Discovering The Hidden Face

My classes meet on a monthly basis. Students join me to discuss horror, mystery and suspense, and then they move on, usually to study science fiction and fantasy.

In our final week, I invite, all right, I compell students to bring in properties they've discovered to discuss. The only stipulation is that the selected piece fall somewhere under the horror, mystery and suspense umbrella.

I can't see everything. That guy from FX was right. There's a lotta TV out there in addition to movies, books, games, graphic novels and web series.

So we crowd source, and we get more than just Dad's movies --i.e. selections I root out--to explore genre elements.

It produces the usual suspects like Dead Space and Silent Hill, assorted anime and sometimes graphic novels.

And sometimes things turn up that I haven't encountered. Such as The Hidden Face aka La Cara Oculta, a 2011 Spanish-language thriller from Columbia.

The presentation in class included a couple of spoilers, which disappointed me a bit. I usually like to experience a piece without knowing major twists, but I was happy to have the film brought to my attention

I learned in watching the film, it's hard to discuss it without spoiling something.

 The trailer spoils a bit, in fact, removing some of the fun of the first act, so don't watch the trailer. Just dive into the film, which focuses on orchestra conductor Adrián (Quim Gutierrez) and the women in his life.

He's broken down in the opening when he gets a farewell note from his live-in girlfriend Belén (Clara Lago). The two have moved together from Spain for him to take the post as conductor of the Bogata Philharmonic, but she's apparently grown disillusioned with their relationship.

Odd occurrences soon plague the house when Fabiana moves in. Eerie ripples disturb her bath, and she hear odd sounds which compell her to explore the house more.

To further complicate matters, Adrián is soon the target of a police investigation. There's no sign that Belén left the country or is alive anywhere.

What follows is twists, with shifts in perspective on key events and a number of surprises, all unfolding as the quirky nature of love and desire are explored.

It's paced a little different than an American film, and it's hard to know what to expect, which is kind of refreshing, and the twists continue to the film's final seconds.

It can be an interesting experience for the horror and thriller fan who's not all about blades and car chases.

Streaming availability seems limited, at least through current subscription services. I ordered the disk from Netflix or it can be rented via Amazon.

A few of my favorite movie songs

A lot of great songs come out of movies, and a lot of others get used in movies. Johnny Cash's fab "The Man Comes Around" has been in more movies than some movie stars.

You Tube's made reliving the musical moments from old films possible since soundtracks are sometimes hard to come by. Below are a few of my melodic favorites.

Tomorrow, tomorrow
"Tomorrow is the Song I Sing" from Richard Gillis is one of several tunes that punctuate the offbeat Sam Peckinpa Western The Ballad of Cable Hogue. It's catchy an infinitely hummable. It, happily, is available from iTunes as part of the Gillis album Blow the Gates of Heaven.



Reachin' to the sky
Folk genius Leonard Cohen's melancholy "The Stranger Song" opens another offbeat Western, Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It really is a perfect tone-setter for the Warren Beatty outing. It's also found on The Essential Leonard Cohen.



I can almost see that old Bandera Highway...
Barry De Vorzon's "San Antone" is actually on a couple of movie soundtracks that I know of, both of which he served on as musical director.  He's best known for Nadia's Theme.

The tune is the homecoming song that opens the revenge flick Rolling Thunder. It's more wonderfully moody and nostalgic in contrast to the opening scenes of William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration, aka Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane. Sadly it doesn't seem to be available for purchase in a pristine MP3.



Over the hills and far away
The television adaptations of Bernard Cromwell's swashbuckling Sharpe novels adopted a John Tams rendition of the 17th century British song "Over the Hills and Far Away."

 It's catchy and a wonderful mesh for the excellent films with Sean Bean. I don't think it's on iTunes, but The Music of Sharpe CD is available in the U.S. on Amazon.




I could go on, but that's a pretty good playlist for a blog post. I'll forego the theme from Kelly's Heros and The Osmonds?! performing "Chilly Winds" on the risque Rock Hudson/Angie Dickinson thriller Pretty Mains All in a Row from Gene, but I kind of like both of those too.

