Tag: Found-Again

Found-Again Friday: Candyman

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Long ago, I started my first little blog, in which I mainly wrote about horror things: movies, art, the occasional book, and a little bit of goth culture. When I started Our Cynical Omelet, I decided I was going to try to 1) be a little more dignified and varied in subject matter and 2) make sure I had no fewer than two things per week to write about.

One of those regular features per goal number 2 turned out to be about Highlander, so that was the equivalent of taking goal number 1, killing it, and desecrating its body. Which…kind of brings us to Candyman, in fact.

Why Found-Again? Because I am totally susceptible to horror movies: easily creeped out, easily grossed out, you name it. Candyman is chock-full of both of those things—it’s kind of what Clive Barker does—so I only watch it every other year or so.

The Premise: Doing your dissertation on a hook-handed urban-mythical boogeyman is a phenomenally bad idea. (I could have told the main character that: if you ever want to see a bunch of English professors become horrified about your career prospects, tell them you’re interested in folklore studies. Don’t ask how I know this.)

I suspect Tony Todd isn’t actually the scariest person on earth, but for the duration of Candyman, he absolutely is. The understandably vengeful spirit of a lynched artist, Candyman enjoys:

  • emerging from mirrors if his name is said five times
  • haunting housing projects in Chicago
  • killing people with his hook hand
  • striding around in a big swingy coat while monologuing seductively, and
  • framing folklore-studies majors for murder (sort of) while pursuing them with unholy persistence.

Yes, the unhappy grad student Helen (Virginia Madsen) is in his sights, and all she wanted to do was make a name for herself at conferences and get her husband to stop being such a pompous dick.

Actually, given the end of the movie, I suspect both of those things happened. Let me revise that to add “…while still being able to enjoy it.”

The Verdict: This is, though hardly without flaws, a great horror movie—smart and atmospheric and fascinating and disgusting, occasionally all at once. It helps, of course, that I’ll watch Tony Todd in anything.

Might go well with: Anything that won’t cause repeated trips to a room with mirrors, if you know what I mean.  (Honey is probably also right out.)

 

Next time: I cover a reasonable amount of ground in watching Highlander.

Found-Again Friday: Musical Interlude 2

J. A. 1 Comment

It’s time for another blast from my listening past, in this case the Celtic/British folk music phase I went through in college.

As you might have gathered from my revisit of Darby O’Gill and the Little People, I have a fondness for all things Celtic, and being a Robin of Sherwood fan sealed the deal: I spent eight years, from age 11 to 19, looking for the soundtrack album by Clannad. Then PBS started showing the occasional Chieftains concert. You know, gateway drugs.

The day I bought my first Chieftains album, I picked up a novel by urban-fantasy author Charles de Lint. At the time, he was in the habit of using epigrams taken from folk artists, and a lot of real-life bands were mentioned in his stories. Couple that with a massive music store (the late Planet Music of Virginia Beach) near my hometown, and the hunt was on! From the fairly traditional…

To the slightly more modernized:

And a lot of stuff from the psychedelic ’60s and ’70s, including this from Pentangle. It gives me chills every time I listen.

(The fellow on the right in this video is Bert Jansch, a folk guitar legend who may get his own Friday music post here at some point.)

Happy listening!

 

Next time: Make your best sword noise for Monday!

 

Found-Again Friday (on Saturday): Octopussy

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Sorry for the delay: the snow and the recent loss of a pet have been sapping my will to blog.

Why Found-Again? Free association from seeing someone throwing knives on TV, as a matter of fact.

Octopussy was the second James Bond movie I ever saw (the first being Live and Let Die, which still has my favorite opening sequence of any Bond movie ever) and is regarded by a surprising number of people as one of the worst. Helpful empirical tip: nothing that starts with a clown murder can be completely bad. That… is just science.

The Premise: Following a trail that begins with a Fabergé egg, James Bond foils a nuclear plot by the evil Kamal Khan (the late Louis Jourdan) with the help of nefarious smuggler/entrepreneur/cult leader Octopussy, whose dealings with Khan are going sour and who has a pet poisonous octopus. Who are these people who hate this movie??

I will concede that it’s a bit formulaic, and I know Mr. Moore isn’t everyone’s favorite glass of shaken-not-stirred. As a freshly minted young fan, though, I found this an excellent Bond 101: exotic locale, tuxedos, beating the bad guy at a game of chance, scheming Soviets, chase scenes, bizarre weapons…and the women!  I’ve always wondered whether Magda using her sari to escape Bond on the balcony would get old for me, and recent viewing has proved it probably never will.

