Club Parnassus

Frasierquest 4.19: Three Dates and a Breakup

2012-01-31T09:26:00.002-06:00

Frasier: Niles! I'd offer you a sherry, but I'm fresh out!

We arrive now at a milestone, the first of quite a few hour-long episodes the show would have over the years. These days it's fairly rare for a sitcom to get a bigger-sized slot, but back in NBC's heyday (and yes, such a rare and mythic time existed), it was common for them to beef up installments of their hit shows by a little or a lot in order to grab more ad revenue. Frasier, being a hit show, got to stretch its legs a few times, and usually with good results; the writers generally used the time to let stories breathe and develop rather than simply cramming in more story. "Three Dates and a Breakup" is an organic use of the format; it doesn't feel padded, or for that matter overstuffed. Rather, it interweaves two storylines that could by themselves make for good episodes, and does so in a way that enhances both.

Martin's relationship with Sherry has gotten more serious, with his ladyfriend staying over more nights, much to Frasier's chagrin. But he's got more important things to focus on, like the fact that in one night he manages to secure three dates for the weekend. This makes him insufferable, especially towards Niles who's in his own bad patch. Sherry and Martin manage to ruin one of Frasier's dates by coming home early, but the next morning they're fighting, and soon enough they've broken up. At first Frasier is ecstatic (as is his brother), and Martin doesn't seem too put out, but Daphne thinks something's wrong and Frasier starts to come around. That doesn't stop Sherry from ruining his dates.

Frasier's storyline focuses on his inability to handle a good thing. That he's now a babe magnet after a drought is all well and good, but rather than simply seek out a relationship with a woman he is attracted to, Frasier gets greedy. What goes wrong on the first date is mostly his fault; he tries to paint himself as a dog lover and vegetarian, and Martin and Sherry simply reveal that he's a liar. The second is undone by the first, when Sherry mistakes his new date for his old, and by the third his carefully calculated seduction routine has become a desperate frenzied dress rehearsal for a play that will never open. There's something downright Aesop-like about the whole thing, and characters trying to overindulge their appetites and ending up starved is a rich comic tradition. And of course, Frasier's smug arrogance sweetens his fall. It's almost encouraging to think that no matter how many failed dates he has, Frasier is never far from believing he's Casanova.

Meanwhile, Martin and Sherry's story is a more mature one, but they too find ways to act childish. The fight that leads to their breakup is an extremely petty one, over insignificant things like Chinese food for breakfast and the proper use of chopsticks. But arguments like this are always about bigger things, and this ends up being true on two levels. One is a conflict in their personalities; Sherry pushes Martin to try new things and Martin likes to stay in his comfort zone. It's the sort of friction that can go either way, either strengthening a relationship or breaking it up. But we also run into Martin's fear of committing to another woman, and again it's a memory of Hester that Frasier uses to help resolve things.

To fill out the hour there's a fun little story with Roz running into an old Wisconsin friend immediately after a mile jog, and trying later to make sure he knows she normally isn't drenched in sweat. We also see that Niles is having a bad run of luck with women, which is awkward at first but adds to his amusement on hearing about Frasier's dating disasters. Also, Daphne tries on an American accent and horrifies everyone in the process. Despite this being a super-sized episode, these subplots aren't used much; there's quite enough going on with the main stories.

The end of the episode provides an opportunity for Frasier to redeem himself of his schadenfreude over Sherry's departure, and it's also a nice turning point for Martin. He can now not only date, but actually fall in love with another woman after Hester; it's a very important step for the character in later seasons. Frasier's first hour-long outing really works in all the ways it needs to, and it proves that the show's world is expansive enough for the occasional prolonged stay.

No Guest Caller

Written by Rob Greenberg
Directed by Jeff Melman

Aired April 29, 1997

Niles: Yes, and I'd love to stay but I... have my therapy group meeting, and last time I was late the compulsive gamblers were betting the passive aggressives that they couldn't make the over-eaters cry.

Random Movie Report #98: Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster

2012-01-27T17:11:00.002-06:00

After Monster Zero, Ishiro Honda took a break from the Godzilla series, and the series itself took a vacation. In one of those great stories of Tinseltown, a script originally intended for King Kong was instead messengered over to Godzilla's people, deals were struck, and Godzilla traded Tokyo for the South Seas. It was a move that allowed Toho to save a little money on miniature city sets, and Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, under the direction of Jun Fukuda, turned out to be a really neat change of pace. It's a jaunty, colorful romp in which four Japanese guys get mixed up with island natives, international terrorists, a giant dinosaur, a giant moth, and one very angry shrimp.

Through circumstances that are way too crazy to condense properly, four men end up on a boat- a thief named Yoshimura (Akira Takarada), two dance marathon contestants named Ichino (Chotaro Togin) and Nita (Hideo Sunazaka), and Ryota (Toru Watanabe), a man searching for his brother who was lost at sea, but who the local fortune teller guarantees is still alive. A storm overtakes the boat, and it's destroyed by a giant claw coming from up out of the sea, and the men wash ashore on a remote island. That island turns out to be the home of the Red Bamboo, a mysterious terror organization interested in manufacturing nuclear weapons. The Red Bamboo also use slave labor from nearby Infant Island (home of Mothra and her miniature twin heralds) to manufacture a liquid which keeps Ebirah, the local giant shrimp monster, at bay, while letting him serve to keep unwanted people off the island. The men meet up with the lovely Daiyo (Kumi Mizuno) who helps them discover more about the Bamboo, and also happen across Godzilla slumbering in a cave. When the bad guys start to close in on our heroes, they soon see no alternative but to wake up the big guy in hopes that he'll stomp on the right people.

The script for this movie was originally going to be used to make another King Kong movie, since Toho still had rights to use the character. The switch to Godzilla (Kong ended up fighting a robot version of himself, and that's a whole other story) puts our scaly hero in some uncharacteristic situations, such as grabbing jets out of the sky with his bare hands and taking an uncomfortable interest in Daiyo. He even gets revived by a bolt of lightning in what was probably a callback to Kong's electrical abilities in King Kong vs. Godzilla. It's an interesting tweak on Godzilla's normal mindless rampaging, and probably ended up helping make him a more heroic figure- even in this film, the human characters assume he'll be on the right side when he wakes up.

A note on Ebirah- "ebi" is Japanese for shrimp, and so, yes, Ebirah is a giant king prawn. He's not the most intimidating of monsters, truth be told, and the fact that he's bright red makes it look like he's already been boiled. Still, he has a certain charm, as do most all of Tsubaraya's creations. Mothra's reappearance in a minor role is a nice creative use of the character. The monster action is as fun as ever, and the story integrates it well with what the human characters are doing, rather than just having them run along in the foreground.

In comparison to Honda, Jun Fukuda brings a looser, more kinetic feel to the Godzilla series. He uses a lot of close-ups and occasionally jittery camera work, and combined with Masaru Sato's jazzy score (complete with surf guitar for Ebirah), the feeling is ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek. Of course this was an element of the screenplay from the very start (an early exposition scene takes place at a dance marathon), but Fukuda proves particularly adept at capturing this feel. There's something pleasantly relaxed about the film, even as the craziness mounts.

Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster isn't as ambitious as earlier entries, but it plays around with the formula to good effect. It's an enjoyable and often-rewatchable picture, well-made despite its goofiness. It was a shake-up the series needed, lest it grow stagnant repeating the same "monsters destroy civilization" story over and over. We'd get back to that soon enough.

Written by Shinichi Sekizawa
Directed by Jun Fukuda

Grade: B+

In Theaters: The Artist

2012-01-23T09:33:00.007-06:00

The silent film is a form so distinct that it's a shame they just aren't done very often anymore. Whereas filmmakers sometimes will be able to use black and white as an artistic device, few have been able to go as far as eliminate sound. So The Artist is a welcome experiment, a look at vintage Hollywood through the lens of the goofy, sweet romances they made at the time. For someone like me, it's an irresistible approach and I have a hard time being truly objective. The movie just charms; it tells a sweet story with a sweet tone, using the tricks of the silent form without letting the self-awareness get in the way of the emotional content.

Jean Dujardin is George Valentin, star of the silent screen, thrilling viewers in a series of adventure epics for Kinogram Pictures. Also at Kinogram is Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), a struggling extra who is nursing a crush on Valentin. Peppy buckles down and begins to rise through the ranks, from extra to chorus girl to bit player to supporting actress to star. Meanwhile, Valentin's career is threatened by the arrival of sound; he doesn't want to speak, can't speak, sees talkies as a novelty, and tries to go into business on his own to continue making silents. The Great Depression soon puts an end to that.

In addition to being a black-and-white silent, the picture aims for the straightforward but lightly fantastic style of silent comedies- we don't get the range of visual invention you see in a film by Lang or Murnau, but there are some very nice "gags" and devices used to tell the story in shorthand, and the atmosphere of 1920s Hollywood is very, very strong. The film is energetic even in its slower moments, and avoids being wholly realistic in favor of a more glamorous vibe.

A well-chosen cast adds a lot, especially in a movie where faces are so important. Bejo has the kind of sparkly, urbane sexiness that characterized so many starlets of the 20s, and is charming even as Miller's rise precipitates Valentin's fall. Dujardin, who starred in the writer/director's OSS 117 films as the titular chauvinistic spy, has a lot of Douglas Fairbanks' charm and handles both the comic and tragic angles on his character very well. The always wonderful John Goodman plays a studio executive, and a couple of other familiar faces pop up to surprise us.

The real stunner here is just how compelling the film becomes in its later scenes. Dujardin's downward spiral is a familiar one from this point in history, and though some of it is his own making (his outright refusal to join the sound era), it's hard not to feel sorry for him. It helps that Miller isn't a bad person at all- there's nothing inherently wrong with the new breed taking his place, it just hurts to be pushed out so early. The film's climax is genuinely gripping, moving, and suspenseful, with great use of parallel action and at least one trick you can only pull off in a silent movie. Actress Kim Novak complained about the film's use of music from Vertigo at a key point, but from my perspective it was entirely appropriate.

To a certain extent, I can't not love this movie. It delivers a lot of things I like- metafiction, old Hollywood glitz, an experiment with a neglected form, pretty 1920s girls, a cute dog- and doesn't fail to make good use of these elements. There's just not a lot wrong here, and the picture has an ingratiating charm. It's a great feel-good picture and a reminder that sometimes, words aren't that necessary. Says the English major.

Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Grade: A

Random Movie Report #97: Attack the Block

2012-01-19T10:05:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure why Attack the Block didn't get a better release in the US. Sure, it's uniquely a product of British culture, immersed in UK slang and the sensationalized chav gang culture, but alien monsters are a universal language and the hook of "inner city vs. outer space" (see above) isn't exactly hard to explain to a wide audience. In any case, it's a movie you should see, working both as a genre exercise and a riff on social issues. In spirit it hearkens back to the alien-monster epics of the 80s, but has a vibe all its own.

The block is a block of flats, aka an apartment building, in this case a particularly run down bit of state housing, with a small gang of very young hoodlums running about under the direction of Moses (John Boyega) who seems to be in charge mainly because he's the biggest. (And also his name is Moses, so it was sort of inevitable.) We start off seeing the kids mug a young woman named Sam (Jodie Whitaker), so they look pretty bad, but there's something worse out there. A meteor falls nearby, unleashing a nasty toothy alien thing which the gang quickly dispatch and bring to the local stoner (Nick Frost) to keep in his greenhouse while they await the inevitable tabloid payout. However, more meteors start landing and disgorging even more vicious nasty toothy alien things, and they're all converging on the block (hence the title.) The gang are the only ones mobile enough to try and keep people alive, including, ironically enough, the girl they just robbed, who isn't entirely pleased with her self-appointed rescuers.

There's a lot of sociopolitical baggage in all this, as the film makes heroes out of possibly the single most disliked group in British media- poor kids on council estates who commit crimes because they're bored. They exist, and the film doesn't attempt to excuse their actions as justified by their class- Sam is a block resident too, and though they claim they wouldn't have robbed her had they known, that's not really an excuse. However the film reminds us that kids like this are just that, kids, irresponsible and immature by nature. The film begins showing the gang at their most menacing, then sets itself the challenge of making us like them. And it kind of succeeds.

Indeed, the nice trick of this movie is that it's actually a story of maturation for Moses. As played by Boyega, he's a boy trying very hard to look like a man, wearing a perpetual scowl and never betraying much emotion. He's set himself as a responsible leader of the gang, but over the course of the film it's revealed his actions have indirectly set the creatures on them. It becomes a very satisfying arc in the midst of a lot of blunder and action, as entertaining as that is in and of itself.

The aliens themselves are a nice design, with neon-green teeth and fur as black as the cover of "Smell the Glove", light seemingly falling into them. They're mindless beasts, but we're given a nice sci-fi explanation for their behavior that ties into the movie's main emotional arc pretty well. Some of the characters are less developed than they could be, and as with almost all horror/comedy combos, the film's tone isn't 100% steady, but the story is compelling enough that these shortcomings don't drag it down very far. Be warned, though, if you're not familiar with the slang and speech patterns of estate-housing London, some of the dialogue might fly by.

Even when you're making a film about rampaging beasties from outer space, stories tend to be about people, and Attack the Block remembers this. It functions well enough as a monster movie, and can be enjoyed just on that level, but it also broaches some touchy subject matter and makes us look through the eyes of people the tabloids would have you believe are slavering blind savages running riot. Even the most irresponsible of us has the potential to be a hero, and access to a katana doesn't hurt.

Written and Directed by Joe Cornish

Grade: A-

Frasierquest 4.18: Ham Radio

2012-01-16T14:57:00.001-06:00

Frasier: The people of Dad's generation would sit around the radio every night, absolutely mesmerized.

Martin: We were a simple people.

As a fan of audio theater I've been looking forward to this one. "Ham Radio" is one of the show's best and silliest episodes, an exercise in pure goofiness that trades on the old comedy trope that, in a live performance, Murphy's Law is always in effect. It's one of Frasier's own great personal disasters, but while his arrogance is the cause of a lot of it, it's mostly just things going wrong because it would be funny. And that's all right, because the gags end up being just that good.

KACL's anniversary is coming up, and Frasier discovers that the station used to specialize in live radio theater. He's found the script for "Nightmare Inn", the first mystery the station ever did, and is the director of a live reading of it on the station. He enlists Roz, Bulldog, and Gil to read parts, and when his over-direction gets one actor to quit, he pulls in Niles to play several small roles, most of whom speak in succession. Of course Frasier casts himself in the lead. When showtime comes around the situation with the cast is already tense, so when things start to go wrong the production quickly lurches out of control.

A lot of what happens is pinned on Frasier having an "Orson Welles complex", which becomes apparent early on when he names the production "Frasier Crane's Nightmare Inn". His controlling nature leads to the project being no fun for anyone, and you can see their enthusiasm drain away slowly. None of these people are professional actors (except the one that Frasier drives away), but they want to make it work. Their director just makes it really, really hard

Of course, if the story were limited to Frasier's bad decisions it wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. What we get in the broadcast is a perfect storm of live disasters. Sound effects fail, music cues miss hilariously (with Frasier making the worst save of all time, described below), and Gil's attempt to hold on to his character's "boyhood in Surrey" speech turns the story increasingly surreal. And a bit about Roz on novacaine trying to spit out "multiple murderer" is just inspired. There really isn't a reason all these things happen, but the results are too hilarious to care about a lack of narrative tightness.

Indeed the entire episode leans more heavy on the rule of funny than the show usually does. Take Niles' climactic tantrum, in which, sick of Frasier's direction and having to play several parts at once, he hijacks the story and brings it to an abrupt and extremely violent conclusion. Under most circumstances this would seem a petty and childish thing to do, but it's far more hilarious than any "actual" conclusion to the Nightmare Inn saga could ever be. And it's not like the other performers care- by this point Frasier has turned everyone against him. The whole point is just to watch a glorious trainwreck, and Niles sends it off with such aplomb.

Is there a lesson to be learned here? That a good director should never let ego get in the way of a collaborative effort, perhaps, or an admonishment against populating your live radio drama broadcast entirely with non-actors? Maybe, but fundamentally you get the feeling the writers just wanted to have some fun with the idea of the gang doing a live radio play and screwing the whole thing up. Fortunately everyone involved brings their A-game, and the result is not just a nice salute to a neglected medium, but an oft-cited classic episode of the series. Farce never sounded so good.

No Guest Caller

Written by David Lloyd
Directed by David Lee

Aired April 22, 1997

Frasier: It appears to be… the ice cream truck!

In Theaters: Young Adult

2012-01-11T09:35:00.001-06:00

One of the good things about sticking up for creative people is the smug sense of validation when they finally prove themselves. When I reviewed Jennifer's Body I said that the backlash against Diablo Cody was a little excessive and that she actually had talent that was obscured by her tendency towards overly hip dialogue. Now she's gone and reunited with Juno director Jason Reitman and they've made a mature, thoughtful character study with only a few audible hipsterisms. Young Adult is the best film I've seen from either talent, and though it's confusingly being marketed as a straightforward comedy, the reality is it's a scathing, discomforting work that nonetheless has compassion for its broken central character.

Charlize Theron is Mavis Gary, ghost writer for the long-running Waverly High series of YA novels that's slowly drawing to a close. When she learns that her own high school sweetheart, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), is now a father, she decides to take a break from Minneapolis and head back to her hometown of Mercury. Her plan is to win him back, but along the way she runs into school sadsack Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), who was beaten up for being gay (though he actually wasn't) and still walks with a limp. Matt is the first person to whom Mavis explains her plan, and rightly diagnoses it as utter insanity and a horrible thing to do. Mavis is undeterred and starts arranging meet cutes with her intended, even as he struggles with trying to be a responsible father and husband. And it's not like his wife (played by Elizabeth Reaser) is anything but a sweet and considerate person. It's clear that Mavis is heading down a very dark path, but she's unwilling to pull away.

There's a trick to telling a story with an unlikable protagonist. Mavis is, as we work out from fairly early on, pretty screwed up. She had a great time in high school, and despite several years in the real world she still believes in "Love conquers all" to a rather self-destructive extent, even as she becomes cold and calculating when it comes to pursuing her target. But though she doesn't have very many redeeming qualities, Mavis is fascinating to watch. In some ways she's out of her depth but in other ways she's brilliant and cunning, and though her plan seems doomed to fail it's still interesting to see what depths she'll sink to.

But the film isn't purely a black comedy. Mavis has more problems than can be chalked up to having read too many teen lit books, and it's clear that on many levels she's deeply unhappy and in denial about being unhappy. The film never lets go of a certain humane pity for her, and Matt articulates this dichotomy well; he objectively sees all the problems that Mavis has, but because he was the fat nerd and she was the most popular girl in school, he can't tear himself away. He of course is also damaged by his experiences, and while he's aware of that damage, the awareness only helps so much.

The film is a showcase for two truly amazing performances by Theron and Oswalt, both of whom have proven their chops before. Theron has the delicate job of keeping the audience from being fully repulsed by Mavis' selfishness, and shows the conflict within her very well. (I also have to credit the makeup and wardrobe for this picture- depending on the scene Theron goes from looking normal and a bit jaded to being absolutely drop dead gorgeous.) The same sardonic delivery that makes Oswalt's stand-up work so well serves him nicely as the only character calling Mavis out on her shit, while being aware of his own.

Young Adult is uncompromisingly honest. Whenever it threatens to veer into cliche it steps back just a little and takes a more delicate path, dealing in a very complex manner with the way our pasts define us and warp our present. Mavis is a woman who should be free, who has the means to make a good living and find a good life, but instead she's drawn back to Mercury, rewinding the same part of an aged mix tape over and over and trying to reset the one big thing that went wrong in her past. It ends messily, as it has to, leaving us to wonder whether she'll ever escape. But as horrible as she is, it's hard not to hope just a little.

Written by Diablo Cody
Directed by Jason Reitman

Grade: A

In Theaters: The Adventures of Tintin

2012-01-06T09:16:00.000-06:00

Now that we're mostly out of the holiday season (by the Gregorian calendar at least), I finally have time to actually see some of the major holiday releases. The Adventures of Tintin, Steven Spielberg's first animated film (which seems wrong somehow), has actually been out for a while in most parts of the world. When I was a child I read a lot of Tintin's adventures, and even have some memory of the animated series, so it's gratifying to see the world's favorite boy reporter who isn't Jimmy Olsen get his due on the big screen. Spielberg does right by our hero; his Tintin may be a little more action-heavy than the books were, but it's still a light comic adventure with plenty of mystery, wry humor, and an engagingly crazy story adapted straight from Hergé's books.

It all starts when Tintin (played in voice and motion capture by Jamie Bell) buys a model ship from a street merchant. The model is of the Unicorn, a mighty ship commanded by the late Sir Francis Haddock, sunk beneath the waves hundreds of years ago and seemingly bringing a curse upon the Haddock family line. The model is stolen, but Tintin recovers what the thieves were after- a scroll inside forming part of a clue to a mysterious treasure. He finds this out just in time to be kidnapped by the sinister Sakharine (Daniel Craig) (and yes, his name is pronounced like the sweetener), who has another one of the scrolls and is after a third held somewhere in Morocco. Aboard the boat Sakharine has commandeered, Tintin meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), last of the Haddock line and an unreliable souse. They, and Tintin's ever vigilant dog Snowy, are driven to beat the evil Sakharine to the treasure he seeks, and in so doing redeem the Haddock family name.

Hergé's will actually forbids the creation of any new Tintin stories, so screenwriters Steven Moffat (of Doctor Who), Edgar Wright (of Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim), and Joe Cornish (of Attack the Block) adapted the story mostly from the classic tale "The Secret of the Unicorn", throwing in elements and references to other Tintin stories along the way (eagle-eyed fans will catch a lot of treats.) They've managed to make the story suitably epic for the big screen without ever getting too serious- there's some thematic stuff about living up to your potential but it's generally pretty lightweight. It also manages to make a surprising amount of sense, which is really difficult when you're dealing with ancient puzzles, sinister conspiracies, and elaborate heists.

Spielberg, of course, is in his element with this material, and animation doesn't seem to have tripped him up any. There are some remarkable action and chase setpieces here, notably one sequence that is mostly taken up by a single unbroken shot that takes us through the chase. Spielberg has an almost instinctive grasp of the grammar of movies, and knows how to sell each little detail of a scene, from a scroll rolling under a table to a tank plowing through the streets of a Moroccan city. The 3-D adds to the sense of kinetic fun without being overbearing- it probably works about as well in 2-D, but if the three-dimensional version is still playing in your area that's the one to go to.

A lot of people have gone on at length about the evils of motion capture animation and the dead-eyed automatons it supposedly produces, so I guess I have to talk a little about that. Well, for the most part it works. There are a few medium and long shots where some of the characters look a bit like live actors in rubber masks, but up close they're much more convincing, and just caricatured enough that live action or simpler animation wouldn't have done them justice. (Zakharine looking like a clone of Svengali is a little problematic but I suppose the director of Schindler's List can get away with it.) The renditions of the classic Tintin characters are spot-on; though Tintin himself is a bit of a blank slate, the script has some self-aware fun with his born adventurer's persona, and Serkis as Haddock is just wonderful, as are Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as crack detectives Thompson and Thomson, respectively.

The Adventures of Tintin loses some energy near the end, gently coasting to a stop more than anything, but the effect is a pleasant one. This isn't an intense thriller, it's an adventure, a lark, with just enough weight for us to care how it turns out and enough sense to leave us wanting a little more. Rumor has it we're going to get this story's follow-up, directed by Peter Jackson (the American box office has been weak, but it's already made more than enough in the rest of the world), and I hope that does indeed come about, because there are still a few more bits of Hergé's world I'd like to see brought to life. Even if the characters do look a little weird.

Based on the books by Hergé
Written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish
Directed by Steven Spielberg

Grade: A-

The Comics Page: Lightrunner

2012-01-04T09:31:00.005-06:00

The boom in original graphic novels in the 1980s gave us a lot of material that's since sunken into obscurity, be it through low print runs, poor distribution, or simple physical decay. I found Lightrunner in an antiques store some years ago, hardbound with some nice foil embroidery. It was a labor of love for its creators, a full color science fiction epic, and if it's not exactly original, the enthusiasm of it is charming.

The story takes place in an interstellar civilization known as the Empyrean Alliance, a group of corpro-states who depend on transport on the Star Stream, an FTL network connecting all member worlds and powered by generators on both ends. Burne Garrett is an Empyrforce officer and frustrated would-be pilot taking a look at an experimental Stream Breaker, capable of even more incredible speeds than anything in the Star Stream itself. He's sitting in the pilot's seat dreaming when the ship suddenly launches itself halfway across the galaxy, in what seems to be a remote theft by pirates. Now, Garnett- son of a commander, no less- is the chief suspect in the theft of an experimental spacecraft, and falls in with a gang of space bandits, including the gruff captain Scarn, a hissing snake-man, a telepathic furry creature, and the lovely and deadly Lanie. In Lanie's own ship, the Lightrunner, the group end up finding out more about the conspiracy to steal the Stream Breaker and derail the project, a conspiracy that goes to the highest levels of the Alliance.

So, nothing terribly unpredictable here. It's plain that the creators are big sci-fi nuts who enjoy indulging the popular tropes of the time, and aren't out to redefine the post-Star Wars space opera. This is just fine by me. Reviews of Avatar to the contrary, originality isn't that important, not if things are executed right. Lightrunner's story works; it's comprehensible, told with clarity, and holds together under the pressure to keep exciting and visually appealing things happening.

The art, by Rod Whigham, is a colorful exercise in 70s/80s sci-fi aesthetics. The characters sometimes look a little more like action figures than people, but it still captures a nice and bygone mood. I honestly miss the shiny, perky optimism of space opera of the period, and even if the future portrayed isn't quite utopian, the visuals give a sense that it can be really fun. Good art and color work ensure that even some of the slow, talky passages (and there are a few, given the intrigues at hand) are at least nice to look at.

Lightrunner ends on an inconclusive but hopeful note, and what went before was good enough to make me regret we never got any follow-ups out of it. Not every pet project can succeed, but there's an accomplishment just in getting something good and entertaining out there, and over a quarter-century later it can still reach someone. For lovers of space opera this is definitely worth hunting down, and as a piece of comics history it's kind of fascinating too.

Written by Lamar Waldron and Rod Whigham
Art by Rod Whigham
Lettering by Susan Barrows (she's listed fairly prominently so I assume the lettering was a big deal)

Grade: B+

The Bookshelf: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

2011-12-31T17:55:00.000-06:00

I try to keep abreast of all the classics of science fiction literature, but it gets difficult sometimes. Joe Haldeman's The Forever War came out when the genre was going through a lot of changes in response to the times and to new literary trends, and it's certainly a product of that era. But it also manages a timeless feel, defying the traditional jingoistic slant of military sci-fi with a story that shows the real horrors of war, horrors psychological as well as visceral. Though a grim and intense read, it's also a very heartfelt human story.

The book follows the story of Mandella, who starts out a private in Earth's army, fighting against a distant and barely-known race called the Tauran. The war is taking on planets orbiting collapsars, collapsed stars which act as portals for interstellar travel. Travel is hazardous, the planets themselves are hazardous, and mere training produces a number of casualties, and open fraternization is pretty much the only means of reducing stress the soldiers have. Mandella has a close affair with a woman named Marygay, and when the two survive their first term they hook up again on Earth, and eventually fall in love. But Earth itself changes by decades each time they leave (thanks to relativity), and it's clear that society itself is in a bad state, basically economically dependent on the war continuing ad infinitum. Eventually it seems the best option for both of them is to re-up.

The Forever War was published in 1974, when American media was still wary of dealing with the subject of Vietnam. Haldeman, himself a vet, had a hard time selling the book as a result, but while the book isn't an allegory in the strict sense, Vietnam pervades it. The war is a seemingly endless conflict with no clear state of victory against an enemy rarely actually encountered, and it's hard not to connect the dots. Of course it also describes our current engagements pretty well, except in the book it's implied the wars are holding up the economy whereas we can't even make a profit off the MIC anymore.

What really makes the story work is the use of relativity as a metaphor and vehicle for the difficulty veterans have re-integrating into society. The world becomes increasingly foreign and unwelcome to Mandella, as social pressures change basic customs and taboos. Increasing age discrepancies make forming relationships difficult, and Mandella and Marygay try to stay on the same wavelength as long as possible, but eventually the military separates them.

It's mostly grim stuff, but Haldeman carries the story along with wry humor, matter-of-fact descriptions of increasingly fascinating developments, and a genuine flair for thrilling action. Though it's in some ways an anti-war book it's still military sci-fi, and the battles are suspenseful, terrifying, and make fascinating use of the strange physics and other properties of the hostile worlds they're fought on. You never get the sense that the author is falling back on notions of how war works here on Earth- he's sweating the details.

What makes this book work so well is that underneath all the craft, it's a sincere attempt to convey the experience of being a soldier, both the horrors and the mundanities and the little pleasures that get them by. Mandella clings to a hope that he will one day eventually be free of the war that's defined his life, whether or not the rest of society follows suit. That hope provides a thin thread of humanity strong enough to take the reader through a difficult and rewarding experience.

Grade: A

Frasierquest 4.17: Roz's Turn

2011-12-29T12:53:00.002-06:00

Frasier: Well, it was just an offhand remark, how did I know how she'd react?

Roz: She's Bebe! If you had said you liked my eyes, they would have been on your desk tomorrow in a Tiffany box!

So I haven't timed this season's coverage right to get any appropriate holiday episodes ready for this time of year. That's too bad, but "Roz's Turn" is a great episode anyway so it doesn't matter. I always seem to like it when Roz gets some emphasis, if only because at this point in the series it's such a break from the routine, and this episode goes one better by throwing in Bebe Glaser. The result is an episode that never gets dull, and is a great lesson in building humor.

One of the personalities at KACL has left for the greener pastures of TV, and Roz is thinking about auditioning to take her place- she always wanted to do her own show, but got sidetracked by producing. She puts together a demo and seems to be the one to beat, but Frasier happens to mention to Bebe that he'd be sad to see Roz go, and soon enough somebody else gets the job. Wracked with remorse, Frasier confesses to Roz, and she demands that he fire Bebe as his agent. This proves difficult, because Glaser is willing to do anything to hold on to her clients.

The story really goes through three phases, the first revolving around Roz's potential show. Called "Love Matters", it's a dating and love advice show, and it provides some good opportunities for gags involving the other characters. Frasier does his best pirate voice, Niles and Daphne pretend to be a couple, Martin lays on some old school charm, and Roz… actually gives some poor advice, glibly recommending a girl dump her SO because his sex drive has diminished. She admits she's not doing well, and Frasier started terrible too, but it's an interesting touch.

A highlight of the episode is easily when Bebe shows Frasier her menagerie of stars, a bunch of second-rate gimmicky talents who are being schlepped around in a van. It points up the contrast between Frasier as a man genuinely helping people and Frasier as an entertainer- as good as he is, he's in the same world as people who can recite basic trivia off the top of their head. They are, to paraphrase Paul Freeman, a shadowy reflection of him.

As for Bebe herself, this episode really ramps up the demonic imagery, both with direct satanic references and just making her even more contemptible than in the past. Sure, faking a suicide attempt to get your client a better contract is one thing, but faking a horrific family tragedy from the next room over is so gloriously shameless it shows her total lack of boundaries. The best part of this scene is that Roz and Frasier don't buy the charade for a second, but the episode sticks the landing by having Roz join up with Bebe anyway, because, hey, she wants to get ahead. Can't blame her.

Looking back over the last few seasons, Roz is definitely a character who the writers had trouble giving spotlight time to. She's not part of the Crane family unit, she's a co-worker, so that excludes her from a lot of stories where Martin or Daphne are still welcome. I recall from many years ago that this was around the period where they started getting better at integrating her into the ensemble, and this episode is a good sign. In the meantime it actually manages some lasting plot development- Bebe is not Frasier's agent anymore, though she's far from gone- on top of being funny. All the more reason to look forward to Roz's next turn.

