McReady!

Going to a Movie.....

In 1977, I remember lining up with my family to see Star Wars at Westmount Square. There was nothing like it. The anticipation and electricity in the line-up was palpable. People would gaze at the movie poster as the line slowly moved wondering how a Tie Fighter would look on a big screen. At the concession stand my father complained about the overpriced popcorn and said that charging $3.50 for a small bag of M&Ms was "highway robbery" but, when the lights went down in the theater and the curtains were drawn, all was forgotten.

We saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1984 in Plattsburg New York, Jaws 2 in Times Square, Aliens at The Imperial on Bleury Street and countless other films over the last three decades and the result was always the same: pure escapism for a couple of hours when all the problems and stresses of daily life simply disappeared.

It was not until late 2015 when I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, that I realized that insidiously, out of nowhere, the experience of going to the movies has now become quite irritating.

On December 18, 2015 at precisely 9:30 am, I set out to Colisee Kirkland to see the latest Star Wars installment and found myself almost as excited as I was in 1977. In fact, I do recollect with great joy humming John Williams' infamous score on the way to the theater. The house was packed, filled with movie-goers ripe with expectations and excitement. When the lights finally dimmed at 10 am, hundreds of us were not immediately treated with eye catching trailers for big new films to come. No, instead we were manipulated into doing the one thing that should be considered as blasphemy in a movie theater. We had to pull out our phones and play some ridiculous game on the big screen with the help of an "app" we had downloaded. The entire event felt like sacrilege and lasted at least eight minutes begging the question: don't we go to the movies to get away from the phone?

After then being reminded to then turn off our phones and to not kick the seat in front of us, we were then manipulated into watching a barrage of advertisements and I felt like "Alex" did in the film A Clockwork Orange when he was subjected to the "Ludovico Technique" - a fictional form of aversion therapy where a patient is forced to watch violence until he is sick to prevent him from being violent in the future. We could not leave our seats because we might have missed the opening to a film we had waited years for and the big corporations like Coke, Tylenol and Honda knew it.

When the ads were finally over and the trailers for upcoming films ended, it was 10:30 am and I was exhausted and considered walking out before the film even began. Luckily, the story was simple and easy to follow and I soon forgot all about the trauma it felt like I just experienced: waiting for the movie to start.

I decided to give the experience the benefit of the doubt and just recently went to see Deadpool. The start-time of the film was 1:10 and it did not officially start until 1:28. Why? Cell-phones, apps, games, instructions to the audience, ads, more ads and finally, the movie.

With all these annoyances, one has to wonder: do movie directors and producers really know what happens in a theater before their film plays? Does a comedian want to come on stage and perform in front of an audience that has been angered and annoyed for twenty minutes? That's what going to the movies has become.

Loaded with Heart and Soul, "Creed" Packs a Wallop

Why no, my good sir, I shall decline your offer of a crack pipe. But I'll take dat dere see-ringe!

 I   n 1982, Airplane 2 was released—a sequel to a spoof movie mocking everything from terrorists to just about every other disaster movie ever made—and movie goers were fairly accustomed to getting ripped off at the box office by the same movie being made over and over again. Rocky III had just been released, which Airplane 2 poked fun at hinting there would be a Rocky 38 which would star none other than Rocky Balboa donning boxing gloves as an old man, ready to make a few more bucks. 

It was pretty much accepted at that time that the first Rocky (made in 1976) was quite good and that the sequels were more or less a money-making scheme that audiences still got a kick out of even though they were considered weak films by most. All this to say that nobody in their right mind would have ever predicted that whenever a Rocky 7 would be released, it would be any good.

Creed essentially tells a story about the illegitimate son Apollo Creed (Rocky Balboa's nemsis in the first 2 Rocky films) had during an affair: Adonis "Donnie" Johnson. 

Adonis is a successful businessman living in California by day, but, in his spare time has a raw obsession with boxing watching old films of his dad's greatest fights and taking on blood matches in the bowels of Mexico's sleazy boxing rings. Michael B. Jordan does a fabulous job bringing a palpable intensity to "Donnie" and the audience can identify with his pain and his many conflicts, just as we did with Rocky Balboa in Rocky forty years ago. 

"Donnie" decides to quit his job to pursue a real boxing career and he seeks none other than the Italian Stallion (Rocky—Sly Stallone) to train him. 

Surprisingly enough, Stallone does a great job acting alongside rising star Johnson and the two have real chemistry together. 

Along for the ride is "Bianca", Donnie's love interest, a singer/song-writer who is slowly becoming deaf. She too is a sympathetic character beautifully played by Tessa Thompson who the audience can easily root for.

Every character in Creed is severely troubled. Rocky has cancer, Donnie has many moral conflicts, his girlfriend is going deaf, Donnie's final boxing opponent—the champion of the world, Ricky Conlan—is about to go to prison for breaking the law, and they are all brought together in an exciting, at times beautifully-shot film that is so full of guts and heart that it is difficult to even fathom that this is Rocky 7.

Donnie's first big fight is shot in one long take that lasts at least 5 minutes, making the viewer dizzy, much like a real fighter must feel like as he's getting pounded around. Creed's musical score cleverly adapts Bill Conti's famous notes to Bianca's songs giving the movie an organic boost, and the streets of Philadelphia—where much of Donnie's training takes place—have never looked so raw and pure.