The Verdict: Those of you who remember the scenes of Octopussy fighting bad guys with a sword can hardly doubt my verdict. It’s one of the few times I’ve watched a Bond movie and not wanted to be Bond: who needs MI6 when you have an octopus cult?

Might go well with: Sushi, Indian food, and a look at some Fabergé.

 

Next time: You know. Sword stuff.

 

 

Found-Again Friday (Well, Valentine’s Day): Singin’ In The Rain

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Why Found-Again? This one, like a few before it, is cheating: I watch this every year on Valentine’s Day.

I can’t really remember when this became a tradition for me: I decided to watch it one year when I thought I’d have nothing else going on and wanted a movie that would have some romantic aspects, but not too many. Singin’ In The Rain still delivers all that and more, and so it’s become my go-to no matter what kind of Valentine’s Day I’m having that year.

The Premise (to most people): Handsome leading man Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) gets a rude awakening when talkies replace silent films, but prevails with the help of the ingenue he loves (Debbie Reynolds) and his best friend.

The Premise (to me and people I’ve persuaded to watch the movie): The snarky, sensible, and crazy talented Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) rolls with the punches—in some cases literally—as the film industry changes. Also, his friend Don has problems both romantic and professional.

I stand by my interpretation 100%. Gene Kelly is good-looking and an excellent dancer, but Donald O’Connor is the star of the movie, and all too few people seem to know it. Don’t believe me?

(Warning: contains musical number, if you’re against that sort of thing.)

The actual “Singin’ In The Rain” song might be more iconic, but this is friggin’ amazing.

The Verdict: Are you kidding me? Go watch this right now. Here’s some more:

 

Might go well with: Given that my traditional Valentine’s Day food involves stuffing cinnamon candy hearts into my mouth until I look like a vampire, I’m just going to say champagne.

Next time: One of my favorite parts of Highlander for TCBOM!. Our long(-winded) nightmare is almost over! And no, I don’t mean me.

Found-Again Friday: The X-Files

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Why Found-Again? I still vividly recall watching the first episode of The X-Files while at college. To the left of me was the guy I had a crush on; to the right was the guy who had a crush on me. And in the middle was me, stunned that they had at last made what in my house tended to be referred to as “spook shows” for a major audience. (Instinctively I knew late-night fare like Monsters and Nightmare on Elm Street: the Series didn’t count, though even now I can’t explain why.) For somebody who’d entertained a childhood dream of becoming a paranormal investigator, this was a Big Deal.

The sight of a young David Duchovny in wire-rimmed glasses was a less big deal, but it is the point at which I forgot I was watching the show with other people. Sorry, fellas.

I started watching The X-Files on Netflix again before I heard that Fox might be trying to bring back the show, but this seems like a good time to see how it holds up.

The Premise: Straight-arrow FBI-agent-with-an-MD Dana Scully is assigned to work with Fox “Spooky” Mulder, who specializes in weird unsolved cases known as “X-files.” She’s supposed to bring him back to mundanity, but the actual existence of aliens/vampires/government conspiracies/mutants keeps getting in the way (as does what seems like an endless stream of autopsies. What did Mulder do before he had a doctor on his team?).

I’m probably in the minority of people who loved The X-Files, in that I do not care about short grey aliens even a tiny bit, and for me the conspiracy stuff was starting to get old even before somebody shoots Deep Throat late in season 1. When it was on TV, I tended to skip around a lot, checking in for a monster of the week but leaving the extraterrestrial stuff alone. Netflix streaming has reminded me that the Scully/Mulder bond is a lot of what’s worth watching here—I’m shocked to find myself literally out-loud “Awwww”ing some of the exchanges when the X-files are (temporarily) closed down but they still can’t stay away from each other.

And, of course, all the classics are still there: the vampires, the scary clones, Eugene Tooms, Flukeman.

The Verdict: Many of these are much better than I remembered. And it’s still got some of the best theme music ever.

And just for the heck of it, my favorite goofy ‘Files YouTube video:

Might go well with: I find myself wanting to watch this side by side with Eureka. As for food recommendations, some of the episodes preclude food altogether. Yuck.

