Review: The Mandalorian

The "Mandalorian" and Joss Whedon's "Firefely" belong to the same genre. I'm calling it the Look-we're-clever,-you-think-you're-watching-a-science-fiction-show-but-it's-really-a-western genre.
Both shows are so much like westerns I can't help but think, "why didn't they just make them westerns?"

In the case of "Mandalorian," when I say it's a western, I'm not saying movie western, I'm saying TV western, which is really a whole different animal, isn't it?

I kept thinking of those 1960s TV westerns with Clint Eastwood or Steve McQueen each playing a brave hero who's reluctant to use his gun, but will do what he has to. There were dozens of westerns like this on TV in the 1960s, they might have burnt themselves out. Movie directors have two hours to tell their story. TV shows have lots of time to fill. Plots were recycled ... a lot.

And that's what I was thinking about while watching the first three episodes of "The Mandalorian." It's not all that different from one of those old TV westerns. With the exception of a few Star Wars characters, it's not a Star Wars spinoff at all.

It's really closer to "Son of Steve McQueen's Character" in "Wanted: Dead or Alive," or "Son of Clint Eastwood's Character" in "Rawhide."

But, the TV western is dead, and the only way to get people to watch them is to  put spaceships in them.

My other problem with this show is: Is the main character really going to keep his helmet on during the whole run of the show? There's a scene with about six people, all wearing helmets conveying exposition, and it slowly became an episode of the "Power Rangers." This is going to go over great in foreign markets.

How do they expect us to get emotionally attached to a protagonist if we never see his face? I'm sure the Lucasfilm people are thinking, "This is a forever character, like C3PO or Chewbacca, we  don't need an actor!" You can get away with that for the movies, but TV is, once again, a different animal.

Update: I finally caught all 8 episodes and must say the last three episodes are very good. There's a 'turn-the-tables moment in "The Prisoner" episode where the whole show turned around for me. Things start moving much faster and plot threads that started in the first two episodes are finally wrapped up in a very exciting manner. Suddenly I started caring about Baby Yoda.

And he takes off his helmet, which he should do more often.

Film review: Knives Out

Just when I was thinking "Knives Out" was the funniest, best written episode of "Murder She Wrote" ever, doesn't Jessica Fletcher appear on the screen. This is Rian Johnson's wink to the audience, he's reminding us to not take this seriously, it's just a really big budget, better written episode of "Murder She Wrote." At one point a detective says the creepy gothic mansion where the murder takes place is like a Clue board and that's exactly the game you're playing.

A rich cranky geezer (Christopher Plummer playing a more delightful J. Paul Getty) turns up dead on the night of his 85th birthday party and as the suspects tell their stories it appears he was going to end all of their allowances. So we have a creepy old mansion (complete with secret entranceways) and a bunch of eccentric family members who'd do anything to keep the family riches. This is an homage to old-timey Hollywood mysteries which would work wonderfully on a double bill with "The Thin Man."

The detective is Daniel Craig having the time of his life as a southern-drawling Hercule Poirot, yes he's a genius detective, but the humor comes in when some obvious clues are playing out right under his nose.

Also playing against type is Chris Evans, trading in the squeaky clean Captain America for the prickish rich grandson

The breakout star is Ana de Armes  as the family maid. As the only suspect who's not a scheming family member, she has no motive, or is that what they want us to think? The character has a unique tell when she's lying and de Armes makes it hysterical or suspenseful. It's an exceptionally clever conceit: A whodunnit character incapable of lying, imagine the possibilities.


To tell anything else would spoil the tightly constructed story, but if you enjoy a good, funny whodunnit, by all means go see it.

Dagwood saves the day

I've been pointing out the disastrous results when Beetle Bailey tries to be hip to what the kids are doing nowadays (mostly technology.) The problem is the creative team doesn't know enough about a new technology to make fun of it; they think that simply mentioning it will be hilarious.

This made today's Blondie doubly hilarious. Dagwood takes his first Uber ride; this could have been a mess if the Beetle Bailey team had done this, but Dagwood saves the day by (literally) pulling the punch line out of his back pocket. I didn't see it coming, yet it's totally in his character.

