Cinematic Titanic

Sorry for being gone for so long, friends. I’ve been busy… I mean, lazy.

Before I get into the main thrust of this post, I’d like to briefly mention the film The Spirit. Not long ago, I wrote about how I thought the movie was going to suck, and I’d like to point out that I stated that before there were any advance reviews of the film.

Well, The Spirit is out now, and I recently dragged one of my friends along to go watch it with me. My reasoning was that if the film was going to be bad, I didn’t want to suffer through it alone.
I wrote an in-depth review of the film elsewhere on the internet, so if you’re curious about my thoughts, click [here].

Now… where was I? Oh yeah! I was going to tell you about going to see Cinematic Titanic live in Chicago.

For those who still need a refresher on it, Cinematic Titanic is the latest pet project of Joel Hodgson, creator and former host of the show, Mystery Science Theater 3000. CT (as it will be called from here on out) is basically MST3K except without the forced plots and commercial breaks. Oh, and you get to see the whole film. (MST3K would sometimes edit movies to fit in the time allotted.)

Now that we’re all up to speed, I went to the live performance with a few friends (and a friend of a friend). I had heard that for live performances, the cast of CT would perform films that hadn’t come to DVD. On a whim, I checked out if the film we were going to see was listed on their website, and it was. After seeing its title, we were all a ‘twitter. The title of the craptacular film we were going to see was called… drum roll please… Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks. Allow me to repeat that so you can soak it in….

FRANKENSTEIN’S CASTLE OF FREAKS.

That title just reeks of awfulness, doesn’t it?
Despite the adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can certainly judge this film by its title because it was terrible. It had one of the most incomprehensible plots I have ever seen, and I’ve watched Manos: The Hands of Fate and The Star Wars Holiday Special.

The plot and its details are sketchy at best, so the only thing that I can say for certain about the film was that it centered around Count Frankenstein’s (yes, I said, “Count”) eponymous “castle of freaks” and the experiments he conducts there. Early in the film, Franky’s niece shows up for no reason*, along with her financé and her beguiling and busty best friend who just happens to get naked a lot. Oh, and a hunchback and a shrewish, heavy-set scullery maid slap each other around and have rough sex. Also, a dwarf befriends a caveman. And this film takes place in nineteenth century Romania.

-coughs-

Seriously, this film is all kinds of messed up. Then again, what would you expect from an English language Italian film made in the 1970s?

The general feeling of the whole night was really loose. The performers had their scripts perched on music stands while they sat off to the sides of the stage. In center stage, an enormous screen was pulled down for the film to project on to. It was like a roundtable Q&A session, except they were facing away from us.

The CT cast was really excited, and you could tell they enjoyed being there. There was a great sense of comedic spirit and comraderie amongst them — when someone’s joke went over well, the other members would applaud them or give them a thumb’s up. At one point, Frank Conniff actually turned around and thanked us for laughing at his joke because he didn’t think anyone would get it.

As expected, the whole evening was great. The CT crew had a film that was perfect to make fun of, and they did an awesome job of ripping it a new one. I had an absolute blast.
But then I went and humiliated myself at the meet-and-greet after the show.

My favorite cast member from MST3K was Trace Beaulieu, the actor behind Crow T. Robot and Dr. Clayton Forrester. Since he is a member of CT, he was there that night, and he stuck around to sign autographs and speak to the fans. I got all excited at the chance to speak with him…. Unfortunately, I made such an ass out of myself that I didn’t actually get to “talk” to him.
Here’s a general synopsis on how the interaction went….

(I approach him, giggling like a school girl near her crush.)
TRACE: “Well, look at you! You’re downright giddy!”
ME: Pthbth frrvnt thbpt shmnk thhfnerrrr….
(He signs my copy of Cinematic Titanic: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians)
TRACE: “I hope you liked the show!”
ME: “Shmengy thmem nrptk ngtkomlrkr.”
TRACE: “Thanks for coming down!”
(I’m then pushed down the line to meet the rest of the cast.)
ME: “I LIKED YOUR SHOW!”

Luckily, I wasn’t such an ass-hat around the rest of the cast. And I must say, Joel couldn’t have been nicer. He was really outgoing and happy to be there — shaking hands, smiling and taking photos with fans. You just got a good vibe off of him.
Frank Conniff, on the other hand, was sick as hell. He mentioned before the show that he got a cold coming into Chicago, but it didn’t seem to hinder his performance. Afterwards, it was really apparent that he was under the weather, and considering how crappy our weather has been, that’s saying something.

It was a great night. I wish I could watch their riffing of the movie all over again.

…Hey, wait a minute….

============

*That’s not entirely true. When the gang arrives at Frankenstein’s castle, they mention that the niece and her financé came “for their wedding.” Since this “wedding” never takes place and is only spoken of in a single line of dialog with no mention of it again throughout the whole film, I’m chalking their visit up to “no reason.”

A Review From A Glance: “The Spirit”

Based solely on the trailers and my knowledge of promotional materials for the movie, I can honestly say that I think The Spirit will suck. Probably a lot.

But first, some backstory….

The Spirit is a comic that started in the early 40s by legend Will Eisner. (Eisner is such a legend in the world of comics that awards for excellence in comic books are named after him.) In the first story of The Spirit, private detective and criminologist Denny Colt gets accidentally covered by a mysterious liquid in a scuffle with the nefarious Doctor Cobra. When the police arrive, Colt is seen motionless on the ground, thought by all to have been killed. Awhile later, Colt wakes up in Wildwood Cemetery and realizes that the whole city thinks that he is dead. Without an identity, Colt creates a role for himself as The Spirit, a vigilante who works outside of the law and uses the bounty he collects from catching crooks to fund his do-gooding exploits.

