The Power and the Money

Animascope: or, what my father did after the wars and before the other wars

 My father, Leon Maurer, was a serial entrepreneur. One his cooler companies made this:

What is so cool about it, besides it being a cartoon featuring the Senate Appropriations Committee, manpower problems in the armed forces, overtired officers, and a coolly professional female space pilot confronting sexism with grace and aplomb? Well, three things. First, it was made in 1962. Second, it was made by my father. Third, it was made by Animascope (aka Colormation or rotoscopic animation) an automated process by which live actors could be used as templates for animation. Yessir, that’s exactly the process used in most CGI flicks today.

They used it to make Yellow Submarine and a cartoon version of The Lord of the Rings. I’m not sure why it faded after that. But I’m here to say that Animascope was my pop’s invention, and give him a loud shout-out, close enough to his 86th birthday for government work. Mazeltov, papito!

Tarantino, decoded

 Courtesy of my good friend Helena Lellis, this is one of the most brilliant things I have seen in a long while. Highly entertaining, and almost enough to fill the vasty gap left in my life now that the World Cup is over. Give the two Brazilian guys who came up with it a major movie contract right now.

This plus the Yankees beating Tampa 5-4 on the day the Bleacher Creatures hold off on making the roll call in honor of the death of George Steinbrenner makes for a pretty good weekend. Not last weekend, no, but not bad.

As for the death of the Steinbrenner, see here. It makes being a fan easier. I predict more Yankees dominance in the coming decade. Not that it would be hard to outdo the last one.

Aliens attack Montevideo!

  I always said that if you were piloting a spaceship to Earth and had to choose a place to settle, you'd pick the River Plate.  Fertile soil, easily extractable oil, great climate, nearby resources when you'll need them.  So it makes sense that's where the giant alien robots would invade!

Man, I hope Sam Raimi makes that movie.  Won't the Argentines be annoyed that the aliens didn't go for Buenos Aires first!

Hat tip:  Will Baird.  It sent me right into a coughing fit that still hasn't abated, so maybe I should be annoyed.

Red Dawn

  It is coming.

 
It is gonna be great.  Even if it's terrible, it's gonna be great.

 
They are here to help.  Between this and 2012, I'm all set.  Eat your heart out, William Baird!

This movie looks really bad

  Well, I guess I'm not really all that much of a lefty, all things considered.  This movie looks really really bad.  Although what Raúl Castro says in the below clip is true.

Caray.  I am not sure that Stone is doing Lula or Lugo any favors with this film.  And I find it sort of amusing that he lumps President Fernández in as a Venezuelan ally.  Very ironic portrayal, considering her government's reaction to Venezuela's nationalization of Argentine-owned assets. 

Revolutionary comrades-in-arms they are not.

Where none of my friends has gone before

  Somebody has to say it.  Star Trek just isn't all that good.

Oh, it gets off to a fine start.  (Although why did they dig that big ditch in the middle of Iowa?)  And it is, as always, awesome to watch stuff blow up.  After all, I'm the guy who really enjoyed Transformers.  I wanted to like this movie.  And I did.  But not as much as I expected to.  Why?  Three reasons, really.  In order of importance:

(1)  Product placements.  Actually, no, that didn't bother me.  That was a plus.  The first one, though, was super boring.  The second, a bit more clever.  “Classic,” indeed.

Restart.  Why?  Two reasons, really.  In order of importance:

(1)  Except for the uniforms (sort of) they missed a lot of chances to riff on the old sets and props.  Modernize them, of course, so they don't look stupid.  You'd want better materials and maybe have the screens be screens instead of flashing lights.  But they changed everything.  Hell, they even altered the ship's exterior.  Still, that's penny ante stuff.  The real problem is that ...

(2)  ... it made no sense.  I don't mean the physics and all; you don't expect that to make any sense.  I mean everything else.  Including ... SPOILER ALERT ...

Dog Day Afternoon blogging

   So I’m at home, cleaning the apartment, missing my wife, thinking about working, and idly watching Dog Day Afternoon on the teevee. 

And about five minutes ago there’s that scene where the cops set up shop outside the bank and the police helicopter waves off a news chopper, and I’m getting this sense of déjà vu.  Like, didn’t the actual robbery happen in Midwood or Gravesend or one of those two-family home places?  Y’know, like, that street is not in that part of Brooklyn.  Actually, it looks familiar.  Don’t recognize the stores, but isn’t that Bishop Ford?  And that's the Prospect Expressway, no?  Dude!  That sign says 17th Street!  That’s Ninth Avenue!  They filmed Dog Day Afternoon in Windsor Terrace!!

Pretty cool.

And that scene where his wife hears what’s happening over a transistor radio in a McDonald’s?  That was Queens.  Black-on-white street signs, instead of white-on-black, or black-on-yellow, the way God intended.  (Don’t talk to me about this white-on-green thing.)  The things you can get nostalgic about.

“He’s one of them Spanish kids.”  I love that line.

UPDATE:  This movie could have been made yesterday.  I don’t mean in a zeitgeisty sort of way, not at all.  And I don’t mean the clothes or cars, of course.  But these little things, a discussion of cigarettes and cancer, a newscaster mentioning “the gay community,” Al Pacino’s body language.  It seems more modern than 1972.   

The Wild East

  The history of the Chinese northeast settlement frontier, like that of the American southwest, is long and complicated.  This movie seems to be neither.  But I really really want to see it.

What? Already???

  This is not a political post.

As some of you know, I like zombie movies.  One of my favorite genres.  Don't ask me to explain it.  Dawn of the Dead got into my head when I was a kid, scared me to death, and I suppose I never got it out. 

I also have no problem with remakes.  Some, like Cape Fear, beat cold the original. 

But a remake of a movie that only came out last year?  What??  And a Spanish movie at that.  It doesn't even qualify as a foreign-language film.

So go rent Rec.  Don't see Quarantine. 

That's filmmaking.

Clever fake movie trailers

I really liked 28 Days Later, dumb as the concept was.  (I give all horror/thriller/sci-fi movies one silly Macguffin.  I give action flicks several.)  I seriously hated 28 Weeks Later.  The latter fell into not one but two traps of the bad horror movies:  not only one but several characters suffered sudden attack of the stupids, and not only one but umpty-scrump random events had to go wrong for the horror to unfold correctly.  That kind of killed the last half for me:  the aerial shots of fuel-air explosives devastating London didn't make up for it.

So I really didn't care that Danny Boyle had dropped hints that he was going to make 28 Months Later and set it in Russia.  Until the following utterly-unofficial fake trailer came to my attention:

Yes, it's silly, but I like this kind of silliness.  And, who knows?  Maybe it will be set in Russia, and maybe Boyle will get the Russia setting right.  The chances of me seeing 28 Months Later just jumped from zero to something, well, greater than zero.