Friday, October 16, 2020

fall 2020 antique mall roundup

 We got out of COVID quarantine lockdown in, what, May? And immediately we went out to the antique malls that we'd been denied entrance to since February, some of which we hadn't been to in a year or so. What did we see?




Well, let's see. The Woodstock antique mall was the first one we hit and it's upped its game considerably; it claims to be the largest in Canada and so far it seems like that's indeed the case. Three floors of this former manufacturing/warehouse/I dunno space are now filled up with stuff, and it's worth an afternoon. 

The two in St. Jacobs, on the other hand, are pretty much exactly the same as they were last year, with the weird new wrinkle being that the vendors in both that once had comic books have had all their comic books mysteriously vanish. They're still in the same spaces, still have the old magazines & paperbacks, but the comics are gone. 

The Cambridge mall hasn't changed a bit. In fact it seems to have less stuff, if that's possible. 

Ditto the Tillsonburg mall, it seems like it has the exact same merch from when we were in there last, in 2019? 2018?  I get that the pandemic has made it more difficult for pickers to get out there and bother the retirees and estate salers that are their typical targets, but still, it's weird to see the same exact stuff in the same exact spots in the same exact booths.  The Courtland place down the road seems to have a better refresh rate, however. Not great, just better. 

Haven't been to Waterdown yet this year. 




Beaumont Mill Antiques in Georgetown has been static for a while. We've found better stuff in the Georgetown thrifts.

The Hamilton Antique Mall is reasonably new, in a great building, and seems to be adding vendors at a nice clip. It's worth a visit. 

Freelton Antique Mall is reliable, they keep managing to cycle through interesting merchandise. 

The 401 Roadshow mall in Innisfill has changed things around a little, it has a few more (boring mid-80s super hero) comics, every once in awhile some neat stuff cycles through.

Further north of Barrie the Pickers' End on the side of Hwy 11 has some great architectural stuff and some truly insane crazy grandma comic book prices. Further north, the Antiques On 11 mall is turning up some interesting pieces, it's worth the drive.

The Port Perry mall is, once again, one of those places where the comic book vendor just vanished. There isn't a funnybook in the place. 

The Roadshow mall in Pickering is almost not worth a stop. Overpriced comics and bad furniture. 




The Courtice flea market delivers interesting stuff from time to time. 

Antiques On 48 in Baldwin is ehhhh (makes hand waving motion)

Sydney Claire and Heath Vintage in Colborne - NOT PORT COLBORNE! - had some groovy stuff the last time we were out that way. Might need to visit again. 

The Main Thru Church mall in Orono seems to keep replenishing with just enough interesting merch to keep us coming back. The other antique mall in town is bigger, but the stuff isn't as good. 

Perth has a really great antique mall, one of the best we've been to this year. We hit it years ago coming back from Ottawa and it was great then and it's still great, lots of the mid century kitsch we like. Saw a Robotech Lisa Hayes fashion doll there in August, always a good sign.




The Nostalgic Journey mall in Peterborough on Hwy 7 has been a dry hole for a while now. 

Craftworks & Antiques At The Barn in Selwyn had good stuff last summer. Haven't been back this year. 

The Crossroads mall in Brantford seems to keep delivering small amounts of neat stuff, enough to keep us coming back. 

Prudhomme's Antique Market on the QEW seems to have better stuff, need to get out there when the outdoor vendors are rockin'. 

If we've been to Lakeshore Antiques & Treasures in Niagara-By-The-Lake any time soon, I can't recall. 

Queensville mall closed, Stratford mall closed, and the Barrie mall closed. 







Thursday, May 7, 2020

May 2020 Eyesore Cinema rentals: short reviews

Here are some reviews of five films we recently rented from Eyesore Cinema  -1176 Bloor West - one of the city's last remaining sources of rental video.



