The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Marc Alan Fishman: Shabbat Shalom, Mother Trumper!

In 2003, the baddest Heeb this side of Tel Aviv took on Christmas. The Hebrew Hammer, a send-up of Shaft by way of Manischewitz, hit Comedy Central. It was, as it still is, a hilarious holiday romp that made star Adam Goldberg pull off cool, even while in complete Jewish regalia.

As someone who stayed Jewish mostly for the jokes myself, I was drawn to the flick at the mere mention of it at the first teaser, most likely saddled between an episode of The Daily Show and a rerun of Strangers With Candy. But as with many a holiday special, The Hebrew Hammer made its way to the DVD rack (purchased by yours truly essentially the day it hit said rack), and for many a gentile… faded from memory. Now that I’ve successfully spared you looking it up on Wikipedia, we soldier on.

The Hebrew Hammer is set to return, just in the nick of these tumultuous times. For anyone not paying attention to the current meteoric rise of Tiki Torch sales, the time is nigh for a plucky Hassid to don his wool hat and Blue Blockers to do what needs to be done here in Trump’s Amerikkka. What’s that? Oh, you know. Go back in time and kill Hitler. Suck on those kosher nuts, Tarantino.

Launching a campaign via MicroVentures, Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler is crowdfunding its way to punching the anti-Semites right where it hurts. I had the privilege of speaking to Adam Goldberg (the He-Man Hebrew himself) and Jonathan Kesselman (the nebbishy Jew behind the camera) to learn more.

Before we start, should we… you know… show people the actual video for the campaign?

Adam Goldberg: I think… maybe… well—

Jonathan Kesselman: Yes. Do that.

Adam Goldberg: (some barely audible kvetching about being interrupted) You should go here and watch the thing.

OK, simple enough. Now, what do people need to know about Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler that isn’t in the video?

Adam Goldberg: I don’t know… Well, over the years, after the first film, people had been asking me about doing another Hammer and I was always one foot in, one foot out, you know? And it was also couched in those feelings you can get of being too-overly-identified by a single character. But then, of course, maybe a year or so ago, with the ascent of Trump, my Twitter mentions begin to include calls for the resurrection of the Hammer – when it didn’t include grotesque anti-Semitic propaganda from these pussies hiding behind cartoon frog avatars. So Jon and I began talking about recontextualizing the sequel script we had worked on years ago—not changing it dramatically, just giving it a little symbolic contemporary context. We had come up with some serialized shorts to sort of bridge the gap between the two movies that we thought we might put online, but in the end we decided to focus our efforts on getting the sequel made. We sort of bastardized the “pilot” of the series to use as our campaign video.

And from there… how did you decide on this campaign specifically?

Adam Goldberg: Indiegogo had been courting us for a while. They had recently teamed up with Microventures to form a new entity which finances projects using equity crowdsourcing. Jon and I felt the cultish nature of the film always lent itself to a crowdsourcing campaign but we dug the idea that you weren’t merely donating, or just getting a mug or a hat or whatever, but that you were actually investing in the film— and invested in the financial success of the film.

I would dare say… how Jewish of your guys!

Adam Goldberg: (laughs) Uh, yeah. I mean, it depends. The Nazis would say it would be more Jewish of us to just take the money. In this case, we’re investing it. It’s more accounting-based… but I feel like maybe we’re going down the wrong road here, Marc. (laughs)

But, you know. Look, I have no problem with straight-up crowdsourcing.  I’ve lent support to many campaigns – completely not movie related at all.  And I’m even considering doing it for an album I’d release next (as in music, as Adam has three albums out already). But the campaigns I like the best are the ones where in essence you’re pre-ordering the product. And in this case you get to watch the film and maybe you see a financial benefit. It just feels like a more collaborative effort.

And we can’t ignore that Hitler has been offed semi-recently in film. Can you promise us Hammer kills Hitler better than Inglorious Basterds?

