JFL42 Comedy Festival 2013

Last year's JFL42 festival of comedy started off on a wrong note with a horrendous delay in getting the festival passes after ordering.  Coupled with the confusion about how the festival works and not having a usable smart phone to effectively check in and reserve shows, there was a lot it had to overcome to make it worthwhile.  What it has was some damn incredible comedeians and the more shows you take in the more value you get out of the festival pass.

It was an easy decision to do it again this year, particularly when discovering the early announced line-up included four of my favourite acts (Mulaney, Kinane, Maron and Burress) with two of the headliners (Silverman and Ansari) vying for my headliner selection.  The ticket ordering process this year went incredibly smoothly, with my festival pass arriving within hours and buying a pass for my wife at the same time required only a couple clicks on a simple "Transfer My Pass" process.  Months before the festival, it had already started things off right.

What wasn't so great this year, however, was the scheduling, partly my fault but also a problem with the organization of the acts.  There was a bit of bunching of the bigger names towards the end of the festival, overlapping at the same time, which was problematic and caused me to miss out on two favourites, Hannibal Buress and Maria Bamford (there were midnight show options for each on Thursday and Friday nights, but not much of an option with work and kids.  As well, there didn't seem to be as many name acts this year as there were last year, and it was very close to the starting date when the last half of the 42 were revealed.  There were a lot more hosted events, which I guess is fine, but I didn't think to investigate them until deep into the festival.

So committed to the festival this year were we that I called in my mother to fly in to watch after the kids.  We only had four nights booked when we asked initially but we took advantage of the in-house babysitting and jumped on a couple of extra shows.  I matched my show attendance from last year (8 shows) but packed even more extracurriculars with my wife into the week.  Where she only saw three shows plus the headliner last year (Louis CK), she caught all the shows with me this year and it made for a far better festival experience.

Here's a few brief recaps of the shows:

Mark Little and Kyle Dooley (opener Todd Graham) - September 20, @The Comedy Bar, 7PM
I didn't know what to expect.  I love Picnicface, the sketch ensemble of which both are members, and Little is a great stand-up in his own right (saw him last year), so I had hopes they could deliver something entertaining.  And it was something, all right.

Todd Graham was an inspired choice for opening act.  He has a quiet, reserved delivery, with dry punchlines and methodical pacing led to a slow laugh build-up (often to the point of uncomfortably awkward), but ultimately quite funny.  Little and Dooley follow Graham on stage with a stark counterpoint, kicking over the mics, crunking to some hardcore hip-hop and screaming like they're wrestlers from the 1980's WWF.  The aggressiveness was disarming, like shocking your skin by jumping in the snow out of a sauna, bracing but it wakes you up.  They don't let up from there.

Little and Dooley construct a loose, free-flowing narrative about attending their high-school prom that takes dozens of diversions that seem improvised (and to a degree are) but are still an important part of the overall structure.  There's a third member to their team in the booth playing music queues and interfering with the proceedings causing Little and Dooley much hilarious consternation (as the unseen third man, he's brilliant and every gaffe or interruption led to comedy gold).

Little and Dooley's irreverent production was jam packed with so many clever elements and funny bits that my mind overloaded.  A section of the show found Little becoming so irate with the errors from the sound tech that he starts ranting, his rants at first repeated by Dooley, then Little starts speaking for Dooley (which Dooley also repeats) before stepping out into the crowd, doffing his shirt, taking glasses from various audience members and piling them all on one audience member as a "glasses totem".  It's hard to effectively describe, but certainly a memorable live experience.

The overall show was so amazing that my wife and I had every intention of returning for an additional viewing but scheduling conflicts interfered with that plan.  Definitely the right way to start off our festival, an easy highlight.  My biggest hope is that one of the performances was captured on video as there's so much in there I would like to witness again.  I wonder if much of it was the live setting (I'm quite sure of it) but I also believe that it would translate well to home viewing.

Jerrod Carmichael (opener Mark Forward) - September 20, @The Comedy Bar, 9PM
 I've heard him as a guest on Comedy Bang Bang a couple of times and heard a few short sets he's done.  Carmichael is a new-ish comic that's garnering a lot of attention, and the kid has some definite comedy chops as well as charm to spare. . What he doesn't have is a solid 45 minute set, and thus it felt more like a workshopping appearance and less a refined headliner.  His attempts to engage the crowd weren't received well.  He basically just asked two or three times if anyone wanted him to riff on anything, and the only reply he got was "Rob Ford" (eliciting major groans from the crowd), but once he learned he was the crack-smoking mayor, his eyes sparkled and he went off.  Carmichael can riff, I'll grant him that, but while full of promice, overall the set was a scattershot work in progress.

Opener Mark Forward was great.  Forwards a Canadian pro, with a solid roster of odd material (including an opening conceptual piece about monitoring his phone for news about his grandmother which had a great payoff).  I got the sense he could easily have pulled a headliner set.

Sam Simmons - September 23, @The Drake, 7PM
"In Australia, all comedy is like this".
What a delightfully odd place that must be.

Simmons I caught on a Jon Dore hosted Just For Laughs alternative program earlier this year.  I didn't catch his name at first but upon seeing a clip while looking for shows at the JFL42 site, I immediately recalled how much I enjoyed him.  His hybrid stand-up/prop comedy/performance piece ebbs and flows between self-effacing, self-aggrandizing, hyper-sexual, off-beat, way-off-beat, outright bizzare, conceptual, clever word play, silly word play, groan-inducing wordplay, audience interaction, odd-ience interaction, audience berating, conversations with himself (pre-recorded), and things with food.  Lots and lots of food.  It's a little more than an hour of weirdness pummeling the audience, with an 80-to-20 hit to miss ratio, and a lot of those misses Simmons can turn into hits with his self-effacing or audience-berating tactic ("Fuck you guys, that was brilliant").  Simmons has no shame, even when he's pretending to be ashamed.  There's running bits throughout the show, with the Old El Paso Taco Kit playing a major part right up until the epic taco-crushing finale.  A decidedly entertaining and unique experience.

Marc Maron (opener Andy Kindler) - September 24, @Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 7PM
I've been listening to Maron once or twice a week, almost every week for four years.  His podcast, WTF, has reached over 400 episodes now, and each episode he engages in a one-sided conversation about his life and what's going on.  Maron's not just a comedian to me, he's a friend, a dear friend, someone whom I care about, yet I've never met.  I had only heard him perform shorter sets, seeing them on youtube or Comedy Central programs, but it was only early in the year when I received all four of his stand up records that I ever heard him as a full act.  But listening to him over those four albums is to hear him evolve as a person, not just as a comedian, and a lot of the stories and jokes were familiar to me in one form or another as he reshapes them on the podcast in rants or conversations (often he retells them in a "I have a joke about that with X as the punch line" way).  It's great stuff, but at the same time, knowing Maron so intimately -- as all his regular What The Fuckers, What The Fuck Buddies, What The Fuckanadians etc do -- is to worry about him and hope his show goes well (he had just had a bomb set a week or two before his JFL42 appearance so that was fresh in my mind).

But Jesus, what I forgot is that Maron is a fucking professional comedian, a 30 veteran of the industry, and seeing him on stage is to see a master at work.  He is incredible.  Within seconds of him arriving on stage you could tell he was loose, poking fun at his opener and friend Andy Kindler (more on him at the end), and he was ready to get into it (he followed that up with a brutally funny physical impersonation of his friend and fellow comedian David Cross).  Maron is a professional talker.  He has bits and his bits are incredible.  He's managed to hone his bits into a form where they don't sound like bits, they sound like conversation, and so when he's not in his bits you can't really tell he's riffing.

This was the first time I've seen Maron perform an hour that's wholly fresh to me.  I was thinking that because of his podcast that I would have known all the jokes or knew where he was going but I was absolutely swept up by seeing someone so capable of working a crowd and engaging them both as friends and potential enemies.  I love Maron, so there's total bias in this write up, but he absolutely killed and I was just floating by the end of the show.  It was like I finally got to put a face and physicality to that disembodied voice that rings around my earholes so often (Maron's also taller and more handsome than I had pictured).

Now Andy Kindler, on the other hand... well, I was immediately soured when he was announced and took the stage as opener.  I don't like Kindler for all the reason's he seems so completely aware about why people don't like him.  He's opinionated but in a manner that makes him seem bitter and envious.  His act is free of jokes, save for some Vaudevillian one-liners he likes to toss around knowingly, otherwise he's just got this shtick of being a jaded bottom-rung Hollywood type and completely self-denegrating.  He gets his laughs from his sad-sack self-awareness (he acknowledged the warm crowd at length and discussed how this was his best show ever, despite the fact that it was only a lukewarm crowd), but it wears thin very quickly.  His anger and vitriol towards specific individuals or organizations or movies or programs in Hollywood seem to have no other viewpoint than "I don't like it because it's successful", leading to no jokes, just hate.  The best thing to come out of Kindler's set was the end...no not that tired joke, but Maron's poking fun at him.  For all the jokes Kindler makes at his own expense, within a minute of being on stage Maron topped those two or three times over.

