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Reviews Written By: A1W3MBU3V858G9

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	Popeye
	"Love It or Hate It...Who Cares?"	2008-06-14
Sure, POPEYE doesn't fulfill conventional expectations, but Altman chose (perhaps as a snarky contrarian to Disney and Paramount, his financiers) to deliberately produce a film that retained the context of the original Segar cartoons and the Dada antics of the Fleischer cartoons at the expense of making a fun, forgetful, and irrelevant cookie-cutter film for the whole family. Jules Feiffer, the film's screenwriter and one of the great keepers of the Segar/Popeye flame (and someone who understands the iconic value of Popeye better than anyone I can think of), thought Altman restored the spirit of Segar's original strips, saving it, effectively, from the decades of mainstream mediocrity that Popeye suffered from, largely as a result of the patriotic exploitation of the character in the wake of World War II. I watch and greatly appreciate this film for what Altman is doing with the Popeye "legend,'" and not for its (lack of) entertainment value (which, ipso facto, makes me an "Altman apologist." Yeah, right. Whatever). Let's put one ignorant myth to rest, shall we? POPEYE was not a bomb. This tall tale was promulgated by a few egomaniacs in the industry who wanted to bury both the film and Altman's career. It did have a problematic production history, as did dozens of films from this era, a time when the studios were going through a major upheaval and wound up playing it extremely safe on the 1980s. Altman (along with nearly all of the great or at least interesting auteurs of the 1970s) became persona non grata practically overnight. But let's not let history get in the way of opinion...
	The Beatles - Beatles for Sale
	"The Best Beatles Album...Cover..."	2008-05-29
First, the album cover itself is probably my favorite image of the Beatles. Very impressionistic, it reveals the first concentrated inkling of maturity. Image-wise, it's as big a leap from the A HARD DAY'S NIGHT album cover as the WHITE ALBUM'S "blankness" was from the density of the more iconic SGT. PEPPER cover. This is important, given the image-consciousness of the Beatles. They really were making a definitive statement of what it meant to be a Beatle, a year or so into full-blown Beatlemania. It was their first declarative turn away from the youthful vigor of their first mass-marketed image. Pretty daring. The originally-penned songs on the album sonically express the exhaustion and disillusionment displayed visually. Both Lennon's and McCartney's songs are profoundly confessional, in a way I think that matches the similar subjects and sensibilities of RUBBER SOUL a year later. One of the major revelations regarding the depth of the Beatles I've ever had was when I discovered just how dark an album RUBBER SOUL truly is (nearly every song is pessimistic about romance and relationships), while the second great revelation was to discover just how dark BEATLES FOR SALE is. Critics tend to position the Beatles as naive idealists (especially McCartney...get over it..wrong!), but these two albums reveal otherwise (okay, "Eight Days A Week" is relatively cheery). Perhaps the one minor drawback is the reliance on cover versions, of which there are several. Nothing wrong with them, but the original tunes would make for an exceptional 9-song EP on their own (if EPs could run that long). Is "Mr. Moonlight" a joke? I've been listening for 30 years, and I still can't tell, which is at least partially what makes it so interesting. Best song? "I'll Follow the Sun." Second best? "No Reply."
	The Company
	"Another Sublime Altman Film Nobody Has Seen..."	2008-04-23
...and those who did saw it for the wrong reasons. I prefer to consider this Altman's truly final film and therefore his final statement (PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, while quaintly amusing, is pretty anemic, not surprising given Altman's health during production). It has all the markings of an artist coming to terms with his Muse and/or Moloch. The melodrama, while sufficiently engaging, plays more like a fading illusion, relegated to the backdrop of Altman's preferences for the blurred, interrelated, and dream-like fantasia of the stage and the cinema. To only judge this on dance and not on Altman's penchant for avant-garde narrative is entirely too reductive.
	Linda Scott - Complete Hits of Linda Scott
	"Too Good for Her Material"	2007-09-13
I don't mean this as a put-down of teen pop, but Linda Scott deserved a "better" career than as merely a "moon and June" pop singer. Her vocal talents are at times impressively accomplished and far exceed the trivial lyrical content. This is a thorough and thoughtful collection of her work, and she deserves the acknowledgment she apparently has never adequately received.
	Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home
	"You Tell Me Santa Claus"	2007-07-05
I have tried to place HIGHWAY 61 and BLONDE ON BLONDE ahead of this one (just as all those entrenched and over-hyped rock critics uniformly do), but can't. This remains his best (along with BLOOD ON THE TRACKS). "Mr. Tambourine Man" is like an eternal morning.
	Michael Jackson - Thriller [Bonus Tracks]
	"Not Available in All Areas"	2007-07-05
Someone once told me this is the biggest selling album ever. The song "Thriller" should have ended side 2.
	Wrestling Women USA
	"Peaches Page, Baby!"	2006-04-19
At first appearance, it looks like a mediocre collection of vintage female wrestling clips, most of which are pretty redundant. The shorts (both in and out of the ring) are interesting and somewhat humourous, but I highly recommend it solely for the inclusion of PIN DOWN GIRLS, a great exploitation fillm starring Tim Farrell and the wondrous, mysterious Peaches Page. A great find!
	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition)
	"Saccharine"	2006-04-19
This reminds me of Gus Van Sant's remake of PSYCHO...what little there is that is any good here is lifted wholesale from the original (Burton claimed to greatly dislike Mel Stuart's version, yet he borrows quite liberally), and otherwise adds absolutely nothing. Johnny Depp is awful, and the woeful addition of a backstory, to put it diplomatically, defeats the purpose of Wonka by humanizing him. This version robs the Dahl book and Stuart movie of all the precious moral and otherworldly ambiguities of Wonka, turning him into a pathetic recluse whose cure can only be provided, in Burton's version, by the magic of family. Nauseating.
	Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968
	"Better Than Jagger"	2005-08-29
It's all incredible. Period.The one drawback is having the great yet overplayed perrenial frat party faves (LOUIE LOUIE, WOOLY BULLY) crammed in with the lesser known/unknown tunes. it may have been better had Rhino organized these seperately, as a "bonus disc."... The second volume digs even deeper, with wondrous results.
	The Shaggs - The Shaggs
	"Sickeningly Beautiful"	2005-08-29
I've never heard anything as compellingly naive. I keep coming back to this album, hearing it a different way each time. It's both shockingly avant-garde and pathetically folk-oriented. A classic (?) of its kind, better than The Residents, Frank Zappa, or any of those people who actually "try" to be outrageous and ingenious. Yes, I give it 5 stars, which really means nothing. The Shaggs are critic proof.
	Joe Meek & Blue Men - I Hear a New World
	"A Glistening Artifact Breathes Anew"	2005-08-29
Infamous British pop producer Joe Meek (of TELSTAR fame) attempted his audio manifesto in 1960, and the result was I HEAR A NEW WORLD, a collection of tracks which has finally seen the light of day. Any self-respecting 4-track-owning lover of sublime schlock must indulge. There are moments of rapture between the freshly digitized grooves. Predating Brian Wilson's SMILE by almost seven years, Meek (with a lot of uncredited help) fashioned a whole new acoustic landscape, begging to be traversed. A must!
