I just watched Casino Royale. Not the Casino Royale you are thinking of, but the 1967 one with Peter Sellars, Woody Allen, Larry Niven and Orson Welles. Basically, the Austin Powers before Mike Meyers made Austin Powers. It’s up on Hulu, and it made me very happy.

Whether or not this movie would make *you* happy depends on two factors: 1) What generation you were born in, and 2) what your expectations are. If you are expecting either a serious James Bond movie or something as blatantly funny, lewd, and fast as Austin Powers, you won’t like this movie.

The comments on Hulu reflect this– half of them seem to be from boomers and other people older than me who thought Austin Powers was vulgar and stupid and Peter Sellars is God, and the other half are from whippersnappers who thought it was stupid and a poor excuse for either a Bond movie or a comedy. I half agreed with all of them. There didn’t need to be any sequels to Austin Powers, and Peter Sellars gave a brilliant performance in Casino Royale. But I laughed more at the first Austin Powers movie. Casino Royale is very much an old school madcap comedy, and I have mixed feelings about the genre. Madcap comedy as a style is beautiful to watch, and the gags made me grin. But most of the gags did not quite make me laugh, with the exception of the sock garter slingshot (resulting in Peter Sellars pants being down and him falling over them at the end of the scene). That is hilarious and amazing to me because that particular gag could not be used in a movie these days. But most of the physical comedy in Casino Royale is too much like the dumber Benny Hill skits that have been rerun too many times on Comedy Central.

This is not a funny movie, though some scenes are nearly as funny as the old Pink Panther movies. No, what I found amusing in this film were the characters created by Sellars, and by Woody Allen, who played the villain. Sellars turns James Bond into an elderly and celibate stutterer, while maintaining his elegant appearance to torture all female agents he meets, while Woody Allen takes the evil out of villainy as he plays Bond’s neurotic nephew who doesn’t want to take over the world so much as to just change the rules so he can get laid. A few of their lines were hilarious, and their entire delivery was brilliant.

There are also a lot of very beautiful women in this movie doing very silly things. I highly recommend it to anyone who has an appreciation for the psychadelic visual style and who can be patient with the over the top madcap presentation of the first half hour. After the introduction of the elderly retired Bond, and the weird Scotland castle bits, it just gets better and better.

I posted a favorite Muppet Show clip, but it seems already to have been taken down. So, I’ll make this entry instead to be a running list of movies I can come back to later.

* The Van (1977)– Supposedly a good college sex comedy, and it features the one hit wonder song “Chevy Van” as well as the first screen appearance of Danny DeVito.
* Patton — I need to see George C. Scott in something other than Doctor Strangelove, and this would open a ton of MST3K references for me.
* 1984 (1956) — I had no idea there was a 50s production. I only saw the remake.
* Young at Heart — I have a bad feeling, but I want to validate. Maybe it’s actually good!
* 1776 — Someone made a musical about the Declaration of Independence?
* Let It Ride — a sentimental day at the races with Richard Dreyfuss
* Stuart Saves His Family — file under morbid curiosity
* Death Race 2000 — In addition to being a terrible Roger Corman movie, there was a horrible video game of this.
* The Jerk — I’m fairly sure I’ve seen it, but I feel like refreshing my memory.
* It’s Alive — Either the 1975 Larry Cohen movie about a giant mutant baby, or something much worse directed by Larry Buchanen (better known for Attack of the the Eye Creatures). It’s cinematic Russian roulette!
* The Paper Chase TV series (late 70s to 1983) — I’ve seen the movie, but I didn’t realize there was a TV series that ran for four seasons.  I will want to watch this when I have some more distance and nostalgia between me and my own college years.

