Chun Li Express

Yesterday I took in "Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li". I confess I had lost track of my Netflix queue. Had I remembered I had it up next, I might have pushed it back. I had picked it because I liked Jean Claude Van Damme's "Street Fighter" a lot. That's a fun movie, and I won't stand for those who impugn it. It's solid, problems though it might have. It's good enough that I was interested in another film inspired by the game, if that's the right word.

I doubt there's much connection to the earlier film. In that, the character of Chun-Li is a TV journalist who seeks revenge on M. Bison after he destroyed her village or some such thing. In this one she seeks revenge on M. Bison, but she's a concert pianist and something of a martial artist (as she was in the other, I admit). Then M. Bison was played by Raul Julia, who bears a certain resemblance to the videogame character. Neal McDonough, who plays the role here, does not. Nor does Taboo of the Blackeyed Peas much seem suited for his role.

Dunzo (Done-zo)

At long last I have finished "Atlas Shrugged". In recent days I had drawn near to it, seeing the end get closer as the chapters melted away. In the stretch run, I always get very enthusiastic about books again. I love them at first and in the end. In the middle there is fatigue and disinterest. The same thing happens with movies. I'm engrossed until I've met the characters and learned of their plight. As they wrestle with it, I grow bored. As resolution looms, I come back.

The second act was rather protracted with this book. It runs over one thousand and sixty pages, which is a lot. The first few chapters had me, and then there is just a lot of middle with this thing. You have the heroic railroad magnate Dagny Taggart and her fellow industrialist friends beset by a lot of stupid, softhearted socialist types. That's basically it. They struggle for the right to do business for profit instead of for some misguided notion of altruism. Oh, and the angular, handsome Dagny hooks up with a bunch of her colleagues (not that I begrudge her that).

Riding High Writing

A few days ago, I was invited to fill in on the writing staff of "Top Story! Weekly:", the show for which I have written jokes and some sketches over the course of the last year. Each time I've gotten to do something more for them, it's been a thrill, and for all of that time what I've wanted is to be a proper member of the writing staff. That hasn't happened yet, but getting to effectively be one for even a week is a good step. I'm only partway through the experience, but so far it's been great.

Last night, there was the pitch session (which began in inauspicious if amusing fashion when the neighbors mistook me for a criminal as I approached the house hosting it and made an alarmed phone call to the host). There were only a few of us there, but fuelled by white grape juice (which, the oenephile host informed us, is made with green grapes), we proceeded and came up with no shortage of fine ideas. It really was a blast, I'll say.

Holding Up

The other day I re-watched "The Living Daylights", Timothy Dalton's first turn as James Bond. Dalton always had a certain spot in my heart as Bond actors went. He was the hardest, most serious of them. He was the one commonly considered the true embodiment of the Bond depicted in Ian Fleming's novels. Sadly he was only in two films before legal trouble put the series on hold for several years. By the time that was over, Dalton's time had come and gone.

In The Living Daylights there is a relatively conventional Bond film. There's a defecting Soviet general, a beautiful blonde sniper, and an unscrupulous arms dealer fomenting treachery in the Russian ranks. Some say it was written with the idea that Roger Moore would take on one more film as 007, which supposedly accounts for humor more suited to him than the taciturn Dalton, but it's also been written that it was written when Pierce Brosnan was the man (before being dismissed on account of his responsibility to "Remington Steele".

About There

As I ease up on watching my VHS tapes, I gear up on watching movies via other media. That still has left me with enough time to mount a new push towards finishing "Atlas Shrugged". I have really hit the stretch run, at long last. I suspect it will be no more than a day or two so long as I keep my resolve. I am quite eager to move on to something new. In fact, I have ordered up a trio of books that I expect to be light and enjoyable, so I do hope I finish the task at hand as promptly as I expect.

The real hump that I have gotten over is the infamously long speech given by one of the book's central characters near the end. There's no need to get really in depth on the content or the context of the speech in order to impress on you the severity of it. It takes most of a 70-some page chapter, and there are no breaks. There are absolutely no breaks in this speech. There is not one moment where the person stops speaking for any reason. It's all a straight monologue.

