All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 13 - The Mysterians

Space aliens in a giant purple egg invade Japan and we fight back with satellite dishes and flying cigars.

"The Mysterians", AKA "Chikyū Bōeigun" (Earth Defense Force), is a 1957 Toho alien invasion movie directed by our old friend Ishiro Honda.  Unlike the other movies on our list, "The Mysterians" technically is not a giant monster movie, its just a movie that happens to have a giant robot creature in it - and a terrible one at that.  Ishiro Honda and his crew just wanted to make an alien war blockbuster with lots of lasers and flying weapons and aliens in colorful helmets, but they were told by producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka to include a man-in-a-suit effect in order to rub off the profits of previous Toho successes like "Godzilla" and "Rodan".  Personally I was pretty conflicted as to whether "The Mysterians" was worth including on this countdown... but then I remembered that in a few episodes I'll be covering "The Beginning of the End", so really everything is fair game.

As you would expect from all the other Toho movies we've covered, the special effects are wide in scope, showing everything from earthquakes and mudslides to airships firing laser beams while still finding room for tank battles, rockets, and a forest fire.  The music by Akira Ifukube is top-notch, the guy seems to do nothing but excellent scores.  Ifukube seems to be one of the most talented film composers of the 1950s.  However, despite those successes, "The Mysterians" also suffers from the main problems of Toho movies of this period, in that the human characters are vague and under-developed, to the point of being literally nothing but names attached to a body.  In fact this movie has some of the worst characterization I've ever seen, with two leading females who have nothing to do but stand around, do their feminine duty, and without complaint get kidnapped by the aliens.

That being said, "The Mysterians" is a pretty mixed film.  It features easily the lamest kaiju monster I've ever seen, the characters suck, the story has no pacing, and its really nothing but an action blockbuster from 1950s Japan.  However, there is still a charm to this thing.  The effects - again done by Eiji Tsuburaya - are pretty cheesy now, but are still exciting in their own cartoony way and give the impression of a high-fantasy interstellar war.  "The Mysterians" was also filmed in "TohoScope", a Japanese recreation of the Western "CinemaScope", meaning that its actually using wide modern cinematic aspect ratio.  Its no "Godzilla", its no "Rodan", but "The Mysterians" is still something special.

Academy Awards 2013 Postshow Postaganza

Hey, last night's Oscar Ceremony actually wasn't soul-crushingly terrible.  For the past few years there's been this terrible trend in Academy Awards telecasts to be really self-conscious and thus either try to hard, or feel really tense and pointless.  The Alec Baldwin-Steve Martin year was so bad that Cablevision tried to save New York from the incoming boredom by blocking all of ABC.  Anne Hathaway and James Franco comes off either as really nervous to entertain, and when their bits started failing Franco decided to get high back stage and give up, leaving poor Hathaway out of her depth in hosting.  And the attempt to revitalize the broadcast by resurrecting Billy Crystal flopped again.  I haven't seen an Oscars telecast with any sense of style, pride, or even confidence in several years now.  Which is why I'm so glad that last night's show actually worked.

Seth MacFarlane was something of a gutsy choice, but also not all that surprising really.  He's a talented singer, songwriter, comedian, and even apparently a great dancer, with a nice baritone voice and surprisingly a great sense of showmanship and a knack for performing.  Yeah, there was that self-conscious bit at the beginning showing headlines of Seth MacFarlane's inevitable declaration of being Worst Host Ever, but this is to be expected, and indeed, today there was plenty of headlines calling him exactly that.  However, I thought MacFarlane was great as a host.  His jokes were as edgy as his musical numbers were classy.  And even when he went too far into the offensive territory he remained warm and was snappy enough with his wit to keep the audience from booing.  Plus, the comedy segments actually made sense, they actually hired a competent sound mixer this time, and the show seemed to have a kind of dignity that's been lacking for years now.  Even wackiness like Captain Kirk appearing to introduce a hilarious bit about sockpuppets playing the movie "Flight" all worked well to keep the night from fading.