More and more recently, I’ve noticed how much I like a movie depends on where it is set. I think this is because I’ve been watching so many bad movies lately, and if the actors don’t do or say enough to make the movie interesting through the dialogue… Well, I need *SOMETHING* pretty to look at while I’m killing time til the next plot point. For this reason, I have to watch movies like “Iron Man” in the theater. Desert scenes are boring to look at unless they are huge and you can feel almost like you are there. (Except for that pesky theater air conditioning that works against the illusion… Hey, somebody should built an interactive theater where the climate changes to match what is on the screen! You’d have to wear a parka to watch The Day After Tomorrow.)

So, let’s test this theory against the movies I watched this week.

I Am Legend — I hate this movie. It wasn’t just a “meh” like I thought it would be; it actually made me angry. I don’t usually get angry at movies. Usually, I can laugh off their failure to suspend my disbelief. But this one’s violent and ugly, and the “Dark Seekers” aren’t supposed to be 28 Days Later zombies at all! We still haven’t had a good movie with a post-Apocalyptic world full of vampires, though Omega Man came fairly close for me and at least had the right atmosphere. As far as setting goes… maybe I’ll like it better if I can make myself watch it again. I’m told there were some interesting mise en scene details in the abandoned apartments Will Smith is checking, like an apartment that was abandoned just before Christmas by a family expecting a baby. But otherwise, Manhatten just isn’t much fun to look at. How come all the CG animals disappeared after the first ten minutes? And even RiffTrax didn’t salvage my enjoyment of the movie after we meet the Brazilian lady of magical faith. Blech.

The Wicker Man — Here’s a movie whose *only* saving grace is its setting. Some folks on the RiffTrax forum were laughing that there is an HD-DVD version of this one, but I can totally understand why someone would buy this in high-def. It was set in the forests of Puget Sound in Washington, which is in my opinion the most beautiful part of the United States. I got nostalgic during the scene where Nicolas Cage is on the ferry boat. I had a nice New Year in Seattle with my boyfriend last year or so, and I would love to live somewhere where you have to take a ferry fairly often to get around. There was also some decent art direction on this movie, with its weird field of beehives with honeycomb walking paths, pickled babies and God only knows what else in Sister Summersisle’s house, and the old-fashioned bicycle Nicolas Cage bikes around on. And I can only imagine the swarm of HD bees stinging the heck out of Nicolas Cage’s giant puppy dog action hero face. Again, when the movie sucks, just look at the beautiful deciduous rainforest in the background and ignore the screams of “Not the bees!” and the smacks of Nick Cage hitting women for your entertainment. For interesting dialogue, just add RiffTrax and you find that this is actually a comedy disguised as a bloodless horror movie. If you have a good HD entertainment center, the setting plus the RiffTrax commentary make this stinkburger worth the price of admission. Especially if you bought a used copy on Amazon for $0.01.

Glitter — Well, aside from this being a terrible Mariah Carey vehicle of epic fail, it’s set in urban New York again. Two interesting apartment sets plus a lot of boring grey. Without RiffTrax, it’s a total honk-shoo. Awesome job by the way, Mary Jo Pehl! This plus X Files won me over so I now like both CinTan *and* RiffTrax.

X-Files: Fight the Future — Yup, another movie saved by the scenery. Two hours is too long for a TV episode, even if it is the season finale. When I saw this one in the theater in 1999, my brain kinda glazed over until they left dusty Texas behind. And it wasn’t til I listened to the RiffTrax commentary that I could pay enough attention to follow the early scenes. (More kudos to MJ for making this fun and also making me realize the movie is much more mockable than I thought when I first saw it and bought the action figures. ) This one only had my full attention when it got to the part with the bees and all the running through cornfields. And Antarctica. Hmm. Desert = boring, but ice = interesting, especially with all the special vehicles they had for moving through the snow, until Mulder reaches the pretty emerald green alien host containers. In the desert all you get are jeeps and camels.

Signs — Another one that kinda made me mad, but at least it succeded at being scary. I had to check the dark, empty bedroom next door to mine for aliens before I went to sleep last night. And here’s some more evidence that cornfields work for chase scenes. The thought that aliens were hiding in the corn was enough of a distraction that I forgot how much I hate Mel Gibson for a few minutes. I hope the RiffTrax team tackles this one someday.

