There Are No Walls in the House of Jearl

Mystery DVD #158

2009-10-25T18:30:24Z

Don't Say a Word

This was advertised as if the main conflict is Shrink vs. Crazy Girl, but Crazy Girl actually becomes cooperative after only a couple of conversations. The healing power of kidnapping!
Sean Bean plays Patrick Koster, a sophisticated bank robber with a skilled crew and a penchant for voyeurism and snarling creepily over cell phones.
Brittany Murphy plays Elisabeth Burrows, whose father double-crossed Koster after a jewel heist; she witnessed his murder and is now insane - or is she? Yeah, kinda. Somewhat. Michael Douglas plays Dr. Nathan Conrad, a psychiatrist who exposition tells us is famous for his work with troubled teenagers.

So anyway Koster's crew steals this big ruby. Daddy Burrows steals it from Koster, who tracks him down but gets caught. Koster goes to prison with the gang for ten years. He really really wants that ruby, guys, for serious. He thinks Elisabeth knows where it is, and that she knows this in terms of a six-digit number. How does he know about the number? UNIMPORTANT. To get the number he needs the best psychiatrist of teenagers in New York, Dr. Conrad, so he kidnaps Conrad's adorable eight-year-old daughter and then menaces him and his wife via cell phone, a lot. Conrad goes off to therapy the heck out of Elisabeth while Oliver Platt sweats and freaks out in the background.

Conrad has to protect three separate helpless damsels - his eight-year-old daughter, his wife, who has a broken leg from skiing, and the damaged Elisabeth. Interestingly enough each of these ladies is pretty competent at defending themselves. They just can't beat the end boss. There's also a flinty detective, Sandra Cassidy, closing in on the plot by way of Koster's trail of bodies. She is awesome but ultimately ineffective. Like all great monsters, Koster is only vulnerable to self-inflicted damage.

The film's not bad for entertainment purposes, but it's hard to avoid repeatedly doubting its basic story premises. A villain resourceful enough to create this complex a plot probably can come up with some better way to get rich and live evilly ever after. He can't be doing it for revenge because the guy that wronged him is dead and his daughter is crazy. I can see Koster getting this Captain Ahab complex over the Macguffin, but I can't see him convincing his crew to go along with it. Did they know the guy for 10+ years and not realize that he's too ruthless and crazy to work with? They were right there when he murdered a dude over the ruby in the first place! (It's very hard to resist comparing this to Boromir failing his Will save and trying to take the One Ring from Frodo Baggins. So look, there I went and did it.) The plan ultimately goes off the rails because Koster is too evil - if he hadn't rather obviously intended to just kill everyone involved ever, he'd probably have got what he wanted.
Don't Say a Word is otherwise solidly constructed, and follows the standard narrative rules such as, "if Famke Janssen is holding a knitting needle in the second act, she must plunge it into a man's chest in the fourth act." Come on that's not a spoiler it is Famke Janssen with a knitting needle. It's ultimately sort of bland. The only questions it made me ask were in regard to its plot holes.

SO JEARL ISN'T THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS CRAZY BRITTANY MURPHY? Yes, I suppose. And I guess she plays "impenetrably unsettling and scary" well enough, for the brief while she does. Honestly though there are like fifteen seconds of real tension, and that's cumulative, before Conrad gets through to her. With a stuffed animal, come on. Hey, who knew that menacing a little girl to create a bond between doctor and patient might backfire on the villain?

Biggest lingering question for me: Why doesn't Dr. Conrad ever analyze Koster? He's got some serious problems!

Netflix Arranger Pattern Matching: Brittany Murphy, obviously. I like her better here than when she was trying to convincingly love Stanley Tucci as World's Greatest Asshole.

Mystery DVD #157

2009-10-23T04:17:00Z

Boy Meets World: Season 3: Disc 2

Believe me when I have say I have spent every day of this long hiatus with the Problem of "Boy Meets World" tying up my mind (seriously that's at least 85% true.) I've been digesting this thing like the Sarlacc Pit Monster trying to get through Boba Fett's armor. No other creative outlet has been possible. Seriously what the hell is the industry that makes this pablum. What is it even. Who is this aimed at? Is it for kids? Retirees? Why, oh why is there a Monkees episode?

So anyway Boy Meets World (previously reviewed here) is a series following this middle-class white Philadelphia kid, Cory, into young adulthood. Right now he's in high school coming to grips with dating. His oafish brother Eric is ahead of him in school and serves as a sort of obnoxious agent of foreshadowing. The brothers and their friends are occasionally menaced by neighbor/principal Feeny.

I am still not getting the point of these, I think.

"Rave On"
Every part of this is horrible. Eric wants to leave a big mark in high school society so he organizes a rave. The very concept is ridiculous but we have to accept the basic premise for the plot to move forward. Cory wants to - I don't really know! Bond with Eric? So he helps plan it. But! it is on the same day as their parents' 20th anniversary, which they have forgotten, so Cory scrambles to convert the venue into a classy adult party space, and actually succeeds. Eric, however, unwilling to relinquish his dreams of meaningless teenage heroism, neglects to cancel the rave and they try to have both parties at once. So basically Cory and Eric are terrible children, but mainly Eric. Then three members of The Monkees, who have been more or less jarringly stuck in as minor characters, do a number and save the day. Just out of nowhere, yeah.

Did you know? My housemate can identify the voice of ANY ex-Monkee from tinny laptop speakers from across the house. That is sort of spooky.

"The Last Temptation of Cory"
The actors playing Cory and Eric have fiery sexual chemistry, I'm just saying.
Cory and Topanga are SUPER SERIOUS IN LOVE, everyone! And so all the girls want to flirt with Cory! Topanga is sick and this other girl just randomly climbs all over him all episode. For some reason he doesn't just give her the Heisman Award. The dialogue is pretty funny in this one but it's just not worth it. I don't get how this show makes everything Cory's fault when in this one he was kind of sexually assaulted. In B plots Eric wastes money on baseball collectibles and Principle Feeny swindles teachers for charity.

"Train of Fools"
Everyone goes to New Year's Eve parties. There's some utter nonsense about Eric dating a supermodel. Everyone gets stuck on a stopped train, and they act like it's the end of the world while I try to hit my head on the corner of the table just right to destroy the part of my brain that feels pity for the actors. Anyway so in a Stone Soup scenario with the resources of various train cars, they have a party. Huzzah. Cory gets credit for organizing this, perhaps to make up for getting blamed for everything else ever.
Eric has body-image issues. The teachers, Eli and Jonathan, are dating, I think. Women show up at their New Year's Male Cocooning Time and ruin everything.

"City Slackers"
Cory and Shawn break into Feeny's cottage. Seriously they do crimes. Cory spends maybe fifteen seconds pointing this out before caving in. For the love of God they go to the Pocanos and act like it's Deliverance country. Anyway Feeny busts in on them, in a shocking twist. They learn, as if they did not learn many times over the years, that he is a human being.
Eric pretends to be an athlete to score a hot girl who is creepily played by the actress who played Darla from Angel. It goes poorly but I refuse to describe this plot further, as a gesture of protest.
For some reason the laugh track is really into Shawn's plans of getting laid. He's like 15 years old, isn't he?

"The Grass is Always Greener"
This one makes zero sense. Cory pretends to be Shawn, I guess? And gets a lot of girls? What? So anyway Cory and Topanga break up for no reason whatsoever.
Oh my god, this show sucks so much, I can't take it, I can't watch it again.
urrrgh watches it again
Okay Eric is having a character-development arc where he is trying to improve at school. Instead he busts in on the faculty poker game and is revealed to be a Rain Man rip-off movie autistic at counting cards.
Blaaarfgh and then they do this horribly sentimental recap of Cory and Topanga's relationship, as if they hadn't ended it abruptly just to generate pointless angst.

"New Friends and Old"
The high school bully team of Joey the Rat and Franky the Enforcer is broken up, leaving Franky unmoored and desperate for comradely affection. Cory and Shawn befriend this sensitive behemoth, and unsurprisingly abuse his reputation. Pretty anodyne. Stunt casting of a pro wrestler as Franky's dad. Jonathan is exposed as having a shameful past of wealth and privilege. Seriously there are weird class issues in this series.

"A Kiss is More Than a Kiss"
urrgh, I think I would rather be eaten alive by dogs than watch this. OH WELL let's do this.
Shawn for some reason has a huge problem with Cory and Topanga being friends even though they're no longer dating. Apparently it is because Cory is not ready to date again WHATEVER THEY ARE 15 GOD I HATE EVERYTHING SO MUCH. Anyway yeah Cory won't kiss this girl and it's the most important thing in the world ever. Actually it turns into a sincere Cory Is Hung Up On Topanga But They Get Past It story but the brain damage is done. In a heartbreaking B-plot idiot man-child Eric can't get into a real college and Feeny swoops in to dispense wisdom.

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"
For the first time in the history of Shawn, the 15-year-old Lothario likes a girl enough to want a second date. Unfortunately she's a Nice Girl so she'll have none of it. Everyone he asks is quite frank about Shawn's role in life as a man-slut. All of his friends mock him until he performs a Grand Romantic Gesture.

