DVD review: DOC SAVAGE

A month ago, I mentioned that one of my guilty pleasures is the 1975 George Pal movie Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, and that it’s now available on DVD from Warner Brothers through The Warner Archive Collection. This is an on-demand service, and the DVDs are bare-bones but “studio quality.” The price may seem a tad high, but if you really love something, what’s twenty bucks, fer crissakes?

Anyway, I ordered my copy and promised at the time that I’d report back on the DVD.

Well, it is bare-bones. The packaging is minimal, but the DVD comes in a keep-case. As for the disk itself, it includes a promo for the Warner Archive Collection, the original movie trailer, and the film. I’m delighted. The trailer is in pretty crappy shape, full of blobs, hairs, bumps, etc. That’s no surprise. But the movie looks great to me. It’s presented in widescreen, and the print seems very clean and sharp, even on my 46-inch flatscreen. Now, I watched the movie on my Blu-ray player, and that’s supposed to amp up the picture quality a bit, so that may have something to do with it. But regardless, the print looks terrific.

As for the film itself, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze remains a prize. While awaiting the arrival of the DVD, I re-read the first Doc Savage novel, written by Lester Dent in 1932. This is the story that the movie adapts. And you know something? Even with all the campiness, the movie is awfully faithful to its source material. Ron Ely still seems to me the perfect Doc, and the rest of the cast is spot-on, too.

So, Doc Savage buffs. If you’ve never before seen this little gem, take advantage of this. Buy the movie and treasure it. Last summer, I learned at Comic-Con that a new Doc Savage movie is planned. But in the meantime, this is the real deal.

Doc Savage is here!

George Pal's Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975) always disappoints fans of the Lester Dent stories. But I love it. And I'm a big Doc Savage fan. Sure, the movie's silly. But the casting was great; Ron Ely brought back the old pulp image of Doc and played his role perfectly.

I saw Doc Savage at least three times in the theaters during its brief original run. I rented it on VHS a couple of times. I've seen it on TV a few times.

But no DVD release, at least here in the U.S. I understand it's been released as a "full-frame" DVD in Germany. And I've seen a few bootlegs online. But nothing official.

Well, the closest thing to an official Doc Savage DVD release is now available from Warner Brothers through The Warner Archive Collection. This is an on-demand service where you can order custom-made DVDs of WB films otherwise unavailable. Each DVD is $19.95 -- not bad for a movie you're just dying to own. Warners says they're "studio quality," but I don't know what that means. Are they widescreen or pan-and-scan? What condition are these films in?

That all remains to be seen. Since no retail release date has been offered for Doc Savage, I just may order this from the Archive. Then we'll all know.

I'll keep you posted.

"It Just Doesn't Matter"

Never a number (1928-2009)

Nixon's the one!

Today on LewRockwell.com, Jeff Tucker writes about Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995), one of my favorite political films. I recommend that movie highly, but would suggest as a companion piece Secret Honor (1984), Robert Altman’s movie adaptation of the play by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone. I saw Philip Baker Hall’s extraordinary performance as Nixon on stage in Los Angeles a year before Altman captured it on film, and I think the movie is indispensable. All fans of political drama should see Secret Honor.

Night and Fog and the State

“Even a peaceful landscape…even a meadow in harvest, with crows circling overhead and grass fires…even a road where cars and peasants and couples pass…even a resort village with a steeple and country fair…can lead to a concentration camp.” So begins the narration of the most devastating documentary film ever made.

Before Hollywood determined it takes at least three hours to effectively grapple with the Holocaust — a Schindler’s List or a Pianist, for example — long before, some four decades and more, there was Alain Renais’ 31-minute Night and Fog.

I first saw and was shattered by this remarkable short movie while in college in 1975. I’ve just seen Night and Fog a second time, because Criterion recently released a new digital restoration of it on DVD. And 28 years later, Renais’ film remains for me not only a chilling record of Hitler’s "final solution" but the most powerful cinematic indictment of the State I’ve ever seen.