Now of course, MacFarlane wasn't a miracle worker.  There was still the tradition third hour doldrums when I found my laptop and was playing on Reddit rather than giving the show full attention.  The show moved at a brisk pace early on, but for a good hour did not have any major awards to give and focused too much on Governor's Dinners, Academy Museums, and very long musical numbers, eating my patience.  However, for the most part, I'd say this is what the Oscars should be in the 21st century.  And after the break, I'll discuss the night's most major moments:

Academy Awards 2013 Preshow Pre-Extravaganza!!!

Its that weekend again!  The Academy Awards, the holiest weekend in the movie-watching calendar.  What will happen inevitably is a firestorm of cynicism, as people declare that the Oscars don't matter, they focus on an overly-narrow band of filmmaking, they're nothing but a marketing device, they aren't even entertaining to watch, blah blah blah.  I get it.  At this point, we're all very much aware of the Academy Awards' failings, most painfully the sad fact that "The Raid" was not recognized in any way because its nothing but a perfectly stupid action movie.  So we can mourn what the Oscars should be in our fantasy minds, or we could enjoy what they actually are and appreciate the dignity and respect they bring to the institution of cinema.

This year, I actually have a good feeling that these Oscars won't be quite so dull as the last pile.  Seth McFarland is a genuinely funny person and many of his creations are quite entertaining, the first few seasons of "Family Guy" are fantastic, and when that show became a pile of unwatchable gross-out humor crap, McFarland made "American Dad".  "Ted" was a very funny movie besides from a few strange "Family Guy"-esque jokes that break the movie's reality.  And if he focuses on his natural silliness, his love of musical theater, and his soulful baritone voice, Seth McFarland might be able to put on a great show.  Or if he decides to bang his shin into a Oscar statue, fall on the floor, and moan for five minutes straight in an exercise in anti-humor, then this will be the worst Academy Awards show ever.

As I like to do every year, I'm going to review the Best Picture nominees and see which ones actually deserve to win, after the break.  However, before that, I'll quickly go over the other awards real fast.  I'd really like Quvenzhané Wallis to win Best Actress, since her performance in "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is truly like nothing I've ever seen before.  My favorite male performance over the year actually would go to Michael Fassbender's fascinating and chilling role as the cyborg David in "Prometheus", but the Academy disagrees with me, so I guess Daniel-Day Lewis should win.  "Lincoln" would also get Best Supporting Actor with Tommy Lee Jones' fantastic run as Theddeus Stevens.  Supporting Actress should go to Anne Hathaway, that's a barreled fish.  Best Director I feel should actually go to "Skyfall"'s Sam Mendes, but in the real world it should either go to Spielberg or Ang Lee - also, why the heck was Ben Affleck snubbed?  Animated feature should go to "Pirates! Band of Misfits", Best Effects to "Prometheus", and Editing rightly deserves to go to "Cloud Atlas", but it got villainously overlooked, so instead I'm protesting that category and say none of those movies should win.  Finally Best Animated Short needs to go to "Paperman" for being some of the best few minutes of my entire life.

All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 12 - Attack of the Crab Monsters

This movie is awesome!

I knew I had to include a Roger Corman movie for All-Out Giant Monster Attack!, the man is a living legend of Hollywood.  Despite working exclusively in the realm of independent B-movie production, Roger Corman is the grandfather of a massive film tradition.  He's produced over 400 movies according to IMDB, and directed over fifty.  The list of people who have worked with Corman on his cheap horror, exploitation, and comedy films is mind-boggling with directors such as:  James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Johnathan Demme, and Robert Town all going through the Corman school.  And that's not even including actors, where we have:  Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock, David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone, and Talia Shire. Chances are, if you've worked on a crappy B-movie at point during the last sixty years, you've worked on a Roger Corman movie.  Corman might just be the most prolific filmmaker in all of history, and he's still at it, still making terrible monster movies for the SciFi channel.

