So I went to see C&A last night. What fascinated me was the response of the handful of people in the audience–and I mean four, maybe five people–as they sauntered out while the credits rolled.

“That sucked.” “What a waste of money.”

I don’t get it. It was a perfectly entertaining two hour diversion. It’s not like they pulled a switch and had the Dallas Cowboys squaring off against Mexicans entering the country illegally. It gave us exactly what it promised. It had Daniel Craig acting surly. It had Harrison Ford acting even surlier. It had cowboys. It had aliens. It had cowboys fighting aliens. What the hëll were they expecting? “Unforgiven” meets “E.T.”?

It’s a perfectly fine film, well made and well acted, with surprising depths given to its lead characters and all the classic cowboy tropes. It had a great supporting cast including Clancy Brown, Sam Rockwell and Keith Carridine. I’m really not sure what people are bìŧçhìņg about. I mean, okay, yeah, it was no “Oblivion,” but not everything can be.

PAD

I’d see pictures of her and there was just something about her that I could swear I’ve seen before. And it’s finally come to me.

I’ve seen a number of productions of “Man of La Mancha” (not counting the ones I’ve actually been in). And one year I saw it at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. And there’s a line in the show where Cervantes describes his knight as a man with “eyes that burn with the fire of inner vision.” Then when the actor “became” Quixote and began to sing, “I, Don Quixote,” for the first and only time in all the times I’ve seen the show, he did exactly that. He did SOMEthing with his eyes and suddenly there was just this burning intensity in his eyes, the flame of the zealot, the fire of inner vision. And it was incredibly scary (I even heard someone near me mutter, “Whoa”) because in a way that was never done in previous productions, it was driven home to you that this guy was nuts. Just stark-staring bonkers.

That’s why Bachmann looks familiar to me. Hers are eyes that burn with the fire of inner vision, just like that day at Goodspeed when the audience and I were in the presence of a madman, a fanatic, a zealot believing that God has sent him on a quest.

The only difference is, he was acting.

PAD

When I first saw “Cowboys and Aliens” being advertised, I thought, “Been there, done that.” Specifically in “Oblivion” and its sequel for Full Moon.

Apparently Shout!Factory agreed; they re-released the original on DVD with a redesigned cover. I knew nothing about it until Kath pointed it out to me in the latest copy of “Entertainment Weekly.”

Continue Reading ““Oblivion”” →

Do you think the country will default?

Personally, I do not. I think what it keeps coming back to is that the debt ceiling has been raised repeatedly in the past (including over a dozen times during the Reagan years) Suddenly making an issue of it simply stinks too highly of partisan politics, and most of that stench seems to be clinging to the GOP. Will they really be so stupid as to shove the country into default as part of a misguided attempt to try and score political points? I doubt it.

PAD

My quietest day insofar as convention programming is involved. I only have a single signing at the Marvel booth, from 2-3.

Continue Reading “SDCC, Belated Day 4” →