MARCH OR DIE! 2015

 

No Apologies!

While I wish I had a better publishing schedule for LERNER INTERNATIONAL, I don’t.

Graduate school keeps a body very busy, and sacrifices must be made.

Busy doesn’t come close to describing the situation. Punch-drunk and dizzy is more like it.

But I’m learning so much and getting so much experience.

I’m aiming at becoming a teacher of writing and composition to adult learners, and have been doing more than just schoolwork: I’m tutoring students at the writing center, and occasionally being a TA for a class of freshman.

That said, I haven’t been doing any reading for fun, and movie watching is few and far between.

I think I saw more films in one week in January (during the break) than I have in the last two months (and these were some of the worst times of the winter; stuck indoors—perfect movie viewing weather—if you don’t have a gazillion pages of linguistic theory to read and annotate…).

List and brief descriptions below the break…

INTRO TO THE POLITICS OF RESEARCH (and the movies of January 2015!)

Let’s get Meta—we’ve all read “University Inc.”? Of course we have.

Did we like it? In the simplest terms, was it fun to read? There’s no wrong answer…

2014: Gone, and Good Riddance! (or: Ding-Dong, the Year Is Dead!)

I’ve been officially accepted into graduate school—working towards my MA in Language & Literacy—and if you have any idea of what that means, you know I ain’t gonna have the time…

“Lady, I don’t have the time…” 

Honestly, 2014 was probably one of the toughest years of my life, burning me out to the core of my soul, messing with my health, emptying my bank account and essentially ruining me financially.

But WOW, I learned a lot about myself and the “System.”

Like I will never teach in a public school. Not because the kids are monsters (and many of them are), but because the pedagogical bureaucrats and creeps run the show—and their one desire is a classroom full of obedient zombies. Teaching students how to be quiet and sit up straight was more important that engaging them intellectually. Sad, really, and I want no part of it.

Wow, this month, I really caught up (sort of) with my movie viewing and “for fun” reading (not that any reading these days doesn’t have an ulterior motive).

The Return of the Reviews! The Films (& Books) of June & August

So, what the heck have I been up to?

Six months of intense and hellish training to be a prison guard to the young folks, that’s what: I was in the bowels of the edjoomakashun system, lorded over by a series of Dolores Umbridges—which thankfully in the long run, I was rejected for—

“Let’s use brutal, militaristic techniques to keep the young’uns in line, to make them good little worker bees—oh, there’s no jobs and poverty creates a toxic stress environment as well as cycle of defeat? Not to mention the learned helplessness where folks say, ‘Why bother to try and improve when the dice are loaded, the cards marked and the game is rigged right from the start?’ Well that’s not our problem….”

Basically it was like dealing with the students of Mao’s Cultural Revolution: Obey or die!

Listen up boy, you gotta get your mind RIGHT. 

Here’s the thing: these Umbridges claim to “love the children,” but I believe they only do so in the most abstract way….

But I’ve burned enough bridges already…

One day I will go into further detail—but today is not that day—today is September 1, and it’s the start of the final quarter of 2014, and it’s a new page in my life.

Getting my ducks in a row, looking forward, and NEVER giving up. The only way you’re going to stop me is by chopping off my head—and then you better watch out: the Gypsy said if that happens, my right hand with come after you…and avenge me.

Now, onto the movie reviews! (Most of which will be very short; I just wanna get this one out of the way—break the silence, and get back on track…)

LIE #108: Signs & Wonders Abounded in February, and Most Weren’t Even Cinematic Ones!

Lemme tell ya, February was a HARSH month here in The Big Apple:

This winter was CRUEL—and it smells like it might just return one last time—and then there were all my personal hassles—which I have been hinting at somewhat during my infrequent posts over the last 18 months….

But Big Bad Febz was also an incredibly busy month for me: Got 47 day’s worth of work accomplished in 28! I worked in a smelly warehouse, visited the Toy Fair, did this, did that, did the other thing, did the right thing, and even more importantly:

I have been, after much stress and worry, accepted into the NYC Teaching Fellows program, and within less than a month, I will be in an inner city high school, first assisting a teacher, then taking over a class myself!

Whoa!

I am SO excited and nervous!

Suffice to say, some changes may be on the horizon, but as of yet, what those changes could be are as yet, unknown.

But hopefully I won’t lapse back into the poor publishing schedule which plagued me recently…

Nuking Oz at Midnight: “Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em” & Other Sick Humor Visions of the Apocalypse in Australia!

From On the Beach to The Road Warrior to Tomorrow, When the War Began, Australia has figured prominently in cinematic depictions of the events surrounding total war, including the use of thermonuclear weapons.