This is not a typical Rocky sequel where Stallone wins in the end during a comical climax. Instead, Creed takes chances and is very difficult to ignore and even gives hope to even the most cynical movie-goers that perhaps Hollywood sequels can be good after all. —Dane Joe

Went To See Ridley But Bumped Into Roland

Must . . . find . .  the terrorists . . .

 T   here's no escaping it: when we go to the movies these days, we have certain expectations. Some directors deliver one kind of movie and others just make films to break box office records. Take Rambo, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla (1998 or 2014) and you have formulaic crowd-pleasers and about 1 billion dollars in profits. Take Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator and you've got two of the best science fiction films of all time and an Oscar winner. Simply put, with this in mind, I went to see The Martian expecting a Ridley Scott movie. Was I being unreasonable?

On Mars, a thirty-day mission is cut short due a terrible storm and the crew of the Ares 3 is forced to vacate the Red Planet post-haste, but wait! They are also forced to leave one of their friends behind, as they assume he is already dead after getting smashed into oblivion by a large piece of flying debris the likes of which would take down a 747.  

Guess what? He's not dead. With just a minor surgical procedure and a couple of staples, our botanist hero Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is alive and well free to take over -200 degree temperatures like they are a walk in the park while cleverly devising a way to grow potatoes out of his own human waste. Starvation and loneliness are no problem for Mark. He is funny, resourceful and when faced with an insurmountable problem he simply says "I'm gonna have to science the shit out of it.”  

The duct tape and tarp starts being unrolled and laid down, plugging holes in space helmets and staving off high winds as it seems that Murphy's Law does not apply on Mars. Watney not only finds a way to survive there, he also finds a way to communicate with Earth.

Lo and behold, after almost pulling a "Capricorn One" (an old Peter Hyams movie where astronauts are murdered to hide the fact that their mission to Mars never took place at all), the big bosses at NASA decide to divulge the fact that they see movement on Mars via satellite and admit that Watney is alive. It would appear that the life of one man is all of a sudden worth NASA's time and resources and they have an unexplained change of heart and decide to try and save him after all.

With disco tunes aplenty and an abundance of CGI effects at his disposal, Ridley Scott then takes his film into more foolishness, and the American flag starts waving with more vigour than a Rambo flick. 

Everyone in the film is typecast and from the director of NASA (Jeff Daniels) to the comic relief character (Michael Peña), Ridley Scott takes no chances in a movie that is about as interesting as adding ketchup to potatoes to give them flavor (something Mark Watney does throughout the film) and about as long as the 500 car commercials that play before the film even starts.

   

When the words "The Martian" first appeared on the screen, a chill ran down my spine. With just a slick lettering style and a few notes of music reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith, I felt like I was really watching Alien! 

I thought to myself, Ridley has not lost his touch!

But by the film's end I discovered that I had in fact just been watching a Roland Emmerich movie.

Network shows that in 40 years, we have not evolved much

I feel Coke!

 I  n 1976, Network was released with the premise: "Prepare yourself for a perfectly outrageous motion picture."

As a fan of "All in the Family", I grew up watching television in the seventies, when sitting down in front of a heavy glass screen that emitted sights and sounds that we counted on to entertain us was considered almost like an epic event.

We were led by "prime-time" television and, for the most part, our days were scheduled around it.

I remember running home so I would not miss Six Million Dollar Man just as vividly as my dad camping out in front of our "big-screen" watching Archie (Carroll O'Connor) insult Meathead (Rob Reiner) like it was his birthright.

What was considered outrageous forty years ago, both thankfully and unfortunately, can now be considered as normal.

Take Network's main female character Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), the head of the United Broadcasting System's (UBS) programming department, and have her collide with the station's news division president Max Schumaker (William Holden) and one would think that in their romance set in the 70's, Max would have been the leader.

Not so! It can be argued that in Network, watching a female character played by the sexy Dunaway screw over—both physically and mentally—a supposedly powerful executive played by a big-time actor like Holden, was considered outrageous at the time. 

Now strong and manipulative female characters are commonplace in many of today's TV shows and blockbuster movies. 

Sigourney Weaver was transformed into Rambo in James Cameron's Aliens, Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame plays a sexy detective and a manipulator of men in the Netflix show The Fall, and most recently, Charlize Theron is the powerful, ass-kicking hero in Mad Max: Fury Road where Max is more or less just a sidekick. Thankfully, that has happened.

In the words of Ellen Ripley—the hero in the now-20-year-old film Aliens—"Fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage" is thought of as a normal thing today.

Ripley blasted out this famous line after discovering her human boss is perhaps more of a slimebucket than the horrific creatures she is battling.

We say it every day in the workplace, particularly in the corporate world.

"Competition," some call it; "The price of doing business" others will say. Still, hardly anyone is thrown in prison for committing this accepted sin.

After being asked by her boss what to do with Howard Beale (Network's incredibly articulate, influential yet deranged UBS anchor man who get used, abused, and misused all in the name of money), Faye Dunaway coldly says "I don't see how we have any options, Frank—let's kill the son-of-a-bitch."

This, after his ratings drop.