Movies Worth a Look: Dolan's Cadillac

I know everyone's probably way ahead of me, but if not, here's a flick to check out.

I haven't read the Stephen King short story Dolan's Cadilac from the Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection, but the title rang a bell a while back when the movie adaptation popped up as a Netflix recommendation. I added to my queue and settled in to watch it recently.

At first blush, the film looks like a standard issue crime drama. It centers on one of those happy middle class couples who run afoul of criminals. There's the intense Wes Bentley (Robinson), of American Beauty and Ghost Rider,  and Emmanuelle Vaugier, from the Saw movies and more. They're school teachers. She's trying to get pregnant.

Unfortunately, while horseback riding, Elizabeth (Vaugier) happens upon Dolan (Christian Slater) and his crime crew. They ride around in Dolan's black and ominous Caddy SUV.

Moving the plot
Dolan's chief criminal activity is smuggling young women for the sex trade. A failed ventilation system in a truck has caused deaths and leads to additional murders while Elizabeth is watching.

She's soon targeted by Dolan and his existential sidekick played by Greg Bryk, also of Saw films. Mild spoiler here: 

 They kill her, and the devastated husband sets out for revenge.

That's where the spoiling stops, and where the film, realizing what I suspect is the meat of the King source material takes off.

Soul searching, confrontation and the execution of an ingenious plan unfold with surprises and subtext that you don't find in routine crime dramas or many direct-to-video flicks.

Performances
Christian Slater is at his over-the-top best as Dolan, who's devilish and intelligent, and Bentley's capacity of deep darkness is perfectly utilized.

A couple of minor characters who play a role in Robinson's resurrection also add flavor, and Bryk's  complex lieutenant is much greater than a typical henchman walk-on.

Is it perfect? Meh. Is it without implausibility? Well no, but it's all well-executed and enriched by character and explorations of grief, torment and even spirituality.

If you're going in cold, it's particularly entertaining and probably worthwhile as a watch-instantly choice if you've read the story.

Watch the trailer below, but know it spoils some surprises before you click: 

Upcoming Movies I'd Rather Be Seeing

You ever go to the movies, and see trailers for flicks you'd rather be seeing than the show you just paid for?

I saw a perfectly fine holiday movie yesterday, but the trailers, always look better. They're the "what else is on?" of the theater experience, a couple of compressed minutes of pure imagination, revealing the best of a two-hour movie while sparking your imagination about possibilities as well:






And a Sci-Fi turn based on the novel from James Frey of "A Million Little Pieces" fame. The next Harry Potter?




Who's to say how these will pan out, but what a seven minute ride.

A Visit to Heroes Club The Art of Toys in San Francisco - Horror Collectibles

My buddy Clifford Brooks was showing me around San Francisco neighborhoods when he did an abrupt U-turn and grabbed a parking spot the other night. "You have to see this place," he said, nodding toward a showcase window with a giant blue robot: Heroes Club: The Art of Toys.

We could only stare in the windows at the shadowed array of collectibles since the shop had closed for the day.

But since we both grew up with Aurora model kits and Famous Monsters of Film Land, we returned the next day for a museum-like tour through an array of super heroes, soldiers, Bruce Lees, steampunk figures and a generous smattering of monsters including a full-sized Jason Voorhees looking down from a ceiling perch.  

Before the Icon

Smaller Jason replicas including a Friday the 13th Part 2 version in a pre-hockey mask burlap sack joined various iterations of Michael Myers, Freddy and a host of other vampires and creatures. An incredible life-size Nosferatu offered a sinister gaze from a rear showcase, and a wooden-frame 3-D replica of the Famous Monsters back page monster mask ad graced another shelf. 

"Are you guys collectors?" he asked.

"Just looking," Cliff said, observing a price tag. 

That didn't seem to bother him. He proceeded to show us a Count Dracula ring and a similar Mummy ring with, he noted, finer detail than some other versions. 

A Hong Kong native, he noted his favorite movie is The Exorcist and pointed to a wall where a bas-relief face of Pazuzu stared forward.

Stan's eye

A hand-eye-coordination statue, not for sale, peered from another case. "That was a gift from Stan Winston," he said. On yet another shelf stretched, a monster from a Twilight Zone-like series from Asia, never seen in the U.S. "Asian people know this," the proprietor said.  "U.S. people not so much." 

