PULP CATHOLICISM #018

PODCAST 49: Carnosaur & The Gate [Forced Perspective Edition]

This week Forest & Cory go off in different direction as Cory reviews the 1987 child friendly horror flick, The Gate. Forest kicks off his three part Carnosaur retrospective, beginning with Carnosaur of course.

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THE B-MOVIE CATECHISM: THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #14 – THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE

Today is the birthday of one of our favorite actors here at the B-Movie Catechism, Sir Christopher Lee. And what better way to celebrate than to enjoy a clip from one of his most frightening performances. Which one is it, you may ask? Well, it’s probably not one you’d expect, so go right ahead and forget about his Frankenstein, dismiss his Dracula, set aside his Saruman, and poo poo his Count Dooku! Here, ladies and gentlemen, is Christopher Lee at his most menacing as… the mysterious Mr. Midnight!

My apologies if that tune revisits you in your nightmares.

But what about poor Captain Invincible, huh? If only he’d paid attention to the Catechism where it says, "the virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine", then maybe he might have avoided the alcoholism that makes him so vulnerable to Mr. Midnight’s manipulations in this scene.

You know, Christianity’s relationship with alcohol is interesting. The Catholic Encyclopedia readily acknowledges that “from a sociological standpoint, we are compelled by incontrovertible evidence to acknowledge that [alcohol] is of all causes the most frequent source of poverty, unhappiness, divorce, suicide, immorality, crime, insanity, disease, and death.” And yet the Church has no problem with its members enjoying a few drinks here and there as long as they don’t overdo it. Even the early Protestants were okay with knocking back a few. Salem’s Increase Mather (father of Cotton), for instance, may have been a staunch puritan, but he apparently didn’t mind a good bit of grog after a long day of witch burnings. “Drink is in itself a good creature of God” he is quoted as saying, “and to be received with thankfulness.” In fact, Protestant temperance only really came into vogue when John Wesley and the Methodists began preaching against its use outside of The Lord’s Supper. These days, however, even those voices have mostly gone silent. So while you’re unlikely to find beer being served at your local Baptist church’s pot luck supper, most modern Protestants will happily wave back to you if see them at the liquor store rather than ducking for cover behind the peanuts display. In the end, I guess even they realized it’s kind of hard to condemn the responsible use of the stuff when even our God drank wine, going so far as to make some more when the vats ran dry at the wedding in Cana.

We are God’s children, yes, but in many ways we are his grown children. He respects our free will and allows us the opportunity to exercise our stewardship over the fruits of the earth. We should thank him for this honor every time we pop open a bottle of brew. There’s even a prayer for the occasion that’s been floating around the Net for awhile now.

Bless, + O Lord, this creature beer, which thou hast deigned to produce from the fat of grain: that it may be a salutary remedy to the human race, and grant through the invocation of thy holy name; that, whoever shall drink it, may gain health in body and peace in soul. Through Christ our Lord.

Of course, being a grownup cuts both ways. So if we happen to pop open a few too many and find ourselves the next morning genuflecting at the porcelain altar of the false god of excess rather than at the altar we should be kneeling at, then a bit of confession is in order. And if your confessor needs any suggestions for a penance, just link him to the video above. Ten Hail Marys and a dose of Christopher Lee singing should do it.

SHORT FEATURE: ST. PATRICK’S BAD ANALOGIES

Who knew the Lutherans could be funny? Well, it turns out they can, except for, you know, those occasional times when they’re being materially heretical and all that. But still, this short currently making the rounds is pretty good…

If you’re like me, you probably heard at least one of these analogies during the homily on Trinity Sunday. Not that I’m blaming any priest for using them because I sure can’t come up with any better ones myself. It’s like the Catechism says, “The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the ‘mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God’. To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.”

The Trinity is like a cold splash of water in the faces of theologians, be they professionals or the armchair variety like myself. It’s just not something you can sit at a desk and noodle out on paper. The mystery of the Trinity is something which ultimately must be experienced, not solved. Or as Pope Francis put it yesterday, the Trinity “is not the product of human reasoning, it is the face which God himself revealed, not from the top of a throne, but walking with humanity in the history of the people of Israel, and above all in Jesus of Nazareth.” Know Jesus and you’ll know the Trinity.