John Mulaney (opener Sean Patton) - September 25, @Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 7PM
If there was one act I could not miss this year, John Mulaney would be it.  His "The Best Meal I Ever Had" is my all-time favourite stand-up routine for a few years running.  His two albums, The Top Part and New In Town are comedy classics, the product of an affirmed comedic voice, one that seems to be getting better with age.  Mulaney's an expert storyteller, a gifted wordsmith, and he has mind-mouth coordination like few others.  His bits waver from funny to stitch-ripping hilariousness.  He entered the stage expressing that the evening would include a lot of new material, but if that was actually true, none of it was evident (except at one point where he declared "That's staying in the act!").  It seemed as polished a routine as either album, and whether it's just the confidence he has on stage or just general quick wit, there was nary a lull in his hour-long set.

Mulaney closed the show with a sister piece to "The Best Meal I Ever Had", which was a story called "The Best Night I Ever Had", about the time he was 8-years-old and met Bill Clinton.  The story takes a few necessary diversions (as most of his stories do) but it all builds an incredible picture that puts you right into the scene with young John as your avatar.  There's a moment in the story where Mulaney notes that the fundraiser where he would meet Clinton was held at the same ballroom that you see at the end of the Fugitive.  He drops a few notes of description, pauses for a moment to gauge the audience, then proceeds with the story, only to backtrack and detail more descriptors, not of the ballroom, but of the scene from the Fugitive.  He then pauses, assess the audience, then proceeds with the story once more, only to stop, backtrack and go off on a very intricate, 2-minute, obsessively detailed description of the climax of the Fugitive.  It's an applause worthy feat that sets a peak for the Clinton story that doesn't let down.

I was unfamiliar with his opener Sean Patton, but his set was entertaining, and I like his style, which was enough for us to fill in our Thursday night 9:00 gap with his headline performance.  More on him shortly.

Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet - September 26, @The Dakota Tavern, 7PM

Okay, I know it's not a JFL42 show, but it could have been.  Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet were the house band for the Kids in the Hall, which makes them a part of comedy history and certainly helped in endearing them to me as one of my favourite bands of all time.  The Shadowy Men, a not-quite-surf-a-billy threesome disbanded in the early 90's and after the death of bassist Reid Diamond were destined to be a band for the history books.  With their first album Savvy Show Stoppers reissued on vinyl last year, Shadowy Men reformed with Sadies frontman Dallas Good (if you're going to replace someone named Reid Diamond, only someone named Dallas Good can fit the bill), who played with Diamond and drummer Don Pyle in their post-Shadowy effort Phono-Comb.  The reforming was a three show event which led to a few more smaller shows last year, and a surprise residency during September this year at the Dakota Tavern.

This was my third Shadowy Men show in two years and where the first time was a quasi-religious experience (so many emotions from my youth came flooding back, as well having one of my best friends from high-school and adulthood there with me who lives on another coast, experiencing this live performance we never thought would happen... it was miraculous), this third time matched the second in a smaller, far more intimate venue with a hundred other devotees of old, and a few new.
The Shadowy Men rip through their repertoire at breakneck speed, one song leading into another, into another, into another...six or seven in a row without a pause.  I love the music and know the songs intimately, (though, through the years the names of the tracks have begun to escape me).  It's like a warm audio hug, just utter pleasure listening to Brian's guitar sing and watching his hands move, seeing Don's sweat over his drums and dropping a few pithy comments at rare intervals when he speaks.  I noticed I haven't paid much attention to Dallas Good in the past (since Pyle is the voice of the band, and Connelly is the spotlight, the bassist is easy to overlook), but I made a point to focus on what's going on with the bass this time.  Knowing that Good is playing Diamond's original bass I have to wonder just how much that particular instrument is integral to the band's sound.  The bass is so prevalent in the songs but also so overshadowed by Connelly's amazing hands that one so often wants to attribute signature moments in the songs to Connelly's guitar.

They played two sets, Connelly blowing out his amp at the end of the first set, causing a delay for the second, and thus causing us to miss out on its latter half as we had another place to be.  Still, absolutely amazing, every time.  I've had Shadowy Men songs running through my brain ever since.  I love it and will never tire of it.

Sean Patton (opener ?) - September 26, @The Comedy Bar, 9PM

This was a blessing.  Patton's opening set for John Mulaney was good, but it didn't imply how great Patton was a headliner.  The undersized crowd at the comedy bar spoke volumes as to how criminally below the radar Patton is flying, but judging by his uproarious, often shocking, often dark, often jubilant set, he's slated to appear all over that radar very soon.  Patton kicked off his act by sermonizing the crowd, then launching into his deep impression of Christian comedy, which at once is painfully unfunny, and conceptually hilarious in execution.  Patton then launches forward into a masterclass on storytelling, interspersed with some straight up jokes and aces crowd work.  His storytelling, an exaggeration of his own life, is filled with dark spots but presented with an affirmative nature so that it never drags too deep so as to take it out of comedy (though it threatens a few times in his closing story about his 12-year-old naive indiscretions).  He wavers in and out of hinting at a southern Nawleans drawling accent, and on occasion plays fully into it as a character type.  He knows his material and can command a stage, he's got a refined voice and he's ready for the next level.  His subject matter may not be to everyone's taste, and he likes to fuck with the audience's trust just enough to perhaps be off-putting to some, but overall should definitely break him out.  It was a revelation, one of my new favourite comedians.

His opener (whose name I've forgotten, but probably for the best) was a bit of a mess on the other hand.  Her act was a shambles, with punchlines flying out without jokes and jokes without punchlines.  Often repeated was "I don't know what I'm saying" which may not be a bad catch phrase if she's able to say a lot of hilarious non-sequiturs in a manner that seems like she doesn't know what she's saying.  Unfortunately it came across as her not actually knowing what she's saying, far too often.  It was continually unfocused and unrefined, there was a lot of senseless cursing and at times unbridled anger that seemed to have no direction.  Somewhere in there is a voice that has a unique perspective but judging by this performance it's a ways away from being found.

Kyle Kinane (opener Rob Mailloux) - September 27, @The Mod Club, 7PM

If there was a highlight of the festival, it would be Kyle Kinane.  I've been a fan of Kinane since he appeared on the Nerdist's first Comedians You Should Know showcase (episode 51) and he's only gotten better.  His first album Death of the Party found a not-so-young-but-still-young Kinane presenting his unique dark hilarity in a refined state, but his second album, Whiskey Icarus revealed the genius that was hiding from that first album.  Like Mulaney's set this year, Kinane has a new hour that seems polished and ready to go to press, his voice so strong that he fills every moment with a nugget of brain joy uniquely his own.

Comedy can be about telling jokes, but the best comedians are storytellers, those that can take even the smallest moments, like throwing out a handful of change, and turning them into epic reveals about the human psyche and making them relatable, as well as spinning them so cleverly on their previously unknown axis that they build in how funny they are.  Kinane this hour bares his soul, yet somehow in the most reserved way possible.  He's crying out about how lonely and damaged he is while contrasting it by doubling over his audience in laugher.  Kinane has a gift of riffing, able to talk and hit upon particular words that even if you miss two-thirds of what he's saying it's still going to perpetuate your laughter.  He has a bit about gay porn which is funny, but only crescendos when he starts expounding upon a scenario he's never seen but would like to see.  Though it's unlikely I'm ever to hear "butt-to-butt" out of the context of this joke, if ever I do I'll likely collapse in giggle fits.  His "butt-to-butt" riff sustained for so long that I nearly threw up from laughing so hard.  It's a good thing I didn't eat dinner before I went.

Kinane, even moreso than Mulaney, has one of the most unique voices in comedy, strictly speaking timbre and tone here.  The only other comedian who can make me laugh so hard just by talking is Buress (still sad I missed him).  Kinane's set was a gift, a treasure trove of turns of phrases that are so odd, yet sharp that you want to swirl it in your ear, rattle it around your brain and slide it out on your tongue again and again.  You will want to develop your own Kinane impersonation because half of the hilarity is in the delivery.

Rob Mailloux was the dark and tortured opening act.  Steeped in material from his seemingly very painful personal life, Mailloux talks about being adopted and his own anorexia as well as about horrifying medical maladies.  He's able to inject enough humour to make them palatable but they're still too shocking and too bleak of subject matter (and obviously still all too relevant to Mailloux) to fully transcend in the same way Maron or Bamford deal with their demons on stage.  His act is really good in foundation but it's still too much of a gut punch to be considered enjoyable.

Aziz Ansari (opener Kyle Kinane) - September 27, @The Sony Center, 10PM

In 2005, whilst visiting New York City, I bought 3-disc comedy compilation called Invite Them Up, a weekly premiere alternative stand-up showcase presented by Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale.  It was a concerted effort on my part to discover more comedy, having then-recently found David Cross and Mitch Hedburg and realizing I liked this stuff.  On that compilation the stand-out sets came from two sources, one Demitri Martin, the other Aziz Ansari.

In that set, Ansari talked about a senator who compared gay marriage to bestiality, particularly with box turtles, and postulated that this senator was really into turtles.  He also had a delicious rip on Kanye West whose music he loves, and whose personality he's fascinated with, and speaking Tamin in a brief encounter with M.I.A.  Ansari's dive into both pop-culture and political arenas was just what I was looking for and he became a fast favourite well before his major turn on Parks and Recreation and his subsequently awesome comedy albums.

This time around Ansari is laser focused, a singular topic in mind...that of, err, being single.  His new set is part comedy, part culture study, as he walks through all he's researched and learned and observed on single life, dating rituals as they compare to other countries and other eras.  It's evident that Ansari is growing up, and despite being a successful actor and comedian he's still trying to figure out some aspect of life.  It was surprising to witness a whole act without a single story about Kanye, but also kind of refreshing to watch him interplay with the audience and build upon that freewheeling in his act.  It was a strangely intellectual yet no less enjoyable.

