Robin Williams

July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014

The death of actor Robin Williams was of course quite a shock.

Like pretty much everyone around my age, I grew up with Williams due to his roles in movies like Hook, Aladdin, and Mrs. Doubtfire. But my two favorite performances of his are in movies I didn't see until I was much older.

I had trouble sleeping (insert Insomnia joke here) when I was a teenager. I would just lie in bed, watching the same movie over and over again every night. I'd go through different phases where I'd watch a certain movie every night for around two weeks and then I'd pick a different movie from our very limited collection of DVD's or cassette tapes. For some reason we had a copy of Good Will Hunting on VHS, so that was one I regularly watched on school nights when I couldn't sleep.

I hated English class all throughout high school. I could go on and on about why, but this isn't the place for that. Once in a while though we'd read a good book or watch a good movie. One teacher who I didn't even particularly like showed us a few things I still love to this day, including a movie that affected me profoundly: Dead Poets Society. It always amused me that rather than attempting to inspire his own students, my teacher showed us a movie about another teacher inspiring his.

Summer Classic Film Series 2014

A local theater (or 'theatre' as they spell it... for some reason I can't see it spelled that way without hearing Tobias Funke say it in my head.) has been playing several classic films this summer. My friend and I decided to go see a few. Rear Window, King Kong, and Creature From The Black Lagoon. I had already seen them before, but never on the big screen.

The picture quality of all three films was gorgeous, but the sound could have been better. I think the acoustics in the theater were to blame. There was this reverb with a long decay, like in a cathedral, and it made the whole soundtrack muddy, especially the dialogue and sound effects. And that's a shame, because I love the attention to detail in the sound design of Rear Window. The sounds of all the little things happening at the apartments. By the way, how wonderful is it that the score's mostly made up of the beautiful piano piece L.B. Jefferies' songwriting neighbor is composing throughout the film? I love all of the quirky neighbors too, and the voyeuristic little glimpses we get into their lives.



King Kong and Creature From The Black Lagoon was actually a double feature, and I thought that was a really cool pairing. Both are influential black and white monster movies. Each monster infatuated with a beautiful woman.




Creature From The Black Lagoon is of course a Universal Monster movie, and it's easily one of my favorites of those that I've seen. Its influence on Jaws, one of my favorite movies period, is undeniable. I'm really amazed by how well the gill-man still holds up. Something about the material of the suit, and the way various parts of the head move makes it just seem like a real creature to me instead of an actor in a costume.



I have of course mentioned in a post before that the stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien in King Kong inspired a young Ray Harryhausen. So I was thinking about how, in that way, it was kind of linked to the triple feature I saw at another local theater last year. The only thing that doesn't really hold up in King Kong is the close ups of Kong's face, which were done using a large bust of the ape's head. The stop-motion is still beautiful to me though, and I'm an absolute sucker for stop-motion dinosaurs.



My friend and I gave spare tickets to a woman and her two children. She thanked us multiple times, but if I understood, I guess the kids weren't particularly thrilled to be seeing a black and white movie. They had said they were probably only staying for one movie, which is understandable because they were playing pretty late. About a minute after King Kong ended, and I was back to reality, I remembered them and wondered what they thought of the movie. I turned around to ask, and they were already gone. And so I was left wondering...

Wondering out into the wasteland...

Oh, I'm sorry. I got distracted by how great the Mad Max: Fury Road trailer is.

Adolescent Genetically-Altered Martial Artist Chelonians

At the end of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, the Shredder suit opens up, revealing that Krang was controlling him the whole time.

Spoiler Alert: I'm just kidding.

Ben Affleck as Batman and Superman.

Back in August when Ben Affleck was cast as Bruce Wayne in the upcoming Man Of Steel sequel (Superman vs Batman or Batman vs Superman or whatever it's going to be called), I made a post in which I said this:

                    A CINEMATIC MIND
          I can't wait until they release the first photo of him in the new
          batsuit so that I can put it together with a photo of him wearing the
          Superman suit in the movie Hollywoodland, in which he played George 
          Reeves, the actor who portrayed the titular superhero in the
          television show Adventures of Superman. Of course, now I can't help
          but to imagine a Ben Affleck Batman fighting a Ben Affleck Superman.
          You know you'd pay to watch that.

Well the other day Zack Snyder shared a photo of Affleck in the new batsuit on twitter, so here you go!

Avatar vs Halloween II: Land Of The Lost

I got these cheaply made wallets at a 99 cent store a few years back simply because the images on them amused me. And now I share them with you.



Do you remember that part in Avatar with Will Ferrell and Danny McBride? Me neither. It's probably because they weren't in it. I'll admit that I enjoyed Avatar, but do you think their inclusion would have made the movie better?



Then there's this masterpiece. Interesting font choices here. You may notice what appears to be Michael Myers wielding his kitchen knife in the bottom left corner of the image. So is this a face-off between James Cameron's Avatar and Rob Zombie's probably terrible (I only saw the first one. Malcolm McDowell and Brad Dourif couldn't even make that movie worth watching.) Halloween II? Or is this actually the second Avatar vs Halloween movie? If so, did the first one really do well enough to warrant a sequel?

I'm not really sure what the story is behind these, but Avatar, Halloween II, and Land Of The Lost all came out in 2009, so it's obvious to me that whoever was behind these wallets was trying to take advantage of what they hoped would be successful movies. At least one of them was a financial success. If you're into mashups of movies that no one cares about anymore, you might be able to still find these, but don't expect to actually use them as wallets. The first time I opened one of these to use it, the velcro ripped right out of it. It's pretty sad when your velcro is stronger than your stitching.

Bloody Dreddful

I was recently reading about filmmaker Danny Cannon, and I found something that completely baffled me.

When Cannon was a teenager, he entered a contest in the comic 2000 AD to design a poster for a possible Judge Dredd movie. Inspired by Blade Runner, his poster said it would be directed by Ridley Scott, have Harrison Ford playing Dredd, and have Daryl Hannah playing Anderson. I saw the poster itself, and I found it rather underwhelming. I was expecting to see a drawing or painting of Ford as Dredd. Someone who's good at art needs to make a new version of that poster. I can't because I suck at art. Anyway, I'm way more interested in the concept. It sounds like it would have made an awesome movie. Harrison Ford playing Dredd? I never say this, but... Shut up and take my money!

Now here's where it gets confusing. Cannon went on to direct the 1995 Judge Dredd movie starring Sylvester Stallone. Why didn't he try to make it like a Ridley Scott movie and cast Harrison Ford? How could the guy have that vision and then make that sub-par Stallone movie? I'm so confused. I'm guessing it was studio interference or something.

I was thinking about it, and honestly, that recent Dredd movie with Karl Urban sounds a lot more like Cannon's original concept to me. It's got Anderson, it has a Dredd who is probably about as intense as if Ford had played him, and it definitely has a Blade Runner feel to some extent. Now that I think about it, it seems to me like the people who made 2012's Dredd must have been like "Hey, remember that poster Danny Cannon made for that 2000 AD contest before he made that mediocre Dredd movie? Yeah, the poster was underwhelming, but wasn't the concept cool? Let's make our movie like a modern equivalent of that."

I feel like maybe this post makes me sound like a dick. If for some reason you actually read this, Danny, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be mean. If it wasn't for you, maybe "Dredd Song" by The Cure wouldn't exist, and I like that song. Let's get FroYo sometime.

My Christopher Walken Supercut: He's not dancing.

To cash in on the Christopher Walken Supercut fad, I'm cutting together clips of him playing Russian roulette and clips of him talking to children about hiding uncomfortable hunks of metal up his ass.

Okay, I'm not really doing this.