MORE RONDO AWARD NOMINEES

HALLOWEEN ENDS… Every time I’ve seen one of this series with Jamie Lee in it—since H2O, that is— I’ve come away with a strong urge to watch the original. Back when they got it right. Think I’ll do that now.

This is an okay horror movie, no more than that. Jamie Lee is good, it’s nice that Laurie and Michael get a final showdown…again. 

If this truly is the way HALLOWEEN “ends”…well, certainly could be worse. Definitely could be better.

The scriptwriting formula here seems to be two-fold. 1. Supply a whole lot of lousy characters to make bad things happen, and, 2. lean heavy on the motif of innocent people blamed for bad things.

This one might be a little better than HALLOWEEN KILLS, but it’s definitely less exciting. Neither should win any prizes, including Rondos.

NOPE … Jordan Peele is the real deal. I thought that US, while terrifically interesting and well-made, didn’t quite crest the hill. Still good though. But GET OUT was truly terrific and this one just might be even better than that. Again, terrific performances (I adore Keke Palmer), along with great effects and great pictorial images. Nice characters, strong story… I’m not totally sold on the big finish, but there’s no denying that it looks good. 

This is just a wonderful movie. Full marks right down the line.

ORPHAN FIRST KILL … I didn’t like the first movie, mostly because it fell into a category of story which I never enjoy, that being a story in which one person knows the truth but no one else believes.  The best things about the original were the performance of Vera Farmiga and the passing of Isabelle Fuhrman as a child. I bought it utterly.

This one doesn’t have Farmiga, her lesser substitute is Julia Stiles — and when did she become old enough to play the mother of a 20-year-old guy? Time, I hate ye. Stiles is not a bad actress, but she’s not an especially good one either. And here she’s really floundering. Bad role, bad performance. 

Even worse, this movie, made 13 years after the original, fails utterly in passing the returning Fuhrman as a kid. Matter of fact, she couldn’t even pass as a teenager. She looks like a woman in her mid-twenties at best. And the substitution of a real child in full body shots is painfully, painfully obvious. Worse yet, this is actually supposed to be a prequel to the original. Not a chance.

As for other elements… well, it’s professional enough but there’s nothing scary, nothing believable, nothing really interesting. Fail.

“He began to think poignantly of Isabel: he had seldom been able to ‘see’ her more clearly than as he sat looking out of his compartment window, after reading the account of this accident. She might have been just on the other side of the glass, looking in at him--and then he thought of her as the pale figure of a woman, seen yet unseen, flying through the air beside the train, over the fields of springtime green and through the woods that were just sprouting out their little leaves. He closed his eyes and saw her as she had been long ago. He saw the brown-eyed, brown-haired, proud, gentle, laughing girl he had known when he first came to town, a boy just out of the State College. He remembered--as he had remembered ten thousand times before--the look she gave him when her brother George introduced him to her at a picnic; it was ‘like hazel starlight’ he had written her, in a poem, afterward.”                                          

Booth Tarkington  THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

THE RONDO AWARDS for 2022

It’s Rondo season again! For those not in the know…

https://rondoaward.com/rondoaward.com/blog/

… check it out.

I’ve decided to try to catch up with all the nominees for Best Movie. I’d try to catch up with everything in every category, but the ballot is immense and time is finite. So, just the films, ma’m. 

There are 21 nominated films, I’ve already seen 4 of them, so I need to get onto these other 17. 

—- AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

—- BARBARIAN

—- THE BATMAN

—- THE BLACK PHONE

—- BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

—- BONES AND ALL

—- CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

—- EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

—- HALLOWEEN ENDS

—- MEN

—- THE MENU

—- THE MUNSTERS

—- NOPE

—- THE NORTHMAN

—- ORPHAN: FIRST KILL

—- PINOCCHIO (Del Toro)

—- PREY

—- SCREAM

—- SMILE

—- TERRIFIER 2

—- VIOLENT NIGHT

—- Or write in another choice:

No, I won’t write in another choice. There’s more than enough there already.

I figure to report in here as I watch ‘em, ‘cause why not?