As for us, the TV-, Netflix-watching, YouTube-guzzling, Internet voyeurs of today? We're worse than we were 40 years ago.

As was the case in Network, we are still ruled and influenced by the media and we want them to push acceptable limits until they explode.

We want blood, violence, sex, drama, action but, we want it now now now!!!

The problem is, that we CAN now get it NOW NOW NOW! We don't care how we get it, we don't care who is exploited, which geniuses take the fall, which smooth and wise-talkers go down, or who gets killed.

As long as characters like Network's Howard Beale can be seen on whatever handheld abomination we are fond of, even when we are driving, even when we are at the dinner table, even when we are making love, we are satisfied.

Perhaps one day, if the zombies take over (we just love our zombies! The more guts spilled on TV, the better) and we are forced to go back into the days when phones and voyeurism did not go hand in hand, we will understand the meaning of what is considered "outrageous" again.

The Godfather: A Nurse's Descent Into Hell and Back

Never put beer in yuh Suddern Comfut, Fanooch . . .

 F   oreseeing the fate of a teenage boy—an imminent death six months before it would happen—was difficult.

Then, watching him die over twelve hours, his gasping breaths, his family around him holding an oxygen mask near his face, his ignorant physicians assuming he had no discomfort, his heart that took nine minutes to stop once he had stopped breathing, his family weeping once they knew he was gone, washing his body, and taking him to the morgue, was enough to send me into an abyss I almost did not get pulled out of.

Following my return from the morgue and the end of my twelve hour shift, I decided not to call in sick for my second job working for a nursing agency. My next shift would begin a mere four hours later and I traveled out to another hospital in the dead of winter to look after more dying patients. 

I was not trying to be a hero; in hindsight, I was so angry, so distraught, so unsupported and yet so numb, that I was trying to destroy myself. I was exhausted and could not sleep and when I arrived home the next morning after a ninety-minute icy drive, I began drinking: my drinks of choice, Southern Comfort and beer and my choice of movies to accompany my bender to Hell: The Godfather series.

There are several scenes in each of The Godfather films which make my heart pound and melt all at the same time. I was interested to see how these scenes would affect me lubed up on booze and rage.

In The Godfather, the first film in the series, a still innocent Michael goes to see his father in the hospital after an assassination attempt. When he realizes the Don is vulnerable, Michael makes a choice. He leans over towards his Dad—who looks in bad, bad shape, with a nasogastric tube coming out of his nose and a blood transfusion running in his arm—and says, "I'm with you now" as he holds his hand. The Don sheds a tear and then a new Michael is born. 

Many years ago, before he died of a blood clot, my father in law, an Italian born in the boot, large in stature with huge baseball-glove-sized hands, had a massive heart attack. 

He needed to be rushed to emergency surgery, and his family—a clueless bunch that would give Dr. Phil enough shows to last a year—was not present to sign the consent to allow the surgeons to perform open heart surgery and "perhaps" save his life. 

I was there in the empty corridor as the surgeon approached me with a subdued look on his face. "Would he want the surgery?" he asked, as my pop-in-law was unconscious at the time.

"Yes" I said, and I signed the consent. 

Three weeks later, he survived and was to be extubated. Once again I was present for the monumental step which meant that perhaps, this once bull of a man, could finally breathe on his own. The respiratory therapist pulled the tube out of his throat, and he breathed, asking for a glass of water. He looked at me, I held his hand and said "You almost died, but you're okay now," and he shed a tear. 

Watching this scene again, as the booze kept flowing, I did not feel rage but a source of comfort that I had done something good, something right. The next scene unfolded, and I continued to drink. 

The hours kept going by and all of the sudden, I realized I had not slept a wink in two days. After The Godfather I became more and more angry, threatening to quit my job in an email to my head nurse if I didn't get some support. 

She called me, then a doctor called me and said the boy did not feel any pain or discomfort when he gasped for breath—in a scene that looked like it was out of a zombie film. (At one point he did not breathe for 90 seconds, I thought he had passed, so did his family, then he let out an enormous sigh that sounded like a balloon being deflated; he still had hours left to go.)

This doctor was not even at his bedside when he died. How could she know what the boy was feeling? I became more and more angry and I knew that tomorrow I would see the boy again, this time in his coffin. 

It was eleven a.m. now, just a few hours away from the boy's funeral. I kept drinking and moved on to Godfather II and still had not slept for three days.

Somewhere in my blurred reality of booze, insomnia and severe restlessness, I had managed to get fired from my second job with the nursing agency. It seems they were unhappy with a hungover nurse's performance when he refused to poke an 88-year-old dying man with a needle to check his blood glucose—a completely useless test that a doctor forgot to cancel in light of the man's near-death state precipitated by a long battle with cancer. 

Despite not having to trek out in the middle of the night, I took the firing rather personally and continued to drink and not sleep. In Godfather II, a young Vito Corleone gets let go from his bakery/ fruit store job so that the Black Hand's cousin can take his place. Vito's boss feels bad and starts crying when he breaks the bad news to young Vito. 