What I learned though was that a multi-thousand seat theatre, like the Sony Center, isn't the best way to view comedy.  Particularly after coming off of seeing Kinane in a few hundred seat room, it was interesting to see him repeat much of the same material in a much bigger room, on a much grander scale.  The comedy doesn't play as well, though still amazing, and I've figured out that, at least for me, it's the space.  The laughter doesn't fill the space of a big theatre like it does in a smaller setting, the laughter needn't drown out the comedian, but they should have to fight to keep pulling you back in.  For stand-up, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre is probably the largest venue that can house it without destroying the sense of intimacy.  Ansari has gotten used to working crowds the size of the Sony Center and has built an act that's meant for such a space.  At the same time, it doesn't have nearly the same impact as Kinane's Mod Club set or Mulaney or Maron's Queen Elizabeth Theatre set.

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For JFL42 next year, some recommendations:
- Doug Benson for the whole week, doing stand-up, doing Doug Loves Movies, and doing Benson Movie Interruptions.  I would go to every single one.
- Deborah DiGiovanni I haven't seen do stand-up in some time, and I miss her.
- Kristen Schall and Kurt Braunohler
- Ron Funches
- Jonah Ray
- Kumail Nanjiani
- Headliner suggestions: Flight of the Conchords, Tenacious D, David Cross, Mindy Kaling, Joan Rivers (seriously)

...I've got more (I'll add them for posterity later).

What I Am Watching... Summer '13

Fringe Season 4 - Revisiting Fringe from the beginning has proven an exceptionally rewarding experience, particularly in seeing how the first season really set up everything else that was to come. While they didn't quite stick the landing, the build up to the final season makes for pretty incredible watching.  Fringe did a lot of things well, but it's their character and relationship building, destruction, and rebuilding that centers the show.  By the end of the third season, Peter and Walter had reconciled and secured their father-son bond, while Peter and Olivia managed to overcome the Fauxlivia scandal and connect as lovers only to conclude the season with Peter blinking from existence and restructuring the show's entire timeline.  It made for fascinating viewing the first time around, but I'm finding the second time around to be a little frustrating, since three years of the show stories are made somewhat irrelevant, at least for a little while, and the just established status quo is so frustratingly obliterated.

The first few eps of the season find Olivia, Walter and Astrid as the Fringe division team under Broyles, with Earth 1 Lincoln Lee brought into the fray.  Walter is afraid of society without Peter to ease him back into it in this timeline, Olivia being his guardian, and Nina Sharpe has somehow become Olivia's foster mother.  It shows a "what-if" aspect to the show, but, as I did the first time around, Peter's absence from the first few episodes is all too palpable.  Equally the minimal use of Earth 2 remains supremely disappointing.  Earth 2 was a fascinating place and if season 4 fails it's in not utilizing it enough after making it so integral in season 3.  When Peter does finally come back, though, the show starts crackling with great energy and tension again, as Walter refuses to acknowledge him, and Peter is all too aware that this Olivia is not the one he loved (not falling into that trap again).  How they reconnect the time-lost lovers, though is brilliant.  Season 4 also carries the Observers masterplan forward a little more consistently than season 3 did.

Season 3 was easily the show's apex, but season four is quite solid, if perhaps a five episodes overlong.

Young Justice Season 1&2 - In Canada we tend to miss a lot of great cartoons since we don't get the Cartoon Network up here.  If we're lucky our Canadian cartoon station, Teletoon, will pick up the domestic license, or perhaps YTV.  But even if they do, unless they're really, really popular, they get run once, never to be seen again.  Young Justice ran on Teletoon on Friday nights at 7ish, but as it wasn't appropriate for a 3 year old, we never watched it.  I honestly didn't think I was missing much.

When it was cancelled earlier this year there was quite the stink in the comics community because, apparently, people thought it was pretty awesome, and it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger introducing Darkseid as the big bad of the series (erm, spoiler I guess...it didn't hurt my viewing of the show one bit).  We picked up the DVDs to see what the stink was about and within three or four episodes, my wife, my stepson and I were completely invested.

DC Comics are built for cartoons: brightly colored, highly visual characters, wildly impossible powers, completely unbelievable scenarios, big concept action.  There have been a lot of great DC-derived cartoons: Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, Teen Titans, Batman: Brave and the Bold, and honestly, I think Young Justice is the best of them.  Young Justice has everything I've always want out of a superhero cartoon, which is that it acknowledges a history and a larger superhero universe.  It doesn't confine itself to its team of heroes, it has mentors and elders and young allies, and piles and piles of villains to contend with.

Still quite unique to American animation, Young Justice runs with a tight continuity featuring an ongoing major arc that serves as a throughline throughout the series, as well as continuing character arcs which sees not just the major character growing, but a lot of the minor ones advancing as well.  Season 2, even when you're prepared for it, is a bit of a shock, as it jumps forward five years into the future, advancing the central characters from the first season dramatically, and introducing a whole new cast, most of which we don't get to know quite as well.  But season two ups the hero ante immensely, and it's glorious how many costumes and capes we get to see.

Aqualad is easily the breakout character from the show, with an insanely cool and visually impressive power, a distinct personality - the product of a foreign culture, and where he winds up in season 2 is bewildering at first.  The character designs, by Jerome K Moore and Dusty Abell, both veterans of the 90's comic scene (and personally, much missed) are sleek and modern, but also don't stray too far from the classic look and feel of the characters.

It's an amazing series, by the fourth or fifth episode I was already angry knowing that it was cancelled (apparently because the toys weren't selling well), having hit its stride very early.  By the end I was even more upset, it's 2 season run not nearly enough to satisfy my excitement and enthusiasm for the characters, their journey, and the epic storyline they didn't get to finish.  We can only hope for a comic book or direct-to-video movie finish.

Axe Cop - I don't know why I didn't think Axe Cop would work as a TV show, but I was wrong.  The idea of a 5-year-old "writing" a comic strip/book and his professional cartoonist older brother translating his script into something not only readable, but genuinely charming, frequently hilarious, and thoroughly entertaining was a winning idea.  Moving that all into a cartoon setting, I don't know, I guess I just thought it would be too surreal. But the creators of the Axe Cop cartoon weren't looking to temper the whims of a young mind into something a general audience would want to watch, instead they looked to the Adult Swim model of 12-minute episodes and embracing the utter absurdity of it all akin to Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job.

Audiences these days, after a steady diet of Spongebob in their youth are ready and prepared for absurdity, and Axe Cop satisfies any craving immensely.  With brilliant casting, the show crackles with the comedic energy of its voice talent. Nick Offerman as the titular character is the perfect choice for a nearly-psychopathic seemingly omnipowerful individual.  Offerman's reserved delivery plays into the mental instability of the character (which is completely the result of trying to rationalize a child's storytelling whims into a coherent continuity), but also his dominant alpha male nature and his absolute egocentricity.  The core cast is rounded out with great comedic actors Rob Huebel, Ken Marino and Patton Oswalt.  A short six-episode test run on Saturday nights this past summer made for perfect 11pm stuck-at-home-on-a-Saturday-night viewing  (as part of Fox's Adult Swim-inspired Animation Domination block.  The block's follow-up show, High School USA  employed a wonderful Archie Comics-inspired animation style, but leaned too heavily on supposed taboo topics as a humour mine, resulting in painfully unfunny material.  If you want a great animated high school cartoon, look back to Clone High).  Axe Cop, is proving great in every medium so far, (web comic, traditional comic, card game, animation), a video game would be incredible, and a film (with Offerman in the lead role and directed by Tim and Eric) would be mind blowing...

Pushing Daisies - Years ago, when it first debuted, I watched the first two episodes of Pushing Daisies and thoroughly enjoyed them, but for some reason never went back to them, though with every intention to return, some day.  Both episodes were directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (Addams Family, Men In Black, the Tick) and established a rich visual aesthetic to the show, filled with vibrant, primary colours that are contrasted with elaborate fabric patterns or cleverly constructed (if often impractical) sets.  It's about as close to the 60's Batman style as any show has ever come, without intentionally trying.  There's definitely an outmoded sense of whimsy to the overall structure that hasn't really been employed with any regularity since the 1940's, and it's extremely rare to see shows or movies with continual third-party narration.

Daisies is the product of death-obsessed showrunner Brian Fuller (see also Dead Like Me, Hannibal), here employing the filter of whimsy and humour to the concepts of mortality and murder, but also overlaying themes of family, friendship and romance.  It is, in actuality, a romantic comedy with just a hint of supernatural elements and and surreality.  Lee Pace is perfectly cast as Ned, the pie maker, who has the ability to bring the dead back to life with a touch, and take it back with another, but if they live for more than a minute, someone else in the vicinity will die instead.  Ned's carried the secret since childhood with only his dog knowing, until Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) a private eye, accidentally witnesses a resurrection.  Cod blackmails Ned into helping him solve crimes, which adds a detective narrative to every episode.  The first episode finds Cod and Ned investigating the death of Charlotte Charles (Anna Friel), who turns out to be Ned's long-lost childhood sweetheart.  Ned can't bring himself to de-resurrect Chuck, as the emotional connection and now romantic sparks fly immediately and intensely.  But how can people be lovers when they can't touch?  The final facet of the show is Ned's employee, Olive Snook (Kristen Chenowith) who has long held a crush on Ned, just to add a romantic triangle to the mix.

