Superman Returns (2006) spoilers:

"Superman Returns" is less a movie and more a sort of cinema sacrament what with all the religious imagery director Bryan Singer crams into the scenario. The Man of Steel in classic fallen angel style plummets from the sky not once but twice and adopts a crucifixion pose at one critical moment.
Well what of it?
This is a film over fifteen years in the making with dozens of appalling scripts and demented casting ideas on its rapsheet (Nicholas Cage as Superman anyone?)...These worshipful vignettes are a sort of benign pay off to the serious Superman fans who have suffered much anxiety on the road to the Multiplex this weekend.
So let me say this, it is a good film, at times a great film, Brandon Routh is a superlative Superman who can but get better with time, Kate Bosworth is a fine Lois Lane and Kevin Spacey's Luthor is ruthless and evil sans recourse to camp.
The film's real strength though is an internally consistent script, the dirty secret of the 1978 movie is that the screenplay was a horrific mess held together by Chris Reeve, Margot Kidder and director Donner's common desire to stave off the descent into pure Adam Westian farce.
This time some thought has gone into the scenario, the film takes up five years after the events of "Superman II", Kal El has left Earth for mysterious reasons of his own and come back to discover Lois Lane is now a single mom and world has forgotten him.
Public approval being Superman's real source of energy, Big Blue goes to work stopping crimes, saving people and reminding all and sundry of his overall ubiquity & usefulness.
As Superman recovers his street cred, Lex Luthor has quietly heisted some Kryptonian crystals out of Superman's Fortress of Solitude and is conjuring with creating his own pseudo-continents.
Yup you have that right, for some reasons even after twenty eight years, the writers can't come up with a better master plan for the mad scientist than yet another sci fi real estate swindle.
oh well...no film is perfect.

Clark Kent meanwhile is heartbroken to see that Lois is engaged and utterly disdainful of her prior fling with the Last Son of Krypton.
Or is she?
Because lets face it, Lois can no more drop Big Blue than peanut butter can ditch wonder bread...Its fated that the world's most dysfunctional couple will hook up once again just prior to all hell breakin' loose.
***
The flying sequences are amazing in this film, Bryan Singer really got value for that $204M price tag.
The action set pieces move the plot forward at a good clip and support the emotional sub-plot nicely. Singer has called this one "a sort of chick flick" to the extent that Superman is trying to recover his humanity and put his Kryptonian heritage in context...That's the high concept in a nutshell.
Much is being made of Brandon Routh's superficial resemblance to the late Chris Reeve. They look a bit a like, but while Reeve was an actor with a nigh beatific smile (and a face that could cloud over in an instant in wonderfully dark ways, check out Superman III to see this), Routh has these tragic eyes and a good "I-mean-it" squint to back things up.
***
The film's most intriguing issue lies in Jason, Lois Lane's five year old son who adds little to the plot other than to illustrate the notion that the reporter has "moved on" in Superman's absence.
Well, other than the fact that his is Kal El's son from Lois and Superman's brief fling in "Superman II" a point that is a sort of open secret with the aud til the very end.
Given the fact the kid has little to do in the film other than get kidnapped by Luthor one wonders why he is included in the scenario at all?
I suspect Jason exists to prompt a marriage proposal from Clark in the inevitable sequel...Otherwise Superman is a very absent dad and that might be a bit much for today's audience.
After all, Lois & Clark are married in the comics and a wedding does make a good sub-plot for a sequel.

And believe me, there will be a sequel.

Today Marks the 130th Anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn

Custer's storied defeat at the hands of the Lakota Souix out in the Dakotas.
We do love our epics of defeat here in the West, from Thermopylae to Waterloo down thru the Seventh Cavalry's sabres glittering in the sun on the bluffs above the Little Big Horn.
Custer has had strong popularity in multimedia as well...from Thomas Ince's 1912 film "The Death of Custer" down to "Little Big Man".
The weirdest film incarnation of the boy general is still under the tutelage of dependable Hollywood hack Sidney Salkow who directed not one but two "pro Indian" westerns about the Little Big Horn. "Sitting Bull" (1956) with J. Carroll Naish in redface as the mighty medicine man and "The Great Souix Massacre" (1965) featured red haired Darren "Kolchak the Night Stalker" McGavin as the only honest man in Custer's command. Both were about as historically accurate as a Ned Buntline dime novel and both suffered from an excess of naivete' about the position of Native Americans in the modern USA.
But what the hell, they are an attempt to break with past proactice no matter how silly or bumptious they may be.