PULP CATHOLICISM #017

PODCAST 48: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms & It Came From Beneath the Sea [Harryhausen Edition]

This week Forest & Cory pay tribute to the late and great Ray Harryhausen, as they review The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and It Came From Beneath the Sea. They also discuss the charm of stop-motion animation and how CGI may look more realistic, but will always play

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SHORT FEATURE: STAR TREKKIN’

I’m sure those of you who have been reading my recent movie reviews over at Aleteia have figured out by now how the deal works over there. I spend most of the article talking about the film (as spoiler free as possible) and then provide a brief paragraph or two touching lightly on a Christian theme that may have presented itself during the movie. It’s similar to what I’ve been doing here, but the reviews are shorter and not quite as heavy on the catechetical material.

That’s fine for most movies, but every now and then I run across one I wish I could blab a little longer on. Take Star Trek Into Darkness for example. While I was able to say what I wanted to about the film’s intended moral theme (just response during warfare), the no-spoiler policy and the allowed length of the article prevented me from going off on a tangent I really, really wanted to. Well, there are no such restrictions on this site, so… it’s tangent time! Now I won’t rehash what I thought of Into Darkness here because you can read all that over at Aleteia, but I am going to spoil stuff I didn’t get to in that review. So, if you don’t want to have some of the plot twists revealed before seeing Star Trek Into Darkness, it might be best to skip the rest of this post.

Alright then, let’s get Star Trekkin’…

Okay, if you’re still here that means you either already know that Khan Noonien Singh is the villain (at least one of them) in the latest movie, or you don’t mind learning it beforehand. Star Trek Into Darkness is basically J.J. Abrams’ take on the Star Seed episode of the original series with lots of visual and verbal cues from The Wrath of Khan thrown in to try and add some emotional gravitas to an otherwise lightweight script. Obviously, thanks to the changes to the timeline which occurred in the previous film, how Kirk and his crew come to meet Khan and how that encounter resolves itself is vastly different from the first time around.

But that’s where the changes end apparently. As I noted in my review at Aleteia, “after taking great pains in the 2009 reboot of Star Trek to establish an alternate timeline (and therefore an uncertain future) for the crew of the USS Enterprise, the writers of Into Darkness appear to have decided some of the previous canon is too sacred to be messed with after all. As a result, things written with the intention of being shocking twists really aren’t, the ending is telegraphed midway through the film, and some plot points make little sense outside of the fact that they have to occur in order to set up future events which didn’t necessarily even have to happen anymore (or so Abrams’ first Star Trek movie would have suggested).”

In short, the writers of Into Darkness decided that The Wrath of Khan was sacrosanct, so even though the new film is set in an alternate timeline, everything that occurs in the new movie does so to ensure that The Wrath of Khan as we know it will come to pass. That’s sweet, but it requires a bunch of increasingly ridiculous plot points in order to make it happen. Don’t even get me started on the blood serum McCoy develops which basically makes it now possible for everyone in the 23rd century to become Wolverine. (I was going to get into a number of the plot holes this movie inflicts upon the franchise, but then I noticed they’ve already  driven Peter Chattaway into a nerd frenzy over at Patheos, so I’ll just let you head over there and read all about that stuff.)

You see, while Star Trek Into Darkness is an enjoyable enough action film, once it’s over and you’ve had a few moments to think about it, you realize it’s also illogical and kind of stupid. Even so, the whole thing got me to wondering about some of the philosophical conundrums presented by Abram’s two films when taken together. You see, in the first Star Trek, the changes that come from Nero’s incursion into the past suggest that events are malleable and the future can change based on our choices. In contrast, Into Darkness appears to imply that some things must always be, that some things are predestined to happen, even if those events don’t make any sense story wise. Khan must always end up in exile even though he should have been killed twenty times over, Carol Marcus and Kirk must always hook up (kind of hard to have a son if they don’t) even after all that happened with her father should have sent her running in the opposite direction, and major characters must survive to star in the sequel/prequel/whatever even after, you know, they kind of kicked the bucket during the big finale.

