FAM 19: Ukraine Is The Good News We Deserve

The New & Usual Suspects | Essay On Comic Movies | WTF Is Glam Rock

A bit of a mixed bag this week... Let’s dive right in!

Ukraine Goes On The Offensive

If you missed it over the weekend, Ukraine had a major, major offensive victory against Russia.

In a strike more than a year in the planning, they hit Russian airfields across the the breadth of the country with killer drones — disabling or destroying more than 40 Russian planes — some of them the newest and most expensive bombers. That’s estimated to be 30% of Russia’s entire air force.

They did it by smuggling in the drones over time (with the help of Russian citizens) and launching them from homes across the country. It was an amazing combination of strategy, secrecy, and pure guts.

On the ground, Russian advances have all been thwarted. Yes, they have the capability to inflict death on civilians from the air, but the front lines are turning into WWI dead zones and Russia just keeps throwing bodies into the wood chipper.

When Trump came back I was more scared about the fate of Ukraine than any other foreign policy issue. But, the cards are thankfully aligning here. Regardless of his utter capitulation to Russia, Trump is being so bigly humiliated by Putin that his magic peace is turning into the new 2.0 Infrastructure Week.

That’s honestly the best case scenario. Europe is filling the void, giving the green light for operations inside Russia, and Ukraine is beating Goliath by any standards. Yes, the doomsday scenario — Russian tactical nukes‚ is still there, but when do Putin allies start falling out of windows?

Slava Ukrain!

The Joni That Is Not Mitchell

I almost dug up my kick-ass Anatomy of a Lie graphic for this one — but they’ll be plenty of time to talk about Medicare & Medicaid lies when Republicans resolve their Big, Shitty Budget.

But, know that they’re going to claim that the cuts aren’t actually happening because the omit the words, Medicare & Medicaid.

Brilliant!

The second Big Budget Lie will be that there are illegals and lazy, ineligible people and that’s the only cuts. That’s all demonstrably false, but that’s not the point here.

As you know, Republicans have been ducking town halls across the country — mainly because what they’re doing is deeply unpopular. But, former hog slaughterer and current Little Librarian on the Prairie hair model Senator Joni Ernst decided to face her fellow Iowans at 7 AM last week.

It wasn’t a good start to her day.

You probably know that when asked about people who could die because of the health care cuts, she said we’re all going to die.

Fact check: True!

It didn’t play well for a senator running for re-election in ‘26.

In a normal world I might feel the slightest sympathy for Ernst because it’s an easy phrase to let slip out. But, Joni had already been down the waste, fraud, and abuse road at that gig — and unless she’s completely incompetent — damn well knows that people of all stripes are deeply worried about these cuts.

So, no excuse for a line that makes let them eat cake sound like a cool party invitation.

But, of course, in the MAGA-Verse that wasn’t enough. And a staffer was soon filming her social media apology that was actually an attack. You can watch that sick snark here.

It’s just so callous and such a lame, typical Republican attempt at humor.

Everyone know they’re going to die. If the Tooth Fairy is any kind of an analogy, it’s for her savior Jesus Christ — who she doesn’t know the first thing about.

So many voters have been voting against their own self-interest for so long.

It’s hard to think what may finally shake them. I’m praying to the Tooth Fairy (and that other dude) that this might be enough in a place that not that long ago had a senator named Tom Harken.

Come For The Depravity, Stay For The Stupidity

Yes, the degenerates in Trump’s cabinet get a lion’s share of the press — as they should.

But, every once in a while one of the idiots bubbles to the top and you remember that almost all of these people are wildly incompetent for their jobs — which if the goal is destroying the administrative state as Bannon long promised. From Reuters:

Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the U.S. disaster agency said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

Honestly. This is hard to fathom. How can an adult who can fire a synapsis have never heard of hurricane season? I have to go with the joke scenario, but the link to the Reuters story is here.

Trump’s Corrupt Pardon Spree

If you missed it, I posted (non-newsletter) a decent overview of Trump’s latest Pardonpalooza. The audacious lawlessness of this administration has no bottom. You can read that, here.

CULTURE CLUB: Captain America Review+ | Glam Rock Spotify Mix

I’m old enough to remember seeing the first great comic book movies in theaters — 1978’s Superman and the sequel Superman II in 1980. I was also there for the next big chapter Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989. Ditto Nolan’s The Dark Knight reboot and the rise of superhero anti-hero and Iron Man in 2008 and the birth of the MCU.\

I’m certainly not alone in this, or the fact that I think I saw most (if not all) Marvel movies through the last Avengers and the Thanos snap. I like many of them, but, then I really started losing interest.