The show revolves around it's of-the-week case that Emerson draws Ned into and Chuck, with nowhere else to go, tags along.  It carries the continual narrative of Ned and Chuck's complicated romance, Olive's wariness of the new girl, and Emerson's exasperation.  Olive and Chuck's childhoods, both their shared history and individual development, play an integral role in their adult lives and the formation of their somewhat unusual characters.  I was worried after rewatching the first two episodes that I would find the intentionally sweet and off-beat nature of the show to wear thin quickly, but the counterbalance of morbid humour keeps it in check.  We blasted through season one rather quickly, but a lot of distractions hit in the past little while to keep us from getting through season two as swiftly.  But the season 1 closing reveal has so far provided a lot of ammunition to keep season 2 interesting.  It's a unique show that perhaps could have enjoyed a longer life, but equally I think got a life just long enough.  Rumours have circulated about a Pushing Daisies movie this year if it could get funded via Kickstarted (but then every cult show has had the same rumour since Veronica Mars pulled it off).  It'd be nice (especially Brian Fuller's idea of making it a zombie movie), but not getting my hopes up, though I would definitely put money into it.

Low Winter Sun - We got two or three episodes into this AMC translation of the British mini-series about a police detective who is manipulated into murdering a fellow detective, and then quickly learns of his manipulation and must contend with a corrupt police department, a brewing drug war, and internal affairs investigating his victim's murder.  It should be a more compelling watch than it actually turns out to be.  Mark Strong reprises his role from the British series and is incredible to watch, so obviously comfortable in the role, but as much can't be said for the rest of the cast.  Lennie James as the manipulating detective being investigated by IA is solid in the role, but his character is tossed into certain scenes without clear motivation (or any understanding of the stakes) making for some less than engrossing viewing.  The B-plot of the series involves a group of small time drug dealers making a push for their own slice of the city, but the actors involved in the role aren't up to Strong's scene commanding caliber, their characters are generally unappealing, and their storyline seems unimportant and unnecessary.  They try to dovetail the two lines together early, but it feels awkward.

The use of Detroit is perhaps its best feature, with the set decoration of the police precinct about as grimy as I've ever seen.  The technology the cops are working with is antequainted, the plaster is falling off the walls, the paint is peeling, the desks are beaten... it's obvious that there's no money being invested, moreover there's no money to invest.  The city looks like it's falling apart at the seams, neighbourhoods are abandoned where wild dogs have taken roost, the show's producer are keenly aware of their surroundings and the part they can play.

There are some great elements to Low Winter Sun, but they're overshadowed an overwhelming amount of tediousness, and nothing really propelling the show forward other than will Strong's otherwise respectable cop get away with murder, and whether he really wants to.

3 Short Paragraphs: Despicable Me 2

2013, Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud (Despicable Me) -- cinema

OK, this is a sequel to a movie I rather enjoyed. But I will be the first to admit that there is no reason to have a sequel beyond enjoying more minions. And, seriously, those minions could have an entire movie... actually, no they couldn't. And that is the problem with most sequels, in that they take so many enjoyable things about the first movie and just run hog wild with them, but at a lacking of depth on the rest of the movie. If the first was about a cartoon villain flipping his personality and adopting three cute orphan girls then at least this follows a logical progression in seeing how the bad guy now adjusts to living as a single dad, no longer super villain. And, add in more minion scenes.

It is not a bad movie, just a not particularly great one. And that is all I can really muster up to think about it. So, let's see what real critics had to say and react to it. Pete Travers from Rolling Stone just seems to be happy he has another DVD coming to sedate his kids with. Bruce Diones from New Yorker was charmed by the one-liners and visual gags. Even Stephanie Merry from Washington Post starts off by mentioning the minions are back. But almost everyone does a lackadaisical retread of the plot without offering much opinion. I think all these family folks are just with Travers on the whole DVD thing.

As for the minions, they do win. "Bo-tay-TOE" is another nonsense word added to my long vocabulary of nonsense. And who wouldn't want a multitude of 3 foot yellow ... creatures to do your every bidding? I am not sure what they were made of, or made from, but they are pliable and adaptable, taking to the situation as needed. They can be baby sitters, housekeepers, entertainment and taste testers. This time they are tampered with and go all Hulk (there was a purple Hulk in some version, right?) and Gru has to rescue them. He's no longer a villain so they are not disposable minions like the rest of the super villain world uses.  Yay family man Gru! Yay entrepreneur Gru! I wonder if the minions have a benefit plan? And yes, I have a soft spot for Dave but Carl is cool too.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Wolverine

2013, James Mangold (Kate & Leopold, Cop Land, 3:10 to Yuma) -- cinema

I am more upset by this movie's loose (non-existent) adaptation of the source material than I was with World War Z. At least I got a differently styled zombie movie out of the mix, and separated enough that I see the two as completely distinct entities. But this movie lifts all the basic elements from the comic book mini-series and manufactures an entirely different story around them. And not a particularly compelling one neither. This is not a bad superhero movie, but considering its source, it could have been so so so much more. Instead, it feels retread and long and not engaging at all.

In the 80s comic series, by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, Wolverine travels to Japan to find out why Mariko, his true love, is cutting ties with him. He finds her engaged to another man, via a powerplay by her father, a power leader of the Yakuza. Wolverine is forced to fight him, seemingly losing his honour in inglorious combat, but later regaining both his honour and the hand of Mariko in marriage. It is a grim, dark story full of Miller's shadows, ninjas and samurai. Wolverine was transformed from a raging mutant of earlier stories into a troubled ronin, seeking to control his beast within. It was a story that changed how I saw superhero comics.

As they are resurrecting the X-Men movies, this one revisits Wolvie's desire to lose his powers and has him still moaning his killing of Phoenix. But that is quickly dispensed with when he meets the frail flower (but oh so lovely) Mariko. Oh, the line from Up was never more apparent than here. I am sure I am not the only one who felt Logan would have been better suited with the wonderfully choreographed warrior Yukio, which was an element of the original story so I have to give them that credit. In an annoyingly PG romp (seriously, how could he not have made hamburger of people in those fights?!?!) he protects Mariko from assassins, falls in love with her, climbs a tower only to fall back down through its levels in a big battle against a giant samurai robot... there is a trope in there somewhere, isn't there? My only suggestion is to give Yukio her own movie.

3 Short Paragraphs: Hell Is For Heroes

1962, Don Siegel (Dirty Harry, The Shootist) -- Netflix

Part of my movie enjoyment experience is a pondering of origins of cliches & tropes. We all know the grizzled, rebellious hero in action or war movies. These characters stand sullenly aside while others listen to orders, they buck authority and always come out ahead. They take chances, they do what is not expected and succeed where others would have failed. Often, they have a bleak outlook on things, don't really want to be there but are more capable than their reputation lets on. They are sort of an anti-hero.

In my mind's eye, I see Steve McQueen known for playing those sorts of characters. I have read he was sort of that way in his real, Hollywood life. But I also assumed that this trope emerged in later pop culture, more around the broken heroes of Vietnam or Korean war movies. I was curious to see how a WWII movie from the 60s would handle the character. It actually turns away from the current version of the character, eventually showing little respect for this type of hero. Or, more likely, showing how this kind of character is just plain dangerous.

Steve's character is a soldier with a bad rep assigned to a new squad. He holds back from his squad mates, drunken and sullen. In their first assignment, they are stuck in rough spot, with little ammunition and no reinforcements. McQueen's Reese wants them to attempt a dangerous attack on a pillbox, despite all odds being against them. With a reputation as a skilled warrior and a massive amount of self-confidence, he convinces them to join him on the attack. And it fails. He gets almost his entire squad killed. Then the rest of the company does show up and complete the attack via proper organization, following orders and overwhelming forces. Reese's final act is self-sacrifice. I saw it more out of shame than anything. So, in the end, the trope I was seeking to see an early example of, was tossed on its head.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Expendables (1 & 2)

2012, Simon West (Tomb Raider, Con Air) -- download

What? I never reviewed my watching of Expendables 1 ?? How did I get away with that? Did I actually download it in early 2011, before this blog was born? Either way, let's roll both into these short paragraphs of outrage. As I have said before, writing about a horrible, bad, stinky, terrible movie is always easier than writing about why you liked a good movie.

These movies are about an ensemble team of aging mercenaries. And that is about it. There are loose (extremely, kind of, maybe) plots about jobs they are sent on. The team is made up of older action stars from other movies. I did ten minutes of research hoping to find a legacy of a writer & director coming up with the witty idea of jamming them altogether into a movie. But it just seems to be a script pulled down off the shelf and handed to Stallone. I think it all happened in those mythical Hollywood cafe patio conversations that I so often imagine movies beginning. The concept is gold -- gather the familiar faces from two decades of action movies, along with their tropes and cliches, and have them shoot the screen up. The concept is gold. The movie is not.

