Comics I Love Even Though I've Only Seen the Covers #11: My Life / My Desire

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm running out of material for these, so today I'm going to pair up two very similar titles published by Fox Features Syndicate in the late '40s. Both specialized in ladies who were a wee bit blasé about love.

A Brave New World

It’s hard to believe that this blog is less than a hundred days old! It’s been both exhausting and rewarding. I’m glad that I chose a format that forced to me to write a lot, generating a lot of content and forcing me to develop a lot of blog-discipline, right out of the gate. I’m gratified at the response I’ve gotten and I’m glad that there are many of you out there checking in every day.

Of course, to a certain degree, this blog has been a victim of its own success. I started blogging to get myself writing again after a long illness, and that’s worked out well. I also wanted the blog to remind the powers-that-be that I was out there and it’s done that too. When I started this blog three months ago, I was worried that my screenwriting career had stalled out and I wanted to give myself a shot in the arm. Recently, possibly because of the blog, the phone has been ringing again, and I’ve now got people waiting for pages. Of course, this has convinced me that I should keep the blog going to generate more opportunities, but it’s also made it impossible for me to watch and analyze a movie every day.

So will I keep up the blog? You bet! Every day? Yeah! How? Some format tweaks:

• I’ll still do at least 2 underrated movies a week! (with occasional TV and Special Guest Picks mixed in)
• I’ll now mix in about 3 entries a week called “Storyteller’s Rulebook”. This was originally going to be a book of its own, and I’ve been writing these up for years in preparation. I’m going to turn them into blog entries. Don’t worry, they’re not that different from what you’ve been reading: they’ll have more of my thoughts on storytelling, just not necessarily focused around the analysis of one movie.
• Also, as of tomorrow, I’ve run out of “Comics I Love Even Though I’ve Only Seen the Covers”, so that’ll be replaced with “On Beyond Superheroes”, spotlighting countdown lists of my favorite comics in other genres, every Saturday. And each Sunday will feature a complete story from one of my picks.
• And there should soon be another new feature, done in conjunction with one of my favorite blogs, that would bring with it many new readers. I can’t say more yet, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for this one. Let’s just say that I hope to make a deal that’ll keep the empire out of my hair for a long time…

Underrated TV on DVD #5: Slings and Arrows

Series: Slings and Arrows
Years: 2003-2006, 3 short seasons, 18 episodes
Creators: Mark McKinney, Bob Martin, Susan Coyne
Stars: Paul Gross, Mark McKinney, Martha Burns, Rachel McAdams

The Concept: Three epic years behind the scenes at the so-called “New Burbage Shakespeare Festival” (but any similarity to Ontario’s actual Stratford Festival is strictly intentional.) Many years ago, an actor went mad onstage playing Hamlet. Now he returns as the new artistic director, a job that turns out to contain equal parts bawdy comedy, piercing tragedy and endlessly-repeating history.

How it Came to be Underrated: Not only have most Americans never heard of this show, they well-and-truly believe that there’s no such thing as 'Canadian TV'. That’s a shame, since this is one of the greatest shows that the medium has ever produced, anywhere.

Sample Episode: 1.1, Oliver’s Dream
Writers: Susan Coyne, Bob Martin and Mark McKinney
The Story: In this pilot episode, all the pieces are still waiting to fall into place: The festival is awash in money but it’s lost its soul thanks to a sloppy artistic director and a rapacious financial officer. Meanwhile, the only man who can save it is barely eking out an existence, assuring himself that “The best things happen just before the thread snaps.”

