Captain Blood!

(Alex Raymond)

I don't think there has ever been a movie star with the allure and romance of Errol Flynn save perhaps for his predecessor Rudolph Valentino. He was dashing, handsome, and communicated a sense of devil-may-care that illuminated any room he walked into. 

Errol Flynn might well have been the greatest "movie star" ever. Of course, part of that fame is really the infamy of his personal life which is the very stuff of Hollywood legend. This movie is also the breakout for Olvia De Haviland, and she and Flynn had crazy chemistry on the big screen. Lionel Atwill plays a baddie in this jaunt, and I love Atwill in anything. 

This story from Rafael Sabatini's 1922 novel Captain Blood is a simple but tragic one. Peter Blood is a doctor who gets swept up in the political strife of his country when he's falsely accused of being a rebel against James I of England. His punishment is to be made a slave and sent to be sold as such. He is forced to serve as a slave for some time though his skills as a doctor give him elevated status. Nevertheless, when a Spanish warship is overtaken, it creates the opportunity for Blood to become a daring and dashing pirate with intentions of revenge on those who imprisoned him. This movie also sets up a clash between Flynn's Blood and Basil Rathbone's pirate Levasseur. It would prove to be the template for more such clashes. 

Captain Blood was Flynn's debut movie as a leading man in 1935, and a magnificent one it was. The character of Peter Blood as portrayed by Flynn is at once noble and selfish. Blood is a great vehicle for the viewer into the battle for freedom. He just wants to be left alone, but he is drawn into the war because of his noble ethics and finds no one in leadership possessing any ethics. He is what we'd call today radicalized by his imprisonment and harsh treatment. In our real world, the current savage conflict in the Gaza Strip will almost certainly have created lifelong enemies for the state of Israel. Certainly, villains exist and must be dealt with, but just as doubtless men are made enemies by what they see around them. Injustice is blind to a flag -- any flag. 

This is a must-see classic. More derring-do when The Sea Hawk docks later this week.    

Rip Off

Superman And Bugs Bunny!

What an absolutely delightful comic book is Superman and Bugs Bunny is. I eagerly collected up the original four-part series by Mark Evanier and artist Joe Staton when it first came out (gasp) over twenty years ago now. But having it in all in a beautiful 100-page package with its striking Steve Rude cover is exceedingly cool. I'm a Joe Staton fan and will glom onto any project he's a part of most of the time, but this one was ideal for his particular skills. He's a dandy artist who is able to sit inside the confines of the superhero universes and also produce delightful broader more bigfooted artwork. This project was the perfect vehicle for his talents. Aided by inkers Tom Palmer and Mike DeCarlo (who are listed as finishers on this project) the two took Staton's art and make it at once distinctive but still cohesive, no small challenge when working with characters which are so divergent as these.

The series is actually a crossover (when crossovers were king) between the myriad characters of the Looney Tunes universe and the stalwarts of the Justice League of America. When this was produced, the League was comprised of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Flash (Wally West), Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner), Green Arrow (Connor Hawke), Aquaman (with a hook), Plastic Man, and Martian Manhunter. It's a visual feast but aside from that it's a really funny comic book. I don't always laugh when I read "funny" comics, but I did when I read this one again after all these years.  Evanier does a grand job of capturing the lines and cadences of the Looney Tuners to a tee and that plays off the rather more stern JLAers perfectly. The scenes with Green Arrow and the singing Frog that won't are invariably hilarious.

You owe it to yourself to get this one if you can dig it up out of the back issue boxes. This is one crossover that is an absolute delight.

NOTE: This is a Revised Dojo Classic Post. 

Rip Off

Marvin The Martian!

Has there ever been a more adorable Martian than Marvin. Despite the obvious fact he has a mission on most days to destroy the Earth, his haplessness in that relentless effort makes us root for him nonetheless. In a universe in which coyotes defy gravity and ducks can be blasted over and over again with shotguns, it's not much of a worry when a little Martian wants to blast us all to kingdom come. 

The first cartoon on this dvd is Bugs Bunny's Lunar Tunes and it's a 90's mash-up of several of the classic Looney Tunes cartoons showing Bugs and Marvin among many other things. The premise that Earth is being put on trial with Marvin as the "Persecutor" and Bugs for the defense. The trial features new animation in the linking segments with elements of vintage Marvin bits from across the decades. It's pretty funny but not as good as the real stuff. Fortunately the second part of this dvd Marvin Martian Space Tunes gives the viewer the genuine articles. The classic Marvin cartoons are all here and a few from the 1980's as well, along with a few other bits of Looney Tunes wonderment. 

