Monster of the Day

It's the Mothman! Look out, Richard Gere!

Monster of the Day

It's the Creeper. From Scooby-Doo.

Here's Hoping: Dune 2020



I thought a good article to write for my audience of one would be an optimistic piece about why Denis Villeneuve's upcoming take on Dune, that monolithic VFW grandpa of modern sci-fi, is shaping up to be not just good but excellent. If at times it trails off or gets lost in the weeds think of this more as my digital summoning circle for the best damn Dune movie that we deserve.

Linguistics
Starting with the absolute sexiest topic, linguistics, it's important to realize how valuable this was both to Herbert's vision but also to creating a believable world in Arrakis. But first, when we think of a desert planet based on the Levant in dryer times we envision, naturally, that there would be things like intense preservation of moisture, weakness to subjugation and slavery, and a very considerable amount of the population being harnessed for the miserable farming of water. But wait --this sounds just like Tatooine, and isn't Star Wars smarter and cooler?

No, get out.

You see, these single biome planets are stupid. So stupid in fact that the one Tatooine was based on not-so-secretly wasn't one. Stupid enough that David Lynch turned down Empire for his original Dune shot in Mexico. George Lucas did not have to read between the lines, he just had to not skip any chapters to know that terraforming the planet was a pretty key item because it meant a symbolic death of culture in the subsequent weaning of the Shai-Hulud in the favor of modernized civilization. Its barren appearance was supposed to be evocative, disarming... even sinister but hey, subtlety doesn't work on everybody and that's okay.



The Arabic and Islamic influences are probably a bit too time consuming to list here, especially since people have done it already if you want to check out this neat summary from Khalid Baheyeldin. I'll just give you two of my favorites and a brief bit on what they mean to me.

The honorific given to Paul, Usul, is based on the Arabic word which may be spelled the same way meaning literally the basis upon which something is built. In some contexts it also means 'of or relating to principles/scruples.' Of the many types of rulers we see in Dune Paul Atreides definitely plays a role more or less opposing of the morally wicked, so the name is apropos. But the evolution of the word usul in our world is also pretty mirroring. For instance, I first heard of this Dune word connection while studying the great Indian tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha. The honorific Ustad was given to him and to few other musicians as a denotation of mastery but the word was originally Persian in origin and spread out from the cradle under many other different interpretations including usul. What's really special and cool to me though is in Indian culture the name is given usually to musicians but it can also be given to teachers of any craft regardless as long as its users wish to show intense appreciation for their teachings. So with the name Usul in Dune, we have a shining man of principle but also a teacher for whom great reverence and gratitude is shown, and will one day be the foundation for what at that point was to be a noble and pure reinvention of Arrakis.

I gotta wrap this one up so I'll go quickly. The Dune word 'kanly' signifies an honor-based duel with knives and derives from the Turkish word kanlı meaning 'bloody' from the stem of blood, 'kan-' a word which in Turkey has come to mean 'sworn enemy.' There's not much to unpack here but we must admire that the practice's first use does in fact take place in a scene that resolves the blood debts of two sworn enemies.

Now go watch Arrival. An alien contact flick about... talking it out. Villeneuve is a lingustics nerd which is very good news with respect to reverence for the sourcemat.



Inspired Casting
As the great mother Mohiam we have Charlotte Rampling, who already has amazing blue eyes so no strange cornea destroying contacts are needed. She was amazing in Zardoz which itself was in some way a great tale of two cities with a clear Athens and a clear Sparta. Finally, there's a bit of closure for her loop as she once was slated to play Lady Jessica in Jodorowsky's Dune until she found out that he had planned to have a scene with about 2,000 extras simultaneously dropping trow and shitting themselves on screen. "Fun" Fact: George Harrison almost played the lead in Holy Mountain until he reached the scene where he was to wash his butthole for like four minutes.



