Category Archives: films

Moonage Daydream

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Tonight we went to the movies for the first time since before the pandemic started.

We saw this film about David Bowie, Moonage Daydream. Not exactly a documentary in the sense I usually think of them. Just kind of a journey through his career, of course with a lot of his music. It was enjoyable, for sure. I listen to my iPod on the way to and from work, and rarely a day goes by that I don’t intentionally listen to some Bowie, usually from the Ziggy album.

One cool thing was the film’s coverage of his painting and other artistic endeavors. His painting was, to my non-educated eye, good. The point is that the man was just compelled to create, nearly all the time. A real loss, but it’s nice that this genius didn’t leave us at 27 like so many have.

Bozo Texino film

Last night I was lucky to see the documentary film Who is Bozo Texino at the Alamo Drafthouse in Richardson. I was extra lucky by the the filmmaker, Bill Daniel, was there to show some of his other short films dealing with Texas Punk Rock and to answer questions. A really interesting guy – I’d love to spend some time talking to Bill for the Concrete Lunch Podcast. Maybe someday.

X-Men Days of Future Past: Part One

The X-Men movie franchise is a mess, starting mostly with the 3rd X-Men movie, and moving through all the Wolverine movies and X-Men First Class.

There are some great scenes. The great Nightcrawler fighting in the White House at the beginning of #2 is fantastic. But really, they screw things up.

I can’t get into all the details here, but let me just list worst infractions.

1)Killed Cyclops in Episode 3.
2)Killed Jean Grey in Episode 3.
3)Killed Professor X in Episode 3.
4)Killed Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, after totally screwing up the character.
5)Chopped off Wolverine’s claws in The Wolverine, leaving him with his original bone claws.

Now in Days of Future Past, they have to somehow resurrect the 3 dead characters. Apparently they do this with Professor X by simply ignoring that fact that he died. Not sure about the other two, but apparently they come back to life at the end of the movie.

Also, they just bring back Wolverine’s adamantium claws. I guess we are to assume that Magneto is able to repair them. How knows.

A mess. Can’t wait to see how that studio fowls up the Fantastic Four reboot.

All that being said, I’m looking forward to seeing the new film. It looks like visually they got a lot of stuff right. It looks fun. I can’t wait to see the Quicksilver scene. It isn’t Brian Singer’s fault that after he left the series they messed it all up. So I’ll give him some room to fix it — isn’t that big of me?

Documentary Report! Constantine’s Sword

Last night I finished watching the film Constantine’s Sword, based on the book by (and starring) James Carroll.

This is going to be a short report, as I really can’t do a very good job of summarizing this movie. First, I thought it was fascinating. The author/star is a former catholic priest who became disillusioned with the church during the Viet Nam war and left the priesthood.

The film investigates a couple of things simultaneously, drawing kind of a philosophical analogy between the two. First, antisemitism and evangelical religious incursion in the US military is examined, specifically at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Then it moves into the history of antisemitism in the catholic church, the church’s complicity in persecution of jews throughout history, and related topics.

Not a christian-bashing film at all, I recommend Constantine’s sword to anyone interested in these topics.