Saturday, August 29, 2020
Prime Movies - Most will be obvious
Trying to learn how to use Keynote, the PowerPoint application for Mac, and finding the right image for each movie ... I really struggled with this. And Yes, Pat, I know there's some overlap in our selections.
Prime Movie Challenge
Like I mentioned earlier, the challenge is two fold:
- Choose a prime number of movies you love, grab screenshots, and make a graphic like the one I'm posting so we can guess what they are;
- Name the 11 movies I have in my graphic.
Good luck!
Friday, April 3, 2020
Celimate Universe
Let me start by saying the quarantine is going GREAT. Super GREAT, in fact. Two kids, teaching class online, what could go wrong?
So, it's no surprise that I like books. Eh, love books. I write books, I read books. I celebrate World Poetry Day, whenever it was last month. See? Look at these treasures of global literature:
One is my son's favorite book, the other was in my car hidden away for whenever I got stuck in traffic. The even sides are the original French, the odd sides are the mirrors in English. That should clear up which book my son loves.
I'm also somewhat a connoisseur of sequential art, AKA, comics.
I've come across some different stuff in the last few years that I want to share. DC Comics has procured the rights to the Hanna-Barbara stable of titles, and started to update them. From the originals:
I've heard good things about each of these. That Scooby Apocalypse lives in a funny place. That issue #1 has the older logo, while issue #2 has the newer logo, having spanned the "Rebirth" event.
But the title of this post comes from the vocabulary used about a universe that, I'm positing, was first discussed in the following movie:
As well as in this movie:
This is a world where animated entities exist along side regular humans, alongside the regular world. This is the "Celimates Universe."
The word celimate refers to animated beings that exist with different physical rules, but otherwise under the same rules of general existence.
The titles here are, originally:
Ruff and Reddy were a cartoon duo on prime time, usually acknowledged as the first such show, predating even The Flintstones. I remember Dastardly and Muttley from Saturday morning cartoons, and Snagglepuss was a favorite of mine.
Here are the updated covers:
The Ruff and Reddy Show, above, is a deep dive into the ridiculousness of Hollywood, a satire of the first order. Dastardly and Muttley, it seems like, since I haven't read it, is a satire of the military.
The Snagglepuss story above, the first comic I got in this vein, is set during McCarthy-era America. Snagglepuss, a popular writer and performer, is in a sham wedding and visits a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. In this story, Snagglepuss is Tennessee Williams, and his friend Huckleberry Hound is Faulkner.
It's very clever and has tons of heart, and has honest things to say about 'Mur'ka in 2018, when it came out. It won awards also. It's worth your time. Maybe.
Did I mention that the quarantine is going great?
So, it's no surprise that I like books. Eh, love books. I write books, I read books. I celebrate World Poetry Day, whenever it was last month. See? Look at these treasures of global literature:
One is my son's favorite book, the other was in my car hidden away for whenever I got stuck in traffic. The even sides are the original French, the odd sides are the mirrors in English. That should clear up which book my son loves.
I'm also somewhat a connoisseur of sequential art, AKA, comics.
I've come across some different stuff in the last few years that I want to share. DC Comics has procured the rights to the Hanna-Barbara stable of titles, and started to update them. From the originals:
 |
| From, respectively, 1971, 1961, 1963 |
These were the titles that DC started with, updating Scooby Doo, then moving on to The Flintstones with an award-winning run of a dozen comics, and then updating The Jetsons:
I've heard good things about each of these. That Scooby Apocalypse lives in a funny place. That issue #1 has the older logo, while issue #2 has the newer logo, having spanned the "Rebirth" event.
But the title of this post comes from the vocabulary used about a universe that, I'm positing, was first discussed in the following movie:
As well as in this movie:
This is a world where animated entities exist along side regular humans, alongside the regular world. This is the "Celimates Universe."
The word celimate refers to animated beings that exist with different physical rules, but otherwise under the same rules of general existence.
The titles here are, originally:
 |
| From, respectively, 1958, 1970, 1962 |
Here are the updated covers:
The Ruff and Reddy Show, above, is a deep dive into the ridiculousness of Hollywood, a satire of the first order. Dastardly and Muttley, it seems like, since I haven't read it, is a satire of the military.