I am actually not sure if it wasn't intentional. To the 12 year old, most action movies are brilliant, well scripted and the ham-fisted lines are memorable. But to the adult, they are tired and oh-so bad. These movies want to be like Pacific Rim was for Graig and I, a wash of gleeful nostalgia of good guys fighting bad guys. Unfortunately, they are just bad. Bad bad bad. The story is forgettable (already forgot what the first one was), the dialogue had me asking, "Why did they say that? SERIOUSLY, WHY WAS THAT A LINE ?!?" and the action is non-sensical (boom boom SPLOOTCH boom). They don't even have memorable villains. And the tropes and cliches are laughable, not laugh ironically with it, but laugh at how stupid it was to shoehorn in the line or scene. These are straight to stealitfromtheinternet moves with bigger budgets than they deserve, all used up to hire the actors.

Graig had a similar high opinion here.

3 Short Paragraphs: Byzantium

2013, Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Michael Collins) -- download

I had completely forgotten that Jordan directed Interview With the Vampire. Yes, the man who brought the arguably greatest vampire story since Dracula (arguably !! ARGUABLY !!) to the screen has returned with a much smaller, original story about a mother & daughter pair of vampires. This is not for the Twilight crowd, but perhaps for the fans who have grown since the books became movies? If the Lestat novels were often considered as a trashy stepping stone into better genre fiction, I can see how Twilight could be an introduction into darker and more considered vampire stories, especially when done by a seasoned and skilled movie director.

This is another original take on the vampire, with a more European sensibility, which is appropriate considering the origins of the myth itself. Sure, we may attribute the stereotypical vampire as euro-trash, but the teen resurrection of the genre has replaced that with mopey boys full of hair product. Personally, I blame Angel despite my love for the character. Here, the vampires are born of a pact with a dark spirit, ageless creatures that do need to live on blood but it dispenses with all the other trappings. These are thoughtful creatures held down by their great age and unseemly desires. They keep to small numbers and it is this plot point that the movie hinges around.

Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) are mother and daughter, Eleanor having been "turned" in her teen years, years after her mother had done the same. They are on the run from the male of their kind, a mysterious sect that rarely chose women and considered Clara's choice of her own daughter as a great crime. They move from place to place, Clara ever playing the part of her youth, a prostitute and grifter. Eleanor is ever the teen daughter, being cared for by her mother. After an unfortunate encounter with the male vampires, they end up back in the place where Eleanor was born, which dredges up old memories and forces her to face her own existence. I liked that Ronan chose this role, as her connection to the teen vampire fiction club, instead of a overly melodramatic, angsty story that she could have easily been pegged into.

The Last of Us and Max Payne 3

The main characters of the last two video games I finished playing, as opposed to those I continue to play (Minecraft, Skyrim, Torchlight II), are grizzled, worn men over the age of 50. Perhaps it is something I need to connect with as I approach that age (but already have the worn, grizzled down pat) and cannot do the Mary Sue characters in their 20s anymore. Are there actually any main characters, other than in J-RPGs, in their 20s these days? Nathan Drake is in his 30s, Master Chief is ageless, the men of GTA are over 30, sometimes reaching 40. The soldiers of the numerous military FPS games are probably the closest, often being your late 20s enlisted man. Either way, its nice to feel something in common with the less than spectacular leading men, however that may come across.

The Last of Us is, at heart (or more, in gut), a zombie game. The cordyceps fungus, which we know from internet articles about it (i originally typed them; how personified) invading ant brains and driving the bug to attach itself to a plant, in a spot for optimal spore production. It was also featured in the giant fungus brain episode of season 4 Fringe. In the game, the fungus jumps to human brains creating raving violent monsters, and eventually worse.

But really at heart, the game is a moving piece of interactive fiction about motivation, devotion, love, and how far we will go to protect those dear to us.

The game begins, through mostly cinematics, with a contemporary zombie outbreak story. In the chaos there is tragedy, moving tragedy that actually had me shed a tear. Then, suddenly, it is twenty years later in the post-apocalyptic quarantine zone of Boston. Our main character Joel, with his partner Tess, are ruthless smugglers. They have survived by doing whatever it takes. They are forced to take on the delivery of 14 year old Ellie, to a group of anti-government terrorists known as The Fireflies. Joel is not happy. But they have a job to do and we have a game to play. They lose Tess. Now Joel must deliver the girl on his own. He feels beholden to Tess's last wish.

Your average video game "hero" kills hundreds, if not thousands, of mooks in a game. This game attempts to deal with the toll this takes on Joel and eventually Ellie. He lives in a world where he has learned to do whatever it takes, whatever the cost, to accomplish his goal. Is everyone he kills a true, out'n'out Bad Guy? Probably not. Some are hungry, some are scared and some are doing whatever it takes for them to survive. But we are on the side of Joel and Ellie and we accept what is being done. Tentatively.

In parallel to the humans Joel kills, are the infected, the zombies. The fungus infected begin as a common fast-zombie, not dead but hosting the spores, maddened and mindless. As the spore grows, months and years, the infected change. For example, the blind Clicker "sees" through sonar-like clicks. The fungus has eaten most of the brain, bursting out of the forehead, looking like some sort of horrible starfish. They are tough, very tough, and you have to learn to ignore the gut wrenching feeling you get from the sound of their clicks, and figure out how to kill them. Joel doesn't feel sorry for killing the infected, even less than the humans in his way.  But Ellie, ever the conscience of the duo, wonders if there are people still inside the monsters.

In the quiet times between combat scenes, we get snippets of conversation between Ellie and Joel, learning more about the two, Joel coming out of his sullen shell and allowing himself to care for Ellie. We also get beautiful shots of the post-apocalyptic world they travel.  This is a world bereft of mankind for twenty years, overgrown and greener. Of course, it is mostly falling apart, but it carries a strange beauty with it, as any urban explorer wandering ruins knows. I really appreciate a game that takes art direction into account.

But the game truly wins because it took story and character to the forefront.  This is about these two characters, how they develop a relationship (father, daughter, you perv) and survive in an incredibly harsh world. We get to care for the two, seeing them grow to care for each other. The story direction is all about the choices they make, why they make them and the impact they have on each other. The bigger picture, the survival of the human race, is overshadowed by a deep caring between two people. It at times heartbreaking, at other times chilling. It was a game, like a really good book always is, that made me sad to end the story.

In a mirror darkly, I then played Max Payne 3. The Max Payne series came out right around the days of the Matrix movies. This gives the game's first gimmick,  "bullet time" to the gameplay. The second was an affection for graphic novels, with painted panels serving as cut-scenes. Over everything was a noir cop story about a down-and-out DEA agent addicted to booze and painkillers, completely controlled by the grief of losing his wife & daughter. It is a revenge story.

Two games later, Max is in his 50s, still a drunk, but washed out of any law enforcement, forced to take up body-guarding to make ends meet. The family he is protecting is a wealthy Brazilian powerhouse of politics and old money. Max is out of his element around these rich, pompous coked-out types so, of course, things have to go bad.

Again, this is noir. They have dispensed with the graphic novel elements and the bullet time is there, but less stylistic and more just a Hong Kong action movie choreography choice, than anything. But the story is all Max Payne, everything dark and convoluted, mixed up and extremely (!!!) violent.

This is not a deep game. But it does have some introspection, I appreciated. Max is very aware that he is a puppet, a killing machine working for an agenda he doesn't understand. There is some nudge nudge wink wink about the guy holding the controller, but more it is about Max being the effective killing machine. He isn't protecting anyone, he isn't seeking vengeance for a loved one, he is just doing dirty work for someone else. But what else can he do but follow the script presented to him? Life (and death) can sometime just drag you along with it, your input counting for very little.

The gameplay, which I suspect was a development test for GTA V, is straight forward and methodical. Some areas are incredibly challenging forcing us to take chances we probably shouldn't, but most is ... well, relentless, as Max sees his life. It was fun in a mindless way, as many games are.

Sometimes you desperately want a well thought out game, with story and character and lovely art direction. Other times you just want to shoot things. There is something to be said about that, but I am not sure what it is. I will leave that up to my (imaginary) therapist.

Pacific Rim

2013, Guillermo Del Toro

Unlike David's review which was supposed to be 3 Short Paragraphs only went way long, I intend to write more but I feel like I'm not going to get far beyond 3 short paragraphs.  At this stage I've told so many people that I loved it, I've faced so many people who have exceeded my love for it, and I've challenged so many of those people who don't share my enthusiasm for it that I'm kind of exhausted talking about it.  What I really want to do is watch it again.  And again.  And again.  This is a film made for men of a certain age, by a man of a certain age.  This is a movie designed to hit said men right in the sweet spot that sends them spiraling back to their childhood, a time-traveling punch that warps them (okay, us) back to the first time they watched Ghostbusters or Back To The Future or Raiders of the Lost Arc or Star Wars or any other seminal work in the sci-fi blockbuster genre.

Guillermo Del Toro has made an exceptionally deliberate film, from his casting choices to the rah-rah bravura speeches to the leaps in logic and the comic relief.  He's presenting some very familiar slabs of nostalgia by way of screenwriting and filmmaking tropes, but on a very different, very impressive platter.  He starts with the basic concept of Japanese kaiju (literally translated to "strange creature" but commonly known as "giant monster"), films like Godzilla, Gamera and Mothra provide inspiration, but there's been less than a handful of truly excellent representations in the subgenre in all of cinema (Bong Joon-Ho's The Host the only one of recent memory, Cloverfield coming in a very distant, nauseating, shaky-cam second), so there's a lot of room for it to grow.  Secondly, Del Toro wanted to show a human side to fighting giant monsters by way of another Japanese pop-culture trope, the giant mech, or human-operated-megarobot (called Jaegers in the film).  Beyond this he weaves in about a decade's worth of faux history to the human/kaiju battle, which, unlike most monster movies where the creatures are treated as "forces of nature", paint them as a deliberate enemy, one capable of getting smarter.