But Vito won't accept a parting gift of a food basket from his boss, nor will he let his boss take the blame for being forced to let him go. Instead, he takes it like a man and with Nino Rota's stirring score playing in the background, he brings home a beautiful pear for his wife who he kisses at the dinner table, he is happy with seemingly no regret, no anger, and no self-pity. With my head spinning after I chugged down another belt of my favorite 40-proof drink, I said to my wife—who was clearly worried about my state of mind—"Now there's a real man!" and headed out with my friend Gerry to the boy's funeral, loaded.

The funeral home was packed, standing room only. There were many of us there.

Physiotherapists, occupational therapists and other nurses who had looked after our tragically departed patient held back tears when the eulogy was read. I became more and more angry when I realized that there was not one doctor in the crowd.

When I arrived home, I continued to drink, becoming more and more loud as the booze began to flow easier and easier. I still had not slept and was getting a second wind, just in time for the rooftop scene in Godfather II. 

During a neighborhood fiesta, brilliantly directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Vito follows the Black Hand as a rousing waltz is playing in the streets. I stood up, glass of booze in one hand, fake conductor's wand in the other and began screaming the waltz, note for note in what sounded to me like perfect pitch. It was entirely euphoric! For the first time in three days I felt good as Vito blasted the Black Hand in the face and he fell to the ground. Then, in celebration, I pounded back a few more drinks. 

That night, I still hadn't slept and I hardly remember Godfather III except for one scene. In the end, Michael is sitting in a chair alone, remembering all the women he loved. He remembers dancing with his daughter, I have a daughter. He remembers dancing with his wife, I have a wife. And then, to Carmine Coppola's brilliant and peaceful score, he dies.

I slept that night, after what seemed like a trip to Hell. My wife said I kept waking up yelling gibberish, saying "I did the best I could" over and over again. In the weeks that followed, I continued to drink, I was still in pain, until one day my daughter said, "Daddy, you drink too much." Then I quit. 

I am better now. I exercise and I try to look at the good things I have and try like hell not to lose them: a wife, a kid, a house, a dog and cat, and a few Volkswagens in my driveway. 

I still have insomnia but, without fail, there is one set of films which always comfort me and help me to fall asleep. 

In some strange way, Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather films saved me and comforted me when no one else could and for that, I am forever grateful to one of the best filmmakers of all time.

Locke, a Lesson for Filmmakers Everywhere

I see . . .  dinosaurs . . .

 T  ired of sequels with big budgets, big actors, cgi-filled scenes with ultra slow-motion photography, 3-D special effects and a story that flows worse than the orgasmic experience one gets while reading the ingredients on the back of a cereal box? Have I got a movie for you!

Take "Bane" from Batman (Tom Hardy), stick him in a moving BMW X5 for 90 minutes and equip him with nothing but his brain, his psyche, and a blue-tooth and what do you get? Movie magic.

Ivan Locke is a construction foreman who is in charge of the biggest concrete pour in Birmingham's history and it is the night before the concrete is to be pumped. A worker with a terrific reputation, he is expected to be there, at the work-site, at 5:25 am, to make sure everything goes according to plan so that construction on a massive 200,000 metric ton building can continue. There's just one problem—Locke's past.

We have all done things we are ashamed of. Most of us run from them, as fast as we can, and we don't look back, unless we are forced to. Not so with our friend Locke. With the exacting mind of an engineer, he thinks there is a solution to every problem and the worst thing one can do is to show weakness and run away. What he has done is not as important as the practical choices he makes to try and rectify the situation.

Despite being filmed almost entirely in a car, Locke's writer/director Steven Knight creates an incredible amount of tension as his main character receives and makes one harrowing phone-call after another in an attempt to deal with his past, the pour, his job, his co-workers, his father, his family, his wife, his kids and a soccer game, as he drives along the highway slowly teetering on the brink of insanity. Tom Hardy is brilliant as he rationalizes his thoughts and organizes them in surgical fashion, justifying them with forceful conviction, trying to find a way to fix his world as it comes crashing down around him. 

There are no other visible actors in the film, only their voices, yet still, we can imagine what each and every one of them look like and feel. No special effects, no complicated story, just a man we can all identify with and root for.

Michael Bay (Transformers 1,2,3), George Miller (Mad Max 1,2,3,4), Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park 2), J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Star Wars), are you watching? This is how you make a movie! 

Locke should be shown to film students everywhere, now, before it's too late! Because if I have to be exposed to more horseshit sequels and remakes, I'm never going to the movies again! 

Catch this on Flexnit.

Boys With Toys: Why Some Men Never Grew Up

Luke . . . I am your FATHER

 T   hose of us with children, if they're like me, start planning ahead before the children are actually born. These days, we tend to know almost from the first sonogram whether or not it's going to be a girl or a boy, and we start thinking about things like how we're going to bond with little Emily or little Johnny.

When I knew that I was going to be a father, but didn’t know whether my first-born would be a boy or a girl, I started fantasizing about things I would be most likely to need for the little tyke.

Emily would probably want to read "soft" books like Dr. Seuss, while Johnny would probably like Tintin. Emily would want to play with . . . uh . . Barbie? Now why on earth would I think that? No one plays with Barbie any more; isn't it more like Care Bears these days?

(A little checking reveals that Care Bears came and went in the early 80s; it shows how in touch I am with contemporary reality.)

But I knew what Johnny would be playing with: Good old G.I. Joe. Because that's what I played with.

