The Signal Watch blog

Stanwyck Watch: Jeopardy (1953)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:03:32 +0000

Watched: 09/23/2026

Format: TCM Noir Alley

Viewing: First

Director: John Sturges

I don't know how you can't be blown away by Barbara Stanwyck. Just an incredible talent. I might be a fan of, say, Marie Windsor, but I know when someone got Stanwyck, she was going to deliver in a way maybe only 1 or 2 of her contemporaries could.*

It's not like our preferred mode of horror and thrillers these days isn't "nice suburban people suddenly confronted with someone who will kill them". And Jeopardy (1953) is absolutely in that mode.

Anyway, this isn't a deep drama. It's a fast-moving noirish thriller with a small cast, life or death stakes, and proof that kids are just bent on self-destruction, and keeping them safe is probably more trouble than its worth.

Stanwyck co-stars with first Barry Sullivan, who plays her husband. They're on a roadtrip from southern California into Mexico to go fishing with their young son, do some camping in a remote spot Sullivan found long ago.

SPOILERS

Their kid goes out on a rotting pier and needs help returning. Sullivan goes to help him, and in doing so, falls and traps his leg under a fallen beam. And the tide is coming in.

Stanwyck is sent for help, when she comes across Ralph Meeker, an escaped con on the run. Maybe 60 seconds too late she realizes this guy is a raging psychopath on the run.

Meeker isn't above hitting a Stanwyck, and he's clearly just off his nut. He sees a chance, and runs some cops off a dirt road, flipping their car.

In a scene that made my eyebrows raise to my hairline, Stanwyck - who has realized she's probably not getting out of this alive, and if she doesn't sort this out, her husband is going to drown in the pounding waves while her young son watches, decides to seduce Meeker.

Friends, I am 97% sure she has sex with Meeker to get him to go along with her plan. She convinced him he should go where her husband is and rescue him to get his clothes (Meeker's in prison duds), his car and his ID, and she'll then go with Meeker.

So, how does she convince him?

I assumed this would be a pretty straightforward movie about pluck and resolve in the face of terror winning the day. But it's not - it's a movie that says "how far would you go to save your husband and child?" in the bleakest terms (and in Stanwyck's V.O.). And we kind of know - no one is ever going to know, because Meeker will be dead in a day or so, and she'll never tell.

A *lot* gets implied in noir, or even stated outright (but never shown). And then with a star of Stanwyck's stature... she picked a hell of a way to quit retirement, which Stanwyck had tried for a few months before coming back to movies. I'm just surprised they went there. It's absolutely something you'd read in a book from the time that would get softened or blown past in a film adaptation.

Maybe there's another reading that got past the Hayes office, but.. yeah, this is some dark, dark stuff, and that tagline on the poster above, "she did it because her fear was greater than her shame" pretty much closes any debate.

Clocking in at a trim 69 minutes, there's zero fat on the movie. And because, to this viewer, everything happening is really all leading to a single act that occurs off-screen and is never directly acknowledged, it's a movie that is exactly as long as it should be, moving along at a terrific clip.

I do have questions about how part of it was made. Barry Sullivan was clearly sitting in water somewhere with waves - maybe a studio lot pool. I don't know. But he's essentially getting his ass kicked by very real waves of some sort for 45 minutes of the movie. I hope he was paid handsomely.

Now, this plot would be Act 1 of a movie, but more likely the pilot of a new prestige series that would get two seasons and you'd never hear about it til it was canceled. But it's a reminder of how movies were consumed at one point - like paperback novels, meant to be watched for the the thrills and what could be deep character introspection - after all, what happens NEXT to these people? - is never really the point. It's what one woman did in a crisis.

*yes, I mean Davis and Crawford

Kubrick Watch: Barry Lyndon (1975)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 01:33:00 +0000

Watched: 09/21/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Somehow I'd never seen Barry Lyndon (1975). I assume some part of my brain would look at the film and say "it won't be fun, and it's 3 hours" and would tap out before I could hit play.

In the past 20 years or so, the common wisdom I received in the 1990's - that the movie was dull or not Kubrick's best - seems to have evaporated and the film has received serious reconsideration. But aside from "people in ruffles cavort in what looks like the second half of the 18th Century", I had no idea what the film was about. That said, every film student knew that Kubrick's movie was shot with very special lenses, using only candlelight in many scenes -something unheard of in film production. And I knew Barry Lyndon was supposed to be one of the most visually stunning movie ever produced, which... I mean, Kubrick. You get that as part of the package.

I am the first to confess, I am not a reader of 19th century books - not since college, anyway, and usually then as coursework. The film is a loose-ish adaptation of a novel by Thackeray, released in the 1840's but set in the mid 1700's. There's whiffs of other things I've seen or read that let me know what's in the book and therefore the movie, and I'm reminded of Tom Jones a bit, as well as Great Expectations. But that's a real basic bitch reading, I'm guessing.

Still, it's the episodic adventures of a young man moving through a life where titles and social standing are all that matter, and occasionally getting laid (tastefully and off camera).

Much has been said about the look of Barry Lyndon. And that is all true. It is absolutely painterly in its use of light, of color, of framing. It looks very much unlike other mid-70's cinema and wears its influences from the preceding centuries openly. I'm not steeped in art history, but I've been to a museum or two, and even I could see what Kubrick was up to, recreating how figures were captured, scenes were composed, light fell. It's a very image-forward film, hanging on often languid shots to allow you to take it in, a lost era re-created so completely one might find it immersive.

I am not on record as a Ryan O'Neal fan, nor will I be one today, but will say that he had a window in which he made some excellent movies, either by luck of being cast or what he brought. And I feel like Kubrick saw something so baffled and dead-eyed in what O'Neal could do, he really is the ideal casting for someone barely in touch with the events surrounding him, maybe too dull in some ways to do much but coast along on the currents of fate, which keep him bumping and swirling for the first Part of the film.

O'Neal is rarely asked to do much more than look pretty and have a somewhat vacant expression. Redmond Barry - who will become Barry Lyndon - is not the sharpest crayon in the box. He sees himself as a would-be gentleman, always on the verge of a great destiny, and he is somewhat cunning. But he is riding the tides of fortune from when he is ejected from his home (and even that is engineered, he learns later), his actions sometimes having great impact, but almost never what he intended.

It takes him from bucolic Ireland to the front lines of the Seven Years War (one I know only the North American aspect), to the courts of royals and into marriage with a woman far above his station.

Across the board, everyone's bringing their A-game. Oddly, aside from O'Neal, the only actor I recognized was Patrick Magee, who plays the Chevalier. One will note that Philip Stone who played Grady in The Shining also appears.

What I can't believe is my lack of familiarity with Marisa Berenson, who appeared in Cabaret, but who I otherwise haven't seen. But apparently she is an American who went to Europe and stayed there to make movies.

I know some find Kubrick's distance from his subjects aloof or off-putting. I don't (so there!). He's not shoving anyone at the lens and insisting you love them via the intimacy of a close-up of a beautiful face. It's camera as 3rd person limited omniscient, and it's up to us to sort out the film. And this may be a bit challenging.

Barry Lyndon is at least a comedy in part, but also a tragedy for many characters, and a commentary on class and chasing a better station. Who has more bills than those who throw their fortunes around? Even when you achieve the role you imagined for yourself, is that enough? Or do you both want more, and fail to avoid the trials and tribulations of life? And, in the end, who you are deep down is often what truly matters.

This is, at the end of the day, a movie I feel necessitates a re-watch. I was too caught up in the visuals at times to always listen to the dialogue as closely as I probably should have, to see everything the movie had to offer. And I was trying!

Is it my favorite Kubrick? No. Do I get why people rave about it? Yes. And I suspect the more I may see it, the more I may enjoy it.

Texas Watch: Friday Night Lights (Pilot)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 15:18:30 +0000

Jamie has been along for the ride on DC's Lanterns. Thanks to her proximity to me and my occasional, intrusive-thought driven monologues, she probably knows more about Green Lanterns than she ever bargained for in this life, so she was primed.

But she also has been a Kyle Chandler stan since back in the day. I get it.

Anyway, that much Kyle Chandler reminded her of the pilot for Friday Night Lights.

Both of us got vaccinated Friday and are slugging it out with our white blood cells, so when she put it on, I was in full support.

I'll argue two things:

The pilot for Friday Night Lights is maybe the best pilot of any TV show I've seen.
Friday Night Lights captures Texas, at least the Texas of its era, the best of any movie or show.

Mechanically, the pilot is excellent. It introduces everyone, sets their status quo and their anxieties and desires. It introduces the stakes of football in this town, and shows how football is a cultural center for the town, right down to how religion is worked in (which I know non-former-jocks don't get, but this is very real). It also shows what it's like to be on a team, when you spend a lot of time with people you may not necessarily get along with, but form a sports-friendship.

And it's delivered in a healthy mix of snippets of conversations in a collage of scenes that both show and tell.

The show seems to exist entirely inside the magic hour, when teams practice, when games are set to start - I have my own memories of walking into a local stadium as the sun was setting. Paired with the dreamy music of post-rock band Explosions in the Sky, it gives the show a feeling of instant nostalgia.

Dialogue is natural and written in the patter of Texas, as well as people who stew in sports jargon, both on the field and when talking to the press. I think the accents work. Texas accents are all over the place, mixes of regional from the Deep South to the Central Texas thing I get after a few cocktails, to more of the East Texas drawl.

The people look and act like how they were 20 years ago, anyway, before the state became flooded with out-of-staters.* I firmly believe in Coach and Mrs. Taylor as the former high school Homecoming King and Queen, now making their way well past the glory days, but steeped in the culture of sport and small town living.

From a storytelling perspective, the pilot is tight as hello, laying all of this out, and then turning on a dime in the last fifteen minutes. If we thought we knew what the show would be, it's just changed a lot. The last fifteen minutes are the inciting incident that will take us through a season of TV.

Real emotional stakes for characters that are not particularly exotic. We're reminded - these are high schoolers, and that young man will never be the same again.

So. Is Texas as football crazy as the book, movie and show of Friday Night Lights indicate?

I live in a mid-sized city with a top-ranked NCAA football school. So, high school football is out there, people care about it if they have kids of a certain age, but the focus is on University of Texas football. And, yes, Saturdays during the season are pretty nuts if you head toward campus. And in Houston, people care about the Texans. A lot. And, yeah, a local channel shows high school games on TV, but I cannot imagine the viewership is high. It's just a fun thing to do.

Texas is not unique in its football culture. It's an extension of what you can find in the South, and parts of the Midwest. Ohio State is Ohio State. I know what Bears fans are like.

But, no, grown adults do not worry about high school football where I live - outside of conversations about college recruits, etc... But in West Texas? I'd buy it. There are some smaller universities out that way, but I don't know that anyone really cares. I only know about the feelings about high school football through the book of Friday Night Lights, and then some schools in Austin are pipelines for college recruitment (certainly Westlake, which produced Drew Brees).

But the general feel of Texas is right in a way that's hard to quantify. People do love it here even when they hate parts of living here. There's a reason that "Texas Forever" has become an unofficial motto, thanks to that show. It's no secret that it often takes an outsider to come in and see a place for what it is, good and bad, and not be afraid to show it as the locals are just too close to it.

If you watch, wondering "why the hell do all of these people care about football so much?" - welcome to my life up to age 21 or so. I find it a feature, not a bug.

