7 Days in May | Attack the Block and Man-Thing

Attack the Block (2011)



Attack the Block has been on the rewatch pile for a while now. I love the movie, but David had never seen it and I knew he'd dig it, 'cause John Boyega and aliens. What's so remarkable about it to me is the way that it introduces Boyega and his friends as completely unsympathetic thugs, but gradually redeems them so that they're heroes at the end. That's a really hard job and the movie does it masterfully.

And that alien design is the best.

Dick Tracy's Dilemma (1947)



I've checked out some old Dick Tracy before and didn't especially enjoy it, but Dilemma is a treat. There's no real mystery to it, because the crime is presented onscreen and the movie's just about watching Tracy and Friends try to piece things together, but Jack Lambert is terrifying as The Claw, a low level thug who's just a little more crazy and ruthless than everyone else. There are some terrific, suspenseful moments throughout, so the movie's worth tracking down.

Zorro (1957-61)



Zorro is still in Monterey for some reason, but my interest is renewed by the introduction of Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man) as a recurring foil for Don Diego. The two characters are old rivals and things get complicated when Señorita Verdugo (from earlier in the season) returns and both men like her.

I'm not usually crazy about these kinds of romance triangles where two people both like the third and the object of their affection refuses to make a choice. But it works in this case, because I feel like Verdugo actually has made a choice, but one of the men isn't paying attention. We'll see though. This storyline is still in progress and I don't know how it's going to turn out.

Whatever the case, Anderson adds a lot of fun to the cast. He'll eventually wear out his welcome, I suspect, because this plot can't go too much longer, but for now I'm enjoying him.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



Watched a couple of episodes packaged together as The Phantom Train of Doom. Indy and his pal Remy have been transferred to Africa to fight Germans there, but have trouble joining their regiment and instead get pulled into a mission with some elderly, but feisty soldiers who are trying to track down a mysterious train with a giant cannon that's been troubling the Allies.

The story is light on education; it doesn't even go into why the war has spilled into Africa. But that may be why it's more exciting than most of the Young Indy series. It's not full-on pulp, but it gets closer than the series has so far.

Underground (2016-present)



We finished Season Two just in time to watch the finale live. It's not as strong an ending as the first season, which leaned more towards satisfying conclusions than teases for next year. This one is mostly teases. But they're good teases and I'm still very much hooked. Looking forward to watching live next season.

Zorro: The Complete Pulp Adventures, Vol. 1 by Johnston McCulley



Most of this collection is made up of The Curse of Capistrano, the original Zorro novel that I've already talked about. But there are two other Zorro stories by Johnston McCulley in it, so I read those, too. And I'm probably done with McCulley's Zorro stories. At least for a while.

The problem is that they're influenced by the Douglas Fairbanks movie. I love the movie, but it bugs me to see original versions of things I love transform themselves to be more like film versions. Like when Ian Fleming retroactively made James Bond a Scot so that he'd be closer to Sean Connery. Or changes in the looks of Marvel superheroes. It destroys the illusion that the story I'm reading is about real characters in a real place and I'm reminded that they're just "properties" (a term that - along with "franchise" - I try to avoid as much as possible when talking about characters and series).

The biggest change from Capistrano to the short stories that followed it is about Zorro's secret identity. Capistrano ends with the threat defeated and Don Diego's revealing that he was Zorro all along. We can't have that in continuing adventures, so "Zorro Saves a Friend" hits the reset button. I tried to make that story work as a prequel to Capistrano and was somewhat successful, but the other story in the collection, "Zorro Hunts a Jackal," makes it impossible. "Jackal" continues using characters from "Friend," but there's no way that it can take place before Capistrano.

McCulley also plays loose with Zorro's support system. In Capistrano, Zorro's servant Bernardo was deaf as well as mute, but that was changed in the Fairbanks movie so that Bernardo was mute only. McCulley copied that in the subsequent short stories, but I'm not sure what his reason is. Bernardo barely appears in Capistrano and - unlike the movie version - doesn't help Zorro at all. And even though he's able to hear in "Friend" and "Jackal," Bernardo still doesn't provide any assistance. For that, McCulley has created a whole new character, José of the Cocopahs, who's able to hear and speak. And frankly, he speaks too much, because he blabs Zorro's identity to several people. They're all trustworthy, it turns out, but it feels like half of LA knows who Zorro is in the short stories.

There are also a couple of essays in the collection and they're worth mentioning: Sandra R Curtis opens the book with a comparison of Zorro's California to the historical one; then Ed Hulse wraps things up with the story of how Curse of Capistrano was adapted for the cinema.

The Man-Thing by Steve Gerber: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1



"Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch!" The specificity of that strange super power has intrigued me for years, so when it came up again when I was reading Master of Kung Fu, I decided I needed to finally read some Man-Thing and figure out what that's all about.

I've been thinking a lot about fear as a motivation lately, especially during the last election, in which both major candidates used it as the basis of their campaigns. I wondered if Man-Thing had anything interesting to add. Why is this mindless swamp creature so opposed to fear? Is Man-Thing symbolic of something else that battles fear? If so, what? And what does burning have to do with it?

Sadly, if there's deeper meaning in these comics, I'm missing it. Like most serialized adventures that are passed from writer to writer (and that's the case here, even though Steve Gerber's name is in the title and he wrote most of the stories in the collection), ideas get introduced then dropped or changed as the story evolves.

Man-Thing started in a standalone story in Marvel's black-and-white anthology magazine, Strange Tales, where writers Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas gave the monster the ability to burn people with his touch. It's not explicitly connected to fear, though. Thomas kept the story going in a two-part adventure in Astonishing Tales, where Ka-Zar connects the Man-Thing's burning power with the emotion of fear, but it's still not explained why.

When the character got his own, ongoing feature in Adventure into Fear, Conway was back writing and added to the fear/burning connection the explanation that fear is an emotion that Man-Thing hates. When Gerber took over in the next issue, he just continued what Conway and Thomas had started, eventually adding the famous catch-phrase.

So I was disappointed in the lack of any deeper meaning to the connection between fear, burning, and this awesome-looking swamp creature. As far as I can tell, it wasn't the result of a creator's philosophy, but just random connections that developed over time.

And I was also disappointed at the willy-nilly plots that Gerber ended up laying over the character. It reads like Gerber was never sure what to do with Man-Thing. There are stories with social commentary about race and environmentalism and capitalism, but they're interspersed with goofy high fantasy and Tales from the Crypt-style horror. Some of these work really well, but some - especially the fantasy stuff - really don't.

The art is pretty great throughout the collection, though. Gray Morrow, John Buscema, and Mike Ploog are special favorites of mine, but there's also good stuff by Rich Buckler, Val Mayerik, Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, and Vicente Alcazar.

