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Saturday, May 10, 2003 ( 5/10/2003 07:52:00 AM ) Bill S. THE NOSY PARKER – If I told you that I spend last night watching Murder She Wrote, would you still respect me in the morning? The premiere of a two-hour telemovie featuring Angela Lansbury in the role that kept her away from musical theatre for way too many years, Murder She Wrote: The Celtic Riddle provided a low-key reintroduction to everybody’s favorite Old-Lady-Snoop-Who’s-Not-Miz-Marple. The tactic of taking a series character and placing ‘em in occasional TV-movies is a long established one, and theoretically it should work. Removed from the rigors of weekly series production, you’d think that the writers, at least, would be able to craft a solid piece of genre work. But in practice, it seldom seems to come out that way: I don’t know of anyone, for instance, who would seriously assert that the seventies Perry Mason teleflicks were equal to the older one-hour black-and-white series eps. Some series characters just seem to flourish better under the weekly pressure of production. In Jessica Fletcher’s case, though, I had some small hope that this first TV-movie would rekindle my interest in the character: her series had lost its punch years before it’d gone off the air. Originally, a tidy classic mystery series (creators Richard Levinson & William Link, plus Peter S. Fischer had cut their teeth on early Columbo and the Jim Hutton version of Ellery Queen), the series had steadily grown less puzzling under a procession of writers whose idea of a telling clue was to have a character state something totally unrelated to anything else we’ve heard come out of ‘em (“I’m color-blind, you know.”) – only to have that out-of-context line be the one thing that tips off Jessica (“Only someone who’s color-blind would’ve dressed the victim in two different toned socks!”) To an old-fashioned mystery fan, nothing can be more maddening than recognizing that a guilty party has given us the big clue, often before the actual crime has been committed. So I had hopes that time away from the show would help Murder’s writers: watching the opening credits, I found my hopes rising even further. Scriptwriters Rosemary Ann Sisson & Bruce Lansbury were adapting the story from a genuine mystery novel set in Ireland and entitled The Celtic Riddle. Perhaps we’d get to see ol’ J.B. displaying some real ratiocination? Nope. Sorry. I haven’t read the Lyn Hamilton source novel, but I bet it’s more complex than the by-the-numbers whodunnit we got here. The most intriguing aspect of the mystery, the titular Riddle, is so perfunctorily handled that we don’t even get to see our heroine work through it in any detail; the plot has not one, but two, different characters who resort to anagrams; and, yes, there’s an out-of-context conversation a half hour into the two-hour movie that pretty much keys you into who the killer’s gonna be. Angela Lansbury remains appealing as J.B. Fletcher, though she’s definitely starting to look a bit frail to be wandering around dry-iced cemeteries in the middle of the night. She remains her usual all-too-observant self with an uncanny ability to pop up in the background just as some distressed twosome are involved in an argument that’ll advance the plot. At one point, a character calls her a “Nosy Parker,” and Jessica cheerfully owns up to it. Still, at this stage in her career, you’ve gotta wonder why anyone would invite the old gal to their house. Don’t they realize that having her on the premises is practically a guarantee somebody’s gonna get their head bashed in tonight? Maybe that was intentional this time. The one who brings her on the scene, after all, is a late businessman who’d made Jessica one of his beneficiaries. Considering how nasty his widow and eldest daughter are played, perhaps he was counting on the Fletcher Curse to get ‘em. . . # | Friday, May 09, 2003 ( 5/09/2003 07:56:00 AM ) Bill S. LINK UPDATE – Temporarily lost sight of R.C. Harvey’s regular comics journal Rants and Raves, but it thankfully seems to have resurfaced. Good news for those of us who appreciate Harvey’s conscientious historical/critical take on strips ‘n’ books. # | ( 5/09/2003 06:47:00 AM ) Bill S. JUST A BIG KID – Watching last night’s ER and noting character actor Stephen Lee actor’s appearance on it, I have to ask: am I the only who, on seeing Lee, immediately feels the urge to shout out, “the killer DOLLS!” # | ( 5/09/2003 06:41:00 AM ) Bill S. WOLF, RAM & HART – So Angel ends its season