If I watch something a few times it often starts to grow on me and "Boy Meets World" is no exception. There are things to enjoy. Cory gets some pretty funny lines! But the heinous PAY NO ATTENTION TO THIS LIFE LESSON plots and Punch-and-Judy quality of characterization make watching this feel like being beaten with wet, broken umbrellas. I AM TRYING TO DIE FROM THIS BUT IT TAKES SO LONG.

Mystery DVD #156

2009-08-18T02:58:34Z

Anaconda

Blugh. Why. Normally I would edit this down from the initial "bile-filled rant" draft but I am not spending much more time on this one. I have even worse trials ahead.

Okay, so there's this team of earnest freshly-scrubbed documentarians kicking around the Amazon looking to film a very mysterious jungle tribe. They are played by Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube and some other dudes and a girl who are there to get eaten or murdered. Their quarry shares a habitat with the legendary giant anaconda, a monstrous beast so hungry and vengeful that it will regurgitate its prey so that it can kill again.
But -- murdered, you ask? Yes, because they run across a stranded, evil snake-hunter (Jon Voight) who is there to supply their tribe-finding and murdered-getting needs. Amusingly enough they all seem to get right away that he is pretty evil but they go with it anyway, because they figure, what motive would this motherfucker have for stopping us getting where we're all going? Why would he essentially kidnap us and make us help him catch a goddamn monster movie snake? good question, which is not answered to my satisfaction. Evidently he would rather hunt a giant snake with a bunch of angry and/or injured filmmakers than with his own experienced crew who he could hire after getting the hippies some tape of the gentle forest people whatever. Monster movie! Killing! Get to it! Eat some dudes, Big Fake Snake!

The good:
Beautiful setting and photography.
No gratuitous killing of the black man.
The film crew has nice, believable chemistry.
Jon Voight plays a hilariously awful man.

The bad:
What the hell, man, I cannot take this unbelievable bulimic robot snake seriously for even a second.
With the exception of Voight and a delightfully overwrought man in the introduction, the actors do not know what type of film they are in. Your nice, believable chemistry does not impress the giant snake gods.

So Snake Man and Snake terrorize and destroy filmmakers until J-Lo and Ice Cube and their friend who has been holed up with injuries for 3/4 of the film can stand no more, and then they find this decrepit warehouse place in the middle of nowhere to make a last stand. They kill the hell out of the snake! Yay! Jon Voight gets really angry because he wanted it alive! but that's okay, there's another one! So making the first one a juggernaut of hungry death was pretty meaningless! Thence comes a lot of snake-fighting and Voight-fighting and Snake Gullet Cam and Voight-regurgitating because why not and explosions! and angry burning snake and fleeing. And then they still get to make their film.
And then the many wounds and burns sustained in the fighting become infected in the rich tropical air and they die of fevers. the end.

Mystery DVD #155

2009-07-23T04:45:22Z

Crank

Wow, now this is what I mean by a Bad Awesome Movie. I went in expecting to hate it, but it is just too funny to really loathe. It's pretty much live action Afro Samurai (reviewed here) except that the Obligatory Sex Scene in Afro Samurai was more respectful and also hotter.

There's this hitman, Chev Chellios (played by Jason Statham) who somehow makes this other crime guy very very angry, something to do with a hit gone wrong or too right - it was hard to parse Primary Movie Villain's rant since it was some seriously exotic swearing action. So this guy injects Chev with some kind of exotic Chinese poison that will inexorably kill him, just so he can tape himself gloating. Chev moves swiftly into the Denial stage of grief, and goes off to punch every mob contact he knows in the face until they tell him where to go for revenge. While on this quest he realizes he, uh, dies more slowly when he is doing stupidly dangerous but exciting stuff, or snorting cocaine off a filthy bar floor. As you do. After a lot of voicemails he gets a hold of his delightfully corrupt doctor who tells him he's screwed but that he should get himself some epinephrine, and generally just go ahead and keep running around and consuming whatever drugs he can get his hands on. MEANWHILE he has finally killed or mutilated enough mob guys to worry that they might take it out on his girlfriend. He scurries off to get her out of town while the violent stunt levels continue to escalate. Chev does more drugs, then Fights Everyone, A Lot and then his doctor finally shows up, but he's still screwed. So he Fights Everyone Again even harder. It's pretty spectacular.

It sort of bugged me that the one female character is an idiot and is treated kind of badly, but on reflection, every character in this thing is a pretty terrible person who has horrible things happen to them so it's not like she's being singled out. Even the greasy but sort of endearing club kid friend of Chev's who never hurts anyone gets caught in the crossfire. I was sad.

The story plays unfair narrator games with the main plotline, but whatever, it's a live-action cartoon! That is the motto of this film. Chev drives through a mall and gets a car to land sideways in the escalator, which is capable of dragging its hulk to the next floor, screeching between its rubber tracks - whatever, cartoon! He still needs to do wacky stunts after pumping himself full of MacGuffinephrine like his doctor said to - whatever, cartoon. There's some cute stuff going on with subtitles that they don't overdo. Chev is funny. He has a pleasing deadpan. Entertainment achieved. Soul probably destroyed forever.

okay feminism aside the Obligatory Sex Scene is hilarious.

Mystery DVD #154

2009-07-18T23:05:03Z

Toy Soldiers
The film that forced me to ask myself: Would I rather root for drug-syndicate terrorists or prep-school douchebags?

The Alpha Douche is Billy Tepper, played by a young Sean Astin with powerful 80s hair. Lou Gosset Jr. plays the dean of his prep school. Billy has been kicked out of three prep schools and is determined to make it a fourth, with his charming antics of liquor-purveying, phone-line splicing and ruthless furniture moving. The dean Believes In Him and is just as determined to make him get an education. Unfortunately this charming coming of age story is interrupted by Luis Cali, son of a Colombian drug lord. Cali is looking for the son of his father's prosecutor, as leverage for getting him out of prison. This kid has already been whisked away by U.S. Marshals, so Cali takes the whole prep school hostage and demands his father's release. Billy will not stand for this nonsense.

But back to our question. It's a tough call! in the end I found myself on the side of the d-bags, possibly because I just had to pay more attention to them and that focus generates affection, even though the kids were doing pretty irritating things. A lot of this attention was spent asking 'Wait, is that really Wil Wheaton playing the son of a mob boss? Really? That, that accent, they're serious about it? Jerry Orbach is the mob boss? Really??' The terrorists, on the other hand, were pretty generic. There was the head guy, an educated but ruthless thug with some serious Oedipal stuff going on, and the soulless American henchman who makes things blow up, and a bunch of guys with guns.

Anyway, the mob boss interferes with what would have eventually been some kind of sensible negotiation, so it's up to Billy to concoct a crazy scheme involving remote-controlled toy planes and badly-simulated asthma attacks to distract the terrorists while commandos rush about quasi-effectively. It has a coherent plot! People discuss their ideas and carry them out! I want to give it those props. However in the end it is still douchebags versus terrorists and I was not very into it. Also the dean gets shot square in the left lung but they stick a square of gauze on him and he just walks off chuckling to himself. I guess Lou Gosset Jr. is just that hard.

Mystery DVD #153

2009-06-30T04:49:12Z

My Name Is Bruce

The mining town of Gold Lick, Oregon is haunted by a Chinese guardian spirit, who is offended by clumsy teens who disturb his burial ground. The creature and emerges to do mayhem, and promises to kill off every soul in the town. Fortunately, B-movie stalwart Bruce Campbell is filming a terrible monster movie just a few hours away. One of the teens is a huge Bruce fan and does the logical thing: he kidnaps Campbell and beg him to lead them against the monster. The whole town endorses this plan. It is because everyone likes Bubba Ho-Tep. Unfortunately Campbell is just an actor - and as it turns out a coward, and generally a douche. He attempts to leave the doomed townsfolk but a spark of conscience compels him to return and try to help.

On the one hand, the movie is so exactly what it sets out to be that it gains a sort of nostalgia-based power-up. It approaches the Platonic ideal of a cheesy low-budget monster movie. You've got the horny teens unleashing a monster, you've got the ambivalent love interest, you've got the reluctant hero, the comical dismemberments, the 'choose your weapon' scene... Once the film gets to Gold Lick it's sweet in the purity of its vision.

But. Sorry. The 'Bruce Campbell as himself' character is so thoroughly pathetic and repulsive that it makes the main conceit of the film - that Bruce Campbell really acts like this, ever, and that he would react in this way to a demon invasion - really hard to swallow. If he'd played it more straight maybe I could have bought into it, but he was so obnoxious I kind of wanted the whole thing to just go off the rails. I wanted to be on its side, but it just didn't pull me in. And even though the whole film is this over-the-top character assassination, in the end they subvert that too by having a different Bruce Campbell as himself character pitch the film. Come on, its like you don't trust me or something.

The DVD extras - and sorry, Arranger, Blu-Ray discs take me longer, there are scheduling issues - the extras are all right. The 'making of' featurette is cheesy but full of love for the project. The guy who played the monster also made the mask for it and he seemed pretty awesome.