Jam of the Week: "Woman in Chains" by Tears for Fears, featuring Oleta Adams 

We saw Tears for Fears live last week, so that's still what I've been listening to. It's amazing to me how relevant "Shout" still is, with its call for people to speak out loudly about the things that upset them. And it's equally amazing - and heart-breaking - how relevant "Woman in Chains" still is as well.

7 Days in May | Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 and The Circle

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)



I liked it better than the first one. It's just as funny and visually interesting and the music is just as cool, but it has a better villain and some really great (and truly touching) development for at least three characters. And awesome cameos.

The Circle (2017)



I'm going to spoil some things, but you shouldn't watch The Circle, so feel free to keep reading. This movie is so disappointing.

I love the cast and the concept is intriguing, but The Circle does a lousy job of making whatever point it's trying to communicate. There's one good scene that raises worthwhile questions about a) the relationship between truth and transparency, and b) the tension between those things and privacy. But I don't know what the rest of the movie is about.

It's not the thriller that the marketing wants you to think it is. Mae (Emma Watson) is never in any physical danger and the only stakes are that if she leaves her job then she also loses the awesome health insurance that's finally getting her dad (Bill Paxton) some help with his MS. That's okay, though. It's enough to put her in an interesting quandary. Should she stay with an employer that has a ridiculous lack of boundaries when it comes to employees' personal lives (and apparently no HR department at all)? The movie could have explored that more fully and I wouldn't have missed the lack of fights and chases. But it's not really about that, either.

I can't tell if Mae is ever skeptical about the Circle's participation policies. I assumed that she was and that her "yeah, yeah, no problem" attitude towards them was simply an attempt not to make waves in her cool, new job. But she never really puts up a fight; not even when senior employee Ty Kalden (John Boyega) decides to entrust her with some concerning information. And after that she's just one bad evening and a pep talk from Tom Hanks away from completely buying what the Circle is selling.

She says some truly stupid things in that section, too. She calls watching videos of other people's experiences "a basic human right," for instance. And says that it's selfish not to post experiences online for everyone to see. She hasn't just swallowed Eamon Bailey's (Tom Hanks) Kool-Aid; she's swallowed the pitcher itself and the entire soft drink aisle. I kept expecting that at some point she would reveal that she was faking it and was really working with Kalden the whole time, but that moment never came.

There's of course a confrontation between Mae and Bailey by the end, but there are two huge problems with it. First, the movie never reveals what it is exactly that Bailey is doing wrong. He's full of terrible, harmful ideas, but there's no explicit indication that he's actually planning to use his collected data for evil purposes. The potential is certainly there and I wanted to see him stopped, but his final unmasking is nothing more than a revelation that he has secrets just like everyone else. Nor does the movie care about telling what those are. So the climactic showdown between him and Mae doesn't have any punch, because it's never clear what would happen if Bailey won.

The second huge problem with the final confrontation is that Mae's ideas are now just as harmful as Bailey's. She still believes in total transparency. Her problem with Bailey is just that he wants to be exempt from it. So I'm not exactly rooting for her, either.

It's not wrong that the movie ends with no clear answers. What I don't like is the way it phrases the question. It presents two, horrible solutions and asks which is preferable. There's some discussion that can be had around that, but the discussion would be so much richer if the film took its dilemma seriously and offered a couple of actually reasonable perspectives for its viewers to contemplate.

Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)



I like Warner Oland's Charlie Chan movies, but this is a minor entry. All the detective work is loaded toward the front with as much passion as Law & Order. It's just trying to get through that as quickly as possible so that it can move on to the spy story that it really wants to tell. And sadly, even though it's set at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, it's not at all interested in the political situation at the time. There's never even a mention of Hitler or the Nazi party.

Zorro (1957-61)



A few more episodes into Season 2 and Zorro's still in Monterey. I had to look ahead at descriptions of future episodes to make sure he doesn't permanently relocate there. He doesn't, but it'll be a while before he gets home.

The excuse for now is that he needs to stay and deal with another rebel against oppression. Unlike the original novel and the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks film, the Californian government in the Disney show isn't depicted as completely corrupt. But the governor isn't as wise or careful as he should be either, so his underlings are often able to get away with cruel activities. When that starts to happen in Monterey, a hotheaded local named Joaquin Castenada rises up in defiance. But while Zorro appreciates the young man's passion, he disagrees with the brutality of his methods. It's an interesting conflict, but one that I hope is wrapped up soon.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



The first of the two episodes I watched last week had Indy working as a motorcycle courier, running messages between the French military HQ and the front lines. It's a heavy-handed commentary on the disconnect between the fighting men and the leaders who command them, but it's good in that it puts some cracks in Indy's view of the war. He abandoned the Mexican Revolution when it became complicated, then avoided the Irish Revolution for similar reasons. Both times he set himself resolutely towards Europe to fight the Germans who had ruthlessly invaded Belgium to get to France. Seemed like an uncomplicated bad guy to fight, but as he learns in this episode, the cause of World War I is pitiful and extremely complicated. Unfortunately, it's too late for him to get out now.

In the second episode (written by Carrie Fisher!), Indy is given leave to visit a friend of his father in Paris. The friend is played by Ian McDiarmid, so there's a double Star Wars connection, but the episode is actually about Indy's hooking up with Mata Hari. It's about relationships, so I enjoyed it more than the previous one even though there's not much plot to it. It has some great insights on love and jealousy and the lies we tell early in romances.

Underground (2016-present)



After the big event of an entire episode about Harriet Tubman's speech, the next couple of episodes get back to the main story around Rosalee and Noah's plan to free Rosalee's family. Of course that doesn't go as planned and everything falls apart. But that's just in time for the last couple of episodes (the finale airs this week) to hopefully bring it back around. Hopefully.

I'm very invested in these characters and the way last season ended gives me encouragement that this one will go out on some kind of victory. But the show is nothing if not surprising.

Jam of the Week: "Shout" by Tears for Fears

I love these guys in a way that isn't healthy and I'm finally seeing them live this Thursday, so I've been all about them this past week. They have many excellent songs and I'd love to feature a deeper cut here, but there's no better song than "Shout." Probably by any band.

7 Days in May | Robert Langdon and Señorita Scorpion

The Da Vinci Code (2006)



I never got around to seeing the new Dan Brown/Robert Langdon movie last fall, so I decided to do that and introduce David to the whole series at the same time. I'm not a huge fan of these, but I do like puzzles and scavenger hunt stories in general, so my base-level interest in these is always going to be enough to get me to look.

The reason I'm not a huge fan is that the Langdon series takes itself so extremely seriously. If I'm going to watch a grown person run around solving puzzles, I prefer the lighter-hearted approach of the National Treasure movies. The Langdon movies have fun plots, but they compete with the joylessness of their hero. I like Robert Langdon - he's a kind person who wants to help whenever he's asked, regardless of what it will cost him - but I don't enjoy him.