No Guest Caller
Written by Joe Keenan
Directed by Joyce Gittlin

Aired April 15, 1997

Daphne: I should think having a lady friend would make you exercise more, not less. I don't mean to be indelicate, but a man in your condition who wants to enjoy certain, shall we say, indoor sports, should take steps to make sure that cranky old Mr. Hip doesn't, shall we say, let down the team, if you get my meaning?

Martin: Don't you worry about me. I may not be the rookie of the year any more but I can still move around the bases!

[Roz enters]

Roz: Oh, hey, Martin.

Niles: Oh, look, a scout from the majors.

Frasierquest 4.16: The Unnatural

2011-12-21T10:05:00.004-06:00

Roz: All right, there's a guy on second, one guy's out, I drive one to the gap. The throw to the cut-off man is late, our guy's safe at home, and I try to stretch it to a double. I make a beautiful hookslide right under the tag. How can I be out?

Frasier: I'm still trying to understand why you drove to the Gap in the middle of a game.

I think we all pretty much knew Frasier couldn't play softball by now, or really any sport, but it's nice to have confirmation. "The Unnatural" throws a few different balls in the air, but the central premise is that Frasier doesn't have a chance of hitting any of them. It's also an episode that focuses on the ever-developing relationship between father and son, as Frasier sees an unfortunate milestone coming up for him and Frederick. It's the biggest role the younger Crane has had on the show, and we start to see some real development of his character. I can't tell if this is an especially funny script or if I've been suffering from deprivation neglecting this feature for so long, but it's definitely an eventful episode which does a lot with a basic premise.

Frederick's back in town for another visit (still played by Trevor Einhorn), and Frasier's been trying to arrange for a tour of Microsoft. He can't quite make it happen (despite Roz attempting to call in a favor on a clingy ex-boyfriend), but Frederick, while talking to Bulldog, who happens to be coaching the station's softball team, decides he wants to see his dad play in their next game. The problem of course is that Frasier can't play, but he doesn't want Frederick to know this, because he's not quite ready for his little boy to find out that dad isn't perfect. He attempts to take a few lessons, but the automated pitching range proves to be a formidable challenge indeed.

This is the first episode of the series directed by Pamela Fryman, who is responsible for some of the show's best installments and would go on to become an executive producer for The King of Queens and How I Met Your Mother. The premise simplicity itself, but fortunately everyone involved does their part to build on it. One element introduced here is that Frederick has developed a crush on Daphne, which she playfully indulges. This drives Niles insane, and the scenes playing on this manage to strike just the right balance between humor and cuteness (the cuteness coming as much from Daphne's indulgence as from anything Frederick does.)

The fundamental conflict, meanwhile, has more to do with the inevitable passing of time than anything else. There's nothing shocking about the revelation that Frasier can't play softball, nor do we expect him to learn. The scene at the cages is great, though, and a rare opportunity for Kelsey Grammer to indulge in some slapstick. We never actually see the game, but there's really no need to.

The whole episode is really about grown-ups not just trying to look good in front of their children, but to do right by them. It even applies to non parents like Daphne, Roz, and even Bulldog, who lets Frederick think his old man is a great player because he's trying to be polite. (The scene between Freddie and Bulldog is one of the funniest bits of the episode, with Frederick managing to call into question Bulldog's entire world view with a few well placed "why"s.) The converse side of this equation is a cute bit where Frasier recalls Roz's disappointment at her mom not taking her to see Bobby Sherman, and in the under-the-credits gag makes it up to her. It's hard to think of even a young Roz as a screaming teen idol worshiper, but it's kind of adorable too.

One of the things we learn from this episode is that Frederick is a pretty sharp kid. He knows his dad isn't perfect and isn't too surprised that he's actually not very good at sports. (He is appalled at Martin's inability to do math in his head, but this is a guy who was wearing a viking hat for no reason earlier so it shouldn't really be a surprise.) "The Unnatural" is a story where both father and son learn a little from each other, and it's part of a well-realized journey continuing throughout the show's life.

No Guest Caller

Written by Michael B. Kaplan
Directed by Pamela Fryman

Aired April 1, 1997

Daphne: We went to the amusement park, we had a lovely time. Only I think the ferris wheel scared him a bit. Spent the whole ride hugging me for dear life.

Niles: Really.

Frederick: Her hair smells like strawberries.

Niles: It smells like peach blossoms, lavender, and vanilla. (Beat) From here, of course.

Random Who Report: The Five Doctors (1983)

2011-12-18T13:36:00.001-06:00

There's a first time for everything. "The Five Doctors" was the very first Doctor Who story I ever saw, when all I knew about the show was a few passages in sci-fi books, the Peter Cushing film Dr. Who and the Daleks, and faint memories of seeing something really creepy on PBS. "The Five Doctors" was a twentieth-anniversary special that ran as a full 90-minute feature (as opposed to being serialized), and while it's not the best story of its era, it's a good introduction, a pastiche of several familiar faces and story elements into a fun if scattershot story. Oh, and it's not quite five Doctors, but we'll get to that.

The current Doctor- being Peter Davison- is on a brief holiday with his companions Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson), when he suddenly starts feeling pangs of weird cosmic pain. A mysterious force is kidnapping his former incarnations (save the fourth- Tom Baker didn't agree to come back so his Doctor gets trapped in a time eddy) and bringing them to Gallifrey, to a remote and shielded land called the Death Zone. The Death Zone was, in ancient times, the site of a series of cruel and bloody games, and it seems one of the Time Lords is interested in playing the games all over again, and has kidnapped the Doctors, as well as several of their old companions, to run them through it. There are also Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti, and a superfast warrior robot, and just to make things more complicated the Time Lord High Council sends the Master (Anthony Ainley) to try and contact the Doctor and help get to the bottom of this.

The game setup for the story was a good idea on the part of writer Terrance Dicks, because it actually provides a justification for throwing together so many disparate elements of the show's past. It also has the appeal of providing a sense of progression towards a goal, and appeals viscerally to the concept of "play", even if the rules of the game are left vague. The Welsh locations used to represent the Death Zone exteriors are grey, foggy, and intensely atmospheric, and overall the set design does a good job of bringing out the fantasy elements in the script. This may have been part of what drew me in so many, many years ago- this was clearly no ordinary sci-fi show.

Looking back, the pace lags just a little, and it's not entirely clear how the great plan the story's villain has is supposed to work and why it's necessary to run multiple Doctors through the Death Zone. As long as the quest is moving forward we don't care too much, but since the Doctors and their companions don't particularly know what they're doing the story is a little chaotic. There's a sense that it's relying on charm and the fact that it's an anniversary celebration to get by, but to be fair there is plenty of that.

William Hartnell had shuffled off this mortal coil years before, so while he makes an appearance in a pre-credits clip from "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", the part of the First Doctor is played through the rest of the story by Richard Hurndall. (Tom Baker's contribution is represented by clips from the unfinished story "Shada".) The cast and companions are nicely chosen- we have the Doctor's own granddaughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford), the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney), Sarah Jane Smith (Lis Sladen), and of course the Fifth Doctor's current team, as well as a few random cameos. As the Master, Ainley excels at hamming it up without feeling inauthentic, and in the scenes on Gallifrey he's nicely counterbalanced by the low-key Philip Latham as Lord President Borusa and the classy Dinah Sheridan as Chancellor Flavia. (Paul Jerrico as the Castellan is less impressive, but I'm not sure anyone could have pulled off the line "No, not the mind probe!")

On the whole it holds up; in a way the spectacle prefigures the new series' Christmas special blowouts, emphasizing action and fun over in-depth drama. There's a place for that, especially in Doctor Who, and "The Five Doctors", though not entirely accurate title-wise, delivers what you expect from an anniversary celebration. And though I can only speak from personal experience, it may still work as an intro to the classic series, showing off much of what was wild and weird and inexplicably charming about it. Or maybe it just worked for me.

Written by Terrance Dicks
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Moffat

Grade: B+

The Bookshelf: The Flying Eyes by J. Hunter Holly

2011-12-14T13:44:00.000-06:00

I am a simple kind of man. If I see a book on the shelf with the title "The Flying Eyes", you know damn well I am going to purchase that book. I may not know if it's good or bad, or the author, or when it was written, but I just have to dive in. This is an obscure volume- the version I purchased doesn't even have a copyright date or much information of any kind, but it was apparently originally published in 1962 or 1963 (depending on which source you believe), and J. Hunter Holly is the pen name of Joan Carol Holly. It's a terse, effective, albeit supremely goofy novella, and its retro B-movie premise is accompanied by an appropriately cinematic tone. It works surprisingly well.

Linc Hosler, Wes, and Kelly, three friends who collectively have a sort of unstated Jules et Jim thing going, are all at a football game when giant disembodied eyes descend from the sky. Most of the crowd panic, but a good portion of them line up and follow the eyes to a giant pit in the middle of the forest, where they disappear. The invaders have the power to hypnotize, and soon enough they're luring away crowds from all over town, like the Pied Piper if he were a giant eyeball from space. The eyes can be hurt, but have lightning fast healing abilities. It falls to Linc and Wes (both researchers at a university Space Research Lab) to start unravelling the mystery of the eyes, and how to resist them- a task which involves capturing one of them for study.

You can tell this is a pre-New-Wave sci-fi novel primarily by how the characters talk. Everyone's reasonably smart and self-assured, though Linc is troubled by the quantum status of his and Kelly's relationship and the involvement of the more handsome Wes. They're all professionals or science-type-people so they can talk to each other at the same level, nobody has any grotesque character flaws, they all have the sense of being idealized visions of the science fiction reader. There's nothing wrong with this except that it was getting a little cliched at this point, but Holly manages a little more conflict and less certainty than most authors.

The imagery of the book is quite vivid, and there's no denying that the giant flying eyeballs with hypnotic powers have a distinct retro sci-fi appeal. The fifties and sixties were the era of the bug-eyed monster, and much could be written about the psychological and archetypal implications of the images of giant eyes, giant brains, and so forth that permeated genre fiction of the time. The eyes are scary not just because of what they do, but because they don't fit. They're something fundamentally wrong. The ultimate revelation of the nature of the eyes is quite clever, and introduces a few new wrinkles to the story.

Though I generally appreciated how quickly the book moves at 140 pages, the tight schedule does ultimately result in a very rushed ending- one that basically makes sense, though it has to handwave a couple of things, but still feels too quick given just how desperate things have gotten up to that point. I can only assume there was a pretty strict limit on how long these little novellas could be (this was first published by Monarch Books). The whole thing seems like it could be a novelization of a contemporary monster movie- I had little trouble envisioning the B actors of the time who would play the leads.

This book has been out of print for a long time, and while I wouldn't make any great effort to find it, it's worth keeping an ey- it's worth keeping a look out if you're in a used bookstore. There are few images more emblematic of late 50s/early 60s sci-fi than people being hypnotized by giant flying eyeballs, and this is one of the rare high-concept works that manages to be good beyond its premise. At this point any pithy conclusion I could come up with would end up as just a sleazy eye pun, so let's just say it's a good book.

Grade: B+

In Theaters: Hugo

2011-12-07T09:45:00.001-06:00

Hugo is the kind of movie I wish I saw more often. While Martin Scorsese doing a children's fantasy film in 3-D may not seem like the most obvious match, this kind of tribute to the history and power of the movies could only have been done justice by someone like him. An adaptation of Brian Selznick's acclaimed book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" (which I have not yet read even though it is literally sitting next to me as I type this), Hugo is both a dazzling spectacle and a warm, intimate story about dreams and lives lost and reclaimed. It's one of my favorite films of the year.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in the catacombs of a Paris train station, working to maintain the clocks and on a mysterious automaton that his father found in a museum, and was trying to fix before he died. Nobody knows he's up there, so to live he's been stealing food and supplies from the shops, including a clockwork toy shop run by a stern old man (Ben Kingsley). The old man catches him and makes him work in the shop to pay off his debt, and there Hugo meets the man's granddaughter Isabelle (Chloë Moretz). The two become friends, and Hugo takes her to the movies for the first time, and then shows what he has been working on. It turns out Isabelle literally has the key that makes the automaton work, and the magnificent machine reveals a secret message from the past- one that, among other things, leads to the discovery that Isabelle's grandfather is the legendary filmmaker George Melies.

At first the brassy, blue-and-bronze images of the film seem familiar for the genre, but Hugo takes a lot of care to establish the right atmosphere. It's actually mostly red and blue, after the two-strip Technicolor process that was used sometimes during the silent era (and was employed for a similar effect in Scorsese's The Aviator) as well as being a fashionable combo of the time. The 3-D is used to highlight the enormity of the station as the world Hugo inhabits for most of his life, and is used in some excellent ways, bringing out the hidden picture-window depths of Melies' cinematic tableaus and making a comical station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) more sinister when he leans in to interrogate the boy. 3-D can be a restricting process, requiring brighter visuals and extreme care taken with the borders of the frame, but Scorsese navigates around them deftly, resulting in a film that feels light and unbound.

The story itself is surprising for just what it ends up being. While the first half has many of the hallmarks of a traditional children's fantasy, with an orphaned boy, a mystery from the past, persecution from authorities and the like, it unfolds to reveal something much more complex and human. Hugo wants to make the automaton work because he feels it may have a message for him from his father, but its true message leads him to someone else's story, and the gradual end of his isolation becomes bound up with learning to connect with the pasts and emotions of others. The screenplay, credited to John Logan, takes care to emphasize the basic decency of many of its characters, even the sinister/comical inspector, who is ashamed of the leg brace he must wear because of a war wound, and nurses a crush on a gentle flower girl (Emily Watson) in the best silent comedy tradition. There are no real villains, just the spectre of the Great War and a real world that often disappoints its dreamers.

As a loving homage to Melies and the silent era in general, the picture is a special treat for movie buffs. (It may not be coincidence that Brian Selznick is related to legendary movie producer David O. Selznick.) It's simply a treat to watch the flashbacks of Melies at work in his glass studio, with performers, props, and mechanical monsters all choreographed precisely. Film isn't the only medium given its due, though, as there are some lovely scenes with Christopher Lee as a kindly bookseller, and in the end it seems that booksellers, flower sellers, moviemakers, toy makers, and magicians all are part of the same group, seeking to make the world something greater through illusion. There are some great performances here, and both Butterfield and Moretz make strong impressions. (The latter is already well-known as a child actress but I'd missed most of her earlier work.)

It may not mean very much to describe a movie as magical, but that's the feeling that Hugo radiates. It dodges clichéd drama and phony sentiment in favor of the real thing, a loving salute to one of film's most influential legends. I don't often recommend movies "for the whole family" because I don't know most of you people, but this really is a great all-ages experience, one that I hope becomes a standard in years to come.

Based on the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick
Screenplay by John Logan
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Grade: A

Frasierquest 4.15: Roz's Krantz & Gouldenstein are Dead

2011-11-30T09:28:00.001-06:00

Norman: Are you here visiting somebody?

Frasier: Oh no. I'm just here with a friend of mine, Roz. She's here doing some community service.

Norman: Ah, the Angel of Death, nice girl.

Most Frasier episodes try to build themselves around one main plot or specific theme, with subplots and such around the edges. "Roz's Krantz & Gouldenstein Are Dead" is more of a melange, with two main stories build on slightly different themes which nonetheless end up intersecting. It's a very pleasant episode, built around scenes of genuine insight mingled with its humor, and not demanding too much of the viewer in terms of following a story.

The story begins when Frasier and Niles see Roz picking up trash beside a freeway, part of community service she's doing to avoid a fine for speeding. It was a choice between garbage duty and working at a home for the elderly, and Roz has never been comfortable around the aged. Frasier persuades her to go back, but then in quick succession two of the people she's visiting die on her. Frasier, who has himself been struggling with the lack of follow-up he gets from the "patients" he advises on air, accompanies her for one more trip to the home where she is now known as the "Angel of Death." While there, he meets Norman (James Earl Jones), a blind man who took some guidance from his show after the death of his wife, and gets a chance to see what an impact he's actually made.

From the start there's not much mystery over what Roz's problem is. Being around the elderly reminds her of her own mortality and that we all have to get old, slow down, and eventually stop. She knows it and she wants to avoid it if she can, and while anyone would be a little discouraged by being called the Angel of Death, for Roz it's an especially appropriate out. Eventually there's no solution other than to just face it head on, as she meets with Moira (Lois Smith), a lively and outgoing old woman who is in many ways like her- but is not everything she once was, and says as much. It's a scene that has a nice candor to it, confronting the problems of aging and the fact that it's better than nothing at the same time.

Candor also becomes an issue in Frasier's meeting with Norman, as he goes to great lengths to hide something, succeeds, tells Norman anyway, and finds out he needn't have gone through the trouble. Chances are we've all been there, but of course the real significance is simply Frasier coming to understand how he's helped someone. (Interestingly enough Norman wasn't even a caller, so Frasier really had no idea how much he was helping.) As you may imagine, Jones gives an excellent and believable performance, just understated enough to counterbalance some nice physical comedy from Kelsey Grammer.

A subplot for Niles involves him going to the wedding of two patients from his fear of commitment group. This ends up playing out in two ways; first, it serves as a catalyst for Frasier wanting a similar sense of closure from his patients, and second, he ends up bringing Maris. The two aren't quite ready to reconcile, but they're still technically man and wife.

There's not really a single overriding theme that this episode has, but it's significant that Fraiser and Roz both end up making brief but meaningful human connections in their time at the retirement home. Maybe there's a lesson there about taking the time to listen to your elders, even if they have the habit of dying on you. And maybe being the Angel of Death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you.

Guest Caller: Eric Roberts as Chet

Written by William Lucas Walker
Directed by Jeff Melman
Aired March 11, 1997

Roz: One minute he's lying in the bed, smiling and happy, ten seconds later it's over.

Niles: For heaven's sake, it happens to every man a couple of times in his life. Why can't you women take it as a compliment?

In Theaters: The Muppets

2011-11-27T14:40:00.001-06:00

It never really felt like the Muppets went away. Sure, they hadn't made a movie in over a decade, and the less said about the Wizard of Oz special the better, but they never really sank below the horizon. Nonetheless, we all wanted to see more of them, and The Muppets is a return to glory, as a new generation of behind-the-camera talent steers Jim Henson's creations away from after-school platitudes and back to grand irreverence. The new film hits just the right blend of silliness, self-awareness, and pure idealism, and is simply the funniest the old gang have been in some time.

The film revolves mostly around Walter, a new Muppet (handled by Peter Linz), though he's never thought of himself as such. Growing up with his human brother Gary (Jason Segel, who co-wrote the movie), Walter was an outcast, never quite fitting in, but when he and Gary discovered the Muppets, he became their number one fan. When Gary wants to take his fiancee Mary (Amy Adams) to Los Angeles, he invites Walter along so they can visit the Muppet studios. Unfortunately, since the Muppets haven't worked together in years, the studio has fallen into disrepair, and Walter discovers that evil oil baron Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) plans to buy the studio (using a clause in the "Standard Rich and Famous" contract Kermit and co. signed 23 years ago) and demolish it to drill for oil. The only way the Muppets can save the studio is to raise ten million dollars, and to do that the only thing they could do is put on a show. Gary, Walter, and Mary convince Kermit to try and get the gang back together, and they travel everywhere to find their old friends- Fozzie performing in Reno with tribute band "The Moopets", Gonzo running a multinational corporation, Animal taking anger management courses, and Miss Piggy working in Paris as a magazine editor. When the group is set up, they persuade a TV executive (Rashida Jones) to air a telethon, but a number of issues are working against them, from their complete lack of rehearsal, to Miss Piggy not being happy about her split with Kermie, to Richman's drive to get his hands on the studio and end the Muppets once and for all.

The writers, clearly Muppet devotees, have not only come up with a loving homage to their history, but also captured the sense of humor they displayed at their peak. A lot of the jokes are corny and obvious, but that's the point; the Muppets never met a bad joke they couldn't run with, and there's finesse in how they're delivered. A wise man once said "It's a very thin line between stupid and clever", and this film manages to be both at once, usually within the same bit. The fourth wall is broken with abandon, but in a way that makes us feel like we're being invited inside; the movie is, above all else, not cynical, and its good attitude is ingratiating.

Helping along is a superb soundtrack, with a lot of memorable new songs. Ranging from the chirpy "Life's A Happy Song" to the peppy and dorky "Me Party" and the epic ballad "Man or Muppet", the songs have a way of catching in your head even after hearing them only once. Like the rest of the movie they balance witty and sincere pretty well, and they allow the plot to have its dramatic moments without ever becoming too serious. There's a sense that the song numbers are designed to echo those on the original Muppet Show, with stagey presentation and framing designed to up the silliness. It's not all new stuff, though, and the return of a particular classic from the Henson vaults is sure to bring a tear to the eye.

Adding a new Muppet was perilous, but Walter strikes a balance- his main joke is that he seems intensely normal, an average guy who happens to be made out of felt, but he's prone to distinctly Muppety reactions when times get tough and, when running through a wall, can be counted on to leave a Walter-shaped outline. It helps that the human actors all play at the Muppets' level- Segel and Adams are not only charming, they're willing to make themselves look ridiculous, as is Cooper, as are the many, many guest stars who no doubt are as thrilled to be working alongside these screen icons as we would be. The cameos are a great source of comedy in and of themselves, so I won't spoil any, and we get the same spark of recognition from a lot of the more obscure Muppet faces who pop up. (There's an especially meaty role given to the gargoylish Uncle Deadly, and if the name doesn't mean anything, you may recognize the face.)

As one might expect in a movie as jam-packed with attractions as this, the plot suffers a little; it makes sense, but it's obvious it was edited with comedy prioritized over coherence. It's hard to care, though. Not only do we get the Muppets back, we get the sense that they never left, and the reassurance that time hasn't changed them that much. It's not quite the best Muppet movie (that honor probably belongs to their original, eponymous outing), but it does Jim Henson proud.

Based on characters created by Jim Henson
Written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller
Directed by James Bobin

Grade: A-

Academy of the Underrated: Dune (1984)

2011-11-25T13:30:00.001-06:00

Over four years ago, when I reached my one hundredth post, I introduced the Academy of the Underrated, dedicated to defending the disliked, the disregarded, and the despised. Since then, one entry has been inevitable, but I've been waiting for the right time. Four hundred posts later, the proper moment has arrived.

Dune is, in my most humble of opinions, the most underrated film of all time. David Lynch's controversial film version of Frank Hebert's classic sci-fi novel is a movie even the director has distanced himself from, and one of filmdom's most legendary flops. It's also a picture decades ahead of its time, a work of science fiction as visual art as distinctive as Kubrick's 2001. Though burdened by the need to explain a complex plot, and hobbled by studio-mandated editing, Dune is a unique experience, profoundly atmospheric and possessed of a grace and majesty that no other film in the genre has quite managed.

In the far future of the year 10,191, the universe is ruled by a feudal hierarchy and fueled by the rare spice melange, a substance which extends life and expands the mind, enabling, among other things, the complex calculations that the Spacing Guild uses to navigate the stars. The noble House Atreides, headed by Duke Leto (Jurgen Prochnow), has been assigned to mine the spice from the one planet on which it is found- the desert world Arrakis, also known as Dune. However, the move is a plot by the Emperor (Jose Ferrer) to enrage the maverick Duke's rival, the grotesquely decadent Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan), and the House Harkonnen is planning a sneak attack on their hated enemies. Caught in these intrigues is the Duke's son, Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan) and his mother, the royal Lady Jessica (Francesca Annis), both of whom end up seeking help from the planet's natives, the mysterious Fremen, who see Paul as their prophesied messiah, destined to lead them to freedom from imperial rule.

In plain terms the story is fairly simple. But there's a lot of detail, most of which Lynch doesn't sacrifice, and unprepared viewers may find themselves submerged in references to the Bene Gesserit (basically psychic nuns), the Kwisatz Haderach, and all sorts of esoterica. Though audiences and critics of the time were famously baffled, to the point where Universal actually distributed explanatory pamphlets before screenings, if anything the film's problem is it tries too hard to explain itself. Major plot points are repeated multiple times, through dialogue, through narration (mostly supplied by the ever-lovely Virginia Madsen as the Emperor's daughter Irulan), and through the spoken inner voices of many characters, a device which takes some getting used to but captures some of the novel's use of multiple limited perspectives. As such the dialogue is a little clunky, and if you've already figured everything out the constant restating is obtrusive.

If you haven't read the book beforehand, it's still possible to understand the story, but it's probably best to let it just wash over you. Atmosphere is the hardest part of a film to quantify or explain in a review context, but it can be instrumental to its quality. The ability of a motion picture to truly take us elsewhere, into its world, can excuse a multitude of sins, and between the details of production design, production value, cinematography, music, sound, visual effects, and the specifics of a story, there's an alchemy that is as important to a good movie as plot or characterization. This is where Dune excels. Lynch's own penchant for surrealism, mixed with the details of Frank Herbert's meticulously constructed universe, results in a series of amazing sights and mythic scenes. Backed by a gorgeous gothic design sense, amazing visuals, and a stirring score by rock group Toto, even subtle moments such as Paul contemplating his future in the deep desert take on a gravity suited to a clash of civilizations.

There may never be another version of this story backed by this much pure talent. Though MacLachlan is older than the character as written, he delivers a wonderfully versatile performance, showing clear maturation as his character is put through his trials. McMillan's Baron Harkonnen is one of the all-time great screen villains, a bloated and pustulant embodiment of the worst excesses of imperialism. A broad cast of characters is brought to life by such luminaries as Patrick Stewart, Dean Stockwell, Sian Philips, Max Von Sydow, Sean Young, Silvia Mangano, Brad Dourif, and Linda Hunt, just to name a few.

Faithful fans of the novel will have their objections. At two hours and seventeen minutes, the film has to take some shortcuts, and Lynch adds a few inventions that seem to go against the spirit of the original. Now, I don't actually care about this, having decided a long time ago that fidelity to the source material is strictly optional for an adaptation, but some inventions are actually kind of clever. In the novel, the Atreides are building an army using elite fighting techniques, and Lynch simplifies those techniques into the Weirding Module, a device capable of converting sound to destructive force. It would be a simple technological gimmick, but for how it's explained- "Some thoughts have a certain sound, that being akin to a form." It actually ends up being used as an extension of the Bene Gesserits' persuasive Voice, a thematic elaboration on the concept of human potential being extended rather than supplanted by technology. Again, in a strict aesthetic sense, none of this matters, but I feel compelled to address it nonetheless, because somebody's gonna bring it up.

The version of Dune we have is not really the version Lynch intended for us to see. The studio compelled him to deliver a picture that wasn't too long, and though an extended version played on television and later found its way to DVD, the producers did not see fit to involve the film's writer and director in said extension. It has more footage than the theatrical film, but it's pretty much a mess, overcompensating with too much backstory and redundant scenes cobbled together by repeating various special effects shots. (The score is also ruined, with tracks often layered on top of each other as though not a single second could be allowed to pass without musical accompaniment.) Lynch was displeased with the experience as a whole, and apparently would have no interest in assembling a proper "director's cut" even if asked (and so far nobody has done so.) To be sure, the theatrical cut is an abbreviated one, often rushing through character elements such as the romance between Paul and the Fremen girl Chani (Sean Young), and the birth of Paul's hyperintelligent sister Alia (Alicia Witt.) A number of deleted scenes are on the most recent DVD release, but we may never know how Dune was really supposed to play out.

And yet, what we have is still something remarkable. At a time when most science fiction films were attempting to recreate the nostalgic thrills evoked by Star Wars, Dune gives us outright majesty, a solemn respect reminiscent more of David Lean than Flash Gordon. It's a flawed classic, beautiful and moving and layered with complex metaphorical imagery. Even if David Lynch himself has reason to disavow the final cut, he has nothing to be ashamed of; Dune is a timeless work of art, offering an experience that no other film can. Though the picture has acquired a cult following over time, it has yet to truly receive the respect it deserves, and so it has a place of honor here at the Academy. Criterion Collection, you know what you have to do.

Based on the novel by Frank Hebert
Written for the screen and directed by David Lynch
Grade: A-

Academy of the Underrated: Explorers

2011-11-24T12:17:00.001-06:00

The success of Super 8 this past summer had me thinking of how "Spielbergian" used to be a category of movies all its own. Throughout the Eighties, filmmakers and studios made many, many attempts to capture audiences with stories about the magic of childhood and stories of ordinary people encountering the otherworldly. Explorers was Paramount's big-budget attempt to follow in E.T.'s footsteps, but with Joe Dante at the helm and a particularly offbeat script by Eric Luke, the film is both quirkier and more personal than a typical summer offering then or now. Though it's not really consistent, it has an innocence and whimsy that makes it more effective than most attempts at sci-fi-tinged nostalgia.

Ben (Ethan Hawke) has been having weird dreams of flying over a giant circuitboard. He describes what he sees his friend Wolfgang (River Phoenix), son of a scientist (James Cromwell) and a child prodigy whose home computer has a whole 128K. Surprisingly, the circuit board actually does something, creating a small bubble of force whose movements can be controlled by computer input. The sphere can be made any size, and moves without inertia. Darrin (Jason Presson), a kid from a poor family who's recently befriended Ben, gives them the idea to build a ship out of junkyard parts, and soon the three are flying over town and causing a panic at the drive-in. Their flight is interrupted, though, by a strange signal, and Ben realizes that the dreams and the signal were sent by aliens wanting to meet them. After some repairs and restocking, the boys follow the signal into outer space, ending up inside a fantastical spaceship inhabited by two decidedly playful aliens, Wak (Robert Picardo) and Neek (Leslie Rickert), who have learned all they know about humanity from television.

The film's third act is decidedly sillier than the rest of it, which is the source of most of the criticism the picture received. Wak's TV-fueled wisecracking does break some of the mystery the film has built up, and it's easy to see why a viewer might not only be disappointed with the reveal, but see it as a cynical attempt at creating easily marketable characters. (I'm unaware of any merchandise the film spawned beyond the soundtrack album, but I know it's out there.) But it's also possible to read the segment as a twist on the old science fiction concept of aliens intercepting our broadcast transmissions (usually used to explain why they speak English.) All the audiovisual detritus we've thrown into space ends up influencing its inhabitants, in a kind of cargo cult way. Sure, it's pandering a little, especially when Wak performs a Fifties rock-and-roll hit, but it's also very funny, a showcase for Robert Picardo's comic versatility. Huge portions of his performance were improvised, and it's more impressive when you consider he's actually wearing the elaborate alien costume. (Picardo also figures heavily in Starkiller, a cheesy dubbed sci-fi flick playing at the drive-in when the boys pay a visit.)

Director Dante's fondness for in-jokes ends up serving the picture well; Ben is a terminal sci-fi geek, unable to resist telling his new friend Darren about the cassette he just got of This Island Earth, and clips of the movies he watches show up in his dreams and have an influence on what the boys encounter, especially since the aliens have been seeing the same late-night movies. There are posters, comics, and pulp paperbacks everywhere, as well as subtler homages to old movie classics. Movies like this are often about the creators' own pasts, and here we have a clear metaphor of a boy setting out to make his dreams into reality. Dante regular Dick Miller has a wonderful role as a police helicopter pilot who runs afoul of the trio's ship, and he reveals that he's had dreams like that as a kid, and has been having them again, but he's let the moment pass. It's a subtly tragic choice.

The film is just realistic enough to draw us in, but there's a subtle magic to it. The kids' home-made spaceship, dubbed the Thunder Road, is extremely ramshackle but looks like it could hold together somehow (maybe it's the lightning decals.) It sits in a misty creek bed which just might be near a typical suburb, but is still bigger than life. And yeah, Wolfgang has a mouse which can talk by pressing keys on a synthesizer. It's funny. The whole thing is tied together by what may actually be legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith's finest work, a stirringly beautiful score that adds the right level of drama to the proceedings which, of course, are the thing a kid would take deadly seriously.