Why It’s Great:

1. Why are most TV shows about cops, doctors and lawyers? Because drama demands life-or-death stakes, and the easiest way to ‘up the stakes’ is to give your protagonist a job where they literally make life-or-death decisions everyday. So how do you make a show where the only thing at stake is the quality of a theater? You have to write really, really well. The lower the stakes, the more of a challenge the writer has. The audience is not going to automatically care, no, so the creators have to work twice as hard to make them care. They succeed beautifully here. Given that every movie and TV episode has a director, it’s surprising that this is the only time I’ve ever see someone successfully dramatize the challenges of that job.
2. Case in point— this episode starts with what we’re told is a painful situation: a poor staging of A Midsummers Night’s Dream. But the first time I watched this episode, I didn’t fully feel how bad the direction of the play was. I understood that I was supposed to find it bad, but I wasn't entirely sure what was so bad about it. By the time I’d spent 18 episodes watching Gross struggle with the joys and pains of the art of direction, my reaction was quite different. Watching it again, I cared so much more, and I was now able to empathize fully with the characters who pour their lives into the theater.
   
3. Two of the co-creators are also actors in the show, but they gave themselves two of the most thankless parts, at least initially. Coyne and McKinney’s characters seem like artless funcionaries in this pilot episode, and it’s hard to believe they wrote themselves into these parts. Of course, they knew and we didn’t that each character on this show contained hidden multitudes, which would slowly unfurl through three beautifully-structured seasons.
4. After watching hundreds of hours of ‘American’ TV shows that were actually shot in Vancouver, in which all the day players are ordered to choke down their Canadian accents, it’s great to see an truly Canadian show where they’re finally allowed to let the ‘aboot’s fly. It’s especially notable with Burns’s wonderful diva character, whose favorite word, after each of her tantrums, is ‘sore-ee’.
   

How Available Is It?: All three seasons are available on disk through Netflix.

But Don’t Take My Word For It:

Underrated TV on DVD #4: Lucky Louie

Series: Lucky Louie
Year: 2006, 1 season, 13 episodes
Creator: Louis C. K.
Stars: Louis C. K., Pamela Adlon, Mike Hagerty, Jerry Minor, Kelly Gould

The Concept: Shocking sitcom about a working class couple and their sketchy friends, focusing on the painful realities of modern American life, based on the creator's brazenly frank stand-up.

How it Came to be Underrated: This series got terrible reviews and it was quickly cancelled. It’s no mystery to me why that happened: The great scripts and performances were undercut by an ill-considered, intentionally fake-looking style for the sets and cinematography that was understandably off-putting to audiences. Unfortunately, they didn’t stay on the air long enough to figure out that they should stop chasing audiences away.

Sample Episode: 1.1, "Pilot"
Writer: Louis C. K.
The Story: Louis's life is filled with embarrassments. In one storyline, the black neighbors give his daughter a black Barbie, then see him throw it away. In the other, his wife decides she wants to try to make another baby, which he has to admit that he can’t afford to do.

Why It’s Great:

1. In the court of public opinion, there have always been two verdicts for Louis C. K.: He's perceived as a super-smart stand-up comedian, but a widely-reviled low-rent screenwriter, responsible for Pootie-Tang and several other flops. This show should have been his opportunity to finally connect to a broader audience, but its failure only seems to have confirmed the status quo.
2. HBO likes to be “daring”, which generally means making shows about rich people cavorting nakedly. This show had a lot of raunchy humor, but it also made a rare attempt to honestly lampoon America’s two biggest “don’t-go-there’s”: race and class, which was a little too fearless, even for HBO.
   
3. Louis’s desperate attempts to befriend the black neighbors culminate in a hilarious spiel about how he really needs a black friend because his young daughter has only ever spoken to one black person: the refrigerator repairman. Now she says ‘refrigerator’ every time she sees somebody black on the bus. Though they have little in common, his neighbor has to relent: “I guess it’s worth it if I can help one little white girl learn the difference between a black person and a refrigerator.”
4. The show specialized in finding those painful little moments that don’t usually get dramatized, sacrificed in the name of that stern TV taskmaster: likability. Have you ever made dinner plans and then forgotten all about it? I have. It's painful. Seeing it on screen, I winced.
   

How Available Is It?: The whole show is rentable on 2 discs, including hilarious, rowdy commentaries that were recorded right after the cancellation.