	The Ramones - Weird Tales of the Ramones
	"The Only Problem..."	2005-08-19
I'm not even going to attempt to defend my adulation of the Ramones or define their cultural importance, since a great many have already done so here. Rather, I think it important to point out the only major flaw with the set: the selection of post-TOO TOUGH TO DIE songs. This set was compiled by Johnny Ramone, and the third disc of the set reflects his bias (and I say this with the utmost respect; Johnny Ramone was perhaps the most perfect rock n roll guitarist since Chuck Berry). Strangely, he opted to include such dreck as Dee Dee's "Love Kills" (from ANIMAL BOY), an ode to Sid and Nancy which I've always felt greatly diminished the Ramones' punk authority, and marked the unfortunate downslide in Dee Dee's songwriting abilities (other Dee Dee songs, especially "Poison Heart" from MONDO BIZARRO, are still painful to listen to, and difficult to justify). Further, the inclusion of so many C.J.-sung songs, rather than the still-great Joey tunes on ADIOS AMIGOS is inexplicable, especially the execrable "Scattergun" (at least "Life's A Gas" and "Spiderman" are included). Lastly, HALFWAY TO SANITY and BRAIN DRAIN, their two most consistent late-period albums, are inexplicably under-represented. The point of this gripe is simply to point out a missed opportunity; everybody already knows by now that the first four albums are peerless, even if they don't "get" the Ramones. The misguided survey of their waning years only furthers the assumption that they went downhill precipitously after 1984 (which is somewhat true, yet predominantly exaggerated). I can't help but wonder what it would have been like had Joey and Johnny been forced to collaborate on this compilation. If nothing else, it would have been more balanced. Otherwise, the remastering sounds great (a further improvement over the already-wonderful album reissues) and the comic book is ingenious.
	Expresso Bongo
	"Botched"	2004-12-29
Make no mistake, I love EXPRESSO BONGO, and the film itself would normally merit five stars; for style and sensibility, it was ahead of the curve for 1959. Watching this version of it, however, gives the false impression that this is just another teen idol film, due primarily to the several excised musical interludes. Of course, my own discovery of the missing Harvey numbers was upsetting, but by far the biggest letdown was the absence of Meier Tzelniker's peculiar performance of a charming number called "Nausea," the strangest moment in the film and biggest disappointment of this edition. Kino is generally one of the few labels I would buy from sight unseen, but this gives me cause for concern...
	Expresso Bongo
	"Botched"	2004-12-29
Make no mistake, I love EXPRESSO BONGO, and the film itself would normally merit five stars; for style and sensibility, it was ahead of the curve for 1959. Watching this version of it, however, gives the false impression that this is just another teen idol film, due primarily to the several excised musical interludes. Of course, my own discovery of the missing Harvey numbers was upsetting, but by far the biggest letdown was the absence of Meier Tzelniker's peculiar performance of a charming number called "Nausea," the strangest moment in the film and biggest disappointment of this edition. Kino is generally one of the few labels I would buy from sight unseen, but this gives me cause for concern...
	Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle
	"Plastic Passion"	2004-07-09
"New Wave" was a woefully insufficient label for a loosely collected mass of musical acts during the time period between Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Michael Jackson's Thriller, an album which singlehandedly and oh-so corporately sounded the death knell for originality on both MTV and FM radio. Unlike psychedelia, punk, or (heaven help us) grunge, there never seemed to be a coherently constructed philosophy behind what was being released by a vast array of almost-popular artists. But when you listen to The Pleasure Principle, you begin to realize that there was some seriously profound subtext at work amongst the better artists of the period, something beyond irony and WAY beyond satire that appealed, however momentarily, to a spectrum of vaguely disenfranchised adolescents and post-adolescents, people eager for music with the same relative intensity of punk, but channeled in a far more conceptual, aesthetic way. The Pleasure Principle, along with Devo's New Traditionalists and Talking Heads' Fear of Music, is an unheralded monument of the era.
	Walt Disney Treasures - Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond
	"Some of the Greatest Animation Ever Created, etc."	2004-06-28
To say the least, this collection features some of the greatest animation ever produced for television, if not ever. Mind blowing, wildly inventive, and overwhelming. Ward Kimball, I would argue (with this set as evidence), was Disney's greatest animator, and, when you consider the starchy conservative reputation Disney had during the mid-50s, it's astonishing to consider how willing and trusting he was to both hand over creative control to Kimball, and to present this profoundly innovative and often extremely abstract animation to the common public. It goes a long way toward the potential for discussing Disney as being far more complex than the overly reductive dismissal of him as reactionary moralist in the cultural realm. In addition, this set encapsulates the bright-eyed utopianism of the era better than any other pop culture artifact, the mood and representation of which clearly informed Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (it also sheds light on the somewhat disturbing Germanic influence on the technology of the space age).
