Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Even by the somewhat iffy standards of comic book art in the 1940s and into the ‘50s, I recall that Wonder Woman was easily the worst-drawn comic I ever looked at. The eagle on her breastplate was all mushy. Scenes of her arrival in her “invisible” airplane at the Amazon Island, whatever the hell it was called, were sometimes so incompetent that I just had to laugh. The Wonder Woman you ... Read more »

Prohibition

Ken Burns’ newest documentary, as he skips happily around in the parts of American history that have enough photographs to make it interesting. In three parts:

One: A Nation of Drunkards. It sounded like such a good idea. All the liberals, yesterday’s progressives, were in favor of it, and a great many conservatives. But that is the greatest weakness of liberalism ... Read more »

Project Grizzly

There are times when something happens – and it can take only a moment – that changes your life forever. It’s never happened to me, but I’ve seen it with others. Seven years before this movie was made, Troy Hurtubise, a Canadian outdoorsman, had an encounter with a grizzly bear. It’s impossible to know exactly what happened as Troy is such a chatterbox, poseur, and possibly flat-out liar, ... Read more »

Project Moon Base

This incredible piece of crap is usually billed as the “sequel” to Destination Moon (1950), commonly agreed to be the first SF movie that tried to get the science right … but it doesn’t make sense. Both were co-scripted by Robert A Heinlein, but there the resemblance ends. In DM they land on the moon and return. In PMB, which takes ... Read more »

Prometheus

SPOILER WARNING. Ridley Scott made two science fiction films that changed the look of movie SF forever: Alien in 1979, and Blade Runner in 1982. I suspect the problem here is that his new film, which is set in the same universe, is going to be compared to Alien, which is a horror ... Read more »

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Some plays can make dandy movies. Take Sleuth, for instance, one of the best ever. Or you can just film the play, which I usually prefer. See Dustin Hoffman in Death of a Salesman. But “opening it up” can be a big mistake, as in The Crucible, even with a screenplay by Arthur Miller. This film has ... Read more »

The Proposal

There are more possible story arcs for a romantic comedy than the standard boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl … but not many. One of them is boy and girl hate each other (or are simply wildly incompatible), boy and girl are thrown together in a comic situation, boy and girl fall in love. I’ll bet you’ve seen a hundred of them. This doesn’t have to be bad. There are very few ... Read more »

The Proposition

If a cowboy movie made in Spain by Italians is a Spaghetti Western, what’s the proper term for a western made in Australia? How about a Didjeridu Oater? The outback isn’t standing in for Texas in this one, but there are no kangaroos or emus in it, and the director clearly is going for some sort of mythic frontier thing here, so it might as well be Buffalo Turd, Nebraska, as ... Read more »

Prospect

I wanted to see this on the strength of several reviews that held it up as an example of what can still be done on a small budget (under $4 million, which is tiny these days). It premiered at the SXSW festival in Austin, to favorable reviews. Most of the people who made it were first-timers, including Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl, the writer-directors, and most of the crew. There is ... Read more »

The Prowler

I don’t know of any other movie that was quite so deep into the infamous and horrible Hollywood Blacklist as this one. I don’t think it was deliberate. But it was written by Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler, both blacklistees, under the “front” names of two German writers: Robert Thoeren and Hans Wilhelm. (It is Trumbo’s voice that is hosting the late-night radio program we hear!) Joseph ... Read more »