Mike’s DVD Round-up.
So the other day, I was listening to some old timey radio on the MP3 player, which is kind of an incongruous thing in and of itself, if you think about it, but that’s beside the point…anyway, one of the old timey radio shows I was listening to was The Shadow, which got me to thinking that I’d never seen the ’90s film adaptation starring Alec Baldwin as the Nosed Avenger of the Night. To wit:
Okay, not the most flattering shot. He looks pretty good when he’s doing stuff like this, though:
…which, honestly, if you’re gonna see a Shadow movie, that’s what you want…two hours of the Shadow shooting the holy bejeebers out of the bad guys. Oh, okay, some “clouding of men’s minds” and stuff, too, I guess, if you’re gonna be picky.
Overall, the movie’s…okay, with a level of cheese present pretty much through the whole film. But it’s an acceptable cheese, and it’s a painlessly fun way to spend a couple hours.
Well, I’m assuming so, anyway, because I’m only an hour into the film, since I had to stop watching the movie and, oh, feed the daily weblog beast. See what I do for you people? In exchange, I only ask you that you not tell me if the film goes horribly south in the last forty minutes. Let me find that out for myself.
Now, I really didn’t know anything about the movie aside from its Baldwin content, so it was a nice surprise to see the star-studded cast. And by “star-studded,” I mean “Max Wright, the dad from Alf.” Oh, and Peter Boyle is the Shadow’s taxi driver, Sir Ian McKellen as Margo Lane’s scientist dad, Jonathan Winters — Jonathan Winters — as the guy who, so far into the film, only sits at a table in a nightclub and is allegedly the police commissioner. And then there’s the guy who played Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager:
NEELIX NO
A less happy surprise is that the DVD, which I rented from the Netflix, is only in fullscreen. Fullscreen! PTUI! I spit on you, vile fullscreen version of a widescreen film. A real shame, because there are lots of nice sets and cinematography and such that you’re missing about 1/3 of. Maybe someday we’ll get a deluxe widescreen transfer with special features and deleted scenes and commentary and comes with the Shadow’s hat ‘n’ scarf ‘n’ guns, but I’m not holding my breath. Or maybe I am. How would you know?
Anyway, as long as I’m being Mr. Screencap McCoy, here’s something that came as a bit of a shock as I was watching the first disc in the Sam & Max Freelance Police DVD set.
So Sam, Max, and Sam’s grandma are at a prison spreading some Christmas cheer, when things go horribly awry and the trio are on the run from some particularly dangerous prisoners.
They find themselves in the prison showers, and Max decides he’s gonna set a trap using bars of soap. He hesitates, the soap looming menacingly in the foreground:
…But then he bends over to pick up the soap, and this sign magically appears on his bottom:
Did…did I just see a prison rape joke in a cartoon? Meant for kids? In the Christmas episode?
Good gravy.
Nothing to do with comics, really, but everything to do with greatness:
JAMES BROLIN.
THE CAR.
Think about it, won’t you?