I wasn’t a comic book kid — monsters were my thing — and all the secondary characters that started getting their own movies didn’t interest me. And those few I did see — save Spiderman movies — seemed each to get worse than the last. The characters were second rate and the stories became dull and convoluted. Look, I think cool things can be done with the while multiverse concept, but for Marvel it seemed to be a way to keep churning out junk because they had run out of giant climactic battle scenes fill with as much CGI shit as could be fit on a screen.

ESSAY: Captain America & The Sad New World

Which brings us to the latest Captain America: Brave New World, the first film version with Anthony Mackie taking over the title role. Like I said, I have missed a bunch of post Avengers: Endgame stuff, including the The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series.

Thankfully, there’s enough boring exposition dialogue to fill in most gaps.

Basically, Mackie is the new Cap, but in reality, he’s more like a winged Iron Man with a shield that seems basically sentient to the point of being a sidekick. But, it’s not because there is an actual sidekick named Danny Ramirez who is a Falcon, err, Captain, in waiting.

Maybe ‘Lil Cap?

Or he never gets a cool name because it probably won’t be long before Mackie leaves the Marvel trough and turns over the franchise to him.

Or he has 20 years of comic books under his belt and turns into some other flying hybrid character whose shows or movies I will likely never see unless there’s an inflight malfunction on a plane and I have no choice.

Back to the Marvel trough.

Of course, there’s Harrison Ford who (I looked this up) takes over the role of General (now President) Thaddeus Ross from William Hurt. What can I say. Either Ford wants to make sure each of his great grandchildren have sprawling Wyoming ranches, or he wants to check actual comic book superhero off the to do list of his legendary career.

Either way, it’s a shame he waited until this movie and the seeming nadir of the genre.

That said, Harrison Ford is fucking Harrison Ford. Beyond his well-deserved iconic stature, he’s also a great actor. And he does his best to bring some emotional heft to the role — digging into an estrangement with his daughter which is never really explained. In fact, the daughter doesn’t even show up to the bitter end.

Which brings us to the plot and dialogue which was written, conceived, concocted, cut and pasted by five (yes, five) credited screenwriters. It’s true, there are good screenwriting teams out there, sometimes uncredited, but once you see end credits go to three, four, and five screenwriters — I guarantee you there are real writing issues going on.

And that’s the original sin here. Beyond the bland exposition, one-minute daughter scene fix for Ford to have something to hang his emotional fedora on, the dialogue is almost universally bad.

Here’s a random sample:

Character 1: What in the hell are you doing here?
Character 2: That’s what I should be asking you.

That’s a good example. None of it is completely cringeworthy, just lazy and on-the-nose. It’s the kind of writing that writes itself because it’s been done so many times. I suspect there’s better writing in actual comic books — and those are some pretty small bubbles and boxes for dialogue.

As for the plot, I’m sure there’s lots of back-story about it from other Marvel sources, but for laypeople like me, it comes down to this: There’s a mysterious and big magical island/rock in the Indian Ocean that could change humanity for the better because it contains some new element.

That seems to be setting up some future storylines, but Ford as President James Marshall gets on Air Force One to check out...

Sorry, wrong movie.

Ford as Thaddeus Ross is trying to secure an international treaty for everyone to responsibly use the rock for good.

But, there’s past bad blood between new Cap and William Hurt-era Ross. For about ten minutes there’s the outlines of the possibility of actual political intrigue. But, that’s pretty quickly dropped as Tim Blake Nelson’s boring-named villain Samuel Sterns arrives on the scene and dissipates any mystery as to how Ford becomes the Red Hulk which has been advertised since the first trailer.

Blake returns as the villain from the Ed Norton version of The Incredible Hulk — which I also had to look up.

By the way. I blame Tim Blake Nelson even less than Ford for being in this. Even at the Marvel trough he probably just got a ranch for himself in Wyoming.

But, damn is his character bad – there’s gamma ray manipulation, and brain extensions, and mind control, all reduced to about five minutes of screen time spewing a bunch of gobbledy goop with no motivation beyond said gobbledy goop.

And his look?

Good God. I am all for practical effects and make-up and toning down the FX. But he looks like a college play version of The Elephant Man meets the serpent-based 1973 camp classic Sssssss.

On the positive side, Nelson, Ford, Nelson, Mackie and a number of the supporting cast do their best to rise above the dialogue and make the best of it.

There are some okay fight scenes if you’re into that, not that I am. I wouldn’t think Jackie Chan is pondering getting out of retirement. Especially when a magic shield does most of the work.

There’s a well-paced and exciting aerial action sequence that I enjoyed. The Captain/Red Hulk showdown was meh at best. The five writers did their level-best to inject some humanity character arc into the fight, but it was so telegraphed that it lost any depth.

Overall, the special effects were good, I guess, for a movie with an on-screen budget reported at $180 million to upwards of $300 million.

I really don’t know what else to say.

I admit I didn’t go into this with high expectations. Blockbuster movies released in February have a certain stink on them. I had an open mind. This movie didn’t change it. If you have Disney, I guess it’s mindless enough to make you feel like you’re getting something out of the subscription.