It's an odd movie, effective even if it doesn't maintain much in the way of tonal consistency. Even in its goofier moments there's sincerity, a sense that the filmmakers genuinely believe in the power of dreams to become real, and it's the authenticity of it that makes Explorers succeed where other attempts to ride Spielberg's bandwagon fail. This time of year always brings out the nostalgia in me, and a film that pays tribute to the imagination itself is often just what we need as the year grows dim.

Written by Eric Luke
Directed by Joe Dante
Grade: A-

Random Movie Report #96: Journey to the Seventh Planet

2011-11-23T13:00:00.001-06:00

There's an entire subgenre of science fiction movies, in which a group of astronauts lands on a planet controlled by some powerful psychic intelligence, which throws hallucinations, disasters, and monsters at them until they defeat it or all die in the process. It runs from such early efforts as Angry Red Planet and The Wizard of Mars all the way to the Roger Corman sleazefest Galaxy of Terror, and possibly Event Horizon. (Whether Stanislav Lem's Solaris counts is arguable.) Journey to the Seventh Planet, a Danish/American production from 1961, is in some ways a standard telling of this timeless and universally relevant story, but some odd decisions and budget woes end up with a much weirder- and frankly more entertaining- picture than probably would have resulted from a slick approach.

In the year 2001, the UN sends a spaceship to investigate strange radiation readings coming from Uranus. (And they pronounce it with a long a, so never mind that.) The multinational-and-yet-all-white-male crew, featuring the ever-cocky John Agar, makes it into orbit around… said planet, and in a brief moment of weightlessness, is contacted and probed by a strange force. The intelligence guides their ship to land in a paradise drawn from their own memories, a realm of forests and creeks and easily accessible European locations, and eventually starts populating it with beautiful women. Suspecting something is up, the crew start exploring beyond the protective force field surrounding the woods, and in the hazardous wastes of the seventh planet, discover a cave inhabited by a gigantic cyclopean brain creature capable of conjuring up just about anything, including hideous giant monsters with which to defend itself. Working out that the brain is hostile, the astronauts set about trying to destroy it before it can travel to Earth and conquer all of humanity.

The first sign that something's not quite right with this movie comes when highly billed Danish sexpot Greta Thyssen is introduced… as a photo, since she's not on the voyage. She naturally appears in the "flesh" as one of the planet's dream women, and is referred to by her own full name, meaning she is playing herself, which doesn't even make sense because this is supposed to be forty years in the future. Perhaps they could only trust her to remember her own name, though she seems okay as an actress, but she's arguably not even the most prominent female character in the movie. Just the one with the best agent.

Adding to the slightly meta nature of the movie are the special effects. Some of them are genuinely good, including a briefly-seen stop-motion rat monster and some of the surreal Uranian vistas. At other times they're intensely inconsistent, failing to keep the appearance of a creature or object consistent from one shot to the next. A good example of this is a spider thing the brain sends after our heroes; we see glimpses of claws and eyestalks, but apparently the whole thing didn't work very well, so it's played mostly by stock footage of a tarantula from Earth vs. The Spider (complete with that monster's distinctive scream.) The brain itself seems to change appearance depending on the technique used to shoot it, and it goes without saying that the budget basically never extended to process shots, so interactions between the astronauts and the strange miniature things around them are kept to a minimum, and in some cases kept offscreen with expository dialogue that would be intrusive in a radio play.

It's not that the film is entirely poorly made. It has a strong visual sense, colorful, and the setting has interesting touches like razor-sharp trees of glass and "quicksnow". The story holds together, basically, and moves pretty fast. But eventually the spare, cobbled-together nature of the thing takes a toll on the atmosphere it tries to generate, and too often they go to stock "space voyage" elements that were becoming worn down just as the actual space race was heating up.

I've talked before about some bad movies being good-bad movies, but Journey to the Seventh Planet is a good illustration of just what qualifies a film for this honor. The fact that it's falling apart at the seams, in terms of production and staging, the fact that characters have to describe what's supposed to be happening but they can't afford to show, that Greta Thyssen is Greta Thyssen and also apparently immortal- it's a case of a structure collapsing in such a way that the wreckage looks rather pretty. Journey to the Seventh Planet isn't a complete failure- there are moments of beauty and even wonder to it- but it's a case where what doesn't work is as fascinating as what does.

Story by Sid Pink
Screenplay by Sid Pink and Ib Melchior
Directed by Sid Pink

Grade: C+

Frasierquest 4.14: To Kill a Talking Bird

2011-11-17T16:12:00.001-06:00

Niles: I don't think my reputation can suffer more than it already has.

Frasier: I wouldn't be so sure about that. Wearing a white bird after Labor Day...

Niles is in a transitional phase in his life. He's not quite divorced, not quite reconciled, and while he's been living on his own we really haven't seen him doing so. "To Kill A Talking Bird" gives us some stability, in the form of the Montana, a high-end apartment building where Dr. Crane will make his home for several years. It's a lovely place, old and stylish and full of stuffy people, the Gallifrey of sitcom settings, but entry to a place for which Niles is suited so perfectly comes at a price. Just what that price is, is explored in a welcome return to farce, featuring one of the first of many disastrous Crane dinner parties.

So Niles has signed a lease to said swanky apartment complex, his own unit being larger than some people's houses. (It may be bigger on the inside- there's that Gallifrey thing again.) Getting the apartment does mean, however, that Niles has to give up his Maris-esque dog, though it's only now that Frasier makes him realize the resemblance. Finding himself still wanting some companionship, Niles buys a cockatoo named Baby. Baby is talkative and learns quickly, but has a tendency to be easily startled. Frasier decides to help Niles throw a dinner party to greet the neighbors, and his decision is not at all influenced by meeting a particularly lovely one named Stephanie (Patricia Wettig), who, as far as he's concerned, is the perfect woman. (Granted he based this impression on about five minutes of conversation, but that's what he does.) It's a good idea until, shortly before everyone is due to arrive, Frasier lights the fireplace, startling Baby, who decides to alight on Niles' head, and won't come off. Niles hides in the kitchen, still convinced he can salvage this somehow, while Frasier runs interference with one gorgeous woman and four very dull people.

Dinner parties are, of course, the Crane family curse. They're the single most common set-up for the show's farce episodes, useful because A) so many things can go wrong and B) society people are brittle and easily offended. Complicating matters is Niles' still troubled relationship with Maris. He's especially worried about his position in Seattle society because he wants to look good in front of her, either to win her back or show her up, he never quite decides. When he sees that one of Maris' girl friends is a guest, that only makes him more determined to hide. The great irony of this episode is that when he is persuaded to emerge- Frasier appealing to his duties as a host- being honest about his predicament seems to work. At least until the bird pipes up with a few choice bits of gossip it overheard in the kitchen.

It's nice to see how the show continues the arc of Frasier's desperation, which has now become so severe that he takes Roz's advice to just stop trying. It's when he actively commits to not looking that he runs into Stephanie, at which point- well, desperation seems to leap right back. He puts so much energy into trying to seal the deal that it makes the entire party situation more frenetic. His caring less about his brother than his chances with a woman he barely knows comes back to bite him in the end. Frasier's just manic enough for this not to be depressing.

Though the dinner party gets things off to a rocky start, Niles stays at the Montana, and for a good time to come. it's a really gorgeous set, I have to say- sitcom apartments are usually excessively nice by the standards of real life (especially on multi-camera shows, due to the logistical demands), but Niles' place goes the extra mile in terms of opulence. Then again, he can afford it. (In retrospect the layout seems modeled after Dr. Campbell's house from "A Lilith Thanksgiving"- it wouldn't surprise me if elements were re-used.) Baby is not as constant a premise, but she has some good moments ahead.

"To Kill A Talking Bird" works both as a farce and as a snapshot of Niles in his single life, finding a place of his own and trying to make his own way in society without Maris' connections. As innately prissy as he can be, he has a hard time of it, and an interesting recurring theme through the series is how much he and his brother, snobs to the bone, don't fit with the snobby crowd. They're too screwed up to really belong, but we love them all the same.

No Guest Caller

Written by Jeffrey Richman
Directed by David Lee

Aired February 25, 1997

Daphne: You know, I've always been fascinated by these birds that can actually learn how to talk.

Martin: Oh, they can't talk. They just drill a few words into 'em at the pet shop and they never learn anything else after that.

Frasier: It is attractive, though.

Martin: Yeah, well that's the way they are. Cute but stupid.

Baby: Cute but stupid!

Frasier: (to Daphne) You know, Daphne, perhaps we should just leave these two alone. I sense a real battle of wits shaping up here.

In Theaters: In Time

2011-11-11T09:41:00.001-06:00

Andrew Niccol is probably one of the most undervalued filmmakers around today. While Gattaca and The Truman Show both caught attention, not much of what he's done in this millennium has met with acclaim. But he's always working with interesting ideas and applying a distinct low-key touch to his films. In Time is an unexpectedly relevant film, a picture about the growing divide between haves and have-nots released just as a lot of the have-nots have finally become vocal, and it couches this in a metaphor that's both obvious and powerful. It's high concept, but makes sure to ground the concept in genre convention, this time a thriller. The blend of concept and genre is rough around the edges, but it works more often than not.

In a vaguely defined near-future, time has become literal currency. Medical science has stopped the natural aging process at 25, but once a person hits 25, they have one extra year to live. They can earn more time by working, but also have to pay time for goods and services. The poor don't live very long, the rich are virtually immortal, and they're kept apart by expensive toll gates and market manipulation of prices in the ghettos to make sure nobody saves up too much. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is a poor man, literally living day to day making time storage boxes for people who can afford to save up. One night, a man whose glowing wrist tattoos proudly display a century to spare shows up at a bar Will frequents, and when Will saves him from a group of gangsters, he wakes up the next morning to find the century in his possession and the rich man dead broke. When Will is too late to save his mother (killed by a sudden uptick in bus fare), he decides to try and beat the rich at their own game, paying his way across the toll booths into the paradise of New Greenwich, and there gambling his way to a fortune. This gets the attention of some very friendly and unfriendly people, and soon the Timekeepers, on the lookout for anyone with too much time to spare, start to track him down- which makes him, and banker's daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), set out to break the system entirely.

The concept of the film is not entirely original, and a few elements- notably the Timekeepers- were apparently similar enough to Harlan Ellison's work that he managed to sue for a screen credit. Niccol tries to explain the premise without over-explaining it. The mechanics are simple; a character's time remaining is printed on their arm like a glowing tattoo, and they can transfer time by grabbing another person's arm. (This makes theft easy, which is why the rich put up so many barriers, and mobsters prowl the ghetto going after anyone with too much time. People try and keep their arms covered.) Running out of time means a person just stops being alive- there's no decline or degeneration, and they stay youthful even in death. The mechanics of how prices are manipulated across time zones aren't delved into much (there are a few shots which I would love to freeze-frame when this comes to disc), but we know enough for the plot to make sense.

There is some cheating. This is a thriller with a lot of chases, and everyone having a ticking clock on their arm is used a lot to add suspense, but it's a little too obvious when time is being stretched out beyond what the characters actually have on them. It's standard procedure in movies like this to manipulate the actual flow of time, but when exact time in the story is vitally important, it's easier to tell when the movie isn't playing fair.

What keeps the film from being great is that the thriller element feels forced; there are car crashes and chase scenes because that makes the movie easier to sell, not because that's the best place for the story to go. It's something of an abrupt switch- Salas is a little too badass in the action sequences for someone who was just a regular working stiff all his life. It's fun to watch him and Sylvia find ways to screw with the markets, though, even if this idea isn't taken to the strongest conclusion.

There's something very likable about this film even if it panders a little. It has a refreshing clarity about how broken its system- and by association ours- really is, avoiding didacticism for the most part but simply acknowledging this is the unfair reality. Timberlake is more convincing as a blue-collar schlub than you'd think, Seyfried is appropriately posh, and Cillian Murphy does a great job as a dedicated Timekeeper who works from a perverted sense of justice. The film's cinematography is by Roger Deakins, and it's gorgeous, being surprisingly colorful without detracting from the tense atmosphere.

In Time is ultimately an engaging yarn. It's got social currency and the refreshing forthrightness of a film that gets to say what others aren't about the world we live in, and while there's a clash between the social critique and the action-adventure elements, ultimately it finds a balance. Some of the potential is missed, but there's still a lot to enjoy here. Hopefully Andrew Niccol won't have to go too commercial next time.

Written and Directed by Andrew Niccol
(With some elements based on material by Harlan Ellison, I suppose)

Grade: B

Frasierquest 4.13: Four for the Seesaw

2011-11-07T09:34:00.000-06:00

Frasier: Maybe we should ask them out.

Niles: On a date? We just met!

Frasier: Good point, Niles. Perhaps we should go out with them a few more times before we ask them on a date.

On the surface, "Four for the Seesaw" is basically a misadventure; the Crane boys get into a good situation and ultimately screw it up. It's an odd kind of story which doesn't rely on building comic momentum, but while it seems inconsequential at first, there's some interesting character stuff going on. And hey, any episode with Megan Mullally is worth remembering.

On a crowded day at the Nervosa, Frasier and Niles decide to take a chance on sharing a table with two lovely ladies. Laura (Lisa Darr) and Beth (Mullally) are kitchen designers, and delighted at encountering two men who are actually interested in kitchen design. The two end up having an informal double date that goes on all day, and on another impulse, Frasier suggests they all go out for a weekend at a mountain cabin he has access to. Things are moving very fast indeed, and this makes them both just a little nervous, especially Niles, who is still working out just how separated from Maris he is. And just how quickly do Laura and Beth want to go, anyway?

This is a story about acting in the moment, something that does not become Frasier and Niles. They like to plan things out or at least carefully weigh their options. The major conflict of the episode is not so much their relationship with Laura and Beth- who seem like the perfect girlfriends for them- but the fact that they are straying outside their comfort zone. They can't really sustain this for very long, and they end up overthinking it, which predictably leads to tragedy and humiliation.

But that may not be the real problem either. Niles is the one who has a harder time with all this, and it's because of Maris. He's separated from her but still thinking he may have made a mistake, and lets that uncertainty get the better of him. Though Frasier mostly ruins things with some poorly chosen words in a moment of frustration, in the end, Niles just can't let Maris go yet.

It must be said that both Darr and Mullally are utterly charming, so much so that we end up sharing the Cranes' frustration when things go south. It's one of those cases where it really is a shame that the wrong thing said at the wrong time ruins everything. There's also a nice subplot involving Martin caring for a flu-ridden Daphne, not relevant to anything but fun nonetheless.

Moving forward, the episode does a good job reminding us of the major conflict in Niles' life- how he's separated but not quite willing to let go. Frasier, meanwhile, continues his drought, his desperation contributing to continued failure, and it's actually impressive how the writers follow this as an arc. His inability to live in the moment is something that will come up again. I'll miss Laura and Beth, though.

No Guest Caller

Written by David Lloyd
Directed by Jeff Melman
Aired February 18, 1997

Frasier: I am always ready to debate the merits of down-draft cooktops and ceramic tile backslashes.

Laura: Woah, whose little boy are you?

Monsterthon: Island of Lost Souls

2011-10-31T09:29:00.000-05:00

Happy Halloween! To cap this Monsterthon off on an appropriately scary note, we're going old school.

Genre fandom is sort of an incubator for critical appreciation. Metropolis was hailed as a masterpiece by sci-fi fans (including fan guru Forrest J. Ackerman) long before mainstream criticism did so. Island of Lost Souls seems to have taken a similar course; growing up, reading books on horror and sci-fi films, I was led to believe it was a well-regarded classic of the genre, but as late as the seventies, when psychotic killers and demonic possessions were the order of the day, it was considered something vulgar and trashy, and a minor film in comparison to other classics of the era. It's taken decades in the public domain and finally, a Criterion release to move from a cult item to a proper place in the horror canon.

Adapted from H. G. Wells' novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, Island of Lost Souls is a work ahead of its time, surreal and brutal on a level audiences in 1932 just weren't prepared for (said audience including Wells, who denounced the film and supported the UK's ban on it). The same elements which made it so transgressive are what make it powerful; it does what horror is supposed to, which is make us feel uncertain. Island of Lost Souls plays on our sense of the foreign and exotic and goes a step beyond, placing us in a nightmare far removed from anyone's idea of normal life.

Edward Parker (Richard Arlen), survivor of a ship sinking, finds himself on board a cargo vessel carrying a strange menagerie of animals. He, with them, ends up on an island owned by Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), a mysterious scientist who lives with an assistant (Arthur Hohl), a strangely feline native woman (Kathleen Burke), and an unusual population of "natives". It doesn't take long for Parker to discover that the inhabitants of the island are actually Dr. Moreau's experiments, half-man-half-animals created through vivisection and grotesque surgery, fearing the doctor as their god and master. Matters are complicated when Parker's fiancee (Leila Hyams) arrives on the island, sparking jealousy in the Panther Woman, and the animal-men, despite the best efforts of the Sayer of the Law (Bela Lugosi) to keep order, are growing increasingly restless.

It's easy to see how the film provoked severe reactions in the audiences of the day. The world of Dr. Moreau is one of an inherent wrongness, more pronounced even than the deathly worlds of Universal's contemporary horrors. Even before we are shown what the animal-men are, there is something simply not right about them, the way they look and move, and the matter of fact presentation of such abnormality anticipates Tod Browning's Freaks a few years later. Despite a couple of cutaways to the outside world, as Parker's fiancee searches for signs of her lost love, we are inexorably drawn into a nightmare realm full of surrealist architecture and impenetrable jungle, where, in Moreau's words, "night falls like a curtain" without the mercy of twilight. The picture simply never lets up, and its refusal to do so wears on the nerves of even the modern viewer.

Laughton provides a unique take on the mad scientist archetype, one that was still being developed in film. He is a man incredibly pleased with himself, seeming to derive some sadistic pleasure from his experiment beyond the pursuit of knowledge as a goal in itself. There's something of a sexual undertone to it, especially as he pushes the Panther Woman (the only female on the island until the fiancee arrives) onto Parker just to see if she's capable of mating with a human male. Lugosi also gives a magnificent performance as the Sayer of the Law, even buried under a mat of facial hair.

Running at a mere seventy minutes, Island of Lost Souls doesn't stop to explain very much, at least not in any great detail. That we don't know much of how Dr. Moreau manages his animal-man hybrids may have contributed to the outrage and censorship which greeted the picture on release; this is in fact one of those cases where what we can't see is more horrifying than anything that could be shown. It's a film where everyone is taut with anticipation of something that's about to happen.

Criterion has done their usual bang-up job bringing this to DVD and Blu-Ray, and as with the restoration of Metropolis last year it's the culmination of a long journey from infamy to just acclaim. Island of Lost Souls is one of the very best horror movies of the decade in which cinematic horror came into its own, and it honestly deserves to be considered as one of the all time great motion pictures, beyond genre or time. The film is a nightmare that has wormed its way into the cultural subconscious, and it's still good for a scare.

Based on the novel "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H. G. Wells
Screenplay by Philip Wylie and Waldemar Young
Directed by Erle C. Kenton

Grade: A

Monsterthon: Godzilla vs. Hedorah

2011-10-25T09:36:00.001-05:00

Let's jump ahead to something more horrific. Godzilla vs. Hedorah, once released in the US as Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, came at a dark time for the Godzilla franchise, with the passing of Eiji Tsubaraya and the general collapse of the Japanese film industry, which had an especially harsh impact on the budgets of kaiju and other effects-driven movies. Intended to kick off a new generation of Godzilla movies, with a new director and new, more kid-friendly attitude, Godzilla vs. Hedorah ended up being a strange, surrealistic experience. It is, frankly, insane, defying any expectation of what a Godzilla movie should be and playing by a set of rules it just made up. There's never been a Godzilla film like it before or since, and the results are goofy, atmospheric, and kinda creepy.

Ships are being destroyed, fish killed off, and the sea polluted even more than it was already by a strange tadpole-like creature, dubbed Hedorah by a boy named Ken (Hiroyuki Kawase) who saw it up close and whose father, a scientist (Akira Yamauchi), was scarred by the creature while diving. A strange mineral-based lifeform who feeds on pollution while excreting acidic gas and poison sludge, Hedorah eventually wades ashore to feed on our smokestacks, attracting the attention of Godzilla, now a full-fledged hero and guardian of mankind. Fighting the monster proves difficult, though, as Hedorah is literally a walking pile of sludge with no vital organs, and Godzilla's radioactive breath has the unfortunate effect of making the smog monster stronger. Mankind races for a solution as Hedorah eventually takes to the skies, burying Japanese cities under a blanket of poisonous acidic fog.

The early seventies saw the rise of the environmentalist movement as we now know it, and Japanese genre media has always paid a lot of attention to the issue of nature being despoiled by pollution (see also most of the works of Miyazaki.) The whole "global warming" concept had yet to catch much attention, but Hedorah- whose name is derived from the Japanese word for pollution- embodies the fear of industry making Earth an unlivable mess of smog and toxic sludge. There's something neat about seeing an icon of the nuclear menace tackle a symbol of a newer threat, and it's actually a fascinating monster concept: a mineral-based lifeform that grows and changes as it feeds, and so embodying the pollution of water, land, and air all at once. Some actual thought has been put into Hedorah's nature, and it's fairly logical.

That's where the logic ends. The film's fundamental oddness starts with its score by Masaru Sato, which includes a strange blaring horn theme for Godzilla, a rousing environmental anthem, and an overall small-jazz-combo feel. There are animated sequences depicting Hedorah's growth and people in the streets wearing gas masks. Public outrage is represented by a mosaic of television screens depicting angry citizens (and, disturbingly, a crying baby half buried in sludge, increasingly marginalized at the bottom left corner as the mosaic grows). A teenage rock party at Mt. Fuji is watched by ghostly elders. We go from material clearly intended to play for the kids in the audience (various bits of physical comedy, and an astounding sequence wherein Godzilla flies) to moments of utter horror, sometimes within the same scene. The overall atmosphere is a gloomy one, but at the same time the horror is much softer than it could be. It's pop art psychedelia, but with a touch of seventies pessimism added.

The visual effects, now directed by Teruyoshi Nakano, are a mixed bag. Hedorah is impressively strange, almost Lovecraftian in its design, and there's some nice animation, but the miniature work is sparse and you can tell they don't have the resources they used to. Director Yoshimitsu Banno does give the film a very nice look, but the sheer dimness of it is wearying at times, especially in Godzilla and Hedorah's first battle.

It's hard to analyze this movie in terms of plot and characterization and linear progression towards a climax. It sort of moves in that direction, but the story is so sparse at points that it almost doesn't matter. We just sort of move into grimmer and grimmer territory as Hedorah's reign spreads, until the final battle takes place on Mt. Fuji in the blackest night. It's honestly kind of intense, despite being completely ridiculous and having something of a protracted conclusion.

Banno clearly had some big ideas, but alas it was not to be. Tomoyuki Tanaka, the Toho exec who oversaw the Godzilla series from the start, was hospitalized while this film was being made, and went ballistic when he finally saw it, accusing the director of ruining the character. Banno was banned from Toho completely, and the series went in a more traditional direction. Still, at least one completely idiosyncratic art-house adventure ended up on Godzilla's resume, and despite its flaws, Godzilla vs. Hedorah is a picture even non-fans should check out. You have to see it to believe it.

Written by Yoshimitsu Banno and Takeshi Kimura
Directed by Yoshimitsu Banno

Grade: B+

Monsterthon: Mothra Vs. Godzilla

2011-10-22T14:23:00.005-05:00

Godzilla's bout with King Kong was a major box office draw, really giving birth to the Godzilla series proper by showing he was no passing fad. But for his next fight he needed another lofty opponent, and so Toho called up its second-biggest draw to give us Mothra vs. Godzilla. This particular entry is a fan favorite, showing Godzilla at his meanest and most relentless, Mothra at her bravest and most selfless, and still treating the whole affair with some degree of seriousness. Though it's not my favorite of the period, Mothra vs. Godzilla does what it sets out to do and makes us believe without reservation in an epic life-or-death struggle between a radioactive dinosaur and a giant bug.

A massive storm hits Japan and washes ashore a mysterious giant egg. Kumayama (Yoshifumi Tajima), a local entrepreneur, buys the egg from some local fishermen and plans to put it on display. A news reporter (Akira Takarada) and photographer (Yuriko Hoshi) are suspicious of his taking possession of it, and are contacted by the tiny twin Shobijin (Emi and Yumi Ito once again), who tell them that it's Mothra's egg, washed away from Infant Island in the storm. When it hatches, the baby Mothra might cause a lot of damage in looking for food, so they'd really like it back, but Kumayama- and his silent partner Torahata (Kenji Sahara) will have none of it, and Mothra and the Shobijin depart Japan in disappointment. It turns out, however, that the storm has also washed ashore Godzilla, who digs himself out of the earth and goes on a rampage. A fellow reporter (Yu Fujiki) gets the idea of asking Mothra for help, and the news team goes to Infant Island to try and persuade the natives, despite civilization having screwed them over royally. Despite being near the end of her life, Mothra is too kind-hearted to ignore their pleas or the potential danger to her offspring, so she sets out to confront the King of the Monsters.

More serious than Godzilla's last movie, Mothra vs. Godzilla dwells a lot on the monster as a deadly menace to all Japan, so serious that the people must call on a force of pure good to combat him. The costume has been slimmed down to look more lean and ferocious, and the scenes of destruction are some of the most impressive of the original series. The film adopts a strong moral overtone, with the innocence and purity of Infant Island tainted by greedy and irresponsible civilized men who have poisoned the island with atomic tests. Kumayama's story is of a ruthless and irresponsible man who finds himself scammed, his greed leading to folly, and Mothra and the Shobijin must inevitably bring themselves to do the right thing to protect all life.

It's easy, then, to see, why the film remains a favorite among Godzilla fans; it uses the monster as a villain and also delivers a truly epic and satisfying battle between him and an exotic foe. This is not to say it's without its flaws- it's too repetitive for its own good at times, with a lot of busy work and spectacle drawn out for the sake of it. While scenes of crowds running for their lives and Godzilla shrugging off futile attacks by the military are part of the fun, other films in the series show Honda as capable of much tighter work.

The effects sequences show Eiji Tsubaraya continuing to develop and refine his techniques. There are still some rough patches- the shots of a puppet Godzilla head are dodgy as ever- but there are some truly spectacular parts as well, including an attempt by the military to destroy the monster by smothering him with electrified nets. It seems odd how a creature like Mothra could ever really attack Godzilla, but the battle is both ferocious and convincing. Composer Akira Ifukube gets to score Mothra for the first time, adding his own theme for the creature that has a nice mystical power.

Mothra vs. Godzilla may not be the best of the Sixties kaiju epics, but in some ways it helped set the tone and expectations for the series; mostly serious, but fantastic and colorful nonetheless, and not without its light and silly moments. Slow in places, especially near the opening, it ends up telling an oddly stirring and sincere story of idealism fighting against the corruption of the modern world. This would be Godzilla's last pure villain role for a while (twenty years to be exact), but he makes the most of it.

Written by Shinichi Sekizawa
Directed by Ishiro Honda

Grade: B+

Frasierquest 4.12: Death and the Dog

2011-10-20T09:31:00.001-05:00

Dr. Arnold Shaw: What do you imagine would be human Eddie's favorite cologne?

Martin: Aqua Velva. It's a little strong but I think he can pull it off.

Daphne: Grey Flannel. I don't know why!

Frasier: Cologne? Well, actually I think he would prefer toilet water!

Niles: By the way, same answer for favorite beverage!

Wisdom comes from strange places. Sitcom episodes are rarely known for it, but Frasier's just a little more thoughtful than the average, and while I'm not sure anything it's ever said would qualify as philosophically profound, "Death and the Dog" casts a familiar problem in an interesting light. Sometimes we just feel bad for no reason, and sometimes we look for reasons to feel bad. The fragile nature of our emotional states is the subject for an episode that's hilarious, poignant, and yeah, kind of insightful.

The story is told to us in flashback as Frasier, having only one caller, tries to assist that caller with her sudden unanticipated bout of depression. In his flashback, Eddie is suffering from a full blown doggie funk, listless and prone to limping around. The vets say he's physically fine, so Martin decides to call in a dog psychiatrist (played by Zeljko Ivanek). Frasier and Niles have a lot of fun taking easy shots at Dr. Arnold Shaw's vocation, but in the end he delivers an unsettling diagnosis- Eddie is depressed because someone in the house is passing their depression onto him. As the gang sit around and think of reasons they might be sadder than they know, pretty soon they're depressed too.

The biggest laughs of the episode come from Frasier and Niles' reaction to the mere concept of a dog psychiatrist, as well as the odd questions Dr. Shaw ends up asking. It's a particularly rich kind of low-hanging fruit; we know that they can't resist making jokes, and even the very easy and obvious ones are funny because of the great joy taken in them. There are some doozies, I gotta say.

The overall motion of the episode is from the absurd to the sublime. We go from the heights of silly jokes to the recognition by all the show's ensemble (Roz thankfully included for once) that they're not that happy, that they're plagued with doubts, that their lives aren't quite what they should be, and that death is never far from their minds. But it's not that these are the most wretched souls in the world; the implication is we all can feel this way. We're all aware that we're one day going to die, we're all aware of the imperfections and shortcomings of our lives, and it just takes that examination to throw us into a funk. (It must be mentioned, of course, that the episode doesn't begin to deal with true clinical depression, a problem of brain chemistry that's less easily confronted in dramatic form.)

But of course, this is not a show to leave its characters mired in existential ennui. They, and we, receive a reprieve, and with it a certain revelation. Like a lot of animals, Eddie included, we're prone to major emotional swings based on minor stimuli, which means that while we can easily talk ourselves into a bad state, a favorite toy or simple pleasure, applied at the right moment, can pull us out. Obviously we can't be happy all the time, but that doesn't mean misery is our default state.

"Death and the Dog" may not be the final word on human emotion, but it paints a surprisingly complex picture of how our circumstances and our choices both affect our moods. It's one of the show's landmarks, an episode that balances humor with poignant and thoughtful scenes, and shortchanges neither the jokes nor the emotion. Eddie's mostly been used for visual gags and moments of cuteness, but after this episode it's impossible to imagine the show without him.

Guest Caller: Patty Duke as Alice

Written by Suzanne Martin
Directed by James Burrows

Aired February 11, 1997

Daphne: If Eddie were one of the Beatles, I think he'd be George. I don't know why!

Monsterthon: Gamera vs. Guiron

2011-10-17T15:15:00.003-05:00

Gamera vs. Guiron is a movie I've seen many times via Mystery Science Theater 3000, so I was looking forward to seeing the full and proper version of it. Surprisingly it's not that different an experience, even in Japanese- the film doesn't seem like it was altered much for American release, and it's short enough that it didn't need to be cut down too much in order to be riffed on. Like the film before it, it's a slight, microbudgeted affair, but seems to wear it a little better. You really have to treat it as a kids' movie, and it appeals to a child's sense of wonder even if it is goofy as all get-out.

The movie focuses on two boys, Akio (Nobuhiro Kajima) and Tom (Christopher Murphy), who see a spaceship land in the woods one night. The next day they venture out and find it abandoned, with the hatch open, and climb right in. The ship, on autopilot, closes up and takes them off into space. They end up on a distant "star" (it's a planet, but even the subtitles get it wrong) called Terra, which is apparently on the same orbit as Earth but on the other side of the sun. It's a desolate and surrealist landscape inhabited by two hot space girls (Hiroko Kai and Reiko Kasahara) and their pet monster Guiron, who fends off attacking space Gyaoses. The two spacewomen act friendly towards the boys and want to come with them back to Earth, but what they don't tell them is that they plan to eat them on the way. It's up to Gamera to rush towards the new planet to save the children, but he has to defeat Guiron to do it.

This is a very small-scale film. While we get some scenes with scientists and reporters milling around as they are wont to do in kaiju flicks, the bulk of the action revolves around the four people inhabiting the entire planet of Terra (two of which are visitors). It's easy to draw a line from the previous movie, which was also about two adventurous young boys (one Japanese, one American) running afoul of an alien plot, and this film outdoes it for economy by removing the action from Earth, eliminating the need for costly scenes of cities being destroyed.

