Not So Fabulous Lifestyles...

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Fabulous Stains (1981)
Director- Lou Adler
Starring- Diane Lane, Ray Winstone, Laura Dern

Corinne Burns (Lane), an orphaned, angst-ridden teen living in a washed-up town forms a band with two of her cousins and strikes a chord with other disillusioned youth. Soon the band finds themselves headlining with the Looters, and Burns sees all the good and bad sides to touring.
Her fans imitate her, seeing in her that part of them that wanted to scream out all their lives and thinking themselves unique, when the Looters' frontman Billy (Winstone) gives them--and Corinne--a rude awakening.

It was cool to see some vastly different personalities in these bands. Billy and Corinne are both brooding and insecure, trying to give the audiences something different while keeping their integrity somewhat intact. Corinne's cousins act and feel as if they're simply along for the ride--which they are. They can barely play any instruments, have little money, and soon miss their home lives as the road becomes longer.

There are also some interesting personalities in the Metal Corpses, essentially a has-been band trying to keep itself alive with a strange frontman who managed to so far stave off STD's and a drugged addled guitarist who probably never knew where he was.

All roles were played very well, very convincingly. The advice from the "has-beens" goes unheeded, and ironically makes sense. It's a good depiction of band relations/tensions, broken families, and also kids coming to the realization that for all the bad in their lives, they are in fact still kids.

Rating: 4/5 Bonedaddies.

A Silver Age Justice League Movie!

Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)
Director- Dave Bullock
Starring- David Boreanaz, Neil Patrick Harris, Kyle MacLachlan

Set in the 1950's, the Justice League is undergoing a change, what with the Korean War and all. Politics play more of a role here than in other DC cartoons, and some of the characters don't get along quite as well. Superman is something of a government patsy, while Wonderwoman helps out Vietnamese woman who were terrorised by guerilla fighters. Flash quits the biz after being relentlessly pursued by the government, J'onn J'onzz is trying to live a somewhat normal life as a human, and Batman is, as always, the Gotham Knight.

The team is more or less reunited by the surfacing of The Centre, a Lovecraftian being that appears to want to take over the world--standard Justice League material. J'onzz is also haunted by the U.S. government, which is aware of his existence and is planning a mission to Mars piloted by Korean vet Hal Jordan.

J'onzz is captured, Jordan's shuttle (which he discovers is equipped with nuclear weaponry in case of hostilities) malfunctions, and he gets saved by Superman while the shuttle explodes upon entering the atmosphere. He is later taken by a mysterious aircraft to a site where a figure lays dying on the ground. The figure is revealed to be a Green Lantern, who has deemed Jordan worthy of the Green Lantern ring and bestows him with the power of the Corps.

Superman takes on the beastly Centre and gets knocked into the sea, not to be seen again until close to the end of the movie, where he is saved by Aquaman, whose introduction in the movie is embarrassingly brief.

This movie seems to represent a change from the Golden Age to the Silver Age of comics, and of society as well, apparently. It was nice that I didn't recognize the voices of big named celebrities, even though many contributed. I liked that Batman was still a dark figure, but I didn't like the evolution of his look.

I also liked that it more or less remained faithful to the Darwyn Cooke comic it was based on. The political subject matter is toned down just a bit, some characters were still phased out, but all in all it turned out to be a great movie.

Rating: 3.5/5 Bonedaddies.