Anne Francis Stars In...

Surely that can't be a monster of the id?

I'm assuming you heard about the recent passing of Leslie Nielsen. Please now congratulate me on the restraint I showed just then by not saying, "Surely you heard about the recent passing of Leslie Nielsen." I've seen a great deal of well deserved praise for the guy who defined deadpan humor so well that comedy roles were written just for him well into his old age. I come today, however, to talk about my favorite Leslie Nielsen movie and it's not a comedy.

1956's Forbidden Planet stands as one of the finest examples of science fiction ever put on screen. Fans of serious science fiction have remembered that movie fondly whenever they would see a movie in which a solar system was called a galaxy or that invading aliens came from a planet 3 million miles from Earth. The makers of Forbidden Planet treated their material as if it was actually supposed to make sense and it did as opposed to most producers of science fiction movies who think that mistakes and lazy writing don't matter since the very genre is stupid anyway. Most science fiction films rip each other off doing variations of the radioactive monster or conquering aliens storylines over and over again. Forbidden Planet used Shakespeare as its inspiration.

The movie opens in the 23rd century, a fact that already puts it ahead of the other movies of the 50s that postulated an incredibly advanced space faring civilization by 1980. Leslie Nielsen plays J.J. Adams, a character that would later inspire Gene Roddenberry to create a starship captain who has sex with green women. Adams commands the United Planets Cruiser C-57D, a ship on a mission to investigate a human colony on the planet Altair IV that disappeared 20 years earlier. They discover that the expedition's sole survivor, Dr. Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), has built himself a very comfortable existence on this planet for himself and his 18 year old daughter, Altaira (Anne Francis). What killed the rest of the colony and how did Morbius survive? The answer to that holds up to this day as one of the most interesting and evocative ideas ever advanced in science fiction cinema.

The special effects technology is sadly dated but still holds up well enough, especially when compared to other movies made between this and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even more dated, though, are the cultural attitudes. The crew of the ship is very male and very white. Altaira's character is classic damsel-in-distress. Adams describes a machine that takes care of dirty dishes as being perfect for Earth's housewives. I mention this because I see this movie at least once a year and these points always stand out as a distraction but I manage to get past them because the rest of the movie is so good.

I love the scene when the crew does battle with an invisible creature that can only be seen by the outlines it leaves in their force field (a scene that entertains to this day and makes up for other outdated effects). I love it when the movie tries to penetrate the history of a long-dead alien race called the Krell. I love it when J.J. Adams has to outwit a genius to defeat something that can't be fought.

The key to Leslie Nielsen's comedy is that he played his funny roles pretty much the same way he played the serious and solemn J.J. Adams. I often snicker a bit when I hear him in this or The Poseidon Adventure or any of the numerous television guest spots he did all through the 60s and 70s. His comedic skills were incredible and they are what most people are talking about but, if you happen to have room in your Netflix queue or TCM is running it during one of their science fiction marathons, your time would be well spent checking out Forbidden Planet. Just don't call it Shirley because, you know, that would make no sense.

Give Me A Head With Hair

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Things I've Learned From Watching Movies Part 85

It's official. They'll make a movie out of anything.

The reason you never hear about a ninja killing anyone is because they spend most of their time trying to kill each other.

If a movie has a sex scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, I'll go see it. This is something I have learned about myself and I'm totally cool with it.

Jesus was a talking lion who mercilessly ripped apart his enemies. Did I get that right, C.S. Lewis?

It's all right if you get tricked, framed and have your life threatened so as as it's Angelina Jolie doing all that to you. Seriously, she could do all that to me and I'd still want to take her to McDonalds or whatever it is she likes to do.

Sure, the story of an underdog boxer going all the way has been done a million times but that means you can say the lines along with the actors. That's good, right?

Sure, 99% of all romantic comedies suck but how do you know for sure? Yes, how do you know?

This movie is a true revelation. I would have thought it would be a huge deal if bears started talking but now I see that people will be nonplussed and the two races will instead enter into a battle of wits over picnic baskets.