Error in today's Sunday Globe Arts Pages...

therein it is asserted that Shakespeare & Co NEVER staged "Hamlet" in its long residence in Lenox Ma. That is a clear mis-statement, I myself saw Shakespeare & Co put on "Hamlet" in the Stables Theater back when they were at the Wharton Estate. It was an a stripped down version for the High School circuit, but trust me, S & C did Hamlet fer sherr.

The Seer Zamparelli

Had lunch with Joe Zamparelli (Channel Zero's long suffering artist in residence) on Friday. He airily predicted that the Belmont Stakes would descend so deep into maudlin sentimentality that a live remote would depict the injured thoroughbred Barbaro in his stall at the Equine Hospital "watching" the race on TV.
Sure enough in the interminable lead up to yesterday's race we were treated to a live remote of a portable TV set up in Barbaro's stall so that the mighty horse could "watch the race".

Now if only Joe could get back to me with those damned powerball numbers.

Kathy Griffin's "My Life on the D-List" returns to Bravo this week...

How much d'ye suppose she charges to withold certain celebrity names from her stand up act?
Okay that was harsh speculation and I have no proof of the practice...but when you wallow in raw gossip hush money usually follows as night follows day.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

Am I the only person in the world who thinks Sir Ian McKellen looks like a horse's patoot in that cockamammie helmet he wears as "Magneto"?

With the reliability of an unloved season we have laid at our feet yet another X-sequel which delves into a paranoid US Government's attempts to forcibly "cure" the mutant population, the resurrection of Famke Janssen's Jean Grey character and the usual show down between Magneto's evil mutants and Patrick Stewart's posse of good guys aka "The X-Men".
Got all that?
The film is otherwise a bit of a shuck and jive, James Marsden's performance as the tormented Cyclops amounts to a ten minute cameo, Janssen has about two lines of dialogue in the whole film and as usual Patrick Stewart's "Professor X" vanishes out of the plotline at the forty five minute mark.
Apparently the scriptwriters for X-3 had the same problem as the creative team for the previous films, they inevitably write Stewart out of the action because his character is a omnipotent telepath whose powers ought to be able to thwart any opponents attempts at subterfuge.
In practice this makes Professor X seem to be the most powerful and yet useless superhero in modern cinema history.
This being the case most of the film is carried by the histrionics of Sir Ian McKellen (who chews the scenery like a starving man) along with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry who are starting to look really really bored with all this x-mishaugas.
And why shouldn't they?
The script simply recycles most of the last two film's pay off scenes loaded up with even more leaden dialogue....I mean no wonder Famke Janssen looks so confused and dishearted.
Much as I jab at the X-Men (they aren't my favorite superheroes overhyped and overexposed as far as I'm concerned) it is at the core an uncommonly well-cast franchise...all the actors are talented enough for the particular creative challenge of a big comic book based film.
So it annoys me to no end when the producers, writers & director end up making such a dreary unremarkable film.
But this being a big summer for super heroes the film will no doubt make millions but its a sad creative comedown and shrill bore overall.

Isn't Superman an Illegal Alien?

I mean think about it.
He has no passport, no green card plus his foster parents clearly lied repeatedly and possibly under oath to secure his adoption as a baby.
Am I alone in thinking under the rules being proposed (nay bellowed) by Representative Tancredo and his ilk in congress Kal El is deserving of nothing but deportation back to Krypton's star system?

Now maybe if he admits to any crimes committed on US soil, pays back taxes, is willing to leave the country and re-enter at the back of the line (Behind such other heroic wetbacks as Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman) THEN we can let him back in.
Anyway he has been stealing work for native born heroes for years, I think the House of Representatives should investigate WHY Warner Brothers and DC Comics are CELEBRATING this illegal immigrant as a paragon of virtue.

Poor Barbaro!!!

Broke his leg out of the gate at the Preakness now his life hangs in the balance. That was an awful thing to see last weekend. Currently there seems to be some post operative optimism out there but not much. Barbaro's career as a racer is over hopefully they can save his life for the stud farm.
This situation pains me as I've always regarded horse racing as reasonable family entertainment despite the gambling and chintzy atmosphere. Kids can grasp who wins and who loses easily and the excitement is fairly wholesome.
Well...except when one of the horses comes up injured like that...then the whole thing takes on a sad morbid cast.
I once saw a horse euthanized at Suffolk Downs, its a humane procedure but utterly sobering in every way.

