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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Alexandre/Alexander

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Alexandre/Alexander

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William Shatner in Alexander the Great (USA, 1968)

To explain the title: this week we’re covering a lesser-known version of Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers, plus a movie about Alexander the Great. If this seems like a weak pretext for a Cinema of Swords article theme, you’re right — mea culpa, it’s a fair cop, I’m busted. The fact is, I was desperate for an excuse to bring you a review of an obscure adventure film about Alexander the Great that stars — wait for it — none other than William Shatner and Adam West!

But we’ll start with the other Alexandre, a French Three Musketeers from the mid-Fifties, preceded by Fanfan la Tulipe, the hit film that brought swashbucklers back to the French cinema. However, if you feel the need to skip ahead to the Shatner flick, hey, this is the internet, no one’s looking.

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What I’m Streaming – May 2022

What I’m Streaming – May 2022

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Man – last week I realized how many good shows I’m streaming these days. Not too long ago I wrote this post about shows you should be streaming. And with almost no overlap (Bosch), I realized I could write one on the things I’m watching now.

You can click on this link to go to last week’s post, which included my thoughts on Halo, Outer Range, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Picard: With a little more on one of those today. But let’s look at even more!

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Goth Chick News: When God and Satan Came to Earth as Cats

Goth Chick News: When God and Satan Came to Earth as Cats

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This might be the best news I’ve heard since Michael Bay dropped his idea to remake The Birds.

If you’re not already familiar with The Oatmeal, it’s a webcomic and humor site created in 2009 by cartoonist Matthew Inman. Inman posts original comics, quizzes, and occasional articles, most of which make me laugh outload, and occasionally snort my beverage out my nostrils. As someone who deliberately and desperately avoided parenthood, one of my all-time favorites is Having a Baby vs. Having a Cat which contains the immortal line, “Babies come shrieking into this world as selfish, amniotic, jam-covered goblins; whereas cats come into this world as kittens, which are independent, adorable, and not at all goblin-like.”

Genius.

But Inman has also produced a series of related books and games, one of which is a card game called Exploding Kittens. Originally proposed as a Kickstarter project seeking $10,000 in crowdfunding, it exceeded the goal in eight minutes, and on January 27, 2015, seven days after opening, it passed 103,000 backers setting the record for the most backers in Kickstarter history. When the Exploding Kittens campaign closed on February 19, 2015, it had $8,782,571 in pledges, contributed by 219,382 backers.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Barbarian Boom, Part 5

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Barbarian Boom, Part 5

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Red Sonja (1985)

The Barbarian Boom has now arrived at 1985, the trough at the low point of the arc, the rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel. What can I say? These are stinkers. At least the first two, Lost Kingdom and the notorious Red Sonja, have got parts that are so jaw-droppingly dumb that you can have fun pointing at them and hooting. However, Barbarian Queen is a movie that genuinely offends Your Cheerful Editor, which isn’t easy to do. Ugh. As always, your mileage may vary, but I don’t think anyone can champion these particular movies as genuinely good. Fortunately, the only direction from this nadir is up, as the fantasy genre slowly climbs toward the quality and respectability it will reach in, oh, fifteen years with the Peter Jackson Tolkien films.

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What I’m Watching – April 2022

What I’m Watching – April 2022

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Outer Range

A couple weeks ago, I did a post on the marvelous, no longer with us, Terry Pratchett. That included a British miniseries for The Color of Magic, which freely adapted parts from the first three novels. Starring Sean Astin and Tim Curry, I liked it.

Then last week, I did an in-depth look at three USA Network shows which I liked, from the glory years. Monk, Psych, and Burn Notice. So, while I’m in this kind of mood, figured I’d talk about some of the stuff I’m streaming/watching lately as well. I don’t actually watch ANY network television any more. I think Moms was the last show I tuned in to. I did like The Unicorn, with the amazingly talented Wilton Goggins (Justified), but just sort of drifted away from that. I do want to get back on board with Nathan Fillion’s The Rookie.

Oh well – between Prime, current streaming shows, and my DVD collection (it’s always Bogie time!), don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

This is an Amazon Original, dropping episodes weekly. It stars Josh Brolin. I’m a fan of both him and his dad – they do rugged SO well. Being a Robert E. Howard fan, I’m familiar with the Weird Western sub-genre. And this one is also a crime show – sort of. Six of eight episodes have dropped.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Sink Me! Scarlet Pimpernels!

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Sink Me! Scarlet Pimpernels!

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The Scarlet Pimpernel (UK, 1934)

The Baroness Orczy (1865-1947) – but really, we must give her her full name: Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi – no wonder they called her “Emmuska” for short – was a Hungarian noble by birth whose family left Hungary after her father’s farm was burned by rioting peasantry. Which may have had something to do with her later decision to write about the persecution of aristocrats during the French Revolution.