And I laughed.

Lost classic review: 1st Issue Special #9 Doctor Fate

Joe Kubert cover is just the beginning of  the issue's great art.

When all the golden age DC characters were getting reboots in the late-50s, early 60s, Dr. Fate was somehow left behind. Sure he got a couple of Showcase outings (teamed up with Hour-Man!), but for the most part, he was relegated to the JLA- JSA team-ups.

The first great attempt to establish him as an A-lister would be in the mid-70s First Issue Special by Marty Pasko and Walt Simonson. Not quite a reboot, but Pasko and Simonson redefined him for the next 40 years.

First the art, yeah, Murphy Anderson was good for the Showcase issues, but holy crap, Simonson's work here is a revelation.We had never seen him this way. Simonson has always said Kirby was a big inspiration on him. I don't see it in the faces or bodies, but like Kirby he has a gift for making the characters look like they're jumping off the page. Instead of the shading lines on Fate's helmet that had been done historically, Simonson keeps the helmet clean, and it's striking. In the old books, if he cast a spell, usually lightning bolts would emanate from his fingers, here, it's magic symbols forming geometric patterns. The attention to detail even extends to the characters' word balloons, each character's word ballon has a unique shape. It's just amazing.

The story keeps up and obviously inspired the art. An old foe (like ancient-Egyptian mummy old) returns from the dead to kill Fate to impress his god. Havoc ensues. Meanwhile, Kent Nelson's wife Inza overcomes her superhero wife fatigue to help him (and the mage inhabiting his body) independently from him. For perhaps the first time, Inza is not a hostage.

It's just beautifully drawn and wonderfully written, and makes me wish it was picked up as an ongoing series with this creative team.

Beetle Bailey's futile search for relevance ... again

In the Beetle Bailey writers' room.

"Let's do a joke for the kids."
"Yeah, I know, we'll have a joke about the YouTube."
"Yeah, kids today like the YouTube."
"What's the YouTube?"
"Um, I think the kids today use it to prank one another."
"OK, I got it, Lt. Fuzz will get pranked on the YouTube, and the punchline will be, "You've been pranked on the YouTube!"
"Good one, let's hit the golf course!"

Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home (no spoilers)

After the heavy, epic Avengers: Endgame, we get the lighter Far From Home, and it's a welcome change in mood.

After a quick and clever explainer of life in the Marvel Universe after "Endgame," we learn Peter Parker just wants to go to Europe on his class trip and leave super-heroing behind. but Nick Fury, and some inter-dimensional monsters have other plans.

He gets help from Jake Gylanhaal's Mysterio, an inter dimensional super-hero whom they hint could fill Iron Man's rocket-laden boots.

As the class goes from European destination to destination, it brings to mind "If it's Tuesday, it Must be Belgium," and other silly-Americans-in-foreign-country movies. Only with superheroes.

Meanwhile, poor Peter has to battle monsters while working up the courage to tell classmate MJ what he feels about her.  There should be some kind of award for Tom Holland, his Peter Parker might be the closest depiction to the character in the comics; he's not a super-hero, he's a kid whose immense powers are tempered by a teenage mindset. The most important thing for him isn't fighting the monster, it's kissing the girl! And he carries this believably.

I was a little disappointed in the beginning at the absence of a bad guy. He's just going to beat up monsters? But a villain comes along soon enough and makes up for his earlier absence.

The film ends with mid-credit and post-credits sequences. The latter is kind of confusing, but the former is a must-watch which made the audience I saw the film with go crazy.

.

Film Review: Booksmart

On the last day of high school, two overachievers find out the party-crazy classmates they've looked down upon for years are going to top universities also. The more daring of the two convinces her bff that they have to cram four years of partying into one night to make up for the time they spent studying.

I usually complain when plots are very simple, but the characters are so endearing, the dialogue is so laugh-out-loud funny ... and raunchy ...and the pacing is so relentless, that you can't help but get sucked in.