with our hero being handed the reins of L.A.’s foremost evil law firm: a deal that you know’ll have all sorts of hidden snares for our protagonists if WB gets off its ass and commits to renewing the show for another year. Me, I hope they do, if only because I can’t bear the thought of Cordelia Chase remaining comatose “in perpetuity.” Unlike Darren Madigan (just added to my blogroll after Elayne Riggs led me to his site), I’ve enjoyed Cordy’s character over the last couple years – the way the writers leavened her heroine status with occasional doses of Old School Cordy bitchiness – and I’d hate to see her left stranded in cancellation limbo. And they resolved the Connor plotline by driving Angel’s son around the bend, then wiping out all memory of his existence among our hero’s lieutenants. So now the boy’s. . . what? Living the Dawn life in a traditional nuclear family that’s reared him into a “stable” high school graduate? I’m unsure how this is supposed to work – does this mean all of Connor’s previous actions on this plane didn’t take place? (If that’s the case, then wouldn’t we have missed Connor/Cordelia’s progeny entirely?) Or just the world’s memory of it? Either way, I’m just satisfied by the fact that they’ve put a cap on the Connor storyline: don’t think I could’ve taken too many more adolescent tantrums from the guy. If they do bring the show back for another season, I hope they keep dead Lilah around. Love the way actress Stephanie Romanov delivers her arch lines (“the deal of a lifetime. . . just not . . . mine”). Not to mention: the way she crosses her legs. . . # | ( 5/09/2003 06:34:00 AM ) Bill S. FROMME – No, not Eric (Art of Loving) Fromme, just a piece of the URL for Mark Evanier’s stellar News from ME. Most Gadabout regulars know to periodically check out Mark’s site, but it’s been particularly active ever since he changed the format for his web log from basic html to a Movable Type template. Less time spent coding means more time writing, and in Mark’s case, that’s definitely a good thing. He’s the platinum standard in pop culture bloggers. # | Thursday, May 08, 2003 ( 5/08/2003 04:49:00 AM ) Bill S. SO DID SORKIN HAVE A WORK-FOR-HIRE CONTRACT? – I may be in a critical/political minority here, but I’m disheartened by the news of Aaron Sorkin’s ousting from The West Wing. Say what you will about his heart-on-sleeves politics (much less liberal than his political opponents assert: more Clintonesque neo-liberal) or his occasional melodramatic tendencies (President’s daughter Zoey kidnapped! Paging Jack Bauer!), the guy’s unmatched when it comes to crafting snappy grownup patter. Ain’t a lot of network series that have so consistently sounded with one writer’s voice – which in itself has been enough to make the show unique. Note that Mickey Kaus is already jokingly anticipating the possibility of a Republican conservative victory if the show lasts four more years (in the West Wing Universe, we’ve seen Bartlett win his 2nd term this season). It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t see the show sticking around that long. # | Wednesday, May 07, 2003 ( 5/07/2003 04:49:00 PM ) Bill S. “NATURE LAUGHS LAST” – Of the myriad comic book movies announced for this year, the one I’ve least anticipated is X-Men 2. Saw the first ‘un, of course, and while I wasn’t bored watching it, I can’t say I was totally wrapped up in it either. Sure, X-Men had beaucoup character and story to introduce – but so did the first Lord Of The Rings chapter, and that puppy moved. X1, on the other hand, just sat there, most damningly in its rote Good/Bad Mutant showdown at the Statue of Liberty. I’ve never especially been an avid X-addict: the original Lee & Kirby series was a decent start, but compared to their stint on Fantastic Four (where the team had several years to stretch the material), it never fulfilled its promise. When Chris Claremont retooled the group – adding former Hulk villain Wolverine to the mix and making the cast more multinational, I was only fitfully interested. Perhaps I was the wrong age for ‘em, but arcs like “Dark Phoenix” (Jean Grey turns into godlike baddie – a plot that’s been replicated too many times since) didn’t work for me. Too strained; too contrived. These days, Marvel’s X-books are a cottage industry by themselves. I’ve sampled a few – including Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men and the first year of the Ultimate book – but have limited working knowledge of all the presentday fannish minutia. So I had that strike going against