Mystery DVD #152

2009-05-25T17:06:35Z

The Philadelphia Story

My thought process after viewing The Philadelphia Story:
1. Man, that was awesome, how Tracy Lord totally ate the reporters alive in that scene. I shall make a LolHepburn.

2. Okay, done. Now to figure out how to express my unease with the Tracy-bashing by the first husband and the father and the marriage stuff at the end while still expressing my great appreciation for the dialogue and eyebrow work.

3. ... Dude, it is still a romantic comedy, what do I even say.

4. Okay, better watch it again.
Man, the little sister is a treasure too. RESIST URGE TO WIKIPEDIA THE ACTRESS JESUS IT HAS BEEN LIKE SIX WEEKS.

5. Well, I am inadequate to this task, but let's just get on with it.

Katherine Hepburn is Tracy, a woman too regal and pure for any marriage to contain. But marry she must, because she is a society lady. She has chosen stumpy but popular coal man George Kittredge (John Howard) to be her earthly tether. Her ex-husband Dexter (Cary Grant) arrives to sow chaos. Actually he is playing a delicate game with a newspaper publisher who has dispatched a reporter (Jimmy Stewart) and photographer (Ruth Hussey) to get The Story on Those Wacky Old-Money Types. Instead they all get wrapped up in some personal-actualization drama in which Tracy is knocked off her pedestal, the reporter and photographer choose art over employment, Cary Grant can't hear you over the sound of how much he rules, and the little sister makes her hungover uncle take a pony ride.

Okay so, it's lovely. The film is light as if a twin planet made of pure Awestonium is directly over the set, making everything brighter and smoother. This rare alloy is composed mostly of sharp dialogue and a respect for the intelligence of the viewer.

What made me uneasy is that there are two uncomfortable scenes of Tracy getting sternly criticized by her first husband and her father for being too perfect and distant. Don't get me wrong, the movie hinges on those and the story absolutely needs them, but I feel like whatever crimes of arrogance Tracy committed to deserve those lashes, the story never told me. I'm just out there hanging with Katharine Hepburn's crumbling facade of dignity wondering who spit in Dad's cornflakes today. SHE JUST WANTS A NICE WEDDING TO A BORING DUDE YOU ASSHOLES. And the rest of the story is so pleasing I feel like the problem is me. I know the problem is me for hating the tacked-on wedding at the end. Who really marries a dude you almost came to blows with the day before just because there are a lot of guests in your parlor? Do you really like all those people? Maybe you could have said some of their names or something. Okay, really, I do understand that it was Cary Grant and you pretty much have to marry that dude the moment you get an opening.

Anyway, check it out because Katharine Hepburn will kick your entire ass.

Mystery DVD #151

2009-04-07T02:48:10Z

Olivia Newton-John: Video Gold 2

I have to share the Netflix blurb, it's so bad.

This retrospective collection of Olivia Newton-John's greatest hits illustrates her appeal as a timeless pop artist, a gorgeous Aussie transplant who came of age in the video arena. Tracks include "I Honestly Love You," "Suddenly," "Sam," "Heart attack," "Tied Up," "Livin' In Desperate Times," "Take a Chance," "Shaking You," "Xanadu," "You're the One That I Want," (from Grease) and "Twist of Fate" (a duet with John Travolta).

Are they leaving any out? Oh man, if they are leaving any videos out of that blurb they must be pretty sad indeed. Holy crap, there are twenty videos in this thing.

You know what, Olivia Newton-John actually seems like a pretty cool person and I get no pleasure dissing her videos. Most of them are just not my thing. Perhaps I have never been mellow. Anyway, I have the feeling all the really fun ONJ videos were on Video Gold 1.

I'm even less capable of criticizing music than I am criticizing film, so I feel pretty lame saying anything about the songs themselves. My main beef with most of them is that there's hardly any development of an idea, just a few repeated couplets over and over, and a lot of them are cheesy love songs that I instantly forgot after they were over. And that's all I can say about that. So off we go to the videos.

"Twist of Fate" - okay John Travolta doesn't sing in this at all, wtf, blurb. He is, however, in many photographs entered into evidence by the wacky neon sci-fi tribunal that is judging ONJ as she stands on a little island surrounded by water.

"Take a Chance" - More John Travolta and okay he is singing in this one. What is up with all the John Travolta? oh man so cheesy.

"Livin' In Desperate Times" - wow, words hurt. I mean the large sculptural ones the set is made of. It looks like it was designed by Steve Ditko for a Mr. A opera (scary? AMAZING? discuss.). But the song is much less lame than the earlier love songs. ONJ wanders though set pieces that form words like 'Anger' and 'Guilt' while singing about how life is dangerous. Many Eighties dancing boys alternately menace and amuse.

"Shaking You" - Sad power ballad. Can we please cede the sad power ballad to Dolly Parton forever? ONJ does a decent job of it though. She has what appears to be a bittersweet romance with an older gentleman in Venice, Italy. Now, she is alone and scaring pigeons while reminiscing.

"Heart Attack" - ONJ suffers nightmares about a little girl while intentionally silly special effects blit around the screen. There are castles and doves flying and also a bamboo cage. The song is vapid and repetitive.

"Tied Up" - oh man what is she wearing. She looks like Michael Jackson. ONJ, no one in the history of fashion could pull off a bright red padded sleeveless leather jacket. But the song is the most enjoyable so far, in that is has more than two chords and maybe a hint of a bridge. Anyway, ONJ just sings the song and dances around in a silly vest while making faces with the band. There's a keytar! kind of fun really.

"Soul Kiss" - Creepy Nails ONJ menaces an unseen party with her sexuality. Then there is sorcery, where she is in a black and white Western film, and then a noir. I don't even know. Mostly she writhes on a giant bed which is set up for pyrotechnic displays. Hazardous.

"Culture Shock" - ONJ bursts through a door looking just like David Bowie. Then she sings about longing to be in a triad, while her band supports her unjudgementally. My brain would not stop writing David Bowie into the video. Sadly he does not manifest. Again, a distressingly repetitive song. So many of these are like 80-90% chorus.

"Emotional Tangle" - sweet lord what is she wearing now. it's like four hawaiian shirts fell into a shredder. ONJ sits on a stool and earnestly sings a painfully sincere soft-rock love song with electronic steel-drum accompaniment.

"Toughen Up" - holy shit, scariest ONJ yet. She's wearing a fox-hunting costume and her hair is like a fiery phoenix. It's like Bonnie Tyler could burst in at any moment and then you might as well get David Bowie as well and there would be an 80s awesomeness tesseract. In the video, I think she's teaching sex-ed to young women? Or self-defense? I can't tell. Anyway, they put some men in their place, I think. It's weird.

"The Right Moment" - pretty much the same experience as "Emotional Tangle," only this time the jacket is basic 80s box style and her hair is giant. Painfully sincere soft-rock love song, on a stage surrounded by mirrors.

"The Rumour" - This one is pretty wacky. ONJ sings the song on another funky, angular Steve Ditko-ish set while dancers have a great time and get caught in compromising positions by a photographer. Meanwhile, men with press passes dance menacingly. The song is pretty interesting lyrically. Unfortunately I am doomed to have "Twist of Fate" stuck in my head for at least the next couple of days, so I will not likely remember it later.

"Can't We Talk It Over In Bed" - ONJ has relationship troubles, sings while sitting in a corner crying and thinking about a handsome but sweaty man.

"Reach Out For Me" - ONJ sings in a beautiful landscape about being good to small children. Probably the most visually pleasing so far, but pretty boring musically.

"I Need Love" - Best hair yet, but we're back to the scary fingernails. ONJ slinks around a forest / bedroom singing about needing love or the sex will not be any good. Relatively interesting song, but again it's three-quarters chorus. I think - I think there might have been mimes.

"I Honestly Love You" - Bleargh, Painfully Earnest Soft-Rock Love Song. ONJ is in Cape Cod or somewhere similar, being domestic, or possibly homewrecking, and honestly loving a dude.

"Sam" - Live on stage. I can't tell these soft-rock love songs apart anymore.

"Suddenly" - Another live performance, duet with I guess Cliff Richard. Blearg, tight closeups in this context are creepy.

"You're the One That I Want" - Another live performance. ONJ sings the song with a beefy John Travolta impersonator. She is way better than he is, and the camera guy doesn't quite get this. The band still has a keytar. I don't know why I approve of this but I do.

"Xanadu" - live performance plus some maybe-intentionally-cheesy-looking effects. Whoa, ONJ is really into this one, and it elevates the energy quite a bit. The thing where she makes an X with her arms is not really helping, I am sad to say.

They don't even get the disc length right. It's like 80 minutes, not 60. 20 extra minutes of ONJ is not something I want to be surprised with. Not cool, blurb writer.

Mystery DVD Special Project

2009-04-05T19:02:12Z

I had conceived of the original Totally Subjective Biaxial Scatterplot to succinctly explain why Snakes on a Plane was disappointing. It got a generally positive reception, but enough of a negative one that I dropped it in shame. However, enough people brought it up last time I was being social that I decided to try to flesh it out and make it a real critical tool.

