I always enjoy an all-over-the-map update after one as narrowly focused as last month’s:
Beast from Haunted Cave (1959), in which the bank robbers were ready for anything except a monster…
Dracula (1973), in which I’m not sure how you arrive at the decision to cast a cowboy in decline as frigging Count Dracula, but that’s what Dan Curtis did…
Dune, Part One (2021), in which I’m insisting on that “Part One” precisely because the producers were so determined to downplay it…
Frankenstein (1973), in which Curtis does something even more radical than casting Jack Palance as Dracula: he makes a Frankenstein movie that more or less follows the book!
Halloween: Resurrection (2002), in which the second major timeline of the Halloween franchise reaches an ending even more ignominious than the first one’s…
Superchick (1973), in which she may have a secret identity, but her only superpower is polyamory…
and…
What Have You Done to Solange? (1972), in which I saved the sleaziest for last with regard to my recent giallo binge.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.
#1 by Brian on November 30, 2021 - 1:57 pm
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After being a fan of both your reviews and the Halloween films for years, I have to say it’s very exciting to finally get to see your impressions of each installment. I’m hoping we’ll get your thoughts on the remaining films in time for the new one next October. A review of the forthcoming “Halloween Ends” would be the perfect way to cap this journey through the franchise.
#2 by El Santo on November 30, 2021 - 4:58 pm
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“I’m hoping we’ll get your thoughts on the remaining films in time for the new one next October.”
That is indeed the objective. I’ll be tackling the Rob Zombie ones next, probably in January.
#3 by PB210 on November 30, 2021 - 5:28 pm
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Superchick (1973):
“As soon as she’s out of sight from any of her coworkers, she ducks into a telephone booth— a telephone booth, you understand— where she undergoes a remarkable transformation”.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhoneBoothChangingRoom
In Super-Folks: At one point, David Brinkley wonders why he changed into his costume so frequently in phone booths-when phone booths are transparent. This a joke on the stereotype of Superman changing into his costume in a phone booth-something he rarely did in the comic books [and George Reeves never did either; David Wilson seems the first live-action TV iteration to avail of a phone booth]. Superman did change in a phone booth in the 1940’s cartoons-which, since they came out in the 1940’s, came out when phone booths were made out of wood and resembled outhouses.
https://commonreader.wustl.edu/why-superman-used-a-phone-booth/
“Clark Kent chose a phone booth (a glass one, transparent and illogical) to morph into Superman”.
Wooden phone boths seemed helpfully available in the 1940’s.
I find it odd that the writer keeps reiterating this notion. In the history of Superman, it was almost always storage rooms where Clark changed, by a very large margin over other places (alleys, roofs and stairwells were all also popular).
1) We know the cliché of Clark Kent ducking into a phone booth to change into Superman, but how common was it, really? I remember more stories where he changes in a storeroom at the Daily Planet instead.
— Scott (vertical@abc.com)
1) The cliché grew out of the Fleisher cartoons of the 1940s, which showed Clark changing in one of the old-fashioned wooden phone booths. I think E. Nelson Bridwell did a search once and found only one or two occasions in the comic books where it happened.
Sidebar on other options for changing clothes:
“The Spider and the Shadow had special compartments in their limousines or cabs to put their cloaks into, and would change in their limousines”.
#4 by PB210 on November 30, 2021 - 5:37 pm
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“This movie wants you to think it’s something like Cleopatra Jones with a white girl”
With the historical Cleopatra as a Greek woman, a Greek woman should use the cognomen Cleopatra.
#5 by Richard on November 30, 2021 - 9:01 pm
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I’m already picturing a parody version of Dune…
The “Kwisatz Haderach” becomes the “Ersatz Headache”, there’s the Reverend Mother Mohel….
#6 by Blake Matthews on December 1, 2021 - 6:36 am
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Re: Halloween: Resurrection – What was your reaction to Busta Rhymes going all Jim Kelly on Michael Meyers at the end?
#7 by ruprecht on December 1, 2021 - 8:59 am
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Dune… I had the same problem with Avatar. I can buy faster than light travel but not if it requires faster than light travel to acquire in the first place. Yes it could be attained but doing hundred year long sleeper ship journeys but then seems insanely unlikely such ships would figure it all out or bring enough back that they could figure it out. Am I missing something? Did the movie/book explain?
#8 by El Santo on December 1, 2021 - 9:18 am
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“What was your reaction to Busta Rhymes going all Jim Kelly on Michael Myers at the end?”
I’m conflicted on that. On the one hand, I like it when things that a movie makes a big production of setting up actually pay off somehow, and Halloween: Resurrection sure does make a big deal of Freddie being a devotee of kung fu. Also, I appreciate it when high-numbered sequels find even the tiniest genuinely new thing to add to the formula, and there’s certainly never been a kung fu fight in a Halloween movie before! In practice, though, the scene really feels like it belongs more in a Scary Movie sequel than a Halloween sequel, you know?
#9 by El Santo on December 1, 2021 - 11:19 am
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“Am I missing something? Did the movie/book explain?”
Villeneuve’s Dune very much does not. Indeed, it doesn’t even explain how the current mode of interstellar travel works, let alone how it was done before the colonization of Arrakis. That’s one of the things that bugs me about the new movie.
Now in the Lynch Dune, there’s the interesting wrinkle that Melange enables travel over interstellar (and possibly even intergalactic) distances without FTL in the strict sense. The Spacing Guild navigators just get super baked and tie the fabric of space-time into knots with the power of their drug-addled minds. So in that version, there’s room to fan-wank some backstory where humans used to get around the universe using some kind of “conventional” FTL drive, but dropped it in favor of folding space after we figured out what the Spice did, because the old way was insanely dangerous and/or expensive. Again, though, there’s nothing in the movie itself to say that’s how it happened.
As for the book, it’s been way too many years since I read it. Herbert was constantly dropping cryptic hints about what life in the Imperium was like in the distant past, though, so maybe? I wouldn’t be surprised, at least, to discover that some of those hints pointed vaguely in the direction of pre-Melange spacefaring paradigms, in the same way that references to the Butlerian Jihad lay a skeletal foundation for the emergence of Mentats. I don’t remember anything in particular, however.
#10 by supersonic man on December 3, 2021 - 11:57 am
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My take on the Dune book series: https://supersonicman.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/the-novel-dune-is-both-great-and-flawed/
#11 by PB210 on October 14, 2022 - 11:54 am
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http://b-masters.com/2021/11/posted-last-night-at-1000-misspent-hours-and-counting/
Superchick (1973):
“As soon as she’s out of sight from any of her coworkers, she ducks into a telephone booth— a telephone booth, you understand— where she undergoes a remarkable transformation”.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhoneBoothChangingRoom
Sidebar on phone booths; rather than phone boths; Pay outhouses seem available in urban areas; therefore, carry coins around for pay outhouses as individuals previously carried coins for phone booths.