Stars and the Star-Crossed - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

 

    Rolling into the final day of July 2021, my general take on the COVID situation's, unfortunately, being borne out as the CDC started to walk back it's abrupt 180° turn on mask protocols while pretending that they're not, by trying to lean entirely on the Delta variant. But, that's a topic well beyond the reach of these Friday entertainment pieces, other than to reinforce that I'm going to be sticking to my home screens for now. I'll be especially interested to see if Disney sticks with their theatrical release only approach to Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings come early September.
     Currently I believe that's the first Disney film to go that route since the pandemic set in, as this weekend's Jungle Cruise film is also being offered via the special pay window on Disney+, as they'd done with Black Widow - it's definitely the first Marvel Studios one - and with mask mandates already beginning to come back... that seems like a fairly indefensible course for them to stick with. Speaking for myself, I continue unable to see when I'd be comfortable going into a theater again. It's highly unlikely to be as soon as September.
     In one of those compulsive thread-pulling reflexes I've been spending too much time going just "one more episode" of CBS' 15-season Criminal Minds. I'm

currently on the close of the third season, which included the early season departure of Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) as the damaged senior member of the team, replacing him with another old school profiler, David Rossi, played by Joe Mantegna, sporting his own style, damages and coping mechanisms. The crime procedural wrapped its CBS run last year, though there's to be a 10-episode revisit on Paramount+, in development since February.
     It occurs to me that the crime procedural format gradually took the spot once held by detective shows, so finding myself falling down this sort of rabbit hole brings a chuckle as I realize it's another of those cases where I've gone the route of my mom.
     Anyway, it's another of those episodic series that reminds me that I can be pulled into nearly anything if I give it a chance, especially with an ensemble cast. One gets tangled up in the character details and wants to see how those play out. As with most shows that try to depict extremely clever to outright brilliant people, often the writer's room isn't up to the challenge. The need for drama requires bold (foolish) moves - again, owing in part to the limitations of the writers - so 100 W bulbs are sometimes portrayed by 10 W ones, so to speak.
     At this point part of the fun is trying to decide which characters are more or less likely to go the distance of the rest of the series. The information's all out there, and I've already stumbled across some of it, but I'm otherwise trying to let it surprise me. Maybe after I'm all through it I'll look back for the details, and find out who exited the series simply because the character was played out, and who did because the actor either wanted out, made a power play that backfired, or otherwise misbehaved.
     Moving on...
      I realized, then confirmed with a search of both the first and second year incarnations of my C7 blog pieces, that I'd not recommended Uzumaki here in the nearly two years I've been writing these Friday pieces. It's the sort of oversight that comes from having been and exponent of something for so long that one feels years past being talked out on the subject.

     The animated gif here is from a miniseries being developed for next year, which is drawing (no pun intended) from the source comics.
     Japanese horror manga (comics) writer and artist Junji Ito produced the story of Uzumaki (Spiral) between 1998 and 1999, running it in weekly installments in Japan. I saw an English translation of it in a similar, anthology format in 2001-2002, which this tale of a supernaturally-doomed, coastal village being the stand-out feature.
     Before long, I became aware that there had been a film version made in 2000, and I sought it out. Over the years I've mad a gift of the film and/or a collected version of the manga to multiple people who I thought might appreciate it. Regrettably, it's one of those cases where my lack of record-keeping has left me unsure in a few cases as to who I gave what to.
 

    The film was rushed into production while the story was still being told, and so ends differently than the manga, and as is often the case the adaptation to the screen loses some elements from the original version. Still, each is something I've enjoyed. Some of this is simply due to the limits of a film's visual effects budget vs the options of ink on a page.
     The story has struck me as something with conceptual elements of both Poe and Lovecraft, which is not to deny its Japanese underpinnings. A fascination with spirals becomes first oddly infectious among various people, then transformative. We see it happen very specifically in a few cases, and on others only become aware of them as they become more obvious, emerging from the periphery. Devotion to duty - job and family - slows the pace of reaction to the creeping madness, leading to more being trapped.
     What brought this to mind again this past week is that it was "unlocked" again on Amazon Prime, where the film is open to all Prime users. For how long I've no idea, as they have a habit of suddenly switching between states there, such that any time I go through my Prime Watchlist I invariably have to un-check multiple titles I didn't get back to in time, which have since disappeared back behind a pay wall.
     At roughly 90 minutes, and presented in Japanese with English subtitles, here's a trailer for
Uzumaki.     

     

     August begins Sunday, so for those of us who've kept their cable packages, and whose provider includes the channel, it's time for Turner Classic Movies' annual Summer Under The Stars celebration. (That link should open a new window to an interactive map of the month.) Each day in August is a 24-hour celebration of films - starting at 6am (Eastern) and ending the same time the next day, for a particular star. For various reasons, I'm sure, each day doesn't necessarily try to spotlight the star's best films, but instead tries to cover the range of their career.

     The first week:
         Sunday - Bette Davis
         Monday - Richard Burton
         Tuesday - Kim Novak
         Wednesday - Louis Armstrong
         Thursday - Margaret Rutherford
         Friday - Robert Mitchum
         Saturday - Abbot and Costello
    
     Multiple comics-related things are set to debut or return in August, but they're all still sufficiently far off that they're better handled as a tidy, timely pack in part of next week's column.
     Closing with a free-to-all film (at least for the moment) is one I don't seem to have posted. (Well, I did mention it in passing in a piece during the blog's first year, on memories of theaters that now only exist in memory.) It's the 1972 Amicus horror anthology pic Asylum.

       If you enjoyed that one, then take a look at my final post from this past January, which I ended with a similar link to the very first of these Amicus horror anthology films, which had more whimsical turns.
     Bonus: If you don't mind a few commercials, each of these last two films is available on Tubi, too, where it's all free.
     Take care. See you in August!  -Mike