ALICE SWEET ALICE was at one point titled "Communion" which is a title that makes a lot more sense in that this film is absolutely steeped in Catholicism and growing up in a hollering, dysfunctional Catholic family in Patterson, New Jersey. And there are some murders, and the killer wears those creepy translucent face masks which gives the whole affair the feel of one of Devo's early music videos. It's a low-budget creeper that makes good use of Patterson location shooting and period set dressing, marred only slightly by the refusal of the male cast to trim their very 1976 dry-look haircuts. Apparently the director got excommunicated for an earlier film; ALICE is his response. If you aren't as invested in the Papist trappings you might not get the intended emotional beats, but ultimately it's suitably unsettling, if at times weirdly suggesting the entire film is a setup for a modern-day sequel.



BLOW OUT:  DePalma's BLOW UP remake/reinterpretation/whatever tries to go in about four directions at once - a less paranoid THE CONVERSATION, a commentary on slasher movies, an actual slasher movie, a Kennedy assassination picture, an educational movie informing non-Philadelphians that a holiday called "Liberty Day" actually exists. Come for the great cinematography, stay for the gritty 1981 Philly - it's like gritty 1981 NYC but without the charm - and enjoy the good Travolta performance and a terrific Nancy Allen. Ultimately the pieces don't quite fit together, and the story feels almost disinterested in the whys of what happens, but it's a good funhouse ride while it lasts.



SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES: Disney's 1983 'dark fantasy' version of the Ray Bradbury story about the Dark Carnival that rolls into your small town, pushes all your midlife crisis buttons, and turns you into a sideshow attraction is pretty much the Walt Disney Company's midlife crisis writ large on the screen, an expensive misfire without purpose or vision. If you wanna see character actors wander through backlots, bitch about their regrets, and dodge Disney special effects department animation while two kid actors fail to compel or inspire, this is the movie for you. Seriously, if your movie needs a child to work opposite Jason Robards, that kid has to be charismatic and appealing, and the kids in this picture are neither, especially up against Jonathan Pryce, who absolutely nails the evil ringmaster role. He gives 120% at all times, hissing and twirling and working those brows. Pam Grier is wasted, James Horner's soundtrack is James Hornering it all over the place trying to liven things up, I saw this in '83 and there's a reason I barely remember it. Apparently the production was its own nightmare carnival, involving reshoots, expensive special effects sequences being entirely cut, Horner's soundtrack a last-minute addition, you name it, they fudged it. Pass.



THE MAN FROM HONG KONG is an Australian/Hong Kong coproduction starring former Flying Guillotine Master Jimmy Wang Yu as the titular Man From Hong Kong. If you've seen the Ozploitation documentary "Not Quite Hollywood" or just the trailer for "Stunt Rock" you might have an idea of what was on director Brian Trenchard-Smith's mind: high speed car chases, hang gliding, and lots of wall-smashing, glass-breaking, board-shattering fists-furious kung fu. This film delivers exactly what it promises, a gritty James Bond with the sweat, violence, and sneers dialed way up. Even ex-Bond George Lazenby is there, a dry-look heel with a great mustache and a willingness to get down and dirty with the stuntmen and to let Jimmy Wang Yu knock the holy hell out of him. Trenchard-Smith never saw a stunt scene he was willing to cut even a fraction out of, and we get to see every slo-mo instant of the crashing, bashing, smashing as Wang Yu, with an assist from Hugh Keays-Byrne - you know, "Toecutter" from MAD MAX! - works his way up to Lazenby's international narcotics gangster. It's rare to see an exploitation movie that actually lives up to the poster, but this one does.



THE BIRD WITH CRYSTAL PLUMAGE is Dario Argento's first feature and you can see Argento straining against the conventions of the murder-mystery genre; not as dreamlike or as evocative as his later features, but there's a charm to the picture that comes from all the late 60s Italian design, the spy-movie hired killer subplot, and a square-jawed American hero who's gonna get to the bottom of this, darn it. It's no SUSPIRIA, but it's worth a look.

What will we rent next time? Stay tuned!

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Dave reviews the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Just what nobody needed: Dave reviews the Marvel Cinematic Universe!! 
IRON MAN - reasonably fun, enough of the 60s vibe to keep it rolling, they even used the cartoon theme song.

INCREDIBLE HULK - Hey, there's the Sam Sam The Record Man sign! Bring back The Leader, I say. Very Herb Trimpe film, which was "my" Hulk growing up

IRON MAN 2 - this is the one with Tony Stark's Dad from Mad Men hiding a secret inside his minature railroad set, and Mickey Roarke with a bad Russian accent, right? 