Adam Goldberg: I have no idea! Never seen it, if for no other reason to never be accused of borrowing from it. But we wrote Hammer vs. Hitler in 2005. So…

•     •     •     •     •

So, what are you waiting for, bubbala? I hope you had a chance to watch the video and see their campaign. Suffice it to say, I was moved by it enough to back it. Then again, I am Jewish and as such felt the pangs of guilt to help my fellow tribe-members out. And who am I to say no? I mean, sure, I’m a father of two growing boys, and I have my own ventures I sink my money into, but how could I let these fine young men stay poor and broke out in the street?

And to my goyem friends, how could you pass up this deal? I mean South Park already let loose the secret of our Jew Gold. And now you have this rare chance to become an investor in a big Jewish Hollywood film? I mean, what kind of madness is this? It’d be like Adam Sandler letting you invest in his next 19 crappy Netflix shows… except this will actually be funny, won’t be phoned in, and has 1000% more killing of Hitler.

REVIEW: Batman vs. Two-Face

REVIEW: Batman vs. Two-Face

You can’t help but watch the just-released Batman vs. Two-Face with a tear in your eye and weight in your heart. Adam West’s final performance was thankfully completed well before his untimely death in June. He goes out with some fine tributes but it’s a shame the concluding chapter of his Batman career is such a mess of a story.

For whatever reason, ABC and 20th Century-Fox chose not to use Two-Face, perhaps fearing he was too gruesome for 7:30 p.m. viewing. That’s a shame since the Harlan Ellison treatment for a two-parter, had some promise. The tortured psyche of District Attorney Harvey Dent makes for a wonderful examination of mankind’s duality and the obsession with the number two fits in with the rest of the rogues’ gallery. For whatever reason, the screenwriters eschewed the comic origins in favor of something hewing closer to Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde (appropriately name-checked here).

There are storytelling lapses in logic that one could argue is in keeping with the rushed pace of producing the original story but for a sustained, feature-length story, you need a far stronger premise. We have Prof. Hugo Strange (Jim Ward) making his debut, demonstrating he has figured out how to extract “evil” from Batman’s foes. To test it, some genius has allowed him to experiment on five of the most dangerous foes rather than one, so yes it works, but so much evil has been extracted that the machine predictably explodes. And so Two-Face is born.

The rest of the story presents an opportunity to showcase large numbers of familiar felons in a wrong-headed bit of fan service (we got them last time so this feels repetitive) while creating an oddly dissatisfying subplot of Dick Grayson (Burt Ward) actually feeling jealous of Bruce Wayne (West) having an adult male friendship with Dent (William Shatner); something to feed the homosexual theories that have existed between the duo since Fredric Wertham first raised the issue in the 1950s. Thankfully, we have the welcome dalliance between Batman and Catwoman (Julie Newmar) early in the story to cement the notion that Bruce is straight. His opening scene of reciting poetry to her from outside her prison cell is one of the most romantic elements in the series.

Given the pedigree shared by writers James Tucker and Michael Jelenic, I expected a tighter story. There’s a lot of fighting, wheel-spinning, and effort to wink at the fans to prolong the story of Two-Face’s efforts to rule Gotham, especially after he unmasks Batman, and Dent’s struggle to retain his humanity. We get a nice focus on King Tut (Wally Wingert) and his own duality issues while little used villain Bookworm (Jeff Bergman) makes for a nice red herring. There is also the introduction of Dr. Quinzel (Sirena Irwin) which is tonally wrong and out of place.

Director Rick Morales does a serviceable job but may have allowed too many inside jokes, marring the actual pathos of the story. That said, of the various puns and jokes, the best may be that Dent is treated after the initial explosion at the Sisters of Perpetual Irony Hospital.

While West, Ward, and Newmar are welcome familiar voices, Shatner surprises with a nuanced performance as Dent/Two-Face. What could have been over-the-top, even for this series, actually helps ground the character’s torment. They are all well-supported by an able vocal cast.