They've named the lead of the pilot Jason Street, after legendary UT quarterback James Street. Because they want real game footage, the Dillon Panthers wear the uniforms of the Pflugerville Panthers (Pflugerville is a bedroom community that is its own township north of Austin). In the pilot, they play a team bedecked in the uniforms of the Westlake Chapparals, which is the rich kid public school in West Austin.

There's the wealth disparity in plain site in the kinds of houses people live in here, to real locations around town where I've grabbed a cheeseburger or ten (EZ's was great, and I am sad it closed a few years back). But mostly, I know these people. I can remember high school well enough to remember the parents who went too far sometimes, the kids from less well-off situations trying to get by, mumbling their way through explanations they shouldn't have to give.

But the reality of the situation and the tragedy that befalls the Dillon Panthers feels deeply real. A single incident on a single play leads to lifelong consequences for Jason Street. I absolutely knew what was coming this time, and I was still wrecked.

If there's two criticism I have, the first is that it's clearly Texas winter in the first episode, probably in January or February, not the furnace that Texas actually is when the season starts in August/ September. The second is that Texas has a massive Hispanic population that exists in every socioeconomic bracket. The sky is the limit here. Yet, you only see Hispanic kids as background characters and I think zero Hispanic adults. That's a misstep and could have easily been remedied.

Of less note is that college-bound athletes get different treatment not just at school, but they get recruited, they go to camps costing thousands. People go into deep debt on the pipedream that Junior will be picked up and play college ball. And that's nowhere to be seen here. Maybe that's not happening in Permian Basin, where the book was written. But by the 00's, it was a reality for many quarterbacks. They're treated like horses getting ready for Churchill Downs.

Also, if football is that big of a deal, Dillon would have a much bigger stadium. That looks like a JV or practice stadium to me. (One does wonder what will become of the culture and those massive stadiums as Texas' government is trying to dismantle public education.)

The cast is excellent, and if you told me that the one younger actor who would do super well out of this show, given the immense talent in place, was Jesse Plemons, I'd have just stared at you. Not that others haven't continued on, and don't have real work. Certainly Adrianne Palicki seems like she's everywhere, and once in a while Minka Kelly appears on my screen. I just saw Taylor Kitsch in something on Netflix, and he was great, honestly.

The show would eventually pivot schools and we'd get Michael B. Jordan and Jurnee Smollett.

But the casting of Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as two very married people may be some of the best casting I've ever seen. These two, plus Amy Teagarden as their daughter of a more literary persuasion, really do make it work. The pilot doesn't give Britton much to do, and she hasn't broken out as a character with equal screentime here, but you can see the bits of great work that already pop up.

Anyway, if you followed along with my blogging while the show aired, this is well-covered territory.

So, yeah, Friday Night Lights would have a stellar first season, a second season that was cut short by the writer's strike (and thank god, because some idiot tried to make it a cheesy soap opera before reverting to what made the show work), and would carry on for a few years as some top flight network TV. I think it lasted as long as it could have/ should have. The Taylor family went through big changes, we even changed schools rather than watch a new herd of kids coming up. It fell prey to a few TV goofs along the way, but overall ended very well.

Twenty years later, I'm endorsing 4 of the 5 seasons of the show.

Will I rewatch it? No. That's like 100 hours of TV, and not even Connie Britton's perfect hair can make me do that.

*20 years ago, you could count on the people around you being from some part of Texas, often a fellow alumnus of your university. Now, it's from all over, and that's fine. It does mean what is *Texas* has been morphed, diluted and changed.

Monsterpiece Literature: Frankenstein

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:33:00 +0000

illustration via the great Bernie Wrightson, available via Nakatomi Inc.*

Back in fall of 2025, when the Guillermo del Toro movie of Frankenstein, I decided to give Mary Shelley's novel a spin one more time before the movie arrived. I've read it probably four times previously, but with so much Frankenstein media out there, it's easy to get details confused or forgotten.

Rather than look at paper, I picked an audiobook narrated by Dan Stevens, a favored actor, and decided I'd listen while walking Emmylou. But mid-way through the book - and I cannot remember the circumstances - it disappeared from my audible library. I shrugged, gave up, and moved on. I know the book, I was prepped for the movie in any case.

I certainly had *opinions* about del Toro's film.and spoke about how it confused me that we've never actually seen the book interpreted as it is on page. Large chunks always get reimagined and changed. I'm not really sure why that is, as every change seems to morph what author Mary Shelley was doing and saying. And while I didn't find del Toro's version *offensive*, I found it was changing the course of events in a way that never added up for me.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the audiobook of Frankenstein re-appeared in my Audible library, and I decided to finish it up before I select a new book for Hallow-read.

There's a lot of ideas and interpretations about Frankenstein floating around, things I've folded into my own thought process on the book and its characters. I am not immune to the common wisdom of the people. And so I looked to see what was striking me now.

First, yes, of course, the novel originally appeared in 1818. I believe that the audiobook version is the 1831 text that most of us got in school. What is considered "good writing" changes every few decades, and this book first appeared more than 200 years ago, so don't expect the text to follow the rules of writing as we know them now.

The prose is... a lot sometimes, chasing in every $0.25 cent word when modern rules would say "use the nickel word." And, yes, Victor laments often and at length, and at some points you wish he'd maybe stop feeling to bad for himself. But that is also the character, through and through.

As is everything, the book is a reflection of the author, and this author was from society (though how Shelley fit into society is its own story). Every once in a while you're reminded of the social dynamics taken for granted by the literate masses of early 19th Century writers, so I am sure the kids are pearl-clutching about that.

It is curious to think that James Whale's Frankenstein met American cinema audiences in 1931, roughly a hundred years later, and we're now at 95 years since that film's release.

Coming back to the novel now, I don't know how I feel about Victor Frankenstein.

When we were taught the book as high schoolers, we had to be told not to necessarily trust the narrator, that Victor had failed his creation. And that's certainly true. We needed to understand that just because Victor decried his own creation as wicked and a monster, as an audience we need to show some empathy. The Monster of Frankenstein in pop culture is a dullard, operating from instinct - and given to fits of murderous rage. And so that first reading is a revelation as the creature speaks eloquently for itself. I suspect people have a chance to know this, and willfully misread the films as well as the book to keep the brainless version going.

And it is true that Victor, despite his fury at the creature, fails him over and over throughout the book, and continually pays the price. It is a book about a guy who simply will not take responsibility for what he's done or the lives he's impacted. He is, in a very real way, responsible for the deaths of the supporting cast of the novel.

But he's also nuts.

Like, in a way where no one helps him. Maybe Henry Clerval sometimes. But mostly he's a maniac living in his own head from the point of childhood. He doesn't see anyone as a persecutor, necessarily, until the creature shows up and is seeking its revenge. He may feel he's unfairly judged or maligned, but he's also *right*. Say what you will, Victor Frankenstein made a being superior to men with the very alchemy he was mocked for.

What he could not do was look into the eyes of the thing he made and offer a life for his creation.

I hate to say it, but he was so preoccupied with whether or not he could, he didn't stop to think if he should. And once he did succeed, he was utterly unprepared for caring for a *life*. Whether he's concerned with what others will think enters into it only through the fact he tells *no one*. There's a shambling giant of a creature loosed, and he just hopes it will go away and he can go back to living in a castle and being rich.

At least Henry Frankenstein of the 1931 movie freaks out and puts the monster in a dungeon while he tries to sort it out (it goes poorly).

But Victor is in that skull all alone until arriving on the ship at the novel's opening. His own lies by omission, his awareness of what he did, the drive that made him work day and night for months. But that drive is... bad?

This is the first time I read what he said about finally marrying Elizabeth, and it seemed to me on this go-round that he finally married as he knew it would drive the monster to him. After all, the monster promised Victor he'd see him on his wedding night, and Victor used the event to lure the creature in - believing himself to be the target and not Elizabeth. It was supposed to end that night, not lead to years of questing after the creature.

Also, as he's on the verge of death at the novel's end, Victor springs to life for one last rousing speech to Walton's ship's men - urging them on to what would be almost certain death in their trip to the north pole (it would be 1909 before anyone actually reached the North Pole). Does he really care if they push the boundaries? Probably. Does he want a boat to take to catch the creature who is headed to Santa Land? 100%.

Frankenstein is about many things, but it is largely about a doctor with obsessive compulsive issues. And his son who came up maladjusted thanks to his father's mental illness. Yet, Shelley frames Frankenstein as tragic, as he is seen through the ideas of kindred spirit Walton, the ship's leader, who - even at the novel's end - exalts Victor, believing him a prince among men. Were it not for what is very obviously about to be a mutiny, Walton would have driven a shipload of men to their death.

It also did strike me in the last 3/4ths that we really cast the monster as blameless in a modern reading, but after gaining reason and literacy and understanding of humans, he decides to kill William and frame Justine. I mean, you can be sad and not murder, or so they tell me.

But that's how white hot the wretch's fury is at Victor, he can't stop at just one. I recalled he killed Elizabeth, but forgot that he killed Henry Clerval (spoilers) as well, not exactly framing Victor, but close.

In the final pages the creature reflects on those murders with Walton, and admits he had no control over himself in those moments. It's a reading I take as true, as he's also reminding Walton that Victor merely paraphrased his sense of loneliness and isolation, and barely understood his fury at being brought into being only to have no place in the world - that Victor intellectually understood his isolation, but never truly understood how the creature felt.

It is hard to ignore the elephant in the room that none of this would have happened if Victor hadn't rejected his child.

But in accepting blame and seeing Victor as his final victim, the creature goes north to hide his own body from mankind, and plans to self-immolate. It's justice of a sort.

Where del Toro and I part is his decision to bring Elizabeth into knowledge of the creature, which makes Victor's decisions more mustache-twirlingly obvious and evil in the film. And maybe make less sense. Del Toro is superimposing King Kong onto Frankenstein, and the two stories diverge in Victor's own solitude, something he seems to share with the creature as he removes himself repeatedly from the comforts of family and friends. The creature does not ever receive the hint of comfort Elizabeth likely would have afforded him - and does not know her when he strikes her down.

But, hey, at least del Toro seemed to know the basic beats unlike many other adaptations. I just get cranky when I think about The Bride.

I have a few books I check in on at different points in my life, and Frankenstein has been one of them since I was 14. I suspect I'll be reading it again in a decade. But I suspect that I will seek out the original 1818 version sooner than later.

Whether Percy Shelley helped craft the novel or not, in any form, is not moot, entirely. I am romantic about the idea of a spooky 19 year old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley conceiving and writing the book. All books have editors, so it doesn't make her efforts any less-than. And that such a young mind would deliver this story that speaks to so much about the human condition as unwanted beasts and glorious beings driven mad by our own ambitions has never failed to speak to me in the way few other creators do.

And, in this new era as we unleash machines that can speak to us people, can look and act and sound like us across screens... and one day in person, I dunno. This book is always worth returning to, I think.

BTW: If you have a suggestion for a Halloween-Read, preferably something not of the 21st century, now is the time!

*Nakatomi Inc., local to Austin, is the source for officially licensed Bernie Wrightson Frankenstein prints. Available here.

Happy Birthday, Cassandra Peterson

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Happy Birthday to Cassandra Peterson, who you may know as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

She doesn't put on the outfit anymore, and has successfully made a career out of being herself, which is pretty great. She appears in movies and at cons and whatnot, and has a thriving merchandising empire. That's got to be nice to know it's not just the character people adore.

