tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post5594179639546588995..comments2024-03-28T16:47:27.333-05:00Comments on Acidemic - Film: Fantasy Phallus Fallacy: SATURN 3 (1980)Erich Kuerstenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-89931911079832288882022-04-28T16:58:00.971-05:002022-04-28T16:58:00.971-05:00It's Amis not AmissIt's Amis not AmissAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-14273655642841237602022-03-03T16:04:01.009-05:002022-03-03T16:04:01.009-05:00Thanks for this detailed post - you rang a lot of ...Thanks for this detailed post - you rang a lot of bells with your self aware man cave ode. Cling to those fanboy dreams, never let their absurdity make you second guess yourself, if Saturn 3, The Swimmer, and Forbidden Planet have taught us anything it's that awareness of one's own aging absurdity need not always be fatal, as long as you keep laughing, and keep your libido pitched just the right balance between Morbius austerity and Kirk louchness. Too far in either direction is fatal, either through monsters erupting from the repressed or monsters of belated post-mid life crisis self doubt (leading to the Star is Born long swim or the Cialis heart attack) Keep the flag flying right in between and live 4-EVA!Erich Kuerstenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-80710159222680646452022-02-20T22:39:59.137-05:002022-02-20T22:39:59.137-05:00Who knew there was so much to say about SATURN 3?
...Who knew there was so much to say about SATURN 3?<br /><br />I've always like/love/shrugged but come backed to this movie. I recognized the FRANKENSTEIN elements, as well as the "getting too old for this shit in Eden" bit (maybe there's an article for OUTLAND waiting to be written, as it deals with a similar "almost impotent male going out with a bang"). Maybe it's the perpetual 70's kid who will always love the weird bug designs and HEAVY METALeque production design (though for as much money as was spent on the film, there was always a level of almost Japanese GODZILLA cheesiness that befuddled me. Did they really think that filming a spacecraft model in an aquarium was going to pass off as A-budget sci-fi in ANY time, much less after ALIEN and STAR WARS?)<br /><br />Maybe it could use a quasi remake in the form of a hentai or something. Or maybe we should just let SATURN 3 be. Regardless, I have my pretty German steelbook to gather dust on the shelf with the rest of my nerd junk in my laughably inadequate boy cave.<br /><br />Let's face it: these aren't "man caves" so much as memorials and art galleries of everything we grew up on as a kid, teen and young adult, ie the physical embodiments of what provokes us to want to live, dream and imagine. You may not be able to bottle it up like an elixir to drink, but you can sure as hell by the German mediabook with the cool poster art to sit up on a shelf and bask at (and occasionally fondle).<br /><br />PS: love the article on THE NINTH CONFIGURATION. While STAR WARS (at 7) and ALIEN (at 9) were my "coming of age" films, T9C is probably the film I feel encapsulates everything about me (humor, philosophy, politics, etc), so it was nice reading your perspective on it.ask_monrovillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03035860091052541588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-18871029316209437072019-07-11T20:43:14.671-05:002019-07-11T20:43:14.671-05:00Kirk Douglas has done some of the finest work in f...Kirk Douglas has done some of the finest work in film. Ace In The Hole and Paths Of Glory alone make him immortal. But the more I learn about the man the creepier I feel. Saturn 3- Hell! If he truly raped young Natalie Wood,I'd personally skin him alive in his wheelchair. And he seemed to pass many of his asshole traits to Mikey. Lancaster on the other hand,was also an athlete,aged gracefully in films,The swimmer,Lawman,Valdez Is Coming,Go Tell The Spartans,Atlantic City and appears to have been a class act. I only hope the rape story is false and that Burt knew nothing about it. Nat's Mother was a real piece of work to. And don't even het me started on RJ...Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17050780812342957714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-42388559836176632432016-07-19T08:36:56.420-05:002016-07-19T08:36:56.420-05:00Ooops thanks TF - I fixeded itOoops thanks TF - I fixeded itErich Kuerstenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-28464064843612419342016-07-19T03:02:59.048-05:002016-07-19T03:02:59.048-05:00Great post!