[Read entire essay here]

Still another guilty pleasure

Any list of the all-time worst movies based on comic book heroes will inevitably include the made-for-TV Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, first broadcast on Fox in 1998. Written by David S. Goyer and directed by Rod Hardy, the movie starred David Hasselhoff as Fury, Lisa Rinna as Val, and even had a guy playing a cryogenically suspended Baron Von Strucker. Visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) and you’ll see that the film has earned a 3.3 user rating (from a possible 10) and comments like “It couldn’t have sucked harder.” The movie definitely has a bad rep.

So here’s the deal: Best Buy now exclusively offers Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD on DVD. And I couldn’t be more pleased.

Granted, the movie’s not great. But after years of having kept my mouth shut, I’ve gotta finally come clean and confess that the Hasselhoff Nick Fury is a guilty pleasure of mine. Hasselhoff may not be today’s Fury (that’d be Samuel L. Jackson, of course), but he sure is the pre-Steranko Fury of 1965-66. Most of his lines sound like they were lifted straight out of the old Strange Tales stories. And Lisa Rinna isn’t much of an actress (although she’s been playing one for two decades), but she’s killer hot. Plus, even though the story’s pretty pedestrian (like most of those original stories from Strange Tales, incidentally), Hydra’s there, the SHIELD logo’s there, the latex jumpsuits are there, and the helicarrier’s there (and it looks damn good).

I watched Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD when it first aired ten years ago. I’ve seen it two or three times on cable since then. And I just picked up a DVD copy at Best Buy.

Guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow night, instead of watching election returns?

If you can't get enough of the Dark Knight...

To coincide with The Dark Knight, which opens tomorrow, a lot of new Batman merchandise, both good and bad, has been released to stores over the past couple of weeks. Here’s what I think is the Good Stuff.

The first nine issues of Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder have been collected into a nice, hardcover “Volume 1.” This “monthly” comic launched in 2005 and has been plagued by constant delays (only a single issue was released in 2006) and miserable reviews. Just about everybody seems to hate it, complaining that Miller’s portrayal of Batman is too hard, unflattering, and inappropriate. Personally, I see the series as a natural fit with other entries in Miller’s alternative Dark Knight Universe (Batman: Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, and The Dark Knight Strikes Again). Sure, this comic is tough. It’s shocking. It’s uncomfortable. But I’ve never expected anything less from Frank Miller. And Jim Lee’s artwork is exquisite. I just hope another three years don’t pass before we see Volume 2.

On the DVD front, DC Comics’ third direct-to-DVD entry is Batman: Gotham Knight. It’s an interesting though very disjointed 75-minute, anime-style movie made up of six separate episodes by three screenwriters and a half-dozen Japanese animators. It’s supposed to fall into Christopher Nolan’s Batman movie universe, somewhere between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. But even with two viewings under my belt (admittedly, I was listening to the feature-length commentary when I watched it the second time), I don’t really “get it.” The six episodes are too loosely linked for my taste, and the film meanders in all directions. And none of this is helped by the fact that Batman and other recurring characters are drawn differently in each chapter. The only element that really ties everything together is Kevin Conroy, who reprises his voiceover role as Batman from the old Bruce Timm cartoon series. Despite all this, the movie looks cool, it’s never boring, and the two-disc DVD set includes a very nice, 45-minute documentary about Batman creator Bob Kane. Batman: Gotham Knight isn’t essential for fans, but it’s worth checking out if you’re among the hardest of hardcore Batman fanatics, like me.

Also available is the fifth complete season (13 episodes) of The Batman from the Kids’ WB. Again, this is something a lot of Batman fans seem to dislike. But I’ve enjoyed the series from its debut in 2004, even though it’s never reached the heights of Bruce Timm’s cartoons from the 1990s. Just as Batgirl was introduced in the third season and Robin in the fourth, this fifth bunch of shows is highlighted by the appearance of other DC heroes, including Superman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Flash — in other words, the Justice League. My only reservation about this particular string of episodes is that Batman, notoriously the grim loner, is presented as the great team-builder. But that’s not too big a deal. This is a fun set of cartoons.