	Walt Disney Treasures - Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond
	"The Greatest TV Animation Ever"	2004-06-28
To say the least, this collection features some of the greatest animation ever produced for television. Mind blowing, wildly inventive, and overwhelming. Ward Kimball, I would argue (with this set as evidence), was Disney's greatest animator, and, when you consider the starchy, conservative reputation Disney had during the mid-50s, it's astonishing to consider how willing and trusting he was to both hand over creative control to Kimball. It goes a long way toward the potential for discussing Disney as being far more complex than the overly reductive dismissal of him as reactionary moralist in the cultural realm, and demonstrates, for better or worse, the entwined relationship between TV and Cold Ward politics. This set exemplifies the bright-eyed utopianism of the era better than any other pop culture artifact, while also shedding light on the somewhat unsettling Germanic influence on the technology of the space age.
	The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952
	"A Revelation"	2004-05-09
THIS is the stuff! This was the big bang of modern comics, and the beauty of it is its mix of zen-like simplicity and psychological/ cultural complexity. These are still, even in their raw form, the best versions of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, simultaneously the closest in representation to their imagined yet conceivable real-life counterparts, and the strongest in graphic design. While I love the patented squiggle of later Peanuts (not to mention the invention of Woodstock), there is something so knowing-yet-innocent, something so exceptionally endearing about this era that was inevitably lost as the late 1960s took hold, not to mention the rampant commercialization of the 70s onward. The book itself could not have been more respectfully designed!
	Devo - Live
	"Joyeux Mutato"	2004-03-12
I was just a little suspect about this release, but checked it out because...well, it's Devo. Couldn't resist for that fact alone. Despite the late date of the show, 1996, I was completely overwhelmed by their energy, humor, attitude, and endurance during the entirety of the show. The whole Devo sensibility was more intact than it had been since 1982, but without all the gimmicks of their early image (not that I would ever knock it). This is Devo at about as stripped down as any band can be, and they're simply amazing. Their musicianship is astonishingly spot-on. Can't recommend it enough. As much as I love Mark Mothersbaugh's art, I wish he'd put RUGRATS on hold and get into the studio to produce just one unadulterated Devo album, one which would balance his keyboard wizardry with the more guitar-driven work of his wonderful brother Bob and the inspired cynicism of Gerald Casale. While you can "never go back," isn't that what Devo was all about conceptually?
	The Love God
	"Great Period Comedy"	2003-09-03
Easily Don Knotts' greatest vehicle (not saying much, unfortunately) - a rich script, colorfully tacky sets and cinematography, "timely" subject matter, and a hilarious performance from Knotts that will surprise anyone uncertain of his ability to pick films worthy of his talent. This was Don Knotts' only foray into "adult" comedy, and it is rather racy, all things considered, and compares favorably to the 1950s Tashlin and Jerry Lewis films.
	The Monkees - Head
	"A Black-Hearted Wonder"	2003-05-24
The underground collides head on with the mainstream in one of the most anomolous anti-masterpieces of American film. HEAD is a severely cyinical metaphor for so much of consumer culture, from television to corporate pop, from Hollywood to the meat industry, from drugs to sports, from religion to free love...somehow, it hits every target, one after the other, effortlessly. Taking the format of the Monkees' TV show as its structure (and completely inverting it), HEAD holds the mirror up to the American conscience, and finds as its reflection an endlessly repeating vortex. No matter how much notoriety this film has or will ever receive, its message is such that, like the truly transgressive films of the 1960s onward, it will never be comfortably co-opted. Still, a remastered version, complete with proper aspect ratio, would be nice. Commentary from Rafelson and the Monkees would be great - what, exactly, did the Monkees think they were getting into here???