Oh, and of course there’s an end credit scene!

It’s Elephant Man Sam making some warning about the mystery rock and the multiverse and the big bad shit that is to come.

I’m sure that’s all on the MCU multiverse, multi-generational calendar of events. I’ll probably be skipping all that too.

That will all likely end after I’ve actually joined some multiverse. But, please, if you see it to the end, and see me in that reality, fill me in.

I’ll likely have time then to give a shit.

The Scourge Of The Super Hero Movie

As I wrote in the opening, I don’t hate comic book movies. Far from it.

But Hollywood has a real problem with comic book movies and intellectual property (IP) that is self-defeating and driving away the most loyal fans of the cinematic experience.

Let’s go back.

Before Superman I remember my mother and aunt going to see Jaws in the summer of 1975 when we were visiting her family in Canada. I was four and I still remember the buzz of them going and coming back all excited.

Jaws changed everything. It created the idea of the summer blockbuster. But, Jaws was a damn good movie. I’d argue an almost perfect movie. That begat a few decades of summer blockbuster movies that were also damn good movies.

Spielberg, Lucas, Zemeckis. Name your director, name your movie. There are tons of them. Usually the top-performing from every year.

And this is not a generational argument or some gauzy view of childhood. By and large, good summer blockbusters continued well into the 2000s. And yet, something seemed to snap when Marvel exploded and DC tried to compete.

The lack of quality (post-Nolan DC) and iconic material just wasn’t there. Yes, generations know Superman, Batman, and top Marvel characters. But what happens when that all dries up?

The Tentpole Mirage

The thing that made everything from Superman to the initial years of comic book movies successful was a universality. These were either just good movies, or brands that had generational appeal.

As those comic book brands have lost their universality. That has been on the horizon for years — you would have thought that 2012’s Battleship, based on the game Battleship (Hey, it’s Rihanna!) and common-sense would have tempered that.

Nope. Real-life Hollywood isn’t much better than Seth Rogan convincing Martin Scorsese to mash up his Jim Jones film with securing the rights to the Kool-Aide Man Movie.

Built-in generational audiences. Tie-ins and 360-branding. Merch. Overseas, easy to be dubbed in a tenth language. I mean, put Pixar aside and look at Disney — for generations the epitome of pure creativity. Have they done anything in the literally decades other than remaking their animated hits into lesser live action money-grabs?

It’s math, not art.

Based on what was put on film and what was spent on marketing, it’s estimated that Captain America: Brave New World cost about $410 billion and made just about that worldwide.

Maybe it broke even — but something tells me that the movie actuaries will determine that ultimate streaming revenue will get them to a good profit.

It’s not all bad. Barbie was good. But, for every Barbie there’s a Kool-Aid Man satire and probably negotiations for The Charlie Story from Chicken of the Sea.

While this devolution has been going on for years, here’s the vicious (and stupid) cycle that Hollywood finds itself in.

Especially post-COVID, they desperately believe that they must put something worthy of the big screen in theaters to somehow draw those tent-pole, IP kids back. That’s a generational false choice. Screen size doesn’t have the historic allure for most of two generations now.

Here’s the real shame.

Twenty years or so ago, major studios had the budget to green light (produce) say 10 movies a year. That’s now down to four or five because the budgets of all this IP bullshit eats it all alive. And that also extends to mediocre directors and writers who fall up because the it’s just easier to stay in the IP bubble when profit margins are eventually hit through streaming.

That bubble. That closed world. That advertising, marketing, and branding alliance with lame focus group testing and no sense of art and adventure. Even in summer — not that long ago — studios took a chance on smaller films and gave them enough budget to test their ingenuity.

I’m not talking about independent cinema. Of course that’s a tougher world, but that cream will always rise to the top.

It’s all those opportunities — and creativity — of original stories that have been shut out for a system that may as well be accounting.

The romanticized Hollywood system is enshrined in the 1930s through the 1960s — The Golden Age — is rife with problems of all shapes and sizes.

But, one problem it did not have was budgeting: A few big (hit) investments, a few mid-level films that could bubble up, and a dearth proving ground flicks that were a wash or could prove to be a good investment.

That sounds pretty good.

Tuesday Mix: Glam Rock

If you say Glam Rock to me, the first band that comes to mind is T. Rex. Next would be early to mid-70s Bowie. In my mind the main components are crunchy guitar riffs with a pop sensibility.

I don’t know when I started a Glam Rock Mix, but I stumbled upon it and decided to clean it up. I did a little digging and found a bunch of bands considered by some to be glam that I hadn’t thought of — like Kiss. But, then I found a couple of songs that totally fit the bill.

The bottom line about what’s glam seems to be in the eye (and ear) of the beholder.

Enjoy!