The Snagglepuss story above, the first comic I got in this vein, is set during McCarthy-era America. Snagglepuss, a popular writer and performer, is in a sham wedding and visits a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. In this story, Snagglepuss is Tennessee Williams, and his friend Huckleberry Hound is Faulkner.
It's very clever and has tons of heart, and has honest things to say about 'Mur'ka in 2018, when it came out. It won awards also. It's worth your time. Maybe.
Did I mention that the quarantine is going great?
Thursday, January 30, 2020
From the Vault, Apparently
Mom sent me and Dan, I'm to assume, a thumb drive with 552 photos she'd discovered in boxes in a closet. She sent them to her favorite digitizer, and back comes the pictures and a disc. You can imagine the rest.
This isn't the first time she's done this, and I always find it fascinating, since the digitizing people don't ever seem to try to place the pictures in any kind of order. One minute there's a picture of me and Dan in the living room at Basswood circa 1994, then Christmas at Grandpa Tom's and Lizzie is 15 months old, then Bobbi holding an infant Heather with Scott toddlering around her feet.
The first few pictures, I was stunned to see, were photos I took during our 1990 trip.
I wanted to come here to share some of them, especially the cool ones.
Like this one, from Christmas some year at Grandpa Tom's, probably 1989:
Having a kid makes me feel differently about this kind of picture.
How about us boys, dad:
There were some tender pictures of dad and Lizzie, which were neat.
Remember posing on the couch for timer-induced family photo time? And then mom trying to snap one of just us boys?
That was when my hair was just starting to curl and I didn't know what the hell to do with it. Too bad Dan's hand is positioned like that.
Some were pretty cool compositions, pics I'm sure mom took. I especially like those momentary snapshot into the life of a guy, the SHERWOOD from the title of this blog, as he lives his life. One, as a father of two on a trip to Yosemite:
And another, as if this were penned by Joseph Heller, chilling on a couch, no kids, I'd even guess no wife:
This Sherwood-son has filled one of those roles, and is about to fill another.
There are more coming...Dan, feel free to put some up (you and me at Johnny and Janelle's wedding?).
These ones made me smile. They all did, though, really.
This isn't the first time she's done this, and I always find it fascinating, since the digitizing people don't ever seem to try to place the pictures in any kind of order. One minute there's a picture of me and Dan in the living room at Basswood circa 1994, then Christmas at Grandpa Tom's and Lizzie is 15 months old, then Bobbi holding an infant Heather with Scott toddlering around her feet.
The first few pictures, I was stunned to see, were photos I took during our 1990 trip.
I wanted to come here to share some of them, especially the cool ones.
Like this one, from Christmas some year at Grandpa Tom's, probably 1989:
Having a kid makes me feel differently about this kind of picture.
How about us boys, dad:
There were some tender pictures of dad and Lizzie, which were neat.
Remember posing on the couch for timer-induced family photo time? And then mom trying to snap one of just us boys?
Some were pretty cool compositions, pics I'm sure mom took. I especially like those momentary snapshot into the life of a guy, the SHERWOOD from the title of this blog, as he lives his life. One, as a father of two on a trip to Yosemite:
This Sherwood-son has filled one of those roles, and is about to fill another.
There are more coming...Dan, feel free to put some up (you and me at Johnny and Janelle's wedding?).
These ones made me smile. They all did, though, really.
Thursday, June 27, 2019
1991 for Keanu Reeves
My good friend Ryan hates Keanu Reeves. Similar to Norm's distaste for Johnny Depp and mine for Owen Wilson, Ryan refuses to watch movies starring Keanu, likely never having seen Speed or The Matrix.
That would be a shame, as I hope Norm has seen Ed Wood or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I've learned a few things since watching Midnight in Paris.
Anyway, I bring that up about Keanu Reeves because I was thinking about him after seeing reviews for the third John Wick film and his appearance in the new Netflix movie with Ali Wong and Randall Park. I do not hold the same feelings about Keanu.