But that’s enough RiffTrax/mainstream studio movie talk. There are also the two released episodes of Cinematic Titanic, of which I finally watched Doomsday Machine today.

Out of the two episodes I’ve seen so far, my favorite is still The Oozing Skull, due to the boring metal or space matte painting scenery in Doomsday Machine. The jokes were good in both, but Doomsday Machine drags more as the original movie and even with the riffing the last half hour was a chore to get through and I found myself thinking thoughts such as, “Huh. At least they *tried* to make the inside of the rocket more interesting. Note to self: if I make a space movie, add lots of multicolor lights to the budget to break up the greyness of metal walls painted in Air Force base colors. With good dialogue and an actual plot, this could work! Too bad *this* movie had neither of those things…” The different plastic spaceships were interesting, but they went by too fast for me to appreciate them. And on my second viewing I’m going to look harder for the fingerprints on the clay planet models.

In contrast to the boring scenery in Doomsday Machine, The Oozing Skull had a lot of interesting visuals, and the set changed often enough, and there was even a chase scene albeit a really boring one. Even though the building in Khalid was a postcard, it was at least as pretty as a postcard. And there was a field, a laboratory with brightly colored fluids in test tubes, some woods, and a dungeon with an interesting set of stone steps. So, outside of the riffing, which is too close to call, The Oozing Skull is still my favorite CinTan episode. Because of the movie’s background scenery.

it brought me much joy today when I mentioned to an online friend that I was watching Glitter and he had no idea that that was a movie. Sometimes the short cultural memory and short attention span of my generation is a good thing.

For the record, I am not brave/stupid enough to watch Glitter in the raw. I paid $2.99 for a RiffTrax mp3 to make it watchable and soothe my morbid curiosity. But I need to stop there so I don’t become addicted to the microtransactions. This is pushing the Movie button in the same way that visiting the Papa John’s website is pushing the Pizza button. But I kinda want to watch one more terrible/pretentious movie that I would never ever pay to see in a theater. Like maybe Saw. Hated Saw. Took pictures of Japanese classmates being scared/depressed/bored by Saw. Or the Wickerman. Avoided that one like the plague when it came out, but that’s exactly the sort of movie that makes for a great RiffTrax.

I also watched X Files: Fight the Future, which was waaay more mockable than I remembered from the past decade when I saw it in the theater and bought the action figures. It was still a complex plot, but now I realize that it was complex in a boring and stupid way as opposed to a clever and insightful way. As a two-hour season finale for the TV show, it works ok, but it could never stand on its own as a movie. And it *is* easier to call both agents “Mulder.” And they *do* mumble a lot so it’s hard to make out their lines. And there are a lot of cheap deaths. Especially the bomb scene in the beginning.

I am already realizing the benefits of being both a Cinematic Titanic fan and a RiffTrax fan. Cinematic Titanic is more creative, and still funnier in my opinion. They make references to older things, which makes it the homeschool equivalent to film school for me. I always try to look up the jokes I didn’t initially get, and I usually learn a new bit of pop culture trivia in the process. RiffTrax, on the other hand, is a bandage for box office shlock. It makes terrible movies like Glitter less of a waste of time, and it puts huge successes like Jurassic Park in perspective. Though I am less likely to watch the ones for the movies I liked when they were originally released. You *can* make fun of good movies too, but it’s really not my style. Additionally, RiffTrax could potentially make things better when one of your friends wants to put on a movie you really don’t want to watch. You could listen to the RiffTrax together or just you could put on a headset to hear the mp3 so no one’s good taste has to be compromised and both people can have a good time.

And on the blogs, the writers in both camps are talking to the fans occasionally. The RiffTrax team is inviting the Titans to collaborate too. So of course all the fans are hoping for a Joel vs Mike riff off.