Here, in brief, are some comments on those I’ve already seen…

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER…I liked the original well enough. Didn't think it was anything great. It was pretty simple-minded, but certainly nice to look at. But I wondered at the time, thinking of JOHN CARTER as well as AVATAR, when does a live-action film become an animated film? Where’s the line between those forms. Well, this sequel is well over the line. This is a cartoon, folks. And it’s animation supporting a pretty weak script. Soap opera dialogue, elementary school plotting. I saw it on my 55” flatscreen and it looked sharp. Probably looked a lot better in IMAX and 3D and Todd-Ao and Emergo and whatever else they offered. But no matter how good it looked, it still would be a childish cartoon.

THE BATMAN … for the first half or so, I thought I was watching a truly great comic book movie. But then…there was a 10-15 minute stretched which slogged and crawled along, followed by good but standard action. At any rate, no longer anything great.

       I liked that the fate of the world didn’t depend on the final confrontation. Every Marvel movie does that already. This ending is not going to be good for Gotham City, but the world is safe. I appreciated that.

Robert Pattinson is fine. Better than Affleck, maybe even better than Bale (not a huge fan of the Nolan series), but not great. What was wonderful about this Batman was the way we could see his eyes so clearly behind the mask, even in dark scenes. I don’t know if it was lighting or makeup or costuming or computer thumbjiggery or acting or all of the above, but it was a great effect. 

      Also, even considering the dauntingly beautiful string of Catwomen over the years, from Lee Meriwether to Halle Berry, Zoe Kravitz has to go near the top of the list. She’s stunning. And delivers a nice performance as well.

All in all, pretty good as superhero movies go, but not really that much above the norm.

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER… Not as good as the first one, which was itself probably a little overrated. This one is too busy for my taste. It’s also more emotional than most any other comic book movie, which is understandable considering the tragic, early death of the first movie’s star.

I love Angela Bassett, always have, and thought she was good here, but I was surprised at her Oscar nomination. I mean, she’s not THAT good, and it hardly seems the sort of role which inspires or requires that level of acting. 

Okay, but not much better.

THE MUNSTERS …       I was not a MUNSTERS fan. I watched it weekly in its initial broadcast because it was, you know, Monsters. But I never found it funny and always much preferred THE ADDAMS FAMILY. But I watched it, oh yeah.       So here I am, watching this movie, made by Rob Zombie whose previous movies--with one mild exception--I really didn’t like. Because…they’re monsters, dude.

      I loved that the movie started with the old Universal globe. Nice touch.

      The movie looks just great. The sets, the costumes, the cinematography, all gorgeous.

      I did very much like Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman. Apart from his laugh, I didn’t see or hear much Fred Gwynne. Phillips, for the most part, made it his own and underplayed quite wonderfully. Thumbs up for him.

      And thumbs up also for Dan Roebuck. It’s much easier to find a lot of Al Lewis in the performance, but I thought the impression was just enough to remind and honor, not so much as to offend or overdo.

      Sheri Moon Zombie is an extremely attractive Lily and I know she can act (she was quite good in Rob’s best movie, LORDS OF SALEM), but the lady seems to have no feel for comedy. Frankly neither does her husband. Maybe she was just following flawed direction. Or maybe she thought she was channeling Yvonne DeCarlo. She wasn’t. And whatever she was doing just was not funny.

       But then again, that’s the problem with the movie overall. It is just not funny, not at all.  I was going to try to split the blame between Rob Zombie and the scriptwriter, but then the end credits told me that Rob was the scriptwriter, so… sorry, Rob. Ya ain’t funny. And when the things in your “comedy” which come closest to being humorous are the supposedly bad jokes told by Herman, well, ya might have a problem.

       Of course, not being a MUNSTERS fan at any point in my life, and never having found them funny, I thought maybe I wasn’t a fair audience. So I texted my son, who is a huge MUNSTERS fan and a huge Rob Zombie fan. I asked him if he’d seen it (he had) and what he thought. He said that it was nice to see the characters again and revisit the family but that it wasn’t funny. I told him I hadn’t laughed once and he agreed, “no,” he said, “it’s totally unfunny.”  My son is very smart.

HOW TO START A BLOG -- NOT!

First, let me tell you a story…

Back in the early ‘90s, we (we meaning me and my then-wife)decided to buy our first home computer. Everybody got their first computer in those days. And like most of those people, probably more than most, we were wholly ignorant on the subject.