So here is a really basic prototype, complete with silly little buglike icon. Clicking it will launch a new window. Hopefully.

The Flash movie pulls in review data from an XML file and then plots it. Right now it's hardcoded with just Lifeforce, but passing parameters should be doable. Getting the basic functionality in Flash was not too difficult, but I had a really hard time getting control over the text. It turns out that styling XML text in Flash is a massive pain in the ass. I also wanted to have a scrolling bottom pane for more text, but it so happens that the TextArea component has strong ideas about what it wants to look like, and I know from earlier projects that editing a component style is serious business. Maybe Flash is not the way to go at all and I should be doing this in Javascript. But that would remove the option of cheesy vector overlays and slideshows. This is your cue to direct me towards amazing Javascript graphics libraries.

It's still very bare-bones - the Flash movie's just grabbing the entire contents of the XML file and plotting all of it, and I should probably have it pick out data points via an array or something. I'm not sure if I should keep at it in this direction though. The current setup has some vexing limitations. I don't want to embed the Flash movie in a Livejournal post because I think it would be overlarge and silly looking. I don't know if LJ lets you embed arbitrary Flash anyway. On top of this there is a Flash caching issue. Javascript is looking better and better. But! I wanted to have the icon trigger a pop-up window at an appropriate size, but I can't, because LJ strips out javascript. So all I can do is have it open a new window, which I can't reliably resize. I gues it could open to a scatterplots home page which then links to each one, but that's getting further away from my admittedly vague vision for how this should work. Most likely I should set up a proper blog, but then I have to worry about stuff like spambots and RSS feeds and have I mentioned recently that I am very lazy?

So this post is more or less an informal survey. What features would you like to see? I asked georgedorn this question and he spun out a dizzying fairytale vision of an app that people could submit movies to and vote on with a database backend and whoa. Maybe someday. I was just thinking more axes would be nice. In fact the need for a way to offer Points for Effort to account for Lifeforce's valiant attempt at awesomeness is why I added variable dot size. Might try color as well.

Tell me what to do, reader. It might get done one day.

Mystery DVD #150

2009-04-05T17:13:39Z

Lifeforce
Talk about review paralysis. I suck, let's get that out of the way. We can discuss my suckery in the next post, which will be along very shortly, I swear.

This is too earnest and too weird a film to simply dismiss as bad sci-fi/horror. Though on first glance it is in fact pretty bad. A manned mision to Halley's Comet discovers a huge, organic-looking spacecraft filled with dead bat people. They also find three human bodies in space caskets. Naturally they take them on board. Months later, the Halley mission spacecraft is careening towards earth, with no communications, so NASA send the Columbia up to rescue it. Hats off to Columbia please. Everyone is dead, an escape pod is gone, and everything in the ship has burned, but somehow they still manage to get those space caskets down to earth.

Two of the caskets hold perfect naked white guys, and the third holds a perfect naked white chick. Obviously it is time for them to get out and start killing people by sucking out their life force. The European Space Agency sends exactly three people out to do something about this. One of them is an SAS agent, one is the guy that fled the doomed spacecraft in the escape pod and the third, I guess is bait, pretty much. But he is important and makes important phone calls.

The astronaut is tormented by psychic visions of the queen space vampire, who mind-melded with him to get the lowdown on Earth stuff and now wants him back as a pet. The visions lead him to a mental hospital, where they menace Patrick Stewart in a fairly harrowing 'Patrick Stewart can really scream' sequence. But he was also just bait and London is pretty much burning at this stage. There is a bunch of fighting and special effects, and then a very ambiguous ending. I honestly do not know who won. So hopefully I didn't spoil this completely, because as I said, it's too weird to just dismiss as a bad film, even though it does get pretty silly. You may want to check it out.

Lifeforce plunged me into an Uncanny Valley of Spectacle - what does it mean when something should, on paper, be highly awesome but instead lands in a pratfall of lameness? Should we award bonus points for trying, or penalize for poor execution? Mulling over the nature of Awesome kicked off the inexcusably long period of review paralysis, so I fear that I may never be able to discuss what is Awesome properly again. Unless I see a lot of it in one place or something. Recommendations?

Important moments include: a dessicated victim of the space vampire gestures plaintively for a hug. And gets one. Oh you British. Zombies can't hug you without killing you. Even if they want to! It's the oldest law.

Mystery DVD #149

2009-01-05T01:50:15Z

Pure '80s DVD: Totally New Wave

More music videos! I'm not going to question my fate this time, let's just get to it. I will say that this is probably the sweet spot for music videos of the 80s - interesting narratives, wacky special effects, Blondie...

"Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles - The band dresses as mad scientists and traps the Radio Star in a plexigass tube, and then in a television set, in which she vogues. Then she flies off of a large stylized pile of consumer technology debris. It's pretty awesome.

"Whip It" by Devo - who even dares try to explain this one. The band is at a ranch. The sky is blue. Ranchers enact social dramas while servants look on stoically.

"Rapture" by Blondie - an aspect of Baron Samedi prances down the alley outside Debbie Harry's house, where she is holding a Masque of the Red Death themed party. Watch it, I am not kidding. Then she does a rap and dances with the Baron. Oh, that vixen. At the end the band is revealed to be sorcerers. I assume the Baron gets all the guests.

"Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran - post-colonial tristesse. The singer obsessively pursues a wereleopard while his bandmates desperately try to intervene. They are too late to stop him becoming a lycanthrope himself, though the transformation is never actually shown. Bravo for restraint, Duran Duran.

"Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson - a domestic worker dreams of a glamorous night out, while in a confusing parallel dream some dude pines for her.

"Tainted Love" by Soft Cell - Space succubi menace a young man. The singer manifests as a cosmic entity and mocks him.

"A Million Miles Away" by The Plimsoles - The band performs poolside while a man has a dissociative psychotic episode. Then someone takes a long road trip, I'm not totally sure who. Later, a woman witnesses an apparition of the man, but he is dead at the pool. I think.

"One Thing Leads to Another" by the Fixx - The singer sings, dances, and experiences symbolic tableaux in a tunnel. The tunnel makes him look very tall.

"Our House" by Madness - The band rocks out in a small but charming house. Then they have some hijinks in several much larger houses. It's fun.

"Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats - There's a renaissance fair, and the singer vigorously teaches all and sundry a spastic S-shaped arm motion. It's trying real hard and it's nice to see some sunlight, but I still don't really get it.

"In a Big Country" by Big Country - it's a good thing I really like this song, because I watched this video five times and I still don't know what's going on. The band faces off against a strapping goth girl for possession of a black and gold portfolio. OR - The goth girl flirts with the singer by way of luring the band to an island by stealing their treasure map. I don't know, maybe it's a third narrative I'm just not seeing. It's a great video, either way. The goth girl is really cute and she can beat up a whole rock band, so she is my new unsung video hero. She dislodges the saxophonist from Quarterflash, who could bilocate, so it's really saying something.

"Cruel Summer" by Bananarama - The band runs a renegade service station and endures a tough New York summer, but they have each other, so it's all good. The police come to bust their service station but they run off with a friendly truck driver and then throw a roof party.

"Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood - I was emotionally prepared for this because I just saw it randomly a few days ago, but still, what the HELL. The singer visits a club where he is made to fight a baby tiger by a fat man dressed as a Roman senator. There is a ton of symbolism going on I am really not prepared to unpack. Go search Youtube for it or something. Anyway, he befriends the tiger and then an incomprehensible riot/orgy breaks out. They seem to be having fun by the end, which I guess is all that really matters.

"Take On Me" by Aha - a woman falls in love with a haunted comic book about motorcycle racers. I think this video singlehandedly kept rotoscoping alive for the year it was made.

"When Smokey Sings" by ABC - the band really, really likes Smokey Robinson and does not care who knows it. There's also a lonely man with a somewhat creepy Smokey Robinson shrine. He offers it a flower and a pretty girl comes over and dances with him, so I guess Smokey Robinson really is pretty awesome.

Mystery DVD #148

2008-12-29T23:55:51Z

#147 is demanding somewhat higher production values than normal. We'll have to get back to it.

Little Man

I made the mistake of watching the totally endearing DVD extras right after the actual movie, which took the edge off my desire to bludgeon it.

Marlon Wayans plays Calvin, a 2' 6" thief. Kerry Washington is Vanessa, a woman with an indeterminate but successful corporate career, and Shawn Wayans is Darryl, her doofy husband who desperately wants to start a family. John Witherspoon plays Vanessa's obligatory crotchety father. Also with Tracy Morgan as Percy, an idiot man-child, Molly Shannon and various others as terrible, terrible people.

Percy and Calvin steal a giant diamond for a gangster, but their getaway goes awry. On the run, Calvin sticks the diamond in Vanessa's handbag while scuttling around the drugstore they're shopping in. Calvin and Percy elude the police, but naturally they must now recover their giant chunk of macguffin. Rather than just, you know, steal it back that night, they decide the best plan is to sneak Calvin into the house, disguised as a toddler. Being basically sensible people, though perhaps nearsighted, in the last moment of sanity of this film, Vanessa and Darryl immediately call Child Services. They are closed for the weekend.

