‘Sharknado’ blows us away

“Sharknado” owned us all last night.

Social media like Twitter were ablaze Thursday night with jokes and jibes about the latest SyFy movie, featuring TV “stars” like Tara Reid and Ian Ziering fighting to survive a series of tornados and waterspouts raining … er, sharks … down on Los Angeles.

The sight of sharks falling from the sky and maliciously trying to snap up everything in sight was hilarious.

But even better was the accompanying Twitter onslaught, with almost everyone I follow, well-known and unknown, commenting on the show.

SyFy, the network behind “Mansquito” and “MegaShark” and other cheap and cheesy movies, blew up the Internet.

A big win for all of us. Especially the sharks. And Tara Reid.

More Madchen: Amick continues on ‘Longmire’

I’ve noted before that Madchen Amick, the lovely and talented actress perhaps still best known for playing teenage waitress Shelly on the 1990-91 series “Twin Peaks,” is like gold for readers of this blog.

So it’s been fun to note Amick’s recent TV appearances, from “Mad Men” to her latest recurring role on “Longmire,” A&E’s engaging series adaptation of Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire mystery novels.

Amick’s appeared as Deena, the rekindled flame of Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips), on “Longmire,” showing up so far in two episodes, “Party’s Over” and “Sound and Fury,” the latter airing just this week.

At the top is a “Longmire” pic of Amick I found. I’m looking forward to seeing more appearances of the actress – and bringing you the latest on her here.

Shocking: Electro and Spider-Man

This ain’t no smurf.

Here’s the cover of the next Entertainment Weekly, with Jamie Foxx and Andrew Garfield facing off as Electo and Spider-Man from “Amazing Spider-Man 2.”

The movie comes out in May 2014.

Go home, Marvel. You are drunk.

Yes, Spider-Man. When you start singing, we know you’re drunk.

And Cap, when you start wearing a motorcycle helmet with wings on it, we know you are drunk.

Go home, Carol Danvers.

Tony, you are undoubtedly Marvel’s most famous drunk.

See?

Nobody needs to see that, Bruce. Go home, Drunk Hulk. (We love you on Twitter, though.)

The Isolation Zone: ‘Under the Dome’ and ‘Siberia’

Nobody ever said TV networks programmed their schedules to help their viewers, what with putting shows in the ridiculous “Friday night death slot” and pitting shows likely to appeal to the same audience on opposite each other.

There’s some of the latter going on this summer – although probably not for long – with CBS airing its adaptation of Stephen King’s “Under the Dome” on Mondays opposite NBC’s “Siberia.” Although that should be the other way around, with “Under the Dome” beginning a week earlier than its no-name rival.

If you’re not familiar with “Under the Dome,” it’s based on King’s 2009 novel about the small town of Chester’s Mill, cut off from the outside world by a see-through but impenetrable dome. No one can get in or get out and viewers will find out what’s really going on by the end of the 12-week miniseries (readers of the book know it’s an ending that combines elements of “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek,” although they’ve supposedly rewritten the ending for the miniseries).

And how much of an ending are we going to get, anyway? I’ve read somewhere that King and the producers intend to continue the series next summer. Hmmm.

Anyway, in the meantime, some typical but still enjoyable King characters fill out the town of Chester’s Mill, including the mysterious hero, the spunky heroine, the town boss and his psycho son (well, the latter character’s not a favorite of mine).

Over on NBC, “Siberia” is trying something a little different that is, at the same time, beholden to such movies as “The Blair Witch Project” and shows like “Survivor.”

In the first episode, 16 varying types – the diva, the nice girl, the down-home guy, the grumpy old man – are transported by the producers of a reality show to the wilds of Siberia. Once there, they’re told they have to survive for an unspecified period of time without quitting. The survivors get to split $500,000.

The show employs the reality show conventions we all know so well by now, with an omnipotent host who appears and disappears and everyone identified by name, profession and home town in subtitles accompanying look-into-the-camera “confessions.”

By the end of the first episode, however, it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t a standard reality show, as things take a violent turn.

For now, I’m keeping up with “Under the Dome” but I’m hoping things begin to boil pretty soon. As for “Siberia,” I’m not sold on it yet. I’ll try another episode to see what the producers have in mind.

So far, “Under the Dome” is beating “Siberia” in the ratings, so the question of how the “reality” show plays out may soon be moot.

Classic schlock: ‘Attack of the Giant Leeches’

“Attack of the Giant Leeches” sounds like the quintessential low-budget drive-in horror movie, and with good reason:

It’s a Roger Corman production at American International Pictures.

It’s set in Florida but there’s a southern “swamp trash” – to use a phrase uttered in the movie – feel to the movie, right down to the corn pone accents and moonshine-swilling hillbillies.

It’s a Roger Corman production (did I mention that already?).

Its title alone sounds like every bad imaginary movie that ever played out on a drive-in movie screen in some other movie or TV show.

“Attack of the Giant Leeches,” all 62 minutes of it, is great fun, a mix of southern fried domestic drama right out of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and low-rent monster movie.

Legendarily made in eight days, “Attack” has a low-rent feel but doesn’t stint on action. Except for a couple of scenes that feel like people are standing around talking for the sake of filling up a few minutes of screen time, “Attack” brings the drive-in thrills early. One of the titular characters shows up even before the credits, and there’s two or three attacks in the first 20 minutes of the movie.

A small Florida town is beset by attacks by man-sized leech creatures. As people turn up sucked to death or missing, game warden Steve swings into action. Well, sort of. First of all, he needs to make sure nobody’s going to do anything to hurt indigenous wildlife.

The creatures are low rent – somebody sewed plastic octopus suckers on the forerunner of the Snuggie – but probably more effective because they are little seen.

