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Spotlight: Threedayfish

1 Dec

December 1, 2011

According to JRD Skinner, Threedayfish is a mystery to man, woman, and child. As master of the FlashCast’s first recurring segment, and sole film reviewer, Fish has begun to build an empire of internet notoriety which can only end in a flame-out of booze, drugs, and easy women.

While always listening, Fish currently occupies most of his time with his education, and has been known to delve into the world of war game miniatures.

I’d like to note that it says “sole” film reviewer. There is a good reason for that. While my New York Minute segment of FlashCast may often touch upon movies, and this website may on occasion do a feature on some of the worst that movies have to offer, I am not nearly the reviewer that Threedayfish is. I would hate to try to put into words what I feel about movies. I would not dare step on his toes. The old cliché “I may not know about art but I know what I like” applies to me. It definitely does not apply to Threedayfish.

You can find him online and like him on Facebook right here.

Read on and discover how some modern films carry on the tradition of a classic American genre.

Fish’s Guide to Judging Pulp

            Special guest Threedayfish here helping out bmj2k, a guy I’ve never even met. Why? Because I am a nice guy. He didn’t give me much to work with. He just said “Hey Fish, you’re a handsome guy, mind helping me with my blog” and I said yes. Why? Because I am a sucker for flattery. Enough about what I am, now for who I am. I am a contributor to a podcast known as Flash Pulp. Flash Pulp tries to revive an American genre that has left a lasting impression on its media. I specialize in reviewing movies worthy of the title pulp. It was easy at first, thanks to the slew of super hero movies. Comic book heroes are a direct descendant of pulp fiction magazines. But as summer waned, and the easy pulp picks thinned, I had to decide for myself how to distinguish pulp flicks from any other old movie?

            Well, looking back on pulp’s history and evolution, I have determined three hallmarks that separate a true blue pulp movie from a look alike. The first genetic trait in pulp DNA is how the movie ends. The movie has to make the audience feel like things worked out for the best. There are a couple of ways a pulp movie can achieve this. Super hero movies have the most familiar form of this kind of ending: the hero, after coming to grips with his new identity as an individual with the responsibility to help others, has saved the day and things look brighter until the inevitable sequel. However, that isn’t to say the ending has to be all smiles. An example of this would be when John Hartigan saves Nancy Callahan then kills himself in Sin City. Not exactly uplifting, but the hero’s moral code was upheld and the girl was saved. A warrior’s death. While not a happy ending, it was virtuous. Sounds predictable? Of course! A pulp movie must leave the audience reassured that good can triumph over evil. The exceptions to this rule would be your Lovecraftian horror and your film noir. But that has more to do with the goals of the genre.

            So, we have eliminated kiddie movies and tragedies. C’mon Fish, we need specifics. Okay. Here’s another give away. Pulp will experiment in story lines and style. A great example of this is Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Movies like Tron experimented with being sucked into a video game, but Scott Pilgrim put on display a world where video games were reality. This made for a visually humorous and charming movie. This narrows down our picks. While dramas can be pulp-y, a good drama will often try to make some point, one that may challenge your beliefs or defend others with a new perspective. This is all well and good, but it’s not the way pulp operates. This eliminates dramas, documentaries, and a through and through comedy which aims to parody rather than experiment.

            So what does this leave us with? The pulpiest of genres: Adventure, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Horror/Thriller and Crime. But Fish, you have yet to really narrow things down. Well, to be honest, it’s not hard to fall into the pulp category. But there is one more necessary quality. Pulp heroes are static, predictable, expected. These have a negative connotation from  movie critics, but an audience member may see it differently. An audience member may see them as reliable. “Count-on-able” if you will. So what’s so great about this predictability?

 Pulp is a genre that doesn’t try to invent, rather to improve and innovate. Humans have created anything original in art, music, or literature for thousands of years. Pulp-influenced writers have no illusions about this and so they reinvent whatever and wherever they can. This can be in the setting as in the Scott Pilgrim example, or with pseudo-science in Sci-Fi. Any new discoveries in science lead to new pseudo-scientific problems and conflicts in our movies and books. It is what society at large calls ‘progress’ that pulp tries to shield us from. Often it seems to just add more problems and more stress to our troubled world. Pulp ultimately tries to reassure the public that things will work out, even if their world was just turned upside down and we hit our butts hard on the unfamiliar ground. Pulp will do this by any means, even if that means avoiding thought-provoking and ‘smart’ plots.

