Mssrs. Jones, Strummer and Hedon called the USA.....



Arguably the greatest lead single from the greatest album from one of the greatest punk bands ever was released on December 7th, 1979....

Bow down and show respect.

Current Mood: moody

Obstensively, this is our periodic review episode, where The Guys Outta Brooklyn discuss Paranormal Activity, 2012, District 9 and more...but we spend almost a half hour tackling a pile of listener mail, welcoming new members into the BITD family and venting our dislike of the 'posthumous Oscar' and the new version of Melrose Place.



Alain Delon Wants You To Click!

Current Mood: pissed off

....really, really really annoyed by the video pop up ads for Best Buy that's plaguing us unpaying customers?

Current Mood: annoyed

As per this post from my friend marjory....

♦ Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile".
♦ I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity.
♦ Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
♦ Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

1. You win $10 million on the lottery. What do you do with it?

Okay, this one is going to take a while...

First thing I'd do is buy The Ridgewood Fiveplex, the movie theater right next door to me that closed down early last year. The Ridgewood was the longest continually operating movie theater in the country, and I find it barbaric that it's been sitting there slowly rotting away for months. I would put money into remodeling and updating it so it is consistent with modern movie-going experiences. I would knock the screens down to three from five, use the lower two screen to run first-run features while using the top screen as a revival house (Yes, this is very similar to what I had Tae do in both Cougar Ridge and Neville).



But wait, there's more--I would also buy the former furniture storeroom that was V.G. Nichols just up Myrtle Avenue, and convert that into an old-school soda fountain, which will serve hand-jerked (that is the term, believe it or not) sodas, coffees, teas, snackie-things and basic comfort foods like burgers, hot dogs and the like. I would also have a 'dinner-and-a-movie' deal so the two sites can work in tandem. Ideally, I will be able to use the profits from these businesses to live off of, and may even use them to buy and renovate other movie theaters in the tri-state area before they become churches or low-rent malls.

I would buy both myself and my mother a house (one of each, silly person). I would buy a Speed Six Bentley, after I learn to drive. I would invest a portion of what remains, and then go and fulfill my desire to go to a football game in every stadium in the country, and yearly visits to Fenway and Wrigley.

2. Your Fairy Godmother sends you for a fantasy picnic with a wave of her magic wand. Who do you go with and where? What activities do you undertake? What is there to eat and drink?

Marjory...you should know that if it is a fantasy picnic who'd be my date....



That's right...my beloved lil' miss Kristen 'Veronica Mars' Bell...

For where--while the impulse is to make a joke about Fenway, I think I'd like to dine while overlooking the Forbidden City of China, or on top of one of the pyramids of the Yucatan, or on the grounds of The Monsoon Palace...I have a love of the architecture of old, old civilizations, and I'd want to share it with my guest. I'd love to go walking around these places, learning and discovering and imagining the history that went on in there.

Food and drink would depend on which of the places I ended up choosing....although there would be lots of Diet Dr. Pepper for myself to drink....

3. The ny_wisdom Film Festival is inaugurated. You are permitted to pick 5 movies with which to boggle the masses. What do you pick? (imaginary movies and TV episodes are permissable!)

Okay....here's the 'films that should've been made' program....

♦ The sequel to Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter that was to feature the samurai-weilding vampire slayer battling Dracula himself.
♦ The never-filmed prequel to Near Dark Kathryn Bigelow has planned, set during the Civil War.
♦ The Quentin Tarantino-directed, black and white James Bond film that we almost got instead of Casino Royale
♦ The Brides Of Flint, the never-filmed third Derek Flint film that got nixed when James Coburn declined to be in it, featuring a script by Harlan Ellison.
♦ The Brad Bird produced cell-animation version of The Spirit that we never got because Bird accepted a job with Pixar

4. Midler, Streisand or who?

Neko Case.

5. What's the most awe-inspiring/awful piece of grafitti you've ever seen?

When I was attending Hunter College in the 80's, a film was released here called 1990: The Bronx Warrior, and someone had scrawled 'featuring lovable Phil, Adam and Nick from Honda of Mineola' under the title in the 68th Street subway station.

You had to be there, but the fact that I remember this piece of graffiti after all these years must count for something....

Current Mood: optimistic

In this episode of The 'Cade, Sinestro traps Green Lantern on an all-yellow world...as part of a popularity contest.



Hey, it gets worse...wait until you meet his manager.

Click To Set Your Alarm Clocks...To Adventure!

Current Mood: moody

Thank you, Mr. Revis.