And so we embark on at least a week's worth of disturbing childrearing adventures. It's pretty awful and wrong. Basically the next hour is a series of skits where fake-baby Calvin acts on an inappropriate impulse and gets away with it, because he's just a huge creepy baby. He does get beaten up by a hockey player at one point. Every now and then he makes an attempt to steal the diamond back, but it just gets more and more inaccessible. Meanwhile Vanessa and Darryl's friends descend upon them with baby stuff and dysfunctional yuppie-parent behavior. Generally most of these skits run on violence and bodily functions.

If I tried to rate this as a movie, it would check in just barely above Dirty Love, but that just seems unfair. It's a cartoon. Only in a cartoon you could believe that people would be this blind and this demented. Scenes that are pretty disgusting in live-action would be tame on Drawn Together or South Park. Plus it does star a visual effects shot.

Everyone learns valuable life lessons and there are a great many groin injuries. Those two things don't actually correlate, though you'd think they should. Molly Shannon appears for a minivan chase scene that is kind of awesome.

The extras include a featurette about the tiny child actor playing Calvin's body, and he seems like a very awesome kid. The visual effects are also explained and that's pretty impressive. I love when the technical film people geek out about the crazy stuff they had to do to make it all work. There's a whole line of discussion on a rig they built to make one of the yuppie moms' racks scary enough. But mostly they geek out about how awesome Linden Porco (Calvin's body) is.

In conclusion. Very cute extras. Impressive effects, not unlike having a film starring a horny version of Gollum. Terrible yet funny movie.

Mystery DVD #146

2008-12-23T03:23:35Z

The Descent

Seven friends who enjoy dangerous outdoor activities meet to explore a cave in the Appalachians. They have emotional baggage and interpersonal tensions. The cave adventure goes terribly wrong, with injuries and getting lost and things happening that you really don't want to happen while caving. AND THEN THEY FIGHT CHUDS. WOOOOOT CHUDS.

Only. It's not that awesome.

The seven main characters are distinguished mainly by accent, and are rather tough to tell apart. I had learned their names and A-Team-like specializations only after about 60 minutes into a 99-minute film. They take FOREVER getting to the actual story.

I'll say this - there's a great atmosphere of dread during the pre-chud caving adventure. For me, personally, that sort of thing is really hard to watch. I have broken my arms and various fingers a number of times, and even though that was a long time ago, to this day my hands hurt if I see someone about to fall hard. So freaked-out characters stumbling around in the dark was really rough, never mind the possibility of drowning or dying of starvation.

One problem I had was that they set up a bunch of interpersonal backstory that never got resolved, or really even explained. My Chick Flick receptors were activated but never got the appropriate molecules delivered. There was also a distracting contrast between the horror effects and the emotional impact the actors were going for. There's one truly horrible, wrenching death scene, where two of the actors are just staring at each other with all this huge unspeakable emotional weight, and then a second later it's all back to strobe lights and a troglodyte comically spurting bright red blood. Unfortunate.

Anyway the film does set up one vital Image of Pure Badass where the most emotionally wrecked character gets the horror-movie baptismal scene and stands on a dead cave-thing looking calmly deadly while you hear the faint, musical sound of her urge to do anything but kill shattering on the floor. I will forgive a bad movie a lot for providing a really convincing Image of Pure Badass.

And I salute the makers for creating something I don't think existed before: a horror film where women fight chuds that is not the slightest bit exploitative. I mean, they're in big heavy gear almost the whole time! I also liked that there's no 'flail, scream, die.' The ladies fight hard. Can't be helped that the odds are really badly against them.

I think I've talked myself into thinking it was kinda good. It's just that getting to the cave was very boring, and never finding out what the emotional history was was very unsatisfying.

Mystery DVD #145

2008-12-14T20:14:02Z

Jack of All Trades: The Complete Series: Disc 3
This is my punishment for going weeks between reviews. I know, I'm sorry. Oh man, I have been so busy. Usually when I fall far enough behind in the reviewing to get a visit from Jack it's because of my own damn sloth, but this time, seriously, lot of mind-sucking stuff going on at work. NO EXCUSES, says Emilia, with a whip. Yes, my mind has completely gone.

"Monkey Business" - Jack and Emilia's Boob Ninja Costume recover a silver monkey idol from what they believe is an extinct mystical society. Both of their governments, as well as the French, want it. Wagering and assassination attempts ensue. Jearl's first scream of pain: during the teaser. Not a good start.

"The Morning After" - Napoleon invents a hypnotic wine and plans to drug world leaders with it. He tests it on Jack and Emilia. Oh no, sexual tension. Anyway, Jack gets out the Daring Dragoon costume and prances about while Napoleon tries to kill him with a machine gun. Relatively good. Just a couple pro forma screams for really bad puns.

"Croquey in the Pokey" - Governor Croque's wife frames him for treason. As you may recall, Croque is the incompetent ruler of Palau-Palau, and Jack and Emilia frequently have to prevent him from getting canned so that no one worse can take over. Anyway, to protect Croque in prison, Emilia gets Jack locked up by framing him for attempted rape (!). Jack organizes a prison break, with the help of a team of circus acrobats. Screaming: pretty much constant.

"One, Two, Three: Give Me Lady Liberty!" - Napoleon is having the Statue of Liberty built on Palau-Palau. Emilia is suspicious so Jack makes a big Thanksgiving feast for the French and they steal the plans while everyone is sleeping. It turns out that the Statue is a Trojan Horse and that Napoleon wants to invade New York. So Jack challenges the French to a football game as a distraction. Napoleon turns out to be surprisingly good at American-style football. Nevertheless, Jack manages to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Insert Planet of the Apes reference and go home confused. Palau-Palau really is everywhere and nowhere. It must be the land of the dead.

"Hamnesia" - Emilia gets a blow to the head and suffers amnesia. The last thing she remembers about their current mission is the word "hog." this is unimportant except foor the title. Anyway Jack tells her she's a party animal and that he's in charge. To his chagrin, Emilia believes him and he has to spend the rest of the episode peeling her off of drunken sailors. Has the advantage of not blowing up the Statue of Liberty in a football game on a tropical island, so it's not too bad.

"Seventy Brides for One Brother" - Eeeeeagh! Napoleon is making alliance overtures to aaaaaaaaah! a Sultan who controls some nearby islands. This Sultan becomes Nooooooooo! Nyaaaaagh! besotted with Emilia and nyrrrgh kidnaps her to add her to his harem. Blurrgh. Jack convinces the palace guard that he lost his testicles in the war and gets a job as a harem guard. gnrrrgh! Emilia provokes a feminist uprising in the harem, hrrrrgf gnrr and the wives all walk out on the Sultan, despite being surrounded by dudes with swords. owww my soul. I'm making it sound so much better than it was.

Mystery DVD #144

2008-12-14T19:05:31Z

Spaced: The Complete Series: Bonus Disc (Disc 3)
Deleted scenes, cast and crew biographies and a "making of" documentary called "Skip to the End." Kind of nice, but nothing really essential to enjoying "Spaced." The two main take-aways for me: everyone really, really enjoyed doing the imaginary gun battles from "Gone," and Mike (Nick Frost) was a friend of Simon Pegg's who had never had an acting job before. Not bad! Only IMDB has him down as a construction worker and 'Sgt. 1' - maybe they don't count if you don't speak.

Anyway, if you buy "Spaced" you probably get this, and buying "Spaced" would not be a crazy decision overall, and after 14 episodes you will want more, and you can watch this. It will be fine.

Mystery DVD #143

2008-11-19T02:52:21Z

Spaced: The Complete Series: Season 2 (Disc 2)

Season Two is not as head-meltingly ruletacular as Season One, mainly because it doesn't have the same startling novelty. A couple of things that were funny once are lame the third time. Also it gets a little over-the-top -- where Season One would have a great visual pun and a throwaway reference to Star Wars, and then move on to the next thing, Season Two does a whole subplot pastiche of Fight Club or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's still totally worth watching though.

"Back" - Daisy returns from a vacation to discover that no one missed her. Sad panda. Brian and Twist are still seeing each other, and a happy Brian is an extremely disturbing and artistically unproductive Brian.
"Change" - Tim gets sacked over The Phantom Menace. Daisy gets kicked off welfare. Mike moves into Marsha's spare room. Marsha torments Brian until he's fit to paint again. It is awesome.
"Mettle" - Brian does an art installation. Tim and Mike try to get on Robot Wars. Daisy gets one of a series of crappy temp jobs.
"Help" - Dark Star Comics wants to see Tim's portfolio. Tyres returns. There is a lot of running about.
"Gone" - A strange yet sort of awesome pub crawl. Contains two ridiculous, fantastic fight scenes. Daisy subverts the male psyche. Totally choice.
"Dissolution" - Daisy's Birthday. A series of misadventures. Everyone in the house hates one another.
"Leaves" - Marsha puts the house up for sale. A series of spectacular apologies.