The Marvin character is unnamed in his debut in 1948's "Haredevil Hare" in which Bugs Bunny first defends the Earth from his schemes to blow it up. His ally "K-9" is named oddly enough. 

He returns in 1952's "The Hasty Hare" in which he and K-9 come to Earth to get a sample Earthling and pick Bugs as a likely candidate. Needless to say, it doesn't go well for the still unnamed Marvin. 

One of my favorites is 1953's "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century" in which the titular Duck Dodgers and his space cadet Porky Pig go to a distant planet to claim it for Earth but are in competition with Marvin for said planet. As usual explosions occur. This is a properly celebrated cartoon which always works. 

1958's "Hare-Way to the Stars" features Bugs as he unwittingly boards a rocket to a space station where he finds Marvin attempting to yet again blow up the Earth. Bugs steals his "Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator" and is chased by instant "Martians" hit with water and who spring to full size. (These Martians remind me of Stanley Weinbaum's "Tweel" from his famous story "A Martain Odyssey".)

Marvin's final theater appearance was in 1963 in "Mad as a Mars Hare" in which once again Bugs is sent by rocket ship to the Martian's outpost on Mars where he tries to stake a claim and Marvin takes issue ultimately changing Bugs into a Neanderthal bunny, much to his regret. 

Marvin turns up on TV in a Bugs cartoon called "Spaced Out Bunny" in which our hapless Martian ends up a toy for Hugo the Abominable Snowman. This 1980's offering is clever but not really funny. 

Marvin also turns up that same year in the sequel "Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2 Century" which pretty much follows the pattern of the original theater version but with less verve and energy. 

There are a few more cartoons in this collection not having to do with Marvin and the best of them is 1956's "Rocket Bye Baby" about a mistake which switches Earth and Mars babies for some hapless couples. This is a funny cartoon.

All the Marvin the Martian cartoons are funny, but the early ones are hilarious! Marvin is the perfect foil for Bugs Bunny, an officious dweeb who represents way too many in modern life. They need a trickster to bring them low, for the good of us all. 

Rip Of

The Fountainhead!

The philosophy that came to dominate the work of Steve Ditko was that of Objectivism. It celebrated reason over emotion and self-interest over philanthropy. Much of the philosophy is a convenient dodge for modern hucksters, mostly politicians as they find its reverence for raw capitalism a nifty way to justify policies which increasingly focus wealth into a smaller and smaller pool. It offers those afflicted with avarice a noble excuse from having to worry about the impoverished as they are conveniently labeled as lazy moochers, and so responsible for their own situations. It's a ghastly mindset that has taken hold in the United States and has demolished the middle class which fueled the most potent economy the world has seen. Now to his credit, Ditko abided by a more thorough understanding of Objectivism, even those aspects which might've hurt his immediate and long-term interests because he desired apparently above all things to be consistent. 

This philosophy was promulgated by the author Ayn Rand and she did it most effectively and famously in her first novel The Fountainhead which was made into a sleek and handsome Warner Brothers movie starring Gary Cooper, Raymond Massey, and Patricia Neal among others. (Note: I've never read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead -- have tried but can never make much progress alas.) 

The story is of an inhumanely confident architect named Howard Roark who demands that his clients build according to his worldview and plans regardless of their whims because by hiring him they are submitting to his vision as an artist. As played by the somber Cooper, he is a utterly rigid and somewhat taciturn man who destroys a project which was not built according to his specifications. The fact he didn't actually own the real property the project was built upon, nor pay for the materials with which it was constructed, nor actually officially take credit for the building of it, seems to have not been a worry to the puritanical desire to see only his imagination on display. 

Both Cooper and Patricia Neal play their parts like statues come to life, ideal physical people who toy with one another in a gamesmanship of a romance which seems more like an battle between two water buffalos than a courting between people. In his trial he makes a potent speech which outlines much of the Objectivist mindset. And that's the problem with this flick, with a screenplay written by Rand herself and with a contract that forbid changes we get torpid conversations and speeches that rattle along with some clarity but never with a whisper of emotion. Cooper and Neal both say "Fuck Me Now!" with their eyes, but they never come close to saying anything so powerful with their mouths. 

Steve Ditko pursued much the same game plan with many of his later projects beginning in the 1960's. Some have a dash of the theories thrown into stories filled with action and drama, while some stories grind to a grisly and often boring halt as multiple characters expound seemingly ceaselessly on the ideas in question. The fusion between words and pictures deserts Ditko in the worst cases of these screeds and the reader gets bogged down in a comic page from which there seems no escape. 

Rip Off