I Get It

The charm of Tyler Perry's Madea movies has worked its magic on me. This journey goes back to when I was in college, and "Diary Of A Mad Black Woman" was in a local theater. It was one of those movies that doesn't have a proper sign to go next to the showtimes outside the auditorium. It sure drew a crowd in Chicago, though. I was blindsided by its popularity, and I wasn't the only one, but people who knew made a pile of money, I'm sure.

Years later- maybe a year or two ago - I saw "Madea Goes To Jail - and it is a quintessential example. These movies are like Bollywood movies in a way. Bollywood movies, I have discerned, are sort of like vaudeville or an old time movie experience. They give you a little of everything: comedy, action, drama, singing, dancing- whatever anyone could want out of a movie, a Bollywood movie has it. A Madea movie has only a little bit less.

Slashed

Something I did - on the same night that I watched "Zapped" - was to finally watch the second and third entries in the "Sleepaway Camp" series of slasher films. I had really enjoyed the original, which was rather different from the typical sort of fare that I have seen so much of. It lacked certain inhibitors that movies like Friday the 13th had. Those Jason movies, and others like them, are really incredibly conservative and staid when you compare them.

Sleepaway Camp was something else. They made it the year I was born, and it feels like it. The sequels were made when I was about kindergarten aged, and they're a little less dated, but not by much. Something that's novel is that whereas the original featured an unseen killer (as is often the case), the sequels have the killer be very much out in the open. They don't even do the thing where we know who the killer is and the rest of the characters only see them when they are getting killed. It's just a bunch of people, and one of them keeps killing people.

Ugh

I reeled off a string of movies in the last few days, all on online streaming. I think I need to gain some distance from my tapes at the moment. First I watched "The Octagon", but giving my impressions of that one would probably not be terribly worthwhile, as similar as it is to a lot of Chuck Norris' movies. Instead, I think it would be interesting to get into the next movie I watched, which was "Zapped!" This is an interesting and problematic movie.

Scott Baio plays a nerd who apparently serves as some kind of scientific research and development department for his high school. Making him not look like a good looking guy is tough, but they try. They also try and make him not have an easy time with women. His buddy is even worse: a super-handsome, super-rich kid who just happens to be a little younger than the guy going out with his dream girl. That one's a real tough sell.

Good Guys Aren't Jolie

I have lately trended away from watching my VHS tapes a little bit. Having just 29 remaining, a number of which are unwatchable due to playback problems (and having no plans to buy more until the rest- a lot of which are earmarked for movie night or are very long and not really exciting to me- are watched), I guess I don't feel a lot of urgency at the moment. They can be dispatched on a more leisurely schedule for a little while.

In the meantime, I've been watching stuff online (and I know that's a kind of a betrayal for me). Yesterday evening, I started off with intentions of watching "Tomb Raider". I can only say that after twenty or so minutes of watching Angelina Jolie mostly lounge around a palatial estate, I had enough, and that's when I turned to someone who may be a much worse actor but who I knew I could rely upon to deliver something watchable: Chuck Norris.

Kauf Kauf

I saw something a couple days ago that was really something. My backlog of VHS tapes that I have yet to watch is contracting, compelling me to watch tapes that I have to this point passed up in favor of others. One that I have finally dispatched was a gift from a friend, but I hadn't watched it because it was rather short. I don't know if that makes sense, but there it is. It's "Tank You Veddy Much", a video biography of Andy Kaufman.

The production value of the tape appeared low, but I didn't take that to mean that the thing wasn't good. After watching it, I can say at least that I loved it. The reason was not that it disproved any notions based on what the tape's quality was, but that it proved those notions in very strange ways. To begin with, the biography's visuals consist largely of photographs that have nothing to do with the things being discussed by the narration.

Our Own Games

I'm a fair sports fan. There's one thing I don't get, and that's the constant efforts to take sports popular in one place and extend them to others. Take the generations-long campaign to make soccer take root in the US. They're probably closer than ever to actually achieving that, but I don't think they'll ever get as far as they'd like, and I don't know why they should try. Of course I know the reason is money, and since I don't get any, I can't connect to that. I guess it boils down to eventually being content with how much money you have.

Who wants to talk about money, though? I'd rather talk about letting everybody just have their own sports. It's fine by me that most of the world prefers soccer. They can have that, and we can have our sports. Just as  some enterprising individuals try to push soccer on us, others try to push our sports on them. I've read of a variety of American games being exported. There was a baseball league in Israel. Naturally Jewish Americans were into it, but the rest not as much.