So one film champions free will and the other favors predestination, yet both exist in the same universe. That can’t work, can it? Well, I suppose it could be a problem for some, but for Catholics, who kind of dine on this sort of paradox, it’s not really a problem at all. As the Catechism explains it, “To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of ‘predestination’, he includes in it each person's free response to his grace.” For God, an intelligence outside of time, everything has happened/is happening/will happen. It’s all a big NOW to him, a done deal so to speak. For us linear creatures, however, everything is still a choice. The concept works even for things like the crucifixion, an event that MUST take place in order to accomplish God’s plan of salvation. Just because the crucifixion MUST happen, that doesn’t preclude the fact that it involved free will on the part of humans to bring it about. Judas had to choose to betray Jesus, Pontius Pilate had to choose to wash his hands of the affair, we all had to choose to sin to make the event necessary in the first place.

But just for the fun of it, let’s imagine that someone managed to go back in time and convince Judas not to betray Jesus. Wouldn’t that throw a monkey wrench into God’s plans? Not at all, because assuming the crucifixion is a fixed point in time (what, you can watch both Star Trek AND Dr. Who, you know), then God, being outside of time, would have already taken into account the choices made in the alternative timeline and arranged for other means to bring the crucifixion about in it. And I’ll guarantee he wouldn’t do it as sloppy as they do in Into Darkness. Magic Wolverine blood, give me a freaking break!.

Oh well, that’s probably more noodling about Into Darkness than it really deserves. Just watch it for the usual Trek stuff and try not to worry too much about the changes Abrams and his writers have made to the Star Trek franchise. And if they bother you too much, you can always fall back on Star Wars.

Oh, wait…

PULP CATHOLICISM #016

Expiration Dates Expired

Well, as I wrote last week, Netflix's public list of expiration dates for streaming titles seems gone for good. An official announcement was made Monday on the company's blog:

Starting today, we will no longer provide expiration dates for any of our titles in the public API... We are making this change because the expiration date can be inaccurate as a result of frequent, often last minute, changes in content flow. Netflix members will still be able to see the listed title expirations on Netflix.com on each individual title page.

That means even sites like Instantwatcher.com will no longer have advance notice of what's expiring. The best we can now expect is a one-week notice for any titles already in our queues. Other titles, i.e., ones we may not know about or whose title page we haven't recently visited, will just disappear.

I'm hoping there will eventually be another alternative, but until then my plan is to spotlight any noteworthy titles that I discover are expiring in the last few days before they're gone. This will be more hit and miss than picking from a compiled list--and with shorter notice--but I should still catch a few good ones that would otherwise have gotten away. In other words, stay tuned...

PODCAST 47: The Beyond & Zombi 2 [Lucio Fulci Edition]

This week Forest & Cory take a stroll through the works of the Italian "Godfather of Gore", Lucio Fulci. Forest shares how thoughts on The Beyond, while Cory recounts the infamous Zombi 2.

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THE B-LIST: 5 MOVIES YOU WOULDN’T SUSPECT WERE ADAPTED FROM BOOKS

For Aleteia this past weekend, I watched the latest film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s required reading, The Great Gatsby. You know, it’s always interesting watching a movie based on a novel, if for no other reason than to see how a director meets the challenges of bringing certain passages to the screen. And it’s not a problem just for A-listers like Baz Luhrmann, B-movie directors have a hard time of it as well. What’s that you say, you didn’t know bad movies also occasionally started out as books? It’s true, and to prove it, here’s a handful of celluloid hack jobs that once started out as hardbacks.

Carnosaur

Oh yes, believe it or not, the screenplay for Roger Corman’s quicky cash-in on Jurassic Park (so quick it actually managed to come out first) was adapted from the 1984 novel Carnosaur written by John Brosnan under the pseudonym of Harry Adam Knight. Troll around the internet and you’ll be amazed to find a few fans who appreciate Brosnan’s Carnosaur more than they do Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. However, I think it’s safe to say you’d be hard pressed to find the same for the movies.