Joe Is Born

At the dawn of history, meaning my childhood, G.I. Joe was born. There are various lines of reasoning as to why there ever was a necessity to create a doll that glorified the military.

"The original motivation for Hasbro to make G.I. Joe was to cash in on the 'Razor & Blade' concept pioneered by Mattel for Barbie, but use it for a boys' toy line," says David Malin, a regular at the action figure website onesixthwarriors.com. 

"The razor & blade concept is simple; just as you continually need to buy new blades for a razor, Mattel wanted customers to continually buy new outfits and accessories (blades) for Barbie (the razor)."

"The reason they chose to make military figures was not because the designers had served in WWII, but because the military seemed to be the most masculine theme possible, which was deemed important when they were basically trying to sell dolls to boys."

The manufacturer's photo . . . my photo

In fact, it was not G.I. Joe that broke the ground for plastic dolls; it was Barbie, who made her first appearance in 1959. According to Wikipedia, "Ruth Handler watched her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, and noticed that she often enjoyed giving them adult roles. At the time, most children's toy dolls were representations of infants.

Realizing that there could be a gap in the market, Handler suggested the idea of an adult-bodied doll to her husband Elliot, a co-founder of the Mattel toy company. He was unenthusiastic about the idea, as were Mattel's directors."

Well, we all know what happened to the record company executive who, upon hearing the Beatles for the first time, said "Guitar bands are on the way out."

So in fact it was a toy for girls that paved the way for a doll for boys. However, the word "doll" was taboo; the toy company had to market their doll in a most manly fashion to separate it from the stigma of being a doll—which, as everyone knew at the time, only girls played with.

Typical vintage G.I. Joe collection

So they stripped "doll" from any reference to the toy. Instead, it was a "figure." Indeed, it was not just a "figure," it was an "action figure," and that is what they are called–even if they're just representations of film stars—to this day.

I was thrilled that there were suddenly these honking big, well-muscled men dolls that could be accessorized—the only vaguely militaristic action figures that had hitherto been available were small plastic two-inch-tall soldiers that would later be featured in the Pixar movie Toy Story.

Malin reminisces: "You could find them in every dime store in the country. Some manufacturers made them in two colours, such as one set green and one set grey, so they could be packaged together as the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys.' The thing was, much of the time, no matter what the colour, the figures were exactly the same!"

But now these would be consigned to the back of the toy box. Make way for Joe!

The Collector

I was the perfect demographic for G.I Joe sales—a small boy whose father had been a warrior against Hitler in World War II. Back then, a G.I. Joe cost about $4 (around $35 in today's market). And you couldn't just have one. The earliest models were crude but attractive dolls that could be manipulated, posed, and had numerous accessories such as rifles, helmets and even miniature vehicles—all eminently collectible and absolutely nothing like a Barbie.

I distinctly recall buying the "Action Pilot" version at a gift shop at Beirut airport, in Lebanon. He would join my travelling circus, since I took my Joes everywhere I went.

Blitzway's Arnie Kim works on Mark Hamill

`

I accumulated a final collection of six G.I. Joes and Action Men (the British version, made by Palitoy): soldiers, sailors, scuba divers and pilots, all with their accompanying paraphernalia and costumes. They formed an incredible world of action and drama—I would play with them for hours on end, imagining nasty Nazis and epic battles and taut adventures as only a small boy can conjure from his overactive prefrontal cortex.

And then suddenly, adolescence came hurtling in and girls and cigarettes became my main preoccupation.

It was with not a little shock, and a lot of horror, as I surveyed the G.I. Joe scene in around 2001. Vintage figures were being traded on sites like eBay for astronomical sums of money; certainly nothing I could afford at the time. They were being graded for condition on a ten-point scale, ferchrissakes!

This only made me want them more. Now it was imperative that I collect them for myself, not just my son.

I decided that buying the vintage figures for their collectible value was nonsense. Since my childhood, dozens of manufacturers whose names were unfamiliar to me had blossomed, and now action figures were not limited to just military dolls.

Blitzway's Bruce Lee, by Arnie Kim

Rise Of The Machined

My first "grownup" action figure was a Roy Batty replicant figure from the movie Blade Runner. I was staggered at the $99 price—after all, the last time I had bought an action figure it had cost in the neighbourhood of $4. But the marketing blurb assured me that only 500 of this particular figure were being produced—and should have included a sale for a suspension bridge in Hunan province.

From there I discovered other manufacturers and a much larger selection of figures. This was becoming big business, and Chinese factories were being retooled to churn out the next "Sergeant Kurt Wormitz" and "Star Wars Stormtrooper."

Over the next decade or so the offerings became more and more abundant. It was clear that my contemporaries—men who had been born at roughly the same time as me and who had grown up in the 60s and 70s—were having a huge influence on the toy market as they sought to recapture those magical days of their youth.

And these memories did not include video games.

G.I. Jerry Bruckheimer

Movies had attacked the action figure market.

As 2007 came and went, it was apparent that the action figure scene was including as many pop culture icons as it was military figures. Companies would become known for their individual specialties: 3rdReich.us became the wellspring of Wermacht figures, and even—heresy of heresies—war criminals like Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and even the Beast of Bohemia, Reinhard Heydrich (no, human lampshades were not offered as accessories. But the Chinese manufacturers exhibit no scruples when it comes to their accurate portrayal of these vintage thugs).