Visually, the designs for Batman/Wayne and Robin/Grayson are less effective than the previous feature. In some angles, Robin actually looks aged and too often, neither look like their live-action counterparts. Thankfully, the animators literally copied Filmation’s Captain Kirk poses so Shatner is recognizable as his 1966 self and his Two-Face is appropriately creepy.

The Blu-ray combo pack comes with the Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD code. The Special Features open with “The Wonderful World of Burt Ward” (14:30), a look at the actor’s career and half-century relationship with West. The actor is remember during the Adam West Tribute Panel from Comic-Con International 2017 (39:30), where radio personality Ralph Garman, director Kevin Smith, producer James Tucker, actress Lee Meriwether, and moderator Gary Miereanu talk about the man’s influence over generations; “Burt Ward on Being Starstruck” (2:00); “Burt Ward on Ambition” (1:00); and “Julie Newmar on Inspiration” (2:00). Look for a 30-second Easter Egg which is fun, but obvious.: bAT

Martha Thomases and the Multi-Dimensional Geeks

This past weekend I had a truly multi-dimensional geek experience.

I went to the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival, which is the San Diego Comic-Con of fiber nerds. I went with two women I’ve known since we were in boarding school together. One is now a judge in appellate court, and the other works for a local historical society. I would like to say that we had a highfalutin’ philosophical discourse as we drove to the Dutchess County New York Fairgrounds and carefully walked among the sheep, but mostly we talked about yarn and comics. One of my friends had read a piece in her local newspaper about the traditional book publishers who exhibited at New York Comic-Con (alas, I cannot find a link). I tried to explain that this was nothing new, but I’m not sure I succeeded.

I wish she had been able to come with me on Sunday, when another friend was kind enough to take me to the American Museum of Natural History for a panel about “Ethno-Graphics” about anthropology and graphic story-telling.

I was unfamiliar with two of the panelists, Lucio Zago, the writer and artist for Williamsburg Shorts and Sherine Hamdy, one of the writers of Lissa, and only a little bit aware of the third, Edgard Miranda-Rodriguez, creator of La Borinquena.

The moderator, Catrin Einhorn, is an editor at The New York Times. She seemed quite knowledgeable about anthropology, and perhaps a bit less informed about graphic story-telling. It’s also possible that she spoke less about that aspect so that the panelists could speak more.

Lucio Zago’s book about Williamsburg and the gentrification it has experienced since the early 1990s when he first moved there, sounds sweet and graceful. Alas, according to this, it is out of print. I don’t know if it was ever available beyond the Kickstarter through which he raised funds to publish, and a few copies for local bookshops. In any case, he seemed to be a bit of an outlier at this particular occasion.

Sherine Hamdy’s book, Lissa, is published by an academic publisher, the University of Toronto Press, and is the first book in what is planned to be an entire line of graphic novels. Although a fictional story about two young women and their families, Lissa is a thoroughly researched examination of religion, culture, medicine and class in the United States and Egypt. The back matter runs over a hundred pages, including original research and interpretations of other studies. I’m very curious about this new publishing venture, and whether these graphic novels, like other publications from academic presses, are used as textbooks as well as entertainment.

Edgard Miranda-Rodriguez was a bit familiar to me from this write-up, but I had no idea what a firebrand he was. He created a Puerto Rican super-heroine because that is exactly the comic book he most wanted to read when he was a kid, and it’s the comic he most wants his kids to read now. He was careful and deliberate to credit other Puerto Ricans working in the medium today (especially ), and more than anything I wanted to ask him if he knew Ivan Velez.

I wanted to ask all three panelists such questions, what one friend of mine calls “Jewish Geography,” although it doesn’t have to be just about Jewish people. It’s what happens when you meet a person for the first time, and try to establish some common ground by asking a few questions (“Where are you from?”) and seeing if you know any of the same people. The panel wasn’t about who these folks knew, however, but rather the anthropological elements of their work, so I restrained myself. Instead, I satisfied my need to feel important by recommending the Eisner-winning Sonny Liew book, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye to the helpless woman sitting next to me, unable to escape my attention.