	Monkees - Season One
	"Great Beginnings"	2003-05-15
Bless Rhino for this near-perfect collection. I've always written off the first season of THE MONKEES as overly shrill, cutesy, and childish, the worst aspect being the standard laugh track, which tends to flatten some episodes outright. But, while the second season (and the feature film HEAD) are light years ahead of season one in terms of music, performance, and overall style, watching this set has allowed me an opportunity to re-appraise the earlier shows. While some are still pretty unpleasant, even the worst episodes have moments of surprising, almost experimental, quality. The pacing and editing of these shows alone stand out as being well ahead of their time, and, even from the very beginning, the show borders on Brechtian in all the many ways (albeit mostly minor) it attempted to break the fourth wall of televised artifice. I am convinced that anyone who wrote the show off as kid's stuff or criticized the Monkees themselves as being talentless or disposable Beatle rip-offs has simply been misguided. Much of what the Monkees did holds up better than any of the Beatles' film work, even from the very beginning.
	A Nous La Liberte - Criterion Collection
	"An Unquestionable Classic"	2002-09-03
Perhaps the most elegantly rendered feature film of the very early days of sound production (barring, perhaps, Chaplin's CITY LIGHTS), Clair's classic is such a seemingly effortless blend of romantic melancholy, bitter social criticism and gentle surrealism, that its many aesthetic qualities tend to overshadow the film's astounding technological innovations in the poetics of sound. The fact that Criterion has thrown Clair's short film ENTR'ACTE onto the disc is reason enough to buy the dvd. The transfers of both the feature and the short are of superlative quality. It's an invaluable release.
	Pikmin - Nintendo GameCube
	"Beautiful, Odd, and Totally Original"	2002-08-09
It's a short game. It's not especially difficult. There is little in the way of action.....and it's one of the greatest video games I've ever played. I bought it a long time ago, back when it came out, and it's been the one game I return to over and over, constantly attempting to build my rocket ship and leave the planet in as short a time as possible. I've been so drawn to this hypnotic game, whereas I've barely finished the others I've played (including RESIDENT EVIL, the most remarkable looking/performing title yet, but comparatively boring). PIKMIN is so addictive, but in a quiet, unassuming way. It's also really bizarre, disturbing almost, in the near-barren terrain of each world, in the over-size ladybug-like creatures who chow down on your little friends, even in the Pikmin themselves, who are simultaneously cute, pathetic, creepy, and altogether otherworldly. I'm praying for a more expansive sequel, one that truly expoits the potential hinted at in the original. Miyamoto is a genius beyond reproach.
	Space 1999, Set 1
	"Pre-Star Wars Ecstacy!"	2002-07-22
A review for Season One: As impossible as it may seem, science fiction used to be thought-provoking, before STAR WARS relegated it to the pre-teen set.. Even those cheesy giant bug movies of the 50s had a direct and often devastating take on modern atomic culture, and, after Stanley Kubrick solidified (and further codified) the potentially endless possibilities and meanings of the genre with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Gerry Anderson snatched the baton with his absorbing television series, SPACE: 1999 a few years later. It's hard to believe how well this short-lived series has held up, but given the popular alternatives of both the 70s as well as today, it's far more involving, rewarding, and resonant. This is exceptional stuff by both television and science fiction standards. As for Season Two: As horrible as Season One was fascinating.
	I Spit on Your Corpse
	"Sure, It's Pretty Bad..."	2002-05-17
But I wish people would leave Al Adamson alone. As Sam Sherman states in the dvd's honest and illuminating commentary, this is nothing more than a drive-in movie, aimed at a drive-in audience. Its value lies in the sociological import such films (inadvertently) carry, capturing an era that has since completely vanished, and, as such, it's pretty entertaining. The only differance between films like this one and the latest STAR WARS film (as but one example) is about 100 million dollars, and I'd argue the performances, energy, and inventiveness of the worst of Adamson outshine the best of the equally exploitative Lucas.
	I Spit on Your Corpse
	"Sure, It's Pretty Bad..."	2002-05-17
But I wish people would leave Al Adamson alone. As Sam Sherman states in the dvd's honest and illuminating commentary, this is nothing more than a drive-in movie, aimed at a drive-in audience. Its value lies in the sociological import such films (inadvertently) carry, capturing an era that has since completely vanished, and, as such, it's pretty entertaining. The only differance between films like this one and the latest STAR WARS film (as but one example) is about 100 million dollars, and I'd argue the performances, energy, and inventiveness of the worst of Adamson outshine the best of the equally exploitative Lucas.