the movie, too: part of the fun after all, with a flick like this lies in picking apart the difference ‘tween source comic and finished film. And so it was a more-than-pleasant surprise to find myself actively enjoying X2: X-Men United. Unlike the first outing, director Bryan Singer and collaborators put together an action film with a fully fleshed conflict. After squandering so much screen time in the first flick with back story, Singer just jumps into the action and assumes the audience has all memorized their X-Men DVDs (not a bad assumption to make for the opening weekend crowd, at least). So when we see the liquefied Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison), we know something is fishy long before the figure gives us a conveniently revealing flash of mutant eye coloring. The film’s basic plot is straightforward. Fanatical Army guy William Stryker (Brian Cox) is out to eradicate all mutants. Using a scantly explicated brainwashing drug on captured mutants Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Kurt “Nightcrawler” Wagner (Alan Cumming), he strives to foment war between human and mutant, first by sending agile teleporter Nightcrawler on an assault against the president, then by kidnapping kindly Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and some X-kiddies from Xavier’s School for Gifted Youth. Left to fend off Mutant Apocalypse: returning grown-ups Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Jean (Famke Janssen) and Storm (Halle Berry); half-formed students Rogue (Anna Paquin), Bobby “Iceman” Drake (Shawn Ashmore) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford); plus ee-vil mutant allies Magneto and the shape-shifting Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos). Outside of fan-fave Wolverine’s kung-fu battle against adamantium-laced peer Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), the best action sequences belong to the putative bad muties: brainwashed Nightcrawer’s bravura attack on the Oval Office, Mystique’s infiltration of Stryker’s underground lair and Darth Pyro’s tantrum pyrotechnic display against an unfortunate squad of Boston cops. (The latter comes across as especially vicious since the poor humans on the receiving end have no way to fend off the flames.) All the other major characters get their brief CGI setpieces (neatest one visually is a series of tornadoes that Storm creates to discourage a pack of pursuing fighter jets), but most of it looked pretty rote. Only time Scott “Cyclops” Summers (James Marsden) really gets to cut loose, he’s been brainwhipped into attacking his lover Jean. And then there’s poor Prof X: captured early in the pic (along with Cyclops), mentally reined by a “neural inhibitor” and victimized by Stryker’s son, a brain-controlling mutant who looks like he’s been lobotomized by Ron Popeil. Attempting to trick Xavier into activating Cerebro, the laser lightshow gizmo (am I only one who expects to hear Dark Side Of The Moon every time they turn this thing on?) that tracks both norms and mutants, the brain-swaying Stryker Jr. creates an imaginary version of the school and pretends to be a helpless li’l girl mutant. Watching this scene, I admit I momentarily got my franchises confused. Didn’t I see a bit like this in the first Star Trek: New Generation film? I thought, wondering if Whoopi Goldberg was gonna show. What I kept waiting for was a moment when our wheelchair-bound headmaster finally shrugged off these puissant attempts at mental manipulation and (figuratively) stood up for himself. Didn’t get it, though. Like the elder faculty in the Harry Potter movies, the main thing wise adults exist to do is get rescued and tidy the mess afterwards. I don’t recall the Professor X of the early comics being so consistently ineffective, but as I said I haven’t been keeping up with X-book continuity all that faithfully, so he could just be growing old. For our heroes, the biggest pleasures come in the small character moments: the Jean/Logan/Scott triangle, Rogue and Iceman struggling to hold their hormones in check, Nightcrawler explaining the iconography that’s been engraved all over his body, Mystique making a morph-filled play for Wolverine, the mutant kid who stays up all night remote controlling the teevee with the power of his mind. If much of the first flick served as a reminder that small moments were insufficient in a genre flick sans an adequate threat, the new entry shows how these same smallish bits can enhance a storyline with a decent ratio of menace. Never