My high-school friend might enjoy it, too. It’s published by Pantheon, a real book publisher.

Tweeks: Halloween Costume Help

Are you still looking for Halloween Costume? Yeah, we get it. Trying to coordinate with your friends is hard and sometimes even with all the planning ahead you try to do, you end up scrambling at the last minute to pull together the right costume.

Well, we’re here to help. We talk about some of our best group costume ideas and enlist guidance from Howie from Rubie’s Costume to help you figure it all out.

Box Office Democracy: The Snowman

There’s a degree to which I have to respect any film that can take a thoroughly innocuous thing and make it terrifying.  Movies like Child’s Play or Nightmare on Elm Street have done this and become iconic classics partially on that basis.  If you can make something spooky that people didn’t find spooky before like a kid’s toy or going to sleep you are going to get substantial mindshare out of it.  The Snowman gets to that place with snowmen.  I walked in to the theater convinced it would be a silly device but by the end of the movie I got a bit of a charge seeing them get that little bugger in to new places.  It doesn’t save the movie— it’s unfortunately a terrible bore— but it gives it a bit of a lasting legacy as opposed to just being completely forgettable.

I don’t like when I feel I’ve been lied to by the marketing materials for a movie.  The first poster I saw for The Snowman (and most of the marketing material overall) was focused on this letter that read “Mister Police You Could Have Saved Her I Gave You All The Clues” and that’s a galling claim for a movie that has basically no clues in it.  The investigation follows one thread for the whole time for basically no reason than one person has a hunch/grudge and the suspects are creepy.  Then when this part of the investigation dead ends (because it was nothing to begin with) the movie is basically out of time and has to just tell you who did it so they have time for any kind of climax.  There’s no mystery presented to the audience at all.  To be fair the letter on the poster is not in the film at all but it still feels like I was sold a mystery and then delivered a more straightforward thriller.

It’s such a bummer that The Snowman is as bland as it is.  There’s a decent cast in here but they have nothing to work with and there’s no spark coming from behind the camera.  Michael Fassbender is an actor that I like but there’s nothing compelling about being a drunk detective that doesn’t have his life together.  That isn’t an interesting character because it’s been done hundreds and hundreds of times before.  He floats through the movie seeming barely interested (it leads to an amazingly unintentionally funny sex scene but that probably wasn’t the point) and that’s not acceptable in a movie about people being killed.  People have to care about that.  The whole movie is full of people who don’t care enough that a serial killer is plaguing their lives or that their son keeps running away, or that a dead person is suddenly in front of them.  Val Kilmer apparently was battling cancer during filming of The Snowman and they had to have someone else come in and rerecord all of his dialogue and it’s jarring and the sync is not as good as it could be.  I don’t know why you would cast someone who couldn’t deliver their lines.  I love Val Kilmer but he’s not such a transcendent physical actor that he’s good enough when his ever scene is a spaghetti western.

It would be hard for a transcendent movie full of spectacular performances and excellent directing to overcome the dreadful story work in The Snowman and with lifeless entries in all other categories this movie sinks into the frozen lake the provides so much of the plot development.  This is a movie with two compelling scenes in the first third of the film and then just a slog of bland nothing for an hour as the gloomy array of characters struggle to make me believe they care.  There are reports out that they didn’t get to shoot 10-15% of the script due to timing and budget issues.  Maybe somewhere in those gunshot pages there are magic scenes that turn this in to the compelling mystery thriller the marketing promised.  It’s just as likely there’s nothing that was going to save this film, that the adaptation was doomed from the start and it was a studio deciding not to send good money after bad.  We’ll never know and I don’t intend to lose any sleep over it.

Dennis O’Neil: Invisible Comic Books!

So look: we’re all part of the same whole, right? I mean, we can all trace our origins to the same big bang, between 13,000,000 and 14,000,000 million years ago, give or take a few calendar pages, so I shouldn’t have to perform mental/verbal gymnastics to convince you that radio drama has a relationship with comic book scripting, beyond the obvious, that both are what Stephen King calls story delivery systems.

