Video review time. I watched “The Illusion is Real”. Murder mystery. Grade B. An alternative to Hollywood, except it has a plot. Contains all the clichés so may be a spoof in disguise. Kills time excellently, great period costumes. Even the poorest folk live in Mary Tyler Moore style penthouses. Most memorable/best scene: the bare-chested star’s protest against a dress code. “I gotta button my shirt all the way up to here but she can wear that dress!”
“Why We Fight”, the painstaking but generally factual documentary commissioned by the US government to explain the non-financial motives behind WWII. For military buffs, tons of footage. For historians, arranged propaganda. For the public, same old, same old. Interesting item, a B-29 Superfortress cost as much as a navy cruiser. Most memorable/best scene: uncensored short of Hitler’s single step at the Victory Train that the British faked into a dance or jig (in 1940).
Media changes. I’ve not bought a comic book in decades, so I stopped to examine a current Superman. The movies had parts to make me gag (Lois on learning of X-ray vision, doesn't a Superman was inside the pyramids, but instead wants to know, “What color are my panties?”). Now the comic has gone wrong also. Annoying, instead of strip panels, they move them around and embed them, making it possible to read them in the wrong order.
Also, I once read a really dumb art book about 1975 that said if you are drawing super-heroes, you have to give them heroic proportions. Now even Perry White is a scale 9 feet across the shoulders. One thing that hasn't changed is the difficulty of comic makers to keep coming up with new material. Guess this issue’s theme:
1. Superman Fights Terrorism
2. Superman Replants the Amazon.
3. “Clark, you’re fired!
(Hint, it’s the one about as lame as Superman choosing Lois (and her green panties) over the blue-eyed blonde.)
