Showing posts with label Dark Knight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dark Knight. Show all posts

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Female Comic Strip Character Movie No. 2: BRENDA STARR

Brenda Starr and Brooke Shields as Brenda
"She looks like the Sunday comics, She thinks she's Brenda Starr"
 Blondie - Rip Her To Shreds Lyrics | MetroLyrics"

I'm going to say something up front that will make me the most hated person on the Internet (which I was for the first two or three years of my blogging career). I like the 1989/92 movie Brenda Starr more than the 2008 mega-hit The Dark Knight. Of course, everyone who reads this blog, and its predecessor, knows I hated the The Dark Knight before it was ever released. Then again, most of people decided to hate Brenda Starr before it was released to American theaters in the summer of 1992. Looking back, over twenty-five years after being made, the movie may have been ahead of its time.

For one thing, it is not just a movie about a comic strip character, it takes you into the world of Brenda Starr. It takes place in the 1940s. This sort of makes it a precursor to the 1990 Dick Tracy movie. There was a definite attempt to design something that looks like a comic strip world, which would latter be done to a greater effect by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher in their Batman films. Granted, the transitional effects look similar to the Wonder Woman TV series, but it works.

Another thing that make Brenda Starr revolutionary, it was probably the first movie to be influenced by a popular music video. The movie started production in 1986. The year before was the year that the Norwegian band A-ha had a number one hit internationally with "Take On Me." The video to that song features a woman diving into a newspaper comic strip to try to save the lead singer of the band from a gang of villains. It featured rotoscoped animation of the groups lead singer and some actors playing the gang.


Brenda Starr begins with an illustrator complaining about the comic strip and the character being stupid. An animated version of Brenda (voiced by Shields) snaps back that she is tired of listening to his gripping. At that point, she disappears from the panel. Which leads the artist named Mike (played by Tony Peck, Gregory Peck's son) to try to "go in and look for her."


Mike follows Brenda as she tries to find an ex-Nazi scientist played by Henry Gibson (How many Nazi parts did he play in films?), who has invented a additive that turns water into a powerful fuel.  Brenda wants get the first interview with the scientist to save the newspaper she works for, The Flash, from bankruptcy and scoop her rival, Libby Lipscomb (Diana Scarwid) of The Globe.


After visiting with President Truman (Ed Nelson), The Flash's editor, Francis Livright (Charles Durning) introduces Brenda to the mysterious eye-patch-wearing billionaire Basil St. John (Timothy Dalton). Basil tells Brenda that the scientist is in hiding in the Amazon jungle, which is where Basil lives and grows black orchids (They counteract a genetic disease that Basil has). The room has been bugged by the Globe and a gang of Russian spies, who want to find the doctor for themselves.

Dang! She's hot!

Brenda is kidnapped by the Russians and taken to, kidnapped by pirates on the Amazon, forced to walk a tightrope in a circus at gunpoint, water-skies on alligators, all while changing from one snazzy looking Bob Mackie outfit to another. Mike tags along, much to Brenda's chagrin, with Basil frequently showing up just in time to rescue Brenda, much to Mike's chagrin.

In the end, Brenda saves the paper, gets the scoop, embarrasses Libby, receives another black orchid from Basil (who vanishes again) and Mike decides that drawing Brenda is a bad job after all.


Reading some of the other reviews of this movie on other various websites I've come to the conclusion that most of the reviewers were not familiar with the Brenda Starr comic strip, they were also wanting some sort of dire, heavy-handed serious film like The Dark Knight, they don't know the tumultuous history of this film and (the majority of the reviewers) they hate Brooke Shields. I got the feeling some of the reviewers never watched this movie before they trashed it.

First off, the actors actually look like the characters from the comic strip. The actress who played Brenda in the 40s movie serial didn't have the soft features that Shields has in common with the comic strip Brenda (Brenda Starr was modeled after Rita Hayworth).


The character of Brenda's co-worker, Hank O'Hare, as played by actress Kathleen Wilhoite (Gilmore Girls, E.R., LA Law) actually looks like Hank O'Hare did in the comic strip. In the mid 70s made-for-TV Brenda Starr movie (staring Jill St. John as Brenda), the actress who played Hank O'Hare looked more like Katy Perry in the "Last Friday Night" video.