 

 

 

 

Found-Again Friday: Musical Interlude 1

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I’ve been wanting to shake up the kinds of things I look at on Fridays (Highlander, of course, being a smorgasboard of infinite variety every Monday), but I hesitated to branch out into music. More than TV or movies, I still listen to a lot of the same things I’ve always listened to—I just add more as things are brought to my attention. The Gordon Lightfoot song  I loved when I was ten* is on a mix in my car right now: that’s not very Found-Again, is it?

Still, the idea appeals, so here are some things you could expect to find blaring in my headphones in the early ’90s. (No verdict section required for this one—if I picked ’em, I still like ’em.)

Here’s something a bit nerdy:

I mean it as a very high compliment when I say that nobody yelps and growls like Murray Attaway, whose solo album was stock listening for me for ages:

One of my teenage regrets is that I never got to see these guys live, even though they were from Norfolk:

And 1993 was the year I got a little bit into zydeco.

*Between the folk music and the Goldblum crush, I was exactly as popular as you think I was during my tween years.

Enjoy!

Next time: This part just drags ON and ON Ramirez trains Connor in Monday’s TCBOM! post.

Found-Again Friday: Darby O’Gill and the Little People

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Why Found-Again? I blame Highlander.

Now that I’m reaching the part of that movie dominated by Sean Connery’s Ramirez in my There Can Be Only Monday! posts, it seemed like a good time to think about the Connery movies I remember fondly. I’m not  huge fan*, so that means mostly the Bond films, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and this, which I last saw…well, right about when Highlander was coming out in theaters, as a matter of fact. Part of the predictable holiday cycle of the old ’80s Disney Channel programming, every March I could (and sometimes did!) watch this several times.

The Premise: Darby O’Gill is a bragging old coot who lives in an extended Irish Spring commercial. After the lord of the manor forcibly retires him in favor of Michael MacBride (Connery), Darby accidentally stumbles into a leprechaun ceilidh. He escapes and turns the tables on King Brian of the fairies, holding him hostage for three wishes. In the meantime, his daughter Katie falls in love with MacBride, but not without complications that result in this bit of nightmare fuel:

The Verdict: I fully expected to suffer through this movie all the way, but the thing about these old Disney movies is that they’re only about 70% as twee as you remember them being. I recalled the dancing leprechauns and the shameless caricatures, but this time I found myself genuinely enjoying the relationship between Darby and King Brian, who argue like an old married couple. So it wasn’t so bad.

On the other hand, it certainly is twee. Exhibit A:

 

Might go well with: Beer (lots of beer!), that episode of Looney Toons where Porky Pig runs afoul of the leprechauns.

 

Next time: It’s Connery Row over here as I return to Ramirez in Highlander.

*In fact, by the “have watched complete crap because a specific actor is in it” standard, I may be a bigger fan of Jason Connery. That doesn’t seem right.

Found-Again Friday: Simon & Simon Season 1

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I hesitated about this one, because this show’s theme song is one of the most pernicious earworms ever crafted by humans (according to the credits, “humans” in this case would be The Thrasher Brothers; it’s been a while since I wanted to write a College Bowl question quite this badly). If you turned this into a ringtone, you would either rule the hearing world or be killed by an angry mob. Don’t say I didn’t warn you:

Why Found-Again? This, like all the other shows from Matt Houston to Riptide, was on at my house a lot when I was young. Mom had a thing for Gerald McRaney. I…did not.

The Premise: Bickering brothers Rick and A.J. Simon (McRaney and Jameson Parker, respectively) run a little detective agency in San Diego that seems to function as a remora attached to the bigger firm across the street. Rick is the shady one; A.J. is the uptight one who for some reason has a red lining in his blazer. As with its cousin Magnum, P.I., the show’s setting itself is often practically a character.

As I revisit the detective/crime shows of my youth and otherwise, it’s interesting to see how much or how little one knows about the characters’ lives: one of my favorite things about classic Law & Order was teasing out the little details about Lenny Briscoe or McCoy/Kincaid as they were dropped in the middle of the real business of the episode. Simon & Simon takes it to the other extreme and lays on a thick layer of back story: the Simons tease each other about childhood incessantly, their mother makes regular appearances, etc. To return to the Magnum comparison, it’s almost as if someone thought internal monologues would be so much  better if only you had someone to talk to.