But there may be a few gnarlys lurking in the crannies of bandwidth who present themselves as doubters. We shall let them continue gnawing on fish bones when I sweep you back some 68 (again giving or taking some of those pesky calendar pages — but much smaller calendar pages this time).

It’s me, there in the kitchen, standing on a chair so I can reach Mom’s white plastic radio which lived atop the refrigerator, also white and sometimes called the “icebox.” I was listening to – I was heeding – my programs. Superman. (Of course, Superman!) Captain Midnight. Buck Rogers. Tom Mix. (He was a cowboy, and of course we made room for cowboys.) These, and others I may be forgetting were after school shows, broadcast on weekdays between four and six.

I heeded them. Oh, yeah.

The radio stuff wasn’t all that was in my post-toddler portfolio. There were also the comic books and some weeks I got only one, largesse from Dad who picked it up along with milk for the family after Sunday Mass. Some weeks, though, I had a lot more than a single paltry comic to read. Every once in a while, often on a sunny afternoon, I collected my used comics, put them in a wagon and visited the homes of the other kid-comics readers in the neighborhood and, sitting on somebody’s porch, we’d trade: their used and maybe slightly torn comics for mine. Our books were never doomed to Mylar bags, to be hoarded like the contents of Uncle Scrooge’s vault. Our comics were only getting started! They were destined to extend their gifts of enchantment and delight into the future, to porches we had never seen and maybe even city blocks that would be new to us.

So, yes, I was a comics nerd before there were such things. But… except for the days when I went a’trading, I had only one new comic in a week. Pretty sparse diet of high adventure. But radio – Monday through Friday, exciting stories – and a bunch of them. Sure, they were continued but I didn’t mind that, and I didn’t know what the characters looked like (unless they also appeared in comics) but that was okay, too.

Better than okay. Not seeing the humans who belonged to the voices, I visualized them – you know, made them up in my head – and while I was at it, I imagined cars and planes and buildings and lots more. I imagined a world.

Pretty good training for a kid who would grow up to be a comic book writer.

Sweatshop by Peter Bagge and others

This is not a limited series. I know: I was surprised, too. But Peter Bagge’s afterword, which explains the history of Sweatshop , makes it clear that it was intended to be ongoing, and that he would have been happy to keep it running for a much longer time.

That didn’t happen: Sweatshop got a six-issue run from DC in 2003, when that company was in one its periodic throes of trying to broaden its range, which was followed by the inevitable and equally periodic pullback to its core competency of grimacing people in spandex punching each other repeatedly.

Sweatshop is not about spandex, or punching. It does have its share of grimacing, and other extreme facial expressions, because we are talking about Peter Bagge here. But, otherwise, it doesn’t look much like a good fit for DC. Our central character is Mel Bowling, a comics creator on the far side of middle age. He’s the credited creator of the syndicated strip Freddy Ferret — though it’s really put together by his oddball crew of young, underpaid assistants — and a lazy, narcissistic golf-playing blowhard.

(The set-up is not unlike some manga about manga-making — Bagge doesn’t mention any inspirations, or Japanese comics at all, in his afterword, but it’s at the very least a striking case of parallel development.)

Reading the first issue, I thought it would feature Bagge’s art on stories about the whole team and his fellow artists (Stephen Destefano, Bill Wray, Stephanie Gladden, Jim Blanchard, and Johnny Ryan also contribute art to these stories) each picking up from the POV of one of the assistants. That would have been neat, and more formally interesting, but it’s not the way the series ended up going: the feint in that direction was apparently a scene-setting one-off for that first issue. Instead, there’s mostly a lead story for each issue drawn by Bagge, and then additional stories drawn by one or more of the others, in the style of old humor comics.

The stories are all about that crew in Bowling’s studio — worrying about the “Hammie” awards, planning and going to the big Comic-Con, dealing with a new writer joining the team, and various career and personal issues for all of them. It’s not quite as zany and slapstick as Bagge got in the ’80s and ’90s, but these are broad characters who do crazy things: it’s a lot like a sitcom on the page.