Dad brought me to see Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure in the theaters in 1989, and I wrote about it a while back, about how it seemed to me to be a '90s movie despite it's release year, about how the special effects looked and how the absurdity fit a later psyche.
Point Break remained one of Dan and my summer favorites for years after we obtained the VHS, Speed was one of the movies we saw while theater hopping in 1994, and The Matrix helped alter the way I engaged with philosophy.
And while I find this discussion on the blankness of Keanu's face being the reason he's the perfect action star funny and interesting, I tend to think he has at least some acting chops. I mean, he's pretty decent in his few scenes in Parenthood.
And Point Break brings me back to the point I'm getting at today.
"Point Break" was released on July 12th, 1991. Keanu plays Johnny Utah, former Ohio State QB who blew his knee out and eventually joined the FBI, goes undercover and pretends to be a lawyer with adrenaline issues. Okay, that is pretty ridiculous, but still, we loved it:
One week later, on July 19th, 1991, saw thew release of "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey," the sequel to the aforementioned 1989 entry:
Keanu again plays clueless Ted Logan, only this time he and his buddy/fellow Wyld Stallions founding band-member Bill Preston, are killed by evil robot copies of themselves, battle with Death itself, enslave Death, and use alien intelligence to best the badguys after reincarnating themselves. The movie is even more absurd than the original, very original in its own right, and has grown quite a cult following.
A few months later, on September 29th, 1991, saw the release of Gus Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho:"
More of a starring vehicle for River Phoenix, Keanu plays a street hustling/gigolo/son of the Mayor of Portland, Oregon. River's character, being gay, falls for Keanu's but is rebuffed, as Keanu reminds him that he only sleeps with men for money. Today it is hailed by the queer community as an early classic. It's also loosely based on parts of three Shakespeare royal plays.
In three months of the summer of 1991, Keanu Reeves played an undercover FBI agent who learns to surf for the work, a clueless teenager killed and resurrected by his own victory over capital-d-Death, and a male prostitute running away from his birthright as the son of a mayor of a large Pacific Northwest town.
How many actors have played such diverse roles in movies that came out essentially within the same season of a year?
That would be a shame, as I hope Norm has seen Ed Wood or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I've learned a few things since watching Midnight in Paris.
Anyway, I bring that up about Keanu Reeves because I was thinking about him after seeing reviews for the third John Wick film and his appearance in the new Netflix movie with Ali Wong and Randall Park. I do not hold the same feelings about Keanu.
Dad brought me to see Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure in the theaters in 1989, and I wrote about it a while back, about how it seemed to me to be a '90s movie despite it's release year, about how the special effects looked and how the absurdity fit a later psyche.
Point Break remained one of Dan and my summer favorites for years after we obtained the VHS, Speed was one of the movies we saw while theater hopping in 1994, and The Matrix helped alter the way I engaged with philosophy.
And while I find this discussion on the blankness of Keanu's face being the reason he's the perfect action star funny and interesting, I tend to think he has at least some acting chops. I mean, he's pretty decent in his few scenes in Parenthood.
And Point Break brings me back to the point I'm getting at today.
"Point Break" was released on July 12th, 1991. Keanu plays Johnny Utah, former Ohio State QB who blew his knee out and eventually joined the FBI, goes undercover and pretends to be a lawyer with adrenaline issues. Okay, that is pretty ridiculous, but still, we loved it:
One week later, on July 19th, 1991, saw thew release of "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey," the sequel to the aforementioned 1989 entry:
Keanu again plays clueless Ted Logan, only this time he and his buddy/fellow Wyld Stallions founding band-member Bill Preston, are killed by evil robot copies of themselves, battle with Death itself, enslave Death, and use alien intelligence to best the badguys after reincarnating themselves. The movie is even more absurd than the original, very original in its own right, and has grown quite a cult following.
A few months later, on September 29th, 1991, saw the release of Gus Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho:"
More of a starring vehicle for River Phoenix, Keanu plays a street hustling/gigolo/son of the Mayor of Portland, Oregon. River's character, being gay, falls for Keanu's but is rebuffed, as Keanu reminds him that he only sleeps with men for money. Today it is hailed by the queer community as an early classic. It's also loosely based on parts of three Shakespeare royal plays.