I saw bits of the party sequence from "Sixteen Candles" and a lot of "American Graffiti," as the teens hit their coming-of-age moment with some hard truths. The ensemble cast could have been stereotypes but the more we get to know them, the more we want to get to know them.

The highlights are Beanie Feldstein as the class president who wonders why her inauguration wasn't celebrated as wildly as the last day of school, and Billie Lourde's ubiquitous, maniac space cadet. My favorite joke is when the girls start speaking in Chinese because of course they speak Chinese.

This is what "Bridesmaids" should have been, raunchy, smart and fun instead of cheap diarrhea jokes.

TV Review: Reef Break

"Reef Break" is a throwback to the light, breezy TV detective shows of the 70s where the detective is loaded with personality, may have a shady past, and is much better at police work than the actual police.

This isn 't a bad thing. Poppy Montgomery has a lot of personality as a surfer/ former smuggler who becomes an under-the-radar fixer for the governor of Reef Break, an island paradise she once, and now, calls home. Not really believable, but just enjoy the scenery and relax.

It's a mixture of "It Takes a Thief," and "Magnum PI". The pilot had twists and turns I saw coming, but hey, it's summer, you want something to go down like a cool Pina colada.

Review: Murder Mystery

As a big fan of the "Thin Man" films, I always thought it was a lost opportunity that they never sent Nick and Nora Charles to Europe. The first film was set in New York, the second in San Francisco, the third ... back to New York.

Noooo.

The third film was the chance to make "The Thin Man in London," or "The Thin Man in Paris." These would have been a much-needed boost to a film series whose producers thought giving them a baby was the boost they needed.

Adam Sandler is a police officer who takes wife Jennifer Aniston to Europe on a long-promised honeymoon. The blue collar couple get invited on a yacht where we meet some eccentric soon-to-be murder suspects as well as the nasty soon-to-be murder victim. This has all the elements of a Thin Man film (and a bunch of Agatha Christie mysteries), and though Adam Sandler plays a rough-around-the-edges police detective, Jennifer Aniston does a good job filling in for Myrna Loy. It's been years since "Friends," and I've forgotten how she can make any line very funny.

The pair eventually get framed for the murder (don't think about it too hard) and while on the run comically bicker as they try to find the real killer.  It's light and breezy and as a screwball comedy is just as good as any from the 1940s.

We get the added bonus of location shooting in Monaco and Lake Como and it's all very Hollywood.

Its only false notes happen in the beginning when Sandler schemes to keep his wife from finding out he didn't get a promotion. This is a plot you'd see on "The Honeymooners" and hasn't aged well. The other misfire is the totally gratuitous chase scene tacked on the end.

We may never see the "Thin Man" reboot I've been hoping for, but until then, this is very close.

Review: Rocketman

Yeah, it's a good film, well made, great acting, even better music ... but ....the showbiz biography genre has one story: Hardscrabble beginnings, rise to the top, drug/alcohol-fueled spiral to the bottom, then semi-positive ending.

We've seen it all before.

When his dad was being cruel to him, I kept thinking of the song from one of the Austin Powers films: "Daddy, why didn't you love me?"

This man used to pal around with Princess Diana, he jammed with his idol John Lennon, he was an early crusader in the fight against AIDS. We get none of that.

See it for the music, because if you see it for the drama you'll be asking yourself 'how much of this is true?'

Doris Day and the Director Who Knew Too Much

We just lost singer/actress/legend Doris Day.

In addition to everything else that's being written about her, she should also be remembered as the woman who embraced an AIDS-stricken Rock Hudson at a time when people thought that would kill you.

But what I really want to explore is how Alfred Hitchcock hobbled his remake of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" by casting Day as the titular man's wife (through no fault of hers).

She was a major motion picture star at the time so I see why he cast her, but in doing so, he watered down the suspense of the film.

Let me explain.

Here's the plot and (spoiler) the ending of both films: An American couple and their child is on vacation in some exotic foreign location. It is established early on that the woman has a latent talent that the husband made her give up in favor of being a homemaker.