But Don’t Take My Word For It: Only the first scene of the pilot is online but it’s one of my all-time favorite introductions to a show.Please, please watch this:

Underrated TV on DVD #3: “Good Neighbors” aka “The Good Life”

TV Week, Day 3:

Series: “Good Neighbors” aka “The Good Life”
Years: 1975-1978, 4 short seasons, 30 episodes
Creator: John Howard Davies
Stars: Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith, Paul Eddington

The Concept: A ad man convinces his wife that they should quit the rat race and subsist on whatever they can raise on their little suburban plot of land. Their social-climbing neighbors are horrified.

How it Came to be Underrated: The show has a tiny cult in the U.S., but it deserves to be a household name.

Sample Episode: 1.2, “Say Little Hen…”
Writers: John Esmonde and Bob Larbey
The Story: The newfound bohemians acquire their first goat and chickens, horrifying their neighbors, who scheme to get Briers back to his old job.

Why It’s Great:

1. My wife introduced me to this show, which is only appropriate, since it’s the most appealing marriage I’ve ever seen portrayed on TV. He’s genuinely charming and she’s downright adorable, but put them together and the glow they generate is supernatural. (Of the other hand, their proto-Thatcherite nemesis Keith, with her Amazonian stature and infinite umbrage, is the one person on the show who isn’t lovable, yet she almost steals every episode.)
   
2. The storytelling couldn’t be more laid back and scruffy –this could very well be called “Scruffy: The Show”— but the structure underlying it is rock solid. Each episode takes the form of a pub-dweller’s shaggy-dog story, lulling you with a series of homey comforts, then busting your gut with last-second punchline that suddenly unites the interwoven storytelling ribbons into an intricate bow.
   
3. Why has this show never gotten an American adaptation?? It certainly couldn’t be more timely right now: Downward mobility? Attempting to live with zero waste? Lawn-obsessed picture-perfect suburbs? Come on! Given the success America’s had with British imports recently, this is sort of a no-brainer.
4. Unlike the shows I’ve covered so far, this one was serialized. Each episode stands on its own but they also form a satisfying epic when taken in full. And there’s a genuine feeling of jeopardy throughout as they struggle to keep their absurd dream alive.

But Don't Take My Word For It:

Underrated TV on DVD #2: Dragnet: The Black-and-White Years

It's TV week, day 2!

Series: Dragnet: The Black-and-White Years
Recommended to Fans Of: "Homicide"and "The Wire"
Years: First it was a radio show, then it moved to TV for 276 half-hour black-and-white episodes from 1951-1959. Many years later, in 1967, it returned for four final seasons in color.
Creator: Jack Webb
Stars: Jack Webb, Frank Smith

The Concept: Gritty police procedural, shot on film in a starkly-lit film noir style. Sgt. Joe Friday and various partners solve crimes for the LAPD, with the details based on actual cases.

How it Came to be Underrated: My generation thinks it knows all about “Dragnet”, thanks to the zany 1988 Dan Ackroyd / Tom Hanks movie version, and the satirical portrayal of the show in L.A. Confidential. These created a totally false impression. Even the ‘60s version, which we got to see through "Nick at Night" reruns, was both campier and stodgier than the original show. By that point, Webb’s Eisenhower-Republican politics had fallen out of favor, and so he allowed the show to become a generation-clash broadside, featuring a lot of “bust the hippies” episodes. People who only know that version owe it to themselves to check out the original, which, in addition to being more morally complex, is amazingly gritty.

Sample Episode: 2.19, The Big Break
Writer: James E. Moser
The Story: Detective Friday and his partner catch a hold-up man in a tense raid. Months later, they hear that he’s escaped from jail, so they stake out his home all day, only to hear that he was caught across town hours ago. A year later, they hear that he’s been parolled into the army. He even stops by and borrows ten bucks from each of them for a night on the town! Then they realize that he’s actually on the lam again, having been put in army prison and broken out. They find him again and finally put him away for good.