I still pick up Elvira comics, which come out pretty regularly in mini-series form. And if she were nearby, I think I'd actually drop some coin to go see her.

I don't normally select pics with someone and their partner (I know her partner has a full name, but she goes by "T"), but this was the best pic I found of Peterson. I am very happy for her and T.

Happy 75th, Ms. Peterson. And here's to a successful Halloween season!

Doc Watch: Film Geek (2023)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 04:25:42 +0000

Watched: 09/15/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Richard Shepard

It's always weird to watch a documentary about someone talking about themselves and their family. In this way, the recent award winning doc by Mariska Hargitay My Mom Jayne absolutely works. As her mother Jayne Mansfield passed when she was so very young, it's really about her learning about her own mother decades after the fact. She just happens to have the best possible access to Mansfield's history. But she also is clear eyed about remaining objective and talking about it when she isn't and what it means to live with that legacy.

Film Geek (2023) tosses anything like objectivity out the window in the first minute of the film, and you're just along for the ride as film maker Richard Shepard recounts his youth in 1970's and 1980's Manhattan, which was a whirlwind of movie mania and NY-based Gen-X childhood. This is paired with our director/narrator trying to unpack how movies tied him to a father he wants to present as a romantic rogue and bon vivant and his mother as a saint.

It can feel like just an endless reel of "remember this movie?" and "boy, Apocalypse Now sure is good", but does pick up a bit when he gets into specific movies and how they shifted his perspective, from All the President's Men to a briefly glimpsed porno at a drive-in.

New York - the New York of the 70's and 80's, which is almost a thing of legend now - is a major character. It's a city on the decline, but still bustling. Just populated with pimps and hustlers instead of people in Smurf costumes trying to get you to take a picture for $20. It's movie theaters tucked into buildings, near and far. It's also a world we did see captured in movies up through the late 1980's when it seemed like actual filming in New York screeched to a halt, but was a place all of us of a certain age grew up seeing in our movies.

The tougher angle is the one he tries to present of his father, who he still clearly and dearly loves, but what he pitches as surprises about his dad feels... oddly predictable? He's a mystery figure with multiple sources of income but no 9-5 job who frames his world as that of an artist while not really producing art. He seems *interesting* - but Shepard refuses to let us really know him. He's protecting his father. It does not take much imagination to connect dots that dad was up to stuff that wasn't going to make the cut, if our filmmaker knows.

I do understand what the story is: here's an early Gen-X'er who came of age in an era when cinema could feel like catching a flame in your hand. And his father was the one who showed him how. It's a feral youth under parents who didn't want to stymie their kid. He got to make movies.

But it can also feel like an excited kid showing you their baseball card collection. It's interesting when they pull out a particularly special card, but it also kind of bleeds into a survey of movies someone saw. And, yes, it's a remarkable youth in cinema, one predating HBO and even really rental of movies, and in a place where theaters are everywhere, all showing different things, which was not always the case in the suburbs.

And, yeah, it inspired Richard Shepard to make movies. Which is maybe more inspiring in itself than becoming a podcaster or, worse, blogger.

I just am not sure there's enough there in the movie for the 2 hour runtime. There's probably a version of this that feels less like name checking movies for an hour, but I did put on a movie called "Film Geek".

I am Not Nostalgic for 22-Episode TV Seasons

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 21:32:47 +0000

the only way to binge a season of 90's TV

Recently, on a popular social media platform, someone opined that we must support shows like DC's Lanterns so that we eventually work our way back to 20+ episode TV seasons.

I responded with "why on Earth would you want back 20+ episodes of a show again?"

They took umbrage. And, look, you can't say things on a public site intended for public reply, but okay. I was rude, I suppose. Especially as I did make the mistake of outlining reasons a 20+ episode season was less desirable, to which, I was basically told "shut up" in social media terms. Which, fair. Gentleman wasn't the first and he won't be the last with that take on my wisdom.

However - this is not about that.

But I've started seeing folks are becoming nostalgic for long TV seasons, when a show would have a season premiere in September and run through April or May.

The folks who like this idea are often younger people who only know binging TV, but - also - seem to be people who were really locked into cult-favorite TV shows in the 00's and 10's. Who want back their year of episodes from a CW show.

Me? I always disliked the 22 episode TV season (the standard number for years and years) for hour long dramas. It was a *huge* barrier to my interest in television series that were not 30 minute episodic shows like Simpsons and Seinfeld. The first show I probably watched in its entirety like that in real time may have been Babylon 5 starting in Season 2. And I didn't watch the final season of B5.

In college I became aware of how British TV works, with short series/ seasons, and wondered loudly and often: why can't we do that? And then, thanks to HBO and the ballooning budget on things like Lost, we did.

Of course, most shows I grew up on in the traditional American format were all shows that reset at the start of every episode, maybe with some small movement. But you could pop into almost any episode of say, Knight Rider, and you were fine for the next 60 minutes. Unless you watched a soap like Dallas,* what was revealed to the viewer three episodes prior was rarely crucial to understanding what you were watching now. At best, you got a two-parter where the network knew you might have missed something and would provide a quick synopsis at the start of the second episode.

There's a million exceptions to this rule, but that was more or less how it worked. We will not be discussing Twin Peaks here, but I think it moved the needle for a lot of people regarding what could be done with continuing narratives.

But as we got DVR's, it meant zero programming of VCRs and the start time of the new episode mattered less. Then, shows just appeared via streaming - and now we were cooking. Now we could assume and hope that people watched the prior episodes and could treat a season less like episodes and more like parts of a connected serial. What happened last week or three weeks ago or two seasons ago could matter. Showrunners, as they became called, were in charge of longform narrative.

But 22 episodes was also a very, very long way to get through a season of TV. Basically a team of writers was having to work just ahead of deadline to produce a sprawling novel's worth of story for every TV season.

Very few shows could hold up the quality, week after week. Writing meant our characters could never quite learn or move forward from what happened previously, or if they did, now you were locked in for 22 hours of your life over the course of a *year* to find out how it went. And TV being TV, it usually really just meant it was setting things up so you'd come back the next year and do it all over again, with no real resolution. See: The X-Files. Which got so hobbled with its own mythology and insistence on moving the goal line that it shed both fans and stars in its sickly, final seasons.

For the folks who fondly remember a lot of genre shows, most of them are far worse than you remember. You remember, like, one great episode per season, maybe 4-5 good episodes. Maybe 7 were fine. The rest fell off to... less than fine. Just forgettable filler. Give you a little dopamine rush to hang with your TV pals. And you do you.

And I get it. I read monthly comics. Not every issue is going to be Watchmen.

What I've appreciated is the near novelistic approach of modern TV. Eight to ten episodes has meant tighter storylines with far less sag, virtually no filler - and I do not include "bottle episodes" as filler, and a narrative drive that makes more *count*. You get real character work in that time, as it's more time than a movie.

And it doesn't hurt that, generally, a season is shot all at once before a single episode is released. TV teams aren't waiting to see if they get renewed after 13 episodes. Or cut off at the knees after 4 weeks. It's unheard of that they get moved around on the schedule, telegraphing either how badly the show is doing or how much an executive really hates their show. I am sure it's happened that a streaming 8 episode show was pulled before it finished, but I've never heard of it.

Unfortunately, I have heard of whole shows just disappearing off streamers, but that's a different problem for a different post.

In short, I don't miss 22 episode TV. In fact, I have much better recall of the plot of shows that were *not* 22 episodes, both whole series-wise as well as individual episode-wise. Nothing blows me away more than people who still recall specific X-Files episodes, when all I recall are broad storylines and Gillian Anderson's blue, blue eyes.

Anyway, it's now 2026. I like my shows to have contained seasons - I never understood how people made time for watching multiple shows across a full year. I didn't even understand in the 90's the concept of staying home to watch any single show (except for new Seinfeld). Of course that changed with a lifestyle of a middle-aged suburban dude, but the thing I noticed was that I'd make it maybe two seasons with longer shows, like 30 Rock, and then tap out.

The last hour-long show that ran a full season I recall watching was CW's Supergirl, which was just something I put on while on the elliptical. And, y'all, it was more or less a study in the wheels slowly coming off a show over the course of two of six seasons. You hate to say you're watching something with morbid fascination, but that's what happened. Sometimes trying to be a Superman-media completionist do be like that. I have a whole separate POV on Smallville. But that is a show that would have 100% benefitted from shorter seasons.

Anyway, I get that everyone wants as much of a thing as they can possibly get, but maybe appreciate the actual quality of a thing when you get something better? You'd never know from things like Star Wars and Marvel these days that less is sometimes more.** Let's not all be the Augustus Gloop of our favored media. Maybe appreciate some stuff for being good, and being what it is.

I guess all I'm really saying is - if TV ever had the budget to do what it does now with 8-10 episode seasons, I cannot imagine a scenario in which I actually *want* to go back to dedicating that much time to any individual show, even if every episode looked like 2001. But we also all know it's going to be 40% people standing around a bridge or headquarters shooting the breeze.

*how soaps were written and worked - both daytime and primetime - was impressive and complicated and made for a slog to watch

**after two aborted viewings of the movie Mandalorian and Grogu, I think I'm done with Star Wars

Catch-Up Watch: Polite Society (2023)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 03:08:50 +0000

Watched: 09/11/2026

Format: Peacock

Viewing: First

Director: Nida Manzoor

I'd seen a trailer for Polite Society (2023) when it was coming out, but theatrical windows are short, and I missed it. Since then, I believe it was Stuart who rec'd it, and I'd had it loosely in the back of my head to watch, meanwhile forgetting why I wanted to see it or what it was about.

Well, whatever I thought it was about, the movie kind of defies genre or expectations at multiple points, and I mean that in the best way. It's like someone took good ideas and stitched them together into exactly the movie they wanted to make (no, I don't know who Nida Manzoor is exactly, but she also did the series We Are Lady Parts in England, which got good notices).

It's a movie about a young woman still in high school, a bit of a nerd, who wants to be a stuntwoman, and so practices martial arts and stunts. Her sister is home, having quit art school, and clearly suffering depression, or at least a deep melancholy, when she meets a handsome young guy whose mother is setting him up to meet a young woman for marriage.

Our hero, Ria (Priya Kansara), does not like this guy and the notion her sister will never return to art and decides she's gotta fix this.

I realize I forgot to mention: the movie takes place within the British-Pakistani community in London, therefore there's certainly some cultural stuff in the film that I think is easy enough to understand even if it's not your run-of-the-mill white people nonsense.

Anyway - I am not spoiling this movie. It's a rare treat to have no idea where a movie is headed when you think you have it pegged. I had absolutely no clue where things were going, scene-to-scene.

The talent in the movie is terrific. The aforementioned Priya Kansara is *fantastic*. Absolutely a firecracker on screen - and I just read she was ship's voice on Project Hail Mary. Go figure! The sister, Lena, is Ritu Arya who has also appeared in Barbie (as a Barbie), The Umbrella Academy, and plenty of other stuff.

Anyway - it's more or less family friendly if your family can handle PG-13, so get out there and find it.

Pirate Watch: The Sea Hawk (1940)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 04:28:32 +0000

Watched: 09/10/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Michael Curtiz

Look, names of directors get forgotten, but Michael Curtiz was one of the best to get behind a lens, making some of my very favorite films - and they may be your favorites, too. Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, Adventures of Robin Hood, White Christmas, Flamingo Road, and another Errol Flynn pirate movie - Captain Blood.