I'm not doing the individual episodes any justice - it's just really hard to get at the zillion little things happening in every scene. It's better than I'm making it sound! except maybe the last two. Bit serious.

Mystery DVD #142

2008-11-16T23:38:09Z

Spaced: The Complete Series: Season 1 (Disc 1)
I've once again taken unconscionably long to review this disc, and I'm already being punished. You'll see.
There are two things that cause me to grind to a halt with the DVDs -- either the disc is so bad I don't want to come up with words about it, or it's so good that I am ashamed to try. Spaced is in the latter category. And how. Sorry, can't talk, too busy watching episode six for the ninth time... but I don't really understand why it's good. It's written by Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes (at the time, Stevenson) - so it's scratching the same sort of itches as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

On the face of it it's rather stupid - two lazy stoner types meet in a coffee shop and pretend to be a couple so they can rent a sweet apartment -- like a reverse Three's Company. I anticipated British Cringe Humor, which gives me nightmares. Indeed they are British and there is much cringing. Oh is there cringing. Jessica Hynes has at least a dozen ways of being an abject yet defiant bullshit artist with just her eyebrows. What I didn't anticipate is the amazing chemistry the cast has, or the exquisite timing they give the dialogue. There is also the highest pop-culture-reference to line of dialogue ratio outside of Family Guy, and a sort of low-budget magical realism thing that I just gave up on trying to explain. I feel strangely guilty about this. Am I just enjoying it because I never expected anyone to pander to my demographic to this degree? Is it wrong to award points because a guy enjoys drowning Lara Croft? Can I ever just review a few hours of highly amusing TV without descending into an existential spiral? apparently not. Anyway, it's hilarious. Check it out.

Season One episodes:
"Beginnings" - Introducing Daisy (procrastinating journalist wanna-be), Tim (recently single, stoned comics artist wanna-be), Marsha (sloshed, bored landlady), Mike (Tim's best friend, Rambo wanna-be), Twist (Daisy's best friend, evil diva wanna-be), and Brian (Marsha's sometime concubine, actual artist and emotional cripple).
"Gatherings" - Daisy puts off writing by throwing a housewarming party. It is shamefully pathetic.
"Art" - Brian is invited to a play put on by his ex-partner, Vulva. He is tormented. Daisy drags Tim along, who is on speed and has been playing zombie apocalypse videogames for 36 hours. Hijinks ensue.
"Battles" - Tim and Mike play paintball. Daisy adopts a dog. Tim confronts the crotchmonger who broke up his last relationship. Tim's phobias concerning dogs, lightning and bamboo are explored.
"Chaos" - Colin the dog is abducted. The flatmates rally and storm the lab for great justice. Twist makes eyes at Brian. Don't do it Brian she's a Skrull.
"Epiphanies" - Introducing Tyres (magical tweaker). The flatmates and allies go clubbing. They have an awesome time. That's all. This episode makes me so freaking happy. It sets up all the sitcom-plot ways of kicking a dude in the kidney, and then...they just have an awesome time. Yay.
"Ends" - oh no sexual tension. Tim's ex sort of wants him back. Daisy freaks out and has a superhuman burst of productivity. Brian and Twist go on a date. Mike re-applies to the Territorial Army, from which he was expelled for invading France. Everyone ends up sort of ambiguously happy.

Mystery DVD #141

2008-10-05T20:42:31Z

The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior
One again I have been crippled with Unreviewable DVD Syndrome. This time it was pure ennui that laid me out. I didn't want to think of words to express my feelings, so I had a plan to just post a photograph of a bowl of oatmeal and maybe a salt shaker labeled 'Rage.' But then I would have either had to steal a photo of oatmeal, or clean my kitchen so the photo wouldn't have a spotty banana and a pile of dirty glasses for a backdrop, and I'm not a good photographer anyway. So words it is. Anyway all I mean is that it's really bland and lame, and sort of lumpy, but not made of poison.
I didn't see the first Scorpion King, but I don't think this really had a thing to do with it. This Akkadian kid named Mathayus is the son of a great mercenary warrior, so he joins the same order, the Black Scorpions. During his tryout he somehow mortally offends General Sargon (Ultimate Fighting champ Randy Couture), who is a Scorpion himself. Unable for plot reasons to take out his pique on the actual source, Sargon uses sorcery to kill Mathayus' father. Mathayus gets accepted as a Black Scorpion, and returns from his training to discover that Sargon is now king of Akkad. Sargon, in the manner of crazy evil kings throughout history, assigns Mathayus to his personal bodyguard. Mathayus refuses to execute his brother for talking smack about Sargon's despotic rule, and like that he is on the run to find a magical weapon and foment revolution. A plucky female sidekick and a Greek poet/con artist join him. I am not going back and learning their names. The writers name drop historical and mythical references in no sensible order just to keep the alert viewer wracked with confusion and disgust. Anyway they go to Greece and blunder into trouble, pick up a company of Illyrians and a Chinese acrobat, fight the Minotaur, go to the land of the dead, piss of the goddess Astarte, get the magic sword, and oh my god this thing is nowhere near over yet.
Back in Akkad, Astarte wants to punish the insolent mortals so she gives Sargon more sorcerous power. He tries to sacrifice a stadium full of Akkadians, I guess as a thank you gift, I dunno. This scene exists to let the acrobat and the sidekick run around on peoples' heads for a bit, and was actually a little bit awesome. So anyway Mathyas and the Greek poet fight Sargon, who turns into millions of scorpions, but magic sword, blah blah, somehow he wins in a confusing burst of CGI and the power of heart. Huzzah.

Mystery DVD #140

2008-08-26T06:03:14Z

Death Proof: Disc 1 (Grindhouse)

Holy crap, that was awesome!

I was not looking forward to this, as I only knew that it involved Kurt Russell as a stuntman who kills ladies with a special car. I enjoy explosions but not so much the violent dismemberments. But then the movie started, and I usually call them films, but it's a movie, tricked out in every way like a cheap B-movie from the 70s, so much so that I was very startled when someone pulled out a cell phone. Anyway, the foul, sweaty, filthy-mouthed and extremely entertaining movie started, and yeah, he kills some ladies with the car, and it was sad and gross, but it was just getting started.

Kurt Russell plays a beat-up old stuntman named Stuntman Mike, and his hobby is killing attractive ladies with his penis I mean his Dodge Charger, which he has reinforced to render Death Proof. His penis he has simply chromed and put on the hood of the car. It's shaped like a duck but you know. He is actually very disarming as he stalks his prey, acknowledging that he is a very creepy man and then charming his way back into a lady's lap dance I mean comfort zone. And then killing her with a car.

But then he goes after a group of ladies that contains two stuntwomen, and they are not having any Death By Kurt Russell shit, thank you very much. There is, you might imagine, a lot of stunt driving. OMGWTF the stunt driving. The two stuntwomen (Tracy Thoms as Kim and Zoe Bell as herself) and their hairstylist Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), who is present to curse when the other two are taking breaths between curses, are terrorized by the Death Proof car, but they happen to be driving an equally badass car, so they terrorize him back. By the end Stuntman Mike is reduced to high-pitched sobs and I think we're supposed to feel sorry for him. Then they punch him a lot. The end. Awesome.

Also there is an awesome sheriff to take us into Act Two.

It's Tarantino. There's cursing, there's feet. There are weirdly attractive storefronts. There is some sexualization of violence/role-reversal stuff but it's pretty transparent and I think he just put it in to give a grad student friend something to write a paper about. There are two formal appreciations of Vanessa Ferlito's back end, and you know what? Thank you, Vanessa Ferlito. Thank you, Quentin Tarantino. Thank you.

Netflix Arranger Pattern Matching: Rosario Dawson, at least. I'm losing track.

Mystery DVD #139

2008-08-14T21:30:05Z

Jack of All Trades: The Complete Series: Disc Two

oh god what
agh
nooooo

okay. be the ball.

I have a new theory about Jack of All Trades. I think Palau-Palau is a manifestation of the Singularity. All terrible fiction comes here and interbreeds. What we observe as Jack of All Trades is just a snapshot of the tempest sliced from literature referencing the early nineteeth century, tearing into itself like a swarm of maddened eels. I further conjecture that at the time of the Singularity terrible erotic fanfiction will outweigh all other writings by wordcount, which would explain the strained sexual tension and awful puns the following episodes are so saturated in. Somehow the signal has propagated back to us, via the social construct that is Sam Raimi.

My housemate julrosec says that it's all just a pity party for Bruce Campbell.
To recap a bit: the year is 1801. Jack Stiles is an American secret agent sent by Thomas Jefferson to the French colony of Palau-Palau to keep an eye on Napoleon's Pacific empire. He teams up with British agent Emilia Rothschild and moonlights as local folk hero the Daring Dragoon. Previous episodes reviewed here. Oddly, I seem to have missed four episodes. I don't think they were on Disc One.