Other companies began offering actors and actresses, sometimes licensed and sometimes not.

"It's just a guess on my part," says One-Sixth Warrior David Malin, "but I'd estimate that about 30% of today's action figures are historical-based (including real world or military figures), and 70% are pop culture-based (from movies, TV, video games, or comics). 

My First Serious Figure (of the adult age)

"There's also some blurring of the lines when it comes to the historical/pop culture categories; there have been some figures (unlicensed) from a few companies that made WWII figures that greatly resemble characters from both the movie Saving Private Ryan and the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Dam did a series of Navy SEAL figures that were based (unlicensed, of course) on characters from the movie Tears of the Sun.

"Hot Toys has done figures of Michael Jackson (in costumes from his music videos) and of James Dean; both could be considered as combining the historical/pop culture categories. 

"Also, a few years ago, Dragon in Dreams made a figure of Gen. George S. Patton; but instead of using the the likeness of the actual Patton, they opted to use a likeness of actor George C. Scott, who won the Oscar for playing the General in the movie Patton. I could provide even more examples, but I think you get the idea."

When asked about the shift from toy to action figure to the next generation, Davinator, another regular from One-Sixth Warriors, has a one-word answer: "Movies."

This figure goes for over $1,000 on eBay

Indeed, these days a military action figure is pretty likely to be based on an actor portraying a military figure, such as the two figures I collected from the movie Enemy At The Gates, both Ed Harris and Jude Law lookalikes. However since they are unlicensed, the names "Ed Harris" and "Jude Law" are not mentioned in the packaging; instead they are "Sniper Major Koenig" and "Sniper Vasily Zaitsev," both of whose actual namesakes are safely dead.

Plastobscene
Today my hobby is threatening to spiral out of control. The figures are getting so good that I just have to have them.

Nowadays it's not just the Boys Who Want Toys who are getting serious—the Boys Who Make The Toys are getting serious. The designers are now superstar artists in their own right. The figures they create are sometimes hand painted by the designers themselves and are sometimes almost indistinguishable from the actual people they represent—stunning portraits in miniature plastic.

Al Pacino leaps out of the screen and is on my shelf next to Toshiro Mifune. I'm not even a Marilyn Monroe fan but even I recognize that the latest figure is no longer an action figure, but an action statue—she's not even posable, for dog's sake! But she becomes a voodoo chile version of the living goddess—perhaps she will actually sing "Happy Birthday Mr. President" to my rapt throng of admiring action figures one night while I'm fast asleep.

Blitzway's Marilyn. $361, with shipping

I know that both Young Steve Jobs (Legend Toys, $199.00 with shipping and custom case modelled after the Apple II) and Old Steve Jobs (Legend Toys, $199.00 with shipping, but a tad more on eBay) along with Carlito Brigante ($Don'tAsk with shipping) and Sicherheitsdienst Oberleutnant Christoph ($199 with shipping) and Brad Pitt With Bicycle (French Resistance fighter "Pierre!"—$299.00 with shipping) will be clapping their well-manicured plastic hands (gripping version or non-gripping version) as Marilyn serenades them from the third shelf from the bottom.

Future, Tense

I sit, lonely, as my Boys stare silently from their shelves. My son will never play with them. He's lost in an iPhone world of texting and tweeting and Facecrap and other digital detritus. I will not press upon him this curious and solitary hobby that no one understands except the legion of men who grew up at the same time I did.

And what will I do with those original six G.I. Joes that are now worth around $2,000 each, and the authentic Jeep that came with them now worth around $5,000 in good condition?

I'll say a silent prayer over their plastic memories, because, one day about forty-three years ago, I summoned all my boys, put them all in their jeep and blowtorched them with a spray can and a lighter, setting them to roll away in a blaze of acrid black smoke across the terrace in a dramatic Last Ride to Hell.

Mayhem, Chaos and Setting: Horror Film Essentials

Mother, that lasagna was AWESOME.

 O  nce a staple of American filmmaking, the horror movies of the last decade have grossly been one gigantic letdown. Movie goers craving films like The Exorcist and Halloween are now being subjected to poorly-made demon possession movies like The Conjuring and Ouija made by folks who don't seem to understand the basics about human nature and what it is that makes regular people genuinely scared.

After honing his craft in 1978 with Halloween, John Carpenter decided to brave the cold and remake The Thing From Another World, a 1951 movie with James (Gunsmoke) Arness about a team of scientists who find a crashed flying saucer and a "body" frozen nearby buried in the Arctic ice.

John Carpenter's The Thing starts off by introducing us to the Antarctic's frigid weather and a couple of crazy Norweigans trying to kill an Alaskan Malamute as it runs across the frozen tundra towards the safety of an American Research Station and into the arms of mild mannered "Clark", Richard (One Day at A Time) Masur. One of the blabbering dog haters is not too smooth with his hands and ends up blowing up his helicopter and himself with a thermite grenade while his comrade gets shot in the head by the station's commander "Garry" who thinks he's defending the camp from a nut with an automatic rifle. The dog survives and smoothly integrates himself into the camp while Kurt Russell "Macready"—a booze loving helicopter pilot who does not take kindly to losing a chess match with a computer—and "Cooper," the camp's doctor, go to the Norweigans’ camp to look for survivors and instead find a frozen corpse and some kind of humanoid they decide deserves a closer look.