Worthy Of A Shot

Today's movie (and am I finally settling on a single subject in having to say that?) is the Bruce Willis flop "Hudson Hawk". Willis plays the titular character, a skilled cat burglar who has recently emerged from a lengthy prison sentence with hopes of living an honest life. He talks of getting a job, though he apparently owns half of an upscale bar. Unfortunately, that's not to be, as a confusing mix of nefarious individuals and organizations puts him up to stealing a series of Leonardo Da Vinci creations.

This is one of those movies that people have made out to be a terrible film on an epic scale as far back as I can remember. A fellow film school student made a short about a Hudson Hawk Fans Anonymous group, because this was one of those "guilty pleasures" if it was a pleasure at all. I don't believe in guilty pleasures, so I'll just say that I actually liked this movie. God knows it doesn't make a ton of sense, but that's not everything for a movie.

The Best

I concluded recently that one of the strongest Bong films is the non-canonical "Never Say Never Again". It is not the best of all the Bond films, I suppose (although which one is I'm not sure I can say). It is still better than most of them, I'm sure I can say that much. I imagine this is an uncommon position to take, and I don't really want to be someone who holds minority opinions on everything, as I don't really find deliberately contrary people so pleasant.

I can't help myself, though. Never Say Never Again stands above a number of the EON-produced Bond films. One reason for that, I believe, is the freedom they seem to have felt to break with a lot of the traditional Bond film stuff. There's a familiar title song, but not a familiar title sequence. Bond carries out a mission over the credits, rather than a dancing girls sequence like we'd seen so many times. Effectively the cold open and the titles are combined.

Honoring The Past

When I was a boy, I liked the movies as much as anyone, though I didn't get to see as many as I would have liked. I got to see some, not that a lot of those stick out in my mind from the very early stages in my life. One that I do remember is the fantasy film "Willow". What I remember better than seeing it was just it being in the theaters. I remember promotions run through the cereals I ate. I remember the sticker books concerning it (and a sticker book, I should say, is a book you'd buy which I believe roughly laid out the story of the movie, and you filled it out with stickers that you bought in random packs. You had to keep buying the packs until you had all the right ones).

I do also remember the movie a touch from then, but watching it the other night certainly helped refresh my memory, and I have to say that Willow is nothing more so than a fun combination of the story of Moses and "The Fellowship Of The Ring". A prophecy is told that a baby will grow up and overthrow a queen. The queen orders the pregnant women jailed and the baby destroyed. The prophesied baby is secreted onto a raft sent down the river, where it's found by Willow, a very hobbit-like creature called an "Elwyn". He must restore the baby into the possession of its own people.

Little Ones

One of the things I've been doing to more rapidly work down my pile of unwatched VHS tapes is to make a point on some occasions of watching the shorter ones. Long movies (exceeding two hours by a wide margin) tend to linger on the pile for obvious reasons, but so have short ones, oddly enough. Perhaps I have seen them as not a real achievement, but a half-hour or hour-long take takes up one spot in my inventory just like the rest, and I can knock off several of them in the space of one feature-length movie.

Yesterday I watched several short tapes. One- "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" - I found to my chagrin I had already marked as watched, which I suppose is true in that I had watched it in my youth. I did not recall it well, and so I should not have done so. It's a good one anyway, feature some enjoyable animation and a legitimately compelling as well as dramatic story. Rikki Tikki is a mongoose living on the grounds of a British family's bungalow in colonial India. He befriends the family (and most of the animals), then battles a series of snakes that menace them. It's very good, and Orson Welles' presence is a plus.

Hitting The Gymkata

On goes the drumbeat of "How Did This Get Made"-motivated movie viewings. The latest is a movie I've wanted to watch for years, and which I finally got to yesterday. It's the cult favorite "Gymkata", and whatever I expected, it was not exactly what I got. Somehow I pictured a silly kind of a combination of Rambo and Rocky- a Reagan-infused gymnastics-centric Bond Film. Let me tell you, there's a lot of weird stuff in this movie that those loglines don't begin to capture.

