Time to finish reviewing movies watched in November.

153. (1212.) Thunder Road (1958)
Robert Mitchum stars in this movie written and produced by Robert Mitchum! All kidding aside, it's pretty good until the rather abrupt ending. I was especially happy with Gene Barry's role as a Treasury agent seeing as he was television's Amos Burke.

154. (1213.) Minions (2015)
I really, really wanted this to suck. Dumb, evil-loving henchmen shouldn't work as cute protagonists. But they do. And this movie was made for fans of comic book super heroics (like me). Minions is a lot of fun.

155. (1214.) Fantastic Four (2015)
On the other hand, Fantastic Four was not made for fans of superhero comics. Or fans of movies. Think Chronicle meets I Am Number Four meets the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still but much, much worse. As with most terrible movies, studio interference is widely blamed for this mess, but it's hard to imagine how anyone could mangle the iconic characters created by Lee and Kirby that launched the Marvel Age of comics badly enough that any part of this script was ever green-lit for filming in the first place. (I'm not in favor of the much discussed merger between Disney and 20th Century Fox, but if it finally gets us a comics accurate Dr. Doom, at least there will be one good reason to let the House of Mouse become the new AT&T.)

156. (1215.) Impulse (1974)
Do you like William Shatner? I mean the real Shatner, the canned ham who pushes the other actors off camera with his over-the-top delivery of... every... line? Then stop reading this and go see Impulse. He plays a deranged con man slash playboy slash serial killer. He attacks a bunch of balloons. He makes sexual innuendos with a hot dog. He treats Goldfinger's Odd Job like a pinata. HE HAS A DEATH SCENE. Seriously. This movie is like mainlining pure Shatner, and it feels soooo good.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: movies william shatner

In the late 80s, I watched Marc Summers as the host of Nickelodeon's Double Dare. By the turn of the millennium, I was watching Marc Summers as the host of the History Channel's History IQ. Now I watch Marc Summers as the host of Food Network's Unwrapped. This progression pretty much sums up the aging process: messy childhood, know-it-all teenager, forced-to-cook-for-yourself adulthood.

(Note that I never watched Marc Summers as the co-host of Lifetime's Biggers and Summers. I simply refuse to watch anything on Lifetime. It's a channel devoted to the equivalent of after-school specials for housewives.)

You watch most television personalities play characters. Usually poorly. I enjoyed David Hasselhoff for his "portrayals" of Michael Knight and Mitch Buchannon. I'm fond of William Shatner for playing Captain Kirk and about one hundred guest star appearances, all of them equally way over-the-top. And don't get me started on My Favorite Martian / The Magician / The Incredible Hulk star Bill Bixby. (I'd recognize Bix before some members of my family.) But Marc Summers always plays Marc Summers.

I'm pretty sure that in another 25 years, I'll be flipping channels and still see Marc Summers, looking none the worse for time, hosting a show deep into my cable dial (maybe hosting the show You've Fallen: Can You Get Up?). It's a comforting thought, really. Some things don't change.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: bill bixby david hasselhoff food marc summers television william shatner

I've discovered that the trick about quitting your job so that you'll have more time to work on your own projects (the "great American novel," a new boat, or -- as in my case -- a comic book) is that everyone that you know says, "hey, you don't have a job, why don't you come give me a hand doing >insert diversion task here< for little or no money. In my case, the activity of my social life is inversely proportional to my economic income.

On a very related note, I took to watching T.J. Hooker seasons 1 & 2 on DVD this week. Hooker represents the golden years (cue tv host Tom Massie: "GoooOOOOOoooold!") of Shatner television. The character of Hooker is somewhere between Dirty Harry and Joe Friday; a television recycling of the high-water points of previous TV cops into a confusing mess of ideology and practice. Hooker is a walking cliche: a "tough-as-nails" ex-soldier turned cop who left his cushy detective desk job to return to the mean streets of the unnamed "L.C." city as a beat cop with a rogue streak and a rookie partner. Confusingly, these beat cops spend more time solving major crimes (snipers, stalkers, gun runners, and other common television crime cases) than the plain-clothes detectives of the uncommonly mundane named "Academy Precinct." Shatner pulls it off with aplomb. If you've not seen it yet, get to it, cadet!

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: gold fever television tj hooker walter william shatner work