What fools these bloggers be...

One of these days, I suppose I'll have to attempt to pull off an April Fool's joke here. I tried it a couple of times at my old comics blog, but I haven't felt all that inspired to attempt one here. WSW isn't a movie news site, so it's not like you'd expect me to have a scoop about whatever's going on in Hollywood. Maybe next year I'll come up with something.

The nomination procedure is still going on in the LAMMY Awards, so if you're a LAMB, please vote for "City Mouse Makes a Movie" in the Best Running Feature category because I think it's really cool and deserves a nomination. In the past, I've tried putting WSW in the hat for nominations in multiple categories, but this is the only category I'm pursuing this year, mostly in order to get my comic strip more attention.

Also, there's still time to take part in the Terrorthon later this month being put on by myself and my pal Page from My Love of Old Hollywood. If you want in, let me know here, but hurry; you've got until the 10th.

From around the movie blogosphere, I bring you:

Ruth gives props to Asian directors crossing over to Hollywood and wishes for more. For the record, I don't know nearly enough about Asian directors to speculate as to why they haven't made a bigger mark here. I half-jokingly gave racism as a possible reason on the WSW Facebook page, but it's probably not that simple. I will say that Hollywood is always late to the party when it comes to certain trends, so if they're only now noticing that there's more to Asian cinema than just John Woo and Ang Lee, that's not terribly surprising.

Jacqueline talks about a theater playhouse that a large number of classic film stars created and worked in while they were still making movies.

John arranges a number of noteworthy baseball movies in a timeline.

Retrospace has a collection of old MAD Magazine movie-parody cartoons with safe-for-work nudity (no naughty bits).

The latest round in the never-ending debate between Star Trek and Star Wars examines both franchises from a psychological perspective.

35mm film ain't dead yet, if this Leonard Maltin piece is any indication.

City Mouse Makes a Movie #12

Previously: The first day of shooting on CM's movie is somewhat less than productive.

You can't stop what's coming: Terrorthon update

Page and I wanna thank everybody who's joining us for our Terrorthon next month. Gotta say, it feels good to be co-arranging a blogathon in which so many people are taking part in - I love looking around and seeing our banners on people's blogs!

This is just to let everybody know where we stand right now, and where we stand is pretty damn good: we've gotten an amazing turnout for this: twenty definites as of this writing, can you believe it? 

If you're contributing, do me a favor and check this list for me and make sure this is accurate:

Le (Critica Retro), Nosferatu
Gilby37 (Random Ramblings of a Broadway, Film & TV Fan), TBA
Caftan Woman (Caftan Woman), I Saw What You Did
Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts), The Wizard of Oz
Dawn Sample (Noir and Chick Flicks), Frankenstein
Aurora (Citizen Screen), The Island of Lost Souls, 4.22
Rick29 (Classic Film and TV Cafe), Plague of the Zombies 4.22
Kellee (Outspoken and Freckled), The Omen
Matt (Classic Cinema Review for Kids), The Haunting
The Lady Eve (The Lady Eve's Reel Life), Rosemary's Baby
Ivan (Thrilling Days of Yesteryear), The Skull
Jennifer Giesey (Portraits by Jenni), House of Wax, 4.20
Monstergirl (The Last Drive-In), The Black Cat, 4.20, Horror Hotel, 4.21
Nitrate Diva, Carnival of Souls
Steve Habrat (Anti-Film School), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 4.22
Barry P (Cinematic Catharsis), Mad Love, 4.23
Vulnavia Morbius (Krell Laboratories), Let's Scare Jessica to Death, 4.20
Flick Chick (A Person in the Dark), Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte
Brian Schuck (Films From Beyond the Time Barrier), Castle of Blood

As for Page and I, she has picked a film called It's Alive, while I'm currently going with the 70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, though that may change.

Now the Terrorthon is gonna cover five days, so if you know which day you wanna post on, then let me know in the comments. Those of you who are still TBA, if you've decided on a film, put that in the comments as well. As for the rest of you, there's still plenty of time to join the party - all you gotta do is think of a classic (or even not-so-classic - we've got 60s and 70s movies included too) - movie that REALLY SCARED YOU and write about it. Talk about things like where you saw it, maybe how old you were at the time, why it scared you, things like that. You've got until April 10 to pick a movie. Good luck!