Because the dog is not a dog and the humanoid is far from dead, the entire camp's members start getting picked off one by one in a movie that starts off in the day and moves into a frigid -40° night (which is scary in itself). It turns out that the Thing is some kind of alien that tries to devour and replicate its prey, turning itself into an indiscernable copy of whatever it engulfs; dog or man. Paranoia and bedlam take over the camp as the Thing periodically reveals itself as a walking head, a deformed spider with tentacles or a half-man, half-alien creature capable of creating sounds that will make anyone's blood curl. The film's special effects are nothing short of breathtaking—and this is when the closest thing people had to a computer was a calculator—making even the most seasoned horror fan say to himself "You gotta be fucking kidding!"

When one of the camp's members real identity is discovered as he is strapped to a couch with his buddies and one by one, they are exposed to a half-assed blood test, The Thing shows why it's one of the best horror movies ever made. There is screaming, yelling and swearing as tentacles fly and flame throwers douse alien guts and a survivor finally says "I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but if it's not too much trouble I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!”

Carpenter understands how people react to stress and the bombastic pressures of dealing with aliens from another world in the freezing cold without having to rely on his characters using snappy one-liners as they wave the American flag. Instead he uses raw, believable reactions that are downright terrifying and entertaining, especially when Macready confronts a screaming "thing" in the film's climax and says "Fuck you too!"

The editing is perfect; the music from Spaghetti Western scorer Ennio Morricone is incredibly surreal, and in choosing to use setting, chaos and mayhem as his primary weapons of horror, John Carpenter sets himself apart from the likes of James Wan and the other horror filmmakers of today as a true master of the genre.

De Palma and Pacino Prove: We Can't Change Who We Are

Gee, Al, your shirt looks . . . funny. Your hair looks . . . plastic. What's up with that?

 W  hen I was dating my wife to be, I knew she was ten years older than me, had some health issues—at the ripe old age of 42 she said she could never get pregnant due to something that happened in her past —had hypertension, diabetes, an addiction to cigarettes, and a personality so labile that it felt like if I somehow hooked her up to the terminals of the dead battery in my car she'd get it to start.

Still, I loved her and easily envisioned a life with her. We got married, had a child but did not live happily ever after. 

Before our daughter got cancer, my wife's heart failed and she nearly died but somehow, both made full recoveries. My partner swore she would quit smoking but never did and ended up back in the hospital several times with chest pain and still, we stayed together. I swore I would not be there for her the next time she ended up in the hospital but always was and always will be for one simple reason. When we were dating, even though we never said it to each other, we both needed saving and made a life together and that was all it took.

In 1983, Brian De Palma and Al Pacino teamed up to make what is now considered one of the better gangster movies of all time: Scarface. Ten years later, they were back at it with Carlito's Way where this time Pacino is an ex-gangster released from prison who is trying to be straight. 

As the cinematography in this film shows, just as De Palma cannot escape his obsession with Alfred Hitchcock, Carlito (Pacino) soon gets drawn back towards his old streets where he meets his old contact Rolando (played by Al Israel - the chainsaw wielding drug dealer from Scarface) and begins to run a bar where he hopes to make enough money to escape New York and go to the Bahamas to rent cars. 

His frizzy haired, sleazy, coke-head lawyer and best friend Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) who got him out of prison by exploiting the system, soon manipulates Carlito into doing dastardly deeds relying on his loyalty and his street smart code of conduct. Carlito's love interest Gail  (Penelope Ann Miller), also has dreams of improving her life from that of a sexy stripper to a respected dancer on Broadway.

As fate would have it, no one really changes in this movie, they are who they are. Gail swears she will never wipe up Carlito's blood ever again and she ends up doing just that. Carlito performs criminal acts for his friend because that's who he is and as he puts it "I don't invite this shit, it just comes to me, I run and it runs after me." 

De Palma is back to his old tricks again, trying to emulate Hitchcock and Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and manages to create some harrowing chase scenes forcing Pacino to run like a cockroach through crawlspaces and dive on escalators in shootouts. All the while, we root for Carlito and Gail as they make love to "You are so Beautiful" and the soulful singing of the great Joe Cocker, hoping they will find their dreams but deep down, we know how the story ends.

Ironically enough, I played "You are So Beautiful" at my half-assed wedding 12 years ago. I am still with my wife and always will be because like the characters in Carlito's Way, I can't change who I am.

Small in Stature, Big on Formula

Where's the fuckin' Ortho man when ya need him?

 E  ven if you're not a Michael Douglas fan, the first five minutes of Ant-Man will have you scratching your head in awe. In it a "young" Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) explains how he will never let his formula out (presumably one which can shrink a human into the size of an ant and give him super-human strength) right after he cold-cocks a business associate for talking about his wife in not so kindly a fashion. 

The year is 1989 and either through CGI or some other aspect of special effects/makeup wizardry that is taste fully abundant in this film, Douglas somehow looks better than he did from An American President, a film from 1995.