Finally, much to my delight, the WB’s short-lived revisionist TV take on the Batman mythos from 2002, Birds of Prey, has finally made it to DVD — all 13 episodes, plus the unaired pilot (really just another version of the first episode, with alternative footage and some different casting). This show was a wonderful bit of kickbutt superhero eye-candy, starring Ashley Scott (who later starred in the Jericho TV series), Dina Meyer (the best thing about the original Starship Troopers movie), and Rachel Skarsten. I was a diehard fan of this show when it first aired, and it’s terrific to be able to revisit it. My only disappointment with this DVD set is that a lot of the original music from the program has been replaced due to licensing problems. This includes Aimee Allen’s memorable title theme, “Revolution.” Regardless, I highly recommend Birds of Prey.

DVD review: JOHN, PAUL, TOM & RINGO

I figger just about anything related to the Beatles is worth watching, so this week I Netflixed the two-disc DVD John, Paul, Tom & Ringo: The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. The set includes a program aired the evening after John Lennon’s murder in December 1980, which rebroadcast a 1975 interview with John (perhaps his last for TV), a 1979 interview with Paul and Linda McCartney, and an interview with Ringo Starr and spouse Barbara Bach from 1981. Almost three decades later, none of these shows reveal anything we Beatlemaniacs haven’t heard before. But it’s good to see the boys from back then and, naturally, the Lennon interview is especially bittersweet. The biggest problem with this set, of course, is the late Tom Snyder himself. His questions were usually vacuous and embarrassing, and it’s hard to watch these shows without thinking about Dan Aykroyd’s sidesplitting Snyder bits on SNL many years ago. Ah well. The set is only worth renting. On the other hand, the DVD sets of The Dick Cavett Show (from the early 1970s) that include an interview with George Harrison and extensive interviews with John and Yoko are worth adding to your home video library, if you love the Beatles as much as I do.

Friday housekeeping

I’m playing catch-up this morning.

* Browncoats should know that Dark Horse Comics’ second three-issue Firefly miniseries, Serenity: Better Days, launched last month. And after reading the first two installments, I’m thinking it’s better than 2005’s Those Left Behind. The story, sandwiched between the TV series and movie, is by Firefly/Serenity creator Joss Whedon; art is by Will Conrad. And by gorram, the characters look and actually talk like the actors we know and love. The third and final issue has a May 14 release date. This series is worth checking out.

* There Will Be Blood is a stunning, absolutely engrossing movie, and one of the very best of last year. So why the shitty DVD packaging? While most DVDs are issued in hard plastic cases that keep the discs safe and unscratched, TWBB comes in a cheap cardboard sleeve. This kind of packaging may be “environmentally responsible,” but these discs can only be removed for viewing by getting your fingerprints all over them. Actually, the discs usually flip out of the sleeves, fall on the floor, and roll under the sofa. My recommendation: Netflix There Will Be Blood for the time being and only buy a copy after Paramount resolves this problem. The film deserves better treatment than it’s getting.

* Starbuck's new signature blend Pike Place Roast makes the best cup of coffee I've had in years. And I drink a lot of coffee. Try it.

Jules Dassin RIP

Dassin died last Monday at the age of 96. He was a great noir director, and his Rififi (1955) is the finest heist movie ever made. If you've never seen it, you must; the film's famous heist scene, 30 minutes without music or dialog, should not be missed.

"Birds of Prey" finally comes to DVD

Most people, even diehard comics fans, are unfamiliar with the Birds of Prey TV series, which ran just 13 weeks on the old WB back in 2002-2003. But I remember it very fondly. Three reasons why are pictured at left. But the show was more than eye candy; it was a clever spin on the Batman legend that pulled ideas directly from the comics and added a few unique ones of its own. Each episode began with this narration by actor Ian Abercrombie, who played Bruce Wayne’s famous butler on the series:

“Legend tells of a caped crusader, Batman, guardian of New Gotham, and his one true love, Catwoman, the queen of the criminal underworld. Their passion left behind something extraordinary…a daughter, Huntress. Half meta-human, she has taken up her father’s mantle, and under the cover of night fights to protect the innocent and helpless. Joining her in this struggle…Oracle, who was once Batman’s protégé, Batgirl. She was caught in the crossfire of the war between Batman and Joker. Now she fights crime a different way — master of the cyber realms, a mentor and trainer to heroes. Together, they have taken in a young runaway…Dinah, a meta-human herself, with powers to open hidden doors to the mind, powers that she is only beginning to explore. Together, these are the protectors of New Gotham…the Birds of Prey. My name is Alfred Pennyworth, and this is their story.”

