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Monday, January 06, 2003 ( 1/06/2003 10:05:00 AM ) Bill S. “IF WE CAN’T BELIEVE IN MARTHA STEWART, WHAT’S LEFT?” – When last we left Dead Zone denizen Johnny Smith (Anthony Michael Hall), our hero was reeling from an apocalyptic psychic vision sparked by touching sociopathic politician Greg Stillson (Sean Patrick Flanery). Several weeks later, and Smith has been obsessively shadowing the charismatic Stillson, a candidate who seemingly can’t get through three sentences of speechifying without bringing “God” into the mix. This gets him the support of the slippery Reverend Purdy (David Ogden Stiers), who also has a hidden agenda involving our man John. Second season of U.S.A.’s summer success, The Dead Zone, began last night, and though the ep opens by following the plot lines set at the end of last season, we soon found ourselves sidetracked. The Stillson plot (a major component in the Stephen King source novel) was suspended in favor of a cat-&-mouse game between hero psychic Smith and a kidnapper. Said kidnapper is a Bible-babbling busted dot.commer who has been driven around the bend by his failure. He snatches the son of the CEO who has bought out his company, threatening to kill him unless Johnny can use his psychic powers to find the boy. Only one hitch: ever since his Big Bang End-of-the-World vision, our hero’s psychic powers have been as reliable as a cheap cell phone. We keep hoping the guy from the Sprint commercials will appear to help Johnny w./ his piss-poor reception. By mid-show, of course, the psychic visions have started coming in clearly again. We have a showdown in a busted bank (lots of refs to economic struggling in this ep) where our dot-com kidnapper has locked his victim in a still-usable vault. He’s kidnapped the boy, we learn, to bring Johnny into the picture, viewing our protagonist as a messenger of God. What said message is supposed to be remains opaque, though at some level it revolves around the fact that we’ve lost our way in our dogged pursuit of Martha Stewart-style comfort. Hey, the guy’s clearly nuts, so we’re not supposed to analyze his actions too closely. Not a bad season opener, though I can’t help worrying how long they intend to leave the Stillson plot hanging. This isn’t Hamlet, after all, and that vision of an ash-strewn Washington D.C. isn't something we can ignore forever. Then again, all the religio-themed dialog (at one point, our psycho baddie uses Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego as a warning) echoes the hypocritical sloganeering used by Stillson. So perhaps we haven’t ventured too far from King’s source plot, after all. . . # | Sunday, January 05, 2003 ( 1/05/2003 10:48:00 AM ) Bill S. NOT A CHARLIE CHAN MOVIE – Watched Robert Altman’s Gosford Park last night. Not a flick for casual viewing: Altman and screenwriter Julian Fellowes drop you in the midst of this heavily populated English mansion circa 1932 and force you to work out the relationships ‘tween masters & servants. Took me about an hour of movie to get all the characters straight, and by then the flick started messing w./ our understanding of ‘em. It was only a matter of time before Altman, a master of the Comedy of Manners, took his knowing eye into the English drawing room Like the underappreciated Cookie’s Fortune, the movie uses the murder mystery format as a means for dissecting social parameters & pretensions. If I enjoy Fortune more than I do the more recent pic, it’s probably because Altman’s southern mystery connected more clearly to the world I inhabit. The upstairs/downstairs setting of Gosford can’t help but contain a whiff of nostalgic yearning, no matter how cleanly realized its view of British class society may be. Altman & Fellowes attempt to take some of the bloom off the setting by plunking an American character into the mix: a movie producer played by Bob Balaban, “researching” the countryside estate milieu for a proposed Charlie Chan movie. Simultaneously enraptured and skeptical about the world he finds himself in, the character serves to occasionally puncture the rituals all the other characters take for granted, but he isn’t utilized enough. Another outsider, Stephen Fry’s comically incompetent detective inspector, seems to have come from another movie altogether, playing the role far more broadly than any of the rest of the cast. I usually like Fry, but in this case, I found him distracting. Still, watching the rest of the film’s cast of solid pro Brit actors (Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Northam, et