So what’s that all about then, eh, mate?

Last Rondo to Brooklyn

 

The title of today’s post is a “There goes Ivan spraining his arm while patting himself on the back” pun.

You see, Rondo Hatton (more about him in a moment; although if you’re a cinephile of any sort, and you don’t recognize him, you are the ultimate loser and should never speak to me again) will be making an appearance in Brooklyn.

Or at least, he will if I have any say in the matter…

LIE #105: Back in the Saddle, Toot Sweet! (And the Films of January 2014) (& RIP PSH)

No way am I gonna let myself get behind schedule like I did last time; nuh-uh! No way, José.

That said, it sucks that Philip Seymour Hoffman had to go and OD. The tentacles of the Mind Parasites can confound and depress even the most successful of us…

I enjoyed PSH in everything I’ve seen him in, especially when the rest of the movie stunk.

And he was someone who could’ve had a LONG career: Not being a “pretty boy,” PSH had a wider range of character choices and possibilities. Growing older, he could’ve been a contemporary Charles Laughton or Edmund O’Brien.

The thing to do is appreciate what PSH did give us, hope that his explorations of a new dimension are successful, and pray that no one decides “Since PSH did dope, so should I.”

Like MacArthur, Odyseuss* and the Local Fish Graffiti, I Have Returned!

See that fish up there? He’s a piece of graffiti in my neighborhood, and whenever he’s painted over, he appears again in a few days. That fish rules, and is an inspiration.

Go, Fish! GO!

Wow! The time I have been taking between posts is inexcusable!

I do apologize, but lack of writing for LERNER INTERNATIONAL certainly doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy.

Oh lordy, have I been busy!

[* = Odyseuss? He’s the guy who wrote Green Eggs and Circe’s Curse and The Scylla & Charyrbdis in the Hat, remember?]

Cute Dogs & Cosplay in the Noonday Sun: The Films of October 2013 - FINALLY!

Oh my god, aren’t these dogs SO cute?!?!?

Yer a good doggie, yes, you are!

Doggie-doggie-doggie!

Scratch your belly, you like that, right, puppy?

Yes, you’re a goooooood dog!

Jeez, I want one!

French bulldogs or the pug-Chihuahua mix, the chug—all of them are so delightful—

and noble!

And wise! Like canine Yodas!

So what does this have to do with the Films of October 2013? Read on, read on….

L.I.E. ONE-HUNDRED!!!! Where No LIE Has Gone Before!

ONE HUNDRED POSTS!!!

Thanks to loyal readers and friends!

Your feedback and comments keep me going, and I really regret not being able to post as much as I would like.

That said, since I’ve subtitled this post “Where No LIE Has Gone Before!” it will be illustrated with some of the Star Trek images that I’ve had clogging my computer for too long.

I wasn’t going to use a picture or a cake, or the actual number “100.”

I love the original Trek—it was the show that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea should have been.

The Original Trek was really about a U.S. battleship cruising the Pacific, keeping the peace—promoting the benevolent Pax Americana. Voyage was just dopey kids’ stuff—but set on the U.S. Navy’s most super-science submarine! Voyage should have been about subverting Castro and destroying the crops of Laos, not lobstermen, phony lizards and atom bomb swallowing whales! (Although that was a cool episode…) 

For the reviews of August and September (and more Trek pix, both from the show and our nation’s cosplayers), please read on:

The Bluesmobile Still Needs Gasoline: Elwood, His Car and the Movies of July 2013

For me, one of the most potent bits of evidence pointing to the veracity that the Blues Brothers were in fact “on a mission from God,” was the almost-heroic death of the Bluesmobile.

LIE #97: Pacific Rim! Premingerliciousness! And the Movies of June—Finally!

Any gripes against Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013) are sniggling ones: For the amount of money spent—and that bread is all on-screen—this is about as perfect a giant monster vs. giant robot flick as you’ll find.

(This, more, and the films of June, all below)

Battlin’ Babs From Brooklyn Conquers the West!

When feisty Barbara Stanwyck’s hard-as-nails, incredibly successful businesswoman is blinded by love for the first time in her hardscrabble life, her selfish and immature younger brother takes the opportunity to ruin her empire.

Sounds kind of modern, right?

Well, it’s as close to a “Douglas Sirk” film that Sam Fuller would ever come to: 1957’s Forty Guns.

But since it’s Stanwyck and Fuller, it’s practically perfect.

LIE #94: Heatwave Quintet—“Blind Beast” & Friends!

Thermonuclear heatwave meltdown in effect, but no summertime-popcorn-Propaganda-Machine-brainwashing here at LERNER INTERNATIONAL, no siree!