Public service announcement

I'd listen to her if I were you.

City Mouse Makes a Movie #11

Previously: Nadine, the leading lady in CM's movie, makes it plain to CM that she sees his movie as a springboard to revive her sagging television career.

Better Mus' Come

Better Mus' Come
seen @ AMC Empire 25, New York, NY
3.16.13

So what, if anything, does Jamaica, Queens and JAMAICA Jamaica have in common? Not a whole lot, based on what I know of the latter. There is a visible Caribbean presence here; for example, in Queens and Brooklyn there are privately-owned commuter vans that supplement the city buses and are cheaper (though not by much), and many of them are run by Caribbeans. On the rare occasions I use one of them, I always hear reggae music playing in the van's CD player. Also, cricket matches are a common sight in some of the neighborhood parks on the weekends in the warmer months. (I've tried, but I cannot figure that game out from looking at it. If baseball really was inspired by cricket, I don't see how.)

I don't like living in Jamaica, Queens. It's becoming more dangerous lately, everyone is similar if not the same, it's too far away from the things I care about, and there's little in the way of variety. While parts of it are mildly aesthetically pleasing, it doesn't compare to other places I've been to and I could easily do without it. I've never been to the real Jamaica, though, like I said, I imagine there's very little in the way of comparison.

Most people tend to think of Jamaica in terms of the three Bs: beaches, Bob (Marley) and blunts (and also, I suppose, bobsledding). Indeed, even as a kid I remember those "Come Back to Jamaica" TV ads that enticingly paint the island nation as a tropical paradise that's just waiting for you Yankees to come visit and spend your money. And I have no doubt that Jamaica does quite well in the tourism industry. However, it's also a country with a long history of poverty and political strife, and part of that history is on display in Better Mus' Come, the latest film distributed by the black film festival collective AFFRM.

Better deals with the turbulent 1970s, when Jamaica was torn apart by conflict between the pro-Castro incumbents, the People's National Party, and the opposition, the Jamaica Labour Party. The film opens with a political rally, led by the PNP's Michael Manley, disrupted by a firebombing by JLP supporters, and throughout the film, the differences between the two parties lead to everything from police harassment to fighting in the streets.

Roger Guenveur Smith as Michael Manley

The movie focuses on a JLP man, Ricky, a single father struggling to make a living, yet gets drawn deeper into the fighting, despite his best intentions to make life easier for his son. Naturally, he also meets a girl and falls in love with her along the way, further complicating things.

This was my first foray into Jamaican cinema since watching The Harder They Come way back when I was in video retail. In a Q-and-A at the Empire after the film, director Storm Saulter, along with stars Sheldon Shepherd and Nicole Grey (who was also in Restless City) made plain that even if they may lack some of the resources that their American counterparts do, Jamaican cinema is on the rise. Still, I found myself unprepared for certain aspects of the culture as seen in Better...

...for example, the local dialect. Like Harder, Better is subtitled. Watching this movie was different from watching something in, say, French or Russian or Japanese because the Jamaican dialect sounds almost like English, but not quite, and as a result I found myself wanting to watch it without the subtitles and thinking there must be something wrong with me because I couldn't fully understand the actors - and I kept thinking I should! It was an odd feeling, especially when there were times when they clearly switched back and forth from accented English (without subtitles) to a much thicker patois which truly sounded like another language, hence the subtitles.

Better is a powerful movie that takes you straight into the heart of the conflict that ravaged Jamaica in the 70s. Shepherd clearly has the movie-star-idol looks, and he carries the film well. Storm (as he is credited, sans last name) not only directed and co-wrote the film, he edited it and was his own director of photography, and his camera takes us through not only the shanties of Kingston but the coastlines and the breathtaking landscapes. We see the beauty and the ugliness side-by-side. (In the Q-and-A he mentioned that the shanties look little different today than they did in the 70s, so from that perspective at least, maintaining the period look wasn't hard.) If Better is indicative of the current wave of Jamaican cinema, then hopefully more films like this will reach our shores soon.