And, man, I still am unclear how they filmed these things, with their huge ships, falling masts, flashing sabers and swashing buckles. The Sea Hawk (1940) merges the scale of Captain Blood and Robin Hood - two prior Curtiz/ Flynn productions with palace sets, huge galleons and more.

Errol Flynn is one of those guys I have to separate the art from the artist. He was a cad, seems to have slept with any and all women (including underage girls) and been a big ol' Peeping Tom. Rumors that he picked the wrong side during the lead up to WWII appear to be unfounded but there's, like, one guy who won't let it go (they based Timothy Dalton's character in The Rocketeer on those stories). But, gaht-damn, he's fun on screen. Really ground zero for the action hero with the cool, dry wit.

As long as we're re-pairing Flynn and Curtiz, we also bring in our Prince John from Robin Hood in the snarky-ass form of Claude Rains as an ambassador from Spain sailing to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Despite the diplomatic flags, Flynn and his crew take the Spanish ship, ignoring maritime law (one does not attack an ambassador) as Flynn knows the Spanish have enslaved Englishmen and made them their crew, rowing below decks.

Essentially the "Sea Hawks" are privateers commissioned by Queen Elizabeth to act as a navy for England as England does not have the budget for a full navy of her own. On the sea, the Sea Hawks are well aware of what Spain is up to as Spain uses their riches from the New World to build the infamous Spanish Armada. What I had not clicked to until this moment is that the Armada was happening at the same time as the Inquisition. But the Inquisition lasted about 200 years longer than I guess I realized (well into the 1800's!)*.

We can't have a pirate movie without a woman of royal standing and her handmaid aboard, and so we get that in the form of Brenda Marshall and Una O'Connor. And we stan Una in this house.

Not so side-note: I adored Flora Robson as Queen Elizabeth. Just a terrific performance.

We have a tremendous sea battle to start with, and it really feels we're off to the races. Canons explode, people swing on ropes, swords slash, it's a whole scene.**

Unfortunately, this movie is incredibly front-loaded with good stuff and becomes a slog in the second-half. I'll be honest, I was kind of disappointed.

Our Captain forms a plan to capture the Spanish booty from the New World in Panama, and is blessed by Her Majesty to go plunder - creating plausible deniability while also slowing Spain's building of their armada. Meanwhile, palace intrigue and shady alliances mean Flynn's plan is discovered.

The movie hits the skids as the crew gets off the ship in Panama. It's not dull, but it feels like it contracts, really, into a different movie. Our crew is on the run in the jungles of Panama, and in a bit of alignment with reality, a huge chunk of them don't live to see their ship again. And those who do are captured and enslaved.

Blah blah blah... escape, sail away, return to England, flex for the girl, save the day. It's.. fine? But why make a pirate movie if it's not going to end with cannons blasting holes in ships and knocking over masts? I need sabers, and lots of them!

It's fine. It's not as good as even the preceding Captain Blood (recommended) but it'll do.

*Spain. You have a long history of weird governance. What's up with that?

**Hollywood - you should try this movie in Space. This sort of thing might kill with the right script and effort. I don't really trust you to do this with actual boats and historical context, but maybe there's room for privateers in space. I can see a Chris or a Scarlett Johansson leading 100 space-faring rogues as they @#$% about with a wicked imperial space navy.

Pat Boone Noir Watch: The Yellow Canary (1963)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:08:29 +0000

Watched: 09/08/2026

Format: TCM Noir Alley

Viewing: First

Director: Buzz Kulik

All I knew was that The Yellow Canary (1963) starred Pat Boone and Barbara Eden, two people I could not imagine paired, let alone in a noir film.

From the intro and outro, my takeaway was that Eddie Muller had gotten involved with preserving this movie because it seemed so unlikely. Famously squeaky-clean singer and sometimes actor Pat Boone had agreed to play a philandering, jack-ass pop star (a Bizarro-world version of himself) who is married to Barbara Eden and somehow (against all imaginable odds, and my basic understanding of the world) finds that boring.

The same night Eden asks him for a divorce, they find that their son has been kidnapped!

Enter Jack Klugman as The Cop, and he's just Klugging it up all over the place. Klugman is basically there to try and talk sense about why the police have procedures for a ransom situation.

But, of course, our hero keeps just running off and doing things.

This is not a great movie. And the score is just f-ing bizarre. It's like swinging jazzy stuff you half expect for a movie about a beach party. It completely undercuts everything that's happening, and you expect Barbara Eden to start shimmying, which, tragically, does not happen.

But like so much else with this movie, it's more interesting *who* did it than what's in the movie. The composer is Kenyon Hopkins, who also scored The Hustler and other major pictures.

The movie also has movie "that guy" Jesse White, the guy who played Sgt. Schulz as well as Joe Turkel from Blade Runner. Somehow I've seen like 4 Joe Turkel movies.

By the way - the screenplay? By Rod Serling.

Did I like this movie? No. But I'm not sure anyone expected you to. Sometimes something is just weird enough that you think it should continue to exist, and that's this movie.

Also, look who helped make the restoration a reality:

yes, I took a picture of my TV. You can see my porch reflected through the window.

And if Jello Biafra wants this movie to exist, how wrong can we be to watch it?

Was Pat Boone good in this? Was he ready to play a cigar-chomping ladies-man? No. But everyone around him is good. Eden is very good indeed.

It's just not... a... good movie.

Anyhoo... here's Barabra Eden in the movie.

Shark/Jet Watch: West Side Story (2021)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 04:23:24 +0000

Watched: 09/07/2026

Format: FX Movies on basic cable

Viewing: Second

Director: Steven Somebody

I was performing repetitive manual tasks (dealing with comic books. Where my fellow nerds at?) which means I need something to occupy my brain, but not something *new*, as I might get up to perform part of a task, move around, etc... And then I saw the 2021 version of West Side Story was on cable, and, sure, why not?

I first saw the play in about 5th or 6th grade with our own Matt A. at the former Capital City Playhouse in Austin. I then saw the 1961 film in about 1992, and so ask me about bearing witness to Rita Moreno as Anita in her lavender dress.*

But this was the 2021 version, which *also* features Moreno, but doing fewer high kicks.

I really dig this version, too. I feel like Spielberg did it right, bringing his sense of visuals, character and narrative tension which he built his career on to the material and made it feel both fresh and deeply rooted in the time and place from whence it sprang, managing to make it speak to the now.

It also fills in some narrative gaps and does some info-dumps to clarify the situation in New York which the general population would have known by osmosis in 1961, but which has shifted and shifted and shifted in the decades since. The actual politics, economics and on-the-street situation in the film is made abundantly clear in a way it just wasn't previously.

I'm just checking in on this one. No real notes. And will say, I'm really glad DeBose and Ziegler are both doing great on the other side of this film. The guy who played Riff is slated to be in the new East of Eden movie.

I recall people being a little weird about this when it came out, and a lot of the commentary came down to skill issues and that even dummies can have internet access. And people oddly offended that a play, done in every town in America, which was a movie, should get remade when the first movie had some really odd weaknesses (like making all the Puerto Ricans wear matching full-body make-up).

So, yeah. I dig it.

*Great googly moogly

Windsor Watch: Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 05:02:58 +0000

Watched: 09/06/2026

Format: TCM

Viewing: First

Director: Charles Lamont

Confession time: I haven't really enjoyed Bud & Lou since I was a kid. I remember we'd check out 8mm projectors and film from the library and watch their movies and have a good laugh. I was six.

Subsequent attempts to watch the classic comedy duo have gone less well.

But, of the main ingrendients, I do like two other things: classic movie monsters and Marie Windsor. And, I figure - two out of three things in this movie? That ain't bad.

Our plot: Bud & Lou are semi-stranded in Egypt and get involved with a cult, an ancient mummy, a murder and shady characters looking to make some money.

I dunno.

It's Abbott being a know-it-all and Costello yelling and running away. You know the drill. It works for me in about 7 minute chunks, but over a movie, it's a lot.

At least Marie looks good in a pith helmet.

I think this look could really take off again

There's not enough Windsor or Mummy in this movie for my liking, and a few too many riffs playing on the "Who's On First?" bit that Abbott and Costello built their career on (and which I did in 8th grade, winning the talent show with pal-Darren. I didn't even know I was entered - we were MC'ing and thought it would be fun to do. Hope that guy is well.).

She's absolutely had it with people want to borrow her sarcophagus

I don't recommend this movie. I was bored and sorting comics through the back half.

Dolly Watch: Straight Talk (1992)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 14:49:07 +0000

Watched: 09/06/2026

Format: Amazon?

Viewing: First

Director: Barnet Kellman

I kind of remember a spate of these sorts of sweet, fluffy, cotton candy movies coming out for a minute. I think a lot of this sort of thing has made its way to TV or streaming, and that's cool.

The draw of Straight Talk in 1992 was "want to see Dolly Parton be nice for 90 minutes?" and in 1992, if it didn't have a robot, Wesley Snipes, a serial killer or an alien in it, no, I did not want to see your movie all that bad. High school me didn't think about Dolly Parton one way or another, so high-school me took a pass. And that's too bad. My mom would love this movie, and we never agreed of movies then or now. I think I'll call and recommend it to her later today.

Anyway, you may recall some of these Pretty Woman-era "modern fairy tales", and that's what it is (note the pumpkin/ Cinderella imagery in the poster), so reality has taken a holiday. Could the movie have done more with it's topic? 1000%. Go watch Talk Radio for that (no, really, do. Good movie.). Straight Talk is a sort of Capra-esque movie about a woman from rural Arkansas who rightfully has determined her life is going nowhere and she should move to Chicago to try something new after she's fired from her job teaching dancing (like the foxtrot, not ballet) by her boss, inexplicably played by John Sayles. Her boyfriend is a dud (played by Michael Madsen just before he'd blow up as Mr. Blonde) and does not want to go to Chicago.

In Chicago, Dolly gets a job as a receptionist at a radio station, but is mistaken for a new on-air talent, a psychologist who will have a talk-radio call-in show. But Dolly's common sense, folksy wisdom wins everyone over. Her boss, Griffin Dunne, is happy to have her, but he doesn't want her revealing her actual past - so she's asked to lie-by-omission about her credentials.

Oh, and James Woods works for the Sun Times under Jerry Orbach. He investigates who this new "doctor" is.

If you don't care much about the likelihood that a call-in talk radio show even in a Chicago-sized market probably isn't really that lucrative or prestigious a career - and they do treat it like she's suddenly doing shockingly well and mingling with Chicago's hoi polloi - it's... okay? It's fine. You can't go to Chili's and then get mad it's not a Michelin star restaurant. The movie is what it is.

I do think James Woods was miscast here. I get why they chose him, especially in 1992, but the very James Woods of him that served him so well in other movies of this era kind of works against him when you realize he's the love interest.

As a quick added bonus, this features a just-before-Lois and Clark Teri Hatcher in a key scene as Woods' temporary girlfriend.

Dolly is many things, but she was never Meryl Streep - luckily her charm remains intact and you can't say she's boring. The movie jumps from beat-to-beat in the way a movie does when they know the movie is predictable-ish and we just need to hit the mark, and she carries it along just fine - handling the third act twist better than the script does.

Anyway, it's totally fine for my mom. And a reminder that Dolly really was the swiss army knife of talents.

Oh, and, yes, it features a Dolly-infused soundtrack, which is nice. No real bangers, but it does give the movie a nice Dolly-holistic vibe. Expect to see this movie re-imagined as a Dolly jukebox musical in ten years.

