Tagged: Ric Meyers

Turok: Son of Stanley Kramer, by Ric Meyers

Turok: Son of Stanley Kramer, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • February 10, 2008

 

Unarguably, one of the things DVD has way over VHS is its compression. Far more discs fit in any given space than cassettes – allowing producers to create compact yet extensive homages to filmmakers or genres. A welcome addition to this group arrives this week in the form of the Stanley Kramer Film Collection. We’ll now take a moment for average film-goers to say “who?” and film-lovers to go “ahhhhh!”
 
For the a.f.g.’s amongst you, Kramer was a true maverick-altruist among those about whom the great comedian Fred Allen once said: “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.” Kramer’s filmography was chock-ablock with socially-conscious challenges which were as ground-breaking as they were entertaining. As producer and/or director, he constantly strove to do both the right and best thing, including breaking the iron rule of the blacklist and rampant racism.
 
Amongst his classics not in this six-DVD set are The Defiant Ones, Death of a Salesman, High Noon, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Caine Mutiny, and (arguably) It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. This collection, however, features some of his rarer (The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T), most influential (The Wild One), heartfelt (The Member of the Wedding, and ambitious [Ship of Fools)] efforts — culminating with the 40th Anniversary release of his last great masterpiece Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. 
 
The latter film has a special edition disc of its own, featuring deserved kow-tows from Steven Spielberg, Quincy Jones, Tom Brokaw, Alec Baldwin, and many others. It also has a two-part “making of:” one for the daring interracial romantic comedy-drama itself, and one just on its final pairing of Katherine Hepburn and the dying Spencer Tracy (when the cast and crew recount his final day on the set, delivering the film’s final speech just a fortnight before he passed away, I’ll defy you not to be as misty-eyed as they are).

 

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ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb 3, 2008

ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb 3, 2008

  • News
  • February 3, 2008

Snackies at hand?  Ready to cheer on the best ads in between the quarters?  Me, I’m psyched to see me some Tom Petty at halftime.  Before they take the field for Superbowl XLIIayeaye!!one!, why not warm up with this past week’s ComicMix columns?:

I love how the titles of those first three columns kind of go together… sex, hate, death (warmed over)… Anyway, Giants in, erm, four, just to be weird…

Across the Midnight Express Universe, by Ric Meyers

Across the Midnight Express Universe, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • February 3, 2008
 
This week I watched two DVDs that considered the same turbulent period, but from two wildly divergent vantage points. 
 
First, the divider. Reviewers were almost totally at odds over Across the Universe, director Julie Taymor’s “homage” to The Beatles. Homage is in quotation marks because half the critics thought its liberties and excesses were trumped by its imagination, while the other half thought it was simply, cringingly, awful. 
 
I doubt the 2-Disc Deluxe Edition that’s showing up next Tuesday will do anything to dispel the opposites. It’s obvious that Taymor – best known as the director of Broadway’s The Lion King — was aiming for the same sort of cinematic success as The Who’s Tommy or Pink Floyd’s The Wall, but the nay-sayers pushed it toward 1978’s campy bomb, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band starring the Bee Gees. 
 
The talented Taymor dodged that bullet, but couldn’t Matrix them all. The Beatles are a creative touchstone, all right, but not always for the best. Just as it’s more difficult to adapt a great book to film (The Kite Runner, Love in the Time of Cholera, etc.) than it is a pulpy one (Jaws, Psycho, The Godfather), it’s also extremely problematic to create a new musical from iconic music. And there’s hardly anything more iconic than The Beatles. The new, obviously far less talented, interpreters will always come out the short end.
 
To her credit, Taymor doesn’t try to overwhelm the music with vocal gymnastics (save for one exception) or distract audiences with stunt casting (save for the welcome inclusion of Bono and Joe Cocker in the supporting cast). But, apparently she can’t resist hurling buckets of creative energy all over the Frankenstein-stitched, wedged-in soundtrack. There are two kinds of directors: those who say “I” and those who say “you”: you’ll feel this, you’ll think this. Guess which one Taymor is.
 

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Good For What Ails You

Good For What Ails You

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

There’s something in the air, and unfortunately your author has caught it.  But it’s well worth rising from one’s sickbed to bring you the weekly roundup of ComicMix columnists!  Isn’t it?:

Apologies for not adding in Andrew Wheeler’s "Manga Friday" columns before now, but he’s only started numbering them himself.  And by the way, the best thing about being sick?  Erm, well, nothing, actually…

Life of Groundhog, by Ric Meyers

Life of Groundhog, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

 

Oh, it’s been a good week. Two of my (diametrically-opposed) favorite comedies are coming out on remastered special edition DVDs this coming Tuesday (one which was embraced by all religions while the other was roundly condemned by all religions) and I could hardly be happier. The operative word here is “hardly,” because, for while both DVD editions are good, one, in particular, could have been great.
 
But this is sour grapes on my part. I love Groundhog Day, and appreciate the skills of its star, Bill Murray, so much that I shouldn’t begrudge his disinterest in participating with the 15th Anniversary release’s special features – but yet, I still do. I shouldn’t be so petty, too, because of Bill’s absence, the true value of director/co-scripter Harold Ramis comes into sharp focus.
 
I’m a big fan of Ramis as well, ever since I saw him as harried station manager Moe Green on the original import of the milestone Canadian comedy series SCTV. I can never forget his delivery as the evil boss in the show’s satire of The Grapes of Wrath, The Grapes of Mud; “You think this land is urine … but it’s all our land, not just urine” (you had to be there, I guess).
 
Ramis left SCTV early, which I also begrudged, come to think of it. But all was forgiven when he started helming, or being intimately creatively involved with, such comedy mainstays as Animal House, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, As Good As It Gets, and Analyze This. Groundhog Day could be his masterpiece, however, given that it’s a romantic comedy fantasy classic.
 