thought I’d write this, but Singer and co. have actually got me anticipating X3 now. . . # | ( 5/07/2003 09:45:00 AM ) Bill S. FIDDLE . . . FIDDLE . . . FIDDLE . . . – A bit of a relief to read that Pete Townshend’s child-porn charges have been dropped. But how does being placed on a national registry of sexual offenders mean you’ve been “cleared”? # | Tuesday, May 06, 2003 ( 5/06/2003 06:12:00 AM ) Bill S. IN THE PROMISED LAND – First few times we watched Manchild on BBC America, I’ll admit my wife and I did it with a certain amount of fannish scorn. This, we thought, is the show that Anthony Stewart Head’s been doing instead of steadfastly playing Rupert Giles on Buffy The Vampire Slayer? What was he thinking? The show’s advanced p.r. didn’t help matters any: a Brit male version of Sex And The City? Excuse me while I head for the study. I’ve got no use for the NY girlie version of Sex, so why would I want to see the same stuff acted out by a bunch of fortyish London guys? Watched a few entries from the first season, anyway, but outside of a few small moments, I found little reason to abandon my original stance. Becky, on the other hand, cheerfully bought the eye candy presented by Head and the show’s narrative lead, Nigel Havers (best known in this country as a handsomely privileged young Olympian in Chariots of Fire) – she’s a sucker for tweed. Manchild tells the story of four well-to-do Londoners, friends since childhood, who are struggling with the male midlife thing. Stockbroker Terry (Havers) is our guide – divorced with an adolescent son who he frequently feels in competition with – an exceedingly unreliable narrator given to pronouncements about the glories of middle-aged maleness; orthodontist James (Head) is considerably less self-assured (first season showed him struggling with penile dysfunction); art dealer Patrick (Don Warrington) is more eccentric and affected, while “deck king” Gary (Ray Burdis) is the only one of the bunch still married (to his childhood sweetheart). All of the actors are fine in their respective roles, but for me the most interesting is Burdis’ Ray, who’s both drawn and discomforted by his mates’ irresponsible lifestyle. As with HBO’s sitcom, each episode focuses on all four characters, typically tying their respective plotlines in the end through some thematic statement made by the narrator. But where Sex And The City’s Carrie brings her journalist’s eye to overviews we’re meant to take somewhat seriously, Terry’s monologues are more often self-serving shite. Self-deception is great fodder for comedy, of course. But in Manchild’s first season, at least, creator Nick Fisher seemed to be spending so much time establishing the parameters of his anti-heroes’ middle-aged foolishness that he didn’t have room for the jokes. Recently, though, BBC America has begun broadcasting the series’ second season, and either I’ve grown more attuned to the show’s rhythms or it’s gotten more comically wicked because I find myself looking forward to it now. Last night’s ep – a riff on The Odd Couple that had James temporarily moving in with Terry – was a particularly funny entry. (As eye candy bonus for my sweet wife, both Havers and Head brandished their nekkid butts dressed in nothing but an apron. Honestly, what can you do when your spouse starts shouting catcalls across the living room?) I may still harbor lingering ill will over Rupert Giles’ abandonment of Sunnydale for the rain-soaked British Isles, but I suppose Anthony Head could be doing worse. (He could, as he was before Buffy, still be playing third banana to long-haired amateur detective Jonathan Creek.) And with Buffy nearly over – and Head’s proposed limited-run Giles series apparently in limbo – it looks like Manchild is the place where I’ll be watching him. Just go easy on the ass shots, guys. . . # | Sunday, May 04, 2003 ( 5/04/2003 08:34:00 AM ) Bill S. SINGIN’ AROUND THE MAYPOLE – (If the following piece reads a bit more scattered than usual, please be assured that this was almost intentional. If nothing else, it should provide insight into the way my pop-addled brain fires. . .) Picked up a copy of Brit guitar rockers’ eponymous debut disc, The Coral (Columbia) a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been keeping it in regular rotation for the spring. The Liverpool group favors guitar sounds, mysterioso organ fills and lyrics that wouldn’t be out of place on a late sixties psychedelic platter. If sometimes the effort comes across a bit too arch (e.g., “Simon Diamond,” which sounds like