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
seen @ Landmark Loews Jersey Theater, Jersey City, NJ
3.16.13

And now, five things I might do if I inherited $20 million, after paying off bills and taking care of my family, of course:

1. Travel. Duh. I was hanging out with Andi recently and at one point she was describing some more aspects of her trip to Spain to take part in the Camino walk and she said that it's not all that expensive. The more I think about it, the more appealing it sounds to me, and I think I'd like to give it a try someday, though in this particular case, time might be harder to acquire than money. Not sure. Still, this is but one of several places around the world I'd go to - and then, there are also places here in the USA I'd like to visit, such as Austin, Texas (maybe during South by Southwest?).

2. I've had this semi-serious daydream deep, deep, DEEP in the back of my mind for a few years about maybe starting a publishing company - not just for my comics work, but for my friends, too. I first began making comics way back in 1993, and I've met hundreds of other creators, both amateur and professional. For a long time, when I was a regular on the convention circuit, there were a handful of self-published creators whom I always hung out with and maintained close friendships with - talented cartoonists, all, and prolific in terms of their body of work. 

If I had my own publishing company - doesn't have to be anything fancy, either - I just think it would be awesome if I could make books collecting all my pals' work and get them into mainstream bookstores, in addition to the comics shops. It would require clever marketing and strong distribution, so I'd need some help on that score, but with $20 million it probably wouldn't be too hard, especially if I had some cool indie bookstores to support me.

3. I'd make a large donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

4. I'd move back to Columbus and buy a house there. Theoretically, I'd want someplace close to the downtown, and there are a couple of neighborhoods on the east side of town that appeal to me. I would get around by bike again (maybe a folding bike this time), so I wouldn't wanna be too far away from everything. Actually, there are a couple of other cities I'd like to live in as well besides Columbus; the point is more GETTING OUT OF NEW YORK rather than moving to Such-and-Such a place.

5. No matter where I lived, though, be it NYC or someplace else, I'd take an old neighborhood movie theater, renovate it, and turn it into a revival house like Film Forum, one deeply connected to the community. It would be outfitted for digital, but I'd insist on 35mm film wherever possible. I'd have the capacity for it, at the very least. I've gone into more detail about this little dream here.

There's simply no way I could be as selfless as Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and maybe that's a failing of mine. Sure, I'd do things with my money that would benefit other people - notably my family and friends - but enacting deep, profound social change? I dunno. I tend to subscribe to the credo, "Think globally, act locally." If the small-scale things I do lead to bigger changes, great, but it's the small things that I find easier to manage. Deeds, like many a Frank Capra character, seems too good to be true, but Capra presents this story in such a persuasive manner, as if to say, "Look fellas, it really isn't that hard to be nicer to each other. Here's how." (Capra and the Occupy Wall Street movement would've had much in common, methinks.)

And of course, to Deeds' way of thinking, he doesn't see what he's doing as anything particularly grand; his behavior is simply a result of his small-town upbringing. Yes, I know that that's how we all should strive to be more like, but - I'm sorry - it's hard to imagine, especially when it seems like humanity has, if anything, gotten stupider since Capra's time. Jean Arthur's reporter character is TMZ and Perez Hilton and the New York Post and the National Enquirer in 2013 terms, and if Deeds was around today, he'd probably still be made fun of in much the same way, though I'm sure he'd have his defenders too (Deeds the movie tends to paint the entire media with the same brush).

Ultimately, I think the effort towards becoming better people counts more than the goal itself. We're not perfect and we don't live in a perfect world, and because of that, any effort to live selflessly is going to be a difficult one. (I'm sure you're all thrilled to see me reference Star Trek yet again, but there's a quote from Deep Space Nine that's relevant here: "It's easy to be a saint in paradise.") Look at the way Deeds silently suffers when his competency is called into question. Some people can deal with that better than others. I know I'm no paragon, not by a long shot, and some days it's damn hard to see the humanity in others. Still, I do what I can, when I can. No promises...

...especially when you're surrounded by idiots. I saw Deeds on St. Patrick's weekend, and though the actual holiday was on Sunday, there were plenty of revelers in both Manhattan and Jersey City acting like fools. I swear to you I saw one guy pissing on Sixth Avenue, in plain sight, in the midst of a snowfall. I was tempted to turn around and go home right then and there.