Their child gets kidnapped and though the father spends the whole movie tracking down the kidnappers, it's the wife's latent talent that saves the day.

So far so good.

In Hitchcock's original version, the wife is an Olympic trap shooter. This brings an exciting ending when the kidnapper is holding her child at gunpoint on the roof of a building and the mother, on the street looking up in horror, steals a police officer's rifle and after a suspensefully long wait she lines up her shot ... and shoots the kidnapper dead.

Wow!

In the remake, Doris Day is a retired singer. At the end, the couple are in the home of the kidnappers while a big society party is going on. They know their child is in the house, so Doris sits at the piano, sings "Que Sera Sera," her signature song, and the little boy hears her voice and joins them in the living room.

How is that suspenseful?

Doris Day was many wonderful things. But she was not a badass.

Film review: Shazam

This cover actually is a scene from the film.

Of all the recent DC movies, this is the closest to the spirit of the Richard Donner "Superman." Unlike the others this one expresses the notion that, hey, maybe it's fun to be a super hero.

And the movie stays pretty close to the source material, orphan Billy Batson  turns into an adult and is given the powers of six Greek gods when he says the name Shazam. Meanwhile, villain Sivana wants Billy's powers for himself.

Most of the movie is spent on the gee whiz aspect of Billy and his foster brother Freddy Freeman trying out the new super powers in mostly adolescent ways. Let's buy beer, let's go to the strip club. It's all a lot of fun for them until the villain shows up. It's light, funny and the writers have a love of the original material. (though if he has the wisdom of Solomon, he really shouldn't be doing this stuff.)

Some niggling things, for copyright reasons, they go through the whole movie without giving him a name. I was just waiting for someone to slip and call him "Captain Marvel," and they never do it. If Sony can lend Spider-Man to Disney, can't Marvel let DC use the name Captain Marvel if only once of twice, then call him "Cap" from then on like they did in the comics?

Also he now has lightning powers, where did that come from? Granted it looks cool, but is it even necessary?

That being said, after years of reading the comics, it's a thrill to actually watch Billy get struck by lightning and turn into Captain Marvel.

Spoilers:

And some crazy trivia, in the comics Freddy Freeman and Mary Batson remain teenagers when they say Shazam, why do they turn into adults here?

And I knew his foster family would turn into Marvels by the end of the film from years of reading the comics, but my 11 year old said they gave it away in the trailers anyway. Hollywood, please, leave us some surprises.

As a Philadelphian I enjoyed the scenery, but kind of rolled my eyes at the inaccurate police cars and subway station geography. (not to mention you can't buy beer in convenience stores.)

But it's still a lot of fun and except for a few grisly deaths, kid friendly.

JSA TPB: Ghost Stories

This trade paperback collects JSA #82-87

This is an old but not unwelcome story device: Building a story around the origin story of a villain. The best-known example is probably Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke."

This time it's the origin story of the Golden Age Hawkman villain The Gentleman Ghost. OK, I'm game, to the best of my knowledge he's never had an origin story, but there's an inherent flaw in giving this particular character an origin story. His whole gimmick wasn't him being a ghost, invisible except for a top hat and a monocle, his gimmick was it was never established if he actually were a ghost, or just a human criminal who was a really good illusionist. Each of his stories would end with Hawkman and Hawgirl scratching their heads; there was enough evidence left behind to go either way.

In this story longtime JSA writer Paul Levitz settles it for once and for all (spoiler): He's a ghost. On one hand it expands on his backstory, on the other hand, it ruins the whole character!

I had a couple other niggling problems, the Gentleman Ghost was a Hawkman villain, yet Hawkman isn't in this story. And after it's determined he is a genuine ghost, someone mentions they should really get the Spectre, and that's just brushed off. You know who else would be helpful? Dr. Fate!

