Artist Unknown
Artwork of the Day: Crossroads of Desire
Yearly Archives: 2017
Music Video of the Day: Down To Earth by Flight Facilities (2015, dir by Rhett Wade-Ferrell)
Hi there! Lisa here, filling in for Val and bringing you today’s music video of the day!
Today’s my birthday and I gave a lot of thought as to what music video I wanted to share on this special day. I considered sharing Only Happy When It Rain by Garbage, because I’ve been told that song pretty much is me. But then I realized that I had already shared that video!
I then considered Fiona Apple’s Criminal but again, I remembered I had already shared that one as well!
(Seriously, after a year and a half, it starts to become a challenge not to repeat yourself. Give full credit to Val on this. She keeps the feature fresh and updated and she has yet to repeat herself once.)
I also came very close to going with the music video for Jake Epstein’s My Window. I love that song and the entire video is pretty much made up with clips from Degrassi and y’all know how much I love that show. (Maybe Val will do My Window someday, Lisa thought, keeping her fingers crossed…)
But then, suddenly, I had a vision of Sam Rockwell dancing in a deserted diner. And I knew then that I was meant to share, on this particular day, the video for Down to Earth by Flight Facilities!
Sam Rockwell’s just adorable, isn’t he? This video was directed by Rhett Wade-Ferrell and the choreography is credited to Vincent Paterson, who previously worked with Michael Jackson.
Enjoy!
A Movie A Day #304: Code of Silence (1985, directed by Andrew Davis)
It’s life and death in the Windy City. It’s got Chuck Norris, Henry Silva, Dens Farina, and a robot, too. It’s Code of Silence.
Chuck plays Eddie Cusack, a tough Chicago policeman who is abandoned by his fellow officers when he refuses to cover for an alcoholic cop who accidentally gunned down a Hispanic teenager and then tried to place a gun on the body. This the worst time for Cusack to have no backup because a full-scale gang war has just broken out between the Mafia and the Comachos, a Mexican drug gang led by Luis Comacho (Henry Silva). When a cowardly mobster goes into hiding, Luis targets his daughter, Diana (Molly Hagan). Determined to end the drug war and protect Diana, Eddie discovers that he may not be able to rely on his brothers in blue but he can always borrow a crime-fighting robot named PROWLER.
Despite the presence of a crime-fighting robot, Code of Silence is a tough, gritty, and realistic crime story. Though Chuck only gets to show off his martial arts skills in two scenes (and one of those scenes is just Eddie working out in the gym), Code of Silence is still Norris’s best film and his best performance. The film draws some interesting comparisons between the police’s code of silence and the Mafia’s omerta and director Andrew Davis shows the same flair for action that he showed in The Fugitive and Above the Law. Code of Silence‘s highlight is a fight between Chuck and an assassin that takes place on top of a moving train. Norris did his own stunts so that really is him trying not to fall off that train.
Davis surrounds Norris with familiar Chicago character actors, all of whom contribute to Code of Silence‘s authenticity and make even the smallest roles memorable. (Keep an eye out for the great John Mahoney, playing the salesman who first introduces the PROWLER.) Norris’s partner is played by Dennis Farina, who actually was a Chicago cop at the time of filming. After Code of Silence, Farina quit the force to pursue acting full time and had a busy career as a character actor, playing cops and mobsters in everything from Manhunter to Get Shorty. As always, Henry Silva is a great villain but the movie is stolen by Molly Hagan, who is feisty and sympathetic as Diana. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t try to force Eddie and Diana into any sort of contrived romance.
Unfortunately, none of Chuck Norris’s other films never came close to matching the quality of this one. Code of Silence is a hint of what could have been.
Hoods vs Huns: ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT (Warner Brothers 1942)
A gang of Runyonesque gamblers led by Humphrey Bogart take on Nazi spies in ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, Bogie’s follow-up to his breakthrough role as Sam Spade in THE MALTESE FALCON. Here he plays ‘Gloves’ Donovan, surrounded by a top-notch cast of character actors in a grand mixture of suspense and laughs, with both the action and the wisecracks coming fast and furious in that old familiar Warner Brother style. Studio workhorse Vincent Sherman, whose directorial debut THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X also featured Bogart, keeps things moving briskly along and even adds some innovative flourishes that lift the film above its meager budget.
Bogie’s gangster image from all those 1930’s flicks come to a humorous head in the part of ‘Gloves’. He’s a tough guy for sure, but here the toughness is humanized by giving him a warm, loving mother (Jane Darwell ) and a fondness for cheesecake…
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Artwork of the Day: The Wrong Quarry
by Tyler Jacobson
Brian Canini Guides You Through “The Big Year”
Diary comics can be a tricky thing to review simply because they’re at sort of a “middle stage” in their overall development these days — originally designed purely as an eyes-only exercise to keep cartoonists “sharp” either between, or alongside, “real”projects intended for public consumption, at some point a handful of artists, most notably Gabrielle Bell, began to take them and mold them into something like cohesive overall narratives, and in that sense it’s probably fair to say that they just might represent the next logical evolution of autobiographical comics as a whole.