A Godzilla figure with an actor stepping out of it was a littl more more recognizable for U.S. audiences. 

Stake out

One of the most fascinating items was a hand-crafted vampire hunter's kit (seriously click the link and have a look) from Zom Bee Toys, maker of Frozen Dead figures as well. 

Moving it from a shelf to the counter, the proprietor offered a closer look. It looked Van Helsing-ready with bottles of holy water and a metal crucifix, plus a weighty wooden mallet and an array of stakes.

"These are hand crafted," the proprietor said, noting the handle-rings etched in the wood and the finely-honed points.

"They sharpen these by hand," he noted, demonstrating the twisting technique and stressing the whittling style of points would be much more jagged. "It takes a lot of time to do that right," he said.

I'll never convince Christine to adopt a collectibles decorating theme, but it was a nice spot to visit. 

Here's hoping the economy doesn't squeeze out this kind of coolness. 

Blogosphering

OK, I'm kinda back. Stewart Sternberg, whose The Ravening everyone should already have on pre-order, gigged me a bit a while back about repurposing Twitter tweets, but I've been a little swamped of late, and I did want to preserve some of those thoughts.

Hopefully I'll be back to the blogosphere full steam soon and fresh with ideas and energy. I've just been busy with school, work, and well that's about it, but that's been plenty.

For those of you who still have me in your RSS feed, let me get a few things on record on things nerd. I've managed to keep up with a few things in spite of the swamping.

Iron Man 2: liked it but the critics aren't really 100 percent wrong.

V: Like it, glad it survived, sorry it had to be between it and FlashForward which I liked marginally better.

Lost: Looking forward to the finale. Is The Source the same thing that's in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction or that box Mike Hammer had in Kiss Me Deadly?

Inception: Looks interesting and I like Christopher Nolan.

Reading: The Outside Man by Richard North Patterson.

Next Up: I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond. Wish me well.

Miss Daisy is hanging in.

Avatar

If you look hard enough you can find negative reviews of James Cameron's Avatar, and I suppose some of the notes about cliches and obtrusiveness of theme are not inaccurate. For me, the sheer joy of Avatar as a moviegoing experience outweighs any of that, however.

It wasn't a scene of flying creatures that wowed me most. It's a long movie, and 3D had already become part of the landscape by the point the first mountain banshee appeared.

The subtle 3D use in a scene in which a crippled Marine is extricated from a cryogenic chamber piqued my imagination first and foremost. With floating orderlies and depth of field, it made the world on the big screen a little different than anything I'd seen before. That's really what's needed in our universe if the movie going experience is to be more than a marketing campaign for Blu-Ray sales.

It really felt like I'd been sucked into the universe of science fiction novels where zero G was a norm.

Flying creatures, jungle landscapes, spiritual indigenous humanoids and rampaging monster dogs only supplemented the experience.

They are really cool, though. It was like being in a fully imagined Edgar Rice Burroughs universe. It's clear James Cameron really did draw on all of the books and movies he experienced as a kid in crafting Avatar as he said in his Studio 360 interview.

It's a wonderous amalgamation, and as Roger Ebert states it's worth seeing if you can get to a theater to be part of the conversation.

I think it's good when we have an occasion for shared dreams, and if something gets us off the sofa, well that's staving off the couch potato universe of WALL-E a little longer isn't it?

Wonderful World

Guess I can check "Be in a movie" off my Bucket List now. I haven't heard from anyone who's seen it, so I could be on the cutting room floor, but Wonderful World with Matthew Broderick premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last night. That's the flick in which I had the opportunity to work as an extra a while back.

(See some coverage of the premiere here or watch the trailer.)

I play a lawyer, so look for me in a courtroom scene. Shaved the beard, kept the mustache, donned a blue suit. Tried to look lawyerly. Had no idea there were magical realism elements though there appear to be in the trailer.

Here's how it happened
This all started because they were filming Stephen King's The Mist in Shreveport, known these days as SoHo - South Hollywood. Thinking it would be cool to pass through a scene in a Stephen King movie, I sent in my head shot and contact information, and didn't get anything.

