Here's something odd but very fun: A Beatles tribute band performing "Stairway to Heaven".
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Space Girl Adventures, Part Four
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| By Tony DeZuniga |
SPACEGIRL
By Travis Charest
Part Four
To Be Continued....
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| By Les McClaine |
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Picture Perfect Wednesday:
Beating the bad economy...
Beating the bad economy...
If you can't find work, one option might be to create a service and find a market for it.
One possibility is to join work and pleasure and start a Bathing Beauty Custom Painting business. It sure beats moronic rioting and trashing your own neighborhoods.
(This photo was originally spotted at Pretty Pictures.)
One possibility is to join work and pleasure and start a Bathing Beauty Custom Painting business. It sure beats moronic rioting and trashing your own neighborhoods.
(This photo was originally spotted at Pretty Pictures.)
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
A better movie than I had expected
Anatomy of a Psycho (1961)
Starring Darrell Howe, Ronnie Burns, Pamela Lincoln, Michael Granger, Frank Killmond, Judy Howard, and Don Devlin
Director: Boris Petrof
Rating: Five of Ten Stars
An emotionally unstable young man (Howe) is driven over the edge when the brother he hero-worships is executed for murder. He embarks on a campaign of revenge against those he blames for his brother's death, starting with assault, moving onto arson, and ultimately murder.
"Anatomy of a Pyscho" is one of those juvenile delinquent dramas that seemed to be very popular fare during the 1950s and into the 1960s, but which I have only seen a precious few that weren't either so deadly dull and/or bone-achingly preachy that I wanted to start hitting myself over the head with a hammer just to make watching less painful. Either I have been unlucky in my picks, or this film genre saw a higher quotient of crap than most others because the fact that I have to count "The Violent Years", which was written by Edward D. Wood Jr. and directed by a fellow not much more competent than he was, as one of the best examples of the juvenile delinquent drama. (Even if most of the juveniles seem to be in their early 20s, as is usually the case with these movies.)
So, given my past experience, it was a pleasant surprise to find this film to be quickly paced, decently acted, and refreshingly free of heavy-handed messaging. The dialogue is awful--vacillating from over-the-top 1950s hep-catness to old-school over-the-top melodrama, but the effort put in by the cast of the film goes a long way to proving the adage that a good actor can save a lousy script as everyone featured elevates the material to a level beyond its natural worth. Heck, Pamela Lincoln and Michael Granger must have been downright acting geniuses, because they manage to make their cheesy, stilted lines sound completely natural.
Still, not even the greatest actors of them all can overcome the shortcomings of indifferent cinematography and lighting, and a weak director who seems to lose his grip on the movie in the final few minutes. After building to what promises to be an explosive finale with the titular psycho going on a rampage that will at the very least destroy himself, the filmmakers chicken out at the last moment and we're left with a badly edited, boring and repetitive closing scene.
It's a shame the film's director and/or screen-writers (which some sources claim include Edward D. Wood Jr. working under the pen-name Larry Lee) couldn't keep it together for the 70-minute run-time, because the weak ending drags this one to the very low end of average.
Starring Darrell Howe, Ronnie Burns, Pamela Lincoln, Michael Granger, Frank Killmond, Judy Howard, and Don Devlin
Director: Boris Petrof
Rating: Five of Ten Stars
An emotionally unstable young man (Howe) is driven over the edge when the brother he hero-worships is executed for murder. He embarks on a campaign of revenge against those he blames for his brother's death, starting with assault, moving onto arson, and ultimately murder.
"Anatomy of a Pyscho" is one of those juvenile delinquent dramas that seemed to be very popular fare during the 1950s and into the 1960s, but which I have only seen a precious few that weren't either so deadly dull and/or bone-achingly preachy that I wanted to start hitting myself over the head with a hammer just to make watching less painful. Either I have been unlucky in my picks, or this film genre saw a higher quotient of crap than most others because the fact that I have to count "The Violent Years", which was written by Edward D. Wood Jr. and directed by a fellow not much more competent than he was, as one of the best examples of the juvenile delinquent drama. (Even if most of the juveniles seem to be in their early 20s, as is usually the case with these movies.)