Correction: Kirk Douglas did not appe...Great post!<br /><br />Correction: Kirk Douglas did not appear in the 1946 The Killers, although he would have been good in the Albert Dekker, William Conrad, or Charles McGraw roles.TFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14335590678153403886noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-23774316958581641172016-07-18T14:45:04.723-05:002016-07-18T14:45:04.723-05:00Thanks Erich! The spelling popped in my head as I...Thanks Erich! The spelling popped in my head as I was typing, so you midwifed it! I love these extended pieces. This is probably the most thinking about Saturn 3 since the accountants broke out their red pens. I know you have had a rough year, and I empathize (visited my family cemetery south of San Antonio this weekend, someone stole my father's VA marker off his grave - probably for the resale of the bronze plaque content. It's hard out there for a Simp). Your writing and explorations into your own insight have been a huge influence on the work I am doing, and a never ending stream of great reads. I am forever in your debt for turning me on to Murder In A Blue World! (have you seen the Criterion release of Judex? 1963? It has everything! A Cat-suited french villainess, taxidermy masquerade heads, a Mysterious Hero who is, by all accounts, just a long haul stalker - I theorize that Wes Anderson's mother watched it on replay loops while she carried her future genius to term)johnnyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11799326880962880585noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-44610263121613752152016-07-18T09:09:40.984-05:002016-07-18T09:09:40.984-05:00hahah thanks for all this Johnny - the image of fe...hahah thanks for all this Johnny - the image of feeding Farrah with an eye dropper is both touching and true - as is the epart about barely registering in any media format but transcending them at the same time. Also, "Psy Fi" is a brilliant term - did you make it up, at least in this context? (I know it's a Brit rave fest but the anachronmyms mean different things)Erich Kuerstenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-59728823842862419202016-07-17T20:06:35.590-05:002016-07-17T20:06:35.590-05:00And finally, The Swimmer. Burt Lancaster played t...And finally, The Swimmer. Burt Lancaster played that character the way he should be played. Don Draper ten years into the past's version of the future. A god of a charismatic man so self deluded he doesn't even know when the truth or the lies start or stop. The concept of swimming home, which worked so well as a short story, should never have worked as a movie, but it did, and it hurt so much to watch it. Lancaster showed great artistic courage in that role, being pathetic, confusing, and sympathetic all at once, and the script and direction were as such that the glares of the party going castmates gave me all I needed to know about his back story. <br /><br />And I can't mention Don Draper and The Swimmer without also mentioning Rock Hudson in Seconds. Wow! That is yet another movie of both denial of the acknowledgment of the passing of the years, and the inability to accept one's decisions in that regard. A little more trip hop sci fi than The Swimmer's barefoot & shirtless Psy Fi, but they are almost companion pieces.<br />I miss Farrah Fawcett. I never saw her in person. I barely saw any of her movies. She had such a long, painful illness, and she was a unique star, barely registering as an actress or a model or a personality, or a T-shirt iron on, but so much more than all of those combined. When I outgrew my teenage poster lust for her and saw her as a person, with very human frailties, I just wanted to nestle her in the crook of my arm and feed her with an eye dropper until she was well enough to fly away. But I never got to and she died. ajohnnyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11799326880962880585noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-8629706689057403042016-07-17T20:05:33.764-05:002016-07-17T20:05:33.764-05:00I really like all the tangents and facets of this ...I really like all the tangents and facets of this one, Erich. I only finally saw this movie a few years ago, after having wanted to see it since junior high. First things first: Farrah Fawcett was from the same shithole town I am from, Corpus Christi, Texas. It was a kind of happening place in the 60's and part of the 70's, when she lived there and when I was little, but forced bussing caused a lot of white flight, and the end of the Viet Nam War took away all the sweet, blood soaked money that had flowed into the Naval Air Station (The Blue Angels used to practice their drills over our part of town all the time, which made the future look imaginable and within reach), and of course the ups and downs of the oil industry have played havoc on any kind of stability the economy once had. It is also the first weigh station of gangland drug dealing this side of the Mexican border, so there is a lot of trashiness and poverty and rust and electronics that can't take the humidity. In short, Farrah Fawcett was always a role model for me, because when she left CC TX, she did not look back. She did not have a summer home. She didn't appear in the Buccaneer Days Parade, she worked hard to reach an apogee that would break the pull of that town, and believe me, it takes a lot to break it. The Gulf Coast tidal undertow is deep within anyone born there, but you have to be strong, because to accomplish anything at all, you have to break orbit, and she showed me that it was possible to do so. Most of my 8th grade teachers bragged that they went to school with her, all the coaches claimed to have taken her to the prom (debunked by the English teachers), so to me, as much as I hated her leaving Charlie's Angels, I knew that it must just be time to leave and I wished her well. I also had high hopes for Saturn 3, but that was one of those movies that never seemed to get released (Like that movie with Robert Mitchum and the boxing Kangaroo, or, Times Square). <br /><br />Kirk Douglas, on the other hand, should have hung it up after The Fury. When Amy Irving collapses into his arms and he picks her up like a rag doll he must protect, in the lovely wordless shot by Mr. DePalma, That could have been his, I am an Old Badass Grown Man - moment to disappear with. That movie is all over the place, but he is a camel hair coat of masculine stability in it. Ever since then, he has just been in the way. I am sorry he had a stroke and he has a speech impediment now, but when Melissa Leo won her well deserved Oscar a few years ago, and that conceited old geezer wouldn't hand her the statue and get off the stage, but instead started asking her if she wanted to go out dancing after the ceremony, all I could think was, You self entitled, creepy old man. You are everything I never want to be. He Hectored her to the point that if she was going to be remembered for even winning the award, she had to say "Fuck" during her acceptance speech, and then feign embarrassment. God Damn, old man, you have sucked for thirty years. Your time on the stage was literally over as soon as you mumbled your way through reading the contents of the envelope, you should have left. You out Baby Janed Mommie Dearest.<br /><br />And that is a drag, because he does indeed have a body of work to be proud of, and for that matter, a son with a body of work to be proud of. What more accolades could an old man want? He wants me to cheer him on for thinking he can hit on Melissa Leo, on her big night? No. He wants me to think he is a viable comedy star because he is old? No. He should have left us wanting more. <br /><br />johnnyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11799326880962880585noreply@blogger.com