Life goes on.

Flash forward to months after I forgot about The Mist. I was in Portland, ironically staying at a movie-themed boutique hotel, when I got an e-mail from the casting agency. They'd been trying to call me. While I hadn't been needed for The Mist, or a multitude of Feast sequels, they'd kept my pic on file, and they needed someone who looked like me for a movie with Matthew Broderick, written and directed by Joshua Goldin, who wrote Darkman. It was thus not without fanboy virtues.

The scheduling worked out, so about a week after I returned to Texas, I drove over to Shreveport one Friday evening. It was the last day of filming, so everyone was pulling an all-nighter.

Holding Pattern
I went to the extras holding area, a former guitar store, where they gave me my blue suit to put on, and introduced me to the other "lawyers." Then we sat for a while listening to people who had been in Feast 2 or 3 discussing running frantically from monsters for eight to 10 hours. I also picked up a story that some of the extras in The Mist passed out while wearing haz-mat suits in the Louisiana heat.

Sometimes, fortuity comes disguised as missed opportunity.

Got to know my fellow attorneys while we sat around. One was a professor, one a chaplain and one was in oil and gas. Everybody was pretty much there for the fun of it like I was. One guy had walked Kevin Costner's dog in a street scene in Mr. Brooks. Set in Portland, filmed in Shreveport.

I was wondering if any of the stars would be showing up, when the oil man pointed out a guy wearing a Greek fisherman's cap as James Burton.

"Who?"

"You know, Elvis's James Burton."

Or guitar legend James Burton as the case may be.

"Oh yeah, he used to have really long hair."

Matthew Broderick passed through a little while later to shoot a DVD-extra interview in a back room.

After dinner with the crew served from catering trucks, we went down a couple of doors to Shreveport's courthouse to settle in to courtroom where second or third assistant directors put us in place next to Drew Waters now of Friday Night Lights.

Basically, I got to participate in storytelling in a completely different way than I'm used to, and I got a front row seat to watch Matthew Broderick shoot a major speech. I was kind of surprised at how subdued it seemed. On film, larger than life comes naturally I suppose. Theatricality is for the stage.

I pretty much memorized his speech as they filmed it from different angles, though I'll keep it to myself lest it be a spoiler. Kind of makes me aware of how things were for the judges in say The Cain Mutiny Court Martial on Broadway.

Like, I say, I don't know if I wound up on the cutting room floor or not, but it was loads of fun either way. Since I couldn't make it to the premiere ;-), I'll be watching local listings or waiting for the DVD.

Terror on Netflix Watch Instantly - Severance

I probably should have been more aware of Severance (2006), a British horror thriller with a healthy dose of humor. Somewhere I picked up a vague notion that it was a slasher film with a little something extra, but I was more than pleasantly surprised when I watched a few minutes on Netflix watch instantly.

A Cut Above

It's more than a bit of all right, just when I was starting to think, there's not much new to be done with the slasher film. Belay that notion. Severance is Hostel meets The Office, both brutal and relentlessly wicked.

It concerns itself with the sales office of an arms company headed for a remote lodge in central Europe for a team-building experience. I don't know why it's a remote lodge and not a motel with meeting rooms, but there wouldn't be much of a story, I suppose.

A slice of the familiar

The heroine is Laura Harris of The Faculty and 24. Speaking of sales offices, I'm sure someone in Severance's decided an American lead would help sell it to Americans.

Also familiar to Americans is James Bond bad guy Toby Stephens, who also provided the voice of Bond in the recent BBC radio adaptation of Dr. No.

A little dialog establishes that there are possibly people at large who hate the office mates'

Severence offers great suspense, interspersed with the occasionally zany moment. To say much more would require that I precede the statements with spoiler warning so I'll count on you getting to experience it for yourself or suppose that you're way ahead of me and you've already discovered Severance.

If not, and if Netflix's recommendation algorithm and site search are failing you, well, this one's a good choice if you have a taste for thrillers.

