There Are No Walls in the House of Jearl
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Infernal Jeer" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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08:39 am
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Mystery DVD #160
Ninja Cheerleaders
(Fight to Cheer Another Day)
I actually, because I am a fool, I actually had some hope that this was going to be entertaining.
( OH WELL CUT FOR DISAPPOINTMENT AND LENGTH )
Tags: dvd review
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10:55 pm
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Mystery DVD #159
Little Black Book
The Brittany Murphy films will continue till morale improves. This one is a zany workplace/romantic comedy. Or it wants to be.
Stacy (Murphy) has big TV dreams of working with Diane Sawyer one day. She sings a lot of Carly Simon because of her mom. It's important to the plot okay. She is living with Derek, who is a hockey scout and seems like an okay guy. She is also starting a job as an Assistant Producer at a daytime talk show - Kippie Kann Do. Kippie (Kathy Bates) is an aging Oprah Winfrey type who is doing trashier and trashier shows to keep her ratings going. There is a backstabbery at the workplace subplot that is probably more engaging than the A-plot.
While Derek is off hockey scouting, Stacy stumbles into some information about a supermodel ex of Derek's, and gradually turns into an insecure-to-the-point-of-crazy person about it. Her co-worker Barb (Holly Hunter, sharpened to a keening edge) takes Stacy under her wing, exploits her man-related paranoia FOR HER OWN NEFARIOUS ENDS and encourages it, by helping Stacy abuse her TV show powers to investigate several of Derek's past girlfriends. Stacy develops a girlcrush on the most sympathetic of them and plays dangerous stupid mindgames with her rather than just calling Derek up and having an adult conversation about her feelings.
There are lots of entertaining scenes and genuinely enjoyable moments, but the story is obnoxious and does not hold together all that well. I actually like Murphy doing comedy. She has pretty good timing and throws herself into undignified absurdity with the requisite abandon. The script is good - dialogue in the TV show plot is often really funny. The direction is also pleasingly hectic. However, the last 40 minutes of this film is Murphy as a humiliated, weeping wreck. Hard to enjoy. Stacy was credulous and Barb devious kind of at the whim of whatever plot point was up in the sequence. And I just hated the whole notion of Derek being this bad guy because he never (according to exposition) laid bare his entire history of feelings ever. 'Lying by omission' is bullshit. Lying to a direct question is lying, and the story only dances vaguely around whether he did so. He hardly even gets the chance to be right or wrong, he's in like four scenes.
SO JEARL ISN'T THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS CRAZY BRITTANY MURPHY? Not really - I mean she is sort of the villain, in that she gets unreasonably unhinged about the boyfriend's privacy. But she also gets goaded into a lot of stuff by Evil Holly Hunter.
Warnings: Comical Pelvic Exam, Feelings, Brittany Murphy basically playing Lana from Smallville Season 4 I don't know. Which was the season where she wouldn't shut up about secrets and lies? It's like that only with a lot of Carly Simon.
Tags: dvd review
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11:28 am
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Mystery DVD #158
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.
( Cut for length and mild spoilers )
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.
Tags: dvd review
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09:16 pm
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Mystery DVD #157
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.
( Here are the eight episodes I got to watch )
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.
Tags: dvd review
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07:57 pm
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Mystery DVD #156
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.
( SPOILERS )
Tags: dvd review
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09:41 pm
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Mystery DVD #155
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.
Tags: dvd review
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04:05 pm
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Mystery DVD #154
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.
Tags: dvd review
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09:49 pm
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Mystery DVD #153
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.
Tags: dvd review
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10:03 am
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Mystery DVD #152
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.
( Spoilers Don't Matter, But Here Are Some )
Tags: dvd review
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07:44 pm
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Mystery DVD #151
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.
( Cut for length and how. )
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.
Tags: dvd review
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12:01 pm
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Mystery DVD Special Project
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 ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) 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.
Tags: dvd review, nerdery
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10:13 am
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Mystery DVD #150
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.
Tags: dvd review
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05:41 pm
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Mystery DVD #149
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...
( I got a little wordy )
Tags: dvd review
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03:51 pm
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Mystery DVD #148
#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.
Tags: dvd review
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07:20 pm
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Mystery DVD #146
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.
Tags: dvd review
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12:13 pm
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Mystery DVD #145
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.
( Please follow me into a six-episode vale of darkness, haunted by stinking black birds, which flap and gurgle, and a faraway screaming of someone who needs your help but who you can never reach. )
Tags: dvd review
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11:05 am
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Mystery DVD #144
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.
Tags: dvd review
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06:49 pm
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Mystery DVD #143
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.
Tags: dvd review
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03:34 pm
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Mystery DVD #142
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.
Tags: dvd review
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Mystery DVD #141
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.
Tags: dvd review
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