Ten Movies I Want to See: Half-Human

Gag publicity still for Ju jin Yuki Otoko; the monster in the film is portrayed as a giant.

Half Human, AKA Ju jin Yuki Otoko ("Monster Snowman") is the second and rarest of the beloved giant monster films directed by Ishirō Honda, the man behind Godzilla/Gojira.

Ju jin Yuki Otoko was his first follow-up to Godzilla's success, and it is even more influenced by 1933's King Kong than Godzilla was.

From the ol' Wikipedia entry:

The original Japanese story concerns the discovery of a giant prehistoric snowman in the Japanese Alps by a group of hikers. When a traveling circus attempts to capture the monster, they accidentally kill the monster's son instead.

One online writer sees part of the film's strength in the ape-man suit and make, which he argues is better than the ones seen in later Toho Studios films like King Kong Vs. Godzilla. He credits this to one Ōhashi Fuminori, a suit designer and actor who later left Toho before its Kaiju series really took off.

The film is in black & white and features a monster that is only slightly gigantic, but the real reason it's so little seen today is the racist undertones of the film. These will sail over most Americans' heads, but the aboriginal Ainu of northern Japan (who have often been stereotyped as hairier and taller than "normal" Japanese) lodged such a protest that Toho Studios more or less pulled the film from circulation forever.

It can still be seen in old bootlegs, which are usually of a cheap American version with John Carradine who appears in a prologue and narrates the heavily edited film.

I've never seen it but my brother has, and his take on it sounds about what I'd expect to see. A weird, curious chapter in the development of the Kaiju genre.

EXPOSED: Astroturfed Teabaggers PAID TO TROLL liberals online to enforce corporate propaganda

EXPOSED: Astroturfed Teabaggers PAID TO TROLL liberals online to enforce corporate propaganda

“I’m paid to post DIS-information online.”

Couple of good articles on why you often see so much online political chatter being derailed by so many people saying the same things: they're being paid to do it.

Jackie Chan Pays Tribute to the Great Silent Comics

This great Youtube video shows how the silent comedians Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd influenced the plucky, acrobatic heroes Chan plays.

Merry Christmas!

Here's Suzy Snowflake, one of my favorite vintage Christmas animations, originally shown on Chicago's WBBM-TV in 1953.

Shootings, Politics, Media and the Economy

This is from an answer I gave on Yahoo Answers. I'm posting it here in case the questioner decides to delete it.

Is the Govt controlled media like MSNBC telling viewers the FL Shooter was from Media Matters org?

A far left KOOK! was the guy shooting that Flordia School board. He hated the rich because the George Soros Cult fed him with hate. Is the liberal media telling their viewers about that?

He wasn't "from" Media Matters. MM was just one of a "long list of websites like Media Matters, and other lesser known blogspot sites on Facebook as meaningful to him" that people reported seeing on his Facebook page before it was taken down, which is a common practice in such cases. It should be noted that he joined Facebook only a week before the shooting.

So even if he did link to Media Matters, that doesn't mean there's any causal relationship between that and his actions at the school board meeting. MM has a lot of opinions, but they're not known for their targeting of school boards.

Compare this to the Oakland shooter who said he wanted "to start a revolution" by "killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU," according to a police affidavit.

Many scratched their heads as to why someone would target the nondescript Tides Foundation, until people in the media pointed out that Glenn Beck was targeting them. In the forefront of people saying this was Glenn Beck. On the Monday after the incident, he bragged that ""No one knew what Tides was until the blackboard." (Meaning the one he uses on his show.)

Or look at the Knoxville shooter, who wrote in a suicide note/ manifesto before his attack, Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book," a reference to Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37).

But I think there's a deeper underlying factor to all these attacks. All three men were unemployed and facing economic hardship.

Adkisson, the Knoxville shooter, also cited his inability to find a job, and that his food stamps were being cut. Byron Williams, the Oakland shooter, told investigators that he was disturbed because he was unable to find a job due to the poor economy. Clay Duke, the Florida School Board Shooter, had been diagnosed by several doctors as bipolar, but didn't have enough money to buy the needed medication, according to his attorney. His wife was going to receive her final unemployment check (she had been fired from the school board a year ago) the week of the shooting. Duke was also unemployed.

There's a Great New Fox News Site...

...and like all great Fox News sites, it's about Fox News, not by them.

I'll let Fox News Comments describe itself:

Fox News Comments was created to expose the audience that Fox News caters to. Every comment is posted as it was shown on foxnews.com or thefoxnation.com. Some of what you read will make you laugh, some of what you read will shock you. Fear-mongering and hate-mongering have proven a very successful ratings-grabber for Fox News, but it’s generated about as much hate and fear as can be expected. So stick around – you might learn a slur that should have been dead decades ago!