 As the simple story would have it, there is indeed a way to transform humans into ant-sized "Hulks", but only Pym knows the way to do it until his now disgruntled former protege turned CEO/villain finally figures out how to perfect the method and stops turning colleagues who disagree with him into snot-sized mucous he is able to wipe up off the floor and literally flush down the toilet. Pym then calls on our hero Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to break into the Cross building now run by villain Darren Cross (Cory Stoll) and steal the formula before it gets sold and turns into a weapon that literally could destroy the world.

Part caper flick, Ant-man has the perfect blend of action, drama, humor and special effects that make it the best block-buster 2015 summer movie so far. The audience cares about the characters— especially Scott Lang, an ex-con convicted for being a modern day Robin Hood, who is trying to gain rights to see his incredibly sweet 4-year-old daughter. 

We laugh at the comedic relief provided by Lang's "criminal" buddies, headed by his friend Luis (Michael Pena) and our hearts break for Pym's daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), also Lang's love interest, who is seeking to know the truth about her mother's death. We tap our feet at the hip Christophe Beck super-hero score which also smoothly incorporates the short 1973 Roy Ayers piece Escape, last used in Jackie Brown, and we learn all about ants, the bravest of which is aptly named "Antonio".

Ant-man is slick, smart and yet thoroughly inoffensive, and it is a joy to watch a film that does not take itself too seriously but still has the sense to know how to please an audience. 

In a time of when movies about desolate wastelands and villains who enslave women are hailed as masterpieces (Mad Max: Fury Road), a good and wholesome story about redemption and the potential goodness of the human heart that people of all ages can enjoy is hard to come by and should not be missed.

Mad Max Resurrects Travis Bickle in "The Drop"

"I'm dying to do the sequel." "VEEERRRY funny."

 I  n 1976, Martin Scorsese gave movie-goers the ultimate anti-hero—a psychopathic, sympathetic, socially incompatible Vietnam veteran taxi driver named Travis Bickle who was determined to rid the streets of New York City of the filth that had contaminated it, turning 13-year-old girls into hookers complete with pimps and other lowlifes that seemed to infest the streets of Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx. 

Over the last forty years, filmmakers have tried in vain to replicate Scorsese's ability to create a character audiences could both fear and root for, a character who did bad things which were justifiable; someone imperfect, lonely, who could not fit in. It would seem that the creativity and sympathy that was omnipresent in films of the 70s have been replaced by special effects and sequels and directors with more money than brains. Not so with a sleeper of a film called The Drop from 2014, in which an actor (Tom Hardy) proves he can indeed act without having to wear a mask and disguise his voice (Bane from The Dark Night Rises), or be strapped to the hood of a car with another mask on in another ludicrous sequel: Mad Max Fury Road. 

The Drop tells the story of a small bar in Brooklyn where Bob (Hardy) Saginowski (funny, his name was Max Rockatansky in Fury Road) serves the drinks under the watchful eye of his cousin Marv (played by the great James Gandolfini in his last role before he died), who lost ownership of the bar to a bunch of Chechen mobsters 10 years ago. 

"Cousin Marv's" serves as a frequent "drop" where thousands of illegal dollars are dumped off on special occasions like Superbowl Sunday—the kind of money that is not declared to the IRS—so that it can be collected by a bunch of well-dressed criminals who will surely bolt your leg to the floor of a van, let you bleed out, chop off your arm, and throw you in a river somewhere if you even dare rob from them. 

After two morons decide to do just that and end up stealing $5,000 from the bar, Bob, a stalky and quiet figure who seems unfazed after the thieves had a gun pointed at his head, finds a small pit-bull puppy in a garbage can on his way home. The garbage can's owner Nadia (Noomi Rapace from Prometheus) and Bob decide to take care of the dog, build a friendship, and Bob takes the dog home and raises it. Lo and behold, Nadia has quite a few problems including a suicide attempt and an old nutjob boyfriend, "Eric," who claims he was the dog's rightful owner but decided to beat it and leave it to die in the garbage. Eric is abusive, volatile and seems to want to harm Nadia and the dog but gets a little more than he bargained for after he meets Bob. 

Bob goes to church every day but never gets communion. He is able to cover up appendages which would otherwise be evidence for the police by wrapping them up and throwing them in the river without so much as working up a sweat; he plays with his dog, works nights at the bar and serves as protector to Nadia. Throughout the film he claims he just "tends bar" when being questioned by a detective searching for those who robbed "Cousin Marv's" but he does quite a bit more than that. He is explosive and capable of great violence when Nadia and the dog are threatened, yet, he is likeable. 

Many of The Drop's scenes are filmed at night in a middle-lower class Brooklyn neighborhood and the music accompanying them is very reminiscent of Bernard Hermann's darker parts of Taxi Driver. 

Originally a short story called "Animal Rescue," The Drop tells a simple story of an "ordinary" man who is a bartender, much like the ordinary job Travis Bickle had as a taxi driver, who is imperfect and alone but when pushed, will push back. He is vulnerable yet violent, a criminal with ethics and morals that audiences love to watch. 

A pity it has taken 40 years for us to see such a magnetic persona come to life in a movie that nobody saw. 

Check it out on Netflix!