Made

Your boy won the weekly San Antonio Current flash fiction contest. Not bad.

The story was inspired by the outstanding work of the Denver and St. Paul police departments.

Let them call it exploitation.

I call it the good, old-fashioned, double feature.

If Dario Argento directed 200 Motels, you’d have Hausu.

If Martin Scorsese didn’t direct Cape Fear, you’d have…

And don’t forget the comedy short at the beginning!

Finding that special someone…

…that special someone who projects an image onto a large screen.

I have acquired such a screen. Now, what’s a boy to do? Ignore it? Leave it in the closet, until a smarter, more ambitious fellow comes along? Hardly. I’m looking for the projector of my dreams…or at least a cheap one that won’t break in two years.

There are some budget models. And considering my apathetic stance towards HD, I’m hardly looking towards high-end stuff. Oh, those endless nights of movies – some from Hollywood, some from the next room – shafts of light across a darkened room, with no tubes or LCD to come between us. And if I get off the couch (when I finally buy one), you’ll be able to see Boris Karloff on the back of my skull!

I want to be the first – and only – kid on my block who has movie nights the old fashioned way.

Yipes.

Realizing…

Does anyone on my block even do movie nights? If so, is it purely Blockbuster fare, or do they take the plunge? Take John Carpenter films, for example. Sure, they’ve seen Halloween, but how about Dark Star?

I watched this movie with some self-proclaimed Carpenter fans, and they thought it was just awful. In fact, they stopped inviting me over after that night. Fine by me. If you can’t appreciate Carpenter’s genius on a small screen, you don’t deserve to see it blown up.

Silencio!

Film Threat interviews Jeff Mashino, the Indiana Jones of silent movie fans. He tracks down rare silent films, and has them restored and released.

Is there a market in today’s DVD world for silent movies? And what have been the challenges and strategies you’ve faced in getting the word out on your titles?
Absolutely! It is the lesson of “The Long Tail,” the theory popularized by Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson, that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream studio-produced DVDs and mass retail distribution) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of “specialty market” niches in the tail, driven in part by the Internet, which has allowed the costs of distribution to become cheaper and has provided a means by which more people can become educated about film history. I’ve tried to use this (and low overhead) to my advantage with Flicker Alley – since I am not entrenched in the traditional “bricks and mortar” retail store route, I rely on online promotion and sales.

The better mousetrap will be the one that keeps people interested in buying movies at all. We don’t make too many classics these days. The Departed and Pulp Fiction come to mind, but little else. There will be dozens more movies like Spider-Man and TransFormers, but they’ll be disposable as always.

The archivists of tomorrow will be sending off plenty of emails, looking for those lost, “great” YouTube videos. Let’s hope something truly great comes along between now and then, so we can say we lived through it. (Hint: It won’t come from Hollywood.)

Fast, sure. But the speed of light?

When you’re growing up in a single-wide in 1986, this kind of thing looks really exciting. Throw in an atmosphere you’ll never be able to recreate, and you have a Christmas winner.  It wasn’t nearly as impressive as the ad, but whatever. I loved Lazer Tag.

I even had the Starbase, which you could program to play in lieu of partners, in case you had no friends or were too lame to share.

Do “futuristic” toys even exist anymore? Or is this the future? If so, where’s Snake Plissken when we need him?

Because there’s a little metal in all of us.

The TransFormers, as scored by Manowar! Notice how the visuals match the lyrics. This is a tightly-edited fan flick. Bravo!

What’s causing all this?

The posts below were all published in Austin’s INsite magazine. I had a great time writing for those guys, even if it was in exchange for swag. I think I could have done a better job here and there, but DVD reviews aren’t exactly the best forum for changing the language. If you like what you read, leave a comment!

Guns N’ Roses

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, March, 2007.

Someone very special told me that Axl Rose is a big INsite reader. He buys it every month. He was going to contribute a tour diary, but that would mean he’d actually have to tour. Plus, it would probably take the place of the DVD reviews, and forget that. I need swag.

Okay, so there’s a small element of LIESLIESLIES to all of that. But I do talk to Axl. And right now, all I can say is that it’s not going to work. Do you read me, Axl? It’s not happening. Buckethead, Rivethead, Celery Head: nope. We want Slash and Duff back. We’d like Izzy, if you can swing it, but Gilby’s probably learned how to play since The Spaghetti Incident. If you can teach him to write, it may work out. Steve’s probably raking in millions with Adler’s Appetite, but we love Matt Sorum. Try to secure him in between Cult reunions.

Anything else is merely Axl N’ Pals. You can hire Jeffrey Coombs to reanimate Jimi and Duane, sew them together, give the thing a guitar and win a Nobel Prize for Musical Taste. It still won’t matter, because it still won’t be Slash.