al) exchanging arch looks & innuendos, forming then breaking alliances, remains wryly entertaining. And as with other great Altman flicks, the man’s mastery of camera and staging is a joy to watch by itself (lots of neat light & shadow play in this ‘un). When we got to the revelation of the mystery's solution, I was ready to watch Gosford Park once more from scratch just to see how it all fit – the mark of a solid mystery movie. # | Saturday, January 04, 2003 ( 1/04/2003 07:00:00 AM ) Bill S. MAGICAL HE – Had a tooth extracted yesterday a.m., and in the afternoon I went to belatedly see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets stoned on vicodan. (I recommend it that way.) We went as the guest of a four-year-old friend: she enjoyed the movie but not as much as the first, which she’s watched to death on tape. Me, I thought it was better and not just because of the painkillers. Because we don’t have to spend as much time establishing everything this time out, the movie is able to quickly start concentrating on its class-based conflicts. Book two in the series has a stronger plot, and the movie remains faithful to it (only player to get shorted: younger Wesley sister Ginny, who has a major role in the climax, though we barely see her in the body of the film). Glad to see Robbie Coltrane’s Hagrid receive more screen time (as before, he provides much of the movie’s heart), while Kenneth Branagh’s comically vainglorious Gilderoy Lockhart was a stitch. Can’t help wondering about the all-knowing wisdom of school headmaster Dumbledore, though, that they even let such a poseur through the doors of Hogwarts School. Outside of those occasional moments when I found myself wondering if the book’s main trio would be able to make it to the end of the proposed seven-book series (Daniel Radcliffe’s Potter already looks to be knocking on pre-pubescence), all three seem to’ve settled into their roles more comfortably than they had in the first flick. Watching Richard Harris’ Dumbledore, I couldn’t help thinking, Gee, he doesn’t look or sound that well underneath all that hair. Making a series like this, you have to work against the ravages of aging at both ends. As for the movie’s big fx setpieces, they were more elaborate and worked better than the ones in Sorcerer’s Stone, though as an adult viewer I had as much fun playing Spot the Source (a bit of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang here, some snippets from The Goonies there – and Harryhausen, lots of Harryhausen) as I did watching the action. McKayla, our four-year-old friend, had to climb on her mother’s lap during the climactic fight w./ the Basilisk. It was scary, she later said, but not too scary. # | Friday, January 03, 2003 ( 1/03/2003 06:11:00 AM ) Bill S. REPEAT THE GEEKS – Mark Evanier alerts us to the fact that Comedy Central has just started quietly re-running eps of Beat the Geeks in the early a.m. (8:30 EST). I share some of Mark’s reservations about the show, which takes the mocking tone established by Win Ben Stein’s Money and kicks it up a notch, but I’ve also grown to enjoy the knowing fannish smarts of its Geek Triumvirate. Over time the show has given them all opportunity to demonstrate their love for their chosen areas of expertise which, goofy robes or no, is kind of cool. Caught yesterday’s repeat on tape: turns out to be from the first season, which just doesn’t hold up as well as the second. Year two, the producers tweaked the game to make it a tad tougher in the first round, brought in the considerably more manic (and funnier) Blaine Capatch to be host and started giving its resident experts more air time to pontificate on various underrated pop culture faves (as when Music Geek Andy Zax extolled the virtues of Brit rocker Nick Lowe). Now that the show's developed its rhythm, its place on Comedy Central's schedule is reportedly in jeopardy. Wonder if there's an available slot on the Game Show Network? # | Thursday, January 02, 2003 ( 1/02/2003 01:46:00 PM ) Bill S. “YOU’RE THE ONE THAT MAKES ME SMILE!” – Our local Hastings is about to close down – done in by the presence of a brand-spankin’ Borders just one parking lot down the beltway. I was never that impressed w./ the store, which was inconveniently located, mediocre in terms of selection diversity & generally priced two to three bucks more than the warehouse stores. Stopped in regularly, but I seldom bought anything. This week, however, with everything in Hastings being sold at better than 50% off, I made a point of