Howling IV: The Original Nightmare

Now most people are aware that Joe Dante’s classic 1981 werewolf flick The Howling was based on a book, but what only the people who actually read Gary Brandner’s 1977 novel realize is that Dante’s final screenplay bears no resemblence whatsoever to the source material except for the idea of werewolves running around somewhere in California. It wasn’t until the 1988 direct-to-video sequel that Brandner’s original storyline finally appeared onscreen. Although gorehounds fondly remember the movie for the scene in which a man melts into a puddle of goo and reforms as a werewolf, most fans of the Bradner’s book probably feel the movie wasn’t worth the wait.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Probably the most successful of the Scream knock-offs, the Kevin Williamson penned I Know What You Did Last Summer was actually an adaptation of the 1973 Young Adult novel of the same name written by prolific YA author Lois Duncan. Just like many an ashamed actor, it seems the Young Adult genre has a few slashers in its past.

Slugs

They Slime... They ooze... They kill... and they did it in Shaun Hutson’s 1982 novel six years before Juan Piquer Simón’s cult classic hit the big screen. Slugs was just one of many killer animal books to hit the spinner racks back in the 70s/80s, a fun mini-genre that included such gems as Guy N. Smith’s killer crab series and James Herbert’s mutant rats saga, both of which also saw low budget film adaptations.

Night of the Lepus

And finally, as hard as it may be to imagine, the story which inspired everyone’s favorite 1972 flick featuring Dr. McCoy battling a horde of giant-sized hares first appeared in Russell Braddon’s 1964 novel, The Year Of The Angry Rabbit. As silly as the movie is, the book was sillier, going so far as to include an Australian prime minister hell bent on taking over the entire world using behemoth bunnies.

There’s many more such treasures, but that should be enough to have you searching the shelves of your local used book store for something to take with you to the beach this summer. I suppose some of you might opt for a classic like The Great Gatsby instead, but hey, some people are just weird that way.

Of course, who says you have to choose one way or the other? Why not have both? If you haven’t lined up your summer reading just yet, why not check out a few sites where you can find a little bit of everything for all tastes. Tucked among the tomes on The Happy Catholic Bookshelf, you’ll find everything from books on church architecture to the weird worlds of Philip K. Dick. For those with kids, The Catholic Book Blogger has a number of suggestions. And if you just want some old fashioned genre goodness, the Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy Blog Tour offers a monthly discussion on some of the more interesting book selections out there.

Or you could just do what I do most of the time and wait for the movie to come out. That works too.

Fell In Love with a Girl: KISSING JESSICA STEIN

If Woody Allen in his prime had made a lesbian romantic comedy that avoided the usual Woody neuroses and verbal tics while remaining immensely funny and likable, it would be pretty close to Kissing Jessica Stein�that is, a valentine to love, New York City, and old jazz tunes, only with two girls kissing. Cowritten and produced by its stars, Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen, the film was a hit on the indie and festival circuits back in 2001 and remains the perfect antidote for anyone feeling nutrient-deprived by the formulaic slop served up with the likes of Kate Hudson, J-Lo, and Katherine Heigl (whose three names in succession summon up in me a kind of indigestion of the soul).

Juergensen and Westfeldt

But calling Kissing Jessica Stein a lesbian romantic comedy isn't entirely accurate, since both the main characters start out straight and with only a bout of bicuriosity. Westfeldt plays Jessica, a magazine editor and self-described "Jew from Scarsdale" who's a hyper-articulate Diane Keaton/Lisa Kudrow type with standards for men as exacting as her standards for words. When, after a dispiriting series of blind dates, her attention is drawn to a personals ad quoting Rilke (her favorite writer), she finds herself intrigued even though the quoter is a woman. That woman, a free-spirited art gallery director named Helen Cooper (Juergensen), has grown fed up with the hairier sex and wants to try the other side of the fence for a change.
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THE B-LIST: FOUR MOVIE MOMS WORTH MENTIONING

It’s Mother’s Day, so there’s going to be lots of lists out there covering the best and worst moms the movies have to offer. For the more mainstream choices, Steven D. Greydanus’ top ten moms over at Catholic Digest is as good a place as any to start. But given the kinds of stuff we watch around these parts, we thought there might just be a few movie moms deserving of honors who’ll probably get overlooked by those other lists, ladies like…

Diane Freeling from Poltergeist

Sure, she’s got a bad habit or two left over from the late 60s, but when all is said and done, there’s a reason Mrs. Freleng is in the foreground in this image. Amidst all the madness going on in their household, Diane is the glue that holds the Freleng clan together. She knows when to be sensitive and hold a funeral for a dead bird and she knows when to get tough and demand her husband be a man. Plus, she’s quick to jump into another dimension if that’s what her children need from her.