Until the G n’ R faithful finally get their due (even if it’s a one-off song over the end credits of Road House 3), we’ll always have retro. It’s just a shame that Chrome Dreams, whose Sexy Intellectual titles have been fabulous over the past year, couldn’t get it together for the band that made me a lifelong metalhead.

At first, the new double-disc Guns DVD seems like a steal. It contains two documentaries, one on the band, the other more Axl-centric (in keeping with the band’s history, I suppose). The cover art is a classic band pose: even Steve and Izzy recline like this beautiful thing will never end. The back of the box promises goodies like “full colour picture discs and deluxe DVD slipcases,” making it a “collector’s item of the highest order.”

So heaven isn’t too far away. Get ready for nothing but a good time. No need to live on a prayer, because…

Nope. It’s awful. It’s just repackaged baloney from a few years ago, apparently before Chrome Dreams started taking advantage of fair use laws. Unlike their Nirvana, Velvet Underground and Rolling Stones discs, these documentaries contain no musical clips of the band. That’s usually the first sign of a bad time, but the interviews are just atrocious. While other documentaries from this company have included some fairly insightful talking heads, this one pretty much phones it in. You do get to hear from the girl who let the band borrow her apartment, though.

Not that G n’ R was ever as good as the rock press made them out to be (no band is), but fans deserve better than this rehashed one-off. I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I’ve seen better stuff on VH1. Being an avid fan of Chrome Dreams’ good stuff, I honestly look forward to a genuine effort at a real Guns doc. Even with “superb packaging including inserts,” this product is rusty and wilted.

Tobe Hooper

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, November, 2006.

Tobe Hooper really likes Dr. Pepper. Because of this fact, I no longer judge people who drink the stuff, although I still stay away from it. (That goes for any drink with benzoate in its makeup. Look it up on Alternet or Wikipedia.) That’s the power of cinema. My love for Hooper’s work is so great, I am now willing to look past my own social experience with a terrible soft drink, and see that geniuses can be Peppers, too.

Hooper has several new DVD’s out right now. His recent Masters of Horror episode, comes from a story by the great Richard Matheson. Matheson’s prose is responsible for some of the greatest fantastic film and television of the last century. He is perhaps best known for novels like Hell House and I Am Legend, his Twilight Zone episodes and stories-turned-movies like Duel and The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Hooper’s episode, “Dance of the Dead,” is a post-apocalyptic zombie story, starring Robert Englund as master of ceremonies to the ultimate humiliation: reanimated corpses are forced to perform on stage. I feel it’s a perfect example of what every Masters show should have: replay value. I can watch this episode several times. God bless Austin.

My favorite thing about this show, other than Englund’s performance (as over the top as he’s ever been), is Hooper’s use of superimposition. I knew I’d been watching movies for too long when I could tell the trick was done in-camera, rather than on someone’s laptop. Darren Aronofsky had a similar trick in Requiem for a Dream, but Hooper’s more chaotic vision required special cameras that could shoot, backwind, and re-shoot at the camera operator’s discretion. If the end result makes you nervous, Hooper’s done his job.

To be fair, a lot of fans really hate this episode. That’s happened to Hooper’s work plenty of times. Back to that in a moment.

            I don’t ordinarily double-dip on DVD’s. Satisfaction is usually achieved the first time around, particularly if the special features are genuinely special. Pioneer’s old DVD of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was a great product for its time. Before box sets for a single movie were in vogue, Pioneer did a great job of giving rabid Leatherheads exactly what they wanted: a commentary, outtakes, deleted scenes and trailers. Unfortunately, the transfer looked like it was shot through a screen door. Hooper’s masterpiece deserved better.

            Yes. “Masterpiece,” I said. The original Chain Saw is the primary reason I’ll still pick up a movie camera. I don’t need Quentin Tarantino to tell me it’s a better, more important movie than Easy Rider. I knew that in middle school. Maybe I like the film too much. I did a fan commentary for it a few years ago, and got a little coverage in Salon and on NPR. They got a laugh out of it.

The new edition from Dark Sky Films contains all of the extras from the original DVD, plus a beautiful new image and even more extra features, including a second commentary and the “lost” documentary, The Shocking Truth. A new interview piece is scored by Austin’s own Russell Clepper, and it fits the mood beautifully. If you’re one of those poor saps who only knows about Leatherface from New Line’s godawful remake, now’s your chance to get the real thing. (I mean, come on. In the remake, Leatherface isn’t even a cannibal. Maybe he should take up macramé while he’s at it.)