Da Vinci Code is my least favorite of the series. I like that the stakes are personal in it, but the plot is all over the place. It's driven by Langdon's being hunted and trying to prove his own innocence, so there's not a lot to contain it. He and his story are able to meander and it's difficult to keep track of how the various clues he's chasing connect to each other. If they even all do.

Angels & Demons (2009)



This is my favorite in the series. I still don't love it, but the narrative is straightforward with a single, clear objective and smaller objectives along the way that are clear about how they fit into the larger one. It also has a ticking clock element that I like. Most of all though, this one makes the most sense as to why there's a scavenger hunt in the first place. In Da Vinci Code and Inferno, there's not a great reason for anyone to have created the elaborate trail of clues. In Angels & Demons, I understand the thinking that went into them.

Inferno (2016)



Like Angels & Demons, there's a straightforward objective and a ticking clock element to Inferno, but those don't do as good a job at keeping the story on track. There's no real reason for the scavenger hunt to exist in the first place and the movie over-complicates itself by questioning everyone's motives. It's trying to introduce paranoia to the adventure, but even while it's doing that it hangs big surprises on the assumption that viewers have unquestioningly trusted some things. I don't think you can have it both ways.

For all that, I still like the movie. That's hugely thanks to Irrfan Khan as the head of a mysterious organization whose objectives I won't spoil. He injects humor and charm into what normally would have been a generic villain. I also very much enjoyed Sidse Babett Knudsen (the Westworld TV series) as the chief representative of the World Health Organization on the case. Her character is a suspect, so I don't want to specify the spoilery things I liked about her, but she made me believe in her (even while I don't believe how her story wraps up).

Chimes at Midnight (1965)



Having watched the Hollow Crown adaptation of Shakespeare's Henriad, I also wanted to check out Orson Welles' condensed version. I love Welles both as a filmmaker and an actor and this reminded me of why. Chimes at Midnight tells the story primarily from Falstaff's point of view with some other scenes included for context. Welles brings the right mix of humor and sadness to the part, making me feel sorry for him while simultaneously feeling like he's getting exactly what he's earned.

There's a thesis paper to be written about how Welles sets up shots in this thing, but the movie rewards even a superficial look with beautiful, fascinating compositions and gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. Chimes of Midnight is no substitute for the full plays, but it's a great companion piece to them.

Zorro (1957-61)



I started Season 2 of Disney's Zorro and it may be wearing on me a little. I'm still enjoying it, but I'm also aware that I'm pushing through it. If I took a break now, I don't know when I'd get back to it.

Some of what's dampening my enthusiasm is a major change in location. Instead of taking place in Los Angeles, the action's been moved to Monterey where a patriotic trader is trying to gather money for a massive supply shipment. Spain is at war, so the Spanish citizens of California see it as their duty to support their homeland by keeping up business. The trouble is that shipments of investment capital from all over California are being intercepted by bandits, so Don Diego has traveled to Monterey to oversee delivery of the money from LA. Four episodes in and he's still there.

He's accompanied by Bernardo and has also been joined by Sgt Garcia and Cpl Reyes, so the best characters from the first season are still there. But I'm hoping that this storyline wraps up quickly and everyone returns to LA. The locations were such an important part of Season One that I'm not ready to let them go.

One really cool thing though is that Lee Van Cleef plays one of the bandits in the first episode. That's him fighting Zorro in the image above.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



Indy has finally gone to war in the two episodes I watched this week. In the first, he's already been embroiled in trench warfare for a few months and there's dissension in the ranks. All of the officers in his unit have been killed and Indy suspects one of the men of murder. Indy's already showing some leadership skills though and has become the unofficial leader of the group until they're reassigned to serve temporarily under French command. Most of the episode is about the horrors of trench warfare as the French try to capture a chateau under German control.

The episode ends with Indy's being taken captive with another soldier (Jason Flemyng), which leads into the next about POW camps. The tone moves from All Quiet on the Western Front to The Great Escape and I enjoyed both genres.

Underground (2016-present)



The episode "Minty" from a couple of weeks ago was the one where Underground went from being Really Cool Adventure Show About a Serious Topic to Holy Crap This Is Important and Potentially Life Changing.

As I've mentioned before, one of the enormous strengths of the show is its ability to shift genres as it changes focus from character to character. The entire run time of "Minty" is nothing but Harriet Tubman (Aisha Hinds) talking to a roomful of fellow Abolitionists about her story for an hour. Hinds has been compelling in the role all season, but she carries this entire episode with very few speaking parts from any other characters. It's a great speech and Hinds delivers it masterfully. There's humor, horror, and hope all wrapped into it, but most importantly there are Ideas.

One of the subplots of the show has been about the proper response of Abolitionists to slavery. Some are content to quietly rebel by assisting on the Underground Railroad. Others see the conflict as all out war and want to act accordingly. So far, Jessica De Gouw's Elizabeth has been the character to most struggle with this, but in "Minty" we learn that Tubman has been wrestling, too, and has come to a decision.

I'm a huge pacifist, but that speech stirred me up and made me rethink my posture towards war. Knowing that the metaphorical war that the Abolitionists are talking about will ultimately lead to very literal war, I think about where my country would be right now if people had just kept quietly rebelling and the Civil War never happened. I'm not ready to pick up arms and I don't believe that Underground is suggesting that we do (though it is very pointed in drawing comparisons between the time of the show and today). What it's extremely successful at though is making me want to take some kind of action. And those who know me best know how difficult a thing that is to accomplish.

"The Brand of Señorita Scorpion" by Lee Savage, Jr.



Read another Señorita Scorpion story from a collection I picked up last year. I was looking forward to more adventures of the female Western hero, especially since the first story was mostly told from the perspective of a male character who falls in love with the mysterious heroine. Sadly, that's also the case here. The Señorita doesn't even get mentioned by her cool name; she's just a damsel in distress for the love-struck cowboy to rescue. It's an exciting enough tale, but not what I wanted.

There are two more in the collection, so I'll keep going, but I'm predicting that I don't pick up the second volume.

Jam of the Week: "Foot of the Mountain" by a-ha

It always irritates me when people refer to a-ha as a one-hit wonder. Forgetting for a second the moderate success that their second album had in the US, the dudes had a freaking James Bond theme song. They're not just "Take On Me."

Still, I understand why a lot of folks are surprised that the band had a long and successful (if sporadic) career after the '80s. This is one of my favorites of their recent stuff, which is as good if not better than their earlier hits. It's eight years old (geez, how time does fly), but there was another album in 2015 with yet another (of live, acoustic versions of their songs) rumored for later this year.

7 Days in May | Fate of the Furious and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

The Tall T (1957)



A while back, Pax and I talked about Ride Lonesome on Hellbent for Letterbox. I like that movie a lot and some of our listeners recommended a few other Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott films, so I picked up a DVD set of six Scott Westerns, four of which were directed by Boetticher. The Tall T is the second of them I've seen now (counting Ride Lonesome) and it promises good things for the rest of the collection.