Columbia Pictures, minus Murray’s input, could only muster a single, pretty poorly photoshopped, disc, but Ramis is all over the extras. There’s a commentary with him, which I lapped up with my admiring head nestled on my hands. There’s also a video talking head grandly titled “A Different Day: An Interview with Harold Ramis,” which I watched appreciatively with my chin on my fist. Then there’s the making-of doc called “The Weight of Time” (borrowing a phrase by story creator and co-scripter Danny Rubin), which I watched with the back of my head resting on my sofa top. 
 

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What happens at ComicMix…

What happens at ComicMix…

  • News
  • January 20, 2008

Wow, new ComicMix contributors Shira Gregory and Rick Marshall have really done a yeoman’s (yeo-people’s?) job filling in our news section, haven’t they?  Even I can’t keep up!  In fact, they’ve posted so fast and furiously that many of our regular columnists have fallen off the "More News" window, so it’s a good thing I do a recap every week:

And I hear a rumor that things are getting steamy over in our comics section.  Have I missed any male pulchritude?  Some of this stuff isn’t safe even for those of us not currently at work!

Hooray For Ray Harryhausen, by Ric Meyers

Hooray For Ray Harryhausen, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 20, 2008

What a relief! Fellow audio-blogging ComicMixer Mike Raub put it in perspective for me as soon the credits ended on Cloverfield: “What ever happened to science?” he asked. “Remember the good old days when movie characters would actually think about why something was happening rather than immediately whip out the heavy artillery?”

Well, Mike, my friend, I do, I really do, because this week I got two new, colorized, long-delayed, two-disc special editions from the “Ray Harryhausen Presents” line: It Came From Beneath the Sea and, especially, Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers. In the latter film, particularly, smart people do courageous things to foil an attack from the stars, and the literate, logical, talk – so absent in Cloverfield – would do Mr. Spock proud.

But first things first. It Came from Beneath the Sea arrived first, in 1955, with a Godzilla-esque tale of a nuclear-radiated giant octosquid attacking San Francisco. The following year saw the release of Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, which was succinct and accurate in its title. Both are being re-released on DVD now because Ray supervised their colorization, and Sony has done a nice job of presenting them in both their original B&W as well as colorized forms, with a “ChromaChoice” toggle so you can go from one to the other with ease.

Only one problem with Ray supervising the coloring: the monsters look great … but the people often also look like they’re made of clay … or used a scoonch too much liquid tanner. All in all, however, it’s one of the more successful colorization jobs, and rarely too distracting. Besides, what with Ray’s Dynamationalized characters, the whole thing has a nice sheen of artificiality anyway, which the colorization folds nicely into.

 

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ComicMix does time

ComicMix does time

  • News
  • January 13, 2008

Thank goodness OJ Simpson and Marion Jones are serving time, making the world safe from rich,  self-indulgent (and presumably murderous, in one case) black former athletes!  Can rich treasonous white oilmen be far behind?  Well, yeah, actually.  Welcome to America, 2008!  Fortunately, our ComicMix columnists have just the thing to take your mind off these weighty matters, and here’s the roundup of what we’ve done this past week:

At least they can’t take away our dreams yet, so I can still fantasize about Karl Rove being frog-marched into a precinct house, can’t I?

Big Miserable Love, Juvenile Attell, by Ric Meyers

Big Miserable Love, Juvenile Attell, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 13, 2008

Welcome to the January doldrums, where, even if the Writers Guild of America wasn’t on strike, there’d still be precious little good new product, since this is the season where studios dump their loss leaders … I mean, this is the month where studios allow their most challenging productions to find their audience.

Actually, both estimations are true, and the titles considered in this column will reflect that. But since I also have a little breathing space, I want to take the opportunity to toast the year of the bummer. If the movies produced at the end of 2007 are any evidence, we’re all feeling really bad. How else do you comprehend a holiday when the most lauded films share a p.o.v. so bleak and unremittingly tragic that the bitter ending of Gone With The Wind seems positively giddy? 

No Country for Old Men, Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood, and Atonement – all … to quote George Harrison in A Hard Day’s Night: “a drag, a well-known drag.” In fact, Atonement not only shoves your face chin-deep into misery, but holds out a small, shiny piece of possible happiness, only to take great pleasure in then ramming it into your eye socket so it can shatter against your brain. Not to say that these aren’t great films, but to quote John Cleese in the fine farce Clockwise: “It’s not the despair. The despair I can handle. It’s the hope…!”

This is where the HBO Comedy Special DVD Dave Attell: Captain Miserable comes in. I’ve been a fan of this “functionally alcoholic” comedian since the days (or should I say nights) of his Comedy Central series Insomniac, where he’d go out after his act and see what the town he was playing in had going on in the wee hours. This is his first HBO special, following in the footsteps of George Carlin, Robert Klein, and Chris Rock, among others. 

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Caucus for ComicMix Columnists

Caucus for ComicMix Columnists

  • News
  • January 6, 2008

Well, about 19% of eligible voters in the first atypically-populated state with way too much power to decide the country’s fate have spoken, Presidential campaign-wise, and rendered moot at least three candidates on the Democratic side, who are no longer Biden their time as they Dodd-er back to Washington with Gravel-y voices.  Thank goodness Kucinich didn’t drop out yet, his name is awfully hard to pun.  Meanwhile, a couple of our weekly ComicMix columnists have become a bit political of late; with the campaign season being so long there’s almost sure to be more where that came from.  Here’s what we’ve given you this past week:

Say, did you know there was also a Republican caucus in Wyoming?  How come Iowa and New Hampshire get all the press?  (Just ’cause Wyoming Democrats caucus separately, two months from now?) If I were Cheyenne I would sue.

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