So here is to Barbaro!

I hope & prey he can survive this thing.

Dr. Who (Sci Fi Friday nights 9 pm) just keeps getting better and better

Christopher Eccleston is at the top of his game and Billie Piper in particular seems destined for membership in a very exclusive club of supporting actors who keep stealing the big show.
In the ultra-chic TV Sci Fi Division this would include such luminaries as Jonathan Harris,Jan Merlin (Tom Corbett Space Cadet, look it up kids), Leonard Nimoy, Julie Newmar and Allyson Hannigan.
A merry collection of players indeed.

Preakness Today...

Can't suss out the field as yet, only nine ponies this time as opposed to the twenty horse cavalry charge we saw at the Kentucky Derby.
Predictably, the sports punditariat is hyping Barbaro as the next Secretariat. They do this ALL the time and it always ends the same way, either in tears in Maryland or in defeat at the Belmont Stakes.
Today's horses are faster than the ponies of 1979, faster yes but they lack the stamina to capture the triple crown.
So I'm thinking maybe Barbaro was a fluke aided and abetted by his long layover from his previous race. He has had but two weeks down time since the derby so I'm wondering in my ignorant amateurish way if he can pull off anothe coup?
Brother Derek has a great starting position and all the bona fides, but he ran so damn poorly in Louisville.
No, I might MIGHT go with SweetNorthernSaint....good starting position reasonable odds he might make two plus two equal victory.

The curtain falls...

The first season "Here Come the Brides", a late 1960's bit of western piffle starring David Soul and then teenybopper pop star Bobby Sherman was released on DVD yesterday.
The show itself only lasted two years and is chiefly noted for it's boisterous feel-good themesong and a guest appearance by the late Sifu Bruce Lee.

The great days of film and tv revivalism are drawing to a close my friends. If obscurities like "Here Come the Brides" can land in the "new arrivals" rack at Tower Records then how soon before Ros Serling's "The Loner" or Richard Mulligan in "The Hero" show up?

The dump it all on DVD movement strongly inhibits Channel Zero's ability to revive and screen such rarities and obscurities. I mean, why drop by Movies on a Menu or the Coolidge Corner Screening Room to watch Bruce Lee's sole appearance on "Here Come the Brides" when you can buy the damn series for thirty bucks?
The very definition of obscure and rare is being relentlessly changed by this phenomenon.

This doesn't mean that Channel Zero is going out of business, but what we do, will have to change because the market is changing and the screening zeitgeist is changing.

Floyd Patterson is Dead...

The heaven's shake.

For better or worse, the late champion was a sort of flight-test for the modern heavyweight fighter. He was fast and light like Muhammed Ali but he also built his rep on punching well above his weight.
Neurotic and given to melancholy he had to be the first boxer whose mental state was a major consideration in all pre-fight commentary. The New Yorker's AJ Libeling devoted reams of copy describing Patterson's eccentric training methods (The champ napped, he napped alot!) and personal worries.
For all his mental agony, Floyd's real problem was he had a classic glass jaw. That prototypical slacker Ingmar Johansson found it in 1959 and practically pounded on Patterson like a ten penny nail.
And yet, neuroses and all, Patterson came back a year later to beat on Johansson like he was an old tin bucket.
Patterson had class...when he wasn't worrying himself into a state of the screaming bedspins.
Alas his 1960 comeback is now completely forgotten in the relentless press of his two humiliating losses to Sonny Liston. A lot of people burdened the champ with expectations that he'd stop Sonny's brutal drive for the championship belt, and alas Floyd just couldn't deliver.
He tried a third time to come back but ah... Muhammed Ali was in the other corner, twelve rounds later it was all over for Floyd.
Still and all that, there was nothing low about him, he kept pushing and striving deperate to live up to his potential, a small man in a business that favors big beefcake he hung in there to the last.
He died of cancer and was suffering from Alzheimers as well. New york State found him a sinecure on the Athletic Commission and in more lucid days he could talk up the sweet science with some enthusiasm.
Ali owed a lot to Patterson's mixture of a middleweight's speed and a heavyweight's stopping power...he'd never admit it, but he does.
And the next time we roll our eyes over Mike Tyson's emotional issues, well, jsut remember Floyd brought a lot of his problems into the ring as well.

