Don't litter or the Mask Man will get you!

Mask Man (2021)

Starring: AJ Ashok

Director: AJ Ashok

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A litter bug (Ashok) has a bizarre and life-altering encounter.

While I was annoyed by the self-important Mask Nazis roaming around forcing their obsession with face masks on the rest of us over the past year-and-a-half, I was REALLY pissed off by those damn masks were strewn in parking lots and on sidewalks everywhere. because the pigs who had worn them were too lazy to dispose of them properly in a trash can. I hope that the Mask Nazis and their filthy habits are well behind us now.

When I first came across AJ Ashok's short silent horror film "Mask Man", I hoped that he'd made a film about some supernatural terror would haunt a Mask Nazi who was also a pig and just threw their disposable masks on the ground instead of in the trash. Alas, it is not my revenge fantasy brought to the screen, but it is an interesting little anti-littering film. (Even if I come to the conclusion that Ashok must live in a strange place... or do adults really carry snack-sized bags of crisps and juice boxes with them while out for a stroll?)

Click below to enjoy Ashok's moody little film. And remember: Don't litter.

Musical Monday with Panic! at the Disco

We're starting this first work-week of July with a stylish video (and a great song from Panic! at the Disco's 2014 album "Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die") that presents a warning about smoking/vaping, relationships, and loss.

Happy birthday to the United States of America!

Vera Ellen is letting freedom ring!

And Vera Miles is bringing the booms!

It's a Vera Special Fourth of July Celebration!

Something a little different...

Today, we got the laziest, most pathetic scam e-mail we've ever received at Shades of Gray. In fact, it's so bad that we felt it should be placed here and preserved for posterity. (Click on the image for a larger, more legible version.)

The email address from which it originated has already been reported for phishing, but you should feel free to call the phone number if you are really bored (and have a blocked caller ID).

The Avengers Dossier, Page Thirteen

Many actors familiar to fans of action films or spy dramas of the 1960 and 1970s could be found as guest-stars on "The Avengers". Here's another look at one of those.

JULIAN GLOVER

In "Two's a Crowd", Julian Glover is one of several handlers for a Soviet assassin so elusive it's as if he's made of smoke.

Born in 1935, and trained as a classical actress, Julian Glover made his professional debut in 1953. He has spent the past seven decades dividing his work between the stage, film, and television work. His sharp facial features, talent for doing voices and accents, and an ability to project an icy coldness made him ideal to play refined villains, haughty academics, and aristocratic military men and police officers.

Beginning in the early 1960s and continuing on into the 1980s, Glover was a familiar face to British television viewers, making frequent guest appearances and playing recurring or starring roles on a range of television series, such as "Doctor Who" (on which he played three different characters over the years), "Spy Trap" (in which he co-starred during the 1972 season), and "The Avengers" (where he played four different characters, in 1965, 1967, 1968, and 1969 respectively. During the 1980s and 1990s, he became known to American television viewers with appearances on shows like "Remington Steele". During the 2000s, he had a recurring role on the HBO fantasy series "Game of Thrones".

 

Glover has the distinction of being the only actor who's appeared as a villain in a "Star Wars" movie ("The Empire Strikes Back"), a James Bond movie ("For Your Eyes Only") and an Indiana Jones movie ("Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"). He's stated that a great unfulfilled ambition of his career was to play the time time-traveling alien Doctor Who, but there may be time for that yet: Glover is still a working actor who maintains a busy stage and film schedule.

'Forgotten Sweeties' should be visted

Forgotten Sweeties (1927)
Starring: Charley Chase, Anita Garvin, Shirley Palmer, Mitchell Lewis, and James Finlayson
Director: James Parrott
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When an absent-minded office worker (Chase) and former lover (Palmer) end up living across the hall from each other, neither his wife (Garvin) nor the ex-lover's husband (Lewis) are happy about it.

"Forgotten Sweeties" is a comedy of errors where coincidences morph into misunderstandings that are piled onto mistakes until our hapless hero is about to lose his marriage if he's not murdered first. Like many Chase films, it's structured in such a way that the gags and situations feed naturally into each other, with their being a sort-of realism to the film that is not found in many silent comedies. Even better, the main character of the film is another one of Chase's Nice Guy heroes who is very literally just trying to get through the day and not looking for any trouble. You can actually feel sympathy for this guy, especially since there is almost nothing he could have done differently that would have not put him in the situations he ends up in.