I have no idea what the title means, but it's based on an Elmore Leonard story, so there's a heavy crime thriller element to it. Scott plays a guy who winds up hostage with some other people to a gang of ruthless bad guys. Mostly the movie is about that captivity and who will survive it, with Maureen O'Sullivan (Jane in the classic MGM Tarzan movies) as a notable (but married) ally for Scott. There's a lot of tension and a lot of trying to figure out how to get out of it. I had a great time.

The Mark of Zorro (1920)



Since I finished Season 1 of Disney's Zorro show last week, I took a break to watch the first Zorro movie. I've seen it a few times by now and it's a very faithful adaptation, but I wanted to watch it again right after reading The Curse of Capistrano to remind myself how it handled parts of McCulley's novel. For instance, Zorro's mute assistant Bernardo is a huge part of the Disney show (played by the lovely and charming Gene Sheldon), but the character is in the novel so little that I actually wondered what the point was of having him there at all. The Mark of Zorro includes the character and gives him a lot more to do, including allowing him to hear (the novel's Bernardo is deaf as well as mute). Disney's version is borrowing from Fairbanks' movie, not the book. And that's a good thing.

Another thing I was interested in was how Mark of Zorro handles the secret identity. I was surprised that the novel saves the reveal until the very end, so the reader finds out at the same time as everyone else. I couldn't remember if the movie does the same thing. It was possible that the movie kept that a secret, but that I filled in the knowledge because of my familiarity with the character. But no, that's not it. Mark of Zorro lets viewers in on the deception right away.

That's cool because it means we get to peek at parts of Zorro's life that the book keeps hidden. Like how Zorro comes in and out of his house. Underneath his mansion, he's got a cave with a couple of hidden entrances. There's a shrub covered, horse-sized outer passage, and in the house there's a secret door disguised as a grandfather clock. Everyone knows that Batman was inspired by Zorro, but sometimes we forget how much. It's all based on Fairbanks' version though, not the novel.

Batman could take some more lessons from Fairbanks' Zorro on playing the idle playboy, though. Fairbanks' performance as Don Diego is brilliant. He always looks exhausted and bored, only perking up when he's irritating someone with an unwanted handkerchief trick. In the Disney version, you kind of have to overlook that no one's figured out that Guy Williams' Diego and Zorro are the same guy. It's about as believable a disguise as George Reeves' Clark Kent. But with Douglas Fairbanks, I totally see why people are fooled. And that impressive bit of acting is nothing compared to the unbelievable acrobatic work that Fairbanks pulls off in Zorro mode: leaping around and climbing over sets like he's inventing parkour.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



Watched two episodes that were basically Young Indy in Love. As he and his friend Remy are trying to get to London to join the Belgian army, they stop off in Ireland to work and raise money for the final leg of their trip. Indy meets a girl who seems to like him, but she's under the impression that he's rich and she always brings along her girlfriend on dates. I feel like it's supposed to be some kind of life lesson for Indy, but after the relative maturity of the relationship back in Princeton that he totally blew off, I wasn't able to believe in Indy's investment in this one at all.

More effective was the story around the girl's brother, a passionate young man who's interested in freeing Ireland from English control. The brother becomes involved in the Easter Rebellion and I wondered briefly is Indy would be tempted to join up, too. After the easy way in which he was persuaded to join the Mexican Revolution and then enter WWI, he seems like a sucker for this kind of thing. But he doesn't join the Irish fight and the show is smart about why. In contrast to the brother, Indy also meets the playwright Seán O'Casey (Juno and the Paycock) who has his own ideas about what Irish independence means. One of the lessons that Indy learned in Mexico is that war is often messy and that everyone has different ideas on what it's about. It makes sense that he'd pass up Ireland's battles in order to fight a more objective evil (so he believes) on the European continent. It'll be interesting to see how long he holds on to that belief.

In the second episode, Indy and Remy reach London and join the Belgian army. They have some time before they leave though, so they split up: Remy to hook up with a war widow and Indy to go visit his childhood governess in Oxford. Before Indy takes off for Oxford though, he meets a young woman played by Elizabeth Hurley and gets involved in the cause of women's suffrage. This romance is way more believable and touching than the Irish one and I'm as heartbroken as Indy when it doesn't work out (for equally believable and touching reasons). I buy that this was the love of Indy's life and it makes some sense out of his lack of commitment to anyone in the later films. In fact, I kind of don't like that he marries Marion anymore. But I expect I'll get over that when I rewatch the movies.

Underground (2016-present)



One of the things I love about this show is how it has enough characters that it can split its focus from episode to episode and depending on the characters its dealing with, can even change genres. So in the Season 2 episodes I watched this week, one was a Revenant-style survival tale while the other was a cat-and-mouse drama between two old rivals. And every episode just seems to open up more potential for future storylines. There's no end to the breadth of stories possible in this setting. And that most of them feature utterly badass women makes me extremely happy.

The Fate of the Furious (2017)



SPOILERS. SERIOUSLY.

As much as I'm a fiend for this series, F8 (as it should have been called) didn't even crack my 20 Most Anticipated Movies of the year. That was due to the hackneyed suggestion in the trailer that Dom's going rogue and betraying his team. Since there was 0% chance that his defection was real, I rebelled at the whole concept. And I wasn't crazy about the promise of Jason Statham's Han-killing character joining the family, either. I went into F8 with arms crossed and needing to be won over.

And it was rough-going for a lot of the movie. Charlize Theron is wasted as a super-serious and self-important hacker who growls the worst dialogue I've heard in a few years. "Did you ever think you'd betray your family the way you did today?" And even though I'm all for previous movies' tossing cars between skyscrapers and parachuting them out of airplanes, I found the complications around the New York car chase ridiculous and unbelievable, but still not as fun as skyscraper jumping and automotive skydiving. And Statham's transition to the good guys' side was as clunky as I feared it would be.

But about the time that Helen Mirren showed up, I decided to just jump on board. She's awesome, her relationship to the other characters is awesome, the final chase across the ice lake is awesome (confusingly shot at times, but still awesome), and Jason Statham is the most awesome of all. Enough so that I forgive the movie for making him a good guy, even if I don't completely forgive him for murdering one of my favorite characters. There's a devastating missed opportunity when he doesn't dive out of the airplane with a baby in pursuit of Theron, but oh well. This isn't one of the best Fast/Furious movies, but it's good enough and I ended up having a really good time.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)



I enjoyed Jack Reacher and had been looking forward to the sequel, but negative reviews of Never Go Back lessened my enthusiasm and I decided to wait for home video. I'm okay with not having seen it in the theater, but I do like it a lot more than the critical consensus did.