G' bye Floyd, say hi to Joe Louis and other departed titans for us willya?

If you are in Downtown Crossing on a weekday

and at liberty (as I am these days) then definitely swing by the Brattle Book Shop on West Street. Their daily outdoor booksale (in the adjoining empty lot) is a thing of wonder with top prices on hardcovers reaching an affordable $5. Most tradepaperbacks can be had for $1 to $3 dollars maxiumum. If you were a penurious local undergraduate, then this might be a way to secure some assigned readings at prices below the campus bookstore.
I've been buying disparate volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's History of Civilization here as I have gaps in the collection.
Trust me, you'll buy something in this lot, there is just too much temptation.

Job Search Anecdote

I was all dressed up in the financial district yesterday morning for a job fair up at 28 State Street. I came out of the State Street Orange Line stop and there at the top of the stairs was Sixty State Street in all it's red rock glory standing there just as insolently as it was when I was a mail clerk in a law firm on the nineteenth floor some twenty five years ago.
A wave of nostalgia for my mildly mis-spent youth washed over me and I exclaimed "Good God I'm back here again!"
Well this dapper legal-looking city gent in front of me spun around with an expression of the utmost solicitude he said "Are you lost? Do you need directions?"
I assured him that I was only having a little moment of deja vu he smiled, waved and walked across the street.
Now that I think of it, you just don't always get that kind of immediate engagement and courtesy here in chilly New England, let alone Boston's financial district.
Hope that fella had a good day.

Plaintive Cry...

The Boston Phoenix has its "Best of Boston" out this week. Once again they've bestowed laurels on East Cambridge's own "Video Oasis" as the best video store in Metro Boston.
This is the second time they've singled out Dennis Arruda's store for plaudits, and in truth the praise is well deserved. Dennis has a great store with a great collection of horror, sci fi, adult, and martial arts films.
BUT!
Let the record show that Jon Haber and I discovered this store back when we were writing "Its All True" and gave him our won "Best in Boston" award three years running back when Bob Dole was a headliner.
They are only catching up to where we were back in 1996....

On a Second Viewing of "The Son of Frankenstein"

In some ways, this is the last great film of the original Universal Studios based horror cycle of the 1930's. It was certainly the last horror film with a lavish A-level budget and it shows in the lighting, decor, SPFX and vast sets.
The story is a familiar one, Victor Frankenstein's son returns and revives his father's dormant monster in a bid to prove his father's genius.
In fact young Wolf Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) seems locked in a sort of Freudian death spiral with the unquiet shade of his father, a matter symbolized by the monster and all his lumbering symbolism.
This is a great looking film, Castle Frankenstein is a sumptuous German expressionist feast to the eye including a sulphur pit and what appears to be a walk in fireplace!
Alas the story is all but undone by an over-ripe hammy performance from Rathbone ably assisted by Donnie Dunagan the screechy child actor playing the scientist's toddler offspring.
Ah but the supporting players are a veritable gathering of the Gods!
Boris Karloff in his last performance as the monster mimes perfectly the brute's existential angst, Bela Lugosi gives the performance of his career as the wily hunchbacked peasant Ygor and Lionel Atwill plays it icy straight as the one armed police inspector.
If only the sequels were this good...but alas they declined in quality. Karloff passed the role of the monster on to everyone from Lon Chaney Jr to Glen Strange. Apparently Boris correctly deduced that from here on in, the monster would end up the uninteresting stooge of various other characters.
Lugosi at least seems to be having the time of his life playing the evil peasant and former grave-robber it is a performance that belies the notion that Bela was only good for playing bloodsucking aristocrats.
Currently "The Son of Frankenstein" is available as part of a DVD "Frankenstein Collection" set from Universal. If you have the scratch it is a worthwhile acquisition, there are plenty of extras plus the "Ghost of Frankenstein" (featuring another star turn from Bela Lugosi as Ygor) and the "House of Frankenstein". One can Watch the whole series come apart despite valiant efforts from reoccuring players Lone Chaney Jr., Lionel Atwill and Bela Lugosi.