Birds of Prey had a terrific, noir look and feel, and there were some very neat nods to past interpretations of the Dark Knight saga. Psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn), played venomously by Mia Sera, was a series regular. The Joker’s crippling of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, played by Dina Meyer, was pulled directly from Alan Moore’s groundbreaking Killing Joke graphic novel and shockingly replayed every week in the series prologue. All three Robins — Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and Tim Drake — were mentioned during the course of the series. Batman’s “retirement/disappearance” was obviously inspired by Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Some nice, if macabre, series touches: the whole meta-human business; Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) is said to have been killed by the Joker; Huntress is heir to the Wayne fortune; Dinah Redmond, played by Rachel Skarsten, is the daughter of Black Canary, who makes an effective series appearance. The cast was great, particularly Ashley Scott’s turn as Helena Kyle, aka Huntress, which made me a big fan and is just one reason I was so faithful to Jericho this past year.

Well, after five years, Birds of Prey: The Complete Series is finally being issued on DVD July 29. Hooray! I’m dying to see this series again.

Update: Warners has just announced that the DVD set will be released July 15, two weeks earlier than first planned, to coincide more closely with the theatrical release of The Dark Knight this summer. Very cool.

NEW FRONTIER is geek paradise

I read a lot of comics — a lot of comics. But somehow, a few years back, I managed to miss Darwyn Cooke’s graphic novel Justice League: The New Frontier. Shame on me, because the direct-to-DVD animated feature based on that novel, released this past week, is fan-friggin-tastic, and now I’ve gotta go back and read the darn thing. If it’s anywhere near as great as this 75-minute movie, and I’m sure it is, I’ll be in heaven.

New Frontier is about the formation of the Justice League of America, a sort of prequel to the original Silver Age comic book series. Set in the paranoid 1950s, the look of the film is spot-on. Superman looks like he just stepped out of an old Fleisher cartoon. We actually see Batman make his costume switch from the scary 1930s big-eared version to the softer ’50s nubby-eared look (and the reason for the change is even explained for the first time). And Wonder Woman, well, shit, she looks like the Amazon she was back during WWII. Cool.

A lot is shoved into this movie. We see the Martian Manhunter’s origin, and we witness Hal Jordan (yeah, that’s right, Hal Jordon) become Green Lantern for the very first time. The Flash — the Barry Allen Flash — is a major player. And in non-speaking cameos, Green Arrow, Adam Strange, the Blackhawks, and even a couple of Jack Kirby’s original Challengers of the Unknown show up. It’s geek paradise, friends.

The Justice League: The New Frontier DVD comes in a few different versions: single-disc, double-disc, and Blu-ray. I bought the 2-disc set, with two full feature-length commentaries (one by Cooke, one with the movie’s creators), a handful of features, extra cartoons, and a 45-minute documentary about the history of the JLA. All for less than twenty bucks. A bargain.

This thing is highly recommended. I’ve watched it three times since Tuesday. I’ll watch it again before the weekend’s over.

The HD war is over. Whew.

So Blu-ray has won the big high-def DVD war.

Thank gawd that's over.

Here's where I stand on HD. It can be cool, I'll admit. I don't own an HD player, but I do get HD with my digital cable service, and I've watched some extraordinary science and nature documentaries in high-definition on my 46-inch Samsung. They're gorgeous. But honestly, friends, my plain old DVDs look pretty good, even on a large screen, and I just don't see the big deal about watching Rush Hour 3 or Balls of Fury in higher definition. My poor old peepers really can't make out that big a difference anyway.

DVD review: SUNSHINE

British director Danny Boyle cites 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tarkovsky’s Solaris, and the original Alien as the three greatest “space movies” of all time. Well, his own Sunshine, released on DVD earlier this month, turns out to also be a masterpiece of that genre. What’s really astonishing, though, is that this film, by the man responsible for such critically acclaimed movies as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, received almost no fanfare until now and was only released marginally in U.S. theaters this past summer. What’s the deal?

Sunshine, which I purchased only because I saw Boyle credited on the DVD case, literally leaps out of nowhere and onto my list of twenty or so favorite science fiction films. It’s breathtaking on countless levels, and it passes two essential Conger criteria for Great Movies: (1) after first watching it, the film haunted me until my second viewing a day or two later, and (2) it bears up to repeated viewings, revealing deeper secrets with each replay.