There are some tropy elements like introducing a potential love interest and a possible daughter. And it seems a little weird and unexplained that Reacher is willing to "go back" in the first place. Also, this is far from the first military contractor we've seen go rogue.

But as clumsily as the relationships are introduced, I bought into them once they got going. Cobie Smulders is good as a high-ranking officer who still struggles with sexism and doesn't feel like dealing with it from Reacher, however unintentional his might be. I don't see a lot of stories that deal with systemic and ingrained, but involuntary sexism. Seeing it here made me think about my own actions and attitudes in a way that stories about blatant chauvinists can't.

Danika Yarosh is great as the teenager who may or may not be Reacher's kid. She reminds me a lot of young Anna Paquin and I love how smart and resourceful and tough, yet deeply vulnerable her character is.

And finally, I just got a kick out of Underground's Aldis Hodge as the MP officer tracking down Reacher and Company. Never Go Back isn't as good as the first Jack Reacher movie, but I found a lot worthwhile about it.

Jam of the Week: "High Ticket Attractions" by The New Pornographers

Shut up and dance.

7 Days in May | Love vs Fear and the Master of Kung Fu

In a Valley of Violence (2016)



I've been cautiously curious about this one. Both Ethan Hawke and John Travolta are actors that I like in certain roles, but I've also experienced annoyance at some of their roles, so I'm never sure how I'm going to react. And all I knew about director Ti West is that he's made a few horror movies that I had no interest in. By all accounts, In a Valley of Violence was a straight-up Western - not a horror movie in a Western setting - so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Fortunately, it's a pretty good movie. Hawke plays a drifter with secrets and a really cute dog. He's passing through the town of Denton when the local bully picks a fight and Hawke humiliates him. Unfortunately, the bully is also the son of the town marshall (Travolta), so things escalate. It's a familiar plot, but Hawke is good as the troubled soul who just wants to be left alone. And Travolta's character is surprisingly reasonable and not at all at the level of wickedness and corruption that I expected him to be. He's perfectly willing to let Hawke go, but is trapped by his loyalty to his less intelligent son.

Taissa Farmiga is also a highlight as a young woman in town who takes a liking to Hawke's character, but Karen Gillen is less impressive as her sister. I usually like Gillen, and her character had the potential for some complexity since she's in love with the bully, but Gillen plays her without any empathy, which means that she didn't create any for me either. She's pretty much perfect for her boyfriend though, since James Ransone plays the bully with no complexity as well.

Back on the positive side, Burn Gorman shows up as a priest who is fairly complicated. He's just not in the movie enough. So I like some of the characters and the action is pretty compelling. In a Valley of Violence isn't doing anything revolutionary, but it's a good, Saturday afternoon, B-Western.

Gojira (1954)



Some friends of ours know that David is a huge Godzilla fan, but don't know anything about the King of Monsters themselves. So they invited us over last weekend for lunch and an introduction. In hindsight, I don't know if Gojira is the best introduction for everyone, because there are some substantial barriers to entry, depending on how you feel about black-and-white and subtitles (we couldn't bring ourselves to show them the English version with Raymond Burr).

i don't know if it's accurate to say that our friends "enjoyed" it, but they at least had their curiosity satisfied and we spent some time at the end talking about the movie in its historical and cultural context. So the purpose of the viewing was achieved and honestly, I don't know that our friends didn't like it. Or if they didn't, why not. The word "interesting" was used, though, and I never take that as high praise.

I still love it though. There's some goofy stuff, but there's also some truly horrific and powerful imagery and I'm always touched by the film's discussion of science and how it's applied.

The Hollow Crown: Henry V (2013)



Since I rewatched Kenneth Branagh's Henry V a couple of weeks ago, I was ready to move on in the Hollow Crown series and see how it handles the play. Branagh is brilliant and jaw-droppingly inspirational in his version, so it would be foolish for Tom Hiddleston to try to top that. Wisely, he understates his performance, which robs power from key speeches, but makes Hal a more relatable character. It's the right way to go. Hiddleston's version is still inspirational; just in a different way.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)



We've been watching Firefly lately for an upcoming episode of Dragonfly Ripple. If I'm going to talk about something on a podcast, I'll save my thoughts for the show and not write about it here, but I bring up Firefly because seeing Alan Tudyk made me really want to watch Dodgeball again.

I always have fond memories of Dodgeball, mostly because it's ridiculous and has great cameos. And of course: Pirate Steve. But watching it again, I'm reminded of its many problems. Some of them are dated and unfunny jokes, but there's also structural stuff, like having Pirate Steve disappear from the climax for no good reason and then clumsily rejoin the movie for the very end. Or worse, the way that the heroes' victory is glossed over and explained in a way that makes it sound sure even though it's totally not.

Still, a lot of the jokes and visual gags are still hilarious and I like the overarching message about inclusion and not being ashamed of who you are.

Zorro (1957-61)



I finished Season 1 and it was pretty good, if not entirely satisfying. As I said last week, Zorro's victories had been getting smaller as the Eagle grew in power, but the hero upped his game for the finale and pulled out a decisive victory.

However... it's also apparent that Zorro's victory wouldn't have been so decisive if the Eagle hadn't grown impatient and tried to stage a final coup before he was ready. His allies knew it was a bad idea and withdrew, but he insisted on moving ahead alone, which was a bone-headed play and led to his downfall more than Zorro's skill.

Still, it's a strong run of almost 40 episodes, even if it doesn't perfectly stick the landing. I haven't mentioned him before, but one of the MVPs of the series is Don Diamond as a late addition to the cast. He's brought in as a foil for Henry Calvin's Sgt Garcia; someone for Garcia to boss around, but who doesn't follow orders so well. The two of them are hilarious together and bring a needed, lighter touch to the show just as it's starting to look rather grim.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



When the show was originally on TV, I always preferred the older of the two Young Indys (Sean Patrick Flanery). Now I remember why. The younger Young Indy (Corey Carrier) had adventures, but they were generally about his learning how the world works: coming to understand things like art, love, and freedom. Flanery's adventures are about his coming to understand himself.

The first episode I watched this week is a transitional one that has him in Princeton. His mom died three years earlier, so it's just him and Dad. Indy's in high school and dating the daughter of writer/book packager Edward Stratemeyer (The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, etc.). Trying to borrow an automobile for the prom leads him and his girlfriend on an adventure involving Thomas Edison and some spies, which also calls into question the tactics of people like Stratemeyer and Edison who benefit from the work of their nameless and unthanked employees.

The episode's not preachy about that, but it does open the discussion. So while there's still an educational element, it's more sophisticated than what's going on with the Corey Carrier stories. And since Flanery is better able to run and fight and propel his own adventures, the action is also ramped up.