Another great pick is Dave Bautista, who has been the surprise character actor of the century. While he can easily be charming  and funny to boot, it's the pathos of his insect protein farmer Sapper Morton from Blade Runner 2049 that I want to focus on. (This is going to happen to humans by the way.) Ignoring the companion animation, his single scene in Blade Runner was so good and so natural that it managed to immediately set a tragic and somber tone for at least the first half of the film. I don't want to ruin that feeling for you but just trust me when I tell you they came up with all requisite in-universe reasons for a vulnerable, muscle bound, bookworm character from him to play and he slam dunks it.

What I have seen of Chalamet, he'll definitely entice a certain audience that expects a high degree of acting but the supporting characters he'll get to play off are what really have me excited. There are so many, but I want to tell y'all about David Dastmalchian. He should look pretty familiar if you've seen many comic book movies. He even recently wrote his own and there's this promo video he did for it that I watch at least... three times a week. As you can see, he's a lot of fun. But one thing he recently said in an interview (I'd link it if this was a job) was that he loves to pull out all the stops to be the slingshot that sets one of the main characters into a violent trajectory. And if that's not the golden mantra of a supporting character actor, I couldn't word it better myself.



Just in general, the casting for characters like Stilgar, Dr. Yueh, and Liet Kynes leads me to believe that there is much more interest nowadays for diverse casting but before you go, realize that the diversity is not coming from a Roddenberry-esque enlightenment future but more because Herbert had a very athropology focused bent on what the spacefaring human race would actually look like. I hope the hard left and the hard book-to-adaptation fans can either overlap or come together and agree that they truly are making a lot of the right decisions in earnest.

And at the end of the day, all you want is the people who will do the best job. Here's hoping!

Your easy guide to the upcoming biopics

Here are some biopics that don't even need to exist to already never be as good as Walk Hard.



Aretha Franklin played by Jennifer Hudson in Respect
Iggy Pop played by Elijah Wood possibly
Elvis played by Austin Butler in some untitled film by noted orc Baz Luhrmann
Bob Dylan played by Timothée Chalamet in Going Electric
David Bowie played by Johnny Flynn in Stardust
George Jones and Tammy Wynette played by Josh Brolin and Jessica Chastain
'The Shaggs' played by Elsie Fisher in a movie
Boy George played by somebody, (hopefully Danny Devito but maybe Sophie Turner).
Richard Pryor played by Nick Cannon or Marlon Wayans, they don't know
Barry Gibb played by Bradley Cooper
Leonard Bernstein played by Bradley Cooper after a quick smoke break
Dusty Springfield played by Gemma Arterton
Hulk Hogan played by Chris Hemsworth but it's Todd Philips so do with that what you will
Charles Bukowski will be the name of a character interpreted by Josh Peck
Marianne Faithfull played by Lucy Boynton
Michael Jackson played, once again, by a brave soul
Janis Joplin played by Amy Adams
Jimi Hendrix played by Andre Benjamin
Judy Garland played by Renée Zellweger
Ronald Reagan played by Dennis Quaid
Tesla played by Ethan Hawke
Al Capone played by Tom Hardy

These are just a few that we're supposed to be getting all within a year.

The Shape of Water



After watching the original Creature so many times it had become a sleep aid of mine in college, I delayed watching this for so long thinking that a Creature remake could never be done justice even when brought to life by a genius or after winning a meaningless award.

Boy howdy was I glad to be wrong. Sally Hawkins is perfect, the comedy all works, literally everything is visually and sonically impeccable, and Doug Jones and Michael Shannon manage to exude love and anger without a single word. Guillermo del Toro is no doubt a true blue Gill Man stan. (One of us! One of us!)

It takes a lot to have confidence in this life. BUT if you take your tongue out of your cheek and really try to engage with what movies like Bride of Frankenstein, Beauty and the Beast, and fuck it- Shrek are trying to say: (What is a man? Is a man a man without woman? Also in the remake, is a man a man without a man? Are you nobody until somebody loves you?) then you really start to peel back the layers of the fairy tale DNA in del Toro's beautiful brain.