The human face of the film is its weak spot, which is to be expected, but in this case it's primarily because the visual effects are so overwhelming and the battle sequences so anticipated that the human angle seems disposable entirely.  But to Del Toro, and screenwriter Travis Beacham's credit, they actually have complex characters in this film alongside a purposeful swath of the kind of stock archetypes you usually expect from these sorts of movies.  But also, it's perhaps a little hard to buy into the challenges of a man having to overcome the hurdle of losing his brother or a woman having to challenge the man who raised her when the fate of the world is at stake.  Either it's time to step up or check out with everyone else.

Though I loathe to admit it, I saw and genuinely liked this film in 3-D (IMAX please).  Del Toro and company made exceptional use of the depth of 3-D particularly in the hanger sequences where you really get a sense of both the size of the place and the Jaeger's within it in perspective with real people.  The opening history lesson, however, didn't work well in 3 dimensions as it was difficult to shift one's focus rapidly between foreground and background and mid-ground text and images.  I think as well the monster IMAX screen I watched it on compensated for the usual discomfort of 3-D.  With a screen that huge, it's easier to escape into a picture which the still-annoying 3-D glasses try to drag you into.  I'm almost tempted to go 3-D on Blu-Ray I liked the experience that much but I'm well aware of how different it would be at home.

Pacific Rim is, to me, what a summer blockbuster should be: inventive, engaging, original but also slightly familiar.  It surprises with what it presents that is new, and surprises even more with how it recontextualizes what you think you know.  It starts with presenting a world rather rapidly, and then inhabits it for two hours before successfully bringing it to a rewarding close.  There's no need for a sequel, and there's no built-in intention for one, which far too many blockbusters attempt to seed these days.  The film stands on its own.  If anything, with the quick-moving images at the beginning, this film is ripe for one or two prequels, showing the first incursion of the kaiju and the building of the mechs to challenge them.  It's covered in Pacific Rim, but it could definitely use room to breathe.

The 13-year-old kid in me, though, loves it for what it is.  That 13-year-old remembers what it was like when sequels weren't automatic, when you just appreciated what you got, over and over again.  In fact, forget 3-D blu-ray, give me Pacific Rim on VHS.  Give me the novelization and the comic book adaptation.  Give me a pencil case and a plastic lunchbox with Alpha Cherno on it.  I'm a kid again.  I want to soak in its every detail and know the Jaeger and Kaiju names like the back of my hand.  It may not be the highest accomplishment of cinema, but it's definitely something special.

3 short paragraphs: Bernie

2011, d. Richard Linklater

Set in small-town Carthage Texas, Bernie is the story of Bernie Tiede, an undertaker at the town's mortuary.  He is a kind and giving man, compassionate and empathetic, and exceptionally well-regarded around town.  He seems a man not completely devoid of ego, but certainly unaware of it.  He's selfless to a fault, which is how he winds up being the devoted companion to Marjorie Nugent, the widow of the town's most prominent businessman, and a complete and utter bitch of a woman.  She is universally reviled around town, disliked by her own children, and if she cares at all about how she's perceived she never lets on.  Only Bernie is able to crack through the facade, or so he thinks, until he learns that it's not a facade at all, she's really that mean, bitter, angry and selfish a person.

It would be lazy to say that Jack Black plays against type, because Black has shown this kind of range before.  He's a skilled and thoughtful performer, and typically every move and gesture he makes seem intentional.  Here he inhabits Bernie's reserved, charming persona, speaking gently and sweetly, building layers into the character, most of which remain hidden but definitely there.  He has a very specific physicality and deliverance that he never breaks, the comedy/musician Jack Black is never revealed.  He even sings sweet hymns without a single trace of scatting.  Shirley MacLaine, meanwhile, is thoroughly unlikable as Marjorie, but it's fairly easy to play such a role.  It's the moments where Bernie tries to unveil Marjorie's inner beauty that MacLaine excels, momentarily letting just a hint of softness show in the lines on her face, just to reset and steel themselves again.  Matthew McConaughey gets a plum minor supporting role as the popular town sheriff who decides to take the unpopular opinion and ride Bernie and his inevitable crime hard.  It's just one of the many roles McConaughey has taken in recent years to reset his career, and be seen as something other than the jokey, shirtless, drawling stoner.

Director Linklater seems utterly fascinated with Bernie's story, and his obvious interest is the true draw of the film.  It's a rather slight story that could be presented any number of ways, but Linklater delivers it even handedly.  He's quite obviously charmed by Bernie Tiede and wants the viewer to see that too.  He also doesn't seek to excuse Bernie's crime, or to say that he should go unpunished, but instead present that he was treated unfairly by the law in the severity of his punishment.  Linklater uses a talking heads testimonial device, interviewing actors playing the townsfolk to give their generally favourable opinions of Bernie.  For the most part these talking heads are amazing, to the point where I was wondering if they were actual townsfolk of Carthage (that is until they started appearing in other scenes).  It's a gentle movie, that despite it's darker third act, is still somewhat uplifting.

1 miserable paragraph: Turbo

2013, David Soren

Turbo is a major studio release with some solid names attached as voice-talent (Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Giamatti, Snoop Dog, Luis Guzman, various SNL alum) but it's strictly a direct-to-video-level effort, painfully so.  Truth is Turbo is a Dreamworks product that wishes it were a Pixar release (with both Kung Fu-Panda and How To Train Your Dragon being premiere-level successes for Dreamworks, I don't know why they're still aspiring to emulate Pixar).  It takes the bugs-eye-view of A Bug's Life, the animal-human interaction of Ratatouille (not to mention the fantasy idol sub-plot), and the never-inspired humdrum of auto racing like Cars, and seems to make no effort to disguise it.  There's the hint of originality in the parallel of older brothers trying to keep their dreamer younger brothers grounded in reality, but one pair are snails (one of which dreams to compete in Formula 1 racing) and the other are taco stand/truck operators (one of which dreams to enter his pet snail in a Formula 1 racing competition).  The ludicrousness is inescapable.  The multi-ethnic cast is admirable, but wasted on, frankly a boring, unfunny, entirely predictable story that will likely entertain only the most inexperienced of movie goers.

3 shrt prgrphs: Horrible Bosses

2011, d. Seth Gordon (King of Kong)

I'm finding so often that the Hollywood system has very little to offer in the way of meaningful comedy these days.  They can assemble all the right parts, but they all too rarely wind up being fairly homogeneous, if not outright disasters.  Comedy is best suited for short bursts -- set-up, build, punchline -- not 90 minutes to 2 hours.  Television is ever doing better with comedy because it's allowing comedy to live and grow unfettered, to have an unedited voice by way of liberated venues like Adult Swim, FX and IFC.  The success of Always Sunny in Philadelphia or Louie, or the creative triumphs of the 15 minute format in Children's Hospital or Eagleheart make the traditional 3-camera laughtrack/studio comedy somewhat embarrassingly puerile.  There are exceptions both on network and on screen, but they are just that, exceptions.

Horrible Bosses, on paper, appears to be a good farce, but the problem it has is it doesn't really know what it wants to be.  Is it trying for the Judd Apatow bent of believable and relatable characters,  is it looking for the outrageousness of the Hangover, or is it looking for the Mike Judge-esque skewering of everyday life?  It's got a solid cast of talented performers with Always Sunny's Charlie Day, SNL's Jason Sudekis, and The Hogan Family's Jason Bateman in the lead and some surprisingly and adeptly outrageous performances from Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Ferrell as the titular bosses, but the performances aren't the problem here.  They're all uniformly solid, great even.  The material just doesn't have enough punch, the predicaments the characters find themselves just never makes the leap to suspension of disbelief.  It's not smart enough to play it naturally and still be funny, and it never pushes it far enough to be farcical.

Director Seth Gordon spent a few years directing comedies for television -- Community, The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family -- so he has definitely had a taste of how comedy is done and done well, but he just cannot elevate a mediocre script.  The comedies that seem to be most successful (if not necessarily commercially so) all seem to be driven by a unified creative team with a singular vision, whether it's Judd Apatow, Ben Stiller, or Adam McKay/Will Ferrell, among others.  Having the focus of a writer/star or writer/director is, for the most part, what is making the most memorable comedies these day.  Horrible Bosses isn't terrible, but in a decade it won't be memorable like Anchorman, Tropic Thunder or Bridesmaids will.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Host

2013, Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, In Time) -- download

Stephanie Meyer wrote the Twilight series but she also wrote a book about an alien invasion and, as books directed at the teenage girl market are wont to do, overwhelming love. Having not read either, but at least having The Host, in my Kobo collection (not sure what that says, perhaps just that I do not dismiss the writer outright), I cannot say if it is Meyer leading to the long empty glances or just an element of the Twilight movies that producers have decided has to remain in all further adaptations of her work. But yes, long loving glances, often filling the scenes with great silence. But not weight; no, any weight in the scenes comes from the setting, where the world is depopulated of true humans leaving grand vistas no longer full of people milling about doing nothing. There is something to be said about the great emptinesses this movie portrays. But actually little to say about the love stories.