Maureen Robinson from Lost In Space

The simple fact that she patiently managed to keep everyone from murdering Dr. Smith for all those years should be enough to qualify Mrs. Robinson for sainthood, but throw in the fact that she was also a biochemist, expert gardener, and expert tracker (How many times did those freakin’ kids run off, anyway?), and there’s no doubt that Maureen was the real deal when it came to motherhood.

Amanda Grayson from Star Trek

There are few more admired figures in science fiction than Mr. Spock, but like many a successful man, there’s a good mother behind him. Amanda was the one who was always there for Spock during all those tortuous years in which classmates bullied the boy for his mixed heritage and his father expressed little more than disappointment in his progress. And her love for her son never wavered once, even despite the fact that his training prevented him from ever telling her that he loved her back. But a mother knows.

Gorgo from Gorgo

Sure, the overprotective single mother is something of a cliché, but it’s not so without its reasons. And who could be a better example of how far a mother will go to protect her child than Gorgo? Nobody takes her baby unless they want their city flattened when she comes to take him back. And you can tell it’s an act of love rather than one of vengeance because once she finds her little boy, the destruction stops and they simply go home. And I’ll bet the kid probably got time out for wandering to far from home to begin with. Gorgo seems like the type not to shy away from discipline.

That’s our quick list. Let us know of any others that come to mind.

Until nest time, Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there. May Saint Monica intercede for you, so that you may continue to draw your children to God and forever remain close to them, even the prodigal sons and daughters who have sadly gone astray. Amen.

PULP CATHOLICISM #015

PODCAST 46: Sinbad of the Seven Seas & Yor [Golden Turkey Edition]

This week Forest & Cory share their thoughts on a couple golden turkeys of old. Forest shares his childhood memories of renting Sinbad of the Seven Seas with Lou Ferrigno, while Cory covers Yor: The Hunter from the Future, starring Reb Brown.

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Foiled by Netflix: QUEST FOR FIRE

[October 2015 Update: I'm happy to report that Quest for Fire is now streaming in its original widescreen aspect ratio. About time, Netflix!]

Today I was planning to post a review of a film I was genuinely eager to write up. It's one I think deserves a shout-out not only for its intelligent, near-documentary glimpse into the distant past but for how well it holds up today as an effective and imaginative adventure story. This is how I was going to start (give or take a sentence):

Aside from the Dawn of Man sequence in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, most cinematic accounts of the Stone Age have been relegated to B movies and comedies�from One Million Years B.C. in 1966 up through 2008's 10,000 B.C. The former, I was surprised to discover, was more than simply a showcase for Raquel Welch and her fur bikini, and proved to be a surprisingly sincere effort at depicting the lives of our prehistoric kin�even if it did promote the typical 1960s/1970s humbuggery of dinosaurs cohabiting with humans. Such chronological compression reached its apex in the 1981 Ringo Starr comedy, Caveman, an intentionally ridiculous account of Stone-Age man which happened to be released the same year as Quest for Fire, a film that was its polar opposite: that is, an attempt to portray the existence of early humanity with as much realism as possible. Low-budget mammoths (and minor historical inaccuracies) aside,I'm happy to report that Quest for Fire still remains the high water mark for such films, providing an enlightening�and truly entertaining�glimpse back in time that exposes our thin veneer of civilization for what it truly is.

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Avoiding the Axe

As some of you may already know, the Netflix database has never been 100% accurate. A title that was marked for expiration might easily return to the service a day or a month later. And now that the company has closed down its public list of upcoming/expiring titles (see previous post), this information remains even more subject to inaccuracy. As such, I plan to regularly follow up on titles I've written about whose status may have changed. Here are a few I wrote about last month that actually survived the Great Purge of 5/1/13:

The Apple
Bad Timing
Doctor at Sea
Gregory's Girl 
Passion of Anna
Y Tu Mam� Tambi�n

That's not to say these won't disappear tomorrow. But if they do, I'll do my best to update you.