Why It’s Great:

1. “The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.” To this day, everybody knows that opening spiel, but most people don’t realize that they meant it. This show is shockingly realistic. Read that plot synopsis. This show is messy. On “Law and Order” (which I love), they delve into moral quandries, but they’re doing so in a very idealized version of reality. Those detectives never say “well, it’s 5 o’clock now so let’s go home”, or “let’s drop that case for awhile and work on something more promising.” On this show, they say that stuff all the time. Webb is downright obsessed with showing the quotidian absurdities of a cop’s life, even if those details sometimes make them look foolish and/or callous.
   
2. The synopsis of this episode might seem to fit the show’s right-wing reputation: A criminal works the system, gets out over and over and makes a mockery of the cops’ sympathies. But the actual episode doesn’t create that feeling at all. Instead of denouncing the cops’gullibility, the whole point seems to be to praise them for the shred of credulous humanity they still maintain, even in this brutal job.
   
3. The 1988 movie, made by veterans of the counterculture, chose to portray Joe Friday as a pseudo-fascist, who became a cop because he was naturally merciless. On the actual show, the opposite is true. Dealing with crooks has certainly made Webb’s Friday unsentimental in his affect, but he’s maintaining that distance precisely so that he can remain open to listening to the pleas of suspects.
4. Likewise, the other phrase everybody knows, “Just the facts”, seems cruel when taken out of context, indicating a lack of empathy for the human element, but in Webb’s hands it’s merely a scalpel for cutting to the truth. Joe listens to lies all day, but his job demands that he not turn away. Not until “Hill Street Blues” would there be another show that captured how absurdly hard that job could be.
   

How Available Is It?: Netflix has a 5-disc “best of” for the original series, featuring 25 episodes.

But Don’t Take My Word For It: Embedding is once again disabled, and they made me watch a Yoplait ad first, but the whole episode can eventually be watched for free on YouTube here.

Underrated TV on DVD #1: Black Books

It's TV Week here at Cockeyed Caravan:

Series: Black Books

Years: 2000-2004, 3 short seasons, 18 episodes total
Creators: Graham Linehan, Dylan Moran
Stars: Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Tamsin Greig

The Concept: A misanthropic intellectual runs a tiny book shop in London, where he makes life hell for his sole employee and guzzles wine with the lady from the neighboring store.

Recommended If You’re a Fan Of: “The Office” or “Fawlty Towers”

How it Came to be Underrated: “The Office” and “Spaced” got more attention here in America, but this is the flat-out funniest of the new breed of brit-coms.

Sample Episode: 3.2, “Elephants and Hens”
Writers: Dylan Moran, Kevin Cecil, and Andy Riley
The Story: Greig spends the weekend bonding with old friends, so Moran and Bailey use the time to collaborate on writing a childrens’ picture book. As usual, both endeavors end in total disaster.

Why It’s Great:

1. The show is first and foremost a showcase for the genius of Moran, who almost begs us to dislike his wretched character. If we’d been asked to like him, we’d hate him, but because he takes not one step towards meeting us in the middle, we gladly cross the whole distance ourselves. We love him because he’s so adorably abject.
   
2. American shows featuring cynical characters either force us to approve of their point-of-view (“Seinfeld”) or hustle them towards redemption by the end of the first episode (“Community”). The brits do neither, which is why Americans are happy to wade across the pond.
3. The women are supposed celebrating an upcoming wedding, but they really want to ambush each other with long-suppressed hostility. They start off with four ingredients: “Games! Cake! Booze! Truth!” and inevitably finish with bitter recriminations: “I can’t believe you kissed my dad.”
   
4. The first draft of the kids’ book is 1030 pages, and not entirely age-appropriate, but Moran can explain: “It’s perfectly simple: There’s the academic who survived the Stalinist purges, his daughter whose long bitter marriage is collapsing around her, and the journalist who falls obsessively in love with the daughter and then sacrifices his whole career to become a lens grinder in Omsk. What’s the problem? I don’t think we should talk down to children.” “Yes, but, I have two tiny suggestions. Instead of the academic and the journalist and the daughter, perhaps it could be about... an elephant?” [bitterly] “I see. What’s your other suggestion?” “Well, instead of the Stalinist purges, it could be about [delicately] losing a balloon.” “An elephant who loses his balloon?” “That’s it.” [pause, then…] “But it would still be my story, in essence? My vision?” “Oh yes, completely.” [sudden mania:] “Let’s do it!”