Kurt Thomas plays Jonathan Cabot, a star gymnast who is recruited to go to the backwards Eastern European nation of Parmistan and compete in a brutal game called "The Game". His father has evidently died in the same game, which has incidentally not been won (at least by an outsider) in nearly a millenium. That's what you call long odds. Still, Cabot trains (falling in love with his head trainer, a princess of Parmistan) and heads to Parmistan.

Bled

Yesterday evening I watched a number of tapes, most of them short in length. I had an episode of "Gilligan's Island" left to watch, a tape containing two episodes of the 80's "Ewoks" cartoon (about which I could write a post, and perhaps might), an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (about which there is no need to write) and finished out things with a viewing of the 1998 film "Blade" (which I had not yet seen). That's worth writing about.

It's a reasonably enjoyable movie. Blade is an exceptionally taciturn vampire hunter, to the point that I repeatedly and openly pleaded for a smile or some sign that the character felt anything ever. The vampires, by comparison, enjoyed a noticeable zest for life that made them easy to root for by comparison. Indeed, all the bad guys seemed to feel joy and none of the good guys did. Is that not the very opposite of what you would expect?

Jingling

Yesterday I finally got to watching an old classic, "Jingle All The Way". It will always be tied in my mind to a long-running "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" bit. Conan had numerous celebrities imitated in appearances "live via satellite" using the old "Clutch Cargo" technique of superimposing a mouth over a still picture. Bill Clinton was frequently lampooned in this bit, and so was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was always plugging "the holiday classic Jingle All The Way".

Well, I really wanted (as has often been the case lately) to watch it so I could listen to the "How Did This Get Made" episode, so now I've seen it. It's a pretty crazy movie. Arnold plays a harried, workaholic dad who neglects his son. In a grand gesture, he vows to get the son a popular action figure (this in the waning days of kids wanting something that was not a video game). The toy is hard to come by, and Arnold is vying with Sinbad to boot.

Shell Out The Money

The same night I watched "The Believers", which I described yesterday, I also watched a couple others. One of them was "Everyone Loves Mel", or as it has been alternately titled, simply "Mel". This is another of those cheap "family movies" that I accrue somewhat unintentionally. They are enjoyable enough at times. I find them a good palate cleanser after more extreme genre movies. The dramatic conflict is light, the characters are amiable, and they do well as a final film of the night.

I slept well enough after this one. Two brothers are struggling a bit for lack of really vigorous parental supervision. The father (Greg Evigan) is evidently a very busy lawyer, and the mother (Julie Hagerty) is a realtor or something. Deciding that it's easier to punt on their kids than their jobs, they send them off to live with her father (Ernest Borgnine). Borgnine is an irascible taskmaster who has apparently been running a farm all by himself in his 80s. He harbors a secret. Namely, he is a friend to the nearby lake's infamous monster, who is a large (if not monstrously so) turtle alternately known as Swannie and Mel. Naturally, a local developer (Jack Scalia) is after the land and has a longtime grudge with Mel.

A Good One

A couple nights ago I watched a few movies, and I stumbled upon a half-way decent one in the bunch. I had some notion that it might be all right because it had Martin Sheen and Jimmy Smits. Smits never has been in a lot of big movies so far as I know- he's known for "LA Law", "NYPD Blue" and "The West Wing"- but he's a fairly reasonable performer who there's every reason to believe could do a decent job in a movie. Sheen of course has been in some classics (and, of course, also starred on The West Wing).

This film was called "The Believers". I figured it was some horror conspiracy movie, and that's about what it amounts to. Sheen plays a therapist working for the police, which is handy since he mostly acts like a cop anyway. He stumbles upon a Santeria-based cult that is comprised mainly of wealthy New Yorkers. They practice human sacrifice to get a head in life, and apparently that works. This is probably not sounding great so far.

"Shame, Shame, Know Your Name"

Yesterday I wrote about "The Invisible Kid". The same evening I watched that, I also watched "Rumpelstiltskin". This, I should say, was a low-budget effort by the Golan-Globus producing team to make a series of fairy tale movies for Cannon, a cheap movie company. I love most movies they make, many of which star an elderly Charles Bronson. This one didn't, but it's still not bad. That is to say, it's watchably terrible.