Current Mood: chipper

Because I somtimes isn't satisfied wuth one podcast appearance every two weeks, I ended up guesting on Scott H. Gardner's excellent comic book podcast Back To The Bins! Scott talks about an issue that attempts to revive the DC Western Hero Cinnamon, and I talk about a forgotten gem featuring Howard Chaykin....which leads into a rollicking talk about the disaster that was Martin Goodman's Atlas Comics Group!



Speed To This Episode!

Current Mood: nervous

In this episode, Tom and Derrick once more team up with The Superman Guru Almighty, Mr. Michael Bailey, as we look at Supes in the movies, from the spectacular Fleischer cartoons to the...not-so-spectacular Superman Returns!



Plus a rant...only it's not from Tom!

Click or George Reeves Will Punch You In The Head!

Give my love of 60's spy culture, and especially Brian Clemens' rather idiosyncratic fairy-tale-as-spy-series, The Avengers, is it any wonder that this is my favorite video ever made by XTC?



And the reason I love it is how Andy Partridge and company managed to recreate the look and feel of my favorite introduction for the series, an intro made for us. See, ABC picked up The Avengers in 1965 for broadcast and the intro was made to bring unintelligent Amurricans up to speed on what was going on in this wacky series....



The way this pop trio managed to capture not only the feel of this opening, but the look is just amazing. It's a tribute, it's a parody, and it's an entertaining video.

When this showed up on MTV screens, The Avengers was being shown on ABC again--but at two in the morning. I was living in the Hunter College dorm at the time, an ominous red brick building that overlooked Bellevue hospital, and was, in fact, once part of the psych-ward, and I would always set my alarm clock for 1:55, so I could watch the repeats of this amazingly unique series. Trust me--if you've never seen this show, it's a spy show unlike anything you've ever seen. And having one of my favorite popsters affirming how much they loved my favorite show just made me happy.

....not so much when Chrissie Hynde did her own tribute...



This one, as much as I want to give it props for the Patrick MacNee footage from the original show, does very little for me. It tries to have the same sense of recreating the classic title sequences, this one from the 1967 color season, but it's kind of sloppy and wanders around without having the focus that XTC's tribute had. That it ends up being half a performance video doesn't help much, either.

(Incidentally, Lily Allen did a cover of this song that doesn't have a video, or I would have included it here. Because, of course, I likes me some Lily Allen and I have no life...but here's a clever fan video that merges The Avengers with the James Bond franchise--two properties that had a strange symbiotic relationship, as those who have been following our 'Gilt-Edged Bond' series over at Better In The Dark know--as Steed and Peel do derring do to Chris Cornell's theme for Casino Royale)



....i loves Emma Peel, i do...

Current Mood: lonely

It's all about Batroc The Leaper in this episode, as our Gaellic Gladiator makes his debut and Tom explains why he's one of his favorite Marvel characters ever.

Oh, and Captain America acts like a stalker when Sharon Carter debuts.


Leap Into A Click!

Current Mood: lonely

Those of you who have sought me out here thanks to Better In The Dark have probably never heard of The Daredevil Companion, an ambitious website in which I endeavored to review every single issue of Daredevil known to man, and also hopefully act as a full companion, with interviews of writers and artists connected to this, one of my favorite series. It fell by the wayside after the initial web-host, Freeyellow, became....well, not so free...and other things occupied my time. But I always told the man who volunteered to maintain it, the great Mr. Chris Munn, that I would come back to it one day.

Well, guess what?




Click here to read the just posted review of Daredevil volume 1, #5, the first appearance of The Matador (I know, I know...) and the start of Wally Wood's brief run on the book.

Hopefully, more to follow.

This month, to celebrate Thanksgiving, Derrick and I team up with the one and only Michael Bailey, host of Views From The Longbox and From Crisis To Crisis, and Superman expert bar none, to examine the Man of Steel on television and radio!




Plus...reasons why you really want to party with Derrick.

Click Faster Than A Speeding Podcaster!

For those of you who are interested, here are the horror films I watched over the last few days as my own personal Halloween celebration, along with some brief comments. In order:

Hellboy II: The Golden Army: There are moments where I actually like this one better than the original. Derrick disagrees, but we'll have that out in an upcoming BITD focusing on Hellboy in the media.

Martin: Watched in prep for a BITD focusing on the non-zombie George Romero horror films. Very different from anything Romero has done before or since, and depressing as all Hell. Kicker of an ending, though.

Strange Behavior: This was part of a three-disc Aussie Horror box set I picked up from FYE for ten bucks. A peculiar film that was meant to take place in midwest America and featuring Christopher Reeves-era Jimmy Olsen Marc McClure. Interesting in its way, with a consious attempt to create a 50's science fiction-y mad science vibe to it. Plus it features one of my favorite lines, "Turn, Chicken, and face the class."