Aliens invade, not only the planet but also the body. They are ethereal little silver fish that inhabit a body and control it, the human psyche slowly fading from existence, sort of like William Bell inhabiting Olivia Dunham in Fringe. But in some rare instances, and if we take the gist of the movie at face value, the human mind inside the body can be so desirous of surviving (say, in the case of being head over heels in puppy love) that the two live together. Melanie Stryder is that human and she lives in the head of Wanderer, the alien now controlling her body. Wanderer is not a bad "person" per se, perhaps a little tired of "her" long life and questioning the moral validity of being a species that can only exist at the death of another. Loosely veiled comment on being a carnivore? Who knows, who cares -- not the point of the story. The point is that Melanie is so strongly connected to her lover (romantic love) and her brother (familial love) that she can survive to influence Wanderer to do the right thing.

That right thing, which flies in the face of common sense, is to get back to her BF and brother. Why? Not really sure, but it is the mind of a teenage girl. She knows other aliens are after her; Hell, Wanderer knows this implicitly. But both make it to the desert hideout of the last few surviving humans, a hapless bunch of young adults, and a few wise old people, playing the part of WB-style resistance fighters. But there is an entanglement -- Melanie's BF does not believe he can have her back and is upset at Wanderer. Meanwhile one of the boys has a crush on Wanderer, on the personality that inhabits a pretty human body that is Melanie. There is something in the story that lends credence to the triangle here, with the characters actually weighing their feelings vs the reality of the situation. But is faint and gets lost in the silent glances. I just wish the alien invasion story had been better laid out, that there was more to it than a Red Dawn style resistance against a force that has pretty much already won. In the end, I cared very little about either.

What I Am Watching: The Glades, Continuum, Ray Donovan

The Glades is a light, couple fare procedural. The premise, which was probably dispensed with by episode 3 of the first season, of a cop from Chicago forced to move after a scandal and a large legal settlement. He ends up in Florida where he can buy a cheap but snazzy house and spend his days playing golf, cuz y'know, what can happen in non-urban Florida?  Well, it wouldn't be a show unless the answer was A LOT !

Jim Longworth is the cantankerous cop with a knack for pissing people off -- asking too many and often offensive questions until he figures out the murder. And he is as often annoying his coworkers as he is the suspects. Because, well, everyone is a suspect until he knows otherwise. But on the other side, when he gets a crush on a local nurse, it is entirely sweet. His job is his job and he is actually a pretty decent guy.

I just like watching the way his relationship with Callie grows, as there is no aspect of "will they get together" as other shows do. By season 4, he and Callie are engaged. There have been some rough spots but the relationship is so sincere, its a joy watching it grow.  See what I mean? Couple fare.

The crime aspect is actually pretty milk toast but the fun is in how much of a tourism commercial for southern Florida the show is. We can ignore the product shots, but we get so much exposure to different areas, people and history of the area. Jim is ever the visitor and his coworkers are constantly educating him to the highlights of Florida life. Meanwhile he continues to grow his reputation as a spectacular cop which just gives him the needed leeway to act the ass, when investigating.

On the other end of the spectrum is a typical scifi Canadian production. Continuum is a time travel series, so of course I am watching. Kiera Cameron is a cop from 2077.  She is assigned, as we are reminded every episode in the opening voiceover, to the execution of a captured terrorist group. But something goes wrong (actually, quite as planned) and the cop & criminals are transported back to 2013 Vancouver. And yes, this is set in Vancouver not just random unnamed US city pretending to not be Vancouver.

The premise is very solid and straight forward -- Kiera has to stop the terrorists from manipulating our present day so their future agenda is played out, all the while trying to figure out how to get back home to her son and husband. She has to work her way into the Vancouver police force, using her magic technology to play the part of a secret American task force member, sent to Canada to assist with these terrorists that just appeared out of nowhere. And she has to build a relationship with a young techie, who happens to be the leading technologist of her age, albeit when he is much older.

There is little play on the typical concepts of time travel fiction. Its hinted at, as the goal of the terrorists is to play with their future, but we never focus on it to any minute degree, i.e. we are not playing with the butterfly effect where we see the dire consequences of any minute change. Kiera messes with history all the time not worrying too much how things will affect the future. And she never experiences any altered memories. Its kind of refreshing, not really having any of the consequences shown to us.  At least, not until the end of season two when an alternate group of time travellers appears with an agenda to protect the time stream. How? We have no clue until next season.

Finally, we have something I have only just started watching, Ray Donovan. Again, a simple premise, a Boston gangster transplanted to LA where he is a fixer for the stars. He deals with scandalous situations, stalkers and the like. He has an ex-boxer of a brother and another one who is a recovering addict. And thennnn there is his dad, a scuzbag of a criminal who just got out of jail and has come to LA to rebuild a relationship with his family. But there is a darker unrevealed connection there that has Ray hating the old man... utterly.

It's the cast that brought me to the show. Liev Schreiber is Ray, Eddie Marsan and Dash Mihok are his brothers. And Jon Voight is the scuzzy aging gangster dad. So scuzzy. I am not one attracted to shows with only reprehensible people but something about this will probably keep me coming back. The setting? Hollywood seedy is expected. The acting? Incredibly strong so far.  We shall have to see how it goes.

3 Short Paragraphs: After Earth

2013, M. Night Shyamalan -- cinema

Right out of the star port, I have to state I am a Shyamalan Apologist.  I have enjoyed, to some degree, every movie he has done, including The Last Airbender. I list Unbreakable in my ever changing, as they should always be, Top 10 Movies list. I even enjoyed The Happening despite the terrible acting by all involved. I don't subscribe to his described need to have "a twist" in every movie in order to stay popular. Alas, I have to admit that this movie is not very good.

Will and Jaden Smith are two soldiers in a distant future where mankind has abandoned the Earth. In a too-little-explained prologue, we learn humans left the earth a thousand years ago and settled another planet. But aliens arrived soon after and a war begins with the S'krell using big nasty monsters who sniff us out via our fear. I could go on for a few more paragraphs adding to this largely useless back story (layered but not explaining much) but suffice it to say that while Will and Jaden are transporting one of these alien beasties, their ship crash-lands on the abandoned but now rejuvenated Earth.

This is a beautifully shot movie, with grand Avatar style vistas and a keenly designed technology. But really, what isn't these days. Crash-landed Jaden has to get from point A to point B and recover a MacGuffin so he can call in the cavalry to rescue him and his dad. The movie is a journey of survival and self-enlightenment -- Jaden's Kitai feels he can never live up to his dad's legacy as General Cypher Raige. So, the story is just the two of them.... and the monster. Not only is Earth a dangerous place (ignore the whole "evolved to kill you" tag line) like any planet with predators would be, but the monster they were transporting is loose and wants to eat Kitai. You would think that in such a small story, we would have a focus and be drawn to the battle of wills between man and beast. But no, Kitai is whiney & annoying and Raige (*rolls eyes at lame name*) is just an absentee dick of a dad. Tell me how a video game (The Last of Us) with an anti-hero male lead and an annoying 14 year female lead can be more compelling and emotionally engaging than a massive budget movie by a gifted film maker? I was truly disappointed with this movie.

3 Short Paragraphs (We Agree): Much Ado About Nothing

2013, Joss Whedon (The Avengers) -- cinema

When I first heard the rumours that Joss was working on a Shakespeare adaptation, it just sounded right. Why was a modern representation of Shakespeare's popular comic play just so right in the Whedon-verse? I am not sure completely but it may be connected to Whedon's love of language and a good ability to mix pathos and comedy. But dispensing with the analyses, it just felt right. Strangely enough, Shakespeare is also a rather geeky concept, having just as many frothing fanboys as superheroes and Firefly.

Alas, I am not one of the Shakespeare geeks. I have never seen a play live, never been to Stratford and it always takes me at least ten minutes to catch the cadence. Yes, in the movies. I am a rather big fan of the Kenneth Branagh adaptation, it emerging right at the height of my Branagh fascination and my Kate Beckinsale crush. That one was set in period so I was really interested in seeing how they would place a story about a Prince and his soldiers returning from war, in contemporary times.  We are not given many details, but the two Dons, Pedro and John, are likely crime bosses and have come to friend Leonato's house to escape some drama in Los Angeles. And it is in this great house party that Claudio falls for Leonato's daughter Hero and Beatrice & Benedick are setup for a hookup.

We have much of the motley crew of the Whedon-verse, some from Buffy, some from Doll House and some from Firefly as well as a few fresh faces to round out the crew as they drink through the night and next day in the house that is actually Joss's. Almost everybody is spot-on with their characters but some are downright outstanding!!  Reed Diamond just falls into the role as if this was the way he speaks everyday... he just was his character. Franz Kranz dispenses with his usual dotty act and is splendid as the besotted Claudio. I wasn't as enamoured with Nathan Fillion as Dogberry, as the rest of the world seems to be and I was as equally cool with Alexis Denisof as Benedick -- he just didn't seem invested. But I must admit, if I don't hear with him with a soft british accent, he just seems off, even though I know that is not his background.  All in all, its a great little movie but a part of me wonders why I didn't find it astoundingly wonderful. I think I might have to ask a Shakespeare guru if there was something flat about the production.