One day in 1903 the image of Sir Percy Blakeney appeared, fully formed, in Emma Orczy’s mind’s eye, and she knew she was seeing the protagonist of her next novel. She wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in five weeks and sent it out with high hopes, but a dozen publishers turned it down. With her husband’s collaboration she crafted a version of the story for the stage and found a company willing to produce it. After a slow start the play took off and became a huge success, after which selling the novel was suddenly easy.

Sequel followed sequel for the next thirty-plus years, and over more than a dozen novels and collections the dashing Scarlet Pimpernel probably saved more aristocrats from Mam’zelle Guillotine than were actually executed in the historically brief period of The Terror. But the Baroness wasn’t a historian, she was a storyteller – and few storytellers have created a character as indelible as Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel. Or one more perfect for translation to the silver screen.

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When USA was Kicking the Major Networks’ Collective Butts!

When USA was Kicking the Major Networks’ Collective Butts!

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In the early 2000’s, for about a decade and-a-half, USA Network was cranking out quality shows. For some programming, they were a viable competitor to the big four. In those pre-streaming days, I faithfully watched each week. And in the past year, I’ve discovered a couple I didn’t watch the first time around. I decided it’s time to talk about a few of them. So here’s the first of a two-parter, looking at some of those great USA Network shows.

MONK (2002 – 2009)

How have I never written a stand-alone about Monk for Black Gate? That needs to be rectified in 2022! This is the show that put USA on the original programming map. Tony Shaloub’s defective detective just grew in popularity each season. The series finale, when aired, had the highest rating of any hour-long drama series on basic cable.

Shaloub is Adrian Monk – formerly a brilliant detective for the San Francisco Police Department. He was a bit obsessive-compulsive, but it was manageable. Barely. But then his wife, Trudy, is killed by a car bomb, and his OCD goes extreme. He ends up discharged by the police department. He can’t solve the murder, and it eats at him. He can’t do what he’s best at, to fix the biggest issue in his life.

His former partner, Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, is now chief of police, and he occasionally hires Monk to consult on tough cases. Lieutenant Randy Disher is his right hand. Stottlemeyer is competent, and Disher is brave; but they’re not brilliant. That’s where Monk comes in.

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Louis Weinberger – Writer of Into the Devil’s Reach

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Louis Weinberger – Writer of Into the Devil’s Reach

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We here at Goth Chick News never fail to be impressed by indie filmmakers. It takes an incredible amount of patience and tenacity to bring a story to life on screen without the backing (and funding) of a major production house. That’s why whenever we have a chance to give you a view behind the scenes of an indie film, we’re all too excited to do so.

Back in December we had the pleasure of meeting Louis Weinberger whose story Into the Devil’s Reach made the impressive jump from novel to indie film. Weinberger is a local Chicago-area writer whose primary focus is scripts. However, when two of his ideas were just too good to wait on the right film project, he combined them into a novel which was published by RedRob in 2014.

We had to know more and here to explain it all is Louis Weinberger.

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Talking Terry Pratchett

Talking Terry Pratchett

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It’s always a good time to talk about Terry Pratchett! He was, simply, brilliant. Pratchett, who passed away in 2015 from Alzheimer’s, wrote the terrific fantasy series, Discworld. He gets my vote as one of the great satirists of our time. And he used classical fantasy tropes to do it! Did I mention, ‘brilliant’?

I re-read (and listen to) Pratchett books throughout the year. I got in the mood again recently, and did a mini-binge. Discworld is fantasy world, with the entertainingly horrible city of Ankh-Morpork at its center. Parody, homage, satire – they are fantastic books. Pratchett pokes fun at our world (especially, society) though these books. If you Google search, ‘Terry Pratchett quotes.’ you will get some absolutely terrific ones. Most are from his books, but real-life ones can be pretty hilarious, too. The man was just incredibly funny. Add in being very observant, and a good writer, and you have the ingredients of a great author.

JINGO

It started when I decided to listen to a Pratchett audio book during the work day last week. I’ve read the series a couple times, and I can miss a bit here and there as I work. Jingo is one of the City Watch books. There are several ‘sub-series’ in the Discworld series, involving central characters. My favorite is the one with Sam Vimes and the City Watch. They are essentially very entertaining police procedurals, in a fantasy world. They’re a blast.

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Goth Chick News: Spirit Halloween Pops Up in Theaters

Goth Chick News: Spirit Halloween Pops Up in Theaters

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When I first received notification of this project, I thought it was a joke.

I’ll assume here, that you’re all familiar with the pop-up Halloween stores which begin appearing in unused retail locations round about August. There’s Halloween City, and Halloween Express, but by far the most prolific of these is Spirit Halloween.

Founded by entrepreneur Joe Marver in 1983, Spirit Halloween made $100k in the first 30 days its first location was open. Over the next 16 years, Marver built Spirit into 60+ locations that were only open in the months leading up to Halloween; August, September, October. In 1999 Spencer’s Gifts acquired Spirit and today there are 1.4k pop-up stores across Canada and the US during “the season.”

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