Signal Watch Reads: Children of Time

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 16:34:28 +0000

Pal Howard recommended this one. He's a prolific sci-fi reader and eager-beaver movie watcher, and a trusted source. He also attends ArmadilloCon each year, a convention for hardcore sci-fi literati, and we tend to get together when he's in town for that event.

A while back I asked him to recommend a favorite sci-fi book as I don't actually *read* much science-fiction. I kind of sputtered out after Bradbury and Asimov as a kid. And I still like Asimov, Bradbury, and Dick. I liked Solaris and Rendezvous with Rama. But the sci-fi section of your local Barnes & Noble is not where I'm usually found. But I figured - Howard is not going to recommend trash. And he did not.

Children of Time is more or less what I consider hard science-fiction. There are no wizards, no deities intervening, no space dragons. Instead, it's all concepts with logic behind them, even if the science is speculative (at best, at times). We're thousands of the years in the future when the book begins, and thousands more by the time the book ends. The science injected is *possibly true* and mercifully focused in only a few areas. One not be a polymath to follow along.

We're a star-faring race when the book opens, but it doesn't mean humanity has changed much. We have our internecine wars, and we have people pushing the boundaries of science, so excited to see they could, they never stop to ask if they should. In this case, Dr Avrana Kern is orbiting a planet with her crew. The planet is terraformed, and she will (a) drop monkeys onto the planet and then (b) insert a nanovirus into the atmosphere. The nanovirus is designed to accelerate the evolution of the monkeys. This will, hypothetically, create a world of hyper-intelligent monkeys who will be friends and possibly heirs to humanity.

But, a man aboard is part of a faction on Earth that is trying to circle back and stop the rapid acceleration of technology and blows up their craft. This leaves the monkeys as ashes, the virus deployed and only Dr. Kern surviving as she uploads her consciousness to her satellite/ lifeboat and puts herself in deep cryogenic sleep.

The nanovirus, scattered, instead infects a breed of spiders.

Thousands of years later, Earth has been through a war that has left the planet a toxic ruin. A cargo ship travels the stars, one of a few, the last of humanity in cryo-chambers, a small crew responding as they come upon the planet.

Largely, this is a book of concepts and ideas. It's the rise of one culture - the intelligent spiders - and the last days of humanity on a lifeboat, sadly chugging along through the cosmos. It leaps forward in time sometimes a dozen years, sometimes several hundred. Cleverly, author Adrian Tchaikovsky renames the spiders every generation with the same names so we're tracking with archetypes and don't need to learn 11 different groups of spiders. Humans, meanwhile, come in and our of cryo-sleep, all through the POV of a the one Liberal Arts major onboard.

Tchaikovsky is interested in the what-if's, pushing at the ideas of accelerated evolution, how civilizations advance, how they decline, the place for religious structures, the place for science, for military. Like a lot of modern sci-fi, it twists and pulls at those ideas. Most of it holds, some of it doesn't (there's a huge key decision in the book that is rationalized and rationalized, and I didn't buy it).

Also, like a lot of sci-fi writ large, the concepts are the star. Tchaikovsky isn't doing deep character work here. Our human lead is almost a cipher, rarely responding or taking action, more often watching events unfold around him.* But that's also and artifact of Tchaikovsky's story-telling. Things seem to keep *happening* and occasionally a character takes actions that change the course of things, but this is not the story of how a single character or two characters impact their own world. The scope is too big for that. It's key moments in time across maybe 5000 years (I stopped keeping track). Our human lead, more than our spider lead, is there to bear witness, not put his hand on the wheel.

But anyone who read Foundation should recognize this sort of sci-fi. And it's reasonably well deployed here, but I was occasionally waiting for someone to *do* something instead of things happening.

The book is a doorstop. Don't expect to blow through it on a flight. It's absolutely worth the journey, and in the day since I finished it, I think I like it more the more I think on it.

Sort-of Spoilers

I do have significant questions about the end of the book, which is oddly glossed over. I kind of get what the author is doing and with three more books in the cycle (so far) I assume it all gets addressed. But I was left maybe a little disquieted by what Tchaikovsky pitched for the resolution.

This would be a terrible movie and maybe a really interesting TV series.

*writing advice generally goes hard against this sort of thing, so it's fascinating to see a beloved, award winning book with a major character who is a useful tool, but not one who strives for anything in particular.

Pitt Watch: Countess Dracula (1971)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 23:06:13 +0000

Watched: 09/03/2026

Format: YouTube

Viewing: Second

Director: Peter Sasdy

We watched this a few years ago, and at the time I remember being disappointed it wasn't basically just a redux of The Vampire Lovers, though I didn't exactly put it that way. I think I appreciated it a bit more on this go-round as I engaged with movie on its own terms.

I had no plans to watch it, but noted it was free on YouTube, and here we are.

Rather than a Dracula movie, Countess Dracula (1971) is a deeply fictionalized version of the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian countess who may have tortured and killed hundreds of girls. What Bathory *actually* did is up for debate, and like a lot of sensationalistic history could have been entirely fabricated to discredit and humiliate her, as well as stick her in a dungeon (see: The Tower of London for endless trumped up charges and nobles who met unfortunate ends).

Screen siren Ingrid Pitt plays the aging widow of a count. For decades, he's been fooling around with a general on the sly. And now that she's free of her husband, he's ready to officially make his move. She isn't so sure. And just as she's thinking on it, she stumbles across the fact bathing in the blood of young women will restore her youth. And, boy howdy, do I not want to discuss the psychology of people as they age, but you get it.

Elizabeth, now refreshed and looking more like Ingrid Pitt and less like Ingrid Pitt in old-age make-up, turns her eye to the handsome young soldier in the castle. The soldier believes Elizabeth to be her own daughter returned from abroad, and can hardly say no when she's throwing herself at him.

She needs 10 cats, STAT

Just a gallon or two of virgin blood later, and...

now that's what I call a glow up

The peasants inside the castle walls start to wonder where they're older daughters have gone, and where the gypsies have vanished to. Meanwhile, every time she re-ages, Elizabeth is looking older and worse, and the change to youth lasts less time.

Most horrific is that Elizabeth's daughter is at first way-laid, held captive by agents of her original suitor. But at some point, Elizabeth is so far gone, her own daughter becomes a possible target for supply the juice for those extra-special spa days.

The movie is part Machiavellian castle intrigue soaked in blood, part horror movie - but of a different flavor of horror than I expected the first time, and part Ingrid Pitt showcase for Hammer. And, kind of like, Lust for a Vampire, I really liked it more the second time than the first time I saw it. It's a shame that Hammer was so ready to swap out their female stars as Pitt can absolutely carry a movie and could have done more.

I would have thought Hammer was setting Pitt up for more featured parts, but that wasn't to be. She moved on to some comedies and TV appearances, as well as showing up in Where Eagles Dare.

This movie looks expensive (by 1970's Hammer standards), all castle sets, Hungarian costumes, etc... and I am unsure of how the picture did at the box office. But it really does work as a gothic horror.

Remade, I think the thing to do is not tell the audience outright what is happening. Let them figure it out as the turn to the third act. Even if they figure it before the reveal, it seems like playing along would make for a good ride. But what we've got works just fine.

Scorsese Watch: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 04:28:20 +0000

Watched: 09/02/2026

Format: Started on Hulu on August 30th, they dropped it and Apple+ picked it up

Viewing: Second

Director; Scorsese

I saw The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) once before in the theater, and wanted to watch it again, but it's three hours. And I figured Jamie would want to see it eventually, and at three hours, I was limiting how often I'd invest in watching the flick.

Plus, when I remember particularly liking a movie, I am not a person who watches it over and over - if the movie gave me something to chew on. I save those for occasional viewings when I can really take them in. I did not mean to give it 13 years between viewings. Whoops. But here we are.

These days, Wolf of Wall Street is mostly known as the source of a wide range of GIFs and memes. Star Leonardo DiCaprio plays the real-life role of former stock hustler Jordan Belfort full-tilt, and screen grabs of some of his scenes are just plastered everywhere. If it's DiCaprio and he's not Gatsby, this is probably the movie that GIF came from.

This is one of those movies where I can see how it might have made some people unhappy. But overall, the critical consensus was strong and I guess this did get some Oscar noms (or so Jamie told me). It's a movie that is very loud about what it's saying, and still manages to never say it directly, and in that, I recall at the time of the movie's release people were being willfully obtuse, clutching pearls at the content of the film.

Let's be honest, this movie have the most nudity of any American movie of the past two decades. It features out of control finance bros engaging in all manner of tsk-tsk behaviors from drug abuse to illegal stock trades to infidelity to the tossing of little people. In fact, this movie opens on our leads doing the latter.

Like many of Scorsese's movies, it's a look at America. Not how we think of ourselves with rock, flag and eagle jingoism, but what we really value. This is a movie that is happy to point out that the people we trust to enforce the law can hope for a livable wage and a pension, and all breaking a few hundred laws will do is get you into a summer camp of a prison for a couple of years.

But it's also showing how breaking those laws, how pushing the envelope is it's own reward. You can treat people as Jarts. You can include escorts as part of your business expenses and got to work so high you can't see, as long as you do it where no one can see and money is exchanging hands. We're used to movies showing us the downside of excess, but this movie never really says that. Instead, what it says is that hubris and bad luck are all it takes for it all to fall apart.

That may not be as satisfying as "because of their evil deeds, the mighty were doomed to fall". No, we know the reason our protagonist fell was just a series of unfortunate events - at least as the movie portrays it. A premature death. A storm at sea. A Benihana executive up to no good. But parties rife with coke and quaaludes and hookers? That's just a good weekend, and schlubs like you and me and Kyle Chandler's FBI agent won't ever see any of that.

The cast is fascinating to look back at 13 years later.

Cristin Milioti showing what people would embrace a decade later. McConaughey playing a maniac mentor. Rob Reiner as his father (and Cristine Ebersol in a non-speaking role as Jordan's mother). Jon Bernthal. Kyle Chandler. Jon Favreau. Joanna Lumley. Shea Whigam. Oddly, two guys who were just in Coyote v. Acme appear, Kenneth Choi and P.J. Byrne. This is a reminder of how good Jonah Hill is when he wants to be.

This is, of course, how the notion of who Margot Robbie is became solidified in my mind. I wasn't honestly expecting much, but - starting for me with this movie, and then a string of stellar performances (I'm the dude who loved Barbie, I, Tonya and Gunn's Suicide Squad) - again and again, Robbie's proven she is the real deal.

And, as I said to Jamie when the movie finished - I'm pretty withholding in my praise for male actors. I have my favorites, of course. And this is deeply uncontroversial - but I genuinely think Leonardo DiCaprio is the best American male actor at this point. He started strong with What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and by The Basketball Diaries, I was stunned. If he has a problem, it's that I think he's the kind of actor who really does disappear inside of a character - he's not Ryan Reynolds where you kind of know what you're going to get (which is terrific. I don't begrudge anyone that.) But DiCaprio is a monster talent, and I don't think he hits a false note in this film, even when his character *does*.

As we head into late 2026, there's something worth going back and looking at in this movie. Because if you think these guys were having a good time then, imagine what's going on as the entire country gets turned into a casino.