There’s one genuinely creepy moment in the movie in which we learn the giant leeches are taking their victims to an underwater cavern. They’re left there to be sucked dry of blood a bit at a time. It’s kind of eerie.

There are some decidedly loony moments:

Game warden Steve runs up to floozie Liz as she screams because she’s been frightened. But Steve, rather than holstering his pistol, points it right at Liz’s face as he comforts her.

Cal, the no-goodnik making time with Liz, is a dead ringer for comic Adam Carrolla.

Cal and Liz go out to a remote spot in the swamp – despite stories about the leech creatures – to make out … in a decision they make standing in the doorway of a bedroom. Young people these days!

Steve and pal Mike decide to go diving in the swamp to look for the giant leech creatures with scuba equipment they took from a ship belonging to “the Italian navy.” Huh?

The creatures usually have a fairly effective “rattle” noise they make, but early on one makes a sound like a cougar’s cry.

Check out “Attack of the Giant Leeches.” It’s drive-in schlock fun.

Classic TV: ‘Ironside’

I was too young to be familiar with Raymond Burr from the TV version of “Perry Mason,” but I was just the right age to enjoy “Ironside,” Burr’s classic TV cop show that debuted in 1967 and ran until 1975.

“Ironside” was part of a wave of disabled or offbeat detectives that was a trend for a decade or more on TV. “Ironside” was confined to a wheelchair. “Longstreet” was blind. “Barnaby Jones” was old. “Cannon” was fat. It didn’t take much for Mad Magazine, which – along with Famous Monsters of Filmland, was my Bible growing up – to poke a lot of fun at the genre.

Burr played Robert Ironside, shot and turned into a paraplegic by a sniper. He leaves the San Francisco Police Department but returns as head of a special squad to help his friend the police commissioner.

Burr played Ironside as more than a little gruff. As a matter of fact, I thought he was kind of an ass. But he got results, dammit!

The supporting cast was familiar and enjoyable, including Don Galloway as cop Ed Brown and Don Mitchell as Mark Sanger, Ironside’s  driver and bodyguard.

And who can forget that siren-like theme music? It is truly unforgettable and was composed by the one and only Quincy Jones. The music was used in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movies.

These days, there would be some over-arching mystery to Ironside’s shooting and there would be a promise that he just might someday regain the use of his legs. “Ironside” didn’t need those gimmicks.

There’s a new version of “Ironside” in the works, starring Blair Underwood. I might try it, but remaking “Ironside” is, in some ways, as heretical as remaking “Mannix” would be. I’m not sure I can bring myself to watch.

Captain America on the Fourth of July

It’s pretty easy to draw a line between Captain America, the classic Marvel Comics character, and the Fourth of July, the U.S.’ most patriotic holiday.

The guy’s dressed in the Stars and Stripes, for pete’s sake.

But those who dismiss Cap and his alter ego, Steve Rogers, as an empty American symbol are wrong.

As a matter of fact, Cap’s real patriotism is what the Marvel movie producers got so right in “Captain America: The First Avenger” and “The Avengers.”

Like Superman, Captain America is a man without his own people. When Cap returned in Avengers No. 4, he was nearly 20 years removed from his era and his battleground, World War II. That “man out of time” feeling, which directors Joe Johnson and Joss Whedon captured so well in those movies, is what sets Cap apart from hip, funny heroes like Spider-Man.

Heck, the former Cartoon Network series “Superhero Squad,” which made Marvel heroes appealing and accessible to young fans, even got Cap right even as they poked fun at him. Cap in that series was always talking about some conversation he had with FDR or making some other “frozen in amber” reference. It was as funny as it was on-the-nose.

But besides Cap’s stranger in a strange land status, he’s also known for doing what’s right. Always. For a period in his comic in the 1970s, that meant forgoing the Cap name and costume and, thanks to disillusionment with the government, operating as Nomad, the man without a country.

I’m looking forward to “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” next year in great part because it looks like more of a political thriller than a spandex slugfest and in great part because it looks to pit Cap against SHIELD. Cap’s character in “The Avengers” certainly showed more than a little skepticism about SHIELD and Nick Fury’s motives. That’s perfectly in keeping with the character and I couldn’t be happier about that.

So while Steve Rogers would, if he existed, be enjoying a hot dog and some fireworks today, he’d also be mindful of what enabled him to enjoy the Fourth of July, the sacrifices of men and women that allowed that and the individual liberties of the people around him.

Because while Captain America might have been a man without his own people, he has embraced – and been embraced by – his new people.

Classic comic strip: ‘Andy Capp’

“Andy Capp” is probably the only comic strip to inspire a potato snack.

I can’t say a lot more about the strip, except that it never prompted much more than consternation from me.

Created in 1957 by cartoonist Reg Smythe, the strip ran in British papers before making its way to the U.S.

The strip follows the soused adventures of Andy Capp, a working class bloke who likes to hang out at the pub and occasionally irritate his wife, Flo.

Online sites say Andy is a wife beater, although I’m not sure I noticed that depicted in the strip. I’ve seen plenty of animosity between the two, however, which makes the former more likely – although almost certainly not in the modern era.

 

So how are those Andy Capp Hot Fries, anyway?

Coolness: ‘Walking Dead’ season 4 banner

Oh man.

AMC today released a banner for season four of “The Walking Dead,” which returns this fall.

The essential elements of the show – well, there’s no sign of Carl, but other than that – are here. You got Rick, you got Daryl.

Tyreese wielding a hammer!

Michonne wielding her katana – from the back of a horse!

The banner was released to promote “The Walking Dead” panel at San Diego Comic Con later this month.

But I like to think of it as a present for us.

Enjoy.