That's also true of the second episode, which was originally the second half of the series premiere. The two-hour premiere was divided into two parts, one with the Carrier Indy and one with Flanery. Connecting the two parts was a story about a jackal sculpture that was stolen from a dig in Egypt. Since the parts are now separated by the way the DVDs are chronologically packaged, the Carrier half ends on a cliffhanger that isn't resolved until years later by Flanery. I like that and the Flanery half does a good job of reminding viewers of the earlier adventure so that the jackal doesn't just come out of nowhere.

What this episode is really about though is the complexity of war. On Spring Break, Indy visits relatives in the southeastern US and accidentally gets caught up in the Mexican Revolution. (There's some weird serendipity working here since I also recently watched 100 Rifles for Hellbent for Letterbox and that also deals with the Revolution, as does The Son, which I'll talk about in just a minute.) Indy joins Pancho Villa's army and is all on board at first (leading me to question how much he was really into Nancy Stratemeyer). He thinks that he's fighting for a good and important cause until he meets an old farmer who sees no difference between the various armies who all claim to be fighting for him, but all steal his chickens in order to do so.

Disillusioned, Indy joins another let-down rebel, a Belgian named Remy Baudouin, in deserting Villa's army to join the fight against Germany overseas. The US hasn't yet entered World War I, but Indy is convinced that there must be a cause worth fighting for and expects that he'll find it in Europe. That's a journey of self-discovery that I'm eager to see.

The Son (2017-present)



A Western TV show starring Pierce Brosnan sounded too good to be true and it turns out that it was. Brosnan plays the patriarch of a cattle family near the Texas-Mexico border. The ranch isn't doing so well, so Brosnan's character wants to convert his land to oil drilling, but he's not sure there actually is any oil and his son who technically runs the ranch is against the idea. It's all family drama; sort of an historical Dallas. Not exactly what I wanted.

And since this part of the show is set in 1915, during the Mexican Revolution, there's also a good supply of timely commentary on modern politics. The white people in Brosnan's community are fearful that the Revolution will spill over to their side of the border, so relations between Anglo and Hispanic neighbors are getting tense. If you don't get enough of that on the news, this may be the show you're looking for.

There's also a more Western part of the show. Interspersed with Brosnan's family drama are scenes from when his character was a boy in the 1840s. His family was attacked by Comanches and he was taken prisoner, so part of the show will be dealing with that. I'd find it more to my taste if I didn't hate the person that kid grows up to be. I don't need to see how he got there. Gonna pass on the rest of the series.

Underground (2016-present)



We started Season 2 of Underground and it's still amazing. It's also still a show that refuses to let me get comfortable with a status quo. Characters die suddenly and shockingly, other characters that I thought were gone make surprising reappearances, and still others go unexpected places and do unexpected things.

What speaks to me most though is the show's consistent theme of sacrifice and compassion; often for people the characters have no prior relationship with. Where The Son is emphasizing the horrible things that people do out of fear, Underground displays the beauty of acting out of love, even when those actions bring suffering. It's not an easy or light show, but it's uplifting all the same.

Shang-Chi: Master of Kung-Fu Omnibus, Vol. 1



I'm 99% sure that my very first Marvel comic was the inappropriately numbered Master of Kung Fu #17. It was only the third appearance of Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu (and son of Fu Manchu), but his first two appearances were in the anthology series Special Marvel Edition starting with #15. When it was clear that he was popular enough for his own series, Marvel just continued the numbering from SME. As far as I knew at the time though, Shang Chi had been around for at least 16 issues before I discovered him.

I wasn't huge into martial arts as a kid, but I very quickly fell in love with Shang Chi. Even more than Batman, he was a relatable hero that I could aspire to be like. I'd never have a Batcave, but I reasoned that if I learned and practiced enough, I could be like Shang Chi.

It wasn't his fighting skill that attracted me most though. It was his cooly stoic demeanor. I wasn't able to fully understand that until reading this omnibus and immersing myself in Shang Chi's personality, but I love him for the same reason that I've always loved Ferdinand the Bull from the children's book. These are both characters who are comfortable in themselves and unshaken by the chaos around them. That's something that I valued a lot as a kid and still do.

I didn't have the ability to keep up with Shang Chi's adventures when I was younger, so it was only in later years that I heard about his globetrotting spy era under the legendary pencils of Paul Gulacy. As a big James Bond fan, I've always wanted to read those stories, so between that and revisting my childhood hero, I was super eager for this series of omnibuses collecting the entire series.

One volume in and I'm not disappointed. Shang Chi is every bit as inspiring as I remember and almost every adventure collected here is a winner. He battles with his father's minions in New York, Florida (hello, Man-Thing!), and the jungles of the Amazon before reaching détente with his dad and joining a team of international spies. It's all beautifully drawn and mesmerizingly written stuff. The one story that didn't work for me is the final, two-part tale in the collection, which is maddeningly surreal and impenetrably enigmatic. That's explicitly the point of it, so I'm not even really faulting it. It was just the single section of the almost 700 pages that didn't work for me on every level. I'm going to take a break and read some Man-Thing (more on the subject of fear) before diving into the next volume, but I already can't wait to get to it.

Batman, Illustrated by Neal Adams, Vol. 1



Neal Adams was a revolutionary get for DC in the late '60s and helped them compete with Marvel's more sophisticated style. It's too bad that the writing was still aimed straight at kids. These stories are all gorgeous, but they're also full of the most ridiculous motivations, coincidences, and plot twists imaginable. That can be fun from a certain point of view, but the childish simplicity of the scripts is jarring next to the innovation and maturity of Adams' art.

Jam of the Week: "Madman" by Sean Rowe

Sean Rowe's deep, baritone voice mixes beautifully with the easy, chill groove in "Madman." And there's hand clapping. I've mentioned before how I like me some hand claps.

7 Days in May | Brenda Starr and Operation Kid Brother

Brenda Starr (1992)



This movie came up on an episode of Nerd Lunch that I was on last year and it got me curious to see it. I remember when it came out, but I'd skipped it because a) it was during that whole glut of disappointing, early '90s comics/pulp movies, and b) I've never cared anything about the comic strip it's based on anyway. But then I learned that the plot involves Brenda Starr's getting in an argument with the cartoonist who draws her, so she disappears from the strip and he has to enter Cool World or whatever to bring her back. As low as that put my expectations, there was no way I could be disappointed. I figured I could at least watch a little and turn it off partway if it was unbearable.

Shockingly, I love every minute of the thing.

I've never read Brenda Starr, so I don't know what kind of tone it had, but certainly there are some outlandish things about the concept of a glamorous, adventure-having reporter. What's great about the movie is that it neither downplays nor ridicules those elements. It celebrates them and holds them up as sources of pure joy. Brooke Shields is amazing in the role as an absolutely perfect fashionista. And so is Timothy Dalton as the dashing, eye-patched Basil St John. Eddie Albert from Green Acres is basically playing Chief O'Hara in an early scene, but the real scene-stealers are Jeffrey Tambor and June Gable (Joey's manager Estelle on Friends) as a couple of KGB agents. The movie is funny and I laughed out loud many, many times. I kept waiting for the movie to turn on me, but it never did. Even the weird cartoonist-entering-his-work plot makes a kind of sense as a story about a passionless, mercenary artist who discovers the joy in what he's doing and falls in love with his subject.