Del Toro also gets the happenings surrounding the original film so well that it hurts how expertly he addresses them in Shape of Water. The magnificent Millicent Patrick didn't deserve her shabby treatment, Kay didn't deserve to be strongarmed into pairing with some shitty Wonderbread man in spite of the events of the original, Julia Adams didn't deserve to be slotted into place as a Hollywood gambit (she didn't mind though, bless her), and Elisa is all of these women and more. Part of the real tragedy of the original is the coequal injustice that never really is addressed, and in Shape of Water, del Toro sees you. He sees all of the misogyny, the negativity, the blind rage, and the injustice of the time period, and asks you to believe not in a perfect world where these all melt away but in a world where an audience of one is all it takes to matter and feel important and loved. That's why it's not enough to have just Shrek or just the Cocteau Beast. The Joseph Campbell people want to say it doesn't matter and the basic conceit of all of these stories is the same and they've got the right. If you got anything from those stories it's that the perfect match doesn't exist until we make them perfect in our perceptions. Shape of Water is here to tell us that again but with layers and newfound nuance that heals the pain of the original movie that most people never put into words. In structure how like an onion...

I think now you're ready to understand why I cried a little during this movie. (Okay, a lottle.) Hope you enjoyed reading this. This post was taken from my Letterboxd account, something I generally won't be doing but I thought it would be an exemplary post to give the new blog home a running start.

Billy Drago


For every chiseled, dreamboat leading man there are precisely a bajillion bit players who routinely (but spectacularly) take one for the team. These talented actors sacrifice personal affectation, appearance, and possibly on-set hygiene to add stakes and personality to what you’re watching. They contrast the hero for an extra pop; and yin to the hero’s yang. Moviegoers and A-listers have them to thank… but not often enough!


Luscious locks

Sadly for actor Billy Drago, he lived faster than I could tell you all about how much fun he was. Last June he passed away of a stroke. His son Darren E. Burrows is also an actor, and has appeared in similar roles like the X-Files and Cry-Baby with Johnny Depp and John Waters. Today we’ll be remembering Mr. Drago and hopefully once we’re done you too will be equipped with all of the tools to spot a wild Billy Drago in his natural habitat: Depicting complete weirdos with an all too natural and individual flair.


Rarely does the man make the cigarette look cool

Now, in his early days of tearing it up in Clint Eastwood movies Drago was actually pretty handsome, but maybe in a sort of alternatively beautiful way that modern audiences seem to appreciate more now in actors like Cumberbatch. For most of the roles I’ll be showcasing here though, I’d characterize him by the wisdom of his white hair worn confidently, his sunken eyes, his vampire teeth, and his waxy, glistening skin that looked like if old butter could be molded into some sort of alcoholic golem. So what do you do when your halcyon days of playing dashing rogues and sinister roadies are winnowed away? You save the production’s makeup money by using your real damn face to play the best vampires and bar none.


Kinda cute (but to whom do I refer?)

My first exposure to Billy Drago was a great episode of the X-Files called “Theef” (s7e14) in which he plays a cajun voodoo houngan necromancer serial killer who does his darndest to make Scully retire. It was a Gilligan script where Billy Drago preys on a surgeon’s family as revenge for failing to save his daughter’s life with medicine rather than more homeopathic methods like dried newts. In the end the role fit like a glove because, even while kidnapping Scully, the tenderness of his generally understated approach made the vengeance angle 1000% believable as X-Files outings go.

When you’re done with Carpenter’s They Live and you want some more Rowdy Roddy Piper in your life, Sci-Fighters is waiting to be discovered along with a complementary side of Billy Drago. The setting is 2009 in far-flung future Boston where detective Roddy Piper must track down Billy Drago, an alien disease infected ghoul man recently escaped from moon jail. It’s simply adorable.

To round out the sample plate and overextend my food metaphor there’s Vamp which was smack dab in the middle of the innocent 80’s movie renaissance. It also features Grace Jones doing her thing as a vampire stripper and Drago back again looking a bit like a melted Tilda Swinton. Drago and Grace apparently threw parties every day of shooting and he even shared a champagne filled bathtub with her.