Here’s what I like about Sunshine:

• The story is riveting. In brief, to “restart” a dying sun, Icarus II journeys forth with a nuclear device. The ship follows an earlier mission that disappeared seven years before and eventually stumbles across the first Icarus, now lifeless but with its payload intact. What happened? And will whatever happened impact Icarus II’s assignment?

• The cast is sensational, including Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Batman Begins), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four), and Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). You care about this crew.

• The movie is stunning to look at. The effects are gasp-inducing.

• The soundtrack by Underworld is phenomenal.

• Written by Alex Garland (who also scripted 28 Days Later), Sunshine is speculative and thought-provoking, way beyond most of what passes for sci-fi these days. It might be accused of being too esoteric or too full of itself. I’d disagree. Yes, it is layered with multiple ideas and themes (Examples: what is duty? is the crew playing God?), and many of them may not be clear until second or third viewings. But it’s all worth the effort, and the film is punctuated by exciting and beautiful “action” sequences that are never gratuitous but instead propel the story forward.

By the way, this single-disc DVD is packed with goodies, including deleted scenes (with Boyle commentary) and separate full-length film commentaries by Boyle and Dr. Brian Cox from the University of Manchester. It’s a boffo package.

Sunshine is highly recommended.

DVD review: SHOOT 'EM UP

The greatest gunplay movie ever made, writer-director Michael Davis’s Shoot ’Em Up, was released last week on DVD. What a treat. I said nice things about the movie last September, when it pretty much tanked in theaters, but on second viewing, my opinion has actually risen to greater heights. What I thought was clever the first time around seems absolutely brilliant now. What I chuckled at in September now has me clutching my gut in laughter.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not a classic noir film. Nor is it a spoof of classic noir. But it takes your typical guns-blazing chase picture and shoves it over the top to a degree that’ll delight action fans. Davis oughta direct a film based on one of Duane Swierczynski’s fantastic crime novels. He’d do a perfect job.

Anyway, the DVD has some nice bonuses: an interesting full-length commentary from Michael Davis, an hour-long “making of” documentary, some deleted and extended scenes (with commentary), and the amazing “animatics” that Davis used to pitch the movie to producers and even to star Clive Owen to get it made. Oh, and Shoot ’Em Up also stars Paul Giamatti as last year’s greatest movie villain and the delicious Monica Belucci as the classiest lactating hooker ever. So what’s stopping you from buying or at least renting this thing?

The Best of 2007

Maybe it’s a little early for this 2007 Top 10. After all, I still haven’t seen Tim Burton’s movie version of Sweeny Todd, one of my favorite musicals, and Dean Koontz’s latest novel, which I hear is boffo, is waiting to be read. But reviews of those may come later, and if they qualify for this list, so be it. Anyway, here are my ten favorite items (books, movies, DVDs, what have you) for the past 12 months so far, in ascending order:

10. My niece’s boyfriend got the Transformers movie DVD for Christmas, so the whole family watched it on Tuesday afternoon. I liked it as much the second time as I did last summer in the theater. Hell, who doesn’t like giant robots with a sense of humor? But it’s not Transformers that’s on my Top 10 list. That honor goes to a young actress named Megan Fox, who stole every scene in that film, gave me life-threatening heart palpitations, and prompted naughty thoughts through most of Christmas dinner. Another star is born.

9. This was an especially “retro” year for me, and you’ll notice that almost everything on this list (besides the scrumptious Megan Fox) represents a bit of yesteryear. Case in point: the British double-CD import Last Flight, a live full-concert recording of Jefferson Airplane closing out its very last tour in 1972 at Winterland in San Francisco. This was Airplane’s last hurrah. Marty Balin and Spencer Dryden had left, and the band was on life support, having peaked three years earlier. But amazingly, this CD is fantastic, an extraordinary postscript to the Jefferson Airplane story.

8. Grindhouse was the most outrageous movie of 2007, a 195-minute two-for-one valentine from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino to those great cheesy exploitation “double-bills” of the 1970s. I loved the movie, and I wish they’d release the whole goddamn thing in one big DVD package. But for now, the two pieces that made up Grindhouse — Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof — are available as separate “extended cut” DVDs. Even without the goofy trailers, they’re worth a look.

