Brains and stuff

Sometimes I do think I have a real problem - for example I recently sent back to Netflix White Heat with Jimmy Cagney and Sunset Boulevard with William Holden – fair enough that’s what you do with films once you’re done.

Except that I had not watched Sunset boulevard and realized I had no wish to watch Sunset Boulevard - because I have only limited time to play my guitar, muse on song lyrics finish reading Havana Nocturne – a history of Mob controlled Cuba – which explains a lot about US Cuba relations and none of it good (I mean when Castro taking over is an improvement things are pretty bad) also do research on pod casting – make dinner from time to time, exercise and keep the apartment from looking like the result of an explosion in a library/DVD CD Store/Laundromat.

No I had no interest in watching Sunset Boulevard.

Because I wanted to watch Fiend without a face again.

Let me type that again.

I wanted to watch Fiend Without a Face Again.

The film was made in 1958 and features well - fiends without a face – It’s a British film set in Canada where an American Air force base is experimenting with Atomic Powered Radar. Major something or other is in charge of security/intelligence/civilian relations which at the start of the film are none to too good as the jets are scaring the local cows and the milk yield is down. They are also mutterings about the atomic power plant that is powering the radar. There is also a female lead whose brother is the first victim of said fiend without a face. She and Major Something or other end up a couple – of course they do it’s the 50’s.

Anyway the story is silly – and for the first half of the film the fiends (there are more than one) are invisible – now there are two ways to do invisibility – on is the careful and well done way of say the original Invisible Man, the other is do it because it’s cheap and saves money – which is how they did it here.

As said for the first half the victims are killed by the invisible fiends – which consist of the actors doing a kind of weird pantomime by grabbing their neck and screaming and then falling to the floor.

Anyway that’s not why I want to see it again. What happens – after a long exposition by some scientist type who uses the atomic power plant to zap his mind to do some kind of telepathy which somehow created the fiends – is that creatures become visible – they are brains with antenna and a spinal column that they use to move about with. It’s done in stop motion in case you’re wondering and explains why the beasts were invisible the first half or more – stop motion isn’t cheap.

So then the brains are all over the woods surrounding the house our heroes who board up the house and fight the brains. Each brain, when it’s shot, makes a noise that sounds something like glug glug glug and then leaks what looks like Jam from the hole with a small steam like whoosh. It’s great fun to we get to see it a lot. I swear the last 10 minutes of the film goes Bang bang glug glug glug whoosh over and over again – with the odd scream when one of the spear carriers goes down.

In the end, the hero blows up the Atomic Power plant that the brains are using for energy and instead of a Canadian Chernobyl we have the end of the film with all still alive well still alive and looking forward to a new day.

And this is the film I want to see again – mainly for the glug glug glug bit – instead of watching a film Noir masterpiece.

I need help.

Peace Love glug glug glug

Desolation Row and the Green Hornet

Saw – with the enemy below and insect girl the director’s cut of Watchmen – it doesn’t really make it into a different film it just adds a few bits from the comic that were left out for the sake of theater running time and it deepened the experience – The death of Hollis the first Night Owl is the highlight of the added footage in my opinion.

As the credits rolled we all agreed that the peace that Vitez gave to the world would never last – after time passed and Doctor Manhattan didn’t attack again the countries of the world would get back to squabbling again and the peace would collapse – albeit slowly bit by bit.

There is an incident in The Maltese Falcon that comes to mind – Sam Spade and Bridget O’Shaughnessy are waiting on Joel Cairo so to pass the time, Spade tells a story – he was hired by a woman to find a husband who had been missing for some years – I forget the context now – and after a bit of digging he finds him in another town married to another woman. The man is not unreasonable but isn’t prepared to go back. He tells Spade that he was walking home one day when a steel girder fell off a construction site and landed in front of him. Had it hit it would have killed him. He tells Spade that he realized he’d just seen life with the lid off and he promptly left town – but after while, when girders stopped falling out of the sky he drifted back into old patters – he was living in the same kind of house with the same kind of job and his new wife looked more like his old one than not – Spade (and I presume Hammett) liked that aspect of the story best.

We humans are like that – we don’t have traumas tossed at us on a weekly or monthly basis we go back to doing things the way we did before the trauma. Ground Zero is now a hole in the ground with some history behind it and the developer is being sued because there are now buildings in it.

I’m going to try and not comment on the whole health care thing – people are doing it much better than I am and well watching Sara Palin or Newt Gingrich like their god damned faces off is not the way I want to spend my time. I’ll leave that for people who have stronger stomachs.

Anyway back to the Watchmen - the Enemy Below noted that the two most amoral characters The Comedian and Rorschach were unable to go along with Vitez’s plan – I wouldn’t call Rorsach Amoral his code was back and white like his mask – the Comedian well he found an internal line he would not cross.

My own feeling is a bit more of you can not found a just and lasting peace upon a great crime and a lie- and murder will out.

And one other thing – when you fire a revolver you empty the sucker.

Random Neural Firings

Seth Rogan is going to be – if the IMDB is correct – stating shooting his Green Hornet film at the end of this month. The film and the property have gone through a tortured development process – at one time George Clooney was interested but that was years ago and now we have Seth Rogan who alas has the charisma of toast and really looks over his head in the picture of him at comic con – this film looks like it’s going to make Daredevil seem like a very well done and nuanced movie. I suspect we’re looking at suckage at a level of Bloodryne or the Lonely Lady.

It’s kind of shame – I like the Green Hornet and would like to see the character in a good film but that’s about as likely as a sequel to the Spirit movie that bombed last year.

At least nobody’s doing Hawkman. Antman yes I read, but Hawkman no. (Guilty pleasure).

I haven’t been doing much blogging because well I’ve been feeling down – I do wonder if maybe it’s actually the other way.

Keep listening to My Chemical Romance’s the Black Parade – and their version of Desolation Row – I’m not sure if it says anything good about me especially my maturity level but I’ve never worried much about that.

Peace Love Shonen Knife.