In three months of the summer of 1991, Keanu Reeves played an undercover FBI agent who learns to surf for the work, a clueless teenager killed and resurrected by his own victory over capital-d-Death, and a male prostitute running away from his birthright as the son of a mayor of a large Pacific Northwest town.
How many actors have played such diverse roles in movies that came out essentially within the same season of a year?
Sunday, February 17, 2019
The Infinite Rewatchability of Incredibles II
I haven't had a chance to get any reading done, and now that I have an idea of my talking time in Rome in June, I really need to crack some books. I have some books on my list (Milkman and Big Bang among others), but with Netflix combined with Cassius being sick as hell, and my plan for watching Incredibles II in a four hour binge with the first iteration did not happen.
I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to talk about Incredibles II. So, to start:
1. It's good. It's popcorn covered in melted cheese, summer blockbuster action movie packaged as a family adventure.
2. It's unabashedly feminist. The main good-guy is Elasti-Girl, the main bag-guy is a lady, and half of the movie is Mr. Incredible being ground down by domestic life as a house-dad.
3. The action set pieces are all Badass, with the capital B. It's almost like Pixar knows that animation can embrace the limitations of the computer in ways that live-action never can without appearing fully cartoony and fake.
4. One thing they really nail is the realization of the full potential of an elastic character. Holy cow, they get it right, and show how awesome that power could be.
I love the movie Coco, another Pixar entry on Netflix, and for a while it was Cassius's go-to for viewing. It's not so bad to have on in regular rotation, but it will always make me cry.
Incredibles II never really has that element: the emotionally-manipulative heart-string tug.
Plus, they really lean in to Jack-jack's powers.
I've gone back to watch clips of the first movie, and I'd have to say that the animation changes are jarring. Watching them back to back would have been amazing, mostly to see what was cutting edge in 2004, and then again in 2018.
But, was it so cutting edge in 2004? I remember that was the narrative, that Pixar had to do years of work trying to update their animation abilities to properly render believable human characters. But didn't Shrek come out in 1999? Not that Shrek has lots of human characters, but...maybe my memory needs to be updated.
Also, they use phrases like "Lets make supers legal again!" and similar taglines, that are so obviously nods to president cheeto-dust that it's more discomforting than funny. For me, anyway.
It's easy to watch, over and over. Mainly because of how cool Elasti-Girl is...
I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to talk about Incredibles II. So, to start:
1. It's good. It's popcorn covered in melted cheese, summer blockbuster action movie packaged as a family adventure.
2. It's unabashedly feminist. The main good-guy is Elasti-Girl, the main bag-guy is a lady, and half of the movie is Mr. Incredible being ground down by domestic life as a house-dad.
3. The action set pieces are all Badass, with the capital B. It's almost like Pixar knows that animation can embrace the limitations of the computer in ways that live-action never can without appearing fully cartoony and fake.
4. One thing they really nail is the realization of the full potential of an elastic character. Holy cow, they get it right, and show how awesome that power could be.
I love the movie Coco, another Pixar entry on Netflix, and for a while it was Cassius's go-to for viewing. It's not so bad to have on in regular rotation, but it will always make me cry.
Incredibles II never really has that element: the emotionally-manipulative heart-string tug.
Plus, they really lean in to Jack-jack's powers.
I've gone back to watch clips of the first movie, and I'd have to say that the animation changes are jarring. Watching them back to back would have been amazing, mostly to see what was cutting edge in 2004, and then again in 2018.
But, was it so cutting edge in 2004? I remember that was the narrative, that Pixar had to do years of work trying to update their animation abilities to properly render believable human characters. But didn't Shrek come out in 1999? Not that Shrek has lots of human characters, but...maybe my memory needs to be updated.
Also, they use phrases like "Lets make supers legal again!" and similar taglines, that are so obviously nods to president cheeto-dust that it's more discomforting than funny. For me, anyway.
It's easy to watch, over and over. Mainly because of how cool Elasti-Girl is...
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