So it starts with Power Girl having returned to the JSA HQ from her "Infinite Crisis" encounter with the Golden Age Superman and Lois Lane with Lois' secret journal. Ma Hunkle reads it to her because it's written in the long forgotten secret code of shorthand (this is a good touch).  Levitz goes back to his own "How Joe McCarthy broke up the JSA" story where we see the Earth 2 Batman and Superman having encounters with the Gentleman Ghost while the JSA is in retirement. Now Earth 2 retroactively doesn't exist at this point, and there never was a Golden Age Superman and Batman, and it shouldn't even be happening. When Ma Hunkle brings up the fact that DC can't follow the rules of its own reboots, PG gets all condescending and tells her in effect, "You're old and confused, stop asking so many questions about DC's inability to stick to the rules of a reboot," and it's like she's speaking directly to me.

(also, for some reason, one of Green Lantern's eyes is green. I missed when this started, and it's never explained here. Also, in this particular reboot, Jade is dead but that really didn't bother me because no DC character stays dead long.)

The story then moves to the present day where the JSA members are being haunted by the ghosts of their own personal lives, in which we learn Alan Scott once accidentally killed a guy. So that's cool. The Gentleman Ghost shows up, attacks again and again then disappears.

Everything comes to a head at London Tower where we get two armies of ghosts and the JSA in battle.

If you look past my small complaints it's a lot of fun, with some great art by George Perez, Rags Morales and Jerry Ordway. Luke Ross draws the Gentleman Ghost old-time flashback sequences and it's like reading Classics Illustrated, and I mean that in a good way.

I spoke too soon

Just when I thought Beetle Bailey was making gains, a big relapse. In today's strip, the general is upset that  Beetle (wearing a beret) drew an abstract picture of him. See, it's funny because you know how kids are today with their abstract art, amirite?

Credit where credit's due

I've given Beetle Bailey crap for being irrelevant, not understanding modern technology while insisting on making 'jokes' about it, and worst of all, not being funny.

Today, I laughed.

Film Review: Captain Marvel

Samuel L. Jackson helps an amnesiac badass.

Some minor spoilers...

Captain Marvel is another sturdy entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Brie Larson is this charismatic, low-key superhero whose past and powers are slowly being revealed to her. We get great action sequences but, like Black Panther, there's a lot of backstory to get through.

What bothered me most is when you boil it down, it's just another hero-with-amnesia story. Amnesia hardly exists in the real world, yet we get movies where amnesia is the main plot point all the time. The character has the "now I remember who I am," moment in the last ten minutes or whenever it's most convenient for the plot.

In fact, Samuel L. Jackson already made a film where he's on a road trip with an amnesiac badass when he co-starred with Gena Davis in "The Long Kiss Goodnight." If you look at some of their plot twists, this is close to being a remake. And I knew Jackson was in the film, but I just thought he'd be making a cameo. Putting him in the entire film just brought more attention to its "Long Kiss Goodnight" parallels.

And since this film takes place in the 90s, we get a de-aged Nick Fury so he's not as much a badass as he is in the other Marvel films and this kind of takes the fun out of it. Speaking of the '90s, why is the film set in the '90s? We get a '90s soundtrack, a Blockbuster Video joke and a Radio Shack joke, and that's it. There was nothing in the film that demanded it be set that long ago, nor do they press it. It could have easily started with a title card that said, "Five years ago..."

I wasn't too keen on the end when she escapes the clutches of death. She pretty much wills herself out of it.

I was also bothered by Goose the cat. He plays a prominent part but it's never explained where he comes from exactly, or how they found him where they found him.

It's a good night at the movies, just don't think too much.

Review: Action Comics #1000

The good:

The standout in this anniversary issue is "The Car," a story idea so simple it's amazing no one has thought about it before. We've seen hundreds of retcons, and reboots of the Superman mythology over the past 80 years, but this is the first story to ask, what exactly happened to that car Superman smashed on the cover of Action Comics #1?

Genius!

It could have been titled, "Action Comics #1: The Next Day." We find out what happened to the car, and by extension, what happened to the owner of the car who, as you remember, was kidnapping Lois Lane at the time he met up with Superman. The clever story is by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, with exceptional art by Olivier Coipel.

The whole book is an homage to Superman, but only "The Car" is an homage to Action Comics.