Several reviewers claim the the producers of Brenda Starr had "contempt" for the comic strip. My contention is no, they respected the comic strip enough to try to make the film look like the world featured in the comic strip, right down to stars in Brenda's eyes (see photo above). The reason, I feel the Columbia movie serial and the 70s made-for-TV movie fail is producers made a movie about a newspaper reporter named Brenda Starr, where as the producers of the 80s/90s film made a movie about a comic strip character named Brenda Starr. The only other comic strip or comic book oriented films or TV shows to do this before Brenda Starr went into production was the 1980 Flash Gordon movie and the 1966 Batman TV series. The best example of a movie doing this is the 1990 Dick Tracy movie with used only seven colors to imitate the look of newspaper funnies print.

I say "went to production" and give vague dates on Brenda Starr because it was actually made in 1986, but due to legal issues it wasn't released until 1989 in Europe and 1992 in the United States. This is partially another reason for some of the negative reviews on the Internet as well as when it was released. It is view as a ripoff of Dick Tracy because of the 40s setting, when in reality it was made four years before it. An extra bit of trivia: After filming finished on Brenda Starr, Timothy Dalton began filming The Living Daylights, his first James Bond film.            

Quite a bit of the criticism of Brenda Starr comes from that old fanboy bugaboo of the use of humor. They think that you have "contempt" for the comic if you poke fun at some of the aspects of comic. Two of the funniest jokes in the movie revolve around Brenda self-righteous attitude toward Mike's cursing and his having a "belly button." The last part is an in-joke, because (according to creator Dale Messick) the syndicate would erase Brenda's belly button if it was showing.

I honestly believe that in the future people will change there opinion of this film. It is incredibly underrated as an adaption of a comic strip.  It doesn't try to force Brenda into a serious, scary real world.  To paraphrase what she tells Mike near the end of the film, Brenda Starr stays in the Sunday funnies where she belongs.






Sunday, August 25, 2013

BEST OF DESDINOVA: THE DARK KNIGHT WILL SUCK COLLECTION

The whole furrier over Ben Affleck being selected to play Batman in an upcoming movie reminds me of  a tiny blog post I made on the old blog that attracted some hatred on a minor national scale, rather than local Springfield/Ozarks hatred that I usually faced at that time.


I saw on another website some photos "preview" photos of the late Heath Ledger's makeup for the up coming Batman film The Dark Knight. It wasn't like the hardened grin of Jack Nicholson or even the clown face over a mustache like Cesar Romero, it was just gobbed and smeared on his face like a child playing the Joker to his next door neighbors Batman in the backyard.

The post was simple. You can read it here: I THINK THE DARK KNIGHT WILL SUCK. In this post I said two things that upset extreme Batman fanatics.
  1. I didn't like Frank Miller's Dark Knight comic books.
  2. I like the 1966 TV show Batman and the full length movie that featured the cast.


During that time, I was always surprised when I got a response outside of Springfield, Missouri. A comment was posted by a person who called himself "andrew." Not sure who he was but he claimed to be an assistant on The Dark Knight set (Yeah right!). He was not very happy with me. So, of course, I had to make fun of this guy on the blog. Here is the post: I UPSET A COMIC BOOK GEEK AND I STILL THINK THE DARK KNIGHT WILL SUCK.

I should point out that I had to stop allowing comments on the old blog in 2009, due to spam by get-rich-quick websites and some Libertarian guy who was planing to run for president in 2012. When I stopped the comments, the previous comments were no longer shown on the blog. Not sure why, but I still have access them through the Blogger dashboard. Here is the complete text of "andrew's" rant.

"Um i might be late on this comment but i came across your site and read what you have to say about the dark knight. First of all you may be suffering from being a douche bag. 2nd read a book and read history on wha batman is really suppose to be because nolan has figured it out. Burtons batmans were great then ruined by the next two obviously. The darkness is finally back with batman begins and the dark knight. i work for warner bro's as a PA, and ledgers makeup is supreme to what it is suppose to be. He is scarred in actuality, and the makeup just adds to the image because he obviously puts it on himself, he does not care what it looks like. Get your head out of your ass and go make some more web sites that just makes you sound ignorant and un educated. Yes i do study film, and you may not nonethelss, go watch the trailer again because you really need to if you took the time to make this website, and by the way did you try and justify the 60's batman show somehow?"