Which is not to say the film is without its wonders- indeed, it makes pretty good use of what were probably limited resources. The planet of Terra is mostly represented by one giant miniature set, with a weird deserted alien city sitting among craggy rocks. It's a neat visual, and a great playground for the monsters, and having all the kaiju action take place in outer space is something that Toho never got around to so there's a certain novelty. The sets for the human characters are a step up on the last installment as well, and though there is some re-use of footage from earlier films, it's not nearly as egregious.

Which brings me to Guiron himself, who is a giant knife. Frankly I'm not even sure this is the weirdest monster Gamera has ever faced, but he's up there, and in addition to his ability to cut through a tin can as easily as a tomato, he can throw giant ninja stars. Guiron's battle with an invading Space Gyaos results in some full-on monster dismemberment, ending with the knife-creature giving a guttural laugh as he slices his fallen foe into cold cuts. It's not quite as horrific as it sounds, but it's out there.

Ultimately this film compensates for its budgetary shortcomings by playing to a child's mentality. The story introduces a bunch of things that, if you're under 10, are really nifty, and uses broad strokes to establish the aliens as bad (they eat children!) and Gamera as good. Not a lot of time is spent trying to explain things in rational terms, and this is ultimately for the best, because it means the story moves too fast for any holes in the story to become too obvious.

So while fully appreciating Gamera vs. Guiron may require looking at it through younger eyes, there are definitely rewards for doing so. It's not so much turning off your brain as it is appreciating what it's trying to be. There's something impressive about how the Gamera series managed to amble along on good cheer, small amounts of money, and wild crazy monsters. This one may be a trifle, but it's a tasty enough one.

Written by Nisan Takahashi
Directed by Noriaki Yuasa

Grade: B

The Comics Page: Dungeons & Dragons: Shadowplague

2011-10-13T10:07:00.001-05:00

I'm not going to be the first person singing the praises of the new Dungeons & Dragons comic, but it's worth adding to the chorus. John Rogers (of Blue Beetle and Leverage fame) and Andrea DiVito have managed to be the first people to successfully translate the tabletop fantasy game into a fun action comic. Shadowplague is a nice hardbound collection of the first major arc, and if you, like me, have been having trouble following the monthly issues, it's a great way to catch up.

The comic revolves around an adventuring party led by fighter Adric Fell (a name which sounds too often like a sentence), a swordsman with a knack for quickly-drawn-up plans. One night in a tavern (of course), the crew are suddenly attacked by zombies, who then suddenly stop being zombies just in time for Adric and his friends to get arrested for murder. Before they can get convicted or punished, this strange zombification starts taking hold of other people in the city, leading Tisha, the party's demon-born warlock. to conclude that a portal has been reactivated between this world and the evil-tainted Shadowfell. Escaping captivity, the gang first set off in pursuit of a doppleganger who's using an ancient dwarven artifact to open the breach between two worlds, and eventually have to infiltrate the ancient forge in which it was made, which now seems to be back to work.

Rogers has a gift for matching character to action; we don't learn a lot about the backgrounds of most of the adventurers, but their personalities get well established in the course of dodging traps and fighting monsters. Bree Three-Hands, the party's halfling rogue, thinks in psuedo-math as she looks to free everyone from a flooding room; Khal, the dwarf knight, gets plenty of opportunities to show his compassion and non-judgmental nature underneath a typically gruff demeanor, and Adric's narration reveals how little he's thinking things through. The pace and tone is somewhat reminiscent of Rogers' series Leverage, only more violent and with undead monsters; the action is fast, good-humored, and relentless.

Andrea Di Vito's art is consistently eye-catching, drawing on the art style of the game's latest edition but simplifying it into more dynamic comic book action. When you consider how much of the story involves the characters fighting and running from certain doom, it's surprising how legible it all remains- the major peril with action in comic books is always keeping it coherent without having the element of motion to tie a scene together.

The collection also comes with two short D&D adventure modules adapting the actions of the first few issues. It would have been nice to see stats for the main characters, but these were bonus content to start with so there's not a lot to complain about there. Shadowplague really is just the first chapter of the story, and it stops just as you're wanting more. I hope this comic has a good long run, because there's clearly a lot of untapped potential here.

Grade: A-

Monsterthon 2011: King Kong vs. Godzilla

2011-10-07T09:34:00.002-05:00

This October is gonna be another month of monsters, and I'm going to concentrate on our friends the kaiju. They're not often scary, though they are awesome, and I may throw in some traditional horror stuff as time permits.

King Kong vs. Godzilla is a tough film to review because, like the original Godzilla, it exists in two versions, but with a much larger gap in quality between them. What's more, the "proper" version of the movie, the original Japanese release, is going to be inaccessible to most readers of this blog; there is no legal English-language release of it, nor is there likely to be anytime soon owing to complicated legal issues. This is the 21st century, though, so… well, I'll let you do the searching.

In any case, this is a lot of fun. Godzilla returned after a 7-year hiatus to battle the original icon of giant movie monsters in a big splashy color Tohoscope production to commemorate the studio's thirtieth anniversary, and not only did the filmmakers deliver the spectacle, they packed in a sly, satiric attitude and some jabs at the world of advertising and publicity. While Godzilla's original rampage was deadly serious business, and the follow-up a straightforward sci-fi thriller, King Kong vs. Godzilla shows Ishiro Honda, Eiji Tsubaraya, and company loosening up and having a little fun with their larger-than-life superstars.

The film, oddly enough, revolves around the advertising department of Pacific Pharmaceuticals, who are sponsoring a very boring science show and desperately need more and better publicity. When a scientist who has discovered a narcotic berry on remote Farou Island reveals that the islanders of the region worship a mighty thunder god, the high strung Mr. Tako (Ichiro Arishima) sends two of his best men on an expedition to find the beast. While this is happening, Godzilla breaks free from the icy prison he was contained in at the end of his last outing and goes on a rampage in the north of Japan. The adventurers have discovered the Farou Island monster, the giant ape King Kong, and Tako sees an opportunity for publicity by having Kong brought over to fight Godzilla. The Japanese port authority objects, but Kong escapes the company's attempts at containment and soon enough is facing off against the scaly menace.

This project has a rather checkered history; Willis O'Brien, who animated King Kong back in '33, had an idea for a sequel with the monster fighting a new creation of Frankenstein, a concept which later transformed into his battling a dinosaur like creature called the Ginko. Producer John Beck bought O'Brien's story and sold it to Toho, and the aging animator was left out of the loop as Kong now fought Japan's monster icon, using men in suits instead of stop motion. O'Brien died shortly before the film's US release and American monster fans looked on the Japanese effort as a kind of blasphemy, a perception which still lingers on in Kong fandom.

The other problem is that Beck and Universal-International severely recut this movie, and managed to do a much worse job of it than had been done on the first two Godzilla films. A number of scenes were cut and reduced with no consistent pattern other than to make the movie shorter. While the Japanese version is a little on the long side, any gains made in cutting it down were offset by the addition of a number of bland expository sequences featuring MIchael Keith as Eric Carter, an international news reporter who doles out great lumps of plot exposition as well as stuff we didn't really care about anyway (as in a segment with Harry Holcombe as a scientist who explains Godzilla's biology using a children's picture book on dinosaurs.) Worse, the dubbing turns one of the characters into an unfunny buffoon and generally makes the comedy very broad and cartoonish, turning the tone more towards outright camp than anything else. (And because why not, much of Akira Ifukube's score was replaced with stock Universal music.)

The humor in the original version is not exactly subtle, but there's a cleverness to it that indicates the filmmakers were starting to play around with the genre itself. The human action in the film revolves almost entirely around publicity and advertising, with the traditional military and science figures playing strictly supporting roles. Tako loves the idea of using Kong as a challenge to Godzilla and promoting it like a wrestling match, at one point getting into an argument with bystanders over who is stronger. There's some slightly uncomfortable material involving "natives" who are clearly Japanese people in blackface, but the explorers winning the tribe over with portable radios and cigarettes is a nice touch. There's none of the truly heavy drama of earlier Godzilla films; characters are imperiled in a couple of scenes but for the most part the humans are insignificant, comic in their failed attempts to herd or control the creatures.

This is the first film where Godzilla and Kong appear in color, and while the effects are mostly up to Tsubaraya's high standards (some very bad traveling mattes notwithstanding), Kong himself doesn't fare too well. The suit is ropey, raggedy, with floppy elongated arms and an ashen face that looks like death warmed over. That having been said, suit actor Shoichi Hirose brings a lot of nice body language to the big ape, taking advantage of his more human-like nature to give him some nice comic reactions and subtle gestures. Godzilla has an excellent look, though, very close to the old-fashioned concept of a dinosaurs as slow cold-blooded creatures.

The bout between the two monsters delivers what it promises. It's booked like a wrestling match, with both the participants made to look strong (a long-standing rumor had it that Godzilla wins in the Japanese version and Kong in the U.S., but the ending is mostly identical.) Kong drawing strength from lightning and even gaining electrical powers near the end is an odd touch, but in the film at least he's associated with the Farou Island thunderclouds so it's not completely random.

In its original form, King Kong vs. Godzilla is an extremely satisfying match. Like most of Toho's sci-fi/fantasy spectaculars from this period it's colorful and imaginative, and has a light self-aware touch that helps transform Godzilla himself into a company icon, legitimized by going the distance with a legend. The American version loses a lot of the original's energy and broadens the comedy to make it seem like pointless wackiness, but it does still deliver what it promises.

Unfortunately, you the viewer will likely have a hard time seeing the original version. Universal's deal gives them the right to distribute their version of King Kong vs. Godzilla, and explicitly not the Japanese cut. Toho tries not to undercut its international partners by offering foreign language versions on its own, so the only way to see the Japanese version legally is without any subtitles. (Also Japanese DVDs tend to be very expensive.) Neither side has, as yet, any particular reason to want to come to terms and arrange for the full cut to be released subtitled, so the only way people like you and me can see it is through less than legal means. In general I recommend people pay for their media consumption, but I can't tell you what to do.

So you see my problem. Well, the link to the official R1 DVD of the US cut is up top, and it is a nice looking disc of what is still basically a fun monster movie. I own it myself. The other version is… out there. The Club waives all responsibility.

Based (uncredited) on a concept by Willis O'Brien, John Beck, and George Worthing Yates
Screenplay by Shinichi Sekizawa, and in the US by Bruce Howard and Paul Mason
Directed by Ishiro Honda

Grade: A- (Japanese), C+ (U.S.)

Frasierquest 4.11: Three Days of the Condo

2011-10-03T09:32:00.003-05:00

Martin: Oh hi there, Mrs. Langer!

Langer: Ms.

Martin: Oh, right, Ms… (elevator doors close)… ssserable old cow.

A man's home is his castle, only it's never that simple. "Three Days of the Condo" is an interesting foray into the politics of condos, neighborhood associations, and other petty tyrannies. It's the sort of thing you'd expect Frasier to be really good at, but it wouldn't be much of a show if he did everything right. This is a broad misadventure of an episode, one that feels not terribly important to anyone involved, but, well, we're talking about a condo board.

The troubles begin when Frasier attaches an antique Japanese knocker to the door of his apartment. This, as it happens, falls afoul of the condo board's regulations, as decided by its cruel president Ms. Langer (Dana Ivey). Frasier makes an impassioned if largely pointless speech at the next meeting, and is contacted by the resistance, a shadowy group of secret plotters whose spokesperson, unfortunately, has a personalized nameplate and stationary and is also quite obviously Austin Pendleton. (A common mistake.) The resistance wants Frasier to run for board president, and so he does.

Dad and Sherry are a major presence in this episode, more than you'd expect seeing as the latter doesn't really figure into the plot. Sherry is in the episode simply because she's Martin's girlfriend, which means that she's not only going to be here for a while, she's also going to be visible. It's a very realistic touch, having a character be there simply because they would be around.

The main story is played at just the right pitch. It's deliberately over-the-top in its use of political thriller imagery (Pendleton's character is obviously trying to be Deep Throat) in the context of a story about trying to install a door knocker, but it's not too far a leap; it's a widely held truth that the lower the stakes on something are, the more seriously people will take it. Ms. Langer is the kind of control-happy figure who makes rules for the sake of having rules, and we get a hint that the lure of power is starting to corrupt Frasier as well.

I'm not entirely satisfied with the climax, wherein Frasier misinterprets one of Ms. Langer's no-no slips so spectacularly he manages to make himself look in favor of indecent exposure (it's a long story) and is forced to cede the race in embarrassment. It's a bit of a downer because he is, for once, on the right side, and it's the kind of situational irony that could have been avoided had he spoken clearer or possibly looked closer at the slip itself. Of course, it doesn't really matter in the long run what rules the condo board has, or what Frasier can put on his door, so it's not a major flaw, and frankly, given his personality, more power is probably the last thing he should have.

So far Frasier is batting 0 for 2 in his ventures into the political world (though it is 1 for 3 if you count him helping Woody get elected to higher office in another series.) This isn't the last tangle he has with the condo board, which is good, because the deathly seriousness with which building and neighborhood "authorities" can take themselves is as good a target for deflation as Frasier's own pomposity. "Three Days of the Condo" is a funny and cleverly-put-together first stab at one of modern life's little stupidities.

No Guest Caller

Written by Michael B. Kaplan
Directed by David Lee

Aired January 21, 1997

Frasier: You know, I came down here expecting a fair hearing in the democratic tradition, but I see now that you are a tyrant, concerned more with the exercise of power than with justice! Well, fine, I will leave now, taking solace in the certain knowledge that in time, you, Ms. Langer, will join all tyrants on the ash heap of history!

Frasierquest 4.10: Liar! Liar!

2011-09-27T14:33:00.002-05:00

John Rajeski: How is Niles, anyway?

Frasier: Ah, he's, ah- he's abroad now.

John: Really? Woah, that musta hurt.

Are the SeaBees over already? Man, I didn't even get to make my predictions. This year the awards are disposed with off-screen as a starter for a less glamorous story about Frasier confronting an element of his past. "Liar! Liar!" is kind of odd. The episode focuses on something that Frasier did wrong years ago, and is unable to really fix, but he does his best. The structure is weird and we end in a way that's barely foreshadowed by the rest of the story, but it ends up being pretty funny so it's easy to let go. And Niles and Daphne's relationship takes an interesting turn.

After a defeat at the Seabees, Roz calls her grandma from Frasier's apartment to tell her she won. This prompts a debate among those present about whether it's ever acceptable to lie, and during the course of the conversation, Frasier and Niles reveal that they got out of their physical fitness exam at school by pulling a fire alarm and blaming it on the local bully, John Rajeski (Saul Stein). Martin is upset with them, since the bully ended up getting expelled, and Frasier decides to find out where John ended up and maybe come clean. He finds John in prison for passing a bad check, and John can, with some assistance, trace his life of crime back to being kicked out of Frasier's prep school. Rather than let John know what happened then, Frasier tries to help him indirectly, going to his wife (Carlene Watkins) to work on their marital problems. Her problems revolve around wanting a more exciting and dangerous sex life, and since her husband has been released and is on his way home, she's got plans for the doc.

The episode sets up its major premise explicitly; is lying ever acceptable? On the one hand, the lie that we follow through the story is clearly a bad one- it set a young man on a life of crime and all to get out of exercise. On the other hand, Frasier quickly decides that just telling John the truth won't solve anything (especially since John has a way of messing guys up.) When John's wife comes on to him, he ultimately has to hide in their apartment to get out with his limbs intact. Once again he has to weasel out of things rather than confront them head-on, so he's not entirely unsold on the "lying" bit.

Niles gets caught up in the lying business too, sort of. When he actually throws his back out, he happily accepts Daphne's offer of a lotion rubdown, only to discover it's the kind of lotion that goes on cold and turns into a raging inferno. So he tries to pretend it worked in order to avoid a second coat. It's an unusual twist on their normal shenanigans, and it ties into the episode's theme a bit, though "lying" is a broad category and applies to a lot of sitcom plots.

So the actual story for this ends up going all over the place, but there's a certain elegance in how it wraps up. Frasier does his best to try and get the couple to reconcile, and they sort of do, or at least reach a state of stable dysfunction. So in lieu of taking a strong moral stance on the lying issue, "Liar! Liar!" concludes that lies cause trouble but we do our best to muddle through. That's probably accurate.

No Guest Caller

Written by Chuck Ranberg & Anne Flett-Giordano
Directed by James Burrows

Aired January 14, 1997

Daphne: Just yesterday you reconciled that couple on the brink of divorce, and today, you helped Molly from Tacoma overcome her addiction to Swedes…

Frasier: That was sweets, not Swedes.

Daphne: I thought it was strange when you told her to limit herself to one or two after meals.

In Theaters: Drive

2011-09-23T14:19:00.003-05:00

Drive is a unique experience, and because of that it may not hang around theaters for long. It's basically a crime thriller done in the style of a film from the eighties, with neon-letter titles and a score reminiscent of Tangerine Dream. But in its spare beauty, deliberate pace, and moments of merciless brutality, it's not something you can easily peg as a genre piece or style emulation. This may be why it's having a polarizing effect on audiences, and why the people distributing it can't quite work out how to sell it. Most of the time we want a clear idea of what kind of movie we're going to see and what we're to expect from it, but if you can take Drive on its own terms and let it establish itself, it's a rich and compelling thing.

Ryan Gosling stars as a nameless stunt driver who works on movies, supervised by an old garage owner named Shannon (Bryan Cranston.) He's being prepped to become a racer on the stock car circuit, but in the mean time he's befriended his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who is raising a young boy alone. When the boy's father (Oscar Isaac) comes home from a stint in prison, he turns out to still have a lot of debts owed, and the protagonist- who had been growing very close to Irene- offers to help him with a small pawn shop heist to pay them off. This being a small-time heist in a movie, it ends in disaster, and the driver finds himself involved in something dangerous not only to himself but to Irene and her child.

This is a film that takes its time, and as a result we're never quite sure what genre it's approaching until it arrives there. The precredits sequence has the driver helping a couple of petty thugs, but there's a minimum of violence and sped- instead he very slowly and deliberately maneuvers them out of trouble. For a time it looks like it might be a very old-fashioned kind of drama, where a man has a dangerous profession but the conflict is his trying to reach a place of normalcy. But that quickly moves out of reach, and his conflict becomes one of survival. Even as the film becomes increasingly brutal, it retains a meditative, zenlike deliberateness, and this makes it more suspenseful, because we can never be sure when the next act of violence will erupt.

Adding to this near-mystic quality is the film's look, which is very carefully controlled. All sorts of colors and shades of light play on the characters- the familiar blue and orange predominate, but not gratuitously, and it's clear that in every scene both the director and cinematographer have thought very carefully about what the lights, colors, and focus are saying about the story. The action is swift and surprisingly gory, but also skillfully choreographed. It's another one of the film's "old fashioned" elements, with little of the absurd physics of modern car race and chase epics; it mostly reminds me of the messy, very solid violence of 2005's A History of Violence.

The film's minimalist qualities do make the characters distant; our driver obviously doesn't even have a name, and without a whole lot of dialogue the film is counting on the actors to fill in the blanks. And to be sure, it's an excellent cast; Gosling is a fascinatingly blank slate, his expression often impenetrable but always moving with deliberateness. Carey Mulligan is just inherently charming, and Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman do a fascinating double act as two small-time gangsters. Though the characterization is spare, it doesn't feel underwritten; for once we do actually see all we need, and there's a lot burbling under the surface of a given scene.

It's hard to say what overall point Drive is aiming for, or what it all means. It's about a man who lives apart from the world, attempts to connect with it, and is drawn into something ugly. That's about as far as I'm willing to go right now. But it's something so vibrant and intense that it doesn't have to explain everything about itself; it tells a simple story that's loaded with unexpressed emotions and powerful images. I'm not entirely sure what I saw, but it left me rattled.

Based on the book by James Sallis
Screenplay by Hossein Amini
Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn

Grade: A

Why You Should Watch Community

2011-09-22T14:59:00.001-05:00

Tonight at 8/7c is the third season premiere of NBC's highly underrated Community. The show has been a cult darling for most of its existence, though that hasn't translated into ratings or Emmys (seriously, nomination committee what is your problem.) This means I have the unenviable task of trying to get you to listen to why you should really give this a try, trust me, you'll love it, etc. Fan evangelizing is annoying, I know, and yes I'm going to get started on The Wire at some point, but the job of even an amateur blog critic is to call attention to these sorts of things, so hear me out.

Community focuses on a group of students at Greendale Community College who have formed a study group and reasonably tight friendship. Joel McHale stars as Jeff Winger, who was a highly respected lawyer before someone found out he'd faked his college degree. Jeff is the informal "leader" of the group as well as the star of the show- the reason for this is because, though he's often cynical and shallow, he's still a Hell of a talker and can often tie the group together just with his words. He got into the study group because of Britta (Gillian Jacobs), a woman whose beauty is matched only by her awkward attempts at coolness and insufferable political sensitivity. Annie (Allison Brie) is a young, idealistic, deeply repressed girl who is often the soul of the group. Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) is a middle-aged mother (formerly separated) and good Christian woman who can be polite and deferential to a fault. Troy (Donald Glover) is a former football player and frequent comic partner-in-crime with Abed (Danny Pudi), a probably autistic pop culture geek who views the world through the lens of television (and so often provides commentary on the show's own use of sitcom tropes.) Chevy Chase is Pierce Hawthorne, a rich, strange, bitter old man who quit the group at the end of last season, but is too helpless on his own for them to let him leave. We'll see what happens. And finally there's Ben Chang (Ken Jeong), who starts as a terrifying Spanish teacher but is downgraded to student when people find out he doesn't know anything.

So why is this show good? Well, it's a balance of brains and heart. This is a very clever show that pokes constantly at the genre boundaries of the single-camera sitcom, whether by doing note-perfect spoofs of other films and genres (an action-movie parody set during a paintball game, a stop-motion Christmas special) or working with the structures of the sitcom itself. (There's a "clip show" episode flashing back to episodes that never actually existed, a bottle episode set entirely in the study hall that Abed labels as a bottle episode, and an episode featuring Jack Black as the kind of annoying "new addition" to a sitcom cast that everyone hates.)

But it's not just about the parodies and the structural weirdness. This is a surprisingly warm and loving show; while the characters fight and insult each other as often as you'd expect, they are, deep down, friends who never stop caring about each other and trying to help each other. It's a show that earns its heart-tugging moments, and is willing to go into serious territory despite its weirdness. And the acting helps a lot: it's a very close and well-chosen ensemble, who clearly have a lot of actual rapport with each other. Not only is the main cast great (with Chase doing some of the best work of his career), but a number of recurring characters fill out the show's universe and make it feel like a real place- there's Jim Rash as a dean who loves dress-up, John Oliver as a sleazy school psychiatrist, and coming this season, John Goodman and Michael K. Williams as new professors.

Where to start? Well, tonight's premiere should be good unless they've had a total meltdown between seasons. The show took a few episodes to find its feet, but I was won over by the second episode in which Jeff and Pierce create the most ambitious Spanish class sketch known to man. I'd recommend catching up when you can anyway, because there's absolute gold in both seasons, from Modern Warfare (the aforementioned paintball episode) to Contemporary American Poultry (a Goodfellas spoof centered around cafeteria chicken strips), and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which is what it sounds like.

This is a show that deserves a wider audience, plain and simple. NBC have stuck with it rather admirably, but it's on against the super-popular Big Bang Theory (which I don't dislike at all, but I like this more), so it needs whatever help it can get. Give it a try tonight, rent the DVDs, see if it grabs you, and if it does, get the word out. It'd be a shame for class to end early.

Also, if it helps any demographically desirable young males make up their minds, Allison Brie is really, seriously hot.

Frasierquest 4.9: Dad Loves Sherry, The Boys Just Whine

2011-09-21T15:00:00.004-05:00

Niles: I didn't know Mae West had children!

And now things really get interesting for Martin Crane. He got a girlfriend last season, but not one we saw very much of. It's a shame that Jane Kaczmarek never got a lot to do on the series, but the arrival of Marsha Mason as Sherry Dempsey is something of a big deal. She looms large in this and next season as a force in the lives of the characters, becoming sort of a marker for this particular part of the show's history. In retrospect it's remarkable that the character worked at all, let alone was a welcome presence for as long as she was.

Frasier gets some bad news from Maureen (Kaczmarek again), who is planning to finally break it off with Martin and wants to do it as gently as possible. Martin, however, is secretly relieved when she dumps him, since he can now start dating Sherry (Mason), a waitress at McGinty's. Sherry is brassy, loud, and bawdy, and Frasier and Niles are more terrified by her than anything else. They don't want to tell Dad that they don't like her, but they don't want to spend time with her either, and with Niles having an awards dinner coming up, it seems like they can't keep their irritation bottled up forever.

One of the hardest things to do in fiction is to write an annoying character. People do it accidentally all the time, but if you're making a character irritating on purpose you have to balance how loud and in-your-face they are with what the audience will actually withstand. Sherry is helped by only having to be really annoying to Frasier and Niles- who are, shall we say, sensitive- while for the rest of us she's merely this side of a bit much. Marsha Mason manages to play her as larger than life without being shrill, and we get her in small enough doses that she isn't tiresome. Well, to me, anyway- it's a subjective area.

The episode repeats some of the themes of the last episode, as it again plays on how Frasier and Martin are men of very different tastes. That in itself isn't enough conflict for comedy, but Frasier and Niles not knowing how to tell their dad that they don't like his girlfriend (assuming they even should) turns it from simple disagreement to full awkwardness. Pretty soon we're headed towards more arguments and hurt feelings, and though Frasier and Niles may be unnecessarily harsh on Sherry, Martin's been guilty of the same thing when it comes to their loves.

Martin getting a girlfriend points up Niles and Frasier's lonesomeness (as well as Daphne's- apparently Marshall didn't quite work out, and she's still mooning over Joe.) The climactic argument leads inevitably to talk of Lilith and Maris, and then of the one Crane woman they could all agree on- Hester. It may simply be an issue of her death making them remember her at her best, but she's practically saintlike in their invocations of her.

As you might expect, the episode ends with the three making a promise to try a little harder to get used to each other's significant others. They pretty much don't succeed, judging by subsequent episodes, but it's a reminder of the difficulties of having friends and family. We all want to get along with people who are close to people who are close to us, but it's partly up to luck, and sometimes you just have to sit and listen to a few banjo solos.

No Guest Caller

Written by Joe Keenan
Directed by James Burrows
Aired January 7, 1997

Martin: Ah, spare me the Ivy League bull. There ain't a dame alive who wouldn't rather break a guy's heart than think she hadn't even made a dent in it. I may not have been to Harvard, but I have been to the College of Love.

Frasier: Apparently on a Spillane Fellowship!

The Tabletop: Space 1889: Red Sands

2011-09-17T16:48:00.003-05:00

I've long been in love with Space: 1889, the RPG that captured the spirit of Victorian science fiction long before anyone knew what "steampunk" was. The setting is one of my absolute favorites, thick with romance, mystery, wonder, and morally ambiguous colonialism. The system I'm not quite as devoted to (though I don't think it's bad), and while Heliograph Incorporated has been doing the Lord's work keeping the original game in print, Space: 1889: Red Sands, a setting book for Savage Worlds, has the promise of updating the classic world with a more modern, streamlined rules set. The two prove to be a good match, and while the book has a few shortcomings and doesn't quite capture all the things that made me love the original game, it's a good translation of the setting with some new elements that open up gameplay quite a lot.

The setting is based on the premise that Thomas Edison invented a form of space travel in 1870, with ether propellers taking ships to the planets of the inner solar system, which happened to be mostly inhabited. Earth's major colonial powers took advantage of the opportunity to expand their empires, setting up bases on the new worlds and making the Great Game of political intrigue even more complicated. While the original game limited PCs to human adventurers, and generally presumed they'd be loyal subjects of the British Empire (with options for anarchists and criminals), Red Sands gives us the opportunity to play noble or savage Martians and Venusian lizard men (no Selenites, though, but I'll get to that later.)

The thing tying all characters together is that they're all members of the British Association's Explorer's Society. It's a group dedicated to discovery, advancing knowledge, and also saving the civilized worlds from the predations of evil secret societies. This is where some of the new stuff comes in- a mysterious cult called the Brotherhood of Luxor has arisen, and while the Explorer's Society doesn't know a lot about it, they know they're up to no good.

The conflict between the Explorer's Society and Brotherhood of Luxor does two things. First, it sets up the Red Sands campaign, a serialized adventure taking up a chapter, which takes the players all over the inner planets fighting a sinister conspiracy. It also alleviates one element of the setting that people may have a problem with- nowadays we generally view old-school imperialism as a Bad Thing, what with our valuing self-determination and not treating other peoples as disadvantaged savages and so on. Frank Chadwick's original game showed some understanding of the messy complexities of the British Empire and Victorian values, but it was hard to really push against those things, and characters were locked in a "colonizer" role by default. Now the characters are not only not necessarily the colonizers, they're not necessarily fighting for the Empire or Queen Vic- they're united by a more palatable, more universal love of adventure and dislike of diabolical masterminds.

The campaign itself is fairly interesting, mirroring the serialized adventures in other Savage Worlds setting books. It has a darker, grittier tone than most of the published material for the original game, and it may be worth double checking the lethality of some elements, but it's a compelling story and likely won't require a GM to do any more tweaking than he or she wants to. There are also a number of shorter, self-contained "Savage Tales" plot hooks, and a nice random adventure generator system to spark ideas.

There's a good amount of setting information, though space concerns mean you may want to turn to some of Heliograph's reprints to pick up on details. However, there are problems I do have with Red Sands' presentation of the setting. As the name implies, the central campaign- and so much of the material- is very Mars-centric, and this is a problem the original game had in terms of the supplements it put out before the line was canceled. More on the lizard men and dinosaurs of Venus would have been welcome, and there's very little information on the moon; the insectoid Selenites aren't even statted up anywhere. Only one of the Savage Tales plots takes place on the moon, and that doesn't involve the Selenites, rather dealing with the vanished Vulcan culture. I had hoped at first that Pinnacle planned to deal more with the other worlds in future books, but I've not heard much on that front. So if you really want to explore all the Many Worlds you may have to do a few conversions yourself.

Though Space: 1889's original rules system was a little clunky and unfocused, I am glad that the Savage Worlds conversion preserves something of its funky, fiddly Invention system that lets you create everything from a more efficient ether propeller to a goddamn lightning cannon, as well as rules for building your own ether flyer (which any good group should do, in my humble opinion.) Converting characters over should be no problem, and of course Savage Worlds was designed for pulpy action-adventure so it fits the setting quite well.

I'm not entirely satisfied with the book, but this may be because I'm applying high standards to the treatment of one of my favorite settings ever. It's definitely focused a bit more on savage adventure than on the wonder of discovery, but the latter isn't shortchanged. I do think the emphasis on Mars represents a missed opportunity to correct the same imbalance in the original line, which was discontinued before it could begin to focus elsewhere. And I'm still nonplussed about the Selenites (they should be in the errata or something.) Still, I can't argue against this being a successful translation of the setting to a new system, and not only is the change in mechanics is for the better, but Red Sands opens up the setting and adds quite a few new possibilities for adventure. It's good enough that I want to see more.

Grade: B+

(Note: this review or something like it should be up on RPG.net later. Since this site gets less traffic I figure I'd give you a sneak preview.)

Frasierquest 4.8: Our Father Whose Art Ain't Heaven

2011-09-10T12:51:00.002-05:00

Frasier: Honestly, Niles, by calling her so many times you've given her all the power. You're much better off coming from a position of strength.

Niles: Don't pour that sherry on your shirt - it will stain.

Frasier: What?

Niles: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this was the portion of the afternoon where we gave each other patently obvious advice.