They brought some creative icons back and they're always welcome: Neal Adams! Jim Steranko! Jose Garcia Lopez! Jerry Ordway! Marv Wolfman! Paul Levitz! Any comic book with only one of these creators is worth picking up ... and studying.

There's an amazing greatest hits package by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason who give us a quick 80-year history through a series of full page recreations. Beautiful.

It ends with a Brian Michael Bendis, Jim Lee cliffhanger which introduces a whole new villain and storyline to be carried out in the future. It's intriguing for now, let's see where it goes.

The head scratchers:


There are two stories where Superman and Lex Luthor stand around and chat. Really, two? Lex Luthor bores me for the same reason the Joker does. He is the default villain. Make a Superman movie, use Luthor as the villain. Make another Superman movie, use Luthor as the villain, make another Superman movie, Luthor. Reboot the franchise: Use Luthor, reboot the franchise again? Luthor, yet again.


And he's not that good a villain.

The other disappointment was the Curt Swan chapter. Yeah, I get it, he was the Superman artist for 20 years, but the unpublished art they use doesn't even have Superman (just his narration, what a cheat!), and secondly, they must have been working with some really rough pencils because after it was digitized and colorized and photoshopped, very little of it looks like Curt Swan's work, same for the full page of Superman by Swan and inked by Kurt Shaffenberger, these two had extremely distinctive styles, all washed out by the time Photoshop got finished with them. I would have been happy with a single page of Superman flying from Swan and Murphy Anderson.

Do they drag out the Superman Day celebration (where something evil is afoot) every anniversary issue. It just seemed very familiar.

Though it's Action Comics' landmark issue, it's all about Superman. Where are the homages to the heroes of its back-up features.  We have two cameos of the Justice League en masse, but no Zatara? Where's the Human Target, Tex Thompson, The Vigilante, the Atom, Green Arrow? When comics had substantial page counts, Superman didn't carry Action alone. I loved those backup features. If I wanted to read just all Superman  stories, I'd get Superman, if I wanted some variety, I'd get Action.

Julie Adams' other leading man

Word's gotten out that longtime character actress Julie Adams died. She's best known for playing the damsel in distress in "The Creature From the Black Lagoon."

Everyone's forgotten another role in which she played the object of creepy affection. Of course I'm talking about "The Jimmy Stewart Show" (1971).

This was some vanilla TV. Jimmy's adult son, his wife and grandson are forced to move in with him when a fire destroys the son's house. Its one gimmick: Jimmy's grandson was older than Jimmy's other son. The son's an uncle who is younger than his nephew!

After that the writers called it a day because there was nothing else in this show. No drama, no comedy, the family got along wonderfully. It was one of those shows where I think a very desperate NBC was more interested in having a star than giving him a vehicle.

But that's not the creepy part. The creepy part is in the first episode, Jimmy Stewart is seen riding his bike through town (an oldster on a bike! Can you imagine??!!). He comes home and kisses Julie Adams, who appears to be his adult daughter,  on the mouth. Well that's pretty creepy, then as they talk you realize... it's not his daughter, it's his WIFE! This is more horrifying than "Creature From The Black Lagoon."

I know, there are couples out there with 18 year age differences, but good lord, this just did not look right. This is a longtime Hollywood trope: Once a leading man hits 40, the age difference between him and his leading ladies gets bigger and bigger.

Poor Julie, her leading men were from the black lagoon or the nursing home.

Film review: Ralph Breaks the Internet

This movie is curiously unengaging. The first film satirized video games, and the sequel seems just as happy to satirize the Internet. And the viewer is thinking, "is that it, a bunch of comical internet references?" Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, it's visually stunning, but the story driving the narrative isn't much to go on. And I'm not saying this because I'm an old geezer, my 11-year-old felt the same way.

The only bright spot is the Disney Princesses interlude where the princesses poke fun at their own tropes (none of them have moms! most were saved by guys!) Not only is it funny, it's beautifully animated. All the characters' facial features and expressions are enhanced and you're seeing the princesses again for the first time.

The sequence got me thinking, maybe they should have made this scene its own cartoon short that would be shown before a better full-length film.