Movies I Have Seen Lately

[The Baron]

Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.

[The Baron]

Re-watching Godzilla (1954).  God, I love that picture!

[Richard Willis]

According to IMDB, the actor Mantan Moreland played Jefferson 'Jeff' Jackson in a series of movies.

He also played a character called Birmingham Brown in several Charlie Chan movies.

Back then all the parts for black people were racial stereotypes. I think the choice was do it and make decent money or just don't act in movies. Sidney Poitier hadn't come along yet to straighten that out.

[Richard Willis]

I guess you do!

The Baron said:

Re-watching Godzilla (1954).  God, I love that picture!

[ClarkKent_DC]

Richard Willis said:

According to IMDB, the actor Mantan Moreland played Jefferson 'Jeff' Jackson in a series of movies.

He also played a character called Birmingham Brown in several Charlie Chan movies.

Back then all the parts for black people were racial stereotypes. I think the choice was do it and make decent money or just don't act in movies. Sidney Poitier hadn't come along yet to straighten that out.

There was an alternative option: So-called "race movies," independent films produced and/or directed by and/or written by Black filmmakers, starring Black actors, targeted for Black audiences. 

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Last night I watched For Madmen Only, a biopic about comedy legend Del Close.  It uses the Wasteland comics he and John Ostrander wrote for DC in the 80s as a framing sequence and recurring motif to bring us in to his tumultuous and flamboyant life. I liked it a lot, but think the reenactments (featuring James Urbaniak as Close) are the weakest & least trustworthy ,part of the film -- it portrays Ostrander almost as Close's stenographer, rather than his writing partner. But regardless, it's a great look at one of the guiding, anarchic forces behind modern comedy.

[Captain Comics]

Watched Eternals, now that it's on streaming. It was a very different sort of Marvel movie, where even the Big Fight in the third act didn't bother me, as it was just a delaying tactic by Ikaris, so there were real stakes happening elsewhere. I see that it's not very popular on Rotten Tomatoes, but I liked it.

And what a cast!

[Philip Portelli]

I just saw The Monuments Men (2014) and thought it was above average. Of course, much of the cast were too old for the parts (John Goodman, Bill Murray) and they tried to add humor to a serious issue: the recovery of stolen and looted art treasures by the Nazis. I thought that the actual events happened after the war, but they occurred during the war! 

The subject deserved more time than a two-hour movie. Perhaps a six or eight part mini-series would have been better.

[Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)]

Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project - a neat little documentary about Don Rickles, and I learned a lot. Not just about Don (like he was a WWII vet), but other things as well. I didn't know Frank Sinatra and Bob Newhart were some of Johnny Carson's guest hosts on the Tonight Show. I loved the bit on how he got involved with his future wife.

Pig - This is a recent Nicholas Cage joint, and it was good I thought. Cage plays a reclusive ex-chef out in the middle of the woods. He has a truffle finding pig, that someone steals from his cabin, and the movie is his search for the pig. My biggest complaint about the movie it that Cage's characters is such a jerk to everyone. If I was the dude helping him, I would have left him wandering the streets pretty early on. I just kept thinking, "You know you could say 'thank you' once in a while to the people trying to help you."

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"Last night I watched For Madmen Only, a biopic about comedy legend Del Close. It uses the Wasteland comics he and John Ostrander wrote for DC in the 80s as a framing sequence and recurring motif to bring us in to his tumultuous and flamboyant life."

I've never heard of For Madmen Only, but I used to read Wasteland. One of my favorite comic book stories ever was written by John Ostrander for Wasteland. 

DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE (1920): I thought i had seen all of the silent horror films of note, but I missed this one somehow. Well worth watching if you've never seen it. Starring John Barrymore. 

[Richard Willis]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE (1920): I thought i had seen all of the silent horror films of note, but I missed this one somehow. Well worth watching if you've never seen it. Starring John Barrymore. 

They don't have Jekyll survive, do they?

I watched the Lon Chaney Sr silent version of Hunchback of Notre Dame and was dismayed that everybody survived except the one bad guy.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"They don't have Jekyll survive, do they?"

No, it was a decent adaptation of the novel (meaning that some changes were made, but mainly ones to make the story more linear). 

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Jeff, if you want to check it out, For Madmen Only is free if you have Hulu. 

Which Wasteland story was your favorite?