7. I’ve talked here about my love for The Third Man so many times that you may be nauseous from it. But here I go again. This year, the Criterion Collection released an upgrade of its earlier DVD release, and it’s not to be missed, even if you own the first one. The two-disc set includes a new transfer of the film, all the bonus features from the first Criterion DVD, plus two feature-length audio commentaries, the 90-minute 2005 documentary Shadowing the Third Man, a 1999 Austrian documentary, a 1968 hour-long British TV program on novelist Graham Greene, and a booklet of essays. Fans of Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, post-war Vienna, and Sacher-Tortes shouldn’t miss this package.

6. I’m so used to Hollywood butchering books I love that Gone Baby Gone, based on a terrific Dennis Lehane novel, surprised the hell outta me. It was not only one of the best movies I saw in 2007, it may be the best film in the private eye genre I’ve seen since Chinatown, more than three decades ago. Director-screenwriter Ben Affleck and most of the cast, which includes Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, deserve Oscars for this. Too bad the movie tanked at the box office. Catch it on DVD when it becomes available.

5. The last time I saw Richard Lester’s 1965 classic Help!, starring John, Paul, George, and Ringo, I was watching a washed-out, choppy print at a revival movie house in Reseda, California. Now, for the very first time, Help! is on DVD. And this newly restored print is breathtaking. The colors pop. The clarity is startling. Help! looks like a brand new movie. And the songs — well, what can I say about the songs? It’s a great DVD. Bonuses include featurettes on the film’s painstaking restoration and interviews with Lester and surviving cast members (sadly, neither Ringo nor Paul). If you haven’t got this one yet, why not? It’s the friggin’ Beatles fer crissakes!

4. For many years, one of my regrets was misplacing my copy of a dusty little 1972 paperback titled A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the Rise of the American Corporate State, one of the few genuine Left-Right collaborations that sprung from Murray Rothbard’s notorious flirtation with the Left in the late 1960s. This eye-opening book, edited by Rothbard and then-Leftist Ronald Radosh, featured essays by, of course, Rothbard and Radosh, plus libertarian Leonard Liggio, New Leftist William Appleman Williams, and others. This year, the Mises Institute made this important bit of Libertarian Left history available as an absolutely free PDF download. Radical Rothbardians, if you care at all about your roots, don’t miss this great book, courtesy of the indispensable Mises Institute.

3. Maybe because so many different versions have been released over the years, I never before owned a copy of one of my favorite films, Blade Runner. I guess I’ve been waiting for this Blade Runner Five-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition all along. After I dropped repeated hints about it for several months, Deb got me this monster for Christmas, and it’s fabulous. It’s got everything, including four versions of the Ridley Scott classic (the original theatrical release, the international release, the director’s cut, and Scott’s brand new “final cut”), plus the work print, a three and a half hour long documentary, 45 minutes of deleted scenes, three feature-length commentaries, umpteen mini-features, a miniature replica spinner car, an origami unicorn figurine, and TONS of other doodads and bells and whistles, all stuffed into a facsimile of Rick Deckard’s metal briefcase. I’ve been weeding through this thing since Wednesday morning, and I’ve barely made a dent. Very cool. This package may set the standard by which all future “special edition” DVDs are measured.

2. Steve Ditko is best known as the co-creator of Spider-Man. But my favorite non-Marvel Ditko creation, hands down, has always been his no-nonsense, blue-suited, faceless, Randian hero, The Question, which he produced for Charlton Comics in the late 1960s. Years later, Denny O’Neil would resurrect and unfortunately reinterpret the character for DC Comics. But the original, uniquely Ditko canon — five back-of-the-book short stories in Blue Beetle and a single full-length comic book adventure, just 62 pages in all — were tremendous fun and crammed with hardcore “A is A” values. My old copies of those comics were long gone, and I thought Ditko’s Question was lost forever — that is, until this year, when all of those precious tales were collected into a wonderful hardcover book titled The Action Heroes Archives Volume 2, part of DC’s Archive Editions series. There are some Blue Beetle and Captain Atom stories by Ditko in this book, too, and they’re all terrific. But it’s The (quintessential) Question that makes this book worthwhile, and my greatest discovery at Comic-Con last July.