How Available Is It?: Each season fits on one disk, and you can rent them all through Netflix.

But Don’t Take My Word For It: Embedding is disabled but you can watch the whole episode on YouTube here.

Comics I Love Even Though I've Only Seen the Covers #10: Diary Secrets

Finally, the comic that dares to reveal what men wish women were thinking!

Underrated Movie #52: The Killing

Title: The Killing
Year: 1956
Director: Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove)
Writers: Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson, based on a novel by Lionel White
Stars: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards (Murder By Contract), Jay C. Flippen, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook (Electra Glide in Blue)

The Story: A career criminal recruits five frustrated working men to help him heist a horse track on race day. As a god-like narrator dissects their failings, we see how a series of small errors lead to one disaster after another.

How it Came to be Underrated: As Kubrick’s films got more and more prestige, this early noir began to look like a work-for-hire by comparison. This may not be 2001, but it’s a serious Kubrick effort, showing his usual mastery.

Why It’s Great:

1. Anyone who’s seen Kubrick’s more famous movies will recognize many of his favorite themes in utero here: the uselessness of ambition, the treachery of emotion and the ironic triumph of fate over free will
2. Jim Thompson barely eked out living as a crime novelist while he was alive, and he was lucky to get the job writing dialogue for this movie (Kubrick was part of his small cult of fans). Since his death, his reputation has soared, and he’s now considered to be not only a great crime novelist, but a genuine literary giant. Straddling both worlds, he's able to provide heartbreaking little vignettes of the criminals’ lives, along with lively hard-boiled dialogue like this: “George has stumbled onto something big!” “That meatball?” “A meatball with gravy!”
   
3. Kubrick made such a classic-looking noir that it seems like it could have been shot ten years earlier, but there are also progressive touches that mark it as way ahead of its time. In one scene a member of the team is doomed by his own racist treatment of a parking attendant. In another, our hero’s grizzled old drinking buddy suddenly admits that he wants to marry him! I react with disbelief every time I watch the movie! Did I hear that right?? But there’s really no other way to interpret it. At least not to my modern ears.
   
4. The crime is planned down to the smallest detail, but it all falls apart. Why? Why do so many bands break up as soon as they get their first hit single? Because people can keep their hopes and fears and jealousies in check as long as there’s no money on the table, but as soon as you can smell success, (to paraphrase Langston Hughes) all the deferred dreams stop sagging like a heavy load and instead start to explode.
   

If You Like This, You Should Also Check Out: Kubrick’s previous movie was a much lower-budget noir, Killer’s Kiss. His next was his breakthrough into prestige pictures, Paths of Glory. These three great movies nicely showcase the rise of a filmmaker whose ambition could not be contained.

How Available Is It?: It’s available on dvd or you can watch it instantly.

Today’s Post Was Brought To You By: It Talks!

Underrated Movie #51: Vera Cruz

Title: Vera Cruz
Year: 1954
Director: Robert Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly, Flight of the Phoenix)
Writers: Roland Kibbee and James R. Webb, based on a story by Borden Chase
Stars: Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Cesar Romero, Sarita Montiel, George Macready

The Story: After coming out the wrong end of the Civil War, a ruined southern gentleman decides to refashion himself as a Mexican Civil War mercenary. Teaming up with a charming horsethief, he tries to earn a fortune by transporting a wagon full of Maximilian’s gold.

How it Came to be Underrated: This movie is in the same league as another western Cooper made that year, High Noon, but it remains far less well known. Alrdich and Lancaster (who also co-produced) both loved to rankle Hollywood by working on their own terms. The result was a lot of great movies, many of which didn’t get the respect they deserved.

