Yesterday's Pop Culture. Today's Attitude.

Monday, 21 September 2009

  • "Inglourious Basterds" and the Tarantino Mix-Tape

    If you'll pardon my doing so, I'd like to start things off today on a bit of a proactive note. Namely, if you haven't seen Inglourious Basterds yet, please take the time to do so. Not for my sake, of course. I've seen it twice, once squeezed between a pair of frightfully squeamish women, and I suppose it wouldn't be the worse thing in the world if you'd read this without really knowing what I was talking about. Still, being able to bond over a shared experience is what seperates us from the chimps.

    Or do they do that too? Regardless, I'm pretty sure shameless bat-wielding Nazi killers never come up in conversation during daily poo-flinging sessions. Then again, according to a spur-of-the-moment Wikipedia search, chimps and orangutans do show laughterlike vocalizations in response to certain stimuli -- so if they were to watch Inglourious Basterds, they'd probably enjoy it. How's that for a thesis?

    Anyway, more to the point. Those of us who've seen the picture can now revel in our butter-flavoured recollections. Evil Nazis! German starlets! The basement shootout! Hugo Stiglitz! And all of it accompanied by a truly ecclectic collection of song and score snippets, from old '70s Blaxploitation theme songs (no kidding) to David Bowie (no kidding.)

    Asked why he wouldn't just hire an established band to record some songs for the film or, you know, a film composer to score the piece, Tarantino said: "I hate that crap. It would've been easy to hire some artist to do the 'Ballad of Shoshanna,' and it could be telling her story in a very on-point, nail-on-the-head kind of way." Instead, the director chose the old David Bowie tune "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)," a song recorded back in 1981 with Giorgio Moroder, to accompany perhaps the most arresting visual of the entire film. Forget the scalping, the gun play, and the pummellings; it's when beautiful Melanie Laurent, playing Shosanna, peers through the upstairs window of her modest movie theatre at a league of top-ranking Nazi officials -- and the opening licks of "Cat People" kick in -- that the film enters a truly mystical plane.

    It's not just a bunch of actors dressed as Nazis. And it's not just another David Bowie song. It's that chill-inducing line "Still this pulsing night, A plague I call a heartbeat"; the leviathan Swastika banners floating down from the ceiling; the three hundred cans of nitrate film ready to detonate backstage. And the knowledge that the fate of the free world, at least in this fictionalized version of history, depends upon the outcome of this night.

    "You're actually shocked at how well the lyrics to 'Cat People' work to [Shosanna's] story," Tarantino said during an interview at Amoeba Music in Hollywood. "I'm looking for that stuff that you haven't heard a gazillion times before. It's kind of a personal mix-tape that I'm making for you. I like the amateur quality about it."

Sunday, 20 September 2009

  • TMNT Volume One's "The Passing"

    Never one to oppose frivolous impulse spending, your dear author has never had any qualms about, say, dropping $40 for a stuffed Jason Voorhees doll. Or $70 for a horrendously overpriced Shock Suspen-Stories Volume 2. Or about a week's paycheque for the entire HBO Tales From the Crypt DVD collection, which is still buried under a ton and a half of packing peanuts at the time of this writing. And while some of my esteemed colleagues may say that I'm otherwise missing a few teeth off the main sprocket, what with all the currency I've thrown down the tubes over the last few years, I remain quietly unphased. Spending money on useless crap makes me feel good. And it makes me a good little drudge in the eyes of our vicious consumer culture overlords.

    So getting royally screwed while purchasing a twenty-year-old Ninja Turtles comic? Hardly something to lose sleep over. Granted, I probably could've gotten the same issue for a dollar or so off Ebay with little to no effort. But I would've had to pay for shipping -- which, I admit, wouldn't have cost more than a couple of bucks at most. But then again, I would've had to wait a week or two for the thing to arrive. Which would have taken considerably less time if I'd opted for Expedited Shipping. Which I usually do. So, uhh...Yeah. I got screwed.

    But it's a good kind of 'screwed.' You know, the kind that makes you sort of regret being taken advantage of in the most basic and vile way, but still pretty pleased with the resulting aftermath. Not unlike that time you were drunk and in college, and there was that one attractive freshman with the neat Ramses tattoo under her left...

    Knee.

    Ha. Anyhow, fifteen bucks for the above mentioned issue. (Which, incidentally, is what I paid Ms. Ramses. True story.) To the best of my knowledge, no individual in recorded history has ever spent more than $4 for TMNT #9, and with a two-decade old sticker price of $1.50, I'm pretty sure that means Pendragon Comics charged me 1000% more than they had any right to.

    But I digress. Fifteen bucks spent on Ninja Turtles is fifteen bucks well spent in my book, and "The Passing" is one of those great TMNT issues from back when the franchise (if you could even call it that) was just getting on its feet. This was 1986; no cartoon, no action figures, and no feature films. Just a whole bunch of gritty, quirky tales written in classic Eastman and Laird fashion, beautifully rendered in eye-catching black and white.

    Now while TMNT #9 isn't the strongest issue in terms of visuals and layout -- some of the panels do seem a little weak compared those in previous issues -- the storyline is class. The book opens with a harrowing samurai battle in pre-industrial Japan, where we find a young Asian man lost amidst the chaos looking quite peculiar in his NYU t-shirt and matching boxer shorts. The helpless time traveller spies a legion of flag-toting warriors just before he awakes in his bed in present day New York City, screaming bloody murder. It seems his dreams have been haunted lately by this recurring vision of battle in a faraway land.

    Cut across town to what we learn are the "Pre-Teenage" Mutant Ninja Turtles, who are busy practicing their fight techniques under the watchful gaze of Master Splinter. The grizzled old rat chastises Donatello for his weak blocking thrusts and then scuttles off to meditate, where he feels "a presence on the astral plane" -- sort of like gaydar, I assume, only more mystical. With a little effort, Splinter manages to make contact with an elderly Japanese man who, lying sick in his death bed, has been reaching out spiritually to anyone who might be listening.

    The old man explains that the spirit force of the great Gosei samurai clan has been passed down from father to son throughout time. Now it's his time to pass it along to his son, Kenji, but he lives in New York City and has turned to evil, heading up the notorious Goseico, Inc. crime syndicate and doing all sorts of nasty wheelings and dealings. The man hopes instead to pass the spirit force on to his grandson, before he too is swept up in a life of crime and the bushido spirit of their ancient clan is lost forever.

    So Splinter and the old man switch bodies -- easy peasy lemon squeezy -- and Hatsumi, in his temporary rodent avatar, hurries downtown to find his grandson and bestow upon him the way of the warrior. Accompanied by a quartet of young terrapin ninjas, natch.

    How does it all turn out? Does the grandson finally accept his ancestor's spirits? Do the turtles beat up a bunch of gun-toting ninja guards? Does the old Japanese fart die happily ever after? You'll have to drop $15 on your very own overpriced copy of "The Passing" to find out -- or $40 on the new collected book, which includes the story in question.

    Or, you know, read the entire issue online. Whatever.

Retro Showcase

 
Homicidal big rigs, rednecks, Stephen King. Say to hello to Maximum Overdrive!
 
 
Rocky VI is released. All fingers point to the main culprit.
 
 
An arcade game based on 1994's Street Fighter using graphics from Mortal Kombat. Let's hear it for bad ideas.
 
 
We return to 1984 to explore the first ever appearance of the Ninja Turtles -- TMNT #1.
 
 
We guarantee this is one Super Mario game you've NEVER heard of.

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