Tag Archives: Entertainment

May 24, 2017 · 12:30 am

MANTIS 5: THE AVENGERS/ DEFENDERS WAR CONTINUES

FOR PART 1 OF BALLADEER’S BLOG’S EXAMINATION OF MARVEL’S SUPERHEROINE MANTIS CLICK HERE  

Mantis Defenders 9THE DEFENDERS Volume 1, Number 9 (October 1973) Divide and Conquer

This worldwide clash between the Avengers and the Defenders was a crossover story covered in multiple issues of each of their separate comic books. Mantis gets to shine once again as the mystery surrounding her deepens. 

DIVIDE AND CONQUER 

The Silver Surfer, fresh from his battle with the Vision and the Scarlet Witch in French Polynesia, arrives back at Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. He carries with him the fragment of the Evil Eye of Avalon that he outfought the two Avengers for.

The Surfer tells the good Doctor about how the Avengers seem to be opposing the Defenders’ plan to reassemble the Evil Eye in order to free the superhero called the Black Knight from the spell that keeps him trapped in stone form.

Mantis divide and conquerNeither the Avengers nor the Defenders are aware that they are being manipulated by Dormammu – an enemy of Dr Strange and the Defenders – and by Loki, an enemy of Thor and the Avengers. The Avengers think they are preventing the Defenders from enacting revenge against the world over their various grievances, a revenge that the reassembled Evil Eye of Avalon will make unstoppable. 

For their part, the Defenders think that collecting the six scattered fragments of the Evil Eye will restore the Black Knight to normal. Dormammu tricked them into thinking that, but actually that Lord of the Dark Dimension wants the Eye so that he can destroy both superteams AND our universe.    Continue reading →

17 Comments

Filed under Superheroes

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

May 20, 2017 · 4:00 am

ADAM ANT’S VERSION OF HELLO, I LOVE YOU

Adam Ant 4“Adam Ant IS Roy Thinnes in Jared Martin: A One-Man Show.”

… Had to be said.

At any rate Adam Ant (Stuart Leslie Goddard) is still the current subject in Balladeer’s Blog’s “Give Them A Shoutout Before They’re Dead” category.

The link below is to Adam’s version of the Doors’ hit Hello, I Love You.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy it!

6 Comments

Filed under opinion

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

May 18, 2017 · 11:06 pm

MANTIS 3: BELOW US THE BATTLE

FOR PART 1 OF BALLADEER’S BLOG’S EXAMINATION OF MARVEL’S SUPERHEROINE MANTIS CLICK HERE 

Mantis below us the battleTHE AVENGERS Volume 1, Number 115 (September 1973) Below Us The Battle 

Avengers Roster: THOR (Donald Blake, MD), IRON MAN (Tony Stark), CAPTAIN AMERICA (Steve Rogers), THE SCARLET WITCH (Wanda * last name unknown at the time of this story * ), THE BLACK PANTHER (Prince T’Challa), THE VISION (not applicable), MANTIS (* unknown at the time of this story *) and THE SWORDSMAN (Jacques Duquesne).  

BELOW US THE BATTLE

Synopsis: All of the Avengers listed above are in an Avengers Quin-Jet flying over the Atlantic Ocean bound for England. The Black Knight (Dane Whitman), in 1973 the only British member of the Avengers, has been out of contact for an alarming amount of time. Anticipating trouble the team has decided to check out the Black Knight’s castle for signs of their friend and colleague.  

In keeping with the usual levels of verisimilitude for 1970s Marvel Comics, the story presents the British branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. intercepting the Quin-Jet because of the presence on board of the recently reformed former supervillain the Swordsman.

Mantis and Swordsman (partial)Despite the Swordsman’s pardon and his status as an Avenger the Brits do not want the formerly wanted man allowed in the country. Thor – more worldly in the comic books than he is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – negotiates with the British and the Swordsman is allowed in England but the Avengers are responsible for his actions.  