The only exposure to computers which either of us had had to that point was a few minutes goggling over the wonders of what could only be called a laptop. A proto-laptop. This magical device belonged to my wife’s cousin. He worked deep in the Pentagon and the computer was part of his work. Probably it actually belonged to the army, not to him, but he had it with him and he showed it off. 

I can’t remember just what he showed us, but it seemed magical and impossible. Probably, compared to current computers, it would now look like PONG compared to GRAND THEFT AUTO XXXIII, but in 1990 or so, it seemed like the furthest possibility of science-fiction.

But that’s all we knew as we entered the world of computer ownership. Wanting to spend our money wisely, I read lots of magazine and newspaper articles and gradually began to accumulate just a weeeeee bit of knowledge. But there was one question which I couldn’t find an answer to.

This is going to seem incredibly ignorant on my part, but it was a long time ago, computers had not yet taken over the world, and vas you dere, Cholly?

In my reading I came upon “floppy disks” and “hard disks”.  It was clear that floppies were interchangeable, that you could buy them by the box. But nothing I read really defined the hard disk. My question was simple, if ignorant:  Are the hard disks also interchangeable?  I wanted to know if a computer owner had a stack of hard disks between which he could alternate.

So I asked people. I asked computer people. We browsed through the computer areas of a few stores and, of course, avid salespeople fell upon us, eager for a commission. And I asked my question about the mysterious hard disk. I’m sure these folks thought they were answering my question. I’m sure they understood that I was an empty-headed non-techie and I’m sure they thought they were making it plain and simple. They weren’t. 

At least three times, maybe more, I asked my question of folks who were supposed to know. Hell, they did know, they just didn’t know how to tell me. They were unable to make their answer simple enough for me. They’d tell me about floppy disks, but I already had a fair handle on that. But ‘is the hard disk removable or interchangeable?’... they couldn’t reduce their vocabulary to simply yes or no. They’d say something like “The hard disk is where the computer…” or “the hard disk tells you how much the computer can…” Or like that. I just wanted ‘yes’ or ‘no’. They couldn’t tell me.

So we just dove in, half-blind, and it worked out okay. We consulted with my brother-in-law beforehand. He was the nearest thing in the family to a computer guy, and he wasn’t that near. We told him that we were thinking of buying a Mac of some sort and that it  had 80 Mb of memory and that we didn’t know what that really meant. He said, “Oh, that’s good. 80 Mb is all you’ll ever need.”  Well, it was the early ‘90s, so…

I don't remember what computer we bought, but it wasn't this one. It did look pretty much like this, however.

I was reminded of all that when I started researching “How to Start a Blog”. In this day and age I figured that YouTube was the place to go. All kinds of instructional videos there, all kinds of “how to” videos. That’s the ticket.

And, indeed, there were buckets full of blog videos. Most of them had titles like “How to Start a Blog and Make $2000 a Month!” Or maybe “How to Start a Blog and Make $6000 a Month.” Or, in a real change-up, “How to Start a Blog and Make $10,000 Every WEEK.”

The second most popular type of title was “How to Write Better Blog Posts”. I wasn’t interested in that either. I’ll write my own, thank you, and better or worse I’ll just let ‘em ride.

Okay.  Except I wasn’t looking to make money. And I didn’t want advice on what to write about on my blog or how to write better. I simply wanted to have a place to post my simple, silly, unimproved essays. I simply wanted to know how to start a blog. After that…GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!

There were a few videos which came closer to what I wanted and I watched several of them. But they all, to one degree or another, had the same problem those computer salesfolk had 30 years ago.  It might be something like this, “If you want to start a blog, the first thing you have to do is…” whatever. But this would immediately be followed with something like “But before you do that, you have to…”  Oh. So the “first thing” isn’t really the “first thing.”

One which was particularly unhelpful started by promising how simple and helpful it would be. Here we were told what we needed to do but without telling us just how to go about that. But, assuming I could figure that out, it just got worse. The host, before telling us anything useful, wanted to go behind the scenes and show us some of the more advanced stuff. So she’s clicking this box and re-ordering a list of something else without, again, telling us, in simple dumb American, just what the hell she was doing. 