something the bass player for a garage band would’ve contributed just to show girls that he, too, could compose a song), most of the disc works just fine, thanks. Even like the way the band breaks its faux reggae song, “Shadows Fall,” with a jaunty horn riff that reminds me of early Mothers of Invention. Like most new releases these days, the disc also has a pair of videos snuck onto the disc. I have mixed reactions to this practice: I play a lot of my music at the computer, running it through the p-c, and I really hate it when a disc tries to take over my computer with a lot of Macromedia screens and such. (Every once in a while, it’ll freeze my ancient computer.) The Coral’s album, thankfully, doesn’t do that. To get to the videos, you have to seek ’em out. Of the two videos proffered, the more interesting is for the exceedingly radio-friendly “Goodbye,” which has a bee-sting guitar riff like something you might’ve heard from – oh, I don’t know, the Electric Prunes, say – and a happily pointless bridge with a launch countdown and Who-ish power chords. The video places the band outside in the English countryside and keeps cutting away to a group of frolicking types in medieval garb (Oh no, this isn’t the Safety Dance, is it?) We see a girl bedecked in flowers and a white gown being led toward what turns out to be a large wicker statue of a man. As the music grows more ominous and frantic, the film geeks in the audience realize: we’re watching a video remake of The Wicker Man! The 70’s cult film is a personal favorite of mine. Written by Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth, Hitchcock’s Frenzy), the flick saw limited play in the U.S. at the time of its release, in part, because it was being marketed as a horror film. (Oooh! A man made of wicker: pretty frightening, but only if you’re subject to panic attacks in Pier One!*) In reality, it’s more a mystery thriller bound in the trappings of a somewhat warped theological debate. The flick concerns Scottish police sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward at his most self-righteously tight-assed), who is sent to a small island off the coast to investigate the disappearance of a young girl named Rowan. The devoutly Christian Sgt. Howie (first time we see him, he’s singing hymns in church) is taken aback by the populace of Summerisle: this agrarian community is composed of even more devout pagans, who believe that the ongoing practice of their religion is responsible for the success of their most successful export, Summerisle Apples. Much of the film’s first two-thirds are devoted to Howie’s reactions to these happily unchristian folk: exemplified by the assertively sexual innkeeper’s daughter (Britt Ekland, who does a provocative naked dance to tempt the sergeant) and the island’s Lord (Christopher Lee, playing his usual creepily majestic self). In one of the movie’s funnier moments, an appalled Howie witnesses a school lecture on the phallic meaning of the Maypool then barges into the classroom to chastise the teacher for teaching such “filth.” The titular Man turns out to be a statue that is burned, caged animals within its torso, as part of a ritual spring harvest sacrifice. The movie does not end happily for our stalwart investigator, but it also remains ambiguous about the ultimate fate of the Summerislians, too. The Wicker Man unfolds at a deliberate pace. Shaffer and director Robin Hardy are less concerned with scaring the audience than with unsettling them. Fans of more traditional horror pics are frequently disappointed with it, but if you’re willing to get into its procedural rhythms (and accept a soundtrack that is packed with traditional British folk music), the movie is engrossing. Gotta admit that the sight of Chris Lee in drag is disconcerting, though. The pic’s available in video and DVD formats. But if you’re looking for it, make sure it’s the 103 minute version (there are shorter editions available which, for instance, have Ekland’s dance snipped – and what fun is that?) This time of year, my wife and I try to watch the flick at least once: have never played it on Beltane (a.k.a. May Day), but one year we did sit down to it on Easter Sunday. There aren’t a lot of flicks out there that so clearly dramatize the conflict ‘tween Christian and Pagan – and give the edge to the latter. Wonder if that’s what drew the psychedelicized Coral (or their viddy director, at least) to the movie? *Okay, so Kirstie Alley is plenty damn scary. # | |
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