Chinatown: The Stones in Jake's Path

A look at obstacles and motivations in the Chinatown screenplay

This is one of several analysis pieces done as part of my MFA work. I thought it might be of some worth to anyone interested in writing, movies, mysteries and things in that vein.

Chinatown’s hero, Jake Gittes, notes in the Robert Towne screenplay that he is a businessman. It is that primary view of himself that draws him deeper and deeper into the complex plot and dangerous situations, and it affects the way he deals with the obstacles or stones that come his way.

For most of his journey, obstacles occur in the form of deception, bureaucracy and a few violent physical confrontations, yet almost every obstacle is eventually transformed into an impetus that propels the protagonist further toward truth if not victory, for in the end the last obstacle is insurmountable.

The Opening Scene
When the screenplay reader meets him, Jake is in the midst of an adultery case that his spiritual predecessors such as Philip Marlowe or even the more pragmatic Sam Spade might not have touched, and, as it plays out, a hint of Jake’s cynicism is revealed. Only the rich, he tells his blue-collar client who is contemplating a crime of passion, can get away with murder. It is a line not included in the film, yet it reverberates thematically through the entire story.

Since adultery cases are Jake’s specialty, he is chosen to unwittingly manipulate water department engineer Hollis Mulwray into cooperation with a plan to re-route water to the San Fernando Valley for financial gain. Embarking on what he thinks is just another adultery case, Jake begins trailing what he believes to be a straying spouse. In the process of this surveillance, Jake observes the first elements of the plot’s core conspiracy.

Professional embarassment
When Jake discovers his client to be an impostor, he is professionally embarrassed and is introduced to the real wife, Evelyn Mulwray. Initially incensed that he has pursued her husband, she soon becomes Jake’s new client and pushes him further into his examination of the conspiracy once her husband is murdered. The death robs Jake of information Mulwray might have provided, but serves up a reason for him to continue.

The Nose Scene
Inevitable physical confrontation comes soon after. Jake endures a water diversion that’s part of the conspiracy, then is confronted by a pair of thugs operating on behalf of the corrupt water department. They attempt to warn him off with the cutting of his nostril, but the moment is another that fails to push him away. Instead the confrontation confirms the water department’s impropriety and continues to embolden and drive Jake forward as he seeks not just professional exoneration but also a businessman’s payday, bragging he will identify the key players and sue them.

As Jake unravels the public works conspiracy, traversing a variety of obstacles using guile or tricks of his trade, he is pushed even deeper into the story’s real and tragic domestic situation and the encounter with the true villain, Julian Cross. (The character is named Noah on screen.)
Just as his false client deceived him, Jake learns Evelyn has concealed the truth about her daughter born of incest, whom she is attempting to guard from her Cross, her father. When he finally learns the truth, Jake is driven to help her.

At odds with the police
He is put at odds with the police and his former friend as he attempts to assist Evelyn and her daughter escape, creating a ticking clock situation as the story moves toward its conclusion, even as Jake identifies Cross as Mulwray’s killer and the man behind the water department conspiracy, the spot a mystery normally might end and where a degree of concluding satisfaction in the story is found. At least answers are available.

Inadvertently and ironically, Jake—when his motivation ceases to be about only business and returns to a lost idealism—sends Evelyn to her doom. He is repeating a similar incident that occurred when he tried helping someone while working as an investigator in Chinatown. Cross, who is wealthy enough to get away with murder, gets the daughter/granddaughter while the police who are owned by Cross push Jake away.

Jake’s operatives remind him they’re in Chinatown, symbolically the place where the authorities look the other way, where he failed before, and like Chinatown the universe is a place where corruption is so interwoven it cannot be conquered. It’s a truth established in the opening pages. Since the final obstacle in his path cannot be changed or conquered, in the end Jake can only walk way.

What Was I Doing Then?

I was glancing at CNN the other night, and they had a clip from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. The parenthetical date after the title made my head swim--1989.

Holy Moses. That was that long ago?

Not only does that put the original Vacation's release in ancient times, but that means it's nearly 20 years since I went with my buddy and his dad to see the holiday sequel.

Holiday movies are, of course, part of the season, and wedged in after shopping or holiday activities, when it's time to see a movie to avoid fist fights with the relatives.