The first thing I noticed, that I mentioned in my blog response, is "andrew" apparently didn't know how to use capital letters.

With in a short time, the original blog post made the rounds of the fanatical Batman fans on the web. It was at one point the most read post on my blog. I even had my own thread on IMDB (That was removed for some reason). So, I decided to to be fair and go see The Dark Knight.

You must know something about me, I don't think I have ever hated a movie I saw at a movie theater. Only about two or three, but I just think that going to a movie theater is a special occasion.

Now for the irony of the original post; I saw The Dark Knight TWICE! The first time was at a Springfield movie theater. After that, I wrote this post: I DIDN'T LIKE THE DARK KNIGHT (but it didn't suck as bad as I thought it would). After that, I went to a drive-in at Aurora, Missouri, with some family members. I hadn't been to a drive-in since I was small, so I thought it would be great to go with them. The movies on the double feature was Babylon A.D. and (You guest it) The Dark Knight. Remember what I said earlier about not hating a movie I saw at a theater, well, Babylon A.D, was the only one I hated. It was confusing and Vin Diesel can't act. After sitting through Babylon A.D, I began to realize I HATED THE DARK KNIGHT! It was just a obnoxious and overblown action film with people dressed as characters from the Batman comic book.

At least two people posted comments agreed with me. A person named Eduardo posted this comment:
"You are entitled to like the old Batman. Although this is a new Batman supposed to be taken from the "The Dark Knight Returns" comic book series which relaunched the character in the 80's. What I think is lacking from the Christopher Nolan films is the atmosphere which was achieved by Tim Burton's first two Batman Films from 1989 and 1990. For me, personally, those were the best achievements of Batman on film, period. They struck a balance between looking like comic books, but looking serious nonetheless. The new film looks more like a Michael Mann film (ie. Heat) for the exterior scenes, there is not enough atmosphere. Gotham, usually a character by itself in all of the previous films, takes a back seat on this one. However, what I believe is that each generation gets their own "revamped" version of Comic Book or literary classics. For those who grew up in the 60's, the TV Batman by Adam West is the ultimate "archetype" of the character, for the children of the 80's its either the Dark Knight or Michael Keaton."
My favorite was from a person named Mike:
I agree that this movie looks terrible mostly because of the Joker's makeup. The joker is too vein to leave his house looking like a piece of street trash. Nice concept but you guys ruined the look of the character which is basically the most important part. Batman's outfit looks terrible and the joker looks terrible. It would be easy for anyone to play the Joker, he's an iconic character. Hopefully next time he hits the big screen they don't make him look homeless.
After that I found that there a have been several websites pop-up that not only point out what is wrong with The Dark Knight, but are called "The Dark Knight Sucks" or something to that extent. My favorite is a post on The Rawness blog.

The thing about the old blog is when I made many of the post, I was demonized as a horrible person who should be executed as an "enemy combatant" (Another Ozarks blogger actually called me that). Since that time, I've found that many of the positions I held were the right ones and the people and things I poked fun at deserved to be made fun of. Case in point: Many of the local talk radio people in town that I poked fun of was championing a former SMSU/MSU student who was suing the school because she claimed the students harassed her and the teachers failed her for not compromising her religious beliefs. One of our local talk radio show host (Thank God, he is no longer on the air) suggested that the buildings on campus be set on fire and the students and faculty be shot as they exited the buildings. A friend of mine on Facebook was a student in that department at the time. She and several other classmates had a discussion going on Facebook about this plaintiff and the lawsuit this week. Apparently, this person didn't work will with the other students...when she came to class. Also several mentioned she didn't have to be "the topic group" she said "harassed" her. As one person said, "The media never asked us about what happened or what she was like to work with."

But then again the people who hated the old blog are the ones who put up websites or adorn there Facebook sites with pictures of the President Photoshoped with the bad makeup job Heath Ledger wore in The Dark Knight.

My opinions are why I'm considered the Super Villain of the Ozarks!!! Mwu-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!     
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