THOR - I waited until Rifftrax riffed this one before watching it. It's a boring movie right until the part where The Destroyer shows up, and then it gets good, and then immediately it ends.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: obviously this is the best of the early run of the movies because it has the Red Skull in it, who shows up and immediately starts vaporizing his own guys just for the hell of it. Also it has some kind of version of the Howling Commandos. I have pretty much every issue of Sgt. Fury & The Howling Commandos. 

THE AVENGERS: remember when every movie had the bad guy getting captured and put in a glass cage so he could smirk and tell the heroes that this was all part of his plan? Yes.

IRON MAN 3: this movie has people on fire and some kind of climax involving shipping containers at the Port Of Los Angeles, which is the climax of at least three other movies. What's the matter, screenwriters, does your corner office have a great view of the Port Of Los Angeles?

THOR THE DARK WORLD: Fun fact: nobody wants to see a movie where the bad guys are "dark elves" except for super gothy teens who haven't figured out what they really want to be are hippies



CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER: Solid picture, good fights, ground-level super guy stuff with a minimum of magic beams shooting out of hands or flying. I wish there was a cut of this movie where Robert Redford reveals he's the Red Skull all along and somebody asks if he's going to take off his mask and he says "what mask?" This one really feels like the mid 1970s Kirby run of Captain America & The Falcon, which are my favorite Captain American comics.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: fun spacey movie with that very specific Marvel outer space stuff that is very post Star Wars but still influenced by all the drugs Marvel's creative staff was doing in the early and mid 1970s; spaceships are big airplanes that do whatever you need them to do and go whereever you need them to go, blaster guns shoot whatever they need to shoot, and everybody's some degree of super strong, able to speak all space languages, and space suits are totally optional. Also stars John C. Reilly! 

AVENGERS AGE OF ULTRON: why does a robot have lips? Ultron is a great villian in the comics, Spader makes a great bad guy, both are totally wasted in this film that exists solely to move continuity forward and get everybody to the next movie. Time is wasted with a detour to Asia, to secure Asian funding, I guess. A big thing is raised high in the air and then falls down, that's what happens in the climax of a lot of these movies.

ANT-MAN: fun heist movie starring funny people doing fun things, doesn't take itself seriously, a nice change. More Gregg Turkington please!

CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR: Super heroes have to fight each other for contrived reasons. Not quite as silly as the Batman vs Superman movie, but still pretty contrived. Ant-Man is in all the best parts, which should tell you something.

DOCTOR STRANGE: Nice Ditko pastiche papered over with iffy American accent for Cumberbatch. Am still not sure about Swinton's Ancient One; do you keep a racist stereotype character as a racist stereotype, do you change it to a painfully white character, thereby whitewashing your racist stereotype, I dunno. It's a difficult proposition.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2: This was the first one of these movies that I actively disliked, mostly because it was a retread of the first picture, with lots and lots of screen time of Saldana and Gillian in crazy face makeup hollering at each other, lots of More Of The Hits From The 70s, more smirky cosmic stuff, bad digital de-aging, more hand-wavey super stoned outer space "what if, like, there were these Ego The Living Planet flowers on every planet in the universe, man? And what if they all went off at once? Because things happen simultaneously across the universe, right? Dude!" Relax and listen to Mellow Hits Of The 70s again, dude

SPIDER MAN HOMECOMING: I saw three decent Spider Man movies, avoided two lame Spider Man movies, waited on this Spider Man movie, and I liked it, they let teenagers be teenagey, kept it local for the most part, and got the most out of Keaton. Still about a half hour too long.

THOR RAGNAROK: Great course correction for Thor, somebody finally realized they should start looking at the Thor comics people actually enjoyed, instead of the Vince Colletta-inked stuff people pretend to like but that nobody actually likes.

BLACK PANTHER: fine action picture, great cast, halfway through you start thinking Killmonger actually has a point, confusing Asian detour and pandering Give Martin Freeman Something To Do segments make this movie, again, about 25 minutes too long.