1.9 "Croque for a Day" - Napoleon sends an inspector to Palau-Palau to check on Governor Croque. Jack and Emilia fear that he wll be replaced by someone competent, so they convince him to go on some diamond-prospecting boondoggle for a week while Jack impersonates Croque. Nothing really interesting happens except that Emilia has to impersonate Jack's superhero alterego, the Daring Dragoon, to bust up an execution. She sort of rules at it, especially with the terrible puns, to Jack's dismay.

1.10 "Dead Woman Walking" - The Daring Dragoon is very popular on Palau-Palau, and so to turn the islanders against him, Croque has his captain impersonate him and repeatedly defile an important tomb. Since Jack and Emilia are unable to focus long enough for a normal stakeout, Emilia decides to fake her own death with a potion of her own devising. Jack inadvertently traps himself in her coffin and they narrowly escape cremation. There is much sexual tension. It is horrible. Anyway somehow the crematorium is in the same place as the tomb, so they jump out and Jack fights the impostors, while Emilia scares the crap out of them by pretending to be a vengelful undead. Croque and Capt. what's-his-name promise a public apology. With that cleared up Emilia has a remarkable recovery and returns to her fake job.
So just before the Singularity people will sometimes come back from the dead. Good to know.

1.11 "Love Potion No. 10" - So horrible. Croque's wife is coming to Palau-Palau. Somehow everyone knows that Napoleon associates a strong sex drive with administrative ability, so basically if Croque doesn't prove his worth by satisfying Mme. Croque it will get back to Napoleon and he will be replaced. Sorry, every time I paid attention for more than two minutes at a time I would start to black out from the awful. Also, Mme Croque witnesses the Dashing Dragoon in action and finds him just the cutest little thing. Okay, so since Jack and Emilia don't want Croque replaced, they use Science! to make a superpowerful aphrodisiac to give him. Unfortunately, Jack knocks it over and it gets all over him and Emilia. Much terrible soul-killing sexual tension nonsense ensues. Anyway they manage to keeep their hands off each other long enough to convince Croque to dress up as the Daring Dragoon and have some good clean role-playing fun with his wife, it all works out, the end. The only way Croque doesn't know Jack is the Daring Dragoon is if he's in end-stage syphilitic dementia, so I don't know what Napoleon's worried about.

1.12 "Up the Creek" - On to a series of obscenely wrong historical figure guest stars. Jack and Emilia are relaxing on the beach when who should turn up but Lewis and Clark (expedition 1804-1806), horribly slandered as pig-ignorant buffoons. They got lost looking for Oregon, think America is still at war with the British, so Emilia is the enemy and Jack must be a traitor. They tie them up and go get themselves captured by the French. Meanwhile Croque has gone sompletely insane and has taken to wearing a suit of plate armor. Jack and Emilia save the day with some sort of magnet gizmo and Emilia hires Sacajawea to help them find Oregon. Very, very bad.

1.13 "X Marquis the Spot" - King George III's crown is stolen. Jack and Emilia are dispatched to another island to follow the only lead. The island turns out to be a sex resort run by the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814). Unspeakably lame, campy nonsense follows. Jack gets to be the bottom. Of course Croque and Captain what's his name are there, I think they might also be looking for the crown. Sorry for the lack of detail, I was busy covering my eyes and screaming. There's some sort of piggyback race. Jack fights de Sade and gets the crown back. I level up a character in CthulhuMUD, which is a lot less sanity-blasting.

1.14 "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Opera" - George III (reign 1760-1820) visits Palau-Palau, where a famous tenor is performing in an opera honoring Napoleon and Governor Croque. Jack and Emilia get wind that someone is trying to assassinate him. My character dream walks to Hatheg-Kla but my climb skill is way too low to reach the top. Probably for the best. Emilia invents a bomb detector. The opera makes the Daring Dragoon a cowardly midget, to Jack's dismay. Anyway they defeat the assassin, the end.

2.1 "A Horse of a Different Color" - Horse racing is suddenly a huge thing on Palau-Palau. Catherine the Great (1729-1796) turns up looking for her missing prize stallion. Many truly wretched sexual innuendoes come hurtling to earth. Catherine threatens to level Palau-Palau with her gunships if the horse doesn't turn up. Jack and Emilia check out the races and instantly waste the entire day becoming gambing addicts. After a play for more time, the Daring Dragoon enters a race on his daring steed Nutcracker (wow, last seen in episode 2 or 3) and spots the missing horse, which has been painted to look like a giraffe. Catherine the Great goes away happy and also dead, since this is supposed to be 1801.

2.2 "Shark Bait" Nardo Da Vinci, descendent of Leonardo, is terrorizing the tropics in a huge shark-shaped submarine. Jack and Emilia break out Emilia's little submarine (more continuity!) and investigate. They find Blackbeard imprisoned aboard. Large confusing fight scene ensues, there's a hot-air balloon involved, they defeat the sub, wow, anticlimax.

Mystery DVD #138

2008-08-11T01:58:39Z

Nacho Libre

This one arrived in Blu-Ray format. Sadly, I do not have an HDTV so I don't know if there were especially expressive sweat droplets or any other details.

Jack Black is Ignatio, aka Nacho, a monk in rural Mexico. He cooks for orphans, but in his husky breast burns a lifelong dream of glory as a masked wrestler. Also inappropriate feelings towards Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera), who teaches at the orphanage. Nacho buries his dreams until the day a feral street person fights him for a bag of leftover tortilla chips Nacho was picking up for the orphans. Seeing an opportunity, Nacho sets a trap for the street person, Esqueleto, and convinces him to join him as a tag-team wrestling partner. Hijinks and weirdly adversarial training montages ensue. The duo does not win matches but they are crowd-pleasers, so they make money anyway. Esqueleto has a wiry strength but mostly exists to scream like a girl when other wrestlers attack his hair, which is all the time. Of course Nacho's colleagues at the monastery would never understand, so they keep their career a secret. There is religious tension, as Esqueleto only believes in science.

It's funny in a physical comedy way and a Jack Black makes funny faces and uses funny nouns in a funny accent way. That's pretty much what it has going on and it knows it. Unfortunately they had to stretch it out to feature length, so there's a lot of tormenting of Esqueleto, pointless nun-wooing, spiritual journeys and so forth.

It wasn't as crude as I was expecting. Nacho farts a lot, and there's one bit in a training montage with a cowpie that didn't make a lot of sense, but generally it's silly, clowny fun. But it's not exactly 'good'. Not terrible either. Jack Black does make pretty funny faces.

Mystery DVD #137

2008-08-05T02:11:11Z

Paycheck
Based on a story by Philip K. Dick and directed by John Woo. What could go wrong?

Ben Affleck plays Michael, a brilliant but mildly skeezy engineer. He is hired by electronics companies to reverse-engineer the products of competitors, and paid handsomely. The catch is that his memory gets erased after each of these projects, so he can't turn it around and sell what he's learned to anyone else. He lives off the big paycheck for months and then does it again. Life tootles along for Michael and his manager/memory-wiper/friend Shorty (Paul Giamatti) until their industrialist friend James (Aaron Eckhart) offers a big score. A three-year project with a big enough payoff to set Michael up for life. Also Michael wants to be around James' biologist employee Rachel (Uma Thurman) so he goes for it.

But of course everything goes wrong. Three years are up and Michael goes to his bank for his big payoff and learns that he signed it away a month ago and sent himself an envelope of junk like hair spray and half-finished crossword puzzles instead. And then people start trying to kill him. Apparently he decided to get out of the project, and he has to pice together why, and do something about it.

It's a pretty fun movie to watch. There are some creative action scenes, and there's the pleasant feeling of watching a smart hero and a smart villain try to out-think each other. However, after many scenes of Ben Affleck's forehead all knotted up in puzzlement it got a bit pitiful. It was also kind of nice to see the government come in as the good guys and for them to be halfway competent. Uma Thurman's character proves to be a wily and creative badass. All to the good.

But the world they do all this in left me feeling like way too much had been left out. It was entirely about the one big puzzle and anything not immediately serving that or exploding was cut. I bet that included a lot of plot-relevant context. The Feds can grab you and strap you into a machine that lets them replay your memories? Could someone have thrown in a line about due process or is this normal? Or how about explaining why the bad guys decided to kill their friend? It's never really explained why the hero couldn't convince them that the project was bad. There's a long, long explody fight scene towards the end where John Woo slowly dials up the Wooness until it's Woo-parody, culminating in an angelic white bird flying right out of the screen. I thought I had somehow dozed off and dreamed it.

Netflix Arranger Pattern Matching: Still more Aaron Eckhart! I was hoping he and Ben Affleck would have some kind of giant chin fight, but I guess they thought it would be too homoerotic.

Mystery DVD #136

2008-07-13T22:18:35Z

The Core

It's a Netflix Arranger Pattern Matching extravaganza, bringing together Aaron Eckhart from Thank You For Smoking, Stanley Tucci from Sidewalks of New York, and the half-baked pseudoscience from Deep Blue Sea. There might have been more pattern matching, the cast was pretty big. One day I'll have to make a spreadsheet or something.