"Failure to Launch" (2006)

Hey if my old man wants to hire a hooker to get me to move out of the house, he is welcome and even encouraged to do so.
Okay so maybe the movie isn't all that explicit, Sarah Jessica Parker's character DOES primly explains to Matthew McConaughey's exasperated parents that she "never" sleeps with her clients as she beguiles them to move out - For a PRICE!
Hell, any experienced streetwalker will tell you the secret of the business is selling the sizzle not the steak.
What kills me is, McConaughey and Parker do have chemistry together in a complete freakshow that otherwise deftly mixes two taboo subjects, guys who live with their mom's past 20 years of age and prostitutes...
I just have this mental image that the script had to ahve been written for say Jennifer Anniston or Sandra Bullock...they both reached page ten of the script and howled into their cel-phone simultaneously "SHERM, THEY WANT ME TO PLAY A WHORE????!!!"
And so thus that is how Sarah Jessica Parker at the tender age of forty five
got her big break as a romantic comedy ingenue.

If you are up in Amherst New Hampshire

then definitely check out Mori Books 141 Route 101A Amherst NH (603 882-2665 or www.moribooks.com). This is an old fashioned used bookstore with volumes piled up on the floor and bookcases that stretch to the ceiling...tons of everything is in evidence. The children's book collection is especially delicious with a pronounced emphasis on old Stratemeyer Syndicate series like "Dave Dashaway" or "Don Sturdy". They've also got a nice selection of the old "Big little Books" (those seem hard to find, though I'm no collector) and an excellent biography-history section with a nice stack of the old Ballantine Books "Our Violent Century" series.
I myself grabbed off a copy of Leo p. Ribuffo's "The Old Christian Right" which devotes an entire chapter to the life and career of Massachusetts' own Native Son, William Dudley Pelley, screenwriter, fascist and spiritualist extraordinaire!
So believe me, this is a good used books, Richard Mori, the owner has his head on straight.

The Rise and Rise of Captain Schoolgirl...

Cheap and crazy sometimes trumps lavish and maudlin...and then there is the iconic lunacy of “Captain Schoolgirl”?
Where to begin?
The independent comic book or the DVD?
The comic created by one “Fernandito” revolves around a goth girl who is a freshman at a local catholic high school. She does not fit in as is often the case and to confront her own alienation she doodles up an alter-ego the sexy Captain Schoolgirl who prances around in parochial uniform righting wrongs or some damn thing.
The Captain’s comic book depiction is a mite unfocused, she is both upholder of the status quo (a punisher of tardiness) and a great subverter of the catholic high school zeitgeist all at the same time.
There is something to be said for this, parochial schools are the last frontier in the American Teenage Firmament, they are seldom depicted realistically nor parodied with any kind of wit or insight.
The DVD on the other hand is a sort of straightforward satire drawing on such puerile fare as Filmation’s old “Secrets of Isis” Saturday morning show. The comic’s framing device and some of its satiric edge is accordingly dispensed with. The main conceit is that is this a normal episode of a mythical TV show called “Captain Schoolgirl” with clips setting up conflicts from previous shows and a nominal cliffhanger ending.
The tone of the whole enterprise though, is bracingly cheap and feckless, with strong performances from the title lead (alas her name is off the credits) and her sidekick “Dunceboy” (Sean Pridgeon) who reminds me of Jon Heder from Napoleon Dynamite. The story such as it is revolves around a bullying new kid and Captain Schoolgirl’s attempts to ward off the advances of the lecherous Reverend Mooney (Shane Scott both bearded and smooth shaven) and defeat the local Queen Bee Cheerleader (Jules Hartley). Imagine an ABC after school special as executed by William Burroughs and you’ll have the whole show figured out very nicely.
Where the DVD fails though, is in some details, ergo Captain Schoolgirl is the only pupil who wears a uniform, her male classmates for the most part are garbed in trashy street wear. For the record, when I was at a catholic school in North Cambridge it was suit coats and ties every day.
Ahhh...but for a labor of love shot over a few days “Captain Schoolgirl” has class and a sort of charm.
One hopes the production team can find time to produce more episodes before their nominal lead actress takes off for Hollywood, she is that good in my opinion.

Captain Schoolgirl's blog, DVDs & Comics can be found Here and or here.
Well worth the trip IMHO.

So Katie Couric is going to become the Prime Anchorperson on the CBS Evening News?

Ahhhhh....CBS knows that Katie Couric ISN'T really fifteen years old right?
She just acts and is made up to look that way.
Hope someone clued them in...