Weeeeeeeeeee!

Unfortunately I didn't love The Untouchables. From a stylistic standpoint it tried to have a finger in as many pies as Capone did to a similar fate. It's a mob movie, it's not, it's an immigrant story sort of, not really now, BAM here's one scene that's a Western homage... Anyway as far as fame goes this may be the high water mark of Drago’s whole career. That said, I just adore this guy no matter where and his roles big and small were all on this guy's back. His character Frank Nitti was based heavily on the real guy and while hanging out with the real life Nitti family, they grew to love him too. They'd call him 'uncle Frank' and sometimes even use him as a medium. Pretty cool stuff.


Although I want to, I really can’t plumb each actor’s entire oeuvre each time I want to share observations about them so hopefully this was a good smattering of stuff he done did. I guess the last thing I want to say is if someone who knew him reads this we are, if nothing else, proof that he was a pretty cool guy who left a lot of positive memories behind.

As an aside: I just saw the new Spider-Man in theaters by myself and my third eye really opened. Not because the movie was a good time but because going to movies alone lets the experience be completely undemocratized. I chose the time I wanted, left moments later, I went on a Tuesday night for the $5 ticket price, and I didn’t even have to pretend to be too busy to watch the post credits scene. Well one of them at least, there were probably several. I also didn’t feel like a weird loner. I just felt like a grown-ass adult. (Felt like it.)

Underpromise and overdeliver, that’s what my new motto round these here parts should be. I really was excited to make this blog but I flustered myself with ideas. I really like the concept of formally introducing the actors who always elicit an “Oh yeah! It’s them!” Especially this one, because there are many character actors I’d love to present to you. Like Patrick Fischler, and hopefully I won’t be half eulogizing him as well. I may revisit this idea.

A word

Sunlight rains down, the clouds part, and a medieval trumpeter toots a triumphant jingle. It’s finally here, the answer to a question on almost nobody’s lips, “When is Jake just going to start a movie blog?”

Yeah, I don’t know what this is going to be, whether it’s a movie review site or some sort of menagerie for whatever I feel. Probably I’ll just add or tweak one UI item each time I add a post so it doesn’t feel like such a chore and the site is eventually pretty looking.  It’ll be fast and loose, folks, but I do take comfort in the complete lack of judging eyes on this ‘fart in the wind’ of mine.

Here’s a fun game: I’ll list some bits and segments I’ve had rattling around and later we can all look back at what I never got around to.

An article about how reviewing Peter Sellers’ Being There (1979) is kind of missing the point.
A retrospective on the Creature From the Black Lagoon trilogy (1954-1956) and its often accidental tragicomic genius.
Corollary to that, a snugly adjacent review of Del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017), in which I try my best to explain my love for this goofy footnote of fish-scented Americana. Spoiler: I love that movie, it’s immaculate.
One painfully biased and unnecessary review of David Lynch’s Dune (1984) some time before Duneis Villeduneve comes and elevates it to something you could hang in the Louvre.
An entire series where I take a look at different schlock horror franchises that went on for so long they became funny, then sad, then awesome and funny. I’m talkin’ bout Critters, I’m talkin’ bout Tremors, I’m talkin’ bout Leprechaun, Hellraiser,  Trancers, you name it. (Mostly though, I have this theory about thirds and fourths and why they always seem to be the installment where they go to outer space.)
A character actor spotlight series.
Something -anything- about Twin Peaks.
That’s already more than I’ll ever get to so in the meantime I’ll point you to Something Awful’s now discontinued Current Releases movie review rotation. These things were the bomb. One highlight I can’t recommend enough is their review of Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer in which reviewer Martin R. Schneider draws the short straw and the only way he can cope is by reading it as a Dadaist takedown of film itself. It’s possible you get something similar looking on my blog, but also maybe not.

Hi mom.