Episodes revolving around Frasier's relationship with his dad inevitably are about how fundamentally different the two are, and artistic taste is one particularly rich area of distance. As strong as family bonds and inherited traits may be, nothing's trickier to figure than what other people like. In this episode Martin learns the hard way that he doesn't know his sons' tastes, but it's an opportunity for him and for Frasier to discover what values they actually share.

When Daphne says she's ready to try her hand at sheep's head stew, the Crane men suddenly realize they have reservations at Le Cigar Volant, the local classy French bistro. Martin wants to pay for dinner since it's his turn, which prompts the Crane boys to order light- he notices and an argument erupts. Later, Martin tries to make amends by actually buying them something he's sure they'll like- a painting from the restaurant that Frasier had complimented earlier. Of course, Frasier had only done so in order to get a table, and wants nothing to do with this garish rendition of bovine violence, but he doesn't want to tell Dad that.

First things first, I have to congratulate the show's art department on the works of Cordoba. The painting Martin buys is garish and ugly, but just polished enough that you can see why he's convinced Frasier actually likes it. If I knew a little more about art I might be able to confirm my suspicion that they're lampooning a certain artist or style, but you see art like this in a lot of places. (Though what's a French restaurant doing with a bunch of bullfighting pictures? No wonder Martin was able to buy one the next day.)

The episode gives us a good opportunity to look at how far Frasier and Martin's relationship has developed. Martin clearly wants his sons to be happy and to do right by them, but he's so insistent on doing the right thing that he becomes belligerent about it. Frasier, meanwhile, thinks he's walking on eggshells, probably because he's already offended his father by not letting him pay for dinner. They're not really opposed to each other in this story, but they don't feel easy being honest and open with each other and that creates conflict where none should exist.

A subplot revolving around people deserting Niles' party for one Maris is holding that same date is an indicator of how things are going for him, i.e. poorly. Niles isn't entirely disentangled from her, and the power she has over his social circles is yet another snare she uses to keep him close. Meanwhile, Daphne is dating again- someone named Marshall, whom I'm not sure we ever meet- and Roz is on hand to offer her own story of unwanted gifts, this time in hippo form.

This is a fairly straightforward episode, as most of the ones revolving around the show's father/son dynamic are; the conflict is easy to see, and it's a question of getting two very stubborn people to come around. But it's still rewarding to see how well Martin and Frasier's relationship is handled after all these years, and how it addresses the relatively normal, low-key problems families have. The resolution is especially sweet, and shows how silly fussing over the details of reciprocation can be. This is an episode that goes back to the show's roots, and finds there's still plenty there.

Guest Caller: John Cusack as Greg

Written by Michael B. Kaplan
Directed by Jeff Melman
Aired December 9, 1996

Martin: You're eating light? All the way over here you had the same look on your face that Eddie gets when he hears the can opener.

Random Movie Report #95: Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God

2011-08-30T09:29:00.003-05:00

A long time ago, there was a movie version of Dungeons & Dragons, and it was pretty terrible. As I wrote at length for the Agony Booth back when they still did text recaps, it was a dull, unimaginative quest through clunky exposition with the only reward being watching Jeremy Irons devour every last scrap of the set. Somehow it did well enough to merit a direct-to-video sequel, and astonishingly, not only is it not terrible, not only is it actually kind of fun and in keeping with the spirit of the game, but it's actually good. Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God doesn't try to be much more than a cheesy sword & sorcery picture, the sort of thing that Syfy airs regularly, but it tries hard within that framework. With only a tenuous connection to its predecessor it manages to do just about everything better.

The hero of the film is Berek (Mark Dymond), a former adventurer who discovers that an ancient dragon god is slumbering beneath a local mountain, waiting to be released. Doing some research, his magic-user wife Melora (Clemency Burton-Hill) discovers that an undead villain named Damodar (Bruce Payne, returning from the original) has located a magic orb which can be used to release the dragon- and that he intends to do so, in hopes that he can rule over what's left of the world when his scaly partner is done with it. Melora is struck ill by her divinations, and Berek gathers a band of adventurers- a barbarian (Ellie Chidzley), a thief (Tim Stern), a cleric (Steven Elder), and an elven wizard (Lucy Gaskell)- to travel to an ancient ruin and track down Damodar before he can unleash evil on the kingdom.

All of this is really just a prelude for the action, and rushed through efficiently as a result. If a few details get lost in the process, it's not a big deal because it's easy to follow the "bad guy wants to do bad thing, heroes must stop him" thread. This is, on balance, a good thing; unlike its predecessor, the picture delivers what it promises, packing plenty of action and incident into its running time. The key to low-budget filmmaking is the efficient use of resources, and while you can see the corners that have been cut now and again, they manage a few impressive CGI monsters and good-enough-for-cable production values.

A real effort to be true to the game has been made here, which is impressive considering that Dungeons & Dragons doesn't even have a fixed setting or characters (the makers of the Monopoly movie would be wise to take note). We have your standard adventuring party, not defined much beyond their class stereotypes but likable nonetheless, lairs and tombs filled with traps and treasure, a few familiar monsters, and even a plot point hinging on the differences between "arcane" and "divine" magic. Fortunately the emphasis is not on the grognardy details but on the general "band of heroes in a dangerous land" territory that should be familiar to anyone- sure, the nerds will get the most satisfaction from it, but it's not exactly impenetrable.

Despite all the in-jokes and a generally unpretentious tone, Wrath of the Dragon God does manage a genuine sense of danger and drama. One of the party is killed about midway through, making it look like all of them are at risk, and the dungeoneering is played parallel to Melora and the mage council's attempts to get in touch with the elder gods who imprisoned the dragon in the first place; we're constantly reminded of her encroaching curse, which threatens to turn her into an undead abomination like Damodar. She's a nice character, well-played, and it's not clear if she's going to make it.

So against all odds, despite specifically not aiming much higher than B-movie fare, Wrath of the Dragon God genuinely works. It captures some of the hack-and-slash feel of the tabletop game without getting bogged down in geek minutiae, and it has just enough heart and regard for its characters to make one want to see how it turns out. In a just world this would have gotten the theatrical release, but then again, it makes for a perfect TV matinee.

Written by Robert Kimmel, Gerry Lively, and Brian Rudnick
Directed by Gerry Lively

Grade: B

Frasierquest 4.7: A Lilith Thanksgiving

2011-08-29T09:40:00.002-05:00

Frasier (on phone): Hello? Yes, Lilith. Yes, Lilith. Yes, Lilith.

Martin: Gee, it's like they're still married

Thanksgiving already? The gap between the last two episodes was pretty big (I think this was due to Grammer's absence, or else NBC had baseball), but it's a shock to be this far along. November sweeps means it's time for Lilith to return as well, in an episode that takes us out of Seattle but is still within the recognizable territory of high-class farce. Usually at odds, Frasier and Lilith team up to make bigger idiots of themselves together than they could ever be on their own.

Frasier, Niles, and Martin are all planning to take Frederick (and Lilith) to a rustic cabin for Thanksgiving (well, it's Niles', so it's not too rustic.) However, Frasier discovers that Frederick is a candidate for the prestigious Marbury Academy, and decides to move the celebration to Boston, so that he and Lilith can make sure their son gets in. To this end they visit with Dr. Campbell (Paxton Whitehead), the head of the school, and do their best bootlicking; but after their visit, they decide they weren't clear enough on some points, and go back to try and clarify. The second meeting doesn't go well, which means they have to go back and try again, and again. In the meantime, Martin and Niles are looking after Frederick, and, well, it starts when Martin tries to teach him to play catch and goes downhill from there.

Not having raised children myself (and not being terribly rich), I can't speak to the authenticity of Frasier and Lilith's conflict. The idea that a child's fate can be sealed as early as grade school never made sense to me, but it is something parents make a fuss over when they don't have enough actual problems to worry about, and it's something that Frasier and Lilith would totally do. Enrollment in ivy-league elementary schools comes up a lot as a plot point when television writers want to show status and overparenting gone mad, and both our protagonists are known for that. Lilith's often the "sane" one in her Frasier appearances, so it's fun to see her being just as unreasonable as her ex-husband.

Both she and Frasier suffer from perfectionism, so it makes total sense that their problems in this episode stem from an unwillingness to leave well enough alone. It's almost symbolic when Frasier tries to tug off a stray thread from his jacket, only to find that he's unraveling the pattern on one of Dr. Campbell's chairs. They just can't stop pulling. Their desperation builds beautifully, culminating in a brutal intrusion on Dr. Campbell's Thanksgiving dinner. (The scene is also notable for an early appearance by Jane Lynch, almost unrecognizable.)

A similar escalation occurs when Martin and Niles try to babysit Frederick (the first appearance by Trevor Einhorn in the role, which he'd play through the rest of the series.) In theory a small child being repeatedly accidentally injured by his caregivers is not funny at all, but Frederick's blasé acceptance of whatever happens to him is hilarious and contrasts nicely with Martin and Niles' panicked incompetence. (There's also a brief mention by Daphne that she's spending the holiday with her transvestite uncle Jackie, who is also apparently a minister, and I can't tell you how disappointed I am that we never meet this guy.)

"A Lilith Thanksgiving" ends on a weirdly triumphant note, and it's made all the better for how Frasier and Lilith handle it. They care more about the welfare of their son than they do about being liked or even tolerated, and that's admirable, even if their zeal blinds them to Frederick's increasing number of injuries. The episode's parallel action and escalating absurdity makes for some great laughs, and it's a worthy visit with Frasier's inescapable ex.

No Guest Caller

Written by Chuck Ranberg & Anne-Flett Giordano
Directed by Jeff Melman
Aired November 26, 1996

Niles: Oh, just a little depressed. It's my first Thanksgiving without Maris.

Martin: Oh, yeah, I know, son. It's hard.

Niles: Do you remember the year I plopped that big wedge of pumpkin pie in front of her, and we all laughed? Then I put a big scoop of whipped cream on top of it and we laughed some more! Then her eyes welled up with tears and we all knew it was time to stop.

Random Movie Report #94: Gamera Vs. Viras

2011-08-23T09:22:00.003-05:00

Inspired by the nigh-miraculous release of the Gamera episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 recently, I've decided to restart my look at the giant turtle's original hits. Gamera vs. Viras avoided the gaze of the Satellite of Love, but it's worth noting for the shift it marks in the series. This is when the goofiness really started to set in, and though it's weird to talk about the Gamera movies of all things getting "more childish", the filmmakers have toned down the darker parts of earlier movies. Not that this is a problem; the film's only major flaw comes down to cheapness rather than kiddie appeal. That flaws kind of a big one, but there's still some fun to be had here.

The movie starts off with a bang as Gamera, flying through space as is his wont, destroys a spaceship from the Viras system which is preparing to invade Earth. Now realizing that Earth is protected, Viras sends another ship, with orders to target Gamera and see how he can be disposed of. The ship manages to snare Gamera and, after probing his mind, realizes his great weakness is that he is the friend to Earth's children. And so the aliens kidnap two boy scouts, Masao (Toru Takatsuka) and Jim (Kurl Crane), and inform Gamera via telepathy that they will kill the children if he doesn't obey them. While Masao and Jim explore the alien ship and try to evade their captors, the aliens plant a mind control device on Gamera, forcing him to go back to his old city-destroying ways.

While there is an actual enemy monster Gamera ends up fighting, the film deviates from the formula a little by not focusing on him until the final battle. Before then, the emphasis is on the Viras spaceship and its attempts to kill or control Gamera, and the kids' attempts to stop the aliens. The aliens and their ship owe a lot to the same colorful, jazzy 60s aesthetic that pervaded Toho's Invasion of Astro-Monster, and the film never steps into outright horror the way the previous installment threatened to. You never get the sense that the kids are truly in danger, and they have a surprising amount of autonomy so long as they don't threaten the ship or its inhabitants. This isn't a bad thing, but it's a bit of kiddie movie logic that you have to accept.

Unfortunately, the series' low budget was felt rather strongly in this film, and it struggles to reach a proper feature length. Seemingly ten to twenty minutes are spent on the spaceship's mind-probe of Gamera, which translates into a lengthy montage of the monster's exploits from three previous movies. It's kaiju action, and I shouldn't complain, but it's clearly padding. It gets worse, though, when Gamera goes on his alien-ordered rampage, which consists entirely of stock footage from the first and second films, the first still in glorious black and white with only traces of color tinting. It's really shameless, even in comparison to what some 70s kaiju films would end up doing to save money.

While all this very nearly ruins the picture, it's saved by a nice atmosphere and an entertaining finish. The climax hinges on a particularly contrived bit of kiddie movie logic, but then, this is a kiddie movie. The main event is a good one- though Viras the monster doesn't have as many tricks as Gamera's other foes, he can still pack a wallop, and there's some truly disturbing kaiju violence, including one particular scene that Gamera by all rights shouldn't survive. But then, he is Gamera.

Gamera vs. Viras (sometimes circulated under the title Destroy All Planets) is a weaker entry than its predecessors, but still delivers some quality entertainment. The film takes the series on a turn towards the stars and towards bright, fun adventure, and it's hard to find much fault with that approach, at least as it relates to a giant jet-powered turtle who breathes fire. I think we can all agree that that's really neat.

Written by Nisan Takahashi
Directed by Noriaki Yuasa

Grade: B-

In Theaters: Glee: The 3D Concert Movie

2011-08-19T14:31:00.002-05:00

I think I’ve worked out why Glee: The 3D Concert Movie isn’t doing well. Though the show is still popular despite a backlash in some quarters, for a good portion of its audience it’s enough of a guilty pleasure that they wouldn’t want to be seen in public buying tickets to a film of a stage revue. I’m probably projecting my own self-consciousness here, though. Going to see this was like going to see one of the Human Centipede movies- I bought the ticket at an electronic kiosk and did my best to remain inconspicuous as I walked to the theater. I’m not a proud man but the film, in its earnest and celebratory embrace of Gleemania, just seems to invite brickbats. But if you’re still Gleek and proud, it’s actually a fun experience: inessential, but pleasant fanservice that, despite some uneven choices in presentation, contains a lot of fairly talented individuals giving good performances.

The film records a concert from the live tour the Glee cast did not too long ago, between seasons 2 and 3 (which hasn’t started airing yet.) The cast did this last season as well, and as the show’s popularity has grown, the concerts have attracted a large audience of loyal Gleeks. Between numbers we get interviews with the cast which seem to be at least half in character, as well as a lot of talking head spots with the fans. Rounding it out, we have in-depth profiles on three fans who fit the whole “be proud of not fitting in” ethos of the program- there’s a cheerleader who’s also a little person, a gay teen who recounts the rough road he had being outed, and a girl with Asperger’s who idolizes Brittany S. Pierce (which, let’s face it, is what more people should do.)

The whole “fan profile” thing is the film’s most ill-advised decision. It’s a little shameless in tying Glee to a message of empowerment and individuality and loving who you are, and it definitely feels at least a little like the show patting itself on the back. But the fans themselves are charming people, and on balance the segments focus more on them than on how the show changed their life (and even acknowledges it didn’t at all in one case.) It still feels a bit like padding though, and unnecessary padding given that this is obviously not the whole show (a number of sketches have been trimmed, including one featuring Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester that popped up in previews, and the songs are also cut a bit from their full versions.)

What we see of the show works pretty well. The cast’s voices aren’t quite as processed as they are on air, and they all sound good. Heather Morris as Brittany pretty much steals the show, be it in her ultra-sexy Britney Spears number (which justifies the 3-D process in and of itself), her feature dancer status in other songs, or just contributing an awesome gesture or two in the background. That said, all the cast have gotten pretty good at working the crowd over two tours, and it’s fun to see them throw in little gestures or reactions to spice up the performance. I think 3-D may be a particularly good fit for concert pieces like this, especially with the number of dance numbers involved- it enhances the spectacle without getting in the way of anything, since the people on stage may as well be floating in space to begin with. Sadly, some cast members get the short shrift, notably Jenna Ushkowitz as Tina who has no on-screen solos.

Rounding out the affair are a few fun clips and vignettes, such as a very young “mini-Warbler” captured performing along at home, and Lea Michele as Rachel ruminating on the possibility that her idol Barbara Streisand may be in attendance. Nothing comes of this, but it’s a great bit of acting on her part, arguably the best she’s done Glee-wise. (It’s naturally followed by her standout rendition of “Don’t Rain on My Parade”.) Other parts feel like they don’t quite fit, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s appearance as Holly Holiday, as fun as she was on the show. It definitely kind of rushes to the ending, as though the filmmakers suddenly realized they shouldn’t let this run long, and I hope more shows up on the DVD release.

If you hate Glee, there’s obviously no reason whatsoever to see this. If you’re ambivalent, you probably won’t get too much out of it either. But for fans who didn’t actually catch the tour, it’s a nice substitute, and is worth catching while you can. The film is just over halfway through a limited two-week release and the box office obviously hasn’t been good enough for it to be held over, so if you want the full big-screen 3-D spectacle, get going. I had to push myself to see it, but in retrospect it’s better than I expected, and was a nice reminder of why I like this crazy thing to begin with. As obvious as the show’s “be proud of who you are!” message may seem, there are a lot of people who don’t actually hear that enough, and if nothing else the film does provide a little pop culture snapshot of an audience for whom that message was just what they needed. And there’s some fun singing and dancing. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Written by N/A
Directed by Kevin Tancharoen

Grade: B

Frasierquest 4.6: Mixed Doubles

2011-08-15T09:35:00.002-05:00

Martin (on phone): Hello? Oh, I can't talk right now, Duke. I'm in the Twilight Zone!

Ah, so this is what happened with Joe.

I always look forward to handling the Niles/Daphne episodes; they’re invariably sweet, funny, and appeal to the misty-eyed romantic in me. “Mixed Doubles” is no exception, but it skews funnier than most of their episodes; Niles’ longing for the delightful Ms. Moon is turned into the set-up for a punchline that would be cruel if it weren’t so profoundly goofy. As with many other episodes in this saga, we’re teased with the possibility of a major change in the status quo, said status quo ends up being mostly reaffirmed, but we get a sense of how close these two are, and that bond gives us hope for the future. This time around, it happens to be utterly hilarious, arguably one of the show’s funniest episodes.

It begins with Daphne dropping a bombshell one evening; she and Joe, after being on-again-off-again for a while, have finally called it quits. More specifically he did. She’s heartbroken, and Niles is ready and willing to declare his love for her now that they’re both unattached, but Frasier convinces him to wait until she’s in a less fragile state. The next day, however, Daphne has already met someone, courtesy Roz taking her to The Sure Thing. Niles, angry at Frasier, calls Roz and gets her to take him to that same bar in hopes of meeting someone of his own, which he does- the comely Adelle (Allison Mackie). But then one night he and Adelle stop by Frasier’s just as Daphne is coming by with her boyfriend, Rodney (Kevin Farrell)- a small, fussy, immaculately groomed man who loves to smell Daphne’s hair. As traumatizing as it is for Niles, it’s worse for Frasier’s collection of decorated drinking glasses.

So Daphne is dating Niles’ doppleganger and dear God, is this hysterical. The irony is cruel, almost brutally so, but the sheer oddness of the two meeting and not actually recognizing each other for what they are is what makes it work. Farrell doesn’t bear the closest facial resemblance to David Hyde Pierce, but his mannerisms and cadence are incredibly close. Daphne remains happily oblivious to the end, but Frasier and Martin’s reactions sell the bit better than anything (Grammer gets one of the very best line readings, as can be seen below). Nothing too outrageous has happened up until the scene where he’s introduced, so it’s really a sudden burst of visual comedy.

The ramifications for Niles and Daphne are interesting. We get why Niles likes Daphne and we’ve seen them be cute together without really being together, but now we get another interesting hint- Daphne is attracted to someone like him. Perhaps it’s just a rebound thing, and Niles never really has time to consider this angle anyway, but for viewers convinced they’re meant to be it’s another piece in the puzzle. The end, however, does two things. First, it gives us another reason to put off any further development- Daphne says she’d never get involved with a man who’s separated, and suggests that Niles probably still has feelings for his wife. So that has to be resolved, and that’s some time off. But in that same final scene, both of them say “I love you.” As friends, of course- but it’s taking their connection still deeper. They’re closer at the end than they were before.

Let’s not forget Roz’s part in all this. She’s only involved in the first act, but her scene throwing Niles into the scene at the Sure Thing is a highlight. She’s unusually friendly towards him, and willing to help. It could be a sign that their relationship, too, is softening slightly- she doesn’t quite despise him anymore, at least. Or maybe she just loves her work- the idea of finding someone for even Niles presents to her a unique challenge. It’s an adorable scene, and her attempt to make Daphne feel better about her breakup is... well, noble at least.

Poor Niles gets put through the wringer here, denied a clear chance at Daphne and later spurned by Adelle for Rodney (which, to his credit, results in his being angry for Daphne more than anyone else.) But all is redeemed by a drink at the Sure Thing and a moment of honest, tender conversation which affirms just how much these two people care for each other. When I first saw this episode I honestly thought this was the writers’ way of burying the angle for good, as ridiculous as that seems to anyone who knows anything about how TV works. It’s a satisfying episode, but the dance has barely begun.

No Guest Caller

Written by Christopher Lloyd
Directed by Jeff Melman
Aired November 19, 1996

Frasier: Niles, whatever you do, do not engage him in a physical fight. The whole thing would just look too weird!

In Theaters: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-13T13:11:00.003-05:00

If I didn’t know any better I’d swear that Rise of the Planet of the Apes was propaganda designed to make us feel good about the coming simian uprising. True, we haven’t seen any evidence that such a thing is in the offing, but the perverse joy of this film is that takes the “nature’s revenge” plotline to its inevitable extreme and has us rooting for a pack of damned dirty apes. That a second attempt at rebooting a decades-old movie franchise (long after Tim Burton’s less-than-ideal effort) feels like one of the most fresh and original big movies of the year is probably damning of something, but the film itself is such a positive experience, one that not only lives up to the potential suggested by its advertising but actually exceeds it.

The star of the film is Caesar (a CGI creation with motion-capture performance by Andy Serkis), a chimpanzee born to a test subject for an experimental Alzheimer’s drug. His mother is killed along with the other test apes, but a remorseful doctor (James Franco) brings him home to his increasingly senile father (John Lithgow.) With the drug, which promotes the growth of new brain cells, passed on genetically, Caesar develops a remarkable intelligence, becoming like a member of the family and gaining the ability to communicate with his surrogate father. He is eventually discovered, and thrown by court order into a grim and poorly run primate enclosure, at the mercy of a particularly sadistic keeper (Tom Felton of all people.) Caesar continues to learn, and decides that maybe the other apes could use a boost to their intelligence- and as luck would have it, the pharmaceutical company that got the ball rolling is testing a newer, stronger version of the drug. A few escapes and night raids later, and soon enough we got ourselves an ape army.

For a while, the movie pretends to be about its human characters and their struggles, and it’s not bad at it. Franco and Lithgow and the lovely Freida Pinto give just fine performances, and Felton (no longer menacing Hogwarts) is virtually unrecognizable. But as Caesar’s relationship with his human family sours, he gets more screentime to himself, and his interactions with the fellow apes at the primate “sanctuary” enter the film’s dramatic foreground. The effect is to invert the apocalyptic vibe that the premise suggests; as the humans continue to set up their own destruction, the apes learn and communicate and build something resembling a society. It’s frankly fascinating, and it’s hard not to see them as the good guys in all this, even as some of the humans remain sympathetic. It also helps that the apes aren’t really dedicated to totally wiping us out; at several points Caesar tries to get his comrades-in-hairy-arms to refrain from killing innocent or defenseless humans.

The visual effects on the film are rare in that they not only bring the story to life, they do actually make it better. We’ve seen performance capture used effectively in other sci-fi epics (Avatar most significantly), but the apes- all digital, with no live animals used- are still more convincing, capable of extremely subtle and nuanced expressions. There are the inevitable telltale signs that we are looking at something digital in a live-action environment (they’re always a little too in-focus), but on their own the apes are nothing less than real. It’s something of a leap forward for digital performance, allowing the skill of the performers to shine through as clearly as with makeup or puppetry.

The film is littered with treats for fans of the original Apes movies; there are not only in-joke references but details that genuinely anticipate this being the same world. Of course, now that the Cold War has ended, a threat other than nuclear annihilation is necessary for our overthrow by simians to be plausible, but without spoiling too much I’d say the film comes up with a good approach. Some of the callbacks nicely evoke the series’ thematic interpretations of the ape rebellion, without going too blatantly into any kind of social allegory.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes leaves us wanting more; it ends a little too soon, perhaps, though sequels are already being discussed. But for its running time Rise is immensely satisfying; its tinkering with our sympathies and the basic structure of an apocalyptic uprising narrative means it’s full of surprises, even if the title gives the game away. For a franchise reboot it’s downright quirky, and the overall feeling is one of subversive fun at the human race’s expense. Apparently when the revolution does come, it won’t be so bad.

Suggested by the novel “La Planéte des Singes” by Pierre Boulle (uncredited)
Written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver
Directed by Rupert Wyatt

Grade: A-

In Theaters: Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-08-08T09:24:00.002-05:00

Though the superhero genre may be reaching a saturation point at the movies (as opposed to comics where it apparently never gets boring), I’m not quite tired of them yet. At least a good entry can still stand out, and Captain America: The First Avenger, the last step in Marvel’s buildup to next year’s The Avengers, is a remarkably fun movie. Captain America was always going to be a challenge, as three failed movies have demonstrated, but the filmmakers, notably director Joe Johnson (of The Rocketeer), embrace the character’s wartime origins and star-spangled cheer, delivering an old-school pulp adventure with just the right balance of character and action. It’s way more fun than a lead-in to an upcoming summer blockbuster should be.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is introduced to us in 1942, applying for enlistment in the U.S. Army and being rejected repeatedly based on his many, many physical deficiencies, from asthma and a touch of TB to a generally scrawny physique. A 4F label is no fun to live with, but beyond any shame, Rogers feels an innate desire to help his country just as his mother and father did (giving up their lives in the process.) His repeated efforts to get in attract the attention of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who is working with the Army to develop a super-soldier serum which amplifies a person’s strength, agility, and possibly his or her basic character. Erskine sees in Rogers’ gentleness and perseverance the qualities the soldier of tomorrow will need, and Steve steps up to be the subject of a painful and dramatic medical procedure which turns him into a musclebound superman.

Erskine is killed shortly after the experiment and his serum destroyed, and the newly powered Steve is sent on a propaganda tour to sell war bonds under the name “Captain America”. When he ends up in Anzio performing for unenthusiastic troops, he discovers that a friend of his has been captured by the forces of HYDRA, the Nazi’s covert science arm which, under the leadership of the “Red Skull” Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), has broken away from Hitler to try and conquer the world themselves. The Captain leads a prisoner breakout and graduates from USO performer to full-fledged hero, aided by Col. Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones), the lovely and kickass Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), inventor and aviator Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), and a host of fighting commandos.

As you might imagine, this film has a solid sense of humor about itself. Cap’s brief sojourn into showbiz is an inspired twist- it allows the filmmakers to trade on the original Golden Age image of the Captain, and the historical context in which he and other patriotic heroes arose. It adds self-awareness to the film’s retro pulp indulgence, just enough to make it interesting but not so much that it undermines the reality of the story. As in the Indiana Jones movies, we’re being told that this is an old-fashioned adventure film and to adjust our mindset accordingly.

Continuing what has been an encouraging trend in Marvel’s pre-Avengers movies, the hero is surrounded by a strong supporting cast of characters, and their interactions form the film’s heart. As Peggy Carter, Atwell is enchanting and convincingly kick-ass, and Tommy Lee Jones’ dry persona is a good addition as well. Chris Evans plays Rogers as more the starry-eyed cadet than the respected veteran Cap would become, but it fits the story very well. There’s a bit of sweetness and even sadness to Steve’s arc, even managing a moist eye or two near the end. On the side of evil, Weaving plays the Skull as the Captain’s snarling opposite, someone who has also been given great power and sees himself as no longer human as a result.

The action sequences in this one are really good, some of the best I’ve seen this year. They’re clear, they’re legible, and there’s a good balance between CGI effects and stuff that seems to be live on set. It helps that, as Cap is fighting a war against fascist scum, the whole “superheroes don’t kill” law gets to be waived (though the picture does take care to emphasize Steve’s gentleness- he doesn’t want to kill Germans, he just doesn’t like a bully.) This is another movie where 3-D conversion was done after the fact and doesn’t add a whole lot, but it doesn’t hurt the visuals either.

Though Marvel Studios’ whole strategy as regards setting up an Avengers franchise may be calculated commercial filmmaking at its most corporate, it’s hard to be too concerned when it produces genuinely good movies. Captain America: The First Avenger is just fun in a way that blockbusters aspire to but are often a little too cynical to manage. It’s a lead-in, and ends in a very direct fashion that precludes other potential directions for the series on its own, but it works not just as a prelude, but a great adventure in and of itself.

Based on the character created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
Directed by Joe Johnston

Grade: A-

Frasierquest 4.5: Head Game

2011-08-04T09:25:00.003-05:00

Roz: This is Seattle. It rains nine months out of the year. We take our indoor sports very seriously.

Niles: Well, I know you always have!

Roz: You're a hero today so I'm going to let that one go.

I try to avoid talking too much about the personal lives of the people involved with this show, partly because this isn’t that kind of blog, partly because I prefer a more formalist approach to criticism, but mostly because I don’t actually know that much about them. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, though, as here, when Kelsey Grammer suddenly needed a leave of absence to go into rehab for his alcohol addiction, and an episode centered on his character- the guy who headlines the show- was rewritten to focus on Niles. As unfortunate as these circumstances are, however, they don’t prevent this episode from being an enjoyable one. “Head Game” wears its silly premise with pride, and doesn’t suffer from the rewrite, as apparent as it is in some places. It helps that the real life story didn’t get any worse.

With Frasier attending a meeting of radio psychiatrists in Aspen, Niles is asked to fill in on air. While helping the people and occasionally cats of Seattle, Niles runs into a guest of Bulldog’s: Reggie McLemore (Lorenzo Newton), a point guard for the Seattle Sonics who’s been having trouble with his game. (For reference, because I probably wouldn’t know either, the Sonics are a basketball team.) Niles gives Reggie some brief therapy, which seems to do wonders, and Reggie goes on to win the game that night and thank Niles on-air. After enjoying his status as the man who saved the Sonics, Niles takes his dad and Daphne to the game, where he makes a rather distressing discovery; his therapy seems to be wearing off, but Reggie regains his mojo by rubbing his head. Niles’ ethics make him uncomfortable with the role of good-luck charm as opposed to legit psychiatrist, but he doesn’t want to disappoint his dad.

It’s easy to see how Frasier would have worked in the original script. The changes seem to amount to a couple of different scenes and a few mentions of Niles feeling out-of-place at KACL, plus the usual unwitting innuendo by Daphne. Some of Niles’ dialogue even sounds like Frasier, especially when he interacts with Martin. Despite some of these changes obviously being done quickly, the show was fortunate in that Kelsey Grammer only really missed one episode, and even then was able to film the first scene. This may be a trivial thing in the face of a serious problem like alcoholism, but we can look back and be grateful, as Grammer has apparently managed to stay clean and sober not only through the end of the series but up until this day, a rare thing indeed. (I think this scramble may also have been part of “The Two Mrs. Cranes” coming first in the season, and Daphne is still with Joe in this episode.)

All of that aside, the story does work well with Niles in the lead. He’s a little smaller and more vulnerable than his brother, and his getting validation from the world of sports is as gratifying for us as it is for him. We like to see the little guy succeed. Without failure as a driver, the episode instead derives humor from Niles’ incongruence in the world of sports; not just in the sense of not being a jock and not really getting the whole game of basketball, but not willing to buy into an athlete’s superstition about the magical powers of his hair (which is still pretty nice this season.)

The way this episode resolves is rather ingenious. Neither Niles nor Reggie get to prove themselves right; instead Reggie comes up with a rather practical offscreen solution. And it just ends with that, because there’s nothing else to resolve; Niles’ ethical dilemma wasn’t that severe, and no matter what he decided he couldn’t follow the team everywhere anyway. Despite it being a thin story, it’s sold by the funny chemistry Pierce and Newton develop- their interactions are genuinely fun to watch.

