from "The Canine and the Crooks," Superman #19, November/December 1942

You tell 'em, Superman!

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Films can be escapist fun from the shittiness of real life. So let's escape.

71. (1930.) Mona Lisa (1986)
Bob Hoskins was a great actor. Here he plays a slow-witted but well-intentioned man, which is a necessity to get the story where it wants to take us. To his credit, I kept overestimating his character exactly as I was supposed to. (The title is not an accident; the Mona Lisa is a famous painting because you see in it what you want to see.) I didn't love the film, but I respect it.

I want to see a Coke

72. (1931.) Lisztomania (1975)
I don't respect Lisztomania, but I admit it has its moments. It's a totally bonkers musical film falling somewhere between biopic of Franz Liszt and allegory about music's power to brainwash the masses. I don't know if Liszt did drugs, but the filmmakers sure did, and they informed the script: It starts all fun and euphoric excitement, but it takes more and more effort to top the previous experience and by the end you just want it all to stop. (The Jack Kirby's Thor-influenced Frankenstein's monster Superman is about three musical bridges too far.) The turning point, as is so often the case, is the mid-film song-and-dance number in which Roger Daltry rides a giant erection straight (in)to the devil. The film wants to say a lot about too much, but the ultimate moral of the story is that what may look like a great metaphor on paper is often unwatchable garbage on screen.

73. (1932.) Mahler (1974)
An earlier film made by the same writer/director as Lisztomainia. This watches more like a conventional biopic of dour, difficult composer Gustav Malher. I found to my surprise that I missed some of the latter film's enthusasiam.

74. (1933.) Walk a Crooked Mile (1948)
This buddy cop early Cold War procedural goes out of its way to have the g-men make mistakes that result in lost lives. I cannot believe that the FBI was ever this incompentent whatever the social mores of the day were. They ignore a man dressed as a priest, discount the possiblity that a woman could be the guilty party, and accuse the naturalized citizen because he has a suspicious accent. Well, okay, maybe that last one still holds.

75. (1934.) One Sunday Afternoon (1948)
On the opposite side of the entertainment spectrum from "geo-political crime drama" is this traditional Broadway-style musical adapted into a film in which it takes all three acts to teach the irritatingly dim protagonist that his best buddy is not a good person. I enjoyed the songs, settings, actors, and the reminder that life at the turn-of-the-20th-century was just all-around rotten. (I don't think that last bit was intentional on the part of the filmmakers. I might have been reading my own biases into a world where women were either trophies or slaves, "painful" dentisty was the only option, and lynch mobs were still considered justice.) I judge the film to be a good way to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon when football is not an option.

77. (1936.) Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
Did I say "escapist fun"? The takeaway here could have been "if you take agency, you can make a good life for yourself," but it's not. If fictional 1980s protagonist "Precious" was a real person, she would in all likelihood have died in obscurity decades ago from a disease forced upon her by her abusers, and the film doesn't let you forget that uncomfortable fact. It's more a "life sucks so let's do what we can to make it less painful for one another" scenario. It's a useful reminder and a good film.

More to come.

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Last month Ned "Otis" Beatty died. This month it's director Richard Donner. Twenty Twenty-One is proving to be a bad year for people associated with Superman: The Movie.

Should we start a pool on who's going to be August's victim? As you might expect from a 43-year-old movie, there really aren't too many principal cast and crew left. Long retired Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor) is 91. Valerie Perrine (Ms. Teschmacher), 77, has been fighting Parkinson's for years. The longest odds go to Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), a comparatively sprightly 64.

Somewhere behind the camera, executive producer Ilya Salkind is 73 and editor Stuart Baird is 74. Only one of the five credited screenwriters, Robert Benton survives at 88. And who wants to live in a world without John Williams in it? He's 89.

Fortunately, all three of the Kyrptonian villains from the opening scenes of Superman: The Movie are still stalking the Earth. Terrance Stamp (General Zod) is 82, Jack O'Halloran (Non) is 78, and Sara Douglas (Ursa) is barely older than Jimmy Olsen at 68. One would hope they get to keep terrorizing Planet Houston for years to come.

I don't mean to be callous. It would be nice if someone could fly around the world fast enough to reverse the flow of time and stave off death. But that sort of thing can only happen in the movies.

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Once upon a time, back in the day when cassette tapes were a thing (and my Jeep's cassette tape player still worked), I thought occasionally about making a mix tape of just songs that title-referenced Superman.

Such a mix would have included the usual top 40 songs from Crash Test Dummies, Five for Fighting, and R.E.M. But imagining such a thing is about as far as I ever got.

Not that there aren't plenty of other songs with titles name dropping Superman. But I'm kind of picky about what I will listen to. Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" isn't exactly catchy, Taylor Swift sounds like a stalker, Donovan puts me in mind of 1970s drug culture, and I've never cared for much of anything Streisand or Eminem. Like I said, picky.

I could have expanded my criteria to songs with lyrics about Superman, but there are a *lot* of those, too. SupermanHomepage.com lists 602 recording that make at least passing reference to the Man of Steel. I'd have to include "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down, but after that, how to narrow it down? Heck, he's in "Rapper's Delight," which can take up half a mix tape by itself.

I always say that I'm not exactly a music guy, so maybe it's best I let this dream go. Anyway, the continuous looping soundtrack in my head is already stuck on John Williams. It's all downhill from there.

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Celebrate Christmas in June with Superboy!

What I heard: solve poverty by giving poor people money. That Superboy, he's a thinker.

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Because of the pandemic — which can't hurt Superman but can hurt the very people he has dedicated his life to helping — the Metropolis, Illinois, Superman Celebration was cancelled last year, and has been postponed to the end of July this year.

But in case you ever wondered why it's usually held around the second weekend in June, here's your answer:

Superman #263, April 1973

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It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...

...Doc Shaner! (Twitter.com)

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Good help is getting increasingly harder to find.

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This. Is. A. Painting.

Hey, if someone — in this particular case, artist Eliza Donze (Twitter.com) — can do *this* with a digital paintbrush, maybe a man *can* fly.

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That PSA was published in 1949, when the USA had a population around 150 million and 25 million registered cars. For comparison, today there are about 350 million Americans (+133%) with 287 million registered vehicles (+1048%) resulting in over 42,000 traffic fatalities (+30%). Obviously, roads have gotten a lot safer in the past 3/4 century, and I think we all know why.

Thank you, Superman!

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