Tag Archives: wplongform

The Last Stand of the Drive-In Theater: Upgrade or Perish

September 16, 2013 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 80 Comments
Tibbs Drive-In, Indianapolis

The drive-in nearest our house is the Tibbs, still standing after 46 years. For now. (Photo from our 2008 personal archives. To date I’ve seen only two of these timeless non-classics…)

In my early childhood years, I had only two options for seeing movies: squinting at them on my family’s thirteen-inch black-‘n’-white TV (and I was rarely allowed to choose what channels we watched); or seeing them writ large on the giant-sized, outdoor screen down at the drive-in theater. In a world where limited technology narrowed our choices, this competition was a no-brainer to me.

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My Super Awesome Blockbuster Reboot of “E.T.”

September 12, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Those eyes are pretty in the right light, but the rest of this will have to go.

February 2014 will see The Killing‘s Joel Kinnaman taking over for Peter Weller as the new Robocop. This fall Ironside returns to TV with Blair Underwood somehow replacing Raymond Burr. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the Lone Ranger, and the Green Hornet are but a few of the myriad characters to return from pop-culture limbo in overhauled guises. And this is the sentence I had set aside for DC Comics if I could narrow the possible examples down to less than four hundred.

At the rate our entertainment recyclers are plowing through their back catalogs, every intellectual property from the last fifty years will have been remade and/or rebooted before I’m fifty. Even if 90% of them flop, every producer, editor, or writer will convince themselves their attempt will be different from all the rest because they truly believe in themselves, if not their work. Maybe 10% of them will hit the jackpot, reap the rewards, and retire at forty.

Sounds like a sweet deal to me, even though I’m running dozens of laps behind the competition. If I’m to win, I need to move now. That’s why I’m calling dibs on E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial. It’s not taken, right? Excellent.

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“Man of Steel”: a Farewell to Role Modeling

June 16, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Henry Cavill, Superman, Man of SteelIn Part One of this two-part non-epic, I covered what I liked best about Man of Steel, the new Superman treatment from director Zack Snyder, producer Christopher Nolan, and screenwriter David S. Goyer. As I mentioned there, despite the team’s successes on numerous fronts, I thought the film had room for improvement.

Those examples require a courtesy spoiler alert because a few of my complaints happen toward the film’s back end and involve major plot points. If you plan to see it pristine and unspoiled for yourself, abandon the reading trail here, and I look forward to seeing you next time.

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Onward, then, to what I liked least:

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Someone Please Resolve the “Geek”/”Nerd” Semantic Rivalry Before We Start Stabbing Each Other Over It

June 7, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Chris Hardwick, The Nerdist Way

This book came close to changing my mind. So, so close.

The following entry is unapologetically subjective, will be unhelpful to most readers, and represents no definitive settlement of the matter for anyone except possibly myself, and I may even be wrong about that. Though I’m codifying my stance for the sake of never having to revisit this topic again if I can help it, I nonetheless reserve the privilege to change my mind without notice as time gallops forward, life experiences continue accumulating, and the aging process turns me either mellower or more crotchety than ever. I haven’t decided which road to take yet.

(Yes, that’s me front-loading the piece with an unwieldy headline and a nearly irrelevant disclaimer. If I were a film director, I clearly wouldn’t be the breed that insists Act 1, Scene 1 must be all about exploding cars. Between those and this bonus meta-parenthetical, I hereby declare the tone Properly Set.)

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“Revolution” 6/3/2013 (spoilers): Charlie vs. the Deadly Depths of Level 12

June 4, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

David Lyons, President Monroe, Revolution, NBCAfter an opening montage of moments from the first nineteen episodes set to the tune of “Can’t Find My Way Home”, at long last begins the Revolution season-one finale, “The Dark Tower” (not the first time they’ve referenced Stephen King). When last we left, Monroe Republic President Sebastian “Bass” Monroe and former best friend Miles Matheson were facing off inside the tower with coilguns at twenty paces. Will this be the duel to end all duels? Here in the first minute of the episode?

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A Perplexing Day with Commercial Radio, My Longtime Recurring Nemesis

May 24, 2013 By in Indiana, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

107.9, Indianapolis radioYou know something’s afoot when you turn on the shower radio at 6:45 a.m. and hear Anne Murray crooning “O Come, All Ye Faithful”. Or maybe it was Julie Andrews.

I spend a minute or so trying to name the singer, ignoring for a moment that the radio was celebrating Christmas in May. The guessing game ends when the mystery diva is succeeded by Wham!’s “Last Christmas”, for which I have no use even in December. Somewhere in Indianapolis, either a DJ is greatly amusing himself, listener requests have taken a bizarre turn in the hands of joyous off-season mob rule, or Skynet is taking over the airwaves as part of a truly twisted master plan and doing a terrible job of acting naturally.

I’m not a morning person and my brain isn’t a morning organ. The confusion sown by my early-morning background noise inspires my brain to awaken more quickly than usual. Now it has a mystery to solve.

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The Fable of Why This Blog is C2E2’s Fault

May 9, 2013 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Midlife Crisis Crossover, Randall A. Golden

Portrait of the would-be writer at C2E2 2012. Appropriate soundtrack: the theme from Laverne & Shirley.

Once upon a time there was a guy from Indiana who wrote a lot in college, took classes for it, thought that majoring in a related field would be the right choice, dropped out without credentials, stopped writing, but never stopped reading or wishing he would make time to think of reasons to write.

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