The movie's not available on streaming, but I found a cheap DVD and blind-bought it. I'm glad I did, because I'll be watching this over and over again.

Operation Kid Brother (1967)



I stumbled across this one a couple of years ago when I was doing that whole James Bond series here on the blog, but just now got around to watching it. It presents itself as a parody of Bond movies, but I don't know if it really is. No more so than You Only Live Twice was anyway, which came out the same year.

This one stars Sean Connery's younger brother Neil as a gifted plastic surgeon who's also the younger brother of a famous secret agent. The movie is goofy about how much it wants to suggest ties to Bond continuity, so the main character is actually named Neil Connery even though it's clear that his older brother is supposed to be James Bond. And the two government representatives who recruit Neil are played by Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell, who are still clearly playing M and Moneypenny, even though their names are now Commander Cunningham and... well... Maxwell (Max, for short).

There are bunch of other Bond alumni reprising similar roles, too. Anthony Dawson is the head of the evil organization Thanatos, for example. Dawson is most recognizable as Professor Dent in Dr. No, but he also played the faceless Blofeld in From Russia With Love and Thunderball. His number two in Thanatos is played by Adolfo Celi, who was SPECTRE's Number Two in Thunderball. And From Russia With Love's Daniela Bianchi is again an enemy agent who falls for the hero and switches teams.

Neil Connery the character is an amazing man who's not just the world's top plastic surgeon. He also has super-hypnotism powers and is an expert archer and hand-to-hand fighter. My only disappointment with him is that Neil Connery the actor was sick when it was time to dub his lines, so the character has a bland voice with no trace of a Scot accent.

Operation Kid Brother isn't a great movie. It learned some of the wrong lessons from Thunderball, so several sequences are pointlessly overlong. And none of the bit actors are very good. But it's such a weird, fun little movie that I had a great time with it anyway. And it also gives us Ennio Morricone's (working with Bruno Nicolai) version of a Bond score. Well worth checking out for Bond fans.

Return to the Lost World (1992)



I actually watched this last week and forgot to mention it. There aren't really any surprises in this sequel to the Lost World adaptation from the same year. That movie ends by unsubtly foreshadowing how the gang's going to get back together and then they do exactly that in the second movie. And because part of the first one's formula was Professor Challenger and his rival's overcoming their differences, Return opens with them feuding again so that they can repeat the same beats in their relationship.

The special effects aren't any better this time around, either, but I did enjoy Return just slightly more than its predecessor, simply because I wasn't comparing it to Arthur Conan Doyle's novel anymore. Not enough to make me recommend it, but at least I was able to stay more-or-less engaged.

Stripes (1981)



Continuing from last week's watching of Airplane! and Caddyshack, we showed David a couple of more '80s comedies. He's a big Bill Murray fan, so Stripes was a necessity, even though it's not my favorite. There are some great gags, but I always lose interest after the characters graduate basic training. The movie should have ended there and lost the whole, tacked on, weaponized RV plot.

That would have given more time to sell the animosity between Murray's character and the drill sergeant, which is pretty loosely sketched out. Sometimes they seem to admire each other and other times they hate each other, but it's all as the plot dictates, not because it feels like a real relationship.

Big (1988)



Diane's birthday was this week and she requested that we watch Big. It's been a long time since I've seen it and I'd forgotten how much of a revelation Tom Hanks' performance was. This was the moment when we all started realizing that he was capable of much more than Bachelor Party and Volunteers (as much as I like those movies). He's really phenomenal in this, especially in the early scenes where his character is afraid and still getting used to his grown-up body.

It's a little weird that Elizabeth Perkins isn't more weirded out than she is when she finds out she's been sleeping with a 13-year-old, but that bit of creepiness aside, Big holds up as a lovely, touching movie.

Zorro (1957-61)



Almost done with Season 1 and things are getting pretty bleak for our hero. He manages to pull out some kind of victory each week, but they're smaller and smaller as the Eagle gains more and more power, even taking over Don Diego's home. Can't wait for the season finale.

Opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)



Since I finished the Young Indiana Jones episodes with 10-year-old Indy, I took a break from the show this week to watch the prelude section of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. So now Indy has his hat and his scar and I'm ready to watch him go to war in the rest of the TV series.

It was jarring to see the character in such an action-packed adventure after the educational journeys of the TV show. And I wonder what kind of tone the Teenage Indy episodes will take. I remember plot details, but not so much the overall feel.

Underground (2016-present)



We finished Season 1 and Oh My God. I'm loving this show.

Last week, I was concerned that the show was going to drag out the drama around some secrets in a relationship that I otherwise really like. But instead, it ripped that Band-Aid right off and forced the characters to deal with the repercussions. Or at least to start dealing with the repercussions. I have no doubt that it's going to come back to bite them, but at least there's no prolonged lying and delaying the inevitable. Excellent work, show.

More than that, though, I love how the final episode of the season pulled out some awesome twists while wrapping up some plots and teasing the direction of the show in Season 2. The new season is in progress as I'm writing this, but I've got the episodes so far queued up on my TiVo and ready to go.

The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley



Watching the Disney Zorro TV show got me curious to finally read the original story and it's a good one. The 1920 Mark of Zorro starring Douglas Fairbanks closely follows the novel's plot, so there weren't a lot of surprises in the novel, but there are some.

For one thing, Zorro's mask isn't the kind that's traditionally associated with the character. Fairbanks' mask influenced the popular image, but the mask in the novel is like the one on the cover above. It covers Zorro's (or Señor Zorro, as he's always called) entire face so that he has to lift it in order to eat, drink, or kiss. I'm not a fan, but I'm curious to see if McCulley changed it in the stories he wrote after the Fairbanks movie.

An even bigger surprise was that McCulley keeps his readers in the dark about Zorro's secret identity until the very end. Don Diego is all in the novel, but the reveal that he is also Zorro is meant to be as much of a shock to the audience as to the other characters in the book. That's as impossible for modern readers as keeping the Vader-Luke relationship a secret is for first time Empire viewers, but it's still cool to imagine how the original readers must have reacted.

Related to that, it was also news to me that The Curse of Capistrano is a complete novel with a definite ending and no set up for sequels. McCulley ends the book with Zorro's enemies defeated and his identity revealed, since it's no longer needed. But since the success of the Fairbanks film created a demand for more Zorro stories, I'm curious to see how (or even if) McCulley dealt with that in future installments.