AVENGERS INFINITY WAR: let's get this straight: I think Thanos is a bargain basement Darkseid ripoff, he's boring, his whole "kill half of everything" plan is stupid, and this movie isn't going to age well. In fact I don't think a lot of these films are. How dare you put the Red Skull back in these movies and he's just playing the goddamn Crypt Keeper? What a waste!

ANT MAN AND THE WASP: again, solid, grounded, action-oriented, heisty switcheroo sciency picture with, instead of Gregg Turkington, his "On Cinema" partner Tim Heidecker as "Whale Man". Keep putting these guys in these movies and I will keep paying to see them in theaters.

CAPTAIN MARVEL: A-list cast works their way through deep-cut Marvel space-empire mythology and generally makes a good showing; fun 90s setting made people nostalgic for Blockbuster Video until they remembered what a shitshow Blockbuster Video really was, burn in hell Blockbuster Video. 

AVENGERS ENDGAME: again, Thanos is boring, he's that boring guy you went to college with who would show up in your dorm room after two beers and three bong hits who really wanted to talk about his philosophy class and then later he got angry with you because he thought you were hitting on his girlfriend, and then even later he dissolved into weepy tears. Also, seriously, again, here's the Red Skull NOT being evil and betraying everybody, and here's way more Jeremy Renner than anybody wanted or needed, combined with, again, Inexplicable Asian Detour. Let's really take our time with this one, okay? Also let's tone the color way down until by the end of the picture it's all one gray-brown smudge. Remember primary colors? 

SPIDER MAN FAR FROM HOME: Actually liked it better than the first movie? Maybe? Moved a little faster. It did the Mysterio very well, better than I'd been expecting. Likeable cast gets to be teenagers, too, thankfully. 

I am probably done seeing these movies anywhere except Netflix, and as it turns out they likely won't be on Netflix, I'm... probably done seeing these movies? Maybe?

Monday, January 6, 2020

2020 event calendar

As I do every year, here's a list of events for the coming year just so I can have things I might attend all in one space and I can plan. Events will be added as they're announced - no dates for Canzine or Zine Dream yet, for instance - so stay tuned. 


January

February

Ancaster Nostalgia Show Feb. 2 Ancaster Fairgrounds

Toronto Comic Book Show Feb. 16 Montecassino http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/show-dates/

Anime Hell: 70s Night Feb. 22, Eyesore Cinema

Oshawa Record Show Feb. 23 
https://www.vibrations.ca/en/record-shows/month.calendar/2020/02/06/-

March

Toronto Toy & Nostalgia Show Sunday March 1 Montecassino

Guelph Record Swap & Sale March 29, 
Unifor Local 1917 Hall
611 Silvercreek Pkwy N
Guelph Ont
N1H 6J2

Ancaster Collectibles Extravaganza March 1 Ancaster Fairgrounds

April

Vintage Marketplace 2020, April 18, Westinghouse HQ Hamilton 

Aberfoyle Antique Market Show April 26 Aberfoyle

Toronto Comic Book Show April 26 Montecassino http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/show-dates/

Toronto East Vinyl Record & Collectibles Show April 26 
Heron Park Recreation Centre
292 Manse Road
Toronto

May

Toronto Mississauga Redord Show May 3 Capitol Banquet Centre 

TCAF May 8 & 9

Anime North May 22-24 https://www.animenorth.com/event/

June

Toronto Comic Book Show June 28 Montecassino http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/show-dates/

July

August

Toronto Comic Book Show August 16 Montecassino http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/show-dates/

Guelph Record & Music Collectibles Show Sun Sept. 20 
Royal Canadian Legion
57 WATSON PARKWAY SOUTH
GUELPH

September

Toronto East Vinyl Record & Collectibles Show  August 13 
Heron Park Recreation Centre
292 Manse Road
Toronto

Toronto Comic Book Show September 27 Montecassino http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/show-dates/

October

Anime Weekend Atlanta Oct. 29-Nov. 1 https://awa-con.com

November

Toronto Comic Book Show November 22 Montecassino http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/show-dates/

December 

Toronto Comic Book Show December 27 Montecassino http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/show-dates/