Movies in general are often reference points, auld lang sine's in their own right, and holiday movies or holiday releases often make me think of absent friends.

Kiss Me Goodbye, I know from imdb.com, was a 1982 release. From memory, I know it was December. My college buddy Lee and I dropped in to see it at the mall cinema. Lee picked that one. Don't know why he was gung ho to see it, but it was pretty good.

It was my buddy David that I went to see the Christmas Vacation film with. He and I went to see Star Trek IV the Thanksgiving it opened also and Starman around Christmas of '84.

Rain Man was a date movie on New Year's Eve the year it opened, part of a holiday romance that lasted a while but not forever. Saw Scrooged with the same girl around Christmas the same year. Seem to remember Steve Martin's Pennies from Heaven as another holiday date movie earlier in the '80s.

I remember Jackie Brown as an outing with my then boss, Wes. Christine and I, he and his wife plus Pam Grier and Robert Forester, now wowing as an uber-villain in Heroes. Time flies.

Yep, time flies.

To absent friends.

Quantum of Solace - A Shaken and Stirred Mixture

I'd heard mumbled comparisons with the Bourne films in reference to the new James Bond outing, Quantum of Solace. Those are not untrue, but nor are they pervasive. 

Action scenes never seem to get to quite the bone-crunching levels they did in Casino Royale, but they are frequent and kinetic, with a couple of early ones offering the blur and bash of Bourne. Things happen so fast your senses require a few frames to catch up. To me that wasn't disappointing at all because things were soon settled into a nice plot-to-action ratio with some Bond-cool chases and battles.

Fleming forever

Happily the new film follows the tone of the Royale reboot, with just a few light touches of past Bond flavor or twists on the old style. We get a red-haired character named Strawberry Fields, as Flemingesque a character name as we've heard since Holly Goodhead, and there's a repeat of the by-the-book--the book being Fleming's Casino Royale--cocktail recipe, which cements that as the replacement for "shaken, not stirred." It's actually a bartender who utters the description this time as a slightly-soused 007 asks "What am I having?"

There's also an homage moment with oil replacing a different precious resource and a set-piece ending both down-to-earth and as extravagant as the best of the set-piece endings in the Bond film canon.

Solace also offers a quality baddie in the person of Mathieu Amaric as Mr. Greene, less grotesque than a Goldfinger but almost as sadistic as Casino's Le Chiffre.

Daniel Craig remains fabulous and grim as bond in his second outing. He is Bond, without question. I'm up for more installments with him in the lead.

Overall, a nice mixture of new formula and old, and a nice early kickoff to the holiday movie season.

Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn

(Charles was right the other day when he noted people can have strong feelings and not understand how others can have different ones. This is generally a pop-culture and personal diary blog, not a political blog, but some days, whether it's good for me or not, I feel compelled to babel about the real world. )

The real world looks more and more like the world of The Dark Knight every day, not in a literal way with set pieces of dire chaos but in a symbolic way as we live through a whirlwind of financial and economic turmoil.

A line from the Batman movie's been playing through my head all week, but I wasn't sure where it applied until last night and this a.m. as reports about yesterday's meeting at the White House unfolded.

Sen. John McCain, after yet another bold, "maverick" move to "suspend" his campaign that was analyzed best, as usual, by The Daily Show:

made a few more public appearances then blew into Washington to fan flames of dissent in a meeting he had called to build agreement.

As the New York Times reported:

At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.

Perhaps the "suspension" and the effort for consensus were inaccurate. Clearly Sen. McCain is more an agent of chaos with a goal articulated by Michael Cain in The Dark Knight.

"...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Addendum
Salon's Joe Consan assesses McCain's roll in the derailment.

Portfolio.com Blog: McCain's Economics

David S. Broder: McCain as Alpha Mail, "imbalance in the deference quotient"

Some on the right are joining a chorus of criticism over Sarah Palin

Newsweek: The Bailout Bill Failed, Should We Blame McCain?

I Liked Indiana Jones. What of It?

I've detected some Indiana Jones bashing out there. I liked Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Is it like the others? Well, yeah, but is that really a problem?