Captain America is the only Avenger still suspicious about the Swordsman and his lady love Mantis, the enigmatic woman who will assume more and more importance as the issues go by, enroute to the Celestial Madonna Saga. Continue reading →

23 Comments

Filed under Superheroes

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

May 18, 2017 · 5:32 am

THE NEW PEOPLE (1969): FORGOTTEN TELEVISION

TTHE NEW PEOPLE (1969) – It’s another Balladeer’s Blog look at a forgotten television program.

The New People was part of a brief and very odd experiment with television programs that ran just 45 minutes INCLUDING commercials.

These shows were always paired with a sister program that also ran 45 minutes total, thus the two back- to- back programs filled a total 90 minute block. In the case of The New People that sister show was The Music Scene. 

The New People was sort of like “Lord of the Flies Meets the 60’s Counterculture”. An airplane crashes on a desert island in the Pacific. Only one adult survives the crash but even they eventually pass away. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under Forgotten Television

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 16, 2017 · 9:00 am

PYTINE aka THE WINE FLASK (423 B.C.)

CRATINUS

Cratinus

Welcome to another Balladeer’s Blog post on ancient Greek comedies. If Pytine was an episode of Friends it would be titled The One Where Cratinus Fires Back At Aristophanes. This play is also known under English language titles like Wine Flask, Flagon, The Bottle, and others along those lines.

Cratinus, seen at left posing for the Attic Old Disco soundtrack album for Saturday Night Fever (Travolta stole all his moves from Cratinus, by the way) and galvanized by the tongue-in- cheek caricature that Aristophanes presented of a drunken, washed- up Cratinus in his previous year’s comedy The Knights, turned that caricature into the premise of his final comedy.

THE PLAY

From the fragments of Pytine that remain it seems Cratinus had an actor portraying himself (Cratinus) as the booze-soaked Grand Old Man of Attic comedy at the time. I always picture the character as a cross between Dudley Moore in Arthur and Tom Conti in Reuben, Reuben. Anyway, in the play Cratinus is  married either to Thalia, the Muse of Comedy or to simply a female personification of Comedy.  

Comedy complains to Cratinus’ friends, who make up the chorus, that she wants to take her husband to court for abandonment. She states that he is neglecting their marital bed because he has been spending too much time sleeping around with Methe, in this comedy a personification of  Drunkenness.

Academic opinion varies on whether or not Methe is supposed to be a hot young woman or a hot young man, and since this is an ancient Greek comedy it definitely could go either way. Not enough of the comedy survives to make it clear so Methe’s gender will remain a controversy.

Cratinus’ friends plot to save their buddy’s marriage by stopping him from drinking. They enact their “intervention” by smashing every last one of his containers of wine, and some of the comedy came from how many different types of vessels Cratinus had been hiding his booze in.

Cratinus counters the destruction of all his drinking vessels by purchasing a pytine, a very durable wine flask reinforced with wicker. The pytine is so strong it will withstand all the friends’ attempts to destroy it, thus foiling their plan to save Cratinus’ marriage to Comedy or the muse Thalia. 

Cratinus defends his drinking by saying wine is the source of all his poetic inspiration (the comedies were all in verse). This line of reasoning sets up the most famous line from Pytine when Cratinus says “You’ll never write great poetry if all you drink is water.”   Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under Ancient Greek Comedy, humor

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

May 14, 2017 · 3:17 pm

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973): MOVIE REVIEW

Despite the movie poster's warning this flick won't even untie your shoelaces. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973) – Category: Bad movie elevated by kitsch value in the casting.

Directed by THE Darren McGavin and featuring his wife Kathie Browne in a small role, this hilariously bizarre film is also known as Run, Stranger, Run. “Run, Potential Viewer, Run” would be a more appropriate title. 

Happy Mother’s Day Love, George  (henceforth HMDLG) is often described as a psycho-sexual thriller but actually it is nothing more than a melodramatic soap opera with a few murders and VERY few scenes of blood and gore. Those blood and gore scenes are so over-the-top they are completely at odds with the low-key, almost made-for-tv mildness of the rest of the movie.