Allegorical fantasy stories about Irish class differences in the 18th century that are considered to be classic works of literature make a great basis for modern day comedies about idiots who bounce cannonballs off their body fat.

Story ideas that ran out of steam in the first movie should definitely get a second sequel.

The Dude abides. As does the Clu. And the Rooster.

Look At My Briefs -- Thanksgiving Day 2010

It's unlikely anyone is reading this today. You're all cramming your faces with various types of traditional foodstuffs while hoping against hope that your closeted cousin doesn't decide that this is the year to announce to Grandma that he and his "roommate" got married in Massachusetts. Still, if you did manage to find time to come and read this site, the least I can do is treat you to an all-new edition of my brief comments on various subjects I like to call Look At My Briefs.

So, a Buffy remake. Without Joss Whedon. I wonder if anyone noticed. Oh yes, you already knew about this. If you aren't a Whedon fan then you know someone who is and have had to listen to them as they describe this state of affairs in the same terms one would use to describe the Holocaust. I'll say what I said when a new Kirk/Spock Star Trek film came out. It's not the end of the world. It does not destroy your childhood. All those episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer you loved? They still exist. The new actress playing Buffy won't be photoshopped into the old episodes. Maybe Angel will be a sparkling, moody douchebag and Spike will be a werewolf with 6-pack abs in the new movie but that won't change who they were before. The new movie will be good and all this rending of garments will be meaningless or it will suck and Whedon fans get to hold a massive congratulatory pancake breakfast/circle jerk. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

Anne Hathaway would be a good choice for Lois Lane in any new Superman movie. The big problem in that article is the rumored description of the plot. We don't need a Superman origin story. Everyone knows Superman's origin. People who have never stained their fingers with comic book ink know this story. The CW is about to wrap up its ten year long television series about Superman's origin. Hell, if you found an island with natives that had never before had contact with the outside world, they would know about Kal-El of Krypton.

And speaking of stories told again and again and origin stories everyone knows...

A few years ago, a company called CleanFlicks was driven out of business after a successful lawsuit by movie makers. CleanFlicks and companies like them would take DVDs and remove anything they found objectionable so that people with delicate sensibilities wouldn't get their precious little fee-fees hurts when they saw things like Kate Winslet's nude scene in Titanic. A federal judge ruled in 2006 that these companies were violating copyright laws by selling altered DVDs and that was that. Until now anyway. Look, prudes, I know most family films suck but you all wouldn't like it if I took Fireproof and added swear words and buttsex scenes. Most movies worth watching have stuff in them you don't like. Accept that and learn to love the Disney Channel.

The answer to the question asked in this headline is no. Sarah Palin couldn't even get her daughter a win on a stupid dancing show and her TLC reality thing has already lost half its initial viewers and the diehard fans left are old and will be dead by 2012.

I'd heard that Johnny Depp might star in a new film about the Lone Ranger but wasn't all that interested until today when I read that Depp wouldn't be playing the Ranger. He would play Tonto. The article speculates that Robert Downey Jr. might play the Lone Ranger and what a dream team that would be but I can't wait to see how everyone involved with the project will try to explain why they chose Depp and not a Native American actor to play Tonto. The explanation would be, "Well, he's Johnny freaking Depp," but I can't believe this controversy hasn't occurred to anyone. Knowing Depp, he'll want to play one weirdass Tonto too.

You Know It's Filler, Filler Night

I'm busy with various holiday related activities so today, instead of posting nothing, I'm going to show off my cut-and-paste skills by sharing the best of my Twitter posts.

• I've decided to start keeping score. So far, I'm ten points ahead of the rest of you.

• Skating With The Stars, because Dancing With The Stars still leaves you with a shred of hope for humanity.

• Tomorrow I will either shake things up or bring that old razzle dazzle. Haven't decided yet.

• Since he Ok'd condoms, Vatican officials have been keeping the Pope quiet lest he say, "Hell with it. Abortion and gay sex are cool too."