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A New York Legend (4)

16 Nov

November 16, 2011

Have any of you seen the movie Arthur? I don’t mean the one with Russell Brand, I mean the funny one with Dudley Moore.

It’s a good film with a good cast and though it came out 30 years ago it stands up well with it’s depiction of Arthur, a rich drunken New Yorker. But that’s really all I have to say about it.

What interests me this week is not the movie but its theme song by Christopher Cross. It hit number one on the billboard Hot 100 and is still a staple of lite FM stations. Alvin and the Chipmunks covered it in 1982 so it had to be good. Dave Seville had a real ear for music.

Anyway, the most famous lyric- don’t worry, I’m not going to sing it, and you couldn’t hear me if I did- the most famous lyric is “when you get caught between the moon and New York City, the best that you can do is fall in love.”

Romantic, isn’t it? Yes, New York really is a city of romance, of love, and imagination. If you have never been to New York you have a mental image of the city. Part of it is formed by the crime drama of television, part of it is formed by glitz of Broadway, thanks to me a small part of it is formed by invisible bridges and blind mutant albino sewer gators, and a large part of it is formed by the allure of mystery, the unknown.

“Caught between the moon and New York City.” The moon is on average around 300,000 thousand miles away from the Earth so I’m pretty sure that isn’t meant literally or it would only apply to whoever is left on the International Space Station. But it is a great line.

One New Yorker who got caught between the moon and New York City and simply disappeared was Judge Crater. Legend has it that in 1930 he simply turned a corner and vanished on his way home. It really was almost that simple.

Judge Joseph Crater is one of the most famous missing persons in American history, and the term “pulling a Crater” has come into the lexicon as slang for disappearing.

The story includes links to organized crime, Judge Crater’s mistress, thousands of dollars in cash, and a pair of suitcases.

Judge Crater was on vacation with his wife when he received a phone call. After hanging up he told his wife he had to get back to New York to “straighten those fellows out.” It isn’t clear who those fellows were or even if they existed because Crater’s next stop wasn’t New York, it was Atlantic City where he stayed few days with his girlfriend, a showgirl named Sally Lou Ritz, and I dare you to find a better pulp name.

He eventually got to New York City where he met up with his wife, went through his files in the courthouse, and cashed checks for over $5,000 dollars, which may not sound like much but was equal to over $60,000 back then. He later returned to his apartment with a pair of locked suitcases.

That night Judge Crater had dinner with Sally Lou Ritz and left to see a show for which he had bought only one ticket. The last anyone saw of him he was walking down the street on his way to the theater. And he was never seen again.

Investigators have pieced together some of his activities. His safe deposit box was empty and the two suitcases? Gone. And what about the money? And his files from the courthouse? Unknown. All I can tell you is that he didn’t run off with Sally Lou Ritz. She left town “to be with her sick father” and believe it or not, that cliché alibi happened to be true.

As you can imagine there is a ton of speculation about what happened to the Judge, but my favorite story comes from 1995.

A 91 year old woman contacted police and told her that she knew where Judge Crater was buried. According to her, Judge Crater was buried under the boardwalk in Coney Island at what is now the site of the New York Aquarium. While many crackpot theories have been put forth over the decades this one was taken a little more seriously because she claimed that one of the Judge’s killers was her deceased husband, NYPD officer Robert Good. Good, along with his partner Charles Burns, were very plausible suspects.

Now I know you all remember the very first New York Minute, about Henry Hudson, the Half Moon Hotel, and Kid Twist? Well, it was officers Good and Burns who were Kid Twist’s bodyguards the night he took a Brodie out a window and went splat on the boardwalk.

So you’ve got a fantastic and famous New York City disappearance linked to a fantastic and famous New York City mob rubout and both took place on the fantastic and famous Coney Island boardwalk and sadly, it is probably not true. When that part of the boardwalk was dug up in the 1950’s to build the aquarium no remains were found.

Although Judge Crater was declared legally dead in 1939, I like to think that he is still out there, somewhere, caught between the moon and New York City.

 

An audio version of this legend first appeared just last week in the amazing FlashPulp website. Check them out for awesomeness and goodies!

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