The video which seemed as if it might finally fill the bill went sour a couple of minutes in. It became painfully clear that the woman in the video was pushing--and pushing hard--a particular web host sort of place. She never said “this is the best” or “this is my choice”, she simply plowed into it as if this was the ONLY way to make a blog. So I clicked off that one.

Not helpful. None of them. Frustrating, actually.

So, the hell with YouTube. I read a bunch of posts about Blogger and WordPress and others. Blogger seemed to be the only one simple enough for simple-minded me. And here I am. Still ignorant, but still here.

 FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, March 17, 1973…An angry pilot of the Khmer Air Force killed 43 people and injured 35 in Cambodia after making a dive bomb attack on the presidential palace in Phnom Penh. Most of the dead were inside the barracks of the palace guards, including families of the guards…Born: Caroline Corr, Irish musician and drummer of The Corrs; in Dundalk, County Louth …

       Caroline Corr, the not unattractive drummer for a not unattractive musical group.

Top song in the country was KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG by Roberta Flack. A goodie.

Myself, I was out of college, out of work, and almost out of my marriage. Just had to hang on a few more months. During this coming week I would have been pretty intensively in rehearsal for THREE MEN ON A HORSE. This would be one of my last shows before I joined Actors Equity and went all perfessional. It would also be the only college show I did after graduating. Hey, my old director needed me! He flashed the Rick-Signal and I answered. The show would open on the coming Friday and close the next night. It was a small-college show in a small town. Not enough audience for more than that. But it was a good show with a really primo role for yours truly.

But there would be no rehearsal this Saturday night, so I could stay home and take in the double feature on Channel 41’s FRIGHT NIGHT. We were treated to two chillers every Saturday night. This went on for a few wonderful years and was hosted by local actor Charles Kissinger as The Fearmonger. Basically we saw a closeup of Kissinger with spooky underlighting. He would introduce the movies and sprinkle in too many ancient groaner jokes. I never laughed at one of them. I would have been embarrassed if I had.

The big attraction on this FRIGHT NIGHT was a Karloff classic from the ‘30s. Had it been a Universal production I probably would have seen it already. But this was from Warner Brothers. That night I watched, for the first time…

THE WALKING DEAD

I had seen photos from this movie in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. As I recall they gave off spooky vibes and, while I’d heard or read very little about the film, what I had picked up in bits and pieces had all sounded positive, so I was very hopeful. 

And this time I was not disappointed. The movie was a crackerjack, no doubt about it. Spooky and weird and kind of oddly religious. I thought it was great, just great. For some reason, I think I’ve seen it only once more in the last half century. Seems like I would have sought it out more than that. But, I think not, so I believe this will be only my third look at it. I remember atmosphere more than anything else, so I expect this viewing will appear pretty fresh to me. Let’s find out…

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Movie fans know Michael Curtiz as the director of CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, and THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. Monster Kids know the truth. He’s the guy who made DOCTOR X, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, and THE WALKING DEAD. He also had a reputation as a taskmaster, driving cast and crew through 15 and 20 hour days. I have to wonder about the working relationship between slavedriver Curtiz and Boris Karloff, one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and a zealous advocate of actors’ rights. Might have been a tense set.

Phenomenally terrific supporting cast: Edmund Gwenn, Ricardo Cortez, Barton MacLane, Henry O’Neill, Addison Richards, Paul Harvey, Joe Sawyer. Young romantic leads Warren Hull and Marguerite Churchill don’t come off as well, particularly Hull. They also play a couple of frankly reprehensible, cowardly characters. 

It’s such a WB movie--dark urban streets, gangsters, reporters, “torn from the headline” elements.

The first people John Ellman should have targeted for his revenge were the young couple who waited till the last possible instant to provide the alibi which could have saved his life.

                                                            John Ellman, pre-death.

From my earlier viewings, plus some stuff I’d read, I thought that Karloff had borrowed too much of the Monster for this performance. Now I don’t think so. The movie itself is somewhat guilty of that, but not Boris. I mean, it’s the same actor and he’s playing a reanimated corpse, so there are, of course, similarities. But Karloff’s John Ellman is not the Monster Part II.

                                                          John Ellman, post-resurrection.