Sweatshop is funny, and probably even funnier the more you know about strip comics: I suspect Bagge buried jokes and references I didn’t get among the ones I did see and laugh at. Some readers may find the changing art styles distracting, though they all are in the same tradition — Bagge’s rubber-hose arms and googly eyes are probably the most extreme, cartoony style here, with the others giving a (sometimes only very slightly) more restrained version of the same look. What can I say? It’s a funny collection of stories about comics and comics people, and a decade has only dated it slightly. (A contemporary version would definitely have at least one issue full of webcomic jokes.)

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk Arrives on Disc Dec. 12

Burbank, CA, October 24, 2017– One of the year’s most acclaimed films, Warner Bros. Pictures’ Dunkirk, arrives on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital this December. From filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, Inception, The Dark Knight Trilogy) comes the epic action thriller Dunkirk.

Nolan directed Dunkirk from his own original screenplay, utilizing a mixture of IMAX® and 65mm film to bring the story to the screen. The film was partially shot on location on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, where the actual events unfolded.

Said director Christopher Nolan, “I’m excited to be releasing Dunkirk on 4K UHD with HDR. The film was shot entirely on the highest definition IMAX and 65mm film and this fantastic new format, with its increased resolution and superior colour reproduction is able to maximize Dunkirk’s impact in the home.”

The film’s ensemble cast includes Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D’Arcy and Barry Keoghan, with Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance and Tom Hardy.

“Dunkirk” was produced by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, with Jake Myers serving as executive producer. The behind-the-scenes creative team included director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema, production designer Nathan Crowley, editor Lee Smith, costume designer Jeffrey Kurland, visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson and special effects supervisor Scott Fisher. The music was composed by Hans Zimmer.

On December 19, Dunkirk will be available on 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack for $44.95. The 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack will include a 4K Ultra HD disc with the feature film in 4K resolution with HDR, a Blu-ray disc with the feature film in hi-definition, a Blu-ray disc with the special features in hi-definition, and a Digital version of the feature film.

4K Ultra HD showcases 4K resolution with High Dynamic Range (HDR) and a wider color spectrum, offering consumers brighter, deeper, more lifelike colors for a home entertainment viewing experience like never before.

Also on December 19, Dunkirk will be available on Blu-ray Combo Pack for $35.99 and DVD for $28.98. The Blu-ray Combo Pack features a Blu-ray disc with the film in hi-definition, a Blu-ray disc with the special features in hi-definition, a DVD with the film in standard definition, and a Digital version of the movie.

Fans can also own Dunkirk via purchase from digital retailers beginning December 12.

SYNOPSIS

Dunkirk opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in. The story unfolds on land, sea and air. RAF Spitfires engage the enemy in the skies above the Channel, trying to protect the defenseless men below. Meanwhile, hundreds of small boats manned by both military and civilians are mounting a desperate rescue effort, risking their lives in a race against time to save even a fraction of their army.

BLU-RAY AND DVD ELEMENTS

Dunkirk 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack, Blu-ray Combo Pack, and Standard Definition DVD contain the following special features:

· Creation: Revisiting the Miracle
· Creation: Dunkerque
· Creation: Expanding the Frame
· Creation: The In-Camera Approach
· Land: Rebuilding the Mole
· Land: The Army On the Beach
· Land: Uniform Approach
· Air: Taking to the Air
· Air: Inside the Cockpit
· Sea: Assembling the Naval Fleet
· Sea: Launching the Moonstone
· Sea: Taking to the Sea
· Sea: Sinking the Ships
· Sea: The Little Ships
· Conclusion: Turning Up the Tension
· Conclusion: The Dunkirk Spirit

DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION ELEMENTS

On December 12, Dunkirk will be available to own in 4K HDR from select digital retailers including iTunes, Google, and Vudu. It will also be available in high definition and standard definition on favorite devices from select digital retailers including Amazon, FandangoNow, iTunes, PlayStation, Vudu, Xbox and others. On December 19, “Dunkirk” will be made available digitally on Video On Demand services from cable and satellite providers, and on select gaming consoles.