Colonialism Watch: Outpost in Morocco (1949)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 04:27:06 +0000

Watched: 08/30/2026

Format: TCM on DVR from Marie Windsor day

Viewing: First

Director: Robert Florey

Outpost in Morocco (1949) was part of Marie Windsor day on TCM's Summer Under the Stars. She's not the lead, that's George Raft, but she plays a Moroccan princess for all intents and purposes.

Look, I'm utterly ignorant when it comes to Morocco aside from being able to find it on a map (I double-checked, and I was right! Thanks, Casablanca for leaving that tidbit in my head!). I don't know its history, and I don't know the culture.

I am aware of the French Foreign Legion, its kind of wild history and reputation for taking in folks at the end of their rope. In this story, Raft plays a Captain who is supposedly awesome at his job when he isn't out romancing the ladies. He's sent to an outpost to deliver Windsor to her father, who is a regional leader. Windsor goes to France every year for six months and has been summoned home early.

En route, because movies don't always make sense, Windsor falls for George Raft (more understandable, he feels the same). But then Windsor's dad decides to kill as many Frenchmen as he can to try to reclaim Morocco from France. And things get brutal pretty fast.

This movie doesn't really blink at what happens when a fort is overrun, and there's a whole lotta bodies as Raft arrives with reinforcements. It then has scenes that will foretell both Zulu and a few shots from Lawrence of Arabia - but smaller, worse shot and in black & white.

A lot of the movie was shot as a mix of on location in Morocco and on soundstages, which is neat. Locals were used, so you get large battle scenes and it all feels very believable and occasionally overwhelming.

Two things:

George Raft's stardom is something I firmly don't get. He's got about two different line reads I've ever seen, he's not exactly dangerously handsome, and I've seen three-week-old bananas with more charisma. In this movie he's supposedly to be a ladies man, and, no. I don't buy it. Marie Windsor is supposed to fall for him, and I don't buy it. It's suggested he's a young man, and he's clearly pushing 50 here. He's maybe one of my least favorite leading actors, and I audibly groaned when the movie started and his name came up as the star.

The ending is a dud and undercuts the narrative. I thought they were going to pull a Pocahontas and have Marie Windsor talk her dad down from the nutsy plan to go to war with the French all on his own. Instead, it's played as tragedy as she rides right into a minefield set by the FFL. So our poor princess, who has been a pawn the whole movie, dies doing the one thing that showed her taking some initiative. It's not even a particularly convincing anti-war message as the idea at the end of the movie is "well, we showed them. France is back on top. Everyone is happy".

I didn't hate the movie entirely, I just think I understand why the ratings on it are not exactly ecstatic. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The best thing going for it, aside from Marie Windsor in some groovy outfits, is Akim Tamiroff as Raft's lieutenant. He has range and outshines Raft non-stop through the movie.

Product Liability Law Watch: Coyote vs. Acme (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:43:47 +0000

Watched: 08/30/2026

Format: Regal Cinemas

Viewing: First

Director: Dave Green

First: yes, this is the *completed* movie Warner Bros. was going to just shelve for a tax write-off and then sold to Ketchup Entertainment when word got out and the PR around the move became quite bad. Yes, I have thought the people who currently own Warner Bros. are absolute chuckle-@#$%s and why having MBAs run your entertainment companies all but guarantees the worst results.

Second: I almost took a pass on writing this post as, at its heart, Coyote vs. Acme (2026) is a product liability law movie. And our good pal, JimD, is an actual product liability attorney with a rich history of doing his own blogging. And I was going to make him go see the movie and write up a post, but assigning homework to friends does not seem like a good way to maintain a pal-ship.

Doing anything with the Looney Tunes characters here in 2026 is a bit of a risk. Warner Bros. has passed through various hands in the past 25 years, and somehow the people who buy it seem to have no idea what they're doing. And always seem like they can't wrap their heads around notions like "people enjoy Looney Tunes", because you get the feeling these @#$%wits only feel joy when they can buy another wife or something.

By the time I was in middle school, concerned mom groups (yeah, we had them back then, absolutely) were already raising hell about how the cartoons were raising anti-social kids and we'd all blow ourselves up with dynamite in our quest to be just like Wile E. Coyote. It was *bonkers*.

Looney Tunes have been mined to do many things since at least the early 90's (I was in high school from 89'-93') when they were relegated to supporting characters on Tiny Toon Adventures, and then featured heavily on urban wear for reasons I never understood. Taz got his own show for a minute (Taz-Mania), but the only real exposure I suspect Millennials got to Bugs and the gang was Space Jam. Then, the endless parade of Looney Tunes we were used to UHF channels showing were pushed by Warner Bros. from syndication to Cartoon Network and then Boomerang. And, then, they just kind of disappeared.

Thus, I am unsure if anyone under 30 has any idea who Sylvester and Tweety are. If they do know, I suspect it's from memes or gifs, and not from having watched cartoons as my generation did. And we did it because we had no internet, and minimal programming for kids across maybe 7 channels on the dial. Kids, our young Gen-X options were limited. But it did mean that if you lived in the US and/ or many other countries, we all shared references and understood what Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner were.

With that in mind, it may be true that had this movie been released by Warner Bros., it would have come out, lost money in theaters, and maybe been scrappy enough to make it up via streaming and other outlets. I have no way of knowing, and neither do you. But i know nothing. If you told me in January that The Odyssey would be a runaway hit of the summer, I would have been a bit surprised, to be honest.

And now that I've seen the movie, I really don't know what would have happened. Coyote vs. Acme is not un-safe for kids, but, again, it's a movie about product liability law. It's a legal David v. Goliath movie, about a very powerful monopoly, an indifferent justice system, and the greased wheels of justice turning just one direction.

It is a very 2020's take. It is not insane to think this movie got buried because someone in the C-Suite found the ideas underlying the movie to be overtly anti-monopolistic, which is the go-to these days in the biz world, and they wanted to look their friends in the eye at the pantsless dance-off at Bohemian Grove.

The film opens on a lab where the WB Cartoon Peter Lorre is trying to get a secret message to the outside. Something sinister is afoot. Dr. Lorre makes it outside but is stopped by a paramilitary security force.*

30 years later, Wile E. Coyote has missed catching the Roadrunner one too many times, and so sits down with a truly new angle after he realizes the common denominator in his failures are the products he's purchased from the ACME company. And he's not alone. Cartoons regularly suffer from injuries and issues caused by the ACME products failing (in spectacular fashion).

Meanwhile, Will Forte plays Kevin, an attorney who makes a living - alongside his partners Dottie (Martha Kelly) and Sal (Tone Bell) and his niece, Paige (Lana Condor) - suing for small claims against ACME. A few hundred here, a thousand there. Which ACME gladly pays out.

Wile E. brings his rocket skates to Kevin, and Kevin's ready to send in a claim, but Wile E. seems to want to sue for hundreds of incidents.

As the lawsuit arrives, it draws the attention of Kevin's former law school classmate, Buddy Crane (John Cena), and things begin to speed up.

Like Roger Rabbit or the already forgotten Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers movie, cartoons walking among us is taken as a given. Familiar WB characters appear, including Porky and Daffy, as well as more obscure figures, including some that were based on popular entertainers from their time of debut (see: cartoon Peter Lorre). A lot are one-off gags - we get maybe ten seconds of Witch Hazel, for example. It's a lot of fun seeing these characters, many of whom have languished in a post Space Jam world of WB animation.

There's some nice digging into who Wile E. Coyote is, and the movie doesn't really knock the edges off. He is who he is - a coyote trying to eat a roadrunner. He's a fellow of singular purpose. But there's lessons to be had in a world that constantly asks us to give up and go with the flow.

To be fair, I have no idea if kids would understand this movie, and I don't know if they'd like it. The cinema I went to showed a raft of trailers for coming animated films,** and it was a reminder of the manic pacing and overstimulation most kids' stuff relies on these days. Concepts like rocket skates and coyotes getting anvils dropped on them just aren't part of their humor vocabulary. In short - as Jamie opined on the way home - this was a movie for adults.

Our theater was surprisingly full (maybe 1/2?) for a 10:30 AM Sunday show. And the kids definitely got restless as the trial stuff commenced.

But the movie is really funny, imho. But I was also a guy who gave up on Looney Tunes in his middle school years and rediscovered them in high school, and has never really looked back. For good or ill (career wise, probably ill) Bug Bunny is a personal hero. This is the most Looney Tunes these characters have been in forever, as far as I'm concerned (as a guy who keeps forgetting to watch Looney Tunes: Back in Action, despite Stuart assuring me it's pretty good).

Some final thoughts:

Martha Kelly remains a champ and elevates everything. (I also once saw her at ABIA!)
It's time to bring back this flavor of Looney Tunes. Enough retro-fitting the characters into other concepts. Let them blow each other up.
Will Forte should be in way more stuff. We really don't have anyone else like him, and he bridges so many flavors of funny while also managing to wrangle pathos.
I really liked Lana Condor, who I knew from movies where she played a teen. She kind of slam dunked her part. Glad for her.
Letting Wile E. Coyote be Wile E. Coyote the entire time was just kind of magical. He doesn't need to be particularly "relatable" or nicer. And I am glad they didn't let him speak - always found that weird except for the "Morning, Ralph" "Morning, Sam" bit.
Proper use of Pepe le Pew
I would like a Bugs Bunny movie now, please

*it's unclear to me that even people my own age know who Peter Lorre is and would understand this is a straight up caricature of a real dude

**3/4ths of the trailers were for separate movies, each about a quirky, but relatable young girl - a misfit if you will - who finds she is special somehow, and though she's unsure of herself, embarks on a magical adventure. It was @#$%ing weird, man. Get the accountants out of the executive suite.

Tim Curry Watch: It (1990)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 05:09:07 +0000

Watched: 08/29/2026

Format: HBOmax

Viewing: First

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

It (1990) has long loomed large over the world of horror media. The book was a big deal, but I never read it. Honestly, I'm unsure I've read any Stephen King since middle school and the book of It was 1000+ pages, and thusly avoided. When the TV movie of It showed in November of 1990, I completely missed it. No idea what I was doing, but I know what would have been happening that Fall, and my eye and interests were elsewhere.

Since, I have not seen the movie as the 3-hour run-time has been a bit of a deterrent. Still, that's much shorter than taking in two movies as the new version of It was released into cinemas in the 2010's.

But with this week's passing of Tim Curry, I figured now was the time to finally see the movie.

SPOILERS

I don't get it.

By that, I mean, I don't get how or why this is the thing everyone's been telling me about for the past 36 years. I do get how Tim Curry's stock may have risen based on this performance, which is @#$%ing great. But as a horror movie?

My feeling is, maybe a lot of people read the book and were just pleased to see some version of the book on screen, while people who don't normally watch much horror saw this for free on TV and because it had characters who weren't campers running away from a guy with an axe, felt like it had deep character work. I don't know. Y'all tell me.

Mostly, it's overwhelming how much this feels like what it is: a TV movie from 1990.

Back in the day, we'd have huge made-for-TV movies and "mini-series" that were the networks trying something prestige. Even then, you could feel the ability to tell a story with commercial breaks cutting things up strained the flow of the narrative. The actors were usually The Best TV Could Offer as there were distinct camps between TV and movies at this time. And the budget just wasn't there, which shows up in funny ways.

And this feels like that, which is something I don't see often anymore.

My guess is that the Salem's Lot show had done well, King was reaching peak popularity, and it seemed like a slam dunk to do it again.