• "Hey man, know what would be funny? When you create women, make them bleed out their vaginas once a month." -- God's a-hole frat brothers

• "Hey man, know what would be funny? When you create women, make them bleed out their vaginas once a month." -- God's a-hole frat brothers

• Incidentally, if anyone knows Kim Kardashian, please tell her it would really help my showbiz career if she and I started having sex.

• "Please sign this petition to protest Miley Cyrus' upcoming 18th birthday." -- Socially active pedophile

• I just had sex with a woman. Please RT.

• "They ride around the Outback looking for gasoline." American knowledge of Australia begins and ends with The Road Warrior.

• Henry VIII didn't kill his 6 wives. He only killed 2 so he wasn't so bad.

• "Can I solve the puzzle, Pat? Raping The Squirrel!" I suck at Wheel of Fortune.

• Historians have show it was 3 days after the invention of math that someone sarcastically said, "You do the math."

• Congress bans "Crush" videos? Well hell, there goes my weekend.

Oh Oh It's Magic -- Part 1

Finally, after all the years, the story of Harry Potter is finally coming to an end. HA! GOTCHA! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is not, in fact, the final chapter in Harry's cinematic saga. That will come in the summer when Part 2 comes out or, maybe, next winter when part 3 comes out or 2015 when Part 10 is finally released. Anyway, was the movie any good?

I'm so glad you asked. Ah, what a difference a decade makes. Way back in 2001 when Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone* was released, Harry and his mates were such joyful children. Harry himself was rescued from a life of being debased by the aunt and uncle who had to take him in when his parents died and so often had a look of wonder and sheer joy at the thought that he could make things float or change their shapes just by saying the correct words. I thought about the poor, innocent boy who had no idea what sort of suffering awaited him during the next seven years of his life. We're reminded of that as Harry wanders around his childhood home and sees the closet under the stairs that used to be his room before Hagrid showed up to rescue him and bring Harry into the wonderful world of magic and wizardry.

Despair is really the name of the game here. Voldemort and his minions have pretty much taken over the wizard world and they're all after Harry. Pretty much all of Harry's old friends, the ones who've managed to live this long anyway, have gathered to try to transport him to a safe house but they get ambushed along the way and another of Harry's friends and comrades doesn't make it. It seems like we might get a bit of peace and happiness when Ron's older brother Bill prepares to marry Fleur Delacour (French witch from Goblet of Fire, please try to keep track, I can't do this every time) but the wedding in the supposedly impregnable safe house is crashed by Voldemort's Death Eaters and Hermione barely manages to transport herself, Harry and Ron to safety.

And now it's just them. The three best friends who have always been the core of the story are now on their own, separated from their friends and allies. They can't go home and Hogwart's is now being run by the traitorous (?) Professor Snape. Their only hope is to fulfill the mission Dumbledore started before he died and try to track down Voldemort's horcruxes, the pieces of his soul he separated and hid so that he can never die. While doing that, they go camping.

If you didn't see the movie but do frequent some form of social media, you already know about the camping from your friends on Twitter or Facebook as that and the fate of Dobby the House Elf were all they talked about. This is where what, up till now, was a gripping and perfectly decent movie. Hermione anticipated having to go on the run so she packed a magical handbag with camping supplies. When they first escaped, they went camping. When it came time to move they went to...another camping site. After an exciting raid of the Ministry of Magic to retrieve a horcrux they once again GO FRIGGING CAMPING AAAHHHHH. Seriously, this is where some judicious script editing of the book would have actually come in handy. It makes me wonder if they had to use all these camping scenes from the book because they had to fill out two movies. That makes this money-driven decision to make the book into two films an even worse idea.

I don't use a four star rating system but if I did, the latest Harry Potter film minus the endless camping scenes would have received three and a half stars. In its present state, I would give it two and a half. That basically makes it barely worth seeing. It contains some of the best material seen so far in the Harry Potter series but also has some of the worst, or at least the dullest. To sum up, it's either a substandard Harry Potter film or, if you're an optimist, it's the greatest camping documentary ever. If not for the Harry/Hermione nude makeout scene, the rating would drop even further. Am I making that part up? Sorry, spoilers.