Normally I try to keep these reviews pretty short and to not spoil everything, but it's really not possible with this one. I can't get into it without really getting into it. So before you wade into the great discursive spoilertacular below I will sum up my impressions in brief: Pretty, entertaining but desperately silly.

Okay, so Aaron Eckhart plays Dr. Josh Keyes, a geophysicist, who is called upon by the U.S. military to explain some bizarre electromagnetic phenomena that have suddenly started popping up all over the world. (The military, not the government, mind you, we only ever see one Army guy in command of this whole project, and never any political response to gigantic and ever-worsening worldwide disasters. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Josh sets his grad students to gathering data on all the bizarre shit that's happening (mostly birds going nuts and pacemakers stopping in clusters). Meanwhile, Major Rebecca Childs (Hilary Swank) is riding shotgun on the Space Shuttle when an EM disturbance wrecks their navigation data and makes them almost crash into Los Angeles. NASA decides she is the most awesome navigator ever for making them only crash into it a little bit. This seems quite fair. Generally bureaucrats and governments know what they're doing in this film, and are using their powers for good, which is a nice change of pace. Unfortunately it's a law of film that whenever something huge and bad happens it has to be either the government or the military's fault somehow, and we'll get to that in a few minutes.

So Josh consults with his friend Serge, a high-energy weapons specialist, and buttonholes Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci) who is an evil scientist (you can tell because he smokes and does not dress like he is about to join the merchant marines. What is it with scientists and giant sweaters? why do they signify 'I am a scientist and a good man, but for god's sake no woman may touch me while I wear this sweater (this was true even in Ultraviolet - vampire in a sweater == sexless science love interest.).). Okay, I digressed. Conrad Zimsky is a brilliantly polymathic geologist type and together he and Josh figure out that the earth is freaking out because the inner core has stopped spinning. They go in front of a U.S. military panel and tell them that because the earth's protective magnetic field is collapsing, everyone is going to die within a year. The military offers to throw money every which way, and off they go to the desert to dig up another mad scientist. Oh, how has the inner core stopped rotating? No one knows, but since it's 'like an engine' it must have stalled somehow. I'm glad no one in the film ever used either of the words 'angular' or 'momentum' or the DVD might have burst into flames out of pure shame.

Ed Brazzleton (Delrot Lindo) is the most awesome mad scientist, but unfortunately the film starts getting really silly right while he's demonstrating all of his inventions. Braz has done pretty much all the work needed to build a vehicle that can tunnel to the earth's core. Including a magical hull material that gets generates energy under pressure. Okay, I'm sure the military would not have wanted to stuff money in his pants before now, just for the armor. Sure. Anyway. He just needs piles of money and the brightest engineers in the world to help him build the ship. Okay here, says that one Army guy. Whee! Science montage! We're gonna save the world! By tunneling to the Earth's core and setting off a buncha nukes!

One of the plot drivers in Thank You For Smoking was the main character's project to get smoking back into films. The Core makes me suspicious that the Air Force has a similar initiative for nuclear weapons. Big huge problem we have to solve in a hurry? Nukes! Of course! They are magical weapons er I mean Items of Peace! Our awesome Peace Items, Made in America, are here to save the world again! Wooot Nukes! Okay they do blow up Stanley Tucci's character with one, so they're not all bad.

The whole world comes together to build a ship! they hire Serge to manage the nukes! they hire Major Childs to navigate! They hire her commander to pilot! I can't remember his name and we won't need it! He's not gonna be making out with Josh at any point! Remember Josh? He invents an awesome MRI/radar device that lets them see rock density, so they bring him too. Also Zimsky, because he is the best scientist in the world. Also Braz, because he built the damn thing. They also decide that the need to hack the entire internet no no one can talk about all the crazy atmospheric shit that's getting worse and worse, so they arrest the best hacker in the world, a pimply boy named Rat. He stays at mission control breaking stuff.

So they tunnel into the mantle and things start going wrong. The ship gets stuck in a big geode and the pilot dies. The ship runs into a giant diamond and Serge gets killed. The core isn't as dense as they thought so their bombs aren't going to be enough, and they can't reconfigure them without Serge. Zimsky and the Army guy decide to go to plan B, which is to use their secret earthquake weapon to poke the core until it spins again. This is where we learn that it is all the government's fault, because they made a weapon that creates earthquakes and it broke the core. For some reason poking again with the earthquake weapon would be really bad, or they'd have tried it already. Rat sabotages the weapon to give the ship more time, and the crew presses on with a new plan that involves gratuitously killing the black guy (that would be Braz, in a truly egregious example of the martyr-the-one-black-guy scene) and dropping chunks of the ship around the core with bombs in them to create a ripple effect. Zimsky gets pinned under a bomb and is left to get exploded. Josh and Major Childs start welding random chunks of what's left of the ship together and it gets them back to the surface. Where they would be trapped except that Rat figures out where they are. Yay! the earth is saved.

Man, that was a long movie. You don't wanna know how many meta-review ideas I thought up and rejected before giving up and just rambling it to death. One involved sending The Core out on a date with Deep Blue Sea. It wasn't pretty.

Mystery DVD #135

2008-07-01T04:17:10Z

Bowfinger

A caper film! That doesn't suck and is not too weird. The kind I am the worst at reviewing, I am sorry.

Steve Martin plays Bowfinger, a cross between a movie producer and a grifter. Eddie Murphy plays Kit Ramsey, Hollywood's biggest action star and secret paranoid. Bowfinger is almost 50, and if he doesn't make a hit film soon he'll turn to dust. Not literally but he talks like he really might. He has a gaggle of friends, all basically losers trying to make it in the movie business. They're all about to give up and get real jobs. To stop them, Bowfinger promises a Big Score - he's going to take an alien invasion screenplay written by his accountant and turn it into a blockbuster. Everyone drops whatever humble but actual opportunity they were pursuing, taken in by the power of hope and bullshit. Bowfinger grifts his way in to see Kit Ramsey, but can't seal the deal. He concocts an elaborate plan to make the film anyway, by stalking Ramsey and having his actors run up to him and say their lines. Since Ramsey has a fear of evil aliens already, this slowly drives him insane. Heather Graham plays a terrible ingenue from Ohio who seduces everyone. Her bad acting is so bad it becomes a new sort of art. I mean her acting like a bad actor. I guess that makes her a good actor.

Bowfinger is okay with driving Kit nuts and lying to all of his friends, but discovers his conscience after befriending a homely Ramsey butt double and discovering that the butt double is also Kit's brother and that the film people are his only friends. Just as the grand project looks doomed, the players find some good blackmail material in all their stalking footage and use it to force Kit to shoot the final scene.

Eddie Murphy is truly hilarious when terrified by fake aliens. Steve Martin grifts with a disarming pathos. Heather Graham kind of scares me. There's a such thing as having eyes that are too big. It's pretty good. Also: Terence Stamp as a cult leader, only he seems to be trying to help.

At the end all of the players, except possibly Kit, gaze up at the finished horrible film and each one sees his true bliss. That was rather wonderful.

Mystery DVD #134

2008-06-21T02:45:51Z

Thank You for Smoking

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) is Big Tobacco's smiling face to the world. Blessed with a quick wit and teflon morality, he goes on television to cast doubt on the science linking smoking with disease and does battle with smarmy environmentalist do-gooders. His only friends are a couple of lobbyists for Big Alcohol and Big Firearms. Meanwhile he is raising a smart and curious 12-year-old son (when he has charge of him. He also has an ex-wife with an interfering boyfriend).

Anti-smoking forces are arrayed to put a 'poison' label on cigarette packs. Despite the fact that they're not planning to ban them, or tax them, just label them, Nick's bosses are in despair. He is dispatched to California with a plan to make smoking sexy again by getting it back into the movies. He brings his kid Joey along for manly bonding and educational adventure. Rob Lowe has an awesome little bit part as some kind of superpowered movie agent/producer/kingmaker guy. Sorry, he was talking really fast and it didn't make that much sense.

All the villains are villains, but they're charming and pleasant and laugh-with-them funny. All the good guys are dicks and harpies and laugh-at-them funny. Senator Ortolan Finistirre (Ortolan Finistirre! Ortolan Finistirre!!!) (played by William H. Macy) leads the label-cigarettes forces and seems like a horribly unpleasant man. In a lovely touch, he is wearing Birkenstocks, which the film instantly turns into the equivalent to smoking on TV as a 'villain' signifier. Katie Holmes is also in it as a predatory reporter. Nick disregards accurate warnings about her breasts.

It's a sharp, funny, really enjoyable film that depresses the hell out of me. The Nick Naylors of the world, and their bosses, are the worst thing in the world. By selling doubt they undermine our culture's trust in reason. No one has time anymore to become an expert in every area one needs to make choices in. Well-funded anti-science just makes those choices harder. Kill a man and you're a murderer. Tell a billion men lies that will kill them and you're an industry spokesman. But anyway it's good and the opening credits are very cool.

Netflix Arranger Pattern Matching: Cameron Bright plays Joey, and was also the hybrid/clone/weapon child in Ultraviolet.