So, given my past experience, it was a pleasant surprise to find this film to be quickly paced, decently acted, and refreshingly free of heavy-handed messaging. The dialogue is awful--vacillating from over-the-top 1950s hep-catness to old-school over-the-top melodrama, but the effort put in by the cast of the film goes a long way to proving the adage that a good actor can save a lousy script as everyone featured elevates the material to a level beyond its natural worth. Heck, Pamela Lincoln and Michael Granger must have been downright acting geniuses, because they manage to make their cheesy, stilted lines sound completely natural.
Still, not even the greatest actors of them all can overcome the shortcomings of indifferent cinematography and lighting, and a weak director who seems to lose his grip on the movie in the final few minutes. After building to what promises to be an explosive finale with the titular psycho going on a rampage that will at the very least destroy himself, the filmmakers chicken out at the last moment and we're left with a badly edited, boring and repetitive closing scene.
It's a shame the film's director and/or screen-writers (which some sources claim include Edward D. Wood Jr. working under the pen-name Larry Lee) couldn't keep it together for the 70-minute run-time, because the weak ending drags this one to the very low end of average.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Space Girl Adventures, Part Three
Every Friday, lovely Space Girls drop by at Shades of Gray, bringing with them another installment of Travis Charest's Spacegirl strip.
SPACEGIRL
By Travis Charest
Part Three
SPACEGIRL
By Travis Charest
Part Three
To Be Continued....
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| By Bob McLeod |
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Picture Perfect Wednesday: Conan the Pin-up!
Here's something to get you ready for the "Conan the Barbarian" movie that's coming to theaters this Friday, August 19: Great drawings of Conan from when Marvel Comics held the comics rights to the character during the 1970s into the 1990s.
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| By Alfredo Alcala |
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| By John Buscema and Joe Sinnott |
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| By Gil Kane |
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| By John Busema and Ernie Chan |
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| By Alex Toth |
Monday, August 15, 2011
'Women's Prison' isn't very arresting,
but still worth watching
Women's Prison (1955)
Starring: Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter, Howard Duff, Barry Kelley, Warren Stevens, Mae Clarke, Gertrude Michael, and Cleo Moore
Director: Lewis Seiler
Rating: Six of Ten Stars
Amelia Van Zandt (Lupino) is the warden of a women's prison who runs her institution with an iron fist, dominating the lives of both prisoners and prison matrons. Her fiercely controlled world starts coming unraveled when her abuses of a delicate housewife incarcerated for involuntary manslaughter (Thaxter) and a prisoner who becomes pregnant (Totter) when her husband (Stevens)--who is incarcerated in the male side of the prison--breaks into the women's prison to an illicit rendezvous provokes both the anger of the prison doctor (Duff) and the prisoners.
Compared to the "women in prison" movies that followed in the 1970s, this is very, very tame stuff, even if the publicity campaign at the time if its release tried to position the film as if it wasn't. The still I chose to illustrate the film implies atmosphere and situations that are nowhere to be found in the film (while demonstrating that Cleo Moore was literally the poster-girl for Columbia Picture's marketing department when it came to "sexing things up"--her part in the film is very small, yet she is the subject of a publicity still). The prisoners here seem more like members of a professional association on a retreat than hardened criminals worthy of being locked away, the guards are all professional and appropriately concerned with the well-being of prisoners, the prison is neat and clean and well-lit. If not for the hell-beast of a warden, the prison in this film and the people in it are nicer than some places I've been on vacation at.
In fact, the prisoners are so nice that the over-the-top hysterics of the poor housewife who is sent up for killing a child with her car become very irritating after a while. While she doesn't deserve to be straight-jacketed or thrown in solitary for being frightened, it's a mystery where her over-reaction to normal prison procedures came from, since every prisoner she meets is nice and chatty and no different than the girls at the hair salon or in the grocery store checkout line. Hell, one prisoner could even find work as a tour guide, I'm certain, given how quickly she steps up to show the "new kid" ropes.
Although the strangely gentile nature of the inmates seemed a bit odd to me, I did appreciate the fact that the film didn't try to paint them as victims of the justice system like some other prison movies I've watched. Most of the inmates are exactly where they belong, and they make no bones about it. I also liked the fact that the matrons and guards were shown as decent human beings who were just doing their jobs.