Why It’s Great:

1. The basic premise of this movie is so clever that I’m shocked we don’t see it more often: What if a movie like Star Wars culminated in a showdown between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo? We’re so used to seeing the lovable rogue win the trust of the naïve hero that it starts to seems like a foregone conclusion. But what if the rogue turns out to be even scarier than the evil empire he’s helping to overthrow?
   
2. Cooper never settled into the sort of fatherly roles that would have been appropriate for his advancing age. He kept playing lean, desperate gunfighters until the day he died. He used his age to his advantage: Rather than growing soft, he just became more haggard.
   
3. Aldrich specialized in movies about hard men who triumph over harder men, only to find themselves continually stabbed in the back by the soft men they’ve fought to protect. His best films are individually quite powerful, but when you put them all together, they form one grand unified statement, a devastating condemnation of nothing less than the idea of civilization itself.
4. Did George Macready (Gilda, Paths of Glory) ever make a bad movie? He’s one of those character actors like Robert Ryan, who not only elevated every movie he was in, but seemed to have a knack for finding the smartest material. He makes it into this one for one scene as Maximilian, but he has to provide the whole motivation for the war.
   

If You Like This, You Should Also Check Out: All three big names went on to make movies that were even more cynical than this one later in the '50s: Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, Lancaster's Sweet Smell of Success, and Cooper's Man of the West. All three are pitch-black gems.

How Available Is It?: You can get it on dvd or watch it instantly.

Today’s Post Was Brought To You By: By Day I Am Known As Senor Suerte—Mister Luck, But At Night I Become Senor Muerte—Mr. Death!

Underrated Movies: Special Guest Picks #4 (Part Two)

And here's four more picks by The Daily Show's Elliott Kalan:

Save The Green Planet (2003)

Director: Jang Joon-Hwan
In all the fuss over Oldboy (which I'm not knocking, mind you) it seems like everyone missed the real find of South Korean cinema. A deranged young man and his acrobat girlfriend kidnap the CEO of a chemical company so they can torture him into admitting the truth: that he is an alien prince sent to earth to begin the planet's destruction. Save the Green Planetis everything a movie can offer -- comedy, horror, suspense, mystery, epic science fiction, romance, and a surprisingly heartfelt plea for world peace and better working conditions in Korean chemical plants. At every turn it will either stun you or baffle you with its audacious breakneck tonal shifts and stunning disregard for the way movies are supposed to work.

The Devil and Daniel Webster aka All That Money Can Buy aka Here Is a Man (1941)
Director: William Dieterle
A powerful mix of cornpone, Americana, fun, and genuine nightmarishness, The Devil and Daniel Webster is one of those movies that feels like it was made just for me. "A fantasy-drama about the promise of America where the devil's mistress literally dances a man to death? Awesome!" But as a recent public screening proved, other people like it, too. Walter Huston is amazing as Mr. Scratch, Edward Arnold sparkles as the Great Orator, and Simone Simon is literally sexy as hell. Wrap it up in one of Bernard Herrmann's greastest scores and a perfect ending and it becomes a shame that people refer to this movie as a "minor classic". It is quite a major classic, good sir!

Zodiac (2007)
Director: David Fincher
Greeted with rave reviews and then quietly stowed away in the back of the cinema closet, the only David Fincher movie I enjoy watching hasn't gotten the respect it deserves. A taut retelling of the Zodiac Killer case anchored by great performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. (and somehow amazingly suspenseful over its 3 hour running time), Zodiac is more than another serial killer film. As it gradually unfolds and the years pass, it becomes an intense treatise on the nature of time and memory, and the inability to ever really know the past. As obsessed men seek ever more detail about these terrifying crimes, the reality of life passes through their fingers. History is a ghost, personal history even more so. No matter how much we ask ourselves "How sure are you on a scale of 1 - 10?", tragically we can never quantify our experiences or capture time. (For this reason Zodiac always makes me think of the song "Finishing the Hat" from "Sunday in the Park From George".) After only three years Zodiac is due for a rediscovery, which is kind of sad in its own way.

