Socratic dialogues as fiction in his catalog of literature. I must admit, I rather dislike this final explanation. There may have been details that Xenophon and Plato adjusted to make for a better story, but I find it hard to believe that most of what they wrote about Socrates wasn't true in some sense. Even if the words that reach us aren't precisely the way he really spoke them, I do think that in the works of Xenophon and Plato, Socrates is speaking to us across the ages.
Xenophon's four accounts are collected in the book Conversations of Socrates. The first is the Defense of Socrates, which is the briefest one and consists of Xenophon defending the arrogant tone Socrates took at his trial. As Xenophon explains it, Socrates believed the gods had already ordained he should die following the trial, and moreover believed the best time for a man to die was at the very beginning of old age, as he was, when he has all the accomplishments of his life to look back on, but the infirmities of age have not yet occurred. So in Socrates' mind, there was no reason to mount a standard legal defense begging the jury for his life, but felt free to make a vigorous justification of his life and actions, no matter what impression on the jury his words might make.
His second account is the Memoirs, and is the largest part of the book. The Memoirs consists of four parts, each with about eight to ten chapters, each chapter containing a little anecdote about the life of Socrates or a conversation he had. Most of these anecdotes or conversations have something of a moral or instructive purpose--Socrates explaining how to be a good friend, or telling a young man how to become a good orator, or similar. I think my favorite is his conversation with his son, Lamprocles, who I suppose is ten or eleven, and has gotten in an argument with his mother. Rather than yelling at or chiding his son, Socrates leads him through one of his little questioning dialogues (i.e., the Socratic method), using his son's own answers to help him reach the conclusion that he should be respectful of his mother.
The third account is the Dinner-Party, about a boozy get-together Socrates took part in with a number of friends on a holiday where they discuss the meaning of love. This is similar enough to Plato's Symposium that they clearly describe the same evening, yet Xenophon's recounting includes a somewhat different cast of characters and the content of the conversations are fairly different as well. Moreover, though Xenophon claims to have been present (I believe Plato merely claims to have heard about the dinner second-hand), the cast of characters is such that he would have to have been a small child, and it seems unlikely the adults would have let him stay in the room for their drinking and sometimes bawdy conversation. But it's fairly entertaining, and at a couple points we get the rare spectacle of his friends making fun of Socrates for his questioning method of conversing--replying "Certainly" in unison to a string of his questions even when that answer doesn't make sense.
The final account is the Estate-Manager, which is in two parts: in the first, Critobulus discusses with his friend Socrates his plan to buy a farm and how he should run it, and in the second, Socrates recounts the time he spoke to Ischomachus, a wealthy man, about the best way to run a farm. The topic may sound a little dry, but it is actually fascinating for it tells the reader a lot about how Greeks lived their day to day lives. Especially interesting is that Ischomachus considers having a good wife to be the most important aspect of managing an estate, and explains how he and his wife divide up their duties in the house and decide, for instance, where to store excess grain or how to reward a slave who does a good job.
The translator of the book, Robin Waterfield, brings up a question that I would like to discuss a bit. He points out that Xenophon's Socrates is somewhat different than Plato's Socrates--less purely philosophical, more concerned with giving good advice to his friends than in considering abstract concepts, perhaps earthier in his vocabulary. He suggests three explanations for this. The first, and the one that a lot of critics have gone with, is that Xenophon is somehow "wrong" in his description of Socrates, and Plato is "right," and thus we can pretty much dismiss Xenophon.
The second explanation, and the one I prefer, is that Socrates was a sophisticated speaker who talked with different people in different ways. To a young, educated aristocrat like Plato, he would talk about the nature of reality or the definition of justice or similar things. To a veteran soldier and landowner like Xenophon, he would discuss more practical matters like managing a farm or running for office, and using a more down-to-earth conversational style. It's not like Plato and Xenophon describe a vastly different man--they clearly are both writing about the same person, who could adjust his style and subject-matter for his audience.
The final explanation is that these are works of fiction though using an actual historical figure, so if Plato writes him one way, and Xenophon another, it has nothing to do with the real person because they're just stories. Note how in the Dinner-Party Xenophon claimed to have been present though that would have been highly implausible, or that both Xenophon and Plato describe the same party but none of the details reconcile. Or note how in Plato's later writings, especially the Republic, Socrates makes smooth, elaborate, chapter-long arguments in speech that seem rather unlikely to have actually occurred. Waterfield also points that Aristotle, who knew Plato personally, classifies the various Socratic dialogues as fiction in his catalog of literature. I must admit, I rather dislike this final explanation. There may have been details that Xenophon and Plato adjusted to make for a better story, but I find it hard to believe that most of what they wrote about Socrates wasn't true in some sense. Even if the words that reach us aren't precisely the way he really spoke them, I do think that in the works of Xenophon and Plato, Socrates is speaking to us across the ages.
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