3 Short Paragraphs: This is the End

2013, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg -- cinema

I was nervous about this movie for pretty much the same reasons as Graig was, with one additional nag -- while the crowd of "Apatow Kids" are good in their own right, often the people they surround themselves with (as actors and creators) are far away from the type of comedy I like. I like Rogen when he is reigned in, I like James Franco in his non-comedy roles, I tolerate Jonah Hill and I outright cannot stand Danny McBride. While I loved the premise and the trailers made me giggle, I worried it would quickly degrade into fart and dick jokes. It did but it also surprised me with some of the depth it had. So excuse me while I do a weighing the scales thing with my hands while making a whiney, "Ehhh uhhhh ehhhh," sound when asked if I liked it.

The premise is The End of the World. From the trailers, we couldn't tell if it was ecological or aliens or an asteroid or all of the above. But, no, its Biblical -- The Rapture. Yes, we are taking a bunch of narcissistic amoral comedians, playing extreme versions of themselves, and presenting them with Christian salvation or ... doom. The movie works around a surprising main plot of Jay Baruchel coming to see Seth in Hollywood, as Seth is the guy who moved there and Jay still lives in Canada. Jay doesn't like the Hollywood lifestyle or Seth's Hollywood friends and feels they are drifting. So, he is not fond of being dragged to the party at James Franco's new house. He is even less fond of being trapped in the house when things fall apart around them.

Its kind of funny but the characters are pretty much played as guys like me believe these actors to be. Franco wants everyone to love him but is a bit of a stoner dick, with delusions of how great his "art" is. Seth is losing the war between embracing Hollywood while maintaining his Canadian stable outlook. Jonah Hill is a conniving little weasel and Danny McBride is just an all around terrible person. Baruchel sees himself as the even tempered fair guy but how long can you maintain that with giant swing-dick demons walking the earth? I know very little about Craig Robinson so no comments. The movie was able to give humor in these exaggerations (which I was not always fond of) but maintained a decent plot of how these people deal with a Christian End of the World scenario. I laughed but I also rolled my eyes a lot.

Much Ado About Nothing

d. Joss Whedon, 2012 - in theatre

Since I met my wife, my Shakespeare IQ has gone up 500%, in that I knew next to nothing about Shakespeare 7 or 8 years ago and now I might know maybe 50 things.  I obviously got exposed to the Bard in high school, as most of us do, but it was only Romeo and Juliet and a half-assed attempt at King Lear that I truly witnessed.  Beyond that Julie Taymor's fantastic Titus and... hmm... Dune?  That was Shakespeare right?

Anyway, I've been to the Stratford Festival a half dozen times (the first time was technically the first date with my future wife to see Coriolanus, I believe, starring Colm Feore), and we've watched a couple of cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare since, a lot of them full-on modernizations, or that old chestnut of keeping the dialogue pure but re-contextualizing the setting. 

What we all know about Shakespeare is that olde-English he wrote in is quite difficult to penetrate without some level of study. Like any dialect one needs to attune their ear, but even still it's a challenge as some words come off as gibberish and others don't mean the same thing anymore.  What I've discovered is that it's the performers, not the setting or the props, but the individual actors who make all the difference.  It's up to these actors, whether on stage or on screen, to intellectually understand the material and be able to convey, both through physical presence and verbal inflection, the meaning of the words, when they really don't make sense otherwise.

When Joss Whedon -- beloved nerd demi-god and creator of the geek gospel such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, not to mention writer-director of Marvel's The Avengers --  brought together a group of his loyal acting familiars to his home to stage a production of Much Ado About Nothing over 12 days, there was a definite cry of "whaaaa?" from both geek circles and the theatre crowd.  It's not that anyone doubted that Whedon couldn't wrangle an ensemble (it's what he excels at afterall), but as far as anyone knew, his cast were all, at best, minor TV personalities with few or no major stage credits, and little sense that they would be credible in a, what seemed to be, tossed off Shakespeare production.

But there's a few things going for it, first that Much Ado is perhaps Shakespeare's most accessible story (maybe second only to Romeo and Juliet), secondly that it is a comedy and Whedon has a masterful sense of comedic timing, and thirdly that Whedon has an extensive and intimate familiarity with his cast.  With the latter, that sense of ease and trust and fun all appears on screen.  The cast seems to be having a great time, and they're given the freedom from intricate sets and extensive lighting preparation and makeup and all the usual filmmaking business to explore the words and the characters, investing well within them.  Whedon dispenses with any notion of a period piece, but also scales back the modern elements, allowing for a production liberated from the modern day without ignoring it completely.  The cast explores the grounds of a seemingly palatial estate (though likely smaller than it appears through expert blocking) but the setting never overtakes the performance.

The actors all, save one or two roles, deliver outstanding performances, most notably Amy Acker as Beatrice.  Acker was a prominent figure on Whedon's Buffy spin-off Angel and Dollhouse as well as a villain on CBS's Person of Interest, and she's always appealing to watch, but she commands the screen here and owns the picture.  It's an amazing performance that had me in awe of her ability, and wanting to see more of her as the lead in a production (while I'm happy her role on Person of Interest has been expanded to series regular, she really deserves her own show).  Likewise Fran Kranz is shockingly good, sloughing off his stoner/nervous tech geek ty
pecasting as Claudio and showing an incredible depth as the enamored, then wounded Claudio. 

If there's a weak spot, it's unfortunately in the counterpart to Acker's Beatrice, and that's Angel veteran Alexis Denisof's Benedick.  Of all the actors, Benedick has the most tricky lifting to do, and fumbles it the most often.  His uneven performance doesn't go so far as to ruin the production, and quite often he delivers a bravura physical performance, but of all the cast he has the most difficult time making the language flow naturally and meaningfully.  Even still, his physicality goes a long way (if perhaps too far sometimes) in making it an excellent comedy, but the true comedic heroes are actually the intended comic relief.  Whedon stalwarts Nathan Fillion and Tom Lenk as the bumbling security team oblivious to their own nature get exactly the desired effect they're supposed to and do so without any hint of irony.  A very Mel Brooks-esque gag is pulled with Fillion's tie appearing awkwardly different in every scene.

Shot in black and white, quickly, cheaply, and largely with hand-held cameras, it's a distinctive picture to get its widest release during summer blockbuster season.  To be honest, though, I enjoyed it more than almost any other major multi-hundred-million-dollar picture this year.  It's a warm, charming, and engaging production of, naturally, a timeless comedy.

3 Short Paragraphs: This Is The End

d. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, 2013 -- in theatre

I was nervous about This Is The End, nervous that it would be a film too "inside baseball" as they say, a film for the fans of the "Apatow Kids" from Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, 40-Year-Old Virgin onward.  I don't think Apatow has inspired the frothing fandom of a Kevin Smith, or even the more erudite geek fandom of Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg, and so I was worried that a film like this, which appeared to be banking on a general audience being fans of the actors, rather than their acting ability, would be a later-day Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, a movie solely reliant on in jokes and understanding fourth-wall-breaking references.  I don't know why I was so worried, after all, I genuinely loved the Rogen and Goldberg scripted Superbad, and Pineapple Express was a blast, so why shouldn't I have faith that they could pull another great comedy out?  *cough*Green Hornet*cough*.  Oh, right.

But it was a concern easily dismissed.  The film begins with Rogen picking his friend and fellow Canadian Jay Baruschel up from LAX for a solid week of catch up, and bonding over weed, snacks and video games.  Rogen drags a highly reluctant Baruschel along to a party at James Franco's new place, where Rogen's new, non-Canadian friends will be, friends whom Baruschel can't really tolerate.  During the party, the rapture happens (nobody at the party notices) and the apocalypse begins.  Chaos and mayhem and dead celebrities abound as the grounds open up and the sky rains fire.  It's all very Biblical, with a lot of blaspheming coming out of the actors mouths.  The party and the subsequent dissolving of the party is epic satire, with a clever bit of celebrity lampooning and piss-taking of Hollywood egos, but for all the hype it's remarkably short.  It's a judicious cutting, keeping the movie at a reasonable time, but I'm looking forward to DVD extras of all the deleted scenes that there must be nonetheless.

Left alive in Franco's fortified bunker of a home are Franco, Baruschel, Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride.  The sextet, largely appearing as friends, are quite clearly realizing that "Hollywood friends" are not quite the same as real friends.  The film is about them relating to one another as people as much as it's about them surviving the apocalypse and the numerous dick and fart jokes that you can draw out of such a scenario (and it's a remarkable amount).  Rogen and Goldberg seem to (generally) excel at drafting these kind of male-bonding experiences and doing so in an entertaining way.  The film succeeds in establishing these men as people and not just relying on their celebrity status to do the heavy lifting, and it's effective in getting you to care for them. or at least their relationships with each other, even if you dislike them.  The film takes aspects of the primary actors and exaggerates them for its own comedic purpose  - such as Rogen's cowardice, Hill's duplicity, and McBride's selfishness - and gets a lot of mileage from it.  It's not necessarily against type for any of them, but it plays with what's expected and pushes them to extremes.  Ultimately, This Is The End succeeds because it's damn funny, it can be silly, honest, scary, gross, bizarre and touching all at once.  The "inside baseball" jokes are there, but it's not the focus of the characters, the story or the humour, it's just one small facet of a surprisingly robust apocalyptic comedy.

3 Short Paragraphs: Enemy Mine

d. Wolfgang Petersen, 1985 -- netflix


I had, for some time, considered Wolfgang Petersen to be an arty film director, one of those European types who