It features A-list "TV" stars. Harry Anderson from Night Court, John Ritter from multiple shows, Tim Reid I think of from WKRP but who is in a million things. Richard Thomas of The Waltons. The most *movie star* player is Annette O'Toole, who we adore here, but who was not competing with Kim Basinger in 1990. Olivia Hussey is also in this, somewhat inexplicably.

As younger versions of our adult characters, we get actors like a teen Seth Green (this dude has an absolutely insane career) and the late Jonathan Brandis.

But the *direction* is just... maybe not great? Tommy Lee Wallace has limited directing credentials and I'm unsure why he was selected other than a relationship with John Carpenter that started when he played The Shape at times for the OG Halloween. He would go on to direct Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (recommended), but his last credit prior to It was Baywatch. So I don't know. But scenes are often awkward, rely on *yelling* for no reason, and the cinematography is clunky - and often what most makes this feel like TV instead of a movie.

I don't know if the movie was shot on telefilm, but it looks like a TV film, not something on crisp 35mm. Visually, it's not terribly striking despite some nice sets. It never feels like there's much *mood* to all of this, like we're just doing what we can with locations, which is something I associate with TV from the 70's - 00's.

Maybe if I'd seen this at age fifteen on a 27" Zenith, my feelings would be different. As it is, this was mostly a slog of a film where I got the idea and then the movie just kept doing the same party trick in different colors.

Kids are turning up dead in Derry, Maine - just as they did decades ago. Tim Reid is the last of a gang of kids who were terrorized by an evil entity known as Pennywise. Somehow, mysteriously, no one recalls this wildly traumatic part of their life until Tim Reid calls (can't believe this isn't somehow a meme). Each has a flashback to being young and beat-up-able. We see snips of how they all became friends, and how Pennywise and a local bully who is *not* Ace Merrill made life real bad for them.

All of the kids have kind of shitty homelives, because Stephen King, and it's about as nuanced and subtle as a punch to the face. Yet somehow all of them end up at the tops of their chosen professions as we return to the present.

In Derry, they all take a while to meet for flashback availability reasons, and Pennywise begins scaring each of them. After what I'd consider a shocking amount of talking about what they should do, the group - armed with only a slingshot? - enters the sewers from their first encounter with Pennywise and now he's a big spider. A big, stop-action spider.

All of the FX in this were of questionable quality, and it is here that I just really don't know what anyone was thinking. Was this convincing in 1990? It's sub-Jason and the Argonauts and lacks that Phil Tippet touch that made stop-motion work in that era. And then they just hit it a few times? There seems like there's something else at work with the notion that believing in imaginary ideas has power or something, but... it just kind of lays there. Our end for Pennywise is just a bunch of people who look like they're dressed for a work retreat kicking a big-assed bug. Not exactly the thing that haunts one's nightmares.

I think what's weirdest is that the movie just introduces ideas like "wow, somehow we all lost memories of our youths and this didn't bother us" and "Derry is actually just a well of evil where things are mystically bad" and then just shrugs. And not in a fun HP Lovecraft way. It all gets waved off more in a "we don't have time for this and we need to wrap things up to show one more Keebler Cookies commercial before the 10:00 News" kind of way.

For his part, Curry really is pretty scary! The make-up doesn't hurt, but he *gets* it. This may actually be the Joker we've all wished we could get (as Mark Hamill never put on the white make-up himself). He seems like a *threat*- like something that can play with its food without worry. And he's just uncanny enough to give the character an other-ness that plays better than anything else in this movie.

Y'all tell me, seriously... is this a favorite of yours? Or have you not seen it since 1990? I promise not to judge, I'm just curious. It feels like being told for 36 years that you just have to try this amazing pizza, and you do, and you're like "is this a Red Barron?"

Chabert Watch: Paris is Always a Good Idea

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:33:00 +0000

As the internet's least likely source for Chabert coverage, I knew I'd need to watch the six-episode series, Paris is Always a Good Idea, which just released the final episode on August 27th. Yeah, six fairly long episodes! Way to spread the butter thin, Hallmark.

There are always two ways to watch a Hallmark film or TV show. Hallmark's preference is to exist in a world where romance is simply that - romantic. It's two people making googly eyes at each other, sharing two details about themselves to sound quirky, and having easily resolvable misunderstandings that wrap up in 80 minutes. Then there's the version *not* on screen where you wonder where sex fits in.

And, boy howdy, if you apply that most basic of human activities to this show, it kind of makes our lead look like she needs deep, deep therapy.

SPOILERS

The days of Hallmark doing Hallmark Hall of Fame is now in the past. Those were perfectly good movies Hallmark made for TV starting in the 1950's, and I remember them from the 80's and 90's, and they'd get good actors to do them. Most famous in my mind was Glenn Close in Sarah, Plain and Tall.

These days, you're absolutely amazed if a movie has multiple locations and a single name talent, and doesn't 100% adhere to the strict guidelines of Hallmark. They've cultivated their own stable of talent and don't rely on formerly-more-popular talent, except in the case of their one huge talent, Chabert.

As we've covered extensively on this site, Chabert has a unique arrangement with Hallmark where she has her own line of goods in the stores, an exclusive contract with the network, and is sort of the most popular actress on the network - so she does rounds of talk-shows, special events, etc... Meanwhile, the other performers are scrapping together cruises and multi-city tours for the fans. (I do think everyone is friendly with each other, but you have to guess how weird it all is behind the scenes. #justiceforsustad)

And with Chabert's star-power, she gets the pick of projects. In this case, she got to go spend months in Europe shooting a 6-episode show, jumping from Paris to Spain to Ireland. Not bad, when most of these are filmed in BFE, British Columbia in summer with fake snow piled around.

So what is the show about?

Chabert plays a woman working for a cancer non-profit. She has a peer who drives her crazy, which in Hallmark's world means that he is marked in minute-one as the guy she'll fall for. I'd say spoilers, but... come on.

Ten years ago, her mother passed from cancer, which is why she's chosen her career path. But when her mother died, she left instructions for Chelsea, her sister and father to go to Paris and listen to an audio recording. Chelsea could not emotionally handle this and kept her father and sister from going, somehow. For a decade. Why? She's mentally ill, I think. But not only does she not go, NO ONE ELSE CAN GO, EITHER.

Just *before* her mother grew gravely ill, Chelsea had been taking a gap year (a phrase you will become very sick of hearing) in Europe. First in Ireland, then in Paris and then Spain. In each place she met a guy and fell madly in love.(?) And then left each guy.(?) It's very confusing what she's doing other than fulfilling a romance author's fantasy of being The Most Special Girl. However, while in Spain being romanced by a literal billionaire, she learns her mother is dying and instead of calling upon him to buy a concorde and send her home, she ghosts him and comes back to Boston.(?)

For story reasons, she refuses to fulfill her mother's one dying wish for Chelsea and her family, until a decade later she has to go to Paris to try to shake down a French cosmetics magnate for money for her charity. She brings along her sister and dad, and, there she is told (via audio recording) by her mother to go find those three guys.

Oh, yeah, and her father has found love again with Barbara Niven. She hates that. Joy is bad. He should feel bad.

A key plot point is that Chelsea's charity is doing financially very badly. And no wonder, her boss is a boob. He hires Knightley (I guess the winky name is cute to someone) without consulting Chelsea or to put them in the same room to see if they'll get along at all. And they don't. Which in Hallmark-speak is "these two should hook up, obviously". The boss then surprises Chelsea after she's prepped for her multi-million-dollar meeting by just sending in the unprepared Knightley to "close" for her. This is how you lose good people, Boob Boss.

The French lady is busy and puts them off, leaving charity workers stranded in Paris on the charity's dime, and so Chelsea heads off to see the dudes. After ten years of nada.

Oh, and we're to believe Chelsea - who is the objectively attractive Chabert - has not been on a date in a decade since her mother passed. She's "too busy" with work.

Yeah, this whole show is fucking bug nuts.

I don't know who else, whilst in college, watched their fellow students head over to Europe for a semester abroad and then return, invariably having had hooked up with some guy in a foreign land. Our peers would then subject us to pronouncing common words in the fashion of the country they'd spent a whole 4 months. But holy shit, was it funny every time. I'll never forget a classmate from suburban Houston now saying "schedule" as "shed-jewel". Good stuff.

The part you weren't allowed to comment on was that returned colleague waxing rhapsodic about some guy who you could tell probably was nowhere as into this and thought he has just having fun with an American.

But this is where the whole question of that second, parallax version of a Hallmark movie comes in.

Sooooo... I guess Chelsea basically banged three dudes as she made her way across Europe, made each into a fairy-tale romance in her head, and then *intentionally* did not get laid for a decade because something something her mother passed.

There's so much weird trauma going on in this scenario that goes unexplored, it melted my brain.

Her sister is back in Europe with her, and of course prompts Chelsea to go to Ireland in search of Guy #1. Somehow it does not occur to them that - hey - the past decade of one's 20's and 30's is usually when people are getting married and having a kid or two, building a career. And for some reason (1) Chelsea still has everyone's contact info a decade later and (2) the dudes are all nice guys who actually return her calls and don't avoid her. This is Hallmark land.

Oh, and all three guys attribute their success or happiness to knowing Chelsea for a few months (but never dropped into her DM's somehow). She is The Most Special Girl.

Of course, Knightley remains in Paris, and he seems positively buoyed by Chelsea running off to see these men. Which is worrisome as he is clearly the guy she'll end up with, but we are not here to kink shame. But, Knightley, there's a fine line between supportive and *into it*, my man.

Between dudes two and three, Knightley and Chelsea have a romantic few days in Paris. They declare their love (way to rush it, y'all) and then the billionaire calls Chelsea. Knightley, claiming he wants her to be sure, sends her to go see Rich, Handsome Man. Not because he's giddy at the thought.

Y'all, I kind of have a hard time with the notion that (a) Chelsea the amazing fundraiser never once called this billionaire guy, and (b) this movie didn't end on the funniest note possible with Chelsea ditching her coworker and shacking up with the billionaire. I know I could put up with a lot for just tens of millions. Think of all the third and fourth wives who've bravely put up with insane billionaires. You'd at least get a jet ski.

But, no, she's in love with the guy she just spent a year loathing. So, she is going to leave Billionaire, but then he offers her a job. And she doesn't take that, either. Bad timing because she returns to Boston just to find out Boob Boss has run the charity into the ground, and even the cash infusion she brought will mean they just barely survive - but Knightley must be let go.

Of course, Knightley is raising his sisters who depend on him financially. On a... charity salary.

No one working on this movie understands money.

I haven't mentioned much about Chelsea's sister but she's apparently trying to become a shrink after her pro soccer career was ended by an injury. She was engaged to a Premier League pro soccer player but that ended well in the past. Her story goes nowhere, but she's more interesting than 85% of Hallmark's side characters. One suspects maybe they're teeing us up for a sequel that will never happen, but they give us an outlet for her as Billionaire apparently can't get enough of the Martin girls as he's hitting on her in the last episode.

The framing device is Chelsea leaving Knightley an interminable voice note explaining herself. It's both too much and cowardly. Girl, either call or write an email. Then edit that email down to what he needs to know.

Anyway, the last episode is our insane lead moaning over a guy she hated for a year before she banged him in Paris, and now she's convinced she's in love and supposedly misses him every day. Girl, you miss getting laid. Sadly, she has taken the job in Spain and must stay away so she doesn't have to tell him the only reason he has a job is because she left. Seriously, that's why - she is afraid of emasculating him. Any future these two have is absolutely @#$%ed as neither can say hard things to the other.