going. Naturally, the goods were heavily picked over by the Xmas shopping crowd. The books & DVD sections were pretty much depleted, but the CD area bore fruit. Wound up purchasing some discs that I probably wouldn’t have considered if they’d been full price (most dubious selection: a German import of Haircut 100’s debut album!) Also bought a batch of funk discs in a doubtless futile attempt at giving myself the groove. Even though I rarely spent much money in it, walking through the remains, I still felt vaguely depressed. Staffed w./temps or soon-to-be-laid-off workers who longer care about polished cleanliness or the niceties of shelving, haphazardly plastered w./ progressively more desperate mark-down signs, there was a palpable sense of sadness within the entire building. No matter how good the deals may've been, no matter how much I may’ve have disliked the place when it was fully operational, I still didn’t feel entirely good about myself, walking up to the disheveled cash register w./ my bargain discs in hand. It’s a different story once I got to the parking lot, though. Released from the momentarily oppressive aura of failed capitalism, I sliced open my first disc and happily deposited it into the car’s CD player. “Favourite Shirt (Boy Meets Girl)” – new wave disco at its cheesiest! Adios, Hastings. . . # | Wednesday, January 01, 2003 ( 1/01/2003 11:12:00 AM ) Bill S. “THEY’RE A WHOLE DIFFERENT SEX!” – Watched Some Like It Hot on New Year’s Eve. The pic was part of a series of cross-dress comedies that TCM was showing for the night. The lineup also included Victor Victoria & I Was A Male War Bride, though the latter was a bit of a cheat since Grant’s cross-dressing scene only comprises about five minutes of the flick. (It’s still a funny movie.) Because it's been topic of recent discussion on the web, I started out looking for moments in Hot where the dubbing that ace voice man Paul Frees did for Tony Curtis’ Josephine was obvious. Found some scenes where the sync ‘tween lips and words was off, but it ultimately didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the movie. In fact, by mid-pic I’d stopped even noticing it. # | ( 1/01/2003 10:40:00 AM ) Bill S. I LIKE MY CHICKEN DIXIE FRIED – Though there are times when I’ve considered ceasing regular visits to blogger Michele Catalano’s A Small Victory – especially when she starts overdoing her only half facetious Proud-To-Be-A-Member-Of-The-Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy mode – the woman still regularly reminds me why she’s one of my favorite Blogcritics. This past week, she started a discussion of her favorite comics, and it opens w./ a strong piece on Garth Ennis’ Preacher series. Because it ran in the mid-90's (as I’ve indicated in the past, my comics reading during that decade was plenty sparse), I didn’t catch Preacher when it was fresh. But over the past month, I’ve been acquainting myself with Ennis’ creation. Not for nothing does the character’s first collection contain an intro by Texas pulpster Joe R. Lansdale: the two share the same take-no-prisoners approach to plotting and aren’t afraid of using the broadest strokes possible when it comes to imagining dark deeds. The approach can be entertaining in a Tarantino-esque way, though at its most belabored it can grow tediously one-note. A problem for those of us coming to Ennis’s work for the first time: some of the elements that he uses effectively in his earlier work have since become shtick for him. One quick example: the pathetic teenager in Preacher who bobbles his Kurt Cobain-inspired shotgun suicide and winds up w./ a Really-Messed-Up-Mug & the sobriquet Arse-Face; the equally messed-up henchman in the recent Fury MAX mini-series who's been given the apt nickname Fuck-Face. (Me, I’m waiting for Ennis to go deeper and give us Clitoris-Face.) Where Ennis’ grim comedy makes thematic sense in the hellish Texas he imagines, more recently it’s felt like he’s merely re-visiting gross-out territory that was already thoroughly charted by undergrounders in the 70’s. Result: the “mature readers” comic book equivalent to a pack of Garbage Pail Kids cards, only sans that nutritious stick o’ gum. Ennis' current re-treading may’ve lessened Preacher’s luster, but mid-point in my first read of the series, I’m still reasonably engrossed. And I can see what Michele’s raving about even if I can’t get on board w./ her elevated estimation of its stature. Looking forward to further entries in her “My Year in Comics” series. # | |
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