*Please join me in giving a hearty FUCK YOU to the small minded American publishers who worried that Americans would be too stupid to deal with a title with which the rest of the planet has no problem. I'd like to kick you guys right in your sorcerer's stones.

Bee Minus

Yesterday, I mentioned a film that Michael Caine describes as his worst movie, and that it's in the process of being remade. A bit of curiosity caused me to look the movie up on Netflix and, sure enough, it's available on Netflix Instant. Regular readers may have already figured out that what you are reading right now is the start of my latest Liveblog and that you can all now sit back and enjoy my real time comments on this oldie-but-not-a-goodie from 1978...THE SWARM!

0:01:30 -- This movie is 2 and a half hours long so I'll have to pace these comments but, in addition to Michael Caine, the credits have names like Olivia DeHavilland, Ben Johnson, Richard Chamberlain, Katherine Ross and Henry Fonda. In other words, the dream cast if you're making a movie in 1978 such as this one. Plus, it was written by the writers of Towering Inferno and directed by Irwin Allen, the guy who produced that not-great-but-decent movie. This means The Swarm should be the bestest movie and I shouldn't be the least bit put off by the fact that, right now, I'm seeing guys with rifles running around some military base in the desert dressed in white jumpsuits and helmets that make them look like they're in some sort of Imperial Stormtrooper fantasy camp.

0:10:00 -- I REALLY have to pace myself or this will end up being 2 parts but the Stormtroopers are actually American military investigating why they lost contact with this missile base. They get to the control room and find several dead members of the Air Force. The control room itself is one of those movie control rooms with machines that have lots and lots of buttons and blinking lights that don't seem to actually do anything and monitors that do nothing but show squiggly lines going back and forth. You'd think you'd want these things to be labeled instead of just referring to everything as "the machine that goes ping" so you don't, you know, accidentally set off a missile or anything but I guess they were less risk averse back in the Carter years. The only living person they found on the base is Michael Caine dressed in a heavy jacket and a turtleneck. In other words, the exact opposite of what you'd want to be wearing in the middle of a desert. He's extraordinarily cool and cryptic considering he's the only guy left alive after some sort of devastation and now has several guns trained on him.

The only consolation I can offer him is that even Jaws 4 won't be as bad as this.

0:30:00 -- Michael Caine is a bee expert named Bradford Crane and he's there because he was tracking this swarm of killer bees when they came down on this missile base. He's such a world renowned bee guy that the President actually gives him full control over the military and the full resources of the U.S. government to fight the swarm. This may sound odd but most of you are probably too young to remember that the 1970s were the time when entomologists were the most highly regarded members of our society and most disaster movies were ridiculed for not having one in charge of whatever problems they were facing. We also met Dr. Helena Anderson played by Katherine Ross. You may remember her from The Graduate or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid because I know you don't remember her from this. She managed to save a few swarm victims and says the bees have an especially potent venom. She also sweats a lot. In fact, everyone sweats a lot except for Michael Caine. I don't know how he pulled that off. Meanwhile, a boy who watched his parents get stung to death has driven into some small Texas town on the day of a big parade. This would have been perfect if someone had said, "We can't cancel the parade. Do you know how much money we'd lose?" but no one did.

1:00:00 -- I got a little excited when Henry Fonda showed up as a wheelchair bound immunologist named Dr. Henry Krim. I was less excited when Caine wheeled Fonda around for a very long seven minute tour of the base. I know it was that long because I kept looking at the clock saying things like, "Oh God, is this not over yet?" and, "No way! Only seven minutes have passed? AAAAHHH!" Caine organizes a briefing filled with famous faces. Fred MacMurray and Olivia DeHavilland play the mayor and school superintendent of the jerkwater Texas town near the base so they naturally qualify to be included in a high level top secret military briefing. Richard Chamberlain is there as another bee guy who swears that no way, no how could these be the African killer bees. I assume Caine wanted him there so he could lord his superior bee knowledge over and give us another exciting scene of a slide show about bee wings that proves that OH YEAH these are definitely the African killer bees. In case you're wondering, back in the 70s, and this is true, there were wildly overblown reports of African killer bees that had spread to South America and were supposed to be here to kill us all by 1990. Remember when that happened? Did I mention that the bees are intelligent? More intelligent than average bees anyway and certainly more intelligent than whoever gave the greenlight to this movie.