So an episode with a lot of turmoil behind the scenes ends up coming together pretty smoothly. While I sometimes complain when the show does “slight” or thin-story episodes, this one is just too funny and likable to find much fault with. The writing is smart and the direction crisp, and it hits all the beats it needs to. Frasier will be back next week, but Niles does him proud with his time in the driver’s seat.

Guest Caller: Wendy Wasserstein as Linda

Written by Rob Greenberg
Directed by David Lee

Aired November 12, 1996

Niles: I want you to imagine yourself on the playing surface, doing whatever it is you actually do. Tell me what you see.

Reggie: Okay. Jeff’s passin’ me the ball... I’m bringing it up court... I’m dribblin’...

Niles: Don’t worry about your appearance.

Opening Credits Sequence Theatre: Mean Streets (1973)

2011-07-31T19:13:00.002-05:00

(A better, non-embeddable version is here.)

Martin Scorsese's breakthrough film starts in a big way. On the surface, the scene establishes a character in isolation, wrapped up in himself, escaping into nostalgia to escape- well, we don't know yet, but that follows quickly. It's a small, intimate scene. But the music elevates it to another plane; the classic Spector "wall of sound" effect is used as a call to attention, making damn sure we're awake as the old filmstrip shows us the protagonist and his world. This was still a relatively new, uncommon approach to music in film, so it was also a signal that this was not going to be your average sleazy gangster picture. This is one of my favorites, because it sets the energy and intensity level of the film so very high, and the picture actually sustains that. Plus it's a really good song.

Frasierquest 4.4: A Crane's Critique

2011-07-28T09:18:00.002-05:00

Niles: We’re a stone’s throw away from one of the giants of American literature!

Roz: Not the way you throw.

“A Crane’s Critique” feels like a throwback. It has a fairly basic, slight plotline that only really makes use of Frasier, Niles, and Martin; it’s the kind of episode that would have worked easily in earlier seasons, but feels less than satisfying compared to some of the episodes around it. Which is not to say it doesn’t have its strengths, most notably a guest appearance by Robert Prosky, but it’s forgettable enough that I took a while to recognize it.

Frasier and Niles are taking their father clothes shopping when Niles catches sight of the reclusive author T. H. Houghton (Prosky), who wrote one earth-shattering book and then dropped out of public view. Frasier and Niles go on a wild chase after the man who changed their lives, only for Martin to befriend him at McGinty’s over a Mariners game and Bonanza discussion. Frasier and Niles keep missing opportunities to have a deep intellectual discussion with Houghton (who doesn’t seem interesting in that sort of thing anyway), but when he and Martin head to the stadium for a doubleheader, the brothers Crane accidentally find themselves in possession of something rather special: the manuscript for Houghton’s next novel. Of course they take a look.

This is an episode rooted in frustration and embarrassment, which puts it on difficult territory from the get-go. Frasier and Niles’ awkwardness as they try to relate to Houghton is palpable, and to a certain extent well-rendered; it’s a bit of a shock to them that such an important literary titan is more like their father than he is like them. It’s not entirely their fault- they don’t so much offend Houghton as perplex him- but it taps into how difficult it can be to meet our heroes.

It’s odd that this fairly simple plotline leaves no time for anything else; the episode doesn’t feel particularly slowly paced or, for that matter, particularly convoluted, so why Daphne and Roz are on the sidelines more than usual is hard to work out. I’m not sure that using all the cast necessarily makes for a better episode; it may just a personal preference. But I think we could have used a respite from Frasier and Niles’ continued exasperation, which does get a little one-note. The actors play it well as usual, but it could probably stand to be compressed a little.

The ending does leave us with a few interesting questions, though. From a comic perspective, what basically happens is that Frasier and Niles ruin Houghton’s book; he decides it’s crap and destroys it based on their attempts to offer their appreciation of it. Clearly they love it, so from their perspective the world has lost a masterpiece. But I wonder if this could really be blamed on them; Houghton is so down-to-Earth in earlier scenes that they may not realize just how deeply self-critical he can be, and in this specific case he’s really excessively worried by the potential damage done to his reputation by a structural similarity to one of the best known works of classical Italian poetry in the entire world. He overreacts, and the Crane brothers console themselves by thinking maybe they protected him from worse criticism later. That they, while clearly trying to make themselves feel better as they are wont to do, may not actually be wrong is an unusual twist.

So, not a top episode; I see what they were doing for the most part, but in the end, perhaps the story could have been taken further or developed into something more complex than simply the Crane brothers repeatedly failing to connect with their idol. Granted, there’s something to be said for setting out to do one thing and do it well, and while this episode gets a little crowded out by the bigger stories around it, I think most viewers can find something to like.

No Guest Caller

Written by Dan Cohen and F.J. Pratt
Directed by Jeff Melman
Aired October 22, 1996

Niles: Are you quite finished undressing him with your eyes?

Roz: Oh, please. I'm already looking for my stockings and trying to remember where I parked my car.

(Note: they are not talking about Houghton, thank God)

In Theaters: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

2011-07-25T09:30:00.003-05:00

I have not previously reviewed any of the Harry Potter movies, but I feel in my random fashion bound to comment upon the final entry in the series, just as I reviewed the final novel itself once upon a time. The movie series has lasted a solid decade, and in that time has matured from a fairly rote recreation of J. K. Rowling’s novels to a still-conventional but much more fully formed fantasy series, truly bringing the world of Hogwarts and its environs to life in a way that enhances the books even if it doesn’t quite eclipse them. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (abbreviated by many theaters as Harry Potter 7B), being the second half of the final book when it proved too lengthy to condense into a single feature without more alteration than either Rowling or her fans were willing to take, inevitably has its problems as a stand-alone feature film, but as the capper to the saga, it does its job with style.

The story so far: Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), boy wizard now firmly in his teenage years, has been tracking down the pieces of the soul of the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) in an attempt to kill him once and for all, before the villain’s Death Eaters can eradicate all of his enemies. To help he has his best friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), now an item after some drama, but he finds himself drawn further towards an inevitable confrontation with the dark lord himself, a confrontation in which prophecy says both must die.

The film basically assumes that you know the rest of the story, which at this point is a fair assumption. Filmgoing habits being what they are, I’m sure some people are going into this at random without knowing the rest of the series, but that can’t be helped. Still, it leaps right into the action, to the point where it’s probably best to rewatch part one just to get reorientated. (Among the details I forgot were how many horcruxes were left, how they were planning to destroy them, and what the business with the wand was.) The good news is that for those who found all the wandering around the countryside in the first half to be a bit much, this story jumps quickly into action, with lots of chases and monsters and battle scenes.

There is a fundamental problem here, in that more than any “split” film I can name, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 really does feel like the back half of Part 1 rather than a movie in and of itself. It was perhaps unavoidable that the studio would split them- together the pictures total 276 minutes, and even shaving off some time for redundant credits that’s testing the patience even of the Potter fanatics. Still I think more work could have been done to actually make the two parts feel more like full moviegoing experiences. Even with the extra time, some of the nuances of the final book are lost, specifically the final significance of the Deathly Hallows themselves.

That having been said, as the final installment of Harry Potter’s cinematic adventures, the film does deliver the goods. The spectacle of the final siege of Hogwarts, while not rendered with the tactical detail of, say, the Lord of the Rings films, is still dazzling and exciting. The characters still ring true in their interactions, and while there isn’t quite enough of this, we come to sense how deeply everyone relies on each other in a time of crisis. The film’s conversion to 3-D doesn’t add a lot, though at the same time I didn’t notice the picture being dimmer than usual.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a satisfying finish to what has, overall, been a pretty splendid set of films. The franchise started out a little too slick and shiny, but over time has come to bring the world J.K. Rowling created to life in a way. They didn’t really change the face of genre cinema (though they did make fantasy films a Hell of a lot more commercially viable), and this one doesn’t really gun for classic status either, but it’s all been fun. Maybe in twenty years or so we can get the twisted Gilliamesque adaptation we deserve, but this will do just fine.

Based on the novel by J. K. Rowling
Screenplay by Steve Kloves
Directed by David Yates

Grade: B+

Frasierquest 4.3: The Impossible Dream

2011-07-22T08:56:00.003-05:00

Niles: Focus on any detail in the motel room. What’s the first thing that pops into your mind?

Frasier: Uh... a crescent shaped lamp.

Niles: Perfect. Crescent shaped lamp. Run with that. Crescent... moon... Daphne Moon... French maid... brass bed... satin robe...

Fraiser: This is my dream.

Dream analysis is one of those weird bits of psychology that even amateurs like myself can pretend to understand. I’m not sure how seriously it’s still taken, but fiction likes to use dreams as symbols a lot, and so sooner or later we end up getting a personal look into Frasier’s head. In practice, the premise of Frasier confronted by an inscrutable but disturbing dream ends up playing almost like an episode of House, with multiple false diagnoses before the final correct one. All in all it’s a cool change of pace, with a few fun extras thrown in.

Frasier’s plagued by a recurring nightmare. He wakes up in a seedy, dimly lit hotel room with a tattoo reading “Chesty” on his arm, when none other than Gil Chesterton steps out of the shower. Frasier is so distressed by this dream that he enlists Niles to help find its true meaning (which he’s reasonably certain is not wish fulfillment.) Twice he thinks he’s come up with a solution, pointing to a dilemma that may be brewing in his subconscious, and by moving it to his conscious mind hopefully expelling the dream, but it keeps coming back and defying his analysis.

I like how the structure of this episode is built on the idea that a dream can be expelled or altered by interpreting it. Even when Frasier’s theories fail to get him out of this recurring nightmare, they end up changing details. It does mean that the structure is just “this doesn’t work, this doesn’t work” until Frasier cottons to the real explanation (and even that may not fully fix things), but in the course of twenty-some minutes it doesn’t feel that repetitive.

There’s a potentially problematic element of gay panic in Frasier’s dream, but I like how this ends up being handled. Instead of simply being comically terrified at the suggestion that he might have buried homosexual feelings, he honestly starts to wonder. He talks with his father about it. In some ways it’s an overreaction- dreams are probably not the best place to look to start confirming or questioning your sexuality- but since we’ve established Frasier is in a dry spell, some existential questioning is understandable. Martin’s probably right- if Frasier were gay he’d know by now- and in any case, I doubt Gil’s his type.

Continuing what now looks to be a pattern of trying to give everyone something to do, Martin and Daphne share another scene this episode, playing a joke on a fellow elevator passenger by improvising a discussion straight out of a spy novel. This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but it’s brilliant- it’s really funny in itself (a rare instance of something that’s funny to the characters also being funny to the audience), and illuminates the characters by showing their more playful side. It’s something we haven’t quite seen before from either, but it doesn’t feel out of place. Both characters also try to help Frasier with his dream problem, Daphne making an adorably loopy suggestion and also sharing a story that, well, let’s say it makes for a nice mental image. (And speaking of nice images, the lovely Pauley Perette, now of NCIS fame, shows up as a Café Nervosa barista.)

The end of the episode implies that Frasier hasn’t quite licked his problem. He’s worked out that his boredom with the dull cases on his show lately forced his subconscious to come up with a complex puzzle for him to solve, but all that means is that now Sigmund Freud is his bedtime companion. in a sense the episode just sort of ends when the premise is exhausted, but given how much fun the ride has been it’s hard to complain too much. This isn’t a classic episode but it’s a memorable one, with a fun concept effectively mined for laughs and for a little bit of character shading. If nothing else, it leaves us with the lesson that if you have a bizarre and disturbing recurring dream, it may just be because you’re really, really bored.

Guest Callers: Kieran Culkin as Jimmy, Christopher Durang as Rudy

Written by Rob Greenberg
Directed by David Lee
Aired October 15, 1996

Daphne: Well, in your dream, who was in the shower? Gil. What is a shower? Running water. Who needs water? Fish. What do fish have? Gills. Do you see where I’m going?

Frasier: Insane?

Frasierquest 4.2: Love Bites Dog

2011-07-09T11:39:00.002-05:00

Bulldog: Last night, for the first time in my life, I actually said those three little words... ‘Stay for breakfast.’

Up until now, Bob “Bulldog” Briscoe has basically been a one-note character. He’s a horny jackass who loves sports almost as much as he loves himself. And this is all well and good, seeing as he only shows up once in a while as the plot demands. “Love Bites Dog” doesn’t upend the boat, but it takes that first crucial step in character development by having him play against type. It’s Comedy 101, but the character is unexplored enough for it to work.

Roz is worried about Frasier’s continuing dating dry spell, and decides to try and fix him up with a friend of hers, a gorgeous woman golfer named Sharon (Jennifer Campbell). She’s a big fan of his show, and they hit it off for all of two minutes before Bulldog happens to butt in. After a vigorous and flirty argument on the merit of golf as a sport, Bulldog steals away Frasier’s intended, and comes back to KACL the next morning acting a bit odd. He’s happy, pleasant, and understands the lyrics to “Time in a Bottle”. He’s in love. But before the full impact of a romantic Bulldog can hit his co-workers, he’s dumped, and takes it hard, breaking down on-air and running out, leaving Frasier to fill in. So, it’s either find a way to bring Bulldog back to his old scummy self, or let Frasier try and talk about sports for three hours.

The episode pulls a nice emotional swerve on us early on. Frasier’s initial frustration with Bulldog is easy to sympathize with; though he and Sharon weren’t even on a date, they were nonetheless in mid-flirt when Bulldog swooped in, and anyone who’s ever tried to chat up anyone has to give a knowing wince. But the pain quickly subsides in the face of the sheer madness of a lovestruck Bulldog, with Dan Butler doing some of his best work with the character. Something has gone fundamentally wrong, and as in many sitcoms, we find ourselves anxious to see the status quo restored. It’s just not right otherwise.

We actually get two subplots in this episode, the first being Niles’ attempt to expand his practice with a little advertising, the second being Daphne’s attempt to find Martin a new pair of weather-resistant Muckabee shoes after accidentally burning them in the microwave. Neither story is terribly substantial, but they speak to an attempt to get every one of the regulars involved in the episode. Roz sets Frasier up, Daphne and Martin go shoe hunting, Niles ends up appealing to the wrong clientele- I noticed this with the premiere as well, and I can’t help but think there’s a more conscious effort this year to showcase everyone. Daphne and Martin in particular are a nice mix; logically they should interact a lot, as health care worker and patient, but we haven’t seen it that much previously.

The episode resolves with one of those neat little balancing acts that take place in sitcoms; one character has strayed far outside his status quo, so someone else- in this case Frasier- must stray outside his own in the opposite direction to bring about balance. The perverse joke of the episode is that the characters are better off with Bulldog as a sexist uncaring pig than as a sensitive lover, though it’s largely in the name of Frasier getting to go to a restaurant and not demonstrated his ignorance of popular sports.

This is an episode with a lot of memorable scenes, even if overall the impact isn’t that huge. Bulldog himself gradually becomes more of a regular over the next few years, and stories like this give him some potential beyond simply irritating Frasier and Roz. As for Sharon, we never see her again, which is probably for the best. We don’t need another maneater so long as Roz is around.

Guest Callers: Marv Albert as Jerry, Bob Costas as Jake, Julius Erving as Mike

Written by Suzanne Martin
Directed by Jeff Melman
Aired September 24, 1996

Jake: Yeah, you think it was a good idea for the Sonics to give up those draft choices so they could free up some money under the cap, you know to go after a wide body to help them in the paint?

Frasier: Yes.

Academy of the Underrated: The Return of Captain Invincible

2011-07-04T09:35:00.004-05:00

This Fourth of July, America’s got all sorts of problems, from a bad economy to unpopular wars we can’t quite seem to end to the fact that the usual political infighting has degenerated into all-out warfare. Patriotism itself is being used as a political tool, with the implication that anyone who likes “freedom” and “liberty” must invariably also hate the existence of social welfare programs. Times are tough, so we get angry and selfish. But once in a while it helps to look up to the skies.

The Return of Captain Invincible is a genuine obscurity, released just as its distributor was going out of business and more or less vanishing from view for a very long time. It’s a fascinating and very odd picture whose execution doesn’t match its conceptual potential, but as superhero comedy musicals go, it is... well, the only one I know of so far. Leave it to the Australians to come up with one of the most interesting patriotic American movies ever, one that satirizes the shortcomings of our nation while holding up its ideals.

Alan Arkin stars as the titular Captain Invincible, the Man of Magnets, the Legend in Leotards, a superhero who fought gangsters and Nazis all through the period which just happens to be the comics Golden Age. As the 1950s dawned, however, the Captain fell afoul of HUAC, and fled from questions about why he was helping the Russians (during World War II), flying without a license, and wearing his underwear in public. He disappeared into drink and has ended up in Australia, apparently shot down by Skylab and now not knowing where he is or how to use his powers. When an American base in Australia is raided and thieves make off with an experimental hypno-ray, the US President (Michael Pate) puts out an APB on the MIA superhero. Fortunately, Sydney detective Patty Patria (Kate Fitzpatrick) has just recently happened across a drunken vagrant who flipped a car into the air just by standing in its path, and she and the President persuade the Captain to try and sober up and help the free world once more. The Captain and Patty soon find out that the hypno-ray has been stolen by arch criminal Mister Midnight (Christopher Lee), who is using it in an elaborate scheme to ethnically cleanse Manhattan, driving minorities into suburban housing developments that will then be targeted by nuclear missiles.

The casting of Arkin in the lead was something of a stroke of genius. He can’t sing that well, which is a problem, but he captures that paternal wisdom and affability that we expect from our superheroes, especially the ones that wrap themselves in the red, white, and blue. With a grab bag of powers (flight, magnetism, and an amazing computer brain, all voice-activated), and a memorable if busy costume, Invincible is a little bit piecemeal, but Arkin finds a certain reality to his disillusioned self, and his likability gets us in the movie’s corner as well. It helps that he doesn’t look like most movie superheroes- he doesn’t have the square-jawed ethnically-indistinct face we expect, and the actor’s Russo-Germanic-Jewish origins tie in not just to the movie’s plot, but to the fact that Superman, Captain America, and many other legends of that time were generally the creation of first- and second-generation immigrants.

The songs for this film are an odd lot, composed by a number of different teams. It’s no surprise that the most memorable of the lot- including the two showcases for Lee as Midnight- are by Richard O’ Brien and Richard Hartley, of Rocky Horror and Shock Treatment fame. (If such a thing as Shock Treatment fame exists, and it ought to.) The very first song is simply the President singing the word “bullshit” over and over again, and while Arkin has a bit of trouble with the singing bit, Fitzpatrick is dubbed over completely in her character’s one number. The music works more often than it doesn’t, but the uneven quality and the rather abrupt shifts into musical mode mean this doesn’t feel a lot like a proper musical, more a comedy with some numbers on top.

If there’s one thing that dogs this picture it’s inconsistency. It can never quite figure out the tone of humor it’s going for, from vulgarity to broad slapstick to subtler jibes (the Captain fingers a traitor at a Jewish deli when he puts mayo on a pastrami sandwich.) Some of it is quite funny, but you’ll get whiplash. The film was budgeted at five million dollars Australian, and though I’m not sure how strong the currency was back then it didn’t seem to buy a lot- the special effects extend mostly to rear projection and a lot of stock footage, and all sorts of shortcuts are apparent in the more elaborate scenes. Director Philippe Mora’s editing style is a bit clumsy, though he does get some very striking visuals. A certain sloppiness extends a bit to the characters and plot as well- the idea of a traitor in the group rehabbing Invincible is never quite explained, and the film is somewhat undecided as to whether Mr. Midnight is specifically racist or if he’s a primal force of terror (who would then, logically, want everyone of all ethnicities to suffer).

So what saves this film? Well, a lot of it is the sheer charm of it. Arkin, as explained above, is wonderful, and Christopher Lee is in his element. (You will note I did not criticize his singing. That is because there is not a damn thing wrong with it.) Fitzpatrick is sharp and charming as well, and she and Arkin play off each other nicely. Both the actors and the characters they portray are compelling, and even if Captain Invincible’s world isn’t as explicitly developed as a proper comic hero’s, it has that certain mythic resonance.

What’s more, the film seems sincere in a way that not many are. The filmmakers, not Americans themselves, are willing to show off the country's faults but also respectful of the dream. Like Superman and Captain America, Captain Invincible’s allegiance is not to the President or the flag or our country right or wrong, but to the ideas behind the country. And specifically he is devoted to the melting pot, to the Golden Door, to the nation of immigrants who have made America what it is. There’s a simple beauty in the film’s final images under the credits, affirming that belief and holding out a wistful hope that just maybe everything could be just great again.

Written by Andrew Gaty and Steven E. DeSouza (additional dialogue by Peter Smalley)
Directed by Philippe Mora

Grade: B

Random Movie Report #93: Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror

2011-06-30T09:08:00.003-05:00

The pleasures of a good bad movie are rare enough that you can sometimes think you’ve outgrown them. For a while there I thought I was becoming too discriminating in my tastes, only able to appreciate finely crafted productions of the highest value, or failing that, low-budget films that were legitimately good. Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror , an uninspired Italian zombie romp whose only distinguishing marks are brutal violence and a random incest subplot, showed me the way. It’s in many ways as generic as a zombie film can get, but it’s got a vibe that I enjoy and is at times just bafflingly clumsy enough to work.

So, the story. An Alan-Moore-ish scientist (Renato Barbieri) researching Etruscan rites in a crypt accidentally wakes up a whole mess of rotting corpses and gets himself eaten, which will happen. Shortly after, a bunch of people arrive at a nearby mansion to spend a weekend or something. There are two young couples who plan to spend most of the time dry humping, and there’s a husband and wife who have an odd-looking son (Peter Bark, who was actually in his twenties) whose relationship with his mother is less than healthy. The zombies slowly navigate their way out of the crypt (and in some cases dig up straight through the ground) just in time to menace the party, chasing them into the mansion. The undead this time around are smart enough to use tools and set up traps, but for the most part you know what’s going down.

I will give European horror filmmakers one thing- their zombies tend to be stylin’. Here in the States we’ve had our fill of facepainted groaners dressed in work-a-day outfits, and while they make a nice metaphor for social decay or the vanishing middle class or something like that, sometimes you want out-and-out monsters, and that’s what Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror delivers. These guys have obviously been in the ground a while, and the makeup is reasonably impressive; they have a look that suggests truly misshapen ghouls, with often-hollow eye sockets, deformed remnants of teeth, and the occasional maggot. While the bright-as-day cinematography is uninspired, the surreal music emphasizes the zombies as something unearthly.

You do have to give a film like this credit for a very quick start, with the zombie rampage beginning in earnest about fifteen minutes in. Of course this gives us next to no time to learn about or connect with any of the characters, meaning they spend most of the film as an undifferentiated mass of victims milling around various locations for no good reason. (The upside of this is it does make it harder to tell who has script immunity, since nobody is particularly more developed than anyone else.)

Even with the plot as rudimentary as it is, there are a few questionable turns. The characters work out early on that you can actually kill the zombies by destroying their heads, and at one point inside the mansion manage to fend off quite a few with swords, clubs, and other weapons. Which they promptly discard and never use again. The mother and son manage to set a few of the creatures on fire using paint cans and matches, so naturally this is never tried again. The people come up with one of the worst escape plans in recent memory only to have it work, only to run along to two other random locations that don’t seem much more defensible. And it’s never really explained just what the Hell caused the dead to start getting up, and a scene late in the movie confuses things no end.

But I had fun. The movie rushes along through nonsensical but nicely weird setpieces, generates something that’s not quite fear or tension but maybe passes as unease, and when it runs out of interesting things to do, just stops. Perhaps going in with no expectations helped, or maybe it just evoked nostalgia from my teenage years renting any lurid crap the horror section at the video store had to offer. It doesn’t feel as cold, crass, or cynical as some other entries in the Euro-zombie subsubgenre, and in its plodding way has a kind of charm. Some people will like it.

Written by Piero Regnoli
Directed by Andrea Bianchi
Grade: C

Frasierquest 4.1: The Two Mrs. Cranes

2011-06-29T09:15:00.001-05:00

Frasier: Speaking of old chums, Daphne, a Clive called for you earlier.

Daphne: Clive? Did he sound British?

Frasier: No, he was one of those fiery Mexican Clives.

We kick off the new season with an episode I’m pretty sure was not meant to be here. “The Two Mrs. Cranes”, despite being the season premiere, manages not to be much about Frasier at all, instead being an ensemble farce centered around our lovely Miss Daphne Moon. With Joe Keenan writing again and David Lee directing, it’s easily up to the standards of previous farces, upping the stakes by dragging the entire cast into an elaborate masquerade which soon becomes self-perpetuating until it finally collapses in on itself. There’s a slightly different feel to the season which is hard to articulate, and I’m not sure whether it’s the show’s continued maturation or just it getting closer to how I remember it at its peak.

Daphne gets a call from an old flame; she was once engaged to a man named Clive (Scott Atkinson), and tried to break it off by telling him they could try again in five years, and he’s shown up right on schedule. He comes over to the apartment for a drink, and Daphne has a hard time letting him down again, but Niles, having heard of Clive’s impending visit, just happens to be there, and Daphne decides to pass him off as her husband. This suits Niles just fine, and he tries to get Clive to stay so he can play out his dream a little longer, and Frasier gets roped into it, pretending to be staying over because of a fight with his wife Maris. When Roz shows up, she takes over the role of the other Mrs. Crane, and when Martin appears he decides to play along and be an astronaut. Eddie remains Eddie.

You may be wondering, where’s Joe in all this? Daphne’s real boyfriend would have been as good a shield as any in all this; more importantly, when Daphne starts to reconsider letting Clive go in the third act, nobody brings up the fact that she isn’t single. I can’t avoid spoilers on this (I think 15 years is an okay statute of limitations anyway), suffice it to say there is a breakup in Daphne’s near future, and I’m pretty sure what happened was this episode was supposed to come some time after that one. Even a popular and critically acclaimed show isn’t immune to random reshuffling by the network, even today as serialization has become more prominent in American TV; I’m sure it happened several times in Frasier’s run, and this is just one of the more obvious cases.

That plot hole aside, this is one of the more elaborate stories the gang have gotten themselves tangled up in. Everyone has their own motivation to play along; Niles because it’s fun, Frasier because Daphne’s promised to take Dad on one of his Army reunions if he does, Roz because there’s a hot guy, and Martin- for his own amusement, really. The more insane the lie gets, the more they make it work. Particularly fun is how, as Daphne attempts to make herself available again to a more-responsible-than-he-looks Clive, the masquerade becomes increasingly dark and twisted, with she and Roz trading allegations of blackouts and pregnancy. Martin’s increasingly ridiculous astronaut stories (oh, the days before Wikipedia) seem almost designed to throw the whole thing off the rails. Clive is a trusting, credulous sort, and it doesn’t take a lot of work to convince him of what he’s seeing- the problem isn’t that he’s going to catch on so much as the lie itself driving its perpetrators insane.

So this is crazy business, and the increased complexity of it is a sign of a shift in the show. When Frasier started out, stories tended to be simple, almost Spartan, uncomplicated by subplots and tangents. We didn’t even get into farce until Season Two. Now the show can hit the ground running, expecting the audience to know the characters enough that we laugh at the incongruity of their situation. The episode does take pains to re-establish some things- Roz’s use of Frasier’s opera glasses to spy on a bodybuilder across the street reminds us of how man-crazy she can get, and we establish that Niles is married to Maris and estranged to her in an early scene so that Frasier being made her husband makes sense as a joke even to the outside observer. But the density of information needed to make the farce work is delivered at a good clip, and the pace builds from there.

Atkinson’s performance as Clive Roddy is an interesting one. His accent is pure Dick Van Dyke, to the point where even American viewers will pick up on the fakery pretty easily; sure, Jane Leeves doesn’t exactly sound Mancunian either, but you have to know the specific regions to pick that up. That said, some critics and viewers, especially those in the UK, tend to make a much bigger deal of this than I think it actually is. A character’s voice need not be authentic to get the job done, and Atkinson gets the important part right, playing Clive as trusting, good-hearted, and only the tiniest bit slow.

Even if it’s slightly out of place, “The Two Mrs. Cranes” makes for a good premiere simply because it’s an excellent signpost for the series. This is Frasier at cruising speed, densely plotted, mindful of its characterization, and heavy on quips. But even as it draws on our familiarity with the characters, “The Two Mrs. Cranes” stands apart as an all-time classic comedy episode, perfectly accessible to anyone who doesn’t already know the series just because it’s that good. And the best part? I’m not even sure it’s the best episode of this season.

No Guest Caller

Written by Joe Keenan
Directed by David Lee
Aired September 17, 1996

Clive: There comes a time in a man's life when he's gotta look a woman straight in the eye and say...

Niles: Cheese nips?

Tonight Only! An Evening of Audio Theater!

2011-06-24T11:14:00.006-05:00

This past week I've been at the National Audio Theater Festivals' 2011 Workshop, and tonight is performance night! Coming to you live from West Plains, Missouri, we bring you around 2 hours of original audio drama and comedy, featuring:

"Knocking on Heaven's Door", a stirring drama by comics legend J. M. DeMatteis, based on a script for a revived Twilight Zone which went unproduced when it went away again;
"The Son of West Branch, America's Great Humanitarian" by Dr. William Wayne Anderson, a historic recreation of vintage election propaganda for Herbert Hoover;
"Junk in the Trunk", a raucous comedy from this year's Freshman Class;
"TransMars Tango", an original science fiction adventure by comic writer Elaine Lee (of Stardust fame);
Music led by Dwight Frizzell, of the Kansas City Art Institute and KKFI's From Ark to Microchip;
Performances by The Firesign Theater's Philip Proctor, Audiobook star Robin Miles, Richard Fish, and yes, even yours truly.

The program begins at 7:30 Central Standard Time (that's 8:30 Eastern, 5:30 Pacific). If you're in West Plains you can either come in and watch us live, or follow on KKDY 102.5. Everyone else can listen along at the same time through a stream on KKDY's website or at NATF.org (a stream link should appear at 7:15.)

Listen and enjoy!

In Theaters: Green Lantern

2011-06-19T17:01:00.003-05:00

Green Lantern plays like a mid-air collision between two superhero movies. Half of it is an epic space opera detailing a threat to the entire universe, and the other half is a smaller, more traditional masked hero picture where a man gains extraordinary powers and is caught up in a personal threat. Either one of these would have been a fine approach to bringing the emerald avenger to the silver screen, but sadly together they crowd in on each other, and the results are less than satisfying. It’s not a badly made movie, and it has a lot of good elements, but it fails to develop anything fully and ends up less than the sum of its parts.

Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a test pilot for an aeronautics company. Owing in part to some obligatory past drama, Jordan is cocky but insecure, prone to freezing up, and a few fancy maneuvers in a demonstration dogfight end up costing him his job. Soon after, however, a green sphere of energy carries him to the wreck of an alien spaceship, where a being named Abin Sur hands him a ring and a lantern. The ring makes Hal into one of the Green Lanters, an association of cosmic policemen bringing peace, order, and justice to the universe, and he is spirited away to the planet Oa to learn the ring’s powers. With the ring Hal can fly, understand alien languages, and conjure glowing green constructs out of sheer willpower. The Green Lantern Corps on Oa are fighting a powerful fear entity called Parallax, which killed Abin Sur and manages to infect Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard), a nerdy xenobiologist who begins to develop telekinetic powers, an enlarged cranium, and a growing resentment of all the successful people around him. Parallax itself is on its way to Earth, and Hal must master his fear before he can confront the beast.

The good news about this film is that a lot of the hard parts of the Green Lantern mythos have actually been handled well. Though the opening is a little exposition heavy, it sets up the concept of the Corps and their role as intergalactic policemen very well, and the scenes on Oa are pretty enjoyable. A lot of fun is had with Hal’s ability to make constructs- though trailers show off his attempt at a minigun, he gets more creative later. The basic thematic clash between will and fear is straightforward and well-rendered, but Hal also has to be clever and resourceful when it comes to the final confrontation.