BASICS

PRODUCT                             SRP
4K Ultra HD Combo Pack $44.95
Blu-ray Combo Pack          $35.99
DVD Amaray (WS)            $28.98
4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD Street Date: December 19, 2017
EST Street Date: December 12, 2017
DVD Languages: English, Latin Spanish, Canadian French
BD Languages: English, Latin Spanish, Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese
DVD Subtitles: English SDH, Latin Spanish, Parisian French, Canadian French
BD Subtitles: English, Latin Spanish, Parisian French, Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese
Running Time: 106 minutes
Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense war experience and some language
DVD: DLBY/SURR DLBY/DGTL [CC]
4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray: DTS HD-MA

Box Office Democracy: Happy Death Day

It would be overly cynical to say that I’m never surprised, or pleasantly surprised by movies anymore.  It happens fairly often that a movie I think is going to be mediocre or bad ends up being good.  It’s much more rare that a movie that I’m actively rolling my eyes at while the trailer is rolling becomes a complete delight.  Happy Death Day looked like a poorly conceived attempt at rehashing old ideas.  Instead it’s a fun, playful, horror movie that hits all the right notes and does a mostly good job exploring their concept.

Happy Death Day is exactly the movie you think it is.  It’s Groundhog Day but a slasher movie instead of a Bill Murray comedy.  A college student (Jessica Routhe) is murdered on her birthday and keeps reliving the day until she can get through it without dying.  There’s a bit of mystery, a bit of comedy, a bunch of becoming a better person and we’re all back in the lobby before the 100 minute mark.  The mystery isn’t particularly difficult (I had identified the culprit in less than 15 minutes) and nothing in the movie is particularly unique or groundbreaking, but everything chugs along nicely.  There are plenty of scares (jump and non) and there’s a persistent sense of tension once the general aura of menace is established.

It’s strange to have a slasher movie where only one person ever gets killed.  On one hand you can always be on the edge of your seat because you always know who is going to be attacked next and that character is always on screen.  On the other hand, you know that if the killer succeeds the movie resets and there are no lasting consequences.  They try to introduce some lasting stakes about an hour in with Theresa getting weaker each time she resets but that never feels like a real threat or a particularly persistent one as in one reset she is confined to a bed and a few resets later she’s enacting an action movie plan for revenge.

The problems with the movie are ones of over-plotting and low budget.  The movie feels the need to chase down so many red herrings that not only go nowhere but aren’t that amusing.  There’s a fun montage of failed suspects but anything that takes longer than a couple minutes ends up feeling a touch long.  The supporting cast is perilously thin and all of the suspected motives are kind of ridiculous so it drags a bunch.  There’s a particular theory of the crime that takes up a huge chunk of the second act that, had it been the true solution, would have been so far out of left field it’s impossible for it to be right just on the basis of not passing dozens of angry patrons on my way in to the building.  This is a Blumhouse film so it was made on a shoestring budget, and it’s only obvious with the fight choreography when nothing looks like it actually hurts.  It’s a little thing but what if, when they knew one of their movies was going to get a big weekend theatrical release, they juiced the budget a little bit so the climax didn’t look like a student film?

There are a lot of bad things to be said about the Blumhouse model of movie making.  That it creates a race to the bottom, that a successful formula can be driven in to the ground at an amazing pace, that things can feel more like a product than a work of art.  This year has shown the way that model can work very well.  Happy Death Day is a movie that wouldn’t get made without this scattershot model.  It’s not that strong of a concept, it isn’t a good pitch or a poster but it turned out to be a good movie.  The lower bar let them jump that much higher.  It’s honestly the same way Get Out wouldn’t have gotten made because a more traditional studio wouldn’t have trusted a new director nor would they have wanted to make a movie like that about race.  Happy Death Day is a half-clever idea executed all the way perfectly and it makes for a great movie, the early favorite for best horror movie of the fall season.  Don’t make a sequel though, the sequel will be a horrible train wreck; this is the money you get from this idea.