He shows up *uninvited* at the wedding, they make out, everyone is happy. We just don't stay with the story long enough to see he was the B-lister all along, and the girl he's *also* been pining for is maybe completely deranged.

Look, I get that people love this stuff. Or might. It's not on either Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, which means Hallmark saw no reason to share it with critics. Which, fair. Why would Hallmark invite getting pasted in the reviews? They know their fans only care what they say to each other online.

Also, the music budget for this show was insane. They have a whole Kelly Clarkson song (Chabert appeared on her talk show a few times, and maybe they're friendly?), a Belinda Carlisle song... on a network that usually has movies scored by kittens wandering around a Casio.

What I don't know is why this is called "Paris is Always a Good Idea". This is not a common phrase in America. No one says it in the movie. It's not like the family oft returns to Paris. I assume it's covered in the book upon which the show is based, but... something got lost, and so maybe they needed to change the title or have the reason in the movie?

Was this good? No. Was it fun to watch? No. But it was never for me, but this is how dedicated I am to the bit. I just am fascinated that these shows and movies are made by adults, for adults, and the approach to romance is still stuck somewhere in a 9 year old's version of how this stuff works. We all have our escapist fantasies, and this is one of them.

I will say the first and last episode were almost like a regular movie and showed what the whole thing could have been, had the premise not been thinned out and warped into a Hallmark-shaped thing. There's actual good moments where you feel like a competent team is telling a competent story. And then you get weighed down by what the story actually is, and... man. You kind of wish Hallmark would find scripts and directors who can get more out of their talent.

Peter Cullen Merges With The Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:33:00 +0000

Voice actor Peter Cullen, who voiced dozens of characters, from the Predator to Eeyore to Venger on Dungeons & Dragons has passed.

Most famously, Cullen provided the voice of Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots in the now mega-franchise Transformers cartoons and movies, based on the popular toys. So indelible was his voice, when they went to make a big-budget movie, they just hired Cullen again, knowing we'd all find someone else voicing the character distracting and wrong.

And that was absolutely the right choice.

Pretty nice to play a world famous action hero and not spend half your day in the gym.

For the record, I only have two Transformers toys in my collection at this point, and the other one is Soundwave (with some associated cassettes). It will not shock you I am a big fan of a tank of a hero colored in red and blue and Optimus retains a place of honor, and Cullen was no small part of why he was a favorite.

Marxist Watch: A Day at the Races (1937)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 08/26/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First?

Director: Sam Wood

I know I've previously seen the back half of A Day at the Races (1937), but I'd not seen it all the way through, I guess.

This one takes the Marx Bros. back to Florida where Chico is working for a Sanitarium that is struggling , but hoping for investment from their wealthy patient, Margaret Dumont. Maureen O'Sullivan has inherited the sanitarium and her boyfriend, a singer, buys a race horse to try to win money to save the place for her. Groucho plays a veterinarian who Dumont thinks is her doctor, and he comes to the sanitarium. Harpo, a jockey.

This one felt a little slow to get started, but then had some amazing stuff. They really understood every scene is funnier if a horse runs through before the end.

It also has some spectacular musical numbers, including a dance sequence by Vivien Fay that I don't know wasn't a special effect. (I made Jamie watch it and she assures me you really can do that, and holy @#$%.) And some long sequence comedy bits that are gold. Is this the first appearance of the Tootsie-Frootsie ice cream? and "thenk youh". I have no idea.

It also has a scene in which Black people enter and perform a few songs, and it's phenomenal. In 1937, dedicating this much time to Black performers was not SOP, and it's initially a highlight of the film. But you cross your fingers and say "please don't do blackface, please don't do blackface" and then, yeah, they do. And it absolutely takes the wind out of the movie for a modern viewer, and more than a few in 1937, I'd imagine. And it's how I knew I'd seen this movie in part before, because I recall this from *a* Marx Bros. movie I caught on cable at some point, but didn't know which film it was.

Does it ruin the movie? Sigh. Well, it kinda spoiled the fifteen minutes following because even if you can contextualize the gag historically, you're now thinking about it.

As someone who thinks editing a movie post facto is bad, I wouldn't touch it. But I also wouldn't give it the G rating it aired with. It's complicated, of course, and one of the many ways film is a solid reminder of what each era was like and what was perfectly normal to someone's great-grandma.*

But what does work, works well. I lol'd. But I also don't want to give away the gags. Instead I'll just mention that the Marx Bros. were also accomplished musicians and happy to give up screen time to others performing, including one character (Allan Jones as "Gil") who was clearly supposed to be Zeppo until Zeppo tapped out and decided not to appear on camera anymore.

*be real careful getting too nostalgic about the past

Tim Curry Merges With the Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:01:00 +0000

Actor of stage and screen, Tim Curry, has passed.

Curry had been ailing for some time, having experienced a stroke in 2012.

For the last fifty years, Curry has built generations of fans with diverse roles from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to The Hunt for Red October to Muppet Treasure Island to Clue. I think I first saw him as Rooster in Annie, when it was in theaters back in the day. And I very much enjoyed him in movies like The Shadow and The Three Musketeers and plenty of others.

He has an insane IMDB listing as he was not shy about taking voice work (I really didn't know til now how many voices he'd done). He may have also been in a few less than amazing movies, and respect. The man was working. He was also acting on a whole different level than everyone else in the small indie movie The Scoundrel's Wife I watched last year.

If social media tells me anything, there's some key roles here that people really remember, and that's pretty great. The man was beloved, and I think he knew it. I hope so.

Windsor Pirate Watch: Hurricane Island (1951)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 03:51:33 +0000

Watched: 08/25/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Lew Landers

So, it's entirely possible that the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was somewhat inspired by this B-movie, Hurricane Island (1951). I'm not saying it is, directly, or there aren't substantial differences, but....

I'm also not sure watching a movie just because it has Marie Windsor in it is wrong, but..! It was Marie Windsor day on Summer Under the Stars on TCM. This one is also a pirate movie, and, in theory, is based on one or two real historical figures. Well, it has Ponce de Leon, which is kind of exciting.

Theoretically, this is about Ponce de Leon's search for the Fountain of Youth. But in this movie, it's about a wounded Ponce outsourcing his adventuring to a husky Captain Montalvo (John Hall) who de facto leads the expedition into the island of Florida (it's like 1513, and I don't think they know dick all about the actual Florida coastline yet).

The King of Spain has put pressure on Ponce to settle the island, but by some odd coincidence, people already live there, and as history rhymes, the people in Florida hate the idea of foreigners moving in. In this case, attacking the Spaniards, who shoot back.

Because the producers knew a simple trick when they saw one, the plot requires our hero to bring along a slew of women who will be married to the male settlers rather than choosing jail, allowing the movie to just randomly have 15-20 young women just floating around in the background.

Oh, and Windsor is a pirate queen! Were there pirates in the Caribbean in 1513? Not exactly yet - the piracy you're thinking of would really get going 100 years later. Columbus had just sailed the ocean blue in 1492, so this was all relatively new. I assume Windsor's character is based on Anne Bonny, but not so much. She's mostly just Marie Windsor with fabulous blonde hair I assume is a wig, but it looks spectacular.

The natives are played by white people in wigs and some generic war paint. It's something else. They're led by a lady chieftain who is incredibly well made up for someone you assume does not have Avon calling. Her name is Okahla, which tells me someone drove through a town my grandparents once lived in, Ocala.

Eventually the "good" Natives lead Ponce and friends, including a now tamed Windsor, to the actual Fountain of Youth. Ponce, who is carried on his back, is given a familiar looking golden chalice full of magical waters which restores him. When violence breaks out, pirates and rogue natives jumping the party, the fountain crumbles into the earth and a storm drives them away. And, oh, look... our Ohkala ages swiftly before out eyes.

I'm just saying. The Indy movie series was originally a pastiche of old serials and a Heston movie no one has ever watched. Who knows?

This movie had Marie Windsor, who would make a great pirate queen, but did nothing with her in the set-up other than have her fall for the doofus hero. And if you know my feelings on Against All Flags, that's a miss.

Honestly, this movie is ideal riff material in a whole lot of ways.

Dolly Parton Merges With The Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 22:02:25 +0000

The great Dolly Parton, musician, storyteller, philanthropist, entrepreneur, amusement park mogul, and one of the best of us, has passed at the age of 80.

If you've never heard it, I highly recommend the podcast Dolly Parton's America from RadioLab on NPR.

I grew up in the 1980's when Dolly - through radio play, TV and her hit movies Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and 9-to-5 - became a household name. In short, I cannot remember a world before I knew who she was. I even saw her in November of 1985 .sitting in the rafters of the Erwin Center, in a co-headlining tour with Kenny Rogers (Sawyer Brown was supporting).

As I became a teen, country music was *the enemy* for a good patch, as I think a lot of us shut it down who live below the Mason-Dixon line as we build our little lines between us and them. So it was not until after college that I finally clicked to who Dolly was as a musician. It came, really, with the release of Little Sparrow - pretty late for me as it was her 38th album. I believe I bought Emmylou Harris's Red Dirt Girl the same landmark day (unaware of the Trio effort with Linda Ronstadt until Nathan C showed me the way a few years back).

A second round for the Trio team in the late 1990's

It does seem that as we entered the 00's, the jokes about Dolly became a relic of our forebears* and rather than just noting her striking appearance, the subsequent generation (which had been raised with far more provocative acts) latched onto her musical output, her tremendous generosity and the kind spirit she held up to the world, even when you knew she had to be tired or even heartbroken.

We were all aware of her humble beginnings in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, which she'd folded directly into her own mythology via story and song. And because she knew what it was not to have what others might have, and that she could help fill the need, she gave back. One example is that millions of kids had a book or three of their own thanks to Parton's generosity.

Generation after generation of performers adored her, and in recent years she was performing duets with The Highwomen, Lainey Wilson and Sabrina Carpenter. She interpreted the songs of others - and her version of Brandi Carlisle's The Story is at least equal to Carlisle's (I may not-so-secretly like it better, and I love Carlisle's original).

Across demographics, political persuasions, sexual orientations, etc... et al, across the world, Dolly was welcome and a favorite. Being a bright light tends to open doors.

The last decade has seen a different Dolly-mania, with robust admiration for the performer and younger people seeing her as a true role model. Breaking away, lovingly from her roots with Porter Wagoner, moving into her own mold, trying on different music styles, writing her own music as she pleased, having TV shows, specials, a career in film, and setting up her various businesses and charities in Tennessee. Heck, she opened a truck stop this summer (and it looks really nice!). She sells cast iron pans, baking goods, and Jamie wears a butterfly necklace that was a collab with Kendra Scott.

And people are fine with it, because of who Dolly is. She gives back. She supports other artists. She's the promise of what we'd hope to be as celebrities made real.

About a year and a half ago, Carl Dean, Dolly's husband of sixty years, passed on. Dolly herself mentioned she maybe hadn't taken great care of herself as she took care of Carl and now her own health was having issues. But you hope.

If my socials are any indication, her passing is being felt worldwide. I am not surprised. She has been a light in a dark time.

I have a feeling people will remember Dolly well into the future. Her impact was too great, her breadth of work too tremendous, and her legacy is going to be one without compare.

We'll surely miss her, but I welcome all the Dolly tributes I think we can expect in the next few weeks and months.

*Dolly Parton was almost exclusively discussed for her bust size and rhinestone-bedazzled persona in comedy and casual conversation when I was a kid