If the film had just been Hal and the Lanterns battling Parallax, all of this might have worked. But the story of Hector Hammond feels like a sidetrack; he’s obsessed with Hal’s girlfriend and co-worker, the lovely Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), and lives a rather sad life as a high school science teacher, and the Parallax infection turns him into a sort of uber-vengeful nerd, which is almost a good idea. But he still seems more pathetic than threatening, and throwing objects around just doesn’t seem as impressive as creating objects and energy out of pure will, so it’s not really convincing when he threatens our hero. He frankly feels like a Spider-Man villain, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it feels out of place next to the cosmic saga that’s supposed to be occupying our attention.

Really, the whole movie suffers from this problem. The film switches back and forth between the two scales of action instead of really blending them (as Thor did), and neither gets enough screen time to register. When Hal Jordan makes his heroic Earthly debut we’re already halfway through the movie, and he has a crisis of confidence in his new role that seems contrived. The Oa material, while fun, is sparse, without the other Lanterns being much more than just ciphers (though Geoffrey Rush is great as the fishy Tomar Re) and the small blue Guardians who created the order have the classic sci-fi problem of being so hidebound you wonder how they accomplished anything to start with. (The effects are a mixed bag- while I like the overall 50s aesthetic and the bright colors, they do rely on CGI to a fault, with even Hal’s costume being a digital creation.)

I will say that Ryan Reynolds does a pretty good job in the lead role, believably conducting Hal Jordan’s transition from overconfident hothead to a man who understands his place in the universe. The film has a lot of entertaining individual parts, but there’s a lot of downtime between them and the picture feels sluggish more than anything. It’s nowhere near as bad as some other reviews say, I don’t regret seeing it at all, and I’m sort of hoping it does well enough to merit a more focused take on the material. But I can’t recommend it or call it a good film. It has the makings of a good film, but they haven’t been mixed properly.

Based on characters created by Marty Nodell, Bill Finger, John Broome, and Gil Kane.
Screen Story by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, and Marc Guggenheim
Screenplay by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, and Michael Goldenberg
Directed by Martin Campbell

Grade: C+

In Theaters: Super 8

2011-06-15T09:11:00.003-05:00

Super 8 is J. J. Abrams’ exploration of the territory first surveyed by Steven Spielberg, with the master’s blessing. It’s a story about growing up, being creative, and dealing with past traumas and tribulations, and also about alien invasions and government conspiracies. Despite it clearly belonging to the Spielbergiana subgenre, the film is more than just a pastiche, working as a surprisingly tight and effective thriller while not neglecting the human element either. It scratches an itch that a lot of movies haven’t in a while, but even if you’re not someone for whom E.T. was a defining part of your childhood, there’s a lot to admire.

The film takes place in the year 1979, in a small town called Lillian. Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is a boy recovering from the sudden death of his mother, and as summer dawns he and his friends are working on making a zombie movie for the upcoming Cleveland Super 8 Film Festival. The project is directed by bossy wunderkind Charles (Riley Griffiths), who has decided to bring in a love interest for the hero, to be played by Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning.) While shooting scenes at a train station, the kids witness a catastrophic crash, which they happen to catch on film. They flee from a group of Air Force men who seem determined to cover up what’s just happened, but bizarre events start to plague the town afterwards. The power blinks on and off, dogs run away, and people start to vanish. It becomes clear that there was something in one of the train cars, something that’s gotten out and is roaming the streets, and Joe and his friends may be the only people who can begin to put together what’s going on.

Making a serious (or just serious enough for summer) movie about children is a dangerous prospect. Rounding up good child actors is always hard, and the failure of one in this film could easily have compromised things. But the protagonists come off as authentic both in what the script has them do and in how they do it. They’re at the age where full adolescent awkwardness has not quite set in, but they’re starting to notice the opposite sex and be insecure about their social status, and the script captures both their tunnel vision (once they’ve gotten away from the wreck, Charlie starts thinking about it as potential production value for his movie) and their timid interactions with the world around them. Elle Fanning is especially good, particularly since she’s playing a good actress; one of the big surprises is that in their dopey super-8 epic, Alice turns out to be a natural performer, and seeing Fanning work on both levels is impressive.

The film itself is a two-tiered affair, and one of the tiers is the sci-fi/thriller action which most viewers will be focusing on. And it is a tense, scary movie; heavy on the jump scares, to be sure, but Abrams mostly plays fair with them (if he cheated I didn’t catch it) and they are startlingly effective. A sense of danger starts to grow around everyone, everywhere, and at no point is it clear that anyone is safe. The mystery is tantalizing, though some may not be satisfied with the explanation/resolution at the end; there’s not a lot of exposition, and time doesn’t permit much of an infodump, so a couple of loose ends still dangle.

Abrams isn’t just out to make us solve a puzzle, though. The very first shot of the film is the steel mill where Joe’s mother has been killed (grimly resetting its days-since-an-accident count), and her death isn’t just a Disney plot device; it looms over the rest of the movie, over Joe and his father, the deputy sheriff (Kyle Chandler), and over Alice and her father (Ron Eldard), a poor alcoholic whose relationship with Alice borders on abusive. To reveal how this interacts with the main story would require giving away much of the mystery, suffice it to say an unusual and fascinating thematic parallel is achieved.

As near as I can tell, this picture doesn’t miss a beat. It’s a genuine original in spite of being a genre homage, and has an energy level and tension that builds to a fiery climax. Do we get all the answers? No, but a catharsis and closure is achieved nonetheless, and something truly remarkable takes place. It’s nice to see a sense of wonder in science fiction movies again, and Super 8 delivers that expertly.

Written and Directed by J. J. Abrams

Grade: A

In Theaters: X-Men: First Class

2011-06-10T09:24:00.004-05:00

X-Men: First Class doesn’t feel like the obvious direction for the franchise to go in. It's not just a prequel, but one set in the 1960s, when the comic was first published, and working with the original “Children of the Atom” concept that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby pioneered. Of course, it’s not a lot like the original comics, or the more recent retro series of the same name for that matter, but rather its own odd take on the origins of the world’s strangest superheroes. It’s actually a fairly charming approach, and a pretty good movie too, managing to feel more like an actual story than the cash grab of the last two X-entries. There are a number of rough patches, and it’s not as good as it could have been, but it’s a step back in the right direction.

The film follows Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), a brilliant student and telepath who is interested in finding other mutants like him. As a child he befriends a young runaway named Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) who has the ability to change her shape, and she lives with him almost like a sister. When CIA operative Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) witnesses a group of mutants led by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) coercing a Pentagon official into placing US missiles in Turkey, she enlists the help of Xavier to help hunt down Shaw and his cohorts (including the shapely telepath Emma Frost, played by January Jones.) In the process Xavier rescues Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), a mutant with magnetic powers who, as a child, saw his mother killed by Shaw when both were held in a concentration camp, and has been working as a superpowered Nazi hunter ever since. Erik and Charles both see the need for mutants to unite in a world that hates and fears them, and begin recruiting others with unusual powers to stop Shaw before he can manipulate the Cuban Missile Crisis into a full-blown nuclear exchange.

It takes a while for the various plot strands to come together, but fortunately the various mutants’ individual stories are pretty interesting in and of themselves. Xavier is both charming and a bit sleazy, the price of being able to manipulate people with your mind, and to some extent the story of the film is the story of him being forced into something resembling emotional maturity by an increasingly unpleasant situation. At the same time, Erik is being forced into maturity by having to confront something larger than his own vendetta (as valid as it is, and as satisfying as it is to see him kill ex-Nazis hiding in Argentina.) Raven (later to be known as Mystique) is also put on a fascinating and conflicted journey, one that calls into question her relationship with Xavier. And then there’s the villain’s story, more conventional to be sure, but not without its fun parts, notably Shaw’s groovy Hellfire Club.

With all these stories and characters flying around the movie can’t help but be a little sloppy. Some of the dialogue doesn’t work, Oliver Platt’s character is never given an actual name, and almost inevitably the team’s sole black member (Edi Gathegi as Darwin, who has a genuinely interesting “adaptive” power) dies in the second act. It’s kind of messy in the way it grabs various characters and names from the comic book mythos, and while I generally believe that filmmakers have no obligation to be especially faithful to their source material, Moira’s lack of Scottishness bugged me. Some of the characters get shorted in the shuffle, and this seems to bear traces of having been a few different X-projects smashed together when it appeared that no single one could carry a picture on its own.

So why does this work for me? For one thing, it doesn’t feel like a soulless moneymaking engine. Some of the story choices- such as the 1960s setting, the direct use of the Cuban missile crisis as a key plot point (even bringing in the US’ own nuclear expansion into Turkey), and the lack of “marquee value” heroes on the main team- give the impression that this was a weird little twist on the franchise that the various participants genuinely believed in. It has an offbeat sense of humor and a nice layering of the character’s social anxieties on top of the apocalyptic stuff. For the most part it feels like it wants to do right by its characters- not necessarily from a comics purist perspective, but from the perspective of telling their story.

A lot of this may fall on the actors as well. McAvoy, Fassbender, and Lawrence have the most heavy lifting to do, and they come off quite well- for people who have seen the previous X-Men adventures, there’s a sense that for the first time we’re really getting to learn about Professor X, Magneto, and Mystique. The kids playing the actual “first class” are enjoyable too, and Bacon as Sebastian Shaw is clearly having a little too much fun. Byrne continues to impress, the changes to Moira notwithstanding, and there are some amusing cameos both by established superhero types and by good actors in general.

This is a film that probably could have been better if given more time to cook. It takes on the burden of a franchise reinventing itself to stay relevant and is unsteady because of it. But even in a genre as played through as comic book superheroics, this feels fresh. It’s a good spectacle, it’s willing to be a little quirky, and no single problem it has is big enough to hobble the whole thing. It charges along in spite of everything, and does so with a considerable amount of charm. The Marvel movies this summer are 2 for 2 so far, and I can only hope they manage the hat trick.

Based on characters created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Chris Claremont, etc. etc. etc.
Story by Sheldon Turner and Brian Singer
Screenplay by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman, and Matthew Vaughn
Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Grade: B

Random (Free!) Movie Report #92: Non-Stop New York

2011-06-07T09:54:00.004-05:00

The grand old days of cinema were filled with programmers: fast-moving little films that would maybe serve as the bottom half of a double feature or simply keep a theater stocked between bigger releases. They were made to be enjoyed and forgotten, in the absence of television or video to give them a second life. Many of them disappeared, and others have fallen into the public domain, and they can be hard to evaluate from a modern perspective precisely because they weren’t made for posterity or to withstand intense critical scrutiny. And yet, some of them hold up.

Non-Stop New York is a movie I heard about and rented almost at random; I saw the poster once, was vaguely intrigued, and here we are. It’s a suspense thriller with a good sense of humor, and a jaunty adventurous spirit exemplified by lead Anna Lee. Though a British film it’s not much different from what Hollywood studios were producing in the mid/late thirties, and seems to have been made with the international market in mind. It’s a smart, well-written movie that, while it follows the usual conventions, does so with just enough aplomb to stand out.

Our heroine is Jennie Carr (Lee), an English showgirl whose travelling company has just opened and closed in Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve. Waiting in New York for the next boat home, Jennie meets a nice young lawyer and goes up to his apartment for a meal (this being the Depression), before being shoved away by some threatening looking men. She later discovers that the lawyer has been murdered, and that a local vagrant named Abel (Arthur Goulett) has been fingered for the crime. But she saw Abel enter and leave the man’s apartment in search of food before she herself was pushed out. By the time she reads about what’s going on, though, she’s back in London, and Abel has already been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The only way to present the evidence that will exonerate Abel is for Jennie to go back to New York, and the only way to do that in time is to stow away on board an overnight plane. Said plane, an advanced and entirely fictional double-decker model with individual passenger cabins and an open balcony, also by circumstance comes to contain the lead gangster Hugo Brant (Francis L. Sullivan) posing as a Portuguese general, trying to make sure the wrong man dies for his crime, as well as a handsome Scotland Yard inspector (John Loder) lured into the case by a shady blackmailer.

So the plot is more or less the dictionary definition of “convoluted”, and I have to confess my summary isn’t doing it too much justice. The whole thing is loaded with contrivance, but that’s where the tone saves it- this is not an entirely serious thriller, more a light comic adventure, with plenty of humor and romantic patter to break up the tension. The plane is basically treated like a flying Orient Express, with a colorful cast of passengers and pleny of room for comings and goings. (In a way the film is almost science fiction, though I’m not sure the “flying boat” concept was ever so much technologically remote as it was economically unfeasible.)

Fortunately the writing is actually pretty clever; it’s not at the level of The Thin Man, but there’s a spark to it. Jennie is a nicely scrappy character, and the obligatory romance with the handsome inspector is nicely handled by the two going out on the small balcony and having all their potentially sappy dialogue drowned out by the noise. There’s a kid who plays the violin (but wants to play jazz saxophone) who is refreshingly non-annoying, and it’s honestly fun to watch the various plot devices interact. A phony coin here, a parachute there, it gets fairly interesting. It’s also striking to see the role the Great Depression plays, especially in early scenes- Jennie is driven by hunger, as is Abel in sneaking into the lawyer’s apartment, and the idea of a bunch of rich gangsters conspiring to end the life of a vagabond for their own convenience is a strong one.

Anna Lee gives a great performance, staying energetic and charming even when being wrongly thrown in prison or having her life threatened. Sullivan is a strong heavy, and John Loder manages to not be as boring as his character would look on paper. The whole film has a strong cast of character actors who manage to be distinctive without being shrill.

There’s nothing in Non-Stop New York that would push it into the realm of a true classic, but for a B picture it’s surprisingly slick. It hums along amiably, never creating an awful lot of suspense as to the eventual outcome, but still being an entertaining ride in itself. The film is in the public domain, meaning you can watch it at the Internet Archive, who have a better print than Alpha Video, which somehow managed to screw up the cropping on a 1.37:1 picture. For free, you can’t do a lot better.

Based on the novel “Sky Steward” by Ken Attiwill
Written by J.O.C Orton, Roland Pertwee, and Curt Siodmak, with additional dialogue by E.V.H. Emmett
Directed by Robert Stevenson

Grade: B+

Random Movie Report #91: One From The Heart

2011-06-03T09:23:00.003-05:00

The film that killed Zoetrope Studios, Francis Ford Coppola’s One From The Heart is the sort of film I just had to see despite not having any expectations as to it being any good. It was a work of sheer audacity on par with a lot of famous auteur stumbles from the late 70s and early 80s; a small romantic comedy that blew up into a $27 million dollar epic not because the story grew any but because the director insisted on building Las Vegas inside a movie studio and treating the whole thing like an old Hollywood musical with touches of modern realism and a soundtrack written by Tom Waits. It doesn’t really work, but it’s fascinating still, a trove of interesting images and sounds and techniques that simply fail to converge on anything significant.

As you might imagine, it’s a love story. Hank (Frederic Forrest) and Frannie (Terri Garr) are our two young lovers, who have more or less lived together happily in Vegas for five years without actually tying the knot. But things have grown sour and a little boring, and an anniversary dinner slowly builds to an ugly fight which makes both of them decide to split up for good. Going into town, they both find opportunities for new love, Frannie with a charming singer/waiter named Ray (Raul Julia) who promises to take her to Bora Bora like she always wanted, and Hank with a mysterious circus girl named Leila (Nastassja Kinski) who seems to represent all of Vegas’ enchantment. But after one wild, music-filled Fourth of July, their thoughts drift to each other, and Hank becomes determined to win Frannie back at any cost.

Among other things, One From The Heart was Coppola’s first experiment in “electronic cinema”, a process intended to capture the feel of live early television- he directed remotely from inside a giant trailer, while cameras large and small followed the actors through sets on long takes. The picture was entirely studio-bound, Coppola wishing to create an idealized fantasy of Las Vegas as opposed to the reality. And to be sure, the film’s visuals are incredible. The city is bright and candy colored, with little division between day and night, sharp colored lights throwing characters into relief. Even the more subdued moments of the film are beautifully lit and composed, and the long takes, rather than feeling obtrusive, create a certain intimacy.

And here comes the “but...”. Romances, more than any other genre, rely on our connecting with the central characters and understanding their emotional links with each other. One From The Heart gets it half right- most of the characters are charming, and the acting is pretty strong, but the fundamental relationship at the core of it all doesn’t quite register. We know from the Old Hollywood look and feel of the picture that the instant our young lovers break up, they’re destined to get back together; unfortunately, the film never really makes us think that they should. They’re not completely miserable with each other, but they’re getting there, and as far as we can tell Ray and Leila are both good people who can offer them the chance at something better. Hank’s third-act mania to win Frannie over again comes off as more neurotic than romantic, and even taking into account the changing morés of the romantic comedy it gets a bit creepy. Frederic Forrest was an interesting and brave choice to cast in the lead, as he’s not the traditional heartthrob, but perhaps he’s been cast too well- Hank gets a little scary and you wonder if his behavior might not seem a little more palatable coming from a Cary Grant type. The pacing of much of the dialogue and particularly the romantic exchanges just feels off, like we’re missing beats that the music and visuals are trying to fill in.

So the film is basically fatally flawed. And yet, it offers a number of delightful distractions. The visuals, including a wistful but eerie title sequence, are constantly surprising. The song score, intended to act as the emotional window into the protagonists’ lives, is terrific, with the growling Waits counterbalanced by a soulful Crystal Gayle. Waits’ growling during the third act almost saves it, as he captures some of the breakdown Hank is going through. Leila is given a great surrealist song number in the most old-timey sequence of all, and Frannie and Ray dance a magnificent tango that spills into the streets and catches up an entire band of 4th of July revelers. You’ve got supporting appearances by Lainie Kazan and Harry Dean Stanton, and going back to visual beauty, this may be Terri Garr at her most utterly gorgeous.

This is not the sort of film you can recommend to most people. It doesn’t quite work as a romance and all the glamour put up around it isn’t enough to compensate. But I think if you’re a movie buff or scholar, you owe it to yourself to watch it at least once. There’s a lot here that works even if the whole thing doesn’t, and you can sense Coppola and company really earnestly trying to realize something important. Critics called the film heartless and mechanical, but I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s made with love, and passion, and that perhaps the filmmakers’ enthusiasm for the story got in the way of their telling it properly. I don’t love it, but I’m very fond of parts of it, and I think I would like to see them again.

Story by Armyan Bernstein
Screenplay by Armyan Bernstein and Francis Coppola (and Luana Anders, uncredited)
Directed by Francis Coppola

Grade: C+

Frasierquest 3.24: You Can Go Home Again

2011-05-31T22:47:00.006-05:00

Frasier (on tape): Good afternoon, Seattle. My name is Dr. Frasier Crane. If you can feel, I can heal.

Frasier (in the present): Fasten your seatbelt, Eddie. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The end of the season brings us full circle to the start, in a nice little story that revisits the series’ emotional roots. It follows the pattern of the last two season finales, being another episode built on contemplation and Frasier and other characters considering their lives and where they are. The difference is that this time, we effectively get a prequel, a glimpse of Frasier’s life between moving to Seattle and having to take in his father. And despite the bad rep prequels get, it’s a memorable retrospective.

May 21, 1996 marks the third anniversary of The Dr. Frasier Crane Show, and Roz gives Frasier a tape of the first show as a gift. Listening to it sweeps Frasier into a reverie, remembering his disastrous first day, when Roz was a last minute sub for his planned producer (who dumped him for reasons Frasier can’t quite understand) and he couldn’t think of a decent catchphrase. When he meets Niles later that day, he’s reminded, begrudgingly, that he hasn’t been to see his father, who is still living on his own, since he came back to Seattle. The two have been out of touch since mom died, and reconnecting is going to be tough.

There’s a nice parallel plot in the present, where Daphne has a vacation coming up and is trying to decide between seeing her family and heading off to sunny Acapulco. She asks Frasier the all important question, “Why is it so easy to love our families but so difficult to like them?”, and that’s probably what weighs on Frasier’s mind as he listens. Frasier and Martin weren’t getting along when the series started, and things were apparently even worse before then. It’s a really jarring contrast between the easy, joking friction they have in the show’s present and the genuine emotional tension of their earlier relationship, and when we return to the present at the end we get an encouraging sign that things have progressed (Martin can now listen to up to 10 minutes of his son’s show before falling asleep.)

So, it’s not really about Frasier’s first show, but we get all sorts of fascinating details and jokes built on the situational irony of knowing what’s going to happen in the future. Niles and Roz have a rude brush-by at the Café Nervosa without ever really being introduced, and later Niles catches a whiff of something in the air as a certain adorable Manchester girl (in the most 90s outfit imaginable) briefly dips in and out of scene. And Eddie, who used to stare at Niles, finds a new object of affection. The episode is full of rewards for regular viewers, and the show’s been around enough to indulge them. It’s one of the pleasures of a show lasting into later seasons- it can build on and play around with our knowledge of its characters, tropes, and running gags.

Frasier’s long-form flashback gives him an answer to Daphne’s dilemma, letting her take two vacations so that she can be with her family and work off the tension of being with her family. (This is a good idea that needs to catch on.) His position- that family is tough but rewarding work- is a theme that comes up in the series a lot. The same could be said of relationships in general, but at least we get to choose some of those.

So, as with “My Coffee With Niles”, the season ends with Frasier in a place of serenity. The show’s ability to take these little emotional and philosophical jaunts is one of the things that puts it in such rarefied territory; though it’s a situation comedy, the situation can be as simple as a little quiet time. Not all the finales are like this, and most aren’t from this point on, but the overall level of thoughtfulness remains. I’ll be taking a short break from this for probably a couple of weeks, but as soon as I decide I want to we’ll dive right into Season 4, because the unexamined life is not worth living.

Guest Caller: Sherry Lansing as Angela

Written by Linda Morris & Vic Rauseo
Directed by David Lee

Aired May 21, 1996

Frasier: Little owlet in the glen, I'm ashamed of you /
You're ungrammatical at speaking as you do. /
You should say "to whom, to whom," not "to who, to who." /
Your little friend Miss Katydid may be green, 'tis true, /
But you've never heard her say, /
(sees Roz enter)
Who the hell are you?

Frasierquest 3.23: The Focus Group

2011-05-31T09:28:00.001-05:00

Leader: Now I know, you’ve been eyeing this two way mirror, but the only people behind there are data consultants, so please, speak freely. There’s no one involved with the show whose feelings could be hurt.

Roz: If anybody says anything bad about me I’ll kill myself.

One of the consequences of being too smart for your own good is overthinking things, and expecting rational answers where none can be found. Like people’s opinions; it’s good if they’re objective but sometimes they just aren’t, and their likes and dislikes can’t be helped. “The Focus Group”, an episode probably with some roots in the writers’ personal experience, is about the fact that no matter how good you are, somebody is going to dislike you, and it’s not even their fault. Despite falling firmly into the “humor of discomfort” category more than I normally like, it’s a really strong episode buoyed by a fun subplot and some superb acting.

The titular focus group is one being run for Frasier’s show, as is done with a lot of radio shows. The random 12 people chosen seem to like it a lot, with the exception of the soft-spoken Manu (Tony Shalhoub), who doesn’t like the show and doesn’t like Frasier. He’s too shy to be very forthcoming as to why he doesn’t like him, and his lack of a reason drives Frasier nuts. Finding Manu running a newsstand, Frasier sets out to discover what specific complaint he had, and needless to say his attempts at subterfuge and diplomacy do not go well.

Frasier’s insecurity here seems to reflect one that people in the media sometimes suffer; on the one hand, feedback is good because it means your work is being seen/heard/read and generates a response, but no matter how many times you hear “You’re doing great”, it’s those few negative comments that resonate more. I’ve had it happen myself now and again with my various non-review ventures. Obviously Frasier takes this to an extreme, because he’s Frasier. It’s probably worse because he’s a psychiatrist- he helps people, he sees himself as one of the good guys. How could anyone not like that?

The territory is a little similar to that of “I Hate Frasier Crane”, with the key difference that Manu is really a nice, humble guy, who does his best to try an back out of the oppositional situation he’s in once he realizes it. That’s what edges us into discomfort territory, especially with Shalhoub having gained so much experience earning audience sympathy on Wings. But Frasier’s attempts to get a clearer answer (or really just win him over) are so ludicrously disastrous- and done in full view of a completely disbelieving Martin and Niles- that it’s just plain hilarious.

Niles and Daphne get the episode’s main subplot, but it’s not what you think. With both characters on edge due to their own troubles (Niles being billed for art repair after a gallery mishap, Daphne’s boyfriend being off in Vegas on their anniversary), the two back into a full-fledged argument with each other, and though they quickly come to their senses and make up, Niles is frankly turned on. It’s a nice twist on their normal relationship- we, the audience, get a little nervous seeing the two fight (well, I did, can’t speak for you), but the fact that it only excites and attracts Niles to her even more is at once surprising and also so very much him. And though it’s not closely related to the main plot, the fact that it’s about an irrational dislike boiling up and becoming more fuel for an irrational attraction at least keeps it in the same ballpark.

I’m sure Frasier was subjected to a lot of test screenings and focus group meetings itself, and that all the writers, Rob Greenberg included, have been on shows which were given even more scrutiny. Rather than mock the process itself, though, “The Focus Group” deals with how we react to criticism- and specifically, the worst way to do so. It seems like it’d be nice to know just what problems people have with us, but the moral of the story is that you have to accept that you’ll never please anyone. That, or fighting with girls is fun. One or the other.

No Guest Caller

Written by Rob Greenberg
Directed by Philip Charles Mackenzie

Aired May 14, 1996

Martin: Vegas, huh? Great! Tell him not to miss the show at the Diamond Lounge; “A Topless History of the World”! If they’ve still got the same Bathsheba he’s in for a real treat.

Daphne: Oh, yes, that’s just where I want Joe spending our anniversary. Some smutty show in Vegas!

Martin: No, it’s very tasteful and historically accurate. Except at the end, where Eleanor Roosevelt and Eva Braun settle World War II by wrestling in pudding.

Frasierquest 3.22: Frasier Loves Roz

2011-05-29T17:27:00.001-05:00

Niles: He claims to have been with, at last count, one hundred and fifty women!

Frasier: Oh puh-leeze. A hundred and fifty...

Niles: As if anything over, say... seven weren't absurd.

Frasier: Well, I would say eleven, but I get your point.

As we near the home stretch for this season, we’ve got some big episodes to go through. “Frasier Loves Roz” is not as Earth-shattering as its title would indicate, but it is an extremely important episode in terms of defining the relationship between the two characters. Roz-focused episodes are welcome because of how rare they are, and this one, executive producer Suzanne Martin’s first writing credit on the show, is a real gem.

On hearing about the latest problems Roz is having with her love life, Frasier advises her to maybe make a change from her usual pretty boys and look for someone more substantial. Roz starts to get serious with a man named Ben (Michael Mitz)- unfortunately, Frasier learns from Niles that Ben is a serial womanizer and sexual compulsive who tends to discard women as quickly as they start to try and get a commitment out of him. Even more unfortunately, Frasier can’t tell Roz about this becase Ben is Niles’ patient and Niles told him this in confidence. Frasier tries to drop subtle hints to Roz that maybe she shouldn’t get so attached to this one, but Roz interprets it as jealousy and, with some unintended help from Daphne, starts to think that maybe Frasier wants her for himself.

One of the things that we learn about Roz in this episode is that despite her penchant for one night stands, she wants a significant relationship as much as the next person. She’s not necessarily looking to settle down, but she’s in the mood for romance. It’s another nice, believable shading to her character that- she’s not inherently lovelorn but everyone gets lonely sometimes. Perhaps her feelings are triggered by the fact that someone back home is getting married, and she’s been asked to wear a hideous green bridesmaids dress, and never expected the bride-to-be to go to the altar before her. Whatever the reason, it puts her in a weaker state than we normally see her.

Frasier and Roz’s interaction in the episode is made especially entertaining by how they talk past each other the entire time. It’s sort of a mirror episode to “Roz in the Doghouse”, where a man coming between them in a professional capacity nearly killed their friendship entirely. Here, with a romantic relationship doing the splitting, they both deeply care for each other and have each other’s happiness in mind. It’s hard to do comedy where almost all the characters are basically decent folk, but it’s always been one of Frasier’s strengths. The misunderstanding which makes up the basis for the humor is plain enough, but it’s a device that lets us see two friends trying to be there for each other without getting to treacly and sentimental.

This is also another test for Frasier and Niles’ legendary and often-strained ethics, another example of how psychiatry as a premise creates plot hooks for the show. It’s solved more by circumstance than by anything else, but that doesn’t prevent Frasier and Niles from hitting the books and looking for any reason that Roz might be declared mentally incompetent so she can be told not to get too close to Ben. Even with her best interests at heart, Frasier can’t help but undercut some of Roz’s more unstable behavior, as well as things he just finds insane (like drinking white zinfandel.) The things we do for our friends.

There’s some very nice acting here by Peri Gilpin, showing Roz at a personal low as she gets her heart broken and ends up sobbing and smearing her makeup while wearing the most hideous green dress. She and Kelsey Grammer establish just the right note for a man and woman who are very close friends but could never really be more than that. (The subplot with Niles and Frasier trying to get Martin on videotape for future generations doesn’t really go anywhere but has a couple of inspired gags.)

The irony of the title is that it’s actually true; Frasier’s not in love with Roz, but he does love her in a way that this episode makes clearer than any before it. We’ve seen Frasier and Roz as partners and friends, but we see now, close to the end of the season, that they’re really best friends. “Frasier Loves Roz” is a sweet, fun episode that quietly shows just how far they’re willing to go for each other.

Guest Caller: David Duchovny as Tom

Written by Suzanne Martin
Directed by Philip Charles Mackenzie
Aired May 7, 1996

Roz: Can you believe I actually have to be seen in public in this thing?

Frasier: Well, Roz, it’s only for a few hours, after that you can donate it to the Salvation Army, and one day make some Irish drag queen very happy.

In Theaters: Bridesmaids

2011-05-25T15:45:00.003-05:00

It’s a sign of how bad things have gotten for the “chick flick” genre that Bridesmaids essentially was promoted and given buzz for not being terrible. There’s something sad about how what should be a totally legitimate function of the film industry- catering to a demographic that makes up 50-odd percent of the population of the world- has been reduced to a cinematic ghetto, with each new ripped-from-Cosmo’s-advice-column entry filling critics and film buffs of both sexes with dread. Hollywood’s been accused of not getting women more than usual lately, and the way this genre has become a toxic dump site makes me think there’s something to it.

I was looking forward to this film from the start, since it looked to have a crudeness and outright irresponsibility that the genre so desperately needs, but even though I’m biased the picture more than met my expectations. The analysis of what this picture means for women in film has gotten a little ridiculous, and it shouldn’t have to carry that weight, but it is a really smart and well-put-together picture that transcends its “The Hangover for women” marketing and successfully strikes a balance between bad taste comedy and emotional realism.

Kristen Wiig is Annie, a woman whose life is not great and bordering on awful. She once owned a bakery, which went out of business, and now works unenthusiastically selling jewelry and having rather meaningless sex with a strangely unappealing Jon Hamm. Her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged (to a decidedly nontalkative Tim Heidecker), and asks Annie to be her maid of honor. This puts Helen in contact with the other titular maids, including the newlywed Becca (Ellie Kemper from The Office), burned out wife Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey from Reno 911), hard living Megan (Melissa McCarthy), and the rich, dainty, and all too perfect Helen (Rose Byrne). Helen takes on most of the planning duties for the wedding, and starts to muscle in on Annie’s duties of planning the bridal shower and bachelorette party as well, touching off the most passive-aggressive of feuds. Annie thinks she may actually be losing Lillian, not to her fiance but to Helen, and this starts to wear at her mind, touching off a spiral of freakouts, fights, and generally destructive behavior which puts her friendship- and a potential relationship with a charming patrolman (Chris O’Dowd)- in jeopardy.