The Fall (2006/2008)
Director: Tarsem Singh
Currently settling into the position of "cult oddity" but deserving so much more, Tarsem Singh's labor of love The Fall is one of my favorite recent movies, and something I never thought I'd see -- a beautifully shot, captivating story about a little Romanian girl, a Los Angeles hospital, and the epic adventures of Charles Darwin's pet monkey. I don't care what anybody says! Sure it drags a little towards the end! But it's an amazing movie, a startling personal vision of the kind we're not used to seeing in American film. And after multiple viewings I still cry at the ending, when a montage of silent film comedy pratfalls becomes a love letter to movies, friendship, and the idea of escape.

Thanks again to Elliott Kalan for eight great picks! Let's see, yesterday I mentioned Elliott's NYC screening series Closely Watched Films and his podcast The Flophouse, so today I'll spotlight entirely different output from this multifaceted guy: He wrote a fascinating article for the most recent issue of Popular Mechanics about The Legacy of the 1939 World's Fair and he's got a hush-hush comic book coming out from Marvel Comics, who interviewed him about it.

Underrated Movies: Special Guest Picks #4 (Part One)

Hi, gang, I'm pleased to announce a very special guest with a deep knowledge of movies. Emmy winner Elliott Kalan was cool enough to drop eight write-ups on me so far, too many for one day, so let's do our first ever Special Guest Picks 2-parter! Here's Part Uno:

The Sea Wolf (1941)
Director: Michael Curtiz
Edward G. Robinson in one of his greatest roles as Wolf Larson the Milton-worshiping seagoing sadist who forces Ida Lupino and John Garfield into marine servitude next to Gollum-like gremlin from hell Barry Fitzgerald. And they're all backed up by the greatest master craftsmen the Warner Brothers studio machine had to offer. The Sea Wolf is a masterful piece of entertainment, gripping and eerie, which would fit in just as easily with the Universal horror classics as it does with the later film noir tales of deviance. So how come nobody ever talks about it?

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Director: Joseph Sargent
Many movies age well. Fewer movies age BETTER. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of those movies. Just as suspenseful, funny, and exciting a crackerjack thriller as it was upon first release, its amazing ability to create a living breathing simulation of 1970s New York makes it a fascinating and invaluable document of those times. The little details that once served only to add verisimilitude have become beautiful moments trapped in amber for future generations to gaze at. That is, if they're not too busy hanging off the edge of their seats.

The Prestige (2006)
Director: Chris Nolan
Unfortunately buried by another, far less interesting 2006 19th century magician movie (what are the odds, huh?), The Prestige is a cold scalpel slash of a film delicately dissecting the hateful competition between two extremely handsome stage performers whose rivalry leads them to ever-darker areas of intrigue and deception. It's a machine-like movie, but if it wasn't then its ridiculously complex multi-flashback nesting doll plot structure wouldn't work as seamlessly as it does. Sure, it's got a twist ending (two, really), but don't focus too much on those. Buried beneath them is a metaphor for the act of filmmaking itself, the reporduction of things and images and the agreement we make not to admit how horrified we'd be if the things we see routinely on screen were to actually occur. Plus, David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla -- greatest casting decision ever.

Hollow Triumph aka The Scar (1948)
Director: Steve Sekely
Failed med student Paul Henreid also fails at a criminal career, and then, while running from the mob, fails to escape into the life of an identical doctor with a tell-tale scar. This is the bleakest of film noirs, in which existence is a series of mistakes, bad decisions, fatal coincidences, and out-and-out fuck ups. Shot with style and verve and loaded with bizarre touches, stumbling a few times but stumbling honestly, it's one of the buried gems of the genre.

Elliott Kalan won an Emmy at his day job writing for "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart". Even before he was on the writing staff, he helped put together Jon's Oscar Gay Cowboy montage, so the guy knows his movies. Here in NYC, he hosts the delightful monthly screening series Closely Watched Films at 92Y Tribeca. He's also, like our last guest, a co-host of the Flophouse podcast, where he once memorably pitched a Ziggy movie.