And yet, by and large, more often than not a cartoonist’s raw sketchbook diary pages are usually just posted as premiums for their Patreon subscribers (see Bell again, as well as Tillie Walden, and who-knows-who-else by now) or collected as print-on-demand jobs (see Gabby Schulz’ recent A Process Of Drastically Reducing One’s Expectations). To that end…
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Update On Music Video of the Day Posts (Rock Me Tonite by Billy Squier)
I haven’t been doing good health-wise, and I’m not sure when it’s going to pick up. So, I am going to be in and out for awhile. I just wanted to give people a heads up. I don’t like missing these, but it’s going to happen more frequently. I would provide a timeframe if I had it. It’s all over the place at the moment.
I picked out Rock Me Tonite by Billy Squier because I wanted to talk about the infamous music video that went with it for today. Unfortunately, that isn’t something I can just throw together like this post. There’s interviews–written and oral–, context, my opinion, it’s importance, etc. It’s one of the most significant music videos ever made.
In the meantime, do what Squier would have liked people to do in the first place: Listen to the music absent of the images that the video brings to mind.
A Movie A Day #303: The Evil That Men Do (1984, directed by J. Lee Thompson)
Clement Molloch (Joseph Maher) is a doctor who uses his medical training to torture journalists and dissidents in an unnamed South American country. Holland (Charles Bronson) is a former CIA assassin, who is content with being retired. But when Molloch kills a journalist who was also an old friend of Holland’s, it all becomes about revenge. No one’s more dangerous than Charles Bronson seeking revenge. Working with the dead journalist’s widow (Theresa Saldana), Holland heads down to South America. Since Molloch is always surrounded by bodyguards, it is not going to be easy to get him. But who can stop Charles Bronson?
Bronson was 62 years old when he made The Evil The Men Do and he was still the toughest, coolest killer in the movies. The Evil That Men Do is a rarity, an 80s Bronson film that was not produced by Cannon. It still feels like a Cannon production, even if it is a little more interesting than some of the other films that Bronson was making at that time. Dr. Molloch was clearly based on the notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie and Joseph Maher plays Molloch as being a dignified sadist. Molloch also has a strange relationship with his equally cruel sister (Antoinette Bower). That Molloch is so extremely evil makes the film’s final scenes all the more satisfying.
The Evil That Men Do is one of the best of Bronson’s later films. Charles Bronson, man. No one got revenge better than Bronson.
Stranger Things S2 E3 -“The Pollywog”; ALT Title: I Used To Have a Role on Stranger Things
Cold Open: Dustin brings the Wee Kaiju into his home. Really?! Really?! If you think it crosses anyone’s mind that the Wee Kaiju came from the Upside Down, you’d be wrong. Even though it looks like a Wee Kaiju, Dustin battled the Upside Down, it’s scared of light, and …. I give up.
Hop spends a lot of the episode trying to make amends with El with waffles. We learn that her captivity has been going on for almost a year and SHE IS BORED. There are a series of flashbacks of Hop finding her, taking her into his Uncle’s abandoned cabin, and an amazingly sad house cleaning montage. I love a good montage, but this one made my heart hurt a little. Hop establishes three rules all that involve El being under house arrest. So, she breaks out and goes forth into the village below.
Bob tries to coach Will on facing his fears, which would be good, but here in Monsterville, Indiana – it’s very very bad advice. Then, he goes to school. That’s it.
Mr. Clarke is trying to teach and Dustin busts in bothering everyone and Mr. Clarke tries to roll with it. Of course, he and Cara Buono are marginalized this season and it is awful. Dustin shows all the boys and the Red Haired Girl the Wee Kaiju and no one connects it to the Upside Down for like a while. The Wee Kaiju escapes, they play the gremlins song, and it’s almost watchable. Will doesn’t want the Red Haired Girl to help and she totally crushes on him. El watches on and goes all psycho ex-girlfriend and makes her fall off her skateboard.
Will, you should really consider moving far far away and try not to date another Secular Carrie.
Dustin finds the Wee Kaiju and hides it to keep it safe from the villagers. Dustin — SHAME!!!!
Hop has a mini-quest and tells Paul Reiser that the rot is emanating from the lab and I guess they should check on it.
Nancy spends a lot of the episode talking about herself. Then, she decides to spill the beans to Barb’s parents on an unsecured line. This would be fine except for this: her mom who was all up in her business last season wasn’t even phased that she took Creeper up into her bedroom, with electronic equipment, and during school hours.
Winona also starts to believe Will is seeing a monster.
Will goes into the Upside Down, faces the shadow monster, and gets possessed “Supernatural” style.
All in all this season is like a chewed-on jigsaw puzzle- contrived connections and a gushy mess.
Artwork of the Day: Don’t Speak To Strange Girls
by Robert McGinnis
Through the Shattered Lens 