It’s a good time to be a MSTie.

Cuz I am one. I’ve been a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 since the Comedy Central days, and it’s the only TV show I’ve ever been fanatical about. I mean, sure, Doctor Who is great too and I wouldn’t miss an episode. But I’m not nearly as tempted to do Doctor Who fan art, even though it lends itself to fan art more than MST3K does. MST3K is the only show I can watch each episode more than five times over and still learn something new each time.

Anyway, the show’s creator, Joel Hodgson, has a new project called Cinematic Titanic. With all of my favorite writers from the old show, he’s riffing on bad movies again and making them watchable for the rest of us.
It’s minus the robots, but otherwise it just is MST3K. It’s available on DVD at their site, or for download at EZ-Takes, and the second episode, Doomsday Machine, will be out on June 19th.

And I made this banner myself, from images in their trailer (which you can watch on the site or by searching for “cinematic titanic doomsday machine” on YouTube.

I don’t know if anyone reads this blog, but if you do, you owe it to yourself to check this out:

I saw Iron Man last weekend and thought I should blog about it, but there really isn’t much to say. Yes, it is worth paying to see in the theater. The explosions are jolting, there’s lots of action, and desert settings bore me on video but are great in the theater.

Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor, especially when he gets to play himself. He’s a rich womanizing jerk with a drinking problem, and yet somehow you love him anyway and want him to win. It *is* easier once he’s gotten a second disability and had an epiphany about the actual disservice to humanity his company is doing, but even before all that you like him because he’s clever. And America loves a clever man who succeeds, even if some of the success was handed to him at birth.

Then there’s all the nationalistic Afganistan propaganda pasted over the comic’s original Vietnam propaganda. Some of that leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I much prefer the attitude about war expressed in Doctor Who– namely, there’s always a choice and if you are *really* clever you can win a war without building bigger, more deadly weapons; in fact, sometimes you can win wars without any weapons or killing at all. And avoiding weapons prevents the whole “What if the bad guys steal our uberweapon?” scenario, which is the whole problem that keeps the Iron Man comic going. But, yeah, still go see Iron Man, because it’s well executed and it won’t be half as much fun on video.

Now that I’ve told you a lot of stuff you already know, I will write about something that you were less likely to already know about, outside of the summer blockbuster Hollywood machine and completely free to experience.

John Smith is an English avant-garde filmmaker who started making films in 1972, and The Girl Chewing Gum is one of his best and probably best known films. It contains footage of a somewhat busy urban street with people going about their daily lives… as Mr. Smith calls out direction of their actions, their entrances and exits.

As the film goes on, the people, cars, and mise en scene behave together in ways that are increasingly improbable and then impossible to direct. It is revealed that just out of the inital shot is the Odeon theater and a lot of the people passing by are going to a show there. Then the “director” reveals that he isn’t really there at all and starts narrating about his actual surroundings. And at the end he returns to describing the action we are watching, but as though the people are characters in a film and there is a plot going on that we get only a glimpse of. It’s as though there is a movie going on around us, but we are only observing it casually as it parades past us.

This is the sort of art I’d like to make. Effects are minimal, just a bit of subtle editing of audio and pausing the action entirely at one point. But it takes viewer expectations and turns them completely around, bringing the magic of cinema into the mundane existence we are all living. And it keeps a sense of humor going throughout. This film is like a Viewmaster containing slides of the world shot through my eyes. It also in effect teaches people how to imagine and see things imaginatively, in case they forgot or stopped around age 12. Great drama is everywhere if you just stop to look for it and don’t ignore your sense of poetry.

Yes, you do have 10 minutes for this.

You can watch the film here: On Google Video

And there is more information about John Smith here: Bio Info

Oh to be alive in the late 60s when cameras apparently fell into your lap if you knew where to look and stock footage was practically given away as well because most people didn’t think that it could be used outside of Hollywood.