This is Wiig’s picture, and where Saturday Night Live usually has her trotting out a succession of one-note characters, here she gets to prove what she can do with an actual role to play. (It likely didn’t hurt that she’s the co-writer.) Annie goes through a lot of emotional damage in this film, and Wiig manages to make it ludicrous and funny while also staying strangely believable. It’s a challenging comic performance that calls upon all her skills for timing, body language, and inflection, and while I can’t be sure what improvisation there may have been I’m going to wager there was at least some.

Wiig is backed up by an excellent cast. Rudolph has a great rapport with her fellow Not Ready For Prime Time Player, and Rose Byrne takes what could have been a broad caricature and gives Helen a certain gentleness- we see that she probably means well, she and Annie just don’t get along. McCarthy has the most off-the-wall character, the kind that has to be in every movie like this to establish the upper limits of outrageous behavior, and she steals several scenes. It’s disappointing that McLendon-Covey and Kemper don’t get more screen time- they clearly have interesting stories but don’t get to tell them because the movie’s running long. It’s the picture’s one real flaw.

As one might expect from a film with Judd Apatow’s involvement, Bridesmaids blends some very lowbrow jokes with genuine insight into how we behave. The low we see Annie hit in this picture is very recognizable and relatable; it’s mostly her own doing, but we can understand the reason she gets into such a state, and we see it from her perspective. The themes of self-loathing and projection are strong, and what we find is a woman who never pulled herself up from the last time she got knocked down. There are no real bad guys, for once- it’s all about the obstacles we throw in our own way. The jealousy that Annie feels as Helen starts to become Lillian’s close confidant is also really well-handled; again, nobody’s entirely in the wrong, everyone has good intentions, but it creates something sour.

Of course, this is a comedy, so there’s a chance at redemption as well as a lot of very funny business. The film’s shift from broad comedy to deeper material can be jarring, but it feels like it earns it. Whether or not Bridesmaids saves the chick flick, or even if that means anything, it’s a really fun experience with loads of talented and funny people, mostly women, whom I very much enjoyed spending time with. I can’t think of any reason not to see it.

Written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo
Directed by Paul Feig
Grade: A

Random Movie Report #90: Strange Days

2011-05-21T08:35:00.003-05:00

Strange Days is a film both of its time and relevant to today; it’s aged in a way that recalls the good things about the era in which it was made. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow from a script by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, the film is a cyberpunk thriller set a mere 4 years in the future and a surprisingly strong comment on the times. Perhaps inevitably because of Cameron’s involvement and the fact that a lot of money was spent (it was a flop at the time, but has since become a cult item), it retreats from some of its more daring elements and embraces a conventionality that prevents it from being as good as it could be, but the overall ride is still a memorable one.

It’s 1999, and Los Angeles is coming apart at the seams. Rapper and social activist Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer) has just been killed in an apparent act of gang violence, and a perpetual riot is running in the streets in the buildup to New Year’s Eve and the turn of the millennium. (Well, not really the turn of the millennium but as close to it as makes no ends.) Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is an ex-cop and dealer in “clips”, recordings of people’s experiences drawn directly from their spinal column and able to be re-experienced by anyone with money and a player. People can live out robberies, daredevil tricks, vacations, sex fantasies with themselves in any role; Nero draws the line at “blackjack” or snuff clips, but others aren’t so scrupulous.

Between dodging the law, dodging creditors, and trying to win back his ex-girlfriend Faith (Juliette Lewis), Nero is sent a clip of an anonymous assassin brutally murdering one of his contacts, a prostitute named Iris (Brigette Bako) who was earlier being chased by the police. Nero is being framed for the killing, so he teams up with an old friend, bodyguard/chauffeur Lornette “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett), as well as his ex-partner on the police force (Tom Sizemore) to try and solve the case himself. In the process the two uncover a conspiracy and a story that could provide the final catalyst to plunge the city into anarchy, just in time for 2000.

Key to all of this is the casting of Ralph Fiennes, and how he and Bigelow interpret the character. Unkempt, unshaven, and just a little unhinged, Nero is an authentic fringe dweller, a man addicted to his own past and living life moment to moment in the present. He more than anyone gives the film its character, and Fiennes keeps up a junkie intensity throughout. Bassett is a particularly good counterpoint, and there's a nice if underdeveloped romantic tension between the two that contrasts well with his obsession with Faith.

The film’s storyline has a fairly gradual buildup- we’re well into the picture before Lenny finds out that anything is wrong at all. On the downside this makes for slowish going in the early segments, though to some extent the world the movie presents is interesting enough to keep us occupied. The upside is that as soon as Lenny discovers something’s wrong, he’s in so far deep that it’s almost too late. He’s being chased by sinister cops (Vincent D’ Onofrio and William Fichtner), has to find a clip that Iris recorded that she left in his car which just got towed, and has to deal with Faith’s sleazy lover/promoter (Michael Wincott) who is also involved somehow- once the plot swings into gear it’s pretty intense, intricate stuff.

The film’s action sequences benefit a lot from Bigelow’s sheer technical skill, and from the slick and vibrant style of 90s action movies, before desaturation and handheld cameras threw us all in the direction of gritty realism. The “clip” sequences are particularly engaging, most notably the very first, what seems like a long unbroken shot of a restaurant robbery from the POV of an unfortunate accomplice. The action is almost too intense at times, and the film has a twisted and relentless atmosphere that you don't expect from something James Cameron helped bring about.

That said, this was also a substantial production with a good bit of money spent, and perhaps because of this it stops short of being as brutal or audacious as it could be. There are themes of racial tension, police oppression, and general apocalypse and social upheaval brewing, but the end holds back. Parts of the story and dialogue are a little clunky and predictable, and you may well end up figuring out the major mystery well before it is revealed. It’s this retreat into formula that keeps the movie from being a genuine classic, and keeps it at merely very good.

For a while I’d hoped we’d stop predicting the imminent end of the world after the real arrival of the milennium failed to wipe us out, but the apocalyptic intensity of Strange Days remains relevant. We still have all sorts of tensions boiling, and in our anticipation of collapse and upheaval there’s both fear and hope that we could finally resolve things. The film captures this tension beautifully, and even if it’s not all it could be, it’s a hell of a thing for what it is.

Story by James Cameron
Screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Grade: B+

Frasierquest 3.21: Where There's Smoke There's Fired

2011-05-16T09:20:00.003-05:00

Daphne: Well, I smoked for years but I never became addicted. To this day, I can buy a pack, have a cig or two, toss them in a drawer and not crave another for months.

Bebe: You know there's a word for people who can do that. What is it? Oh, yes: bitch!

Does anyone like PSAs? They are treated as, at best, a necessary evil, and when a TV show or movie starts to bear even the slightest resemblance to a PSA we begin to get defensive. So the various attempts by the networks to primp up their image by reminding us that we shouldn’t smoke, or drink and drive, or get hooked on drugs usually wind up as examples of the worst episodes of their respective shows. (Ask a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan about “Beer Bad” sometime.) “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fired” manages to avoid this inglorious company, mainly because it’s only half committed to the bit. I can’t even be sure it was a network-ordered thing, though last season’s cigar party during “Adventures in Paradise, Part I” may have attracted a few complaints. But it’s not a story about smoking, it’s a story about Bebe Glazer, and her glorious scumminess overrides any sensation we may have that we’re being taught a lesson.

The station has yet another new manager, “Big Willy” Boone (Richard Hamilton), an aging Texas tycoon who asks (or rather orders) that Frasier cure his young fiancee of her smoking habit in time for their wedding, which is three days away. A challenging assignment becomes to Frasier nearly insurmountable when he realizes that the fiancee is Bebe, who is marrying Big Willy for pretty much the reason you’d expect. He gives her some pointers at his apartment one evening, but when she starts smoking again before she’s even left, it becomes an all-night intervention, and Frasier’s career and future stardom becomes dependent on getting one very dedicated and crafty woman to overcome one of the most powerful addictions known to man.

One of the reasons this episode feels much more substantial than some of the ones we’ve had recently is more involvement from the supporting cast. Because the story concerns the station and Frasier’s career, it’s enough to get not only Bebe, but Roz, Bulldog, and Gil involved. Daphne and Martin, who’ve been shown smoking in the past, also get dragged in, their habits stirred awake by Bebe’s professions of love for cigarettes. Niles has his own subplot involving an attempt to become more frugal, but offers some assistance to Frasier as well. For everyone to be involved, including a guest star and two semi-regulars, means there’s more places for the story to go and more it can do in the twenty-plus minutes it runs.

Writer Joe Keenan’s ease with farce may also have been a crucial element in getting this story to work as well as it does. The story may not completely fall into that genre- the action isn’t quite complex or chaotic enough- but Keenan knows how to shove people into high-pressure situations and find the humor in their responses. We get to see a side of Bebe we’ve never seen, one where she’s downright vulnerable, even childish, and it represents a fundamental upending of her and Frasier’s relationship, even greater than their tryst in “Agents in America, Part III”.

On top of everything, the episode is almost perverse in the way it handles the anti-smoking element. Bebe’s monologue about the near-sexual experience of smoking is almost a sales pitch, as well as a good depiction of just how personal our vices are to us. When Frasier does ultimately wean Bebe off of tobacco, it’s solely so that she can cash in on Big Willy’s almost certain incipient demise; in a final irony, that ends up happening anyway, and she goes right back to the cancer sticks. So, yeah, this probably wasn’t meant as a sop to the American Lung Association.

Harriet Samsom Harris again delivers a dynamite performance, and contributes a lot to making this episode as memorable as it is. It’s the kind of episode where everyone gets their moment to shine, though, and so we get to see the ensemble working at top form with some unusual subject matter. There’s something of a successful anti-smoking message to it, in that we see how addiction makes fools of the people who suffer it, but it doesn’t press for a message at the expense of quality comedy. Sometimes that’s the higher road to take.

No Guest Caller

Written by Joe Keenan
Directed by Philip Charles Mackenzie

Aired April 30, 1996

Bebe: I like the way a fresh firm pack feels in my hand. I like peeling away that little piece of cellophane and seeing it twinkle in the light. I like coaxing that first sweet cylinder out of its hiding place and bringing it slowly up to my lips. Striking a match, watching it burst into a perfect little flame and knowing that soon that flame will be inside me! I love the first puff, pulling it into my lungs... little fingers of smoking filling me, caressing me, feeling that warmth penetrate deeper and deeper until I think I'm going to burst! Then 'woosh!'... watching it flow out of me in a lovely sinuous cloud, no two ever quite the same!

Daphne: [Visibly aroused, as are the others] More potatoes, anyone?

Frasierquest 3.20: Police Story

2011-05-11T09:27:00.002-05:00

Niles: Maybe underneath it all, you’re attracted to this woman, and you wanna go out with her.

Martin: Oh, are you nuts? That’s sick! That’s disgusting! But for the sake of argument let’s say you’re right.

Marty Crane has a way with the ladies. It’s not something he tries too hard at most of the time, unlike Frasier- women just seem to like him. “Police Story” has him returning to the dating scene after a hiatus of a couple of seasons, and as such it actually sets up material for some later episodes. On its own, it’s a sweet enough little story, marred by not quite knowing when to stop.

Frasier has agreed to drive Roz to a date while her car’s in the shop, and while speeding to her destination he gets pulled over. The cop, Maureen Cutler (Jane Kaczmarek) turns out to be a fan and lets him off with a warning, and Frasier is smitten enough to want to see her again. He gets Martin to accompany him to McGinty’s, a favorite watering hole for Seattle’s finest, and sure enough runs into her again. However, in the course of things, Maureen and Martin get to talking, and it turns out she’s more attracted to Crane the elder, asking him out. This puts Martin in two quandries- whether he can tell Frasier that Maureen picked him, and whether he wants to date again.

Something that’s obvious but not really stated is that Maureen is at least a couple of decades younger than Martin. I make no moral judgements beyond a certain point, and Jane Kaczmarek is clearly well over 18, but TV does have a double standard and it is more common to see older men with younger women than the other way around. The episode doesn’t bring this up, though I imagine Maureen was always going to be around Frasier’s age. Niles does sense some nervousness on Martin’s part about dating Maureen, but some of the subtext may be that he’s worried about getting into a relationship with someone younger. Either way, he takes the plunge.

Martin has dated before on the show, but it’s after this episode that we start to see him as an active ladies’ man. His scenes with Maureen are played well by both actors (that Kaczmarek is good is hardly a surprise), with a real sense of chemistry. Martin’s dating life is solid material for the show, because he tends not to make the epic blunders his son does (in fact, Maureen stays his girlfriend well beyond this season.)

Unfortunately someone has to lose in this arrangement, namely Frasier. The episode takes place around his 43rd birthday, and he’s been some time without knowing the touch of a woman. This weighs heavily on him, and though meeting a sexy police woman gives him some confidence, it ends up being taken away just in time for the worst surprise party ever. The last scene comes off as almost unpleasant; it’s the kind of unearned embarassment I have a hard time laughing at. Frasier just ends up having a bad day and it’s not really his fault.

There’s an amusing scene here introducing two of Daphne’s Anglo-American friends, Charlotte (Jillie Mack) and Maggie (Denise Poirier). They are never seen again, but it’s a brief picture of Daphne’s life outside the Crane home, something that was never developed much. (Incidentally, Mack is Tom Selleck’s wife and Poirier is the voice of Aeon Flux.) Luck Hari appears again, and we learn about an unhappy love affair Frasier had with one of his coworkers many months ago.

“Police Story” would probably have worked better if it were focused more on Martin; Frasier’s story is just him having a terrible day, without much to learn from it. Still, the episode has its moments, and it’s more significant than it looks. From here on in, Martin’s no longer content to be a lonely widower, and when a Crane man is on the loose, that can never end well.

No Guest Caller

Written by Sy Rosen
Directed by Philip Charles Mackenzie
Aired April 23, 1996

Niles [to Frasier]: The gleam of her jackboots, her dangling nightstick, the glint of her handcuffs hanging on her leather belt... you’re off on some lurid little disciplinary fantasy.

Daphne: Oh, Dr. Crane, shame on you, you’ve got icing up and down your sleeve.

Niles: Oh. I am a naughty boy.

In Theaters: Thor

2011-05-08T12:54:00.003-05:00

As comic book adaptations go, Thor must have been a tall order from the start. The original Marvel comic’s complex revision of Norse mythology, coupled with the traditional superheroics and a story of a god living on Earth due to family disputes, called for an expensive and elaborate epic about a character who doesn’t have a lot of recognition value for the average moviegoer. (Unless said moviegoer is a fan of Adventures in Babysitting.) There was a lot of skepticism about this film, and even I wasn’t quite prepared for how much I would enjoy it. Kenneth Branagh and a host of writers have managed a warm, funny, and engaging spectacle, and despite its purpose to build up to the eventual big screen debut of Marvel’s Avengers, there’s not a cynical bone in its body.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is the son of Odin (Anthony Hopkins), ruler of the Asgardians, an advanced, godlike race of beings who once saved Earth from an invasion of frost giants, and so inspired the myths of the Norse pantheon. As Odin ages, Thor is to be named king (over the objections of his brother Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston), but the ceremony is disrupted by an attempt by the frost giants to break into Asgard and steal a precious artifact. Though the attempt fails, Thor is outraged and over his father’s objections leads his friends to the frost giant’s homeworld, trying unsuccessfully to discover the secret of how the giants were able to reach Asgard to begin with. For his act of aggression, Thor is stripped of his godlike powers and exiled to Earth, where he is discovered by Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), a young scientist researching the gates between worlds that the Asgardians use for travel. She’s not sure who he is at first, but when government agents start confiscating her work and constructing a base around a mysterious hammer which fell from the sky the same time Thor did, she starts to have her suspicions. Meanwhile, Odin falls into a deathly slumber from the stress of his actions, and Loki seizes power, putting dark designs into practice.

One of the benefits of the superhero genre’s popularity is that filmmakers now don’t seem afraid to embrace the wild and crazy aspects of the comics they’re adapting. Marvel’s version of the Norse gods was a blend of high fantasy and science fiction aided to no end by the wild visual imagination of Jack Kirby, the sort of thing that might get toned down, but then again this is a Kenneth Branagh film. He’s never worked with a picture quite this size before, but he’s never one to hold anything back, and we get Asgard in all its colorful glory, an at times downright breathtaking metropolis, populated by actors who were somehow persuaded to take their job of playing comic book space gods with the utmost seriousness.

Which is not to say the film lacks humor. Both in Asgard and on Earth, there are a lots of moments of realistic comic relief which somehow lend the more ridiculous plot events more credibility. Thor has a nice rapport with his friends, the Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander) and the Warriors Three (Ray Stevenson as Volstagg, Tadanobu Asano as Hogun, and Josh Dallas as Fandral)- fearsome fighters all, but also a lot of fun. Portman is warm and charming as Jane, and is aided by the amazing Stellan Skarsgard, and Kat Dennings as the loveliest comic relief I’ve seen in a while. The script has a lot of good banter, something which has served the Iron Man films exceedingly well and which I hope catches on.

There’s a surprising believability to the characters, aided no doubt by Branagh being very good with actors- Loki in particular becomes a complex villain, devastated by Odin’s revelation that he is actually born of the frost giants and thus driven by emotions that don’t become entirely clear until the film’s climax. Hiddleston and Hemsworth both play their roles very well despite being among the freshest faces in the cast. Hopkins is, well, Hopkins, and Idris Elba as the gatekeeper Hemdall has some wonderful scenes. The action is grand and imaginative without being overly contrived, and the 3-D effect is well done for the most part, though you could probably get the same impact from a 2-D screening.

The proliferation of writers on this film (the plague of big budget filmmaking is that coherent voices often get lost) does result in a story that’s not entirely seamless. Some thematic elements aren’t hit as strongly as they should be and some character movements are a touch too fast or too slow. None of these are really glaring, but they do add a bit of sloppiness to what is otherwise a well-crafted production.

Thor is just plain fun in a way that many blockbusters aspire to but often miss because they’ve thrown character and emotion under the bus. It’s technically possible for a film to get by without these things, but the ones that stay with me are the ones that try to have it all, that try to be clever and funny and sincere despite the best efforts of studios to breed out these characteristics. Of the Avengers set-up pictures, Thor may actually be the best, or at least my favorite, and while he’s guaranteed a return to the big screen there, I hope the god of thunder has another solo outing or two in him.

Based on the comic book character created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby
Story by J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich
Screenplay by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stewart, and Don Payne
Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Grade: B+

The Lis Sladen Tribute

2011-04-30T22:23:00.001-05:00

I feel bad about having taken too long to do this. Elisabeth Sladen's death took many people by surprise- it was not widely known that she had been struggling with cancer, and her sudden loss felt wrong, unjust, disorienting.

There's not a lot I can say, as a result. I will miss her despite never having met her, never having actually known a woman who from all accounts was as sweet and selfless in person as on television. On Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures, Sladen was a favorite aunt, a wonderful first grade teacher, a friendly and trustworthy guide into a world of wonder and danger. There will never be another person like her. In this context all I feel I can do is point to those accomplishments I have already noted, and hope I can do some form of justice.

The Time Warrior- The first appearance of Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who.
Genesis of the Daleks- Possibly the finest story of the show's original run, and arguably the best of the entire show.
K-9 and Company- Lis's first appearance at the Club.

There are, of course, other roles that Sladen filled, and I regret not knowing them. This is a terrible loss by any measure and I just hope that I can do her some justice- and I can only hope that somewhere she knows how much she was loved.

Frasierquest 3.19: Crane vs. Crane

2011-04-29T14:12:00.002-05:00

Martin: What father doesn’t look forward to the day he gathers his friends around the TV and says, “Hey, that’s my boy! The one making the old man cry!”?

“Crane vs. Crane” is interesting because it teases a brother against brother conflict that ultimately never takes place. The old sibling rivalry`formula is given a twist, in that what they’re arguing about is ultimately too important for their petty disagreements. A potentially very serious issue, that of senility and senior capacity as it pertains to huge sums of money, is turned into a strong comic story that lets us revisit Niles and Frasier’s endless game of oneupsmanship without feeling like it’s just a retread.

The story starts with Niles being retained to appear as an expert witness at the capacity hearing of timber baron Harlow Safford (the legendary Donald O’ Connor), a trial which is going to air on Court TV and thus give Niles a bit of celebrity. Frasier is approached by lawyers for the eccentric Safford, and finds the man a charming and clear-headed individual who just happens to like riding the rails and giving money to charity. He agrees to testify as well, setting himself against Niles on the other side of the aisle. Niles refuses to believe that Frasier is doing this out of any sincere conviction of Safford’s sanity rather than a desire to hog the spotlight. Both men enter the courtroom with cutting speeches prepared, but fate intervenes.

Thinking about it now, there’s something topical about the entire “Court TV” angle of the show. The 90s often seemed like the decade of the sensational show trial, and by the time this aired most people were still trying to get the O. J. Simpson case out of their heads. Little did anyone know we had a Presidential impeachment to look forward to. So of course Niles sees the courtroom as his chance at stardom. The show doesn’t try to hammer this home in any way, and it’s only on my most recent viewing that I recognized Court TV fame as a contemporary emergent phenomenon. (And speaking of contemporary references, Daphne’s Eddie-repelling shriek sounds a lot like the battle cry of Xena, Warrior Princess. That's probably coincidence but I prefer to think that it isn’t.)

The irony of Niles’ paranoia is that for once Frasier isn’t acting in his self interest. Usually when these two clash it’s purely ego vs. ego, but Frasier sincerely believes he is in the right for once. It ends up being a question of perception- Niles just happened to visit Safford when he was less lucid- and for a time we share Frasier’s, as he visits Harlow in what turns out to be a particularly sane period. It would have been interesting to see this from Niles’ perspective.

It’s always disheartening to think that we must, inevitably, decline in our abilities as we grow older- that after decades of self-improvement there is a peak. Frasier’s worried about this before, and that’s why he falls under Harlow’s spell. O’ Connor does a great job playing both the lucid and less-so sides of his character, showing how easily he can put up the appearance of normality and be his old vibrant self.

In the end, Frasier and Niles shouldn’t be the ones deciding the old man’s fate, and taking the outcome out of their hands not only works as a basic comic twist but also a way of deflating the seriousness of the situation. There’s no indication that Harlow is going to suffer for his incapacity beyond losing control of his money, so that makes the audience feel a little better too. While Martin justifiably grouses about the rush to declare senior citizens incompetent, sometimes it’s unavoidable.

Ultimately, the episode is memorable for how it balances the “new” elements- the guest star, the jump to televised courtroom antics- with the familiar spine of Niles and Frasier trying to outdo each other. This is ideally how most sitcoms work on a given week, taking a basic formula and introducing things to spice it up. The trick is actually making it happen week in and week out, and while some more unusual episodes are coming up in the season’s home stretch, it’s shows like this that keep the show’s reputation up.

Guest Caller: Debbie “Mrs.” Fields as Beth

Written by David Lloyd
Directed by Philip Charles Mackenzie
Aired April 9, 1996

Frasier: Yes, but you weren’t fooled! Somehow you pick up on some tiny clue that I missed! Remember what it was?

Niles: (thinks) Yes. Midway through our interview he took off his trousers and tried to put them on the cat.

Frasier: I’d like to think that I might have picked up on that one too.

Club Parnassus' Fifth Anniversary

2011-04-23T13:32:00.002-05:00

Welcome, one and all, to the blog's five year anniversary! Yes, on this day in 2006 I made my very first post, unsure of what I'd do with this place or whether I'd even spend much time on it.

Oh, to be innocent again. Keeping this place updated in the midst of creative writing and job searching hasn't always been easy, but it's worth the trouble to have a place to speak one's mind. I like to think of the Club (and I'm sentimental enough to picture it as a place instead an online journal) as a celebration of my various pop culture loves. I started with movies, then television, music, comics, books, audio theater, RPGs, live theater, pro wrestling, and of course, the eternal beauty of Julia Sawalha.

There's a lot I'd like to do still. Frasierquest continues rolling on. I've been thinking of starting a second blog solely to post some of my prose and creative work, but I need to figure out the best way to present that kind of content in blog form.

I'm gonna put this here because I'd still like people to see it if they haven't already, and I'd especially like some Youtube feedback. More machinima is on the horizon, but the next one will be a more complex undertaking, with voice actors and sound effects and the like.

New Doctor Who is on tonight, and I plan in the coming week to put up something as a tribute to the dear, recently departed Lis Sladen, taken from everyone far too soon.

And to send you all out with something inspirational, just remember that no matter what anyone tries to tell you, no matter how overwhelming the consensus is, no matter how you much you are made to feel you are objectively wrong, the 1998 Avengers is awesome.

Frasierquest 3.18: Chess Pains

2011-04-19T09:24:00.003-05:00

Martin: Those guys at the park make it look great. Eatin’ baloney sandwiches, smokin’ cigars... sometimes a fist fight even breaks out.

Frasier: Well, let’s just start with name calling and see where it goes, all right?

So. Chess. A great strategic pasttime, and a game where it’s quite possible to lose 2 moves after you start. It’s the sort of thing Frasier would naturally gravitate towards, so “Chess Pains” is an episode they had to do sooner or later. The main plot is not really one that lends itself to being a main plot, and it ends up a little slow, but it is a return to the conflict between Frasier and his dad, which we haven’t seen in a while despite it being the premise on which the show was based.

Frasier has ordered an expensive and elaborate chess set, a glorious antique which has him itching for a game against someone. He ropes Martin into a game, and though dad is not a very experienced chess player, he whoops Frasier’s butt. This upsets the good doctor more than it should, and he spends a lot of time contemplating how he lost, concluding that dad just happened to blunder into a good offensive strategy. So he asks for a rematch, and loses again. And again. And again.

This is one of those cases where Frasier’s reaction to a problem makes it much worse than it is. Anyone else by this point would have assumed that Martin just has a mind for chess (there’s a bit of a plot hole in that he’s been shown playing the game before, but acts like it’s mostly new to him here). He’s not a dumb guy, as much as he acts like it at times- he was a detective, for cryin’ out loud. But Frasier refuses to be outclassed in an intellectual pursuit, at least not without some deep underyling reason.

Frasier’s reasoning in this case is that he is afraid of toppling his father, and he expects this conflict to resolve itself simply by his having confronted it. And there may actually be some of that at work. Obviously the episode doesn’t show us too many details of their games, and I wouldn’t know enough to analyze them if it did. (It doesn’t help that Frasier’s fancy chess set is sufficiently fancy that I’m not entirely sure which piece is which.) But the overall impression we get is that he’s just covering, and that Martin is just the better player. Still, it’s left open for us.

There are a couple of highlights from the supporting cast to help pad out a thin central story. Niles, at Daphne’s suggestion, decides to get a dog to keep him company during his separation from Maris. Said dog ends up being Maris’ canine double, a thin whippet with a haughty attitude. It’s kind of adorable in a bizarre way (the actual breed is lovable enough), and a nice touch is that nobody ever actually says she looks like Maris; we’re expected to connect the dots ourselves. I also like the touch that Niles naturally takes Daphne’s advice; it’s something people in love do, not even necessarily to impress the object of our affection but because they’re so wonderful that they must be right about something. Then there’s Daphne’s attempt to cheer up Frasier with a sock puppet, which is a trainwreck.

I find myself wondering now whether I wouldn’t like this episode a lot more if I didn’t have to write about it. It’s a story about which not a lot can be said, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. This is, in the end, a 30-minute sitcom, and in that format there will inevitably be non-special episodes in which amusing things happen for a while and then stop, without a lot of room for thematic dissection. “Chess Pains” could have been better, but it’s not without its redeeming elements- it’s entertaining, but not one for the ages. Given the streak we’ve been on, it was inevitable.

No Guest Caller (though Luck Hari graces us with her presence at the Café Nervosa)

Written by Rob Greenberg
Directed by Gordon Hunt
Aired March 26, 1996

Frasier: Daphne, I would rather have a tarantula lay eggs in my ear than listen to any more of this puppet show.

Random Movie Report #89: The Green Slime

2011-04-13T09:31:00.004-05:00

Having a DVR has in some ways really thrown me back to my old days as a sci-fi fan who sorta knew how to program the VCR. I would scour the TV listings for old monster movies, usually playing late at night, set the timer and hope for the best. One holy grail that eluded me for a while was The Green Slime, scheduled to air on TNT one afternoon in the event that a World Cup game finished on time, so of course it never did. For months, possibly years, I looked for it to crop up again, finally getting a 3 A.M. airing. Years later, the film never popped up on mass release DVD, but eventually made its way to the Warner Archives print-on-demand program, and has shown up on the TCM Underground, allowing me to discover it again.

Kind of a lofty status for what is, to be honest, a pretty bad movie. The Green Slime is a historical curiosity, a pre-Alien monsters-in-space movie with cute blobby aliens, swinging mod space women, and a funky rock theme song. It’s cheesy and has problems beyond that, and I like to think I recognized them even as a youngin’. However, it’s so odd and fun that I still enjoy it, big though the stumbling blocks may be.

In the near-ish future (Next Sunday A.D.), an asteroid is suddenly detected on a collision course with Earth. Two-fisted, ginger-haired Commander Rankin (Robert Horton) is sent to space station Gamma III to head a mission to blow the thing up, and as if to prove that the makers of Armageddon were just wasting our time, they manage to do so in the first 20 minutes of the movie. However, the asteroid was covered in a strange green sludge, some of which rubs off on one of the crew’s space gear. Energy from the station’s decontamination process causes it to grow, turning into a one-eyed green monster that feeds off energy and can electrocute people with its tentacles. When the creature is wounded, its blood turns into more of the monsters, and soon the station is overrun. Rankin, distracted briefly by his contempt for the “soft” station leader Commander Elliott (Richard Jaeckel) and his love for the sexy Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi), must find a way to destroy the creatures and prevent their reaching Earth.

The film’s major flaw is easy to identify; Rankin is a dick. Not just kind of a dick, but really an unpleasant and egotistical embodiment of all that was wrong with old school machismo. Some of his criticisms of Elliott make sense, but he takes it way too far, makes no real effort to get along or show respect to a man whom he does not technically outrank, and keeps insisting that Lisa still loves him despite being engaged to Elliott. What was supposed to be a love triangle just comes off as a guy too full of himself to understand why anyone would reject him for anyone else. The writers (one of whom was Bill Finger, Batman’s uncredited co-creator) really seem to want to make a point about the necessity of leaders who make hard choices and don’t try to be nice, but they completely miss the mark.

Fortunately, this is a monster movie, and the monsters are effective in a way that the filmmakers probably didn’t anticipate. The Green Slime are, frankly, adorable. They’re a neat old school design with cyclopean eyes and flailing tentacles, and they make a wonderful ululating sound that makes them seem more like curious, electric children than evil aliens. The movie doesn’t skimp on the critters once they start showing up, and there’s a nice feeling of increasing chaos as they take over the station.

Another nice thing about this movie is how very Sixties it is. How Sixties is it? Well, Dr. Lisa spends most the entire movie in a variety of space-age minidresses, there’s a booze-heavy party scene with the nurses acting like office secretaries, and there’s the theme song. The lyrics are gloriously stupid, but it’s so damn catchy. I’ve been looking for an MP3. The visuals are appealing and colorful, and while the special effects of this American/Japanese co-production aren’t great, they get the job done.

Basically The Green Slime is a battle between some very entertaining monster action and an almost offensively tone-deaf human story. The results are not what one would call, from an aesthetic standpoint, good- you have to suffer through the dull macho bullshit to get to the fun action, and as a result you really start to root for the creatures more than usual. They don’t get bogged down in the chain of command or ancient love triangles, and they don’t waste the viewer’s time. For some they will make the movie worth watching, and the whole shebang also inspired the excellent boardgame Awful Green Things from Outer Space, so there’s that. Purely a guilty pleasure, but one I’m probably going to revisit more than I should.

Story by Ivan Reiner
Screenplay by Bill Finger, Tom Rowe, and Charles Sinclair
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku

Grade: C+

And now, let's rock out!