A Note About Expiring & Upcoming Titles

When I started this blog in early April, little did I know that only four days later Netflix would discontinue its public database of upcoming and expiring titles. Unfortunately, that means that my (and many other websites') ability to list these titles in advance may no longer be possible. I realize the value in having those tabs at the top of the page--for myself as well as everyone else--but what this most likely means is that Upcoming Titles will be replaced permanently with New This Month, while Expiring Soon may become more limited in scope after June 1 (which is as far in advance as current lists go).

In the meantime I'll continue doing what I hope this site does best: calling attention to an eclectic mix of overlooked, underseen, and forgotten titles, so that you'll have a slightly easier time choosing what to watch next. I hope you'll continue checking in.

THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #14 – MARVEL HEROES THEME SONGS

Just like half the population of the world (I’m not sure that’s an exaggeration), I went to see Iron Man 3 this past week. You can find out what I thought over at Aleteia. You know, it’s hard to believe ol’ shell head and his fellow Avengers are among the biggest box office draws in the world right now, especially when you consider the quality of the first efforts to bring The Marvel Super Heroes to life back in the 1960s. Anybody remember these intros for the big four…

Yeah, so definitely not up there with the original 1960s Spider-Man theme, but then again, what is? Still, if you consider that each piece is only about 20 seconds long, you have to admit they pack a lot of information in there. Take Iron Man for instance…

Tony Stark makes you feel
He’s a cool exec with a heart of steel.

As Iron Man, all jets ablaze,
He’s fighting and smiting with repulsor rays!

Amazing armor! That’s Iron Man!
A blazing power! That’s Iron Man!

In twenty seconds and six lines you get the basic concept of the character. Not too shabby. It makes me wonder if there’s a way to do that for Christianity. Not the music part, mind you, we get enough bad tunes at mass as it is (oh what, like I’m the first person to ever say it). But is there a way to communicate the fundamentals of the faith in a sound byte?

Well, there’s always the words spoken at the presentation of the Eucharist during mass…

Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.

Or maybe the ubiquitous John 3:16…

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.

I don’t know. Any ideas out there on how to explain Christianity in only a handful of words? How about if you’re trying to include an explanation of the Church as well? Let me know what you think. Music optional.

WEEKLY NEWSREEL

Good evening Mr. & Mrs. Catholic, and all you other Christians at sea, welcome to another edition of the Newsreel. This week, we have a trio of stories with a surprisingly common thread. What is it? Read, and see. And with that tease, it’s off to press…

DATELINE: SRI LANKA – Scientists working in Southern Asia have apparently discovered a new species of tarantula the size of a human face. Fortunately, none of the tarantulas found in Sri Lanka have proven to have bites deadly to humans. Unfortunately, the enormous arachnids have been known to enter dwellings due to massive deforestation in the area. Consequently, the benefits of a non-fatal bite seem somewhat diminished by the potentiality of heart attacks caused by finding a Giant Spider As Big As Your Freakin’ Face sitting in your living room!

DATELINE: BOULDER – Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, scientists at The University of Colorado-Boulder have potentially solved a question once thought unanswerable (or is it just that nobody ever cared to ask), why do so many people find things like fart jokes and people getting kicked in the crotch funny? Studies have now determined that the average person only enjoys inappropriate/gross-out humor when the incongruous subject matter (an action or event violating moral or social norms) results in a benign outcome (no permanent damage to anyone). Most people, it would seem, have a crude streak, but they’re not monsters. Culture, it appears, also plays a part. "It's hard to find a comedy that's funny cross-culturally, because the ways that violations can be benign differ from culture to culture," says study co-author Peter McGraw. "The comedy that is funny cross-culturally tends to involve a lot of physical humor.” So heads up, aspiring filmmakers, if you want to make them laugh in China (and they’re the ones funding your films these days), avoid Woody Allen style dialog and have your actors punch each other in the cajones instead.

DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD – And finally, after years of being considered a Hollywood myth, it now appears possible to demonstrate that cars actually can explode when shot with a single bullet just like you see in the movies. It turns out that this reaction is somewhat akin to the explosions which occasionally occur at flour and sugar factories when heated metal shavings float through the air and come in contact with inert gases. Obviously, the perfect storm of ingredients required for such an explosion means that such events won’t happen as frequently as they do in the movies, but they can still happen. Looks like Roger Corman might have been on to something after all.

So what do these three stories have in common? Not much, really. Well, except maybe that they illustrate scientists doing what scientists should. Science. In none of these stories is there any indication of researchers making any Dawkins-esque leaps of fancy that their discoveries have anything to say about religion, or the fact that they can pick up a test tube somehow disproves the existence of God. These studies simply tell us something about the physical world we live in, which is all we really want them to do anyway. Or as G. K. Chesterton  put it, “In these days we are accused of attacking science because we want it to be scientific. Surely there is not any undue disrespect to our doctor in saying that he is our doctor, not our priest… I want my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed.”

So kudos to these scientists for doing their job and leaving religion to the experts. The more scientists like them, the more we’ll get results like this…

Scottish nutritionists have developed pizzas said to contain 30% of an adult's guideline daily amount of vitamins and minerals. That means if you eat their pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you’ll get all the nutrients you need. Pizza all day long, now that’s science we can all get behind.

And with that, we leave you until next time, closing the Newsreel, as is our custom, with the immortal words of the great Les Nessman. Good evening, and may the good news be yours.

New May Titles (2013)

Despite last month's massive MGM/UA purge, a few notable new titles have found their way to Netflix Instant.

The Three Musketeers (1973) - Expired 7/1/13

Director Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, Petulia) brings a fresh take to this old tale, cramming a large all-star cast into corsets and tabards and letting the mud and swords fly. Bawdy, messy, violent, and occasionally thrilling, this first of two Musketeers movies shot back-to-back (The Four Musketeers is inexplicably unavailable on Instant) remains the standard for all Dumas interpretations before or since. Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Lee and others take part in some of the most spirited�and exhausting�swordplay ever put on film, made all the more convincing for being performed by the actors themselves. Lester accomplishes the rare feat of fusing a sometimes Monty-Pythonesque tone with genuinely escalating dramatic stakes. Good old-fashioned fun.

Harry & Tonto (1974) - Expired 5/1/14

Art Carney gives an Oscar-winning performance in this Paul Mazursky road movie. I haven't seen this one myself, but it's always been well regarded and I'm a lifelong fan of Mazursky's other work (including Moscow on the Hudson, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and Enemies, A Love Story). This one's definitely going into my queue. [UPDATE: Saw it. Loved it. Sorry to see it gone.]

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Expiration Watch: THE AMATEURS

My first exposure to The Amateurs (2005) was in a discount DVD shop on Manhattan's 8th Avenue. I knew nothing about it, but the large ensemble of character actors listed on the box--headed by the always reliable Jeff Bridges--immediately got my attention. With Bridges, Ted Danson, Tim Blake Nelson, Glenne Headly, Joe Pantoliano, Eileen Brennan, Judy Greer and (of all people) Valerie Perrine playing small-town denizens banding together to make a porn film, how bad could it be? Plus it was only five dollars, so even if it was crap I could probably make back a few bucks on eBay.

Surprise, surprise--it actually turned out to be one of those shaggy-dog sleepers you secretly hope all unheralded movies in an 8th Avenue video store will be, but never are. Bridges plays Andy, a softhearted, down-on-his-luck dreamer who's the de facto leader of a group of quirky losers who are always just a corner or two away from their Million Dollar Moment. As we learn from Andy's droll voiceover, those moments are usually engineered, in a burst of inspiration, by Andy himself and acquiesced to by his forgiving friends even when they know he's batting .000. (As one character later puts it, it's not like they've got anything better to do.)

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PULP CATHOLICISM #014

PODCAST 45: Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector

This week Cory & John talk with the twisted, VHS craving minds behind the new documentary, Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector.

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