It's about time someone started a site that featured Fox News' loyal audience, especially since a recent study showed that they are the woefully misinformed news audience in the country. And surprisingly enough, they're consistently misinformed in ways that benefit the Republican Party!

Blake Edwards 1922-2010

I came to love the work of Blake Edwards through my young love of Inspector Clouseau, the classic stumbling hero who was played by Peter Sellers in five movies directed by Edwards.

Even as a youth, I got the definite impression that Edwards, A) was very funny, and B) had a mean streak a mile wide.

Maybe you need to be a little mean to be funny. Most jokes are aimed at deflating someone or something.

I had to learn to accept that Sellers and Edwards were talented but often unpleasant men who grew to intensely dislike each other because both of their careers became dependent on making Clouseau films.

Sellers wanted to show he didn't need Edwards to make a Clouseau movie. From all I've heard about his proposed Romance of the Pink Panther, it's just as well it never made it to the screen.

Edwards wanted to show he didn't need Sellers to make a Clouseau movie. In fact, he tried at least four times: Trail of the Pink Panther utilizing some unused footage of the late Sellers; Curse of the Pink Panther, which was supposed to reboot the series with a new hero; Son of the Pink Panther, which tried yet another new hero; and Victor Victoria, which included a subplot with a bumbling detective. The last one is clearly the best, with expertly timed gags, and a character you forget about the moment he's off screen.

So is there a happy ending here? The happy ending is that Edwards made a lot of great comedies, including six with Sellers, even though they didn't like each other.

His slapstick, however violent, represented a kind of comedy not seen much today, and is long overdue for a revival.

My favorite Edwards film is A Shot in the Dark, in which he and Sellers truly create Clouseau as we now know him: thickly accented, bumbling, and somehow noble, the closest thing to Don Quixote or Laurel & Hardy that Hollywood has accomplished int he last 50 years.

I also have a special place in my hear to The Party, a comedy about a well meaning fool (Sellers) running amuck at a Hollywood Party. While not always 100% on the mark, it's a pleasurable return to the improvisational style that marked Hollywood's Golden Age of comedy. It was largely improvised, which was taboo at the time, but has now come back into fashion.

Ten Movie I Want to See:Dead of Night

About all I know about Dead of Night is that:

--It's an anthology horror film with the what may be filmdom's first Evil Ventriloquist Dummy plot.

--It was praised to heaven by Robert Bloch in a Famous Monsters of Filmland essay that was brief, cranky, and (because it was one of the few article not written by Forrest J. Ackerman, a writer who surpasses even the great Stan Lee in corniness) surprisingly coherent.

--It was a rare pre-Hammer British horror film, back when the Brits had a track record in horror that was as pathetic as its legacy literary horror was legendary. Amazingly, it's by Ealing Studios, which would soon become synonymous with comedy.

--I passed up the chance to see it one night on a UHF channel. I wasn't primed for it, and I wanted wait until I could give it my full attention to watch it. I haven't seen it for rent or sale ever since.

That's all I know and that's all I want to know. Horror anthologies should surprise you.

Let's put the filibuster back in the filibuster.

Senator Bernice Sanders got up today and spoke for eight hours against the tax cuts for the very wealthy.

Here is a news story on it, and the comment I wrote for it which may or may not be posted. (It's up to the author, who did not do a very good job in my opinion.)

I not admire not only what Sanders is filibustering--outsized, unproductive debt-increasing tax cuts for the very wealthy--but how he chose to do it. He got up and spoke. Under modern rules, Senators no longer need to "hold the floor" and speak for long stretches to filibuster, they simply have to indicate that they are filibustering. This is why the Senate Republicans have been able to achieve record-breaking number of filibusters, often on the simplest procedural votes. And this is why most Americans probably don't even realize these filibusters are happening. It's time to make a Senator who wants to filibuster actually filibuster.

I should have added that though Sanders speech wasn't actually a filibuster because he wasn't

there was a modern sit-on-your-ass GOP-led filibuster that day, blocking a vote on repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell which would have certainly passed. I wonder how many people know that.

Addendum: I still support Obama, and I support the Democrats who are fighting him. The President is pressured form all sides, and Democrats must not sit back and assume he'll do whatever they want. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once told a group of reformers, "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."

"He Who Gets Slapped" is on DVD! Somebody Read My Blog!

Looks like He Who Gets Slapped has finally got its DVD release!

To tell the truth, I'm just glad I finished my blog posting pining for its release before this happened. I'd been meaning to write about it for awhile.

My blog post was published November 9 and the DVD was released November 27. At this rate, Kongo should've be out on DVD by November 29.

What's taking these guys?

CASINO JACK Bob Ney Baller Webisode

Caught this on the extras on Casino Jack and the United States of Money (the documentary, not the feature film drama that was apparently based on it).

Check what he has to say at 1:40. It's a pity someone has to be in prison and out of power to realize this.

Cat's Playing Pattycake--With Dialogue