I also liked the fact that the decency and professionalism of the prison's staff was contrasted with the indifference of the men's prison warden (Barry Kelley)--who may have worked his way up through the system, but who somewhere along the way forgot that the inmates and those working under him are human beings--and the calculated cruelty of women's prison warden, the aforementioned Ida Lupino. In fact, Lupino does such a great job at portraying a sociopathic cast-iron bitch that I almost wished her end had been a little less predictable and pathetic... I wanted her to get a "top o' the world, ma!" sort-of memorable exit, even if the way the film does dispatch her is adequate and dramatically fitting.
Well-acted, well-scripted, and effectively paced, "Women's Prison" is worth a look if you're a fan of Ida Lupino and have a high tolerance for melodrama. But this is not the place to look if you have a hankering for a Roger Corman or Jess Franco "birds in cages"-type sleaze.
Starring: Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter, Howard Duff, Barry Kelley, Warren Stevens, Mae Clarke, Gertrude Michael, and Cleo Moore
Director: Lewis Seiler
Rating: Six of Ten Stars
Amelia Van Zandt (Lupino) is the warden of a women's prison who runs her institution with an iron fist, dominating the lives of both prisoners and prison matrons. Her fiercely controlled world starts coming unraveled when her abuses of a delicate housewife incarcerated for involuntary manslaughter (Thaxter) and a prisoner who becomes pregnant (Totter) when her husband (Stevens)--who is incarcerated in the male side of the prison--breaks into the women's prison to an illicit rendezvous provokes both the anger of the prison doctor (Duff) and the prisoners.
Compared to the "women in prison" movies that followed in the 1970s, this is very, very tame stuff, even if the publicity campaign at the time if its release tried to position the film as if it wasn't. The still I chose to illustrate the film implies atmosphere and situations that are nowhere to be found in the film (while demonstrating that Cleo Moore was literally the poster-girl for Columbia Picture's marketing department when it came to "sexing things up"--her part in the film is very small, yet she is the subject of a publicity still). The prisoners here seem more like members of a professional association on a retreat than hardened criminals worthy of being locked away, the guards are all professional and appropriately concerned with the well-being of prisoners, the prison is neat and clean and well-lit. If not for the hell-beast of a warden, the prison in this film and the people in it are nicer than some places I've been on vacation at.
In fact, the prisoners are so nice that the over-the-top hysterics of the poor housewife who is sent up for killing a child with her car become very irritating after a while. While she doesn't deserve to be straight-jacketed or thrown in solitary for being frightened, it's a mystery where her over-reaction to normal prison procedures came from, since every prisoner she meets is nice and chatty and no different than the girls at the hair salon or in the grocery store checkout line. Hell, one prisoner could even find work as a tour guide, I'm certain, given how quickly she steps up to show the "new kid" ropes.
Although the strangely gentile nature of the inmates seemed a bit odd to me, I did appreciate the fact that the film didn't try to paint them as victims of the justice system like some other prison movies I've watched. Most of the inmates are exactly where they belong, and they make no bones about it. I also liked the fact that the matrons and guards were shown as decent human beings who were just doing their jobs.
I also liked the fact that the decency and professionalism of the prison's staff was contrasted with the indifference of the men's prison warden (Barry Kelley)--who may have worked his way up through the system, but who somewhere along the way forgot that the inmates and those working under him are human beings--and the calculated cruelty of women's prison warden, the aforementioned Ida Lupino. In fact, Lupino does such a great job at portraying a sociopathic cast-iron bitch that I almost wished her end had been a little less predictable and pathetic... I wanted her to get a "top o' the world, ma!" sort-of memorable exit, even if the way the film does dispatch her is adequate and dramatically fitting.
Well-acted, well-scripted, and effectively paced, "Women's Prison" is worth a look if you're a fan of Ida Lupino and have a high tolerance for melodrama. But this is not the place to look if you have a hankering for a Roger Corman or Jess Franco "birds in cages"-type sleaze.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Coming Monday from NUELOW ....
"The Deadly Sword of Cormac", featuring two tales from Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan! (Special sales price just $1 through 8/19.)
(The illo is a mash-up assembled from Larry Elmore art and a woodcut from ca. 1200 AD.)
(The illo is a mash-up assembled from Larry Elmore art and a woodcut from ca. 1200 AD.)
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Picture Perfect Wednesday:
John Buscema's Conan
John Buscema's Conan
No artist has drawn more Conan portraits and stories than John Buscema, and no one has ever drawn him better.
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