It took nearly fifteen years for the original film to get a sequel (not to mention compound word status for its title tool), but the result was yet another cult classic. No one I knew felt this way about Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 when it was new. Nearly everyone hated this movie. Feeling that too many people failed to see the humor in the original, Hooper dared to make Chainsaw 2 into a barely-veiled parody of the first. James Whale did the same thing with Bride of Frankenstein, and as did Joe Dante with Gremlins 2.

Not your cup of tea? What if I told you that Dennis Hopper runs around in a cowboy hat, with chainsaws strapped to his waist like six-shooters? Plus, you get Bill Moseley as Chop-Top, the Nam vet with a very visible metal plate in his head. He has to scratch it with a coat hanger. Plus, Leatherface falls in love. It’s beautiful.

It’s time we recognize Tobe Hooper’s skill as a director. By “we,” I mean Earth people. Texans have known about it from the jump.

I’m still not drinking Dr. Pepper, though. Unless I can find the new Eaten Alive DVD. Then I’ll drink one.

Weird Al Show, Pee-Wee Herman Show, Faith No More, Vince McMahon, The Big Buy

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, October, 2006.

The Weird Al Show was gaudy, obnoxious, and nerdier than the Drafthouse on anime night. It was obviously a kids’ show, which was okay, because it was far funnier than its Saturday morning time slot deserved. It was 1997, about six years since tabloid TV “news” had demolished Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Someone needed to fill the void. For one season, “Weird Al” Yankovic would deliver a fairly worthy successor. Sure, it had lame guest stars like Drew Carey and Hanson, but it was still better than anything your kids have been subjected to since. The new three-disc DVD comes with commentaries and some behind the scenes stuff. Fire up the accordion, fix some Twinkie wiener sandwiches, put on a Hawaiian shirt and do a rubber man dance. Perhaps Al-TV won’t be too far behind.

Speaking of Paul Ruebens, you can’t go wrong with his Playhouse prototype, The Pee-Wee Herman Show. This is the HBO special from 1981, several years before the silver screen, the weekly series, or all those jokes about Abraham Lincoln. He wasn’t quite the guy from Nice Dreams anymore, but this was no kids’ show, either. Shoe mirrors, fake dog doo, a Shaft reference, Kaptain Karl getting blitzed, Jambi’s joke about his new hands: it’s all risqué, perhaps even more so today than when it was new. (If that last thought makes you shudder, we should hang out.) There are no extras, but the show itself is brilliant, and the price tag is low. Plus, you get guest stars like Phil Hartman, John Paragon, a barely recognizable Tito Larriva, and the incomparable Lynne Stewart.

Mike Patton must have seen The Pee-Wee Herman Show, as it contains a classic children’s educational film about minding your manners, lest you become a “Mr. Bungle.” Patton would reach a larger audience with Faith No More, who has a double-feature DVD out now. Live at the Brixton Academy, London was on VHS and CD during the band’s Real Thing heyday, and features a fantastic concert with songs from the era. Patton flops like a fish during “Epic,” breaks wind into the microphone and swears it was real, and even belts out a couple of tunes originally sung by Faith No More’s first frontman, Chuck Moseley. Who Cares a Lot? The Greatest Videos covers the band’s entire career, and made me wonder why these guys had to break up. I mean, we lose an innovative, imaginative, songwriting machine like Faith No More, but the Chili Peppers get to release the same album every few years?

I haven’t watched McMahon, but I know it exists, because I’ve seen it in stores. I even held it in my hands, but I put it down before the curse could affect me.

Let’s face it: I’m a big dork for wrestling. You know those anime guys I made fun of in the first paragraph? They have nothing on wrestling fans when it comes to utter silliness. Some of us have limits, though. Mine is McMahon. He runs the whole show, some old robber baron’s version of action storytelling, where the racial and gender stereotypes are worse than anything that upset Pauline Kael. And he gets away with creating really bad television (and now, really bad movies, thanks to Lion’s Gate and Fox), because he’s the last one left. (TNA? Please. I’d love to see those guys succeed, but I’m not staying up until eleven on a Thursday night – or whenever they’re on this week – in the hopes that Impact will at least be slightly better than Raw or WWECW.)

So, no, I won’t be paying money to watch the old fart pretend he can wrestle. I also won’t be buying any autobiographical DVD’s from Steve Jobs or Rupert Murdoch. I love wrestling, but there’s better, more entertaining stuff out there.

The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress is for fans of an entirely different variety of wrestling. Our state’s favorite disgraced congressman finally gets his own movie, and it’s an eye-opener. This is the guy who said, in 1994, that having no federal government at all would suit him just fine. Over the course of a decade, DeLay did all he could to make this happen. The movie comes from Disinfo, the same bunch who brought you Outfoxed. Check it out, especially for the killer jazz score.