1:30:00 -- When a general wants to drop insecticide on a swarm, Caine objects because it will also kill American honey bees. This strategy leads to the swarm messing with Texas by attacking that town Fred MacMurray is the mayor of and 200 people die but at least the honey bees are all right. Caine still objects to using chemical agents because...oh hell, I don't know why. It's not like they'd have to spray everywhere. This swarm shows up on radar. During the bee invasion, Caine and Katherine Ross hid in a pantry climate controlled to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that puts bees to sleep. For some reason, this is also the scene where Caine finally broke a sweat. Is keeping cool in hot weather and sweating in cool temperatures something that happens to British men that I'm only just hearing about? Oh, I can't possibly overstate the intense excitement during a scene where Caine, Fonda and Richard Chamberlain are collecting venom and brushing bees off each other. This is actually a director's cut and it's great that this awesome bee brushing scene was saved from the cutting room floor. I looked at Henry Fonda's face as I'm sure he was thinking, "How the hell did I end up here? I used to work with John Ford," but he looked fine. That's how good an actor he was.

Check out the awesome special effects. Could someone please invent CGI?

2:00:00 -- Due to the movie's length, there have been several subplots I've had to ignore. One is that Olivia DeHavilland's character is being pursued both by Fred MacMurray and a local businessman played by famed character actor Ben Johnson. Both men ask her to marry them but luckily for her, she doesn't have to choose when the train they're all on is attacked by bees. Mind you, MacMurray and Johnson would have been fine had they not obviously and hilariously tossed themselves out of a window. I bitch a lot about the poor quality of CGI today but this movie reminds me that there were crap special effects before that was created. That thought was brought to mind both by the swarm that basically looks like a smudge on the camera lens and the crash of the obviously toy train. This movie was made at the same time as Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind so there's really no excuse for this. Another thing for which there is no excuse is the number of people who died and no attempt was made to revive them. I know CPR existed back then. Did people refuse to learn it because they thought it was too much like kissing? One of the guys who was allowed to die was Henry Fonda's character though, for an actor of Fonda's stature and caliber, taking him out of the movie was more of a mercy killing. Fonda's genius doctor character decided to test out his new bee venom antidote on himself so he injected himself with the equivalent of six bee stings and died when the antidote didn't work. This, of course, could only have happened to a true genius. The good news, of course, is that the movie's almost over.

2:34:00 -- Oh, are we done so soon? Another great character actor, Jose Ferrer, showed up as the director of a nuclear power plant. After bragging that no way would an attacking bee swarm cause his plant to blow up, the bees attack and the plant blows up causing the deaths of 36,000 people. Good thing they didn't harm all those poor honey bees with insecticides, eh? Not that it would have done any good since they finally do try harsh chemicals and the bees are immune. Then, when the bees are in Houston, they decide that a half dozen guys with flame throwers will be sufficient to burn up 5 billion bees, an idea that, shockingly, turns out to be wrong. Finally, after things have gone from "fucked" to "totally fucked" to "fucked as fucked can be," Caine puts those blinking machines with the reel-to-reel tapes going non stop to use and discovers the bees are attracted to sound waves that simulate their mating call. In a moment of topical irony, he gets the military to create an artificial oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, draws the bees to it with the sound waves and sets them all on fire giving a movie that killed around 40,000 people a happy ending. And, that's it. I hope none of this ruins the upcoming remake. I'd to think I caused that movie to get bad buzz. You all think about that while I wonder how the hell Michael Caine, one of our greatest actors, wound up being a target for my jokes for a second time.