	Sheep Raider - PlayStation (PS one)
	"A Perfect Cartoon Adaptation"	2002-05-17
FINALLY, a game based on a cartoon series that actually, effectively captures the humor and sheer cartoonishness of its inspiration! This game is funny, clever, and just difficult enough to make wasting time beating it worthwhile. The Daffy Duck-driven, external plot is pretty bad and cheaply rendered, but the actual gameplay is wonderful. Let's hope Infogrames' promised future titles for the latest platforms improve on the 32-bit PSOne graphics but retain the authenticity of games like SHEEP RAIDER.
	Blood of Ghastly Horror
	"Charming Trash"	2002-04-20
This is one beauty of a head-scratcher. It is, literally, 3 movies in one. Al Adamson made the tight-yet-pointless heist film ECHO OF TERROR (a/k/a TWO TICKETS TO TERROR) in 1964, only to see it chopped up and intermixed with new footage several years later (starring John Carradine as an ethical but mad scientist) and retitled MAN WITH THE SYNTHETIC BRAIN, and sold as a horror cheapie to television. Not to be outdone, he and producer Sam Sherman further complicated matters by adding a third plot strand to the mix (something to do with killer zombies and yet another mad scientist, not to mention a rather sickly looking Tommy Kirk), and another new title, BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. In order for the final incarnation to make sense, there are flashbacks-within-flashbacks all over the place. There was yet another version, PSYCHO-A-G-GO, which had musical numbers spliced amongst the madness! Amazingly, it's quite an enjoyable viewing experience following the severely warped logic of the narrative, which only gets more confusing with each viewing. Toppping it off is some of the best commentary I've yet heard on any dvd, provided by Sam Sherman, who promises to some day restore the integrity of Adamson's ECHO OF TERROR to its original glory (well, one can hope). As with Ed Wood, it's hard not to admire director Al Adamson's earnestness, and Vilmos Szigmond's cinematography (on the ECHO OF TERROR portions), despite the faded print used for the dvd, shows a precocious eye for composition. A most unusual recommendation!
	Inside the Yellow Submarine: The Making of the Beatles' Animated Classic
	"Nice Try, But..."	2002-04-13
Just as when the dvd of YELLOW SUBMARINE was announced, I was anxiously, sleeplessly awaiting the arrival of this book. The cover alone was so promising, I could barely contain my anticipation. Now that I've read the final version of this text, I feel quite let down. Granted, Dr. Hieronimus took on an obviously impossible mission, that is, to chronicle the birth, development, and legacy of one of the greatest animated works in history, one that had an extremely convoluted production and development. While I can't blame him for trying, his claims that the book was extensively researched over 20+ years is quite a stretch. While the many interviews demonstrate his attempts at comprehension, the slapdash results suggest a bit of a rush job. The text itself is marred by redundancy (he could have easily shaved off 100 pages without losing a detail) and his insistent lapses into the first-person are, at times, overly congratulatory. The many anecdotes provided by Heinz Edelmann are reasonably incisive, yet they are inexplicably scattered throughout the book with no chonological guide for the reader. The one advantage of such a book is that I finally have a strong sense of just who it was who did indeed create (or co-create) SUBMARINE, an aspect of the film I have always found troubling (Boy, Al Brodax certainly allowed himself a large onscreen credit!). I've always been aware of Edelmann's contribution, but not so those of Charlie Jenkins, who was the apparent other genius who worked extensively on giving the film its one-of-a-kind style. The author does quite a decent job sorting through the primary participants, and he does (inadvertently?) put Brodax squarely in his place. A full-color picture book, though cost-prohibitve, would have proven far more satisfying. For a film so purely visual, the book displays little of the actual ART of the project - anyone who, upon picking up the book for the first time and flips directly to the color panels in the center, will be woefully disappointed, for there is nothing new here whatsoever, and too much time is spent on the 1999 reissue. As I quickly discovered, the cover is completely misleading. Still, I respect the effort, but can't disguise my disappointment.