28 Days Later: Danny Boyle's love letter to the Romero zombie trilogy. I really, really like the look and feel of the film, and think its a textbook example of how to pay tribute to a film without stopping the whole film to admire your 'hommages' ala' Brian DiPalma.

Paranormal Activity: See the 'Ten Statements' entry on this film below. Not the scariest film ever made to be sure.

28 Weeks Later: Such a disappointment in comparison--too many characters, no one nearly as sympathetic as the first film's Jack and Selena, a plot that asks you to believe that two kids can circumvent a heavy military blockade, a silly stop-and-start chase sequence that never ends, and a demonized view of the US Government that sees nothing wrong with killing civilians outright. Thank God for Robert Carlyle, who manages to hold the first act together in spite of his thoroughly selfish personality.

Two Evil Eyes: And here is my other favorite lines: "It's a cat! Meow, meow! It's a fucking cat!", ranted out by Harvey Keitel in the nuttily insane Argento half of this highly uneven film. The Romero part drags out, but Argento just leaves what's left of his sanity at the door and hands it to Keitel. Like Martin, watched for that Romero episode.

I am hoping to watch Patrick and the original (NEVER THE REMAKE, FUCK YOU NICHOLAS CAGE!) Wicker Man before football kicks off.

Current Mood: sick

1) Let's get it out of the way: No, this is not the scariest film ever made...it's interesting in its way, and has its moments, but scariest ever? No.

2) I give mad props to director/writer Oren Peli for standing his grounds and not allowing it to be remade by Paramount. The effectiveness of the film would have been hurt by some name actor and actress playing Katie and Micah....and speaking of Katie...

3) I love that Katie Featherston is a heavyset woman, yet is portrayed as being sexy and desirable--and that Micah finds her so. This emphasizes her 'veracity' as a real person more than using the actress' real name for her character does.

4) There are some nice, smart touches in the script that defuse certain problems--the best arguably being how Peli makes it clear that it's not the house that's anchoring this entity, but Katie herself. Thus, even when I thought 'Why don't they just leave?,' I realized immediately why that would be pointless.

5) It's refreshing that Peli never gives in to the 'shaky-cam' to re-inforce veracity--in fact, a simple title card makes it clear why there is no shakey-cam while also explaining some of the filmmaker-ly editing tricks in the movie.

6) Micah is a jerk. He consistently ignores his girlfriend's wishes at every turn, treats this situation as a territorial fight, and seems to think of this situation Katie's been going through since the age of eight as a game. Thus, when he meets his ultimate fate, my reaction was 'serves you right, jackass.'

7) There is no reason for the psychic to show up the second time, and that appearance only reinforces the actor's limited ability. Likewise, why bring up that Dr. Avery fella if he never plays any role in the film?

8) The biggest flaw with this film is how all the entropic elements are fairly pedestrian, and are all telegraphed the same way. The moment we hear that noise that sounds like an air conditioner being turned on, it's a sure thing there's another 'spooky' scare coming.

9) Okay, the cursor on the Ouija Board was kind of neat, if predictable...and it leads to one of the cooler character moments for Micah in the film. But to have it spontaneously combust as well?

10) This film is really built more to be seen with a full audience, where you can feed off the energy of your fellow filmgoers. Watching it in a near-empty auditorium blunted the impact of some of the better scares.

In short...I can see the potential in Peli, and this is better than some of the faux-Blair Witch flicks--Lord knows it kicks Quarantine's ass, especially when it springs an almost identical 'dragged away' gag on us. But its reputation has written out a check the film's quality cannot cash. See it with a bunch of strangers you could love.

In the second part of the two part Halloween 'Cade Spectacular, The Phantom Stranger moves into his own series, wanders into San Francisco to play Mystery Machine with a spectre who has to open doors, Asian Archtect Stereotypes, and a foaming at the mouth Doctor Thirteen.



When Click-Throughs Walk!

Current Mood: sore

What is the worst music video you've ever seen?

It's time for our annual Halloween tradition, as The Guys Outta Brooklyn dig into the darkest recesses of their cinematic closet for a six-pack of Obscure Horror Films you might want to watch in place of those Freddie, Jason, and Michael films you've seen a thousand times.


Plus, there's horror host talk and far too much discussion about Bad Kids To Stay Away From.

Click Down The Lane!

Current Mood: uncomfortable

I know I promised I wouldn't post any more Lily Allen videos, but check out her aping of The King of Comedy in her latest...



I think one of the reasons I look forward to every one of her videos is that Lily's sensibilities seem firmly planted in the 80's, where videos actually told stories and found clever ways to showcase their songs.

Besides...she looks absolutely stunning in this video (perhaps my favorite? Her dressed as the chauffeur...)

Current Mood: good