I was right before. It’s a great horror movie. First class right down the line. I would say that it’s one of two great horror films Karloff made in the ‘30s for someone other than Universal, the other being Columbia’s THE BLACK ROOM.

                                             SIXTY YEARS AGO TODAY 

Sixty Years Ago Today was Sunday, March 17, 1963…Mount Agung erupted on Bali, killing 1,150 people. On February 19, the volcano had killed 17 people after being dormant for more than a century, and then had a more violent eruption a month later….At the Vatican, Mother Mary Seton was beatified. In 1975 she would be canonized, becoming the first American saint...

Boston Celtics’ great Bob Cousy played his final game in the NBA…The number one song in the country was “Our Day Will Come” by Ruby and the Romantics…Personally, I was in the 7th grade at Parkview Junior High School in Jeffersonville, Indiana and I was doing just fine, thanks for asking…

That afternoon I watched a semi-horror film of which I’d heard but about which I knew almost nothing other than the fact that it featured three big-time scary names. Yeah, boy, that afternoon I settled on the living room sofa to watch…

YOU’LL FIND OUT

I knew that Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre were in the cast. I assumed that they would be the “stars” of the film. So disappointment loomed. I also expected to see a genuine horror film, so….more looming.

Oh, it not only loomed, it arrived. I didn’t hate the movie. It was impossible to muster enough feeling of any sort, much less ramp it all the way up to “hatred”. Just disappointing, that’s all. Not much of a movie, not good roles for the trio of master villains, not really much of a horror film. Oh, well.

I’ve rewatched it a couple of times over the years and have come to enjoy it a little more mostly because, believe it or not, I’ve grown somewhat fond of Kay Kyser and his band. So sue me.

So here and now, upon the solemn occasion of the 60th anniversary of my first look at YOU’LL FIND OUT, it’s time to watch it again, give it one more shot. And, considering my current age, and my lack of caring about the movie, it’s probably safe to assume this will be my final viewing. Ooof. Just scared myself.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kay Kyser is billed over the title, Lorre gets second billing, Lugosi fifth. Fifth…Then, after everybody else, comes a big solo full-screen billing “And Boris Karloff.”

The opening “comedy” with Kyser and Jeff Corey and some cute girl is very weak, the sort of opener which might well have seen audiences rising en masse to go demand refunds.

Boris and Bela both get nice spooky introductions. Lorre’s is a little muddled. 

Kay is not a bad actor…for a bandleader. Ish Kabibble is not funny…for a lead comic.

Kyser’s girl singer Ginny Simms is both more attractive and a better actor than leading lady Helen Parrish. At the risk of being severely ungallant…that’s not saying much.

Karloff’s wonderful voice is put to some great use.

The band’s songs are definitely nothing special, still, it’s nice, mellow, old-fashioned, ‘40s big band stuff, so it’s still welcome.

I don’t think Lorre ever looked more like “Peter Lorre” than he does here. It must also be said that he often gives the distinct feeling of someone who really does not want to be there.

Lugosi gets lots of screen time, lots of chances to lift eyebrows and flare nostrils. Unfortunately, apart from the pleasure of seeing the actor himself, his scenes are pretty silly.

But his reaction to Ginny Simms is so blatantly admiring that it’s pretty funny.

One thing in favor of big band musicals, we don’t have to wonder where all the instrumental music on the soundtrack comes from.

The comedy in the script is just outrageously unfunny, as if scripted by a depressed, perhaps suicidal writer.

It’s rather strange that the white-haired, mustachioed Karloff wears a white-haired, mustachioed ghost mask. It looks like Karloff wearing a bad Karloff mask.

In the end credits, the billing is Kyser, Lorre, Karloff, Lugosi. That’s a little better.

So…no, not much of a movie. I’d say it is a horror film, but just barely. And I can’t make up my mind about the use of the Big Three. There’s no doubt that they’re wasted, as is the celluloid for that matter. But to cast three of Hollywood’s legendary villains and make them…villains. I don’t know. I guess. But maybe there would have been worth in making them harmless guys who just look like villains. Like TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL but with Kay Kyser. I don’t know, probably not. But I did feel, as I watched it, that it was just too easy to cast Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre as villains. Too on point sorta.