There are great action sequences, from a thrilling opening--with Soviets replacing Nazis as villains--to a hyper motorcycle chase that helps introduce new Indy sidekick Mutt (Shia LaBeouf).

If you're familiar with general paranormal lore, you'll recognize many of the plot riffs stemming from the crystal skull but there's so much excitement and spin that it's all pretty fresh, and if you've avoided spoilers there are many other neat character surprises as well.

I liked it on a par with Raiders and Last Crusade and better than Temple of Doom.

Ohhh, I almost forgot to mention there's a "Lost" Easter Egg: Andrew Divoff aka Patchy aka Mikhail Bakunin is seen briefly as a Russian soldier.

Christine and Benjamin Button

Del Toro will direct "The Hobbit"

The word up at the Wired blog is that Guillermo del Toro who directed Hellboy, The Orphanage and Pan's Labyrinth and other cool flicks is going to be a the helm of The Hobbit, produced by Peter Jackson's production company.

That sounds like a good combination to me, and it's nice to hear the film is back on track after legal wrangling between New Line Cinema and Jackson.

In celebration Wired posts an old Leonard Nimoy performance of the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. Though I know many J.R.R. Tolkien fans disavow it, I've always been fond of the Rankin and Bass animated version of The Hobbit and in particular the main title theme sung by folk great Glen Yarbrough.

Chuck is Gone

It seemed like for a while, when I was a kid, just about every movie or every other movie that I wanted to see starred Charlton Heston. Hard to believe he's gone.

He made a lot of science fiction/horror films in the late sixties and early seventies, so there was a steady run of his pictures on television, representing a great artistic contribution to the cinema of the fantastique.

If it wasn't Heston as Taylor in Planet of the Apes, or as The Omega Man, he was a future cop discovering mass deception in Soylent Green--it's people, you know. Or it was Heston dealing with an Earthquake, a sniper, a sunken sub or a killer mummy.

Later he would move to TV work but still turn up in the occasional genre outing including the Lovecraftesque In the Mouth of Madness and as a Nick Fury-like boss for Ah-nahld in True Lies.

Though it's not genre, it has a high cool factor and I also absolutely love Touch of Evil, in which Heston was a stand-up guy, backing Orson Wells as the director when the studio was iffy. His acting turn in that is a bit odd, but it's a great movie with two great scenes -- the uncut opening tracing the path of a bomb and the suspenseful denouement as Heston tracks Wells as the chief baddie with a listening device, struggling to stay in range.

I'd have met him if I met him
I missed out on the opportunity as a reporter to cover him when he came to Louisiana to appear for a religious group in the early '90s, but I did manage a six-degrees-of-separation moment once upon a time.

I interviewed Mariette Hartley upon the release of her autobiography. She had worked with Heston in a film called Skyjacked in which he played the pilot on a flight plagued by a mad bomber.

Somehow he came up in our conversation, and she talked about how warm and friendly he was in spite of his on-screen persona and his role as Hollywood's top conservative.

It's always nice to hear stars are also nice guys, and it is of course, sad to see Chuck go. At least we'll always have those great scenes to remember:

Pushing reporters out of the way in the oft parodied Airport 75.

Stretching a hand up from the crowd in SG: "Soylent Green is people!"

Handing over the vital bottle of his blood to save mankind in Omega.

And of course:

Kneeling in the sand at the base of the statue of liberty in POA shouting: "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! Damn you all to hell"

Tearing Up

Christine says I tear up too easily at TV shows and movies. You be the judge. I tear(ed) up when:

• James T. Kirk is stealing the Enterprise to save Spock in Star Trek III and James B. Sikking tells him: "If you proceed with this you'll never sit in a captain's chair again," to which Kirk, without hesitation, responds: "Warp speed, Mr. Sulu." If you're a TOS fan, you know what I'm talking about. Captaining a starship is everything to Kirk but he says f*** it to save his friend.
  