In the title role, they have Billy Barty, which isn't the worst move you could make. He's fair in the role, although Warwick Davis probably would have been better. Relating the story is probably not necessary. If you really don't know how the story of Rumpelstiltskin plays out, you'd just better look it up and then come back here. I'll say this much for the movie: it tells the story fairly accurately as far as I can recall. It's been a while for me.

Don't See It

One of the latest movies I've watched from my VHS collection, as the unwatched portion of which continues to deplete, is 1988's "The Invisible Kid". To say I had high hopes for it is a slight exaggeration, but I did think there would be some enjoyment to be had. The box cover was promising, and the trailer was as well. That's often when there is trouble ahead. Many of the worst movies I have are supported by great trailers and box covers.

The Invisible Kid largely follows the same plot as "Teen Wolf", which I only recently saw. In that film, a high school loser becomes a werewolf and enjoys new popularity as he leads the basketball team to success. In this one, a high school nerd (who takes off his glasses and instantly stops being a nerd) stumbles upon a formula that turns you invisible. With it, he gets a girlfriend and uncovers a point shaving scheme conducted by the principal and star player. It's pretty terrible.

Final Bite

I finally completed not "Atlas Shrugged", as I'd like to be saying, but the "Jaws" film series. The object of this was to edifying myself on the content of the aforementioned films so that I could properly enjoy the "How Did This Get Made?" episode. Well, that worked out just like I hoped, but let me have my own say on the final entry, "Jaws: The Revenge". It is not a very good movie, but it is also not an unwatchable one.

The film begins by effectively undoing the events of the previous film. Rather than being an engineer, the elder Brody son is instead a marine biologist. Instead of doing whatever it was he was doing in Colorado, the younger son is a deputy for the Amity police, following in his father's foosteps. Both are involved with different women from the ones in the earlier film. Sure, people change jobs and significant others, but they don't tend to omit any comment when it is relevant to do so, as it would be in this case.

Why Not?

I was thinking about something kind of strange yesterday. I had recently watched a couple of Roger Moore's James Bond movies, and I was struck again by the relationship he has with M's secretary, Miss Moneypenny. Her job in the office consisted of three things, seemingly. First she'd say how Bond had better go in to see M right away, or that M was in some kind of mood. Last she'd caution Bond to be careful. In between was her unrequited longing for Bond.

In the universe of these films, every woman wants Bond, regardless of how old and decrepit he is (and Moore particularly was not looking great by the 80's. With most women, Bond gives them what the want. The cost is that they die somehow at the hands of people who just want to kill Bond, but Bond does give them what they want. With Moneypenny though, he never does. For whatever reason, she's the one woman he refuses.Why is that? Isn't she good-looking enough for him? I guess she's too close to his own age or something.

Long Haul

I am drawing nearer to finishing "Atlas Shrugged". As I write this, I have perhaps two or three hundred pages to go out of what I believe to be over a thousand. I have read books that long or nearly so before, but this is probably the most difficult read I have yet embarked upon (not counting ones which I began and gave up on in more youthful days). I will be terribly delighted when I can put this thing behind me, as much as I have enjoyed it.

By all rights, I should have been done with it long ago, and not just because I could have been more consistently applying myself. I'm not going to make some excuse out of having other things to do or of my interest level waxing and waning. Those are things that happen to everybody, and if they've happened more this time, it's just because there's been more elapsed time during which they could happen. It's a long book, that's all.

Not To Be

I was a little upset with myself a couple days ago. As I write this, I kind of still am. What happened is that I had found myself a little stressed out, and as I happened to be in Hollywood, I did what has become habit in such conditions. I went to Amoeba Records and started shopping. I found a Warren Zevon album that I really wanted ("Stand In The Fire", a great live album he did that I could listen to non-stop), and then just a pile of VHS tapes that I loved.

It occurred to me though, that I should think of being frugal. I ultimately concluded that I shouldn't make any purchases just now, and I reluctantly put everything back and left. This was a very hard thing to do. I wanted to have those things so badly, and I knew that was likely to be the case when I walked in there. I have tried not to allow myself to even walk inside, knowing that it's easier to pass on something undefined that I know is probably in there.