The comic itself was versatile to say the least; mystery, noir crime drama, sci-fi, romance and humor all combined together to create the many stories of The Spirit. Given the fact that there are over 60 years of storylines for The Spirit, it would take someone with finesse in story crafting, an ear for excellent dialog and a working knowledge of combining disparate elements into a cohesive narrative to be able to write and direct a successful movie based on the comic.

Unfortunately, the producers thought that man was Frank Miller.

Don’t get me wrong; Frank Miller has done some good work… just not recently.
Sure, he has created two of the most important Batman tales written with Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, he almost single-handedly turned Daredevil from a lame comic on the verge of cancellation to a staple character in Marvel’s roster, and he expertly brought the 80s extremeness for comic ultra-violence into the 40s and 50s world of noir crime fiction by creating the entertaining (although, admittedly, not for everyone) Sin City.

In recent years, however, Miller has created work that has done nothing but shown that he has gone absolutely, positively, completely, bat-shit crazy. While he used to strive for pathos and dark thematic elements in his comics, he has now gone into creating campy, self-aware, style-over-substance, violent-for-violence-sake works. Worst of all, his dialog goes for 30s and 40s-style melodrama, but it lacks sophistication and subtext, making it ring hollow, yet overwrought and… well, campy.
I hate to keep going back to the word, but “campy” is probably the best word I can use to describe anything that Miller has done in recent years.

Perhaps I’m just being hard on the man. He has done greatness before. Who is to say he can’t do it again? Besides, my complaints are about the recent comics he has written. This is a movie — it’s a different medium entirely. Maybe he can make something that exceeds expectation. Let’s watch the trailer to see if my complaints are without merit….

Um…. No, it looks like my complaints were spot on.

My inner geek also feels compelled to address certain issues that only I and other comic geeks care about, like that The Spirit wore all blue (not black) except for a red tie and a white dress shirt. Now, I know that blue might look terrible on film, but if you go for a deep indigo like the new EU police uniforms, I can’t see how it would look bad or out of place. The Spirit wearing blue is iconic.

Also, The Octopus (played by Samuel “Motherfucking Snakes” Jackson) was never seen in the comics. Never. The only times he was seen was in a disguise, so you never saw what he actually looked like. Outside of his disguises, he was always obscured by the shadows with only his gloved hands being visible.
He was the classic unseen villain, one step ahead of the hero. He was a seemingly-omnipresent, evil, criminal mastermind with henchmen doing his bidding. Seeing his face takes away his mysterious, omniscient-like quality and makes him seem less frightening as a villain. It’s like finally seeing Dr. Claw’s stupid face and being completely let down by it.
If your villain has an air of mystery about them, sometimes it’s best to keep it.

(Samuel L. Jackson’s scenery-chewing performance doesn’t help, either.)

I have many more things to say (re-hashing Sin City’s look to the point that people think it’s a sequel, making Denny Colt a cop instead of a for-hire private detective, etc.), and I know it appears like I’m nit-picking, but if they can’t get a few small things right, who is to say they’ll do the big things well?

Besides, nit-picking is what fans are supposed to do. We’re supposed to vocalize what we don’t like about the things we obsess over to keep filmmakers in line. They’re (sometimes blindly) making these movies to turn a profit by keeping us happy and in the theater seats and/or buying their DVDs. By speaking out, we’re letting them know how they’re screwing up so they don’t repeat mistakes and therefore, lose money. In a way, I’m helping the film industry… sort of. Not really.

Well, I talked A LOT about a movie that hasn’t even been out yet. Just know that should you go to the theater and the film stinks, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And if it’s good, I’ll be shocked… and proven wrong… for once.

Burn After Reading Review

In a spoiler-free nutshell, Burn After Reading had the tone of Fargo, but the nihilist, “anti-movie” bent of Big Lebowski. It has people getting killed and losers trying to extort money from others (staples in a Coen Brothers film), but it constantly tries to subvert your expectations and make you realize how unimportant it all is.

In most other reviews that I have written (found elsewhere on the internet), right now would be the point where I’d give a summation of the film’s plot. However, for this film, I’d rather you not know anything about it, since most of the fun comes from watching the whole thing unfurl like the pulled string on a sweater’s seam.

As a friend of mine pointed out, Burn After Reading was basically a satire of the espionage genre, and I think the film plays best if you see it as such. The ominous music during key scenes and the inherent secret government trappings of Washington, D.C. make you think that all of the events are of great importance. A few minutes later, it’s revealed that whatever notion of urgency or gravity you thought a certain story element had was completely meaningless. Case in point: George Clooney’s character’s “secret device” subplot.

Personally, I laughed my ass off at some points, namely the “wrap-up” scenes with J.K. Simmons. But I found the movie funny simply because I could see that the Coen Brothers were intentionally trying to make a movie that screwed over the audience. I mean really do one over on them. If the “non-ending” of No Country for Old Men was a slap in the face, then Burn After Reading’s ending is a full-on blanket party.

Despite my tone regarding what you’ve read here, I really enjoyed the movie. However, I don’t know how it would hold to repeat viewings simply because a lot of the humor and purpose of the movie comes from the surprise of watching the non-events unfold in an inconsequential manner. And then conclude… sort of. It’s complicated.

Fargo is to noir crime drama as Burn After Reading is to government spy thriller.
8.5/10