1. What’s more exciting to a radical libertarian than a brand spankin’ new Murray Rothbard book, written in the mid-1970s and finally published 12 years after the great man’s death? Not a damn thing. The Betrayal of the American Right, available from the Mises Institute in hardcover and even as a free PDF download, is a first-rate blend of memoir and libertarian movement history. It is the Libertarian Left treasure of 2007. And it tops my list. Onward to 2008!

I celebrate Christmas early

I’m still breathless from my trip to Costco yesterday afternoon. Costco has marked down all five DVD box sets of Babylon 5 — seasons one through five, every damn one of them — to just $15.99 apiece. I’ve been a big fan of the series for more than a decade, but have always winced at the $59.99 price tag I see on the sets. So as you can imagine, I quickly plunked down $79.95 at Costco and bought all five of ’em yesterday. An early Christmas present to myself.

For the next few weeks, it seems my life’s gonna be filled with Babylon 5. Hooray!

This movie classic is real horrorshow

The films of Stanley Kubrick are being reissued on DVD in 2-disc “special editions.” Among them, naturally, is his extraordinary Oscar-nominated adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange, which I first saw on its release in 1971, when I was just 17. Seeing it then, of course, required my passing for 18, because A Clockwork Orange was rated X. This was in the day when “X” didn’t necessarily signify pornography, and critically acclaimed movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Damned, and Last Tango in Paris sported X ratings. Anyway, I’d already read the Burgess book for a high school English class, and I wanted to see the movie version, so I not-so-confidently walked into a theater on Hollywood Boulevard, trying to act eight or nine months older than I was.

I was staggered then by A Clockwork Orange. And I was staggered again this past weekend, when I watched it for the first time in many years. The movie is, by turns, horrifying, edifying, and comedic. Even by today’s film standards, it rattles you. Watching it with much more history behind me, I was struck first by the obvious influence the movie’s had on filmmakers, music, and even clothing trends over the past 36 years. Then I was reminded again of what an angry and devastating polemic it is against bureaucracy and the nanny State, and of how prophetic it was. Malcolm McDowell, then 28, brilliantly plays teenaged Alex, every society’s nightmare — and I think the film’s opening shot on just his face is one of the most memorable in cinematic history.

On a recent list of the top 50 dystopian movies of all time, A Clockwork Orange came in at #2, behind only Fritz Lang’s silent classic Metropolis. It absolutely deserves that placement. If you’ve somehow missed seeing this film, by all means see it, but with this suggestion: Don’t be frightened. It’s only a movie. (Sure it is…)

Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time

Perhaps inspired by my list of top movie crime thrillers a couple of days ago, my pal Brian shares Snarkerati’s Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time. Not succumbing to just listing personal favorites, Snarkerati took fan ratings from the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes, added them together, then found an average for each movie, which accounts for placement on the list. Pretty cool. And here’s what I find really interesting: 21 of the listed movies are right now in my personal DVD collection. Another six are movies I intend to buy when they finally come out as “special editions,” or their prices drop so low I just have to purchase them. Am I a depressing guy or what?

In case you’re interested, here are the 21 dystopian films I now own (with their ranking on the abovementioned list): Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (#1), Brazil (#3), Children of Men (#6), The Matrix (#7), The Road Warrior (#8), Minority Report (#9), 12 Monkeys (#14), Serenity (#15), RoboCop (#19), Akira (#20), V for Vendetta (#23), Fahrenheit 451 (#26), Total Recall (#29), Dark City (#30), George Pal’s version of The War of the Worlds (#31), THX-1138 (#34), Escape from New York (#35), the 1984 version of Nineteen Eighty-Four (#38), A Boy and His Dog (#40), Starship Troopers (#48), and Equilibrium (#50). The six I will buy eventually are: A Clockwork Orange (#2), Blade Runner (#5), Alphaville (#13), Gattaca (#25), They Live (#33), and Artificial Intelligence: AI (#38).

Oh, and I also own one of the movies Snarkerati offers as an “honorable mention”: Code 46.

Welcome to my nightmares.