The Boring Innards

Something that I fight against is isolating myself. It's very easy for me to spend the majority of my time holed up at home, remote even from my roommates (though schedules have something to do with that). The increasingly warm weather of late spring and summer compels me at least to leave my bedroom door open, allowing some interaction between them and myself to happen at least incidentally. I suppose that's a blessing of a kind.

A fair amount of socializing and exposure to society happens accidentally for me. The other day, I found a 90 minute public transit trip necessary. I went and forgot to bring my book or my headphones, leaving me few avenues to shield myself against the world and the people inhabiting it. I did, I should say, have my phone, and I spend much of the time composing jokes. The rest of the time was devoted to ensuring I made it to my destination.

I didn't honestly end up speaking to anyone in that time outside of the driver of a bus. I like to think that counts for something. I sure didn't have to say anything, and he didn't have to reply, but we both conducted a voluntary social interaction, and that felt nice. I also managed to talk to a grocery store cashier (since I can't buy alcohol via the automatic teller thing), and while this is another pitiful victory, it's still something. I have no shame in counting it.

This is all that came of being open to to socializing with people this occasion, but I've achieved more in the past. I had a whole conversation with a guy waiting for the bus not so long ago, and other stuff like that could easily happen in the future. After all, don't I do very well with people I know well, and in performance situations? Having the capacity to socialize in those ways means I'm capable, so I just have got to keep making the effort.

Arnold Endures

In making up for my egregious oversight of Saturday, here is my second post Sunday. Now, the same day I watched "Jaws 3", a plan developed to see a movie at the cheap theater. Two movie options were floated initially, with one of them being "Need For Speed". I was not interested in what I understood to be a terrible movie. I do watch plenty of those, but this one looked to not be very watchable. It also featured a prominent actor from "Breaking Bad", which I was not interesting in discussing.

The other movie,which I pushed hard for, was "Sabotage". It's Arnold Schwarzenegger's most recent post-gubernatorial film, and that is what we ended up seeing. It was a rare victory for my point of view over anyone else's.To briefly relate the plot, Arnold is the leader of an allegedly elite DEA team. They decide to steal a cartel's money during a raid, and the movie unfolds in the aftermath of that plan's failure. It's a kind of ridiculous story.

Jawed

This post comes a day late, as my once-vaunted record for delivering a post a day is no longer what it was. It's getting harder. When I started in 2009, there was relatively little going on for me, and so it was easy then to devote endless amounts of time to things like blog posts and Toastmasters speeches. Then I could give one every few weeks and lavish lots of prep time on it. Now I do one speech every few months, and invariably with little more than hours of time spent readying it.

Who wants to hear about that, though? Let me tell you about a movie I've seen. As I think I've said, I've been working at making better use of my Netflix account. Instead of just the instant view, I've been making an effort to get the discs back in a timely fashion. That's been easier with the added motivation of "How Did This Get Made?". Watching the movies they cover in their episodes has been enjoyable, and I've just knocked off another one.

Double Shot Of Movies Hot

Last night there was my latest big "VHS Vault" movie watching night. I enjoy those an awful lot, as people are inclined to enjoy presiding over something they like in the company of their friends. I like being able to share things with people, but at the same time to experience them for the first time just as they do. That's how I do it. I go out and find the movies, but then I see the ones I earmark for movie nights only on the appointed date. I feel that's important.

Last night I picked two movies that aren't exactly like many that I grant this honor to. I have a fair number of TV movies and straight to video movies of relatively recent vintage in my collection, but I prefer older movies (falling in or near the 1980s) that received a theatrical release generally for movie nights. These two both (I think) violate those conditions, but I went with them because they seemed like the two best options that I could pair together at the time.

Deep Stuff

Yesterday was a pretty good day for me. The good news included an audition that did not go incredibly badly and the prospect of friends coming over to watch some movies (and it always pleases me to have my film-watching proclivities connect me to people instead of removing me from them). There was also the bad news of a neighbor accusing us of fraudulently signing for her medicine being turned into good news when she learned the error of her ways.

I was, therefore, in good spirits while on my way to the mail box out by the post office in order to return a DVD to Netflix that I'd received and watched that very day. I decided to do something that I occasionally do: snap my fingers until they blister. I think I may have written about this before, but maybe some fresh insight will sneak in there. Yes, I deliberately imposed very inconveniently-located blisters on myself, and you may well wonder why.