These five films are thought-provoking and controversial, yet brush against the Genre Zone quite successfully—after Blind Beast, we look at the recently released Upstream Color, the long-awaited follow-up to cult favorite Primer; then Larry Cohen’s 1977 exploitation biopic The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, best watched if you put yourself in a late-1970s mindset. We conclude with reviews of lost early-1980s UFOlogy masterpiece Wavelength and its abducted aliens; finishing with Kuroneko, another Japanese film, with bloodthirsty yokai seeking revenge.

Blind Beast (1969; Yasuzo Masumura) WOW, what a film!

“Why can’t touching be an art form?!?"

An insane blind sculptor kidnaps a young model that he’s become obsessed with—in order to recreate the “perfect “ female form in Yasuzo Masumura’s unique erotic horror masterpiece Blind Beast. The madman cries out, “A new art form, by and for the blind!”—and he means it!

LIE #93: Beyond Blaxploitation, It’s Bla-Sex-Ploitation—1976’s “Black Shampoo!” (And "The Purge")

  

We gotta flick here that’s pure, 100-proof, 1970s old-school 42^nd Street exploitation madness about the dangers of being a stud hairdresser.

Enlivened by beyond over-the-top performances and excessive (but thematically integral) nudity, 1976’s Black Shampoo is blasexploitation at its height: Mr. Jonathon knows how to satisfy his customers!

(And later, we’ll be taking a look at the New School in Exploitation, reviewing The Purge!)

Billy Can’t Be A Hero: A Re-Appreciation of William Friedkin, and the Movies of May 2013

In the last month or so, I’ve not only rescreened William Friedkin’s films Sorcerer (1977) and The French Connection (1971), but also caught his latest movie, Killer Joe (2011), as well as read his recently-published autobiography The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir. 

An iconoclastic autodidact, director Friedkin has always been interested in morally questionable people doing bad things (sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not) and the consequences of their actions.

It has been several years since I last saw any of WF’s work, and for some reason (probably raw, ugly contrarianism), he had fallen out of favor with me. Wow, was I stupid! His flicks are GREAT!!!!

Ray Harryhausen RIP—and the Movies of April 2013

Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013)

The Last of the Old School Special Effects Masters has passed away. Now Harryhausen joins Albert Whitlock, Derek Meddings, L.B. Abbott and a small handful of others creating special visual effects for the Afterlife—all without computers!

Big Ray was no hired hand, though:

Harryhausen’s was the rare case of the special effects man determining the path of the motion picture routinely—essentially acting as a hands-on producer (even the directors usually hired by him and partner Charles H. Schneer were non-entities: so as not to interfere?). His individualized, specific form of stop-motion animation is intractably tied to the movies they were in and vice versa.

There is a certain tone to Harryhausen’s flicks, combined with an extravagant but classical sense of fantasy that puts his name directly on the same level as George Pal and Walt Disney as the Masters of Family-Friendly Fantasy. You might consider it a level of “cheese” in Harryhausen’s wholesome enterprises, but it is extremely earnest, and absolutely charming—and drips with the hard work of one solitary man.

LIE #85: This Evening, Scream along with God (or, Jesus Freaks vs. Bible Thumpers; Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them?)

“Summon the AAAy-toner!”

Can your soul stand the theological implications of 1971’s The Night God Screamed?

You get old-school 42^nd Street madness with this lost exploitation flick about the dangers of uncanny Bible-quoting hippies and the generation gap.

Deliciously nasty 1970s trash, and a great midnight movie!

In Praise of Jack Kirby (and we've been given the LIEBSTER AWARD—Huzzah!) (Spraining My Arm Patting Myself on the Back Edition)

LERNER INTERNATIONAL ENTERPRISES is lucky enough to have had the Liebster Award bestowed on it by that absolutely perfect blog, The Girl With the White Parasol, and we here in the LIE control room, say THANK YOU, and send many, many delicious telepathic chocolates her way!!!

  

More on The Liebster in a moment, but first, the illustrations for this post: you might be asking, “What’s with all the Jack Kirby?”

Well, The King (Mr. Kirby’s nickname—and shame on you if you didn’t know that) is the answer to one of the Liebster’s questions (see below) because he is one of my favorite artist/writer/storytellers ever.

Kirby’s is a clunky, yet beautiful and psychedelic style that has always stirred my imagination—not only was his art cosmic, so were his tales: supreme super-weirdness from beyond space and time, with storylines that were never mundane. No simple stopping of bank robbers for Kirby! It was routinely gods vs. man vs. demons, with the soul of the universe in the balance!