This is one of those short films that will be ruined if I talk too much about what happens in it. However, I can assure you if you enjoy sit-coms and like silent comedies, you'll find plenty to entertain yourself here. Anita Garvin also gets to play a more sympathetic character than usual, so that's a nice change of pace.

Not every bit in "Forgotten Sweeties" works--and I suspect that part of that may be due to a social context that has been muted by the passage of time, but others are just a little too silly and drag on just a little too long--but the good outweighs that bad. The running gag with James Finlayson and a cat during the second half of the film is one of the highlights here.

"Forgotten Sweeties" is one of a handful of Charley Chase shorts included in the "Silent Comedy Classics" collection, all of which were digitized from the collection of film preservationist John Carpenter. It's a great DVD... at a price that's a steal. It's more than worth the price, I think.

Ending June with Junes

Milla Meets the Cat People

It's time for another of our quarterly visits with a favorite here at Shades of Gray: Milla Jovovich!

Milla's been menaced by virus-borne monsters, hunted by assassins, and kidnapped by mandroids. Now, the Cat People are being a pain in her neck! 

But who are they? What do they want? Find out by rolling on the following random tables, which allow you to generate a random story outline that you can then turn into an adventure to use with players in a roleplaying game. (NUELOW Games has released an entire book of this sort of thing, themed around murder mysteries, which you can get a copy of here. You can also see more random outline generators and similar material at the NUELOW Games blog. )

WHO ARE THE CAT PEOPLE? (Roll 1d6)

1. Invaders and/or refugees from an alien planet

2. Explorers from an alien planet

3. Visitors from another dimension

4. Neighbors who have been living among humanity since the dawn 

    of civilization.

5. Travelers from a secret city, deep in the jungle.

6. Refugees from the Hollow Earth.

WHAT ARE THEIR POWERS (Roll 1d6)

1-2. Standard lycanthropes who transform from humans into 

    black panthers (1-4) or tigers (5-6) when subjected to appropriate 

    triggers. Natural felines are frightened around them.

3. Shapeshifters who can turn from humans to black panthers (1-4) 

    or tigers (5-6) at will. They have amazingly good rapport with 

    natural felines.

4. Shapeshifters who can turn from humans into humanoid cat-beings 

    (their true forms). They have amazingly good rapport with natural 

    felines.

5. Shapeshifters who can turn from humans into black panthers or 

    humanoid cat-beings at will. They have amazingly good rapport 

    with natural felines.

6. Roll again. The Cat People are as described, but they are locked in 

    their human forms due to a curse.

   (Additionally, see "d20 Cat People" below, if you're using a d20 System-based rules set.*)

WHAT DO THEY WANT? (Roll 1d6)

1. To find lost Cat People who are unaware of their true natures due to an ancient curse, remove said curse, and return them to their civilization.

2. To conquer Earth.

3. To return home.

4. To breed with humans to make more Cat People.

5. To stop a demonic invasion of Earth.

6. To remove an ancient curse that is slowing causing them to go extinct.

--

*If you like the d20 System, and you liked this post, come back next week when we'll present rules for D20 CAT PEOPLE!

Happy birthday to Lalla Ward!

Lalla Ward, best known for her role as the second regeneration of Romana (and perhaps the cutest of all Timelords) on "Doctor Who", turns 70 years old today! Here are some pictures from of her from the 70s in celebration!

Musical Monday with Magnetic Fields

The Magnetic Fields was formed in 1989, with Stephin Merritt (the band's primary songwriter) and Claudia Gonson forming the band's foundation and John Woo, Shirley Sims, and Sam Davol arriving to build on it. Merritt is the primary songwriter for the group, as well as the primary vocalist (with Gonson taking a turn as lead singer every now and then); all members are multi-instrumentalists. 

For more than 30 years of recording and touring together, Magnetic Fields has been one of the more interesting (not to mention amusing) performers of experimental pop around. Today's song is taken from their latest album--Quickies (2020)--and it seems like they're only getting better with age. It's song with a premise that seems more and more likely to be true with each passing week.