• Jody in Family Affair works tirelessly to save Mr. Osaki's ill bonsai tree because he believes its health will determine whether or not Mr. Osaki survives his journey back to Japan to see his family a final time. Jody pulls the tree through though all hope seemed lost and finally gets a letter with a photograph of Mr. Osaki back home.
• The allied POW team chooses not to stage their planned escape during the soccer game halftime in Victory with Sylvester Stallone, Pele and Michael Caine. Instead they decide to play the Nazi team to the game's fruition in occupied France. They win with some play that includes magnificent moves by some of the world's best soccer players in small roles. The Paris crowd is so thrilled that they rally, shouting "Victorie, victorie, victorie," and tear down the stadium walls, thus facilitating escape for the heroes anyway. (I guess I should have said spoiler warning if you havn't managed to catch that film on cable sometime in the past 25 years.)
  
• The moment I realized in Brother Bear that the mother little Koda is looking forward to seeing again is the same bear Kenai killed. Christine says even Monty the Cat who was at my side as I watched that was teary eyed, though he claimed: "No, no there's just something in my eye."
  
• When Bernard and Rose were reunited in Lost. Christine teared up at that one too.

Those are just a few, but I guess they're illustrative.

How I Spent Christmas Vacation

I guess EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANNA KNOW about Blade Runner is in the new boxed set.

I learned a lot of it, though I have a few featurettes yet to view.

Dangerous holidays
It took me a while to finish "Dangerous Days," the making-of documentary on the boxed edition of Blade Runner.

It's about 3 1/2 hours long, but it's a fascinating look into the creative processes that translated the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into the classic science fiction movie.

You go from the inception to the post-release and long-term phenomenon. Lots of outtakes and behind the scenes footage are included, even an interview with the artist who created the neon elements for the set.

The early portions of the documentary, detailing the first drafts and early story boards of a screenplay first called "Dangerous Days" are, to me, the most fascinating with both writers Hampton Fancher and David Peoples supplying insight.

The Results - Movies included
I watched the set's new director's cut, illustrating the results of the angst and hardship portrayed in the making-of. The new cut, while not drastically different from the earlier director's cut, fixes things I'd never noticed were broken. I've decided I do like the final cut and its more abrupt ending better than the theatrical release from 1982 with its voiceover and hopeful conclusion, though thankfully it's nice to have that version to review.

I didn't get to see the movie until the fall of '82 because Central Louisiana theaters didn't run the movie that summer. When I finally got to see it, the opening crawl was screwed up though eventually they got that fixed so that the immersion into the Blade Runner world was possible. I liked it then but wasn't blown away as some people were.

In retrospect it's possible to clear my earlier blindness and appreciate better just how good a film it is and how unique. It's real science fiction as it rarely makes it to the screen.

I'm glad I had a couple of days to relax with the boxed set with limited interruption.

The life and death of movies

With home theaters, big screen television and other temptations to make you wait for the DVD, the movie industry clearly needs new dazzle to lure moviegoers to theaters. The enhanced 3-D digital of Beowolf certainly present an enticing carrot.

Spears and Grendle come right at ya, and it's all in all a pretty wowing movie experience, but I felt like I was witnessing spears being driven not into sea monsters so much as moviegoing with the flip side of the experience.

The digital theater in town, where you had to go for the 3-D version, offers dazzling clarity. Still, I have to wrangle with Christine to convince her to go to that Carmike-owned establishment over the locally-owned theater closest to the house. She doesn't worry as much about crystal clarity as I do.

But for 3-D she agreed.

Only to be subjected to what she hates most about the Carmike theater, where we used to get a Fantanas concert every time we went. As Entertainment Weekly once put it "enough with the $3%@*(&^*%*% Fantanas."

It's the holiday movie season so there are more commercials than ever. We got an extended music video about the National Guard then a host of paid commercials, then a string of previews including a cool new I Am Legend trailer.

Then came the message to put on the 3-D glasses, a demo of 3-D effects, a preview of a a 3-D U2 concert video--Bono comin' at you--and a preview for Journey 3-D with Brendan Fraiser.

Then more previews.

"This has been going on for half an hour," Christine said.

She was right of course.

Once Beowolf started and we settled in and enjoyed it, but I'm going to have a heck of a time making another "it's worth it for the digital experience" argument.

Enough with the overabundance of commercials. I know I'm not the only one saying it. That's because it's true.

Keep it up, theater chains, and I will wait for the DVD.