In the Fifties, a typical Corman production took around two weeks to film, and would cost something between ten and seventy thousand dollars, which even at the time was an incredibly low amount of money with which to make an entire feature film.  But Corman was the type to get the work done, using a crew of professionals working around the clock with multiple jobs, pumping out movies like factory products.  In a single year Corman could produce as many as nine movies.  One of his best-known movies, the 1960 original "Little Shop of Horrors" was filmed entirely in two days.  In "Attack of the Crab Monsters", the chief actors were paid six-hundred dollars per week of shooting, which for many desperate starving actors in Los Angeles at the time, was perfectly fine.  Even the star, Russell Johnson, who previously starred in the SciFi classic, "This Island Earth" and would go on to be The Professor from Gilligan's Island, was glad to have the paycheck.

"Attack of the Crab Monsters"* was born in typical Corman fashion, with him suddenly deciding one day to make a movie about giant crabs attacking.  He also demanded from his screenplay writer, Charles B. Griffith, that every scene contain suspense or action, so they wouldn't have to film any unnecessary and pricey scenes of characterization or even exposition.  And I would say, for the most part, this strategy worked, because "Attack of the Crab Monsters" is an excellent movie.  I mean, yeah, its obviously a very cheap B-movie and the characters are lousy, but the movie has a great atmosphere of unrelenting suspense.  And it has one of the most original giant monsters ever, which add to the creepy tone of the entire movie.  There is not one scene that doesn't work to continue to build the suspense the eeriness of the isolated madness that the characters have been trapped within.  "Attack of the Crab Monsters" is a perfect lesson on how to make a cheap monster movie.  This is how its done.

Beautiful Creatures

Crappy teen fiction returns!  Wasn't it just like three months ago when "Twilight 5" came out and bored America to death?  Well, apparently the craving for supernatural romance was too strong, and the rip-off franchise needed to be created immediately.  In the Fifties they at least gave us a year between "Them!" and "Tarantula", but we've modernized, now you gotta ride that preteen romance wave right now, before it breaks on the shores of sanity and decency.  Unfortunately, it appears that the Twilight craze is already over, as "Beautiful Creatures" is a pretty significant flop, probably killing all hope of a sequel.  Maybe "The Host"* will do better.

However, unlike the Twilight... Saga (rrrrrrr...), "Beautiful Creatures"' failure is not for lack of trying.  This is definitely a better-made movie in every respect then every single one of the Twilight movies.  And look at that cast!  Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson, Emmy Rossum, and last year's Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress, Viola Davis!  How did they rope all these people into this?  More surprising to me, this actually is not a badly made movie.  In terms of "Twilight"-ness, yeah, there are still some of the worst trends and tropes from those movies.  Its got a needlessly complex and confusing supernatural plot that turns the main female into the center of the universe, there's plenty of awful voice over narration that seems to serve no purpose other than for "tell don't show", and the soundtrack is awful.  But what they wisely did not copy off the Twilight formula was the weird sexual hang-ups of the protagonists, the emotionless lack of energy between the lead actors, and the awful musical video-style montages that served no purpose other than to slow the movies down.

"Beautiful Creatures" is a movie where you actually get the sense that our star-crossed teen lovers actually like each other.  Interestingly its set using the boy's perspective, who is the Muggle this time, not the girl, and they have decent banter and flirting.  And the side characters are interesting colorful people rather than set pieces that Stephenie Meyer created to make her vapid universe seem populated and complex.  We have some very funny and campy moments where the supporting characters really ham it up, and its actually legitimately entertaining.  I mean, this isn't ever going to be fine art, but I get the sense that the movie at least has some kind of sense of humor about itself.  The romantic melodrama does overwhelm "Beautiful Creatures" in places, but there's enough motion and plot for the most part that the movie continues to be a solid experience.  Shockingly, this is the best movie I've seen from 2013 so far.