Mike Gold: Halloween, Cosplay, and the Human Torch

Riddle me this: what’s the difference between dressing up in a Halloween costume and doing cosplay at a comic con? Answer after my weekly rant.

Strap yourself in. We’re on another bumpy ride to my time-share condo on Memory Lane.

Time was, there were no “big-box” toy stores, or “big-box” stores at all. Toys R Us started (as such) in 1957 and before that, all we had was Woolworth’s – a large chain of small, wood-floored three-aisle neighborhood stores where you could buy just about anything, except at certain locations if you were a black person in need of lunch. The back half of one aisle was devoted to toys. That wasn’t a lot of space compared to Target and Costco and contemporary outlets. But, hey, I was a little kid. By my standards, that half-aisle was huge.

(An aside. Sometime around the Depression Woolworth’s started building two-story stores in the downtown districts of many big cities, and they lasted until shopping malls made downtown shopping redundant. The chain went blooie in 1997 and the owners converted a lot of them to Foot Lockers. Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy protection last month … and most shopping malls aren’t looking too good either.)

So, back in those thrilling days of yesteryear when Halloween came around our parents took us to Woolworth’s to get swathed in gaudy costuming. The unlucky kids were taken to the arts and crafts area where they could get material for some sort of home-made illusion. The lucky kids got to buy “professional” stuff made by one of a number of different companies, usually focusing on monster imagery that was in the public domain. But the lucky comic book fan kids got costumes made under license from the Ben Cooper company.

There wasn’t a lot of comics merchandising in those days. Actually, there was hardly any you could count on – some cheaply made tchotchkes masquerading as toys, some licensed food products… and Ben Cooper. That company had the licenses to Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, and Archie. Later, they also acquired the licenses to Spider-Man, The Hulk, and other Marvel characters. So, in a way, the first DC/Marvel crossover happened at Woolworth’s.

Parents liked ‘em, probably because they sold for a buck and a half a piece. Kids loved ‘em, even though the costumes really didn’t look all that much like the real thing. That didn’t matter to us. We were starved for comics product. A few parents were concerned that these cheaply made costumes might burst into flames, which might be why we didn’t see anything with the Human Torch. Remember, back then most parents smoked cigarettes – as well as some kids – and the idea that a wayward roll-up could ignite your child was merely a risk taken on with your addictive behavior.

There really was a Ben Cooper, and he did know a thing or two about the business. He had designed costumes and sets for the Ziegfeld Follies and for the Cotton Club back in the day, and he was smart enough to sign on when Disney did its first big merchandising push in the mid-30s. Over time, Cooper acquired the rights to such “characters” as Davy Crockett, Zorro, John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, C3PO and The Simpsons.

When I did my first run at DC Comics in 1976, I learned four of the top five merchandised characters were Batman, Superman, Robin and Wonder Woman. Why Wonder Woman, I wondered alliteratively? Simple. Male kids wanted the various male characters, and female kids wanted the one and only female character – not counting generic princesses, witches, and Jackie K. Through its Licensing Corporation of America subsidiary, DC was able to sandwich WW in with Superman and Batman despite the fact that they were having a very hard time selling the Wonder Woman comic book. That licensing revenue went a long way towards paying the Marston family their annual dues, and it certainly kept the comic book alive.

This year the top Halloween character is Wonder Woman, and the second is Harley Quinn. We’re not just talking about kids anymore, but, still, I think it’s pretty cool that this year of all years the women are ruling the roost.

Oh, yeah. You might see a few Donald Trump doppelgängers next week, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a compliment. I’m also uncertain who sells the merchandising rights to that character.

Riddle me that: The difference between dressing up in a Halloween costume and doing cosplay at a comic con is… candy. And a somewhat reduced likelihood of harassment.

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