The Verdict: Mixed. They won’t be playing it for the damned souls in hell or anything, but you’d have to be pretty bored to seek this out. (If you are, however, full episodes seem to be available on YouTube.)

Might go well with: Tacos. But then again, what doesn’t?

 

 

Found-Again Friday: Danger Mouse

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This British cartoon about a super-spy rodent didn’t come to my TV until the mid-1980s, by which time I’d already seen my first two James Bond movies (both of them Roger Moores, in case you wondered why I have his autobiography; I was marked at a young age). I’ve often wondered what the show is like for people who saw those things in a more age-appropriate order, since Danger Mouse may be one of the first things I ever recognized as parody.

Why Found-Again? Because even the most puerile grownup—I grant that I may crack a top 500 list in this regard—can only stomach so much punnery at a time, and once the DVDs are in, I refuse to turn them off in the entertainment equivalent of eating the whole bag of chips.

The Premise: The world’s greatest secret agent is a little white mouse with an eyepatch who lives in a mailbox. His assistant is a nervous hamster with glasses and a suit. Together they take on foes natural and un-, including evil toad (but I repeat myself) Baron Silas Greenback and a pre-vegetarianism Count Duckula, saving the world one odd adventure at a time.

For something like this, it might work better if I just list my top 3 episodes, in no particular order:

  • “Who Stole the Bagpipes?”—Dangermouse and his not-very-musical assistant Penfold investigate bagpipe theft…and as the bagpipes in question are wheezy, plaid grazing creatures, it gets a little odd.
  • “The Duel”—Dangermouse enters a contest with supervillain Baron Greenback; if the mouse wins, Greenback promises to give up villainy. Yeah, that’ll happen.
  • “One of Our Stately Homes Is Missing”—in which we learn what DM did before he met Penfold, and about his very unusual piloting ability.

And then there’s the theme song:

 

The Verdict: Interestingly, the DVDs have made it a little harder for me to rewatch these by restoring them to their original British glory; when I was a kid, some of the transition between episodes was obviated, and Stiletto the hench-crow had a Cockney accent, not Italian. So it’s not quite as I remember it. It is still gloriously silly, though, which is good, because so am I.

Might go well with:  Tea, anything you ate as a giddy eight-year-old.

Next time: In all likelihood, a shorter-than-usual Highlander post.

 

Found-Again At-Last Friday: Flashdance

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You may have gathered from past ruminations on murder shows and evil cartoon cobras that I was not particularly censored in my viewing as a child, and you’d be right. (That doesn’t mean I ran wild: in the days of network TV, just having a child-sized bedtime prevented you from seeing a lot of things—and when Mom figured out those things included The Twilight Zone, I got a dispensation for that, too.)

In fact, the only thing I remember anyone specifically not wanting me to watch was 1983’s Flashdance, and given that one of my parents would later painstakingly explain the “dickless” joke from Ghostbusters on the way back from the theater, it may have been less about censorship and more about being unwilling to take on the annotation.

Happily, Netflix has offered Flashdance on streaming, so I spent part of New Year’s Eve remedying a years-old gap in my education.

The Premise: Spunky, insecure Alex (Jennifer Beals in the role that made her famous) welds by day, dances at the world’s coolest strip club by night, and dreams of being a professional dancer. Also, she has an adorable dog.

Flashdance is one of those movies people know from the pop-cultural collective unconscious even if they’ve never seen it: the off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, the bucket of water splashing down, the dance moves, the amazing soundtrack. What I hadn’t realized was how pretty the movie would be, though it’s no surprise with Adrian Lyne as director. Even the steel mills have a faint halo, buildings are lovingly filmed, and the scene where Alex panics in the dance academy has her moving through practicing dancers who threaten to engulf her like the clockworks of some gorgeous, terrible machine. Even the strip-club scenes (a club where none of the dancers ever completely denudes, and where elaborate costumes and themed dance routines are allowed to flourish) resemble early music videos.

None of that completely disguises the fact that Flashdance is a basic triumph-of-the-underdog movie with a bit of bildungsroman and fairy tale thrown in, but it does help the movie rise above that. To my surprise, this isn’t leaving my streaming list anytime soon.

The Verdict: An emphatic yes. I wish I’d made an effort to see this a lot sooner.

Might go well with: Rocky, Amélie, but probably not lobster.

 

Next time: How do you solve a problem like Maria Connor MacLeod?