Jam of the Week: "Carter & Cash" by Tor Miller



I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it, just because of it's light beat and playful melody, but I didn't immediately understand the reference in the title. It was calling to mind Tango & Cash, which led me down the completely wrong trail. And then I realized that it was holding up June Carter and Johnny Cash as an example of enduring, faithful love and I fell for the song even harder.

7 Days in May | Battle Royale and The Last Man on Earth

Battle Royale (2000)



As a fan of the Hunger Games books, I got irritated when the movies came out and snotty people were all, "I liked it better when it was called Battle Royale." Yes, yes, you're very hip. But it did put the movie on my radar, so I'm grateful for that. It's a good film.

I still don't think it's smart to compare Battle Royale and Hunger Games though. The similarities are striking, but superficial. They're both about dystopian futures where kids are forced to battle to the death for public entertainment, but each is trying to do something different. For Battle Royale, it's a brutal and memorable analogy for middle and high school. Instead of being so embarrassed that you could just die... well, you could just die.

But that's as deep as it goes. I like the characters in Battle Royale just fine, but they're all simple archetypes; characters we've seen a billion times in a billion different teen movies. Only this time they're trying to murder each other. I dig Battle Royale, but I was way more invested in Katniss and her choices.

The Last Man on Earth (1964)



Probably my favorite adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, though I should give The Omega Man another try. I still have problems with The Last Man on Earth, though. Vincent Price is great, as usual, but the other actors aren't convincing and the ending - while a fascinating idea - doesn't pay anything off. The movie seems to be a survival tale, but decides at the last minute that it's really a social commentary of some kind. Except that I'm not clear on what comment it's trying to make; certainly nothing that was set up earlier in the story. It's a pretty cool twist; I just wish it was a more powerful one.

Airplane! (1980)



We talked about Police Squad on a recent episode of Dragonfly Ripple and that got me wanting to share Airplane! with David. Finally pulled the trigger on that and it was a big hit. A lot of the jokes are dated cultural references, but for the most part it's timeless, goofy humor that still holds up.

Caddyshack (1980)



Airplane! got me thinking about other '80s comedies that David hasn't seen yet. And since he's a big fan of the original Ghostbusters, I figured some classic Bill Murray (directed by Harold Ramis, no less) was the way to go. And it was joyous. Caddyshack easily has my favorite roles for Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Ted Knight, and possibly for Rodney Dangerfield, too (though I need to give Back to School another look). That gopher puppet is adorable and the Kenny Loggins theme is second only to "Holiday Road." There are a couple of weird, pointless sidebar scenes to endure, but for the most part it's just one memorable gag after another.

Zorro (1957-61)



Still loving this show. This week some new villains were introduced with a multi-episode plot about stolen treasure that's being used to finance the Eagle's takeover of California. And while Zorro competently overcomes every individual threat, there's the growing sense that he's getting in over his head when it comes to the Eagle's larger organization. The stakes are raising nicely as we head towards the season finale.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



In the last couple of episodes with the younger of the two Young Indianas, the Jones family visits India and China. I quite liked the China episode in which the gang makes an excursion far into the countryside without Indy's dad and Indy comes down with typhoid. Even knowing that he has to make it, I was still impressed with the performances, especially by Ruth de Sosa as Indy's mom. She was convincingly terrified that her son was about to die. And though I grew impatient with her hesitation to try Chinese medicine, I understood every decision she made.

The India episode wasn't as touching, but it did make me realize how effective the educational component of the show is. I mentioned last week that I thought the Jones' discussion of philosophy was over-simplified. The show did the same thing in this episode while talking about world religions. But seeing it repeat that tactic made me realize that it's intentional. Like with the geographical and historical elements, the show gives just enough information to tease my curiosity. I've had to pause every single episode at some point to hop on my phone and research one of the characters. In this case, it was Jiddu Krishnamurthi and the fascinating Theosophy organization that made him famous.

Underground (2016-present)



Nearing the end of the first season and the show's getting rather heart-breaking. Some of my favorite characters aren't going to make it.

And others are making some hard decisions that I'm not on board with. I don't know what it says about me that I'd rather see a woman kill a man than have sex with him to buy his silence (especially when her husband is someone else I like), but I would. I don't like that kind of secret in a marriage that I've grown to admire, so I'm hoping that gets resolved quickly and doesn't sit and fester in order to propel more drama. It was something similar that killed my interest in Downton Abbey.

Totally willing to keep going for now, though. I'm still very invested in the surviving runaways and there's some folks who need some comeuppance that I really want to see.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame



I'm a slow reader, so I won't always have books to talk about each week, but as luck would have it, I finished three of them last week.

The Wind in the Willows is beautifully pastoral.  Its opening chapters read like a series of short stories about the same, recurring characters. Since I was mostly familiar with Disney's very loose adaptation, I was surprised and pleased to find so much of the book's focus on Mole and Rat. They're pleasant characters who live in a pleasant place and Grahame's wonderful descriptions make me want to live there, too.

I love his prose and especially the observations he makes about human (or animal, I guess) nature. I was completely hooked as soon as I read Mole's thoughts about vacations: "...he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working." Grahame gets me.

There are stories about hospitality and homesickness and curiosity and traveling and worship and they're all lovely. As they progress, Badger and Toad enter the tales and the stories start to become more connected, so there's a strong narrative pushing through by the end. That's the part that Disney latched onto, and it is entertaining, but it's not the best part to me. The earlier, quieter chapters are the ones that are going to stick with me for a long, long time.

Grandville: Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot



An excellent sequel to Talbot's Grandville. Like it's predecessor, it successfully combines mystery and political intrigue with some horror and lots of talking animals. I really enjoyed reading this so soon after finishing The Wind in the Willows, just because of how radically different they are using so many of the same building blocks.

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan Omnibus by Various Creators



I knew that Dark Horse had an ongoing Tarzan series in the '90s, but I'd never read it and incorrectly assumed that it was like most ongoing comics series: more or less telling a continuing story of the adventures of a primary character. This omnibus collects the entire run, but it reads like an anthology of individual mini-series. Every few issues brings not only a change in creative teams, but in overall tone and genre. There's no house style connecting them.

Which can be a strength and it mostly works for the collection. I enjoyed some stories more than others, of course. My favorites were the ones with Tarzan in New York encountering a variety of historical figures and literary monsters. And I especially enjoyed the art of Thomas Yeates in the closing story, even if I wasn't as crazy about that story in which Tarzan travels to the future to fight creatures from Edgar Rice Burrough's The Moon Maid.

Jam of the Week: "You Don't Know" by Scarlett & Black



I recently head this playing in a Taco Bell and it brought back all kinds of memories. It was used in the 1987 Jon Cryer movie Hiding Out and was my second favorite song on that soundtrack (after the kd lang/Roy Orbison team-up on "Crying"). I don't know if you can even call Scarlett & Black a one-hit wonder, because this song wasn't much of a hit, but it holds up for me and I love how Robin Hild belts out the title lyrics towards the end.