Always knew he was a drumstick lover. Monster after my own heart.
Episode 8 – What Dreams May Come
The Series follows up (arguably) one of its better episodes with one of its silliest. But at least this is more traditional daikaiju fare than last week’s voyage to the bottom of the sea. We open in Queens, New York, where a a fifty-foot-tall, six-limbed, godawfully ugly thing interrupts an obnoxiously “Nu Yawk” couple’s spat over the electric bill by reducing their five-story walk-up to scrap.
Morning finds H.E.A.T. at the attack site (minus team-spy Monique Dupre, who must be off…I don’t know…spying on something) and they seem to be the only municipal agency at work in New York City. Seriously, I know we had a garbage strike back in Talkin Trash but where’s the Fire Department? Where are the EMTs? Isn’t this a city under the constant shadow of perpetual Godzilla “attacks”? Where rednecks with Army surplus missile launchers and giant rats terrorize the streets with regularity? Why does anyone still chose to live in this New York City, anyway? Then again, why does anyone chose to live in Metropolis? Or Marvel Comic’s version of the City That Never Sleeps? Continue reading Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part VII→
The devout Action Movie worshiper must face west five times a day and sing praises to their god: the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet.
Michael Bay didn’t know it at the time, but he made this movie for my mother. She’s an actor junkie who came of age in a time when movie stars were movie stars and the mainstream culture still surrounded them with auras of “respectability.” As such, she prefers her leading men play flawed-but-noble heroes…though she’s not opposed to the occasional flight of hyper-masculine fantasy (after all, she married my dad). So putting Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery in the same film was like ringing her personal dinner bell. And since I was thirteen at the time, I had no choice but to suffer through this at her side.
This was my – and a lot of people’s – real introduction to Michael Bay. Sure, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence might’ve headlined their own TV shows, but neither boasted the box office draw of the original James Bond…or the original Ben Sanderson. Continue reading The Rock (1996)→
Nothing forced or contrived about that at all. No.
You know, Inner Circle’s song “Bad Boys” is probably responsible for more crap than the rest of reggae combined. And I say that as a man who has never and will probably never be able to get into reggae, no matter how many stoners I may or may not hang out with. Apart from that great commercial for the coming Police State, COPS, we can also thank Inner Circle for Michael Bay’s career as a feature film director.
No, not entirely. But they aren’t exactly blameless. If not for that bad song, this bad film wouldn’t exist. At the very least, it wouldn’t have such a readily marketable title. By the time this premiered, COPS had drilled this song into America’s head with a rusty bit and a slow grind, like something out of…I don’t know…Driller Killer. Is that even real or did I just make it up…? Holy shit, it’s real and I didn’t. The more you know. Add that to the list of films we could all be watching right now…or could’ve been at the time. Continue reading Bad Boys (1995)→
“Peek-a-boo! I’ll show you ‘Only looks dangerous’!”
Episode 7 – Leviathan
The first episode of The Series named after a genre in-joke begins with a stereotypical New England sea captain (complete with a little anchor on his hat) nervously checking his watch.
Far, far, far below, Drs. Prolorne, Hoffman, and Sopler explore the mysteriously-pulsating alien starship they’ve found lodged in the Atlantic seabed. “Radio carbon dating confirms my hypothesis,” Prolorne tells us. “This ship is over ten thousand years old.” Unfortunately, the ship’s security systems (which come complete with pink, wriggling tentacles that seize our Scientists and drag them, screaming, into the darkness, as if they were Japanese schoolgirls) remain functional. Continue reading Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part VI→