This was a theatrical release but is so subdued and slow-paced it seems like a telefilm. You and your friends can keep yourselves entertained making jokes about the recognizable cast members to kill time since the first murder doesn’t happen until we’re more than an hour into this flick.

Ron Howard IS Johnny, a teenager who has come to town to discover who his birth parents are but who mostly just stands around staring at people and ESPECIALLY at houses. He seems completely taken aback that the townspeople find this somewhat creepy. Johnny is intrigued by the rash of missing persons plaguing the small town and feels they are connected to the secret of his past. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Bad and weird movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

May 13, 2017 · 6:08 pm

MANTIS 2: NIGHT OF THE SWORDSMAN

FOR PART 1 OF BALLADEER’S BLOG’S EXAMINATION OF MARVEL’S SUPERHEROINE MANTIS CLICK HERE  With Marvel Comics characters basically being Pop Culture Deities these days I’m approaching this topic the way I approach neglected mythological epics.

Mantis Night of SwordsmanTHE AVENGERS Volume 1, Number 114 (August 1973)  Night of the Swordsman

Before diving in, just contemplate the original publication date of this issue. FORTY-FOUR YEARS AGO!

If you went back 44 years before August of 1973 superhero comic books didn’t even exist yet. Just let that sink in for a moment.  

Cast of Characters:

Mantis 3MANTIS: When researching these old stories I’ve come to really “marvel” at Marvel Comics’ writers’ knack for handling long-term episodic storylines. In my opinion they handled it better than many writers of serialized science fiction and horror television series’ of today. Maintaining multiple threads of a long-running narrative is a specialized type of pulp fiction writing and 1970s Marvel Comics are excellent examples of the craft.  

The enigmatic seeds being planted in this issue regarding the brand new character Mantis and the long-established figure the Swordsman will bear fruit over the course of YEARS, culminating in what is remembered as the Celestial Madonna Saga. But a maddening one month wait between episodes makes today’s one week or so between tv episodes look pretty brief.   

Getting back to MANTIS – She was one of the many superheroines introduced by Marvel in the 1970s. This issue of The Avengers was the first appearance in action of this Eurasian beauty who was part Vietnamese and part ? for now.

Mantis’ mutant powers included empathy so advanced it was akin to telepathy at times. Physically she employed a brand of “super kung-fu” like DC’s superhero the Karate Kid. In this debut appearance, for instance she defeats THOR AND CAPTAIN AMERICA in battle. Yep.

The enigmatic hints about Mantis’ potential were nicely done and seem to have partially inspired Chris Claremont’s later handling of Marvel Woman/ Jean Grey’s slow evolution into Phoenix and then Dark Phoenix over at The Uncanny X-Men.

SwordsmanTHE SWORDSMAN: Hawkeye’s trainer and mentor when they both traveled the circus and carnival circuit in their pre-supervillain turned hero days. Unlike Hawkeye, however, the Swordsman was an actual villain, not merely misunderstood like his protégé.

Way back in Avengers’ #19 and 20 he pretended to join the team but was really infiltrating them as an agent of the supervillain the Mandarin. (The real one, not the comic-relief impersonator from the third Iron Man movie.) The Mandarin was the man who – using alien Makluan technology – upgraded the Swordsman’s regular sword into its unbreakable state. He also outfitted it with the ability to shoot electric rays, fire rays and power blasts. That weaponry was controlled by buttons on the hilt of the sword.

After his betrayal of the Avengers at the behest of the Mandarin the Swordsman  was an active supervillain in the Marvel Universe, often clashing with the Avengers as part of the Lethal Legion and as a semi-regular foe of Captain America. Most recently the Swordsman had fought alongside the Avengers in the 100th issue anniversary special to help them save the Earth and Asgard from the Greek god of war Ares.       

The current members of the Avengers at this time were: THOR, IRON MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE SCARLET WITCH, THE BLACK PANTHER and THE VISION. Since they’ve become household names thanks to the Avengers movies there’s no need to reintroduce them here. Time to give a synopsis of this issue’s story:  Continue reading →

40 Comments

Filed under Superheroes

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

May 13, 2017 · 1:57 pm

ADAM ANT: VIVE LE ROCK

Adam Ant 3“UP AND AT ‘EM, ADAM ANT!” … Had to be said. Balladeer’s Blog continues with its “Give Them A Shoutout Before They’re Dead” policy with another quick treat from the neglected Adam Ant (Stuart Leslie Goddard).

So, enjoy Eine Kleine Antmusic. Well, no, it’s not Adam’s hit Antmusic but I’ve been dying to use that lame joke ever since last week’s blog post Goody Two Shoes. 

Anyway, it’s the Adam Ant song Vive Le Rock:

 

6 Comments

Filed under opinion

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

May 9, 2017 · 12:00 pm

MANTIS: THE CELESTIAL MADONNA SAGA

MantisWith the release of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 last week and its introduction of the character Mantis to the Marvel Cinematic Universe I dove in for some research.

Luckily with the countless superhero web sites and the ready availability of archived collections of comic books from the 1970s and earlier it only took me til today to decide to take an extensive look at Mantis as she was originally presented in the pages of The Avengers – NOT the Guardians of the Galaxy – during what came to be called The Celestial Madonna Saga.

REASON ONE: I still have a soft spot for comic books because reading them as a kid served as a gateway to two of my adult passions: mythology and opera.

REASON TWO: I’m intrigued by the fact that so many of the stories brought to the screen by the Marvel Cinematic Universe and their related properties trace their original appearance to the 1970s like Mantis.

Mantis 2Hell, Gwen Stacy was killed by the Green Goblin around 1973. Magneto was ret-conned into his present personality in the 1970s. Adam Warlock got his Soul Gem, later ret-conned into one of the Infinity Stones. The Defenders debuted in that decade. Wolverine was also introduced in the 70s. Same with Luke Cage, Blade the Vampire Slayer, Iron Fist, Ghost Rider, Thanos, the Punisher. Even Howard the Duck. (Well, you can’t win them all.)  

REASON THREE: I’m genuinely impressed with the way Marvel’s writers in the 1970s anticipated today’s slew of serialized sci-fi and horror series’ with their expert handling of prolonged narratives. Sometimes over YEARS! Seriously. Continue reading →

82 Comments

Filed under Superheroes

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

May 8, 2017 · 8:57 pm

ADAM ANT: GOODY TWO-SHOES

Adam AntSince we just passed the one year anniversary of the death of Prince a few readers emailed me to mention it. Some even asked the time-honored question about why we wait until people are dead to give them a shoutout.

So I figured I would do a shoutout to an often neglected Prince-like figure from the past: Adam Ant – real name Stuart Leslie Goddard. From his first appearance in the surreal Punk film Jubilee in the late 70s up to the early 1990s this interesting figure turned out some pretty memorable music and videos. He has since produced a few unique stage presentations, too. 

Adam Ant 2Adam Ant is a prime example of the bittersweet connection between creativity and insanity. Unlike many other  entertainers  who engage in long battles against various addictions Ant’s major vice was his own periodic madness. And I don’t say that as an insult, but as a very odd compliment. (And I know about his stays in a few mental hospitals and his being diagnosed as bi-polar. I repeat – I’m not insulting him. I’m sincerely complimenting him.)

Anyway, thinking about Mr Goddard’s  comparative – I repeat – COMPARATIVE – tendency to get highs from his own creativity rather than booze and such put me in mind of Goody Two-Shoes. When you consider the presence in this video of British Scream Queen (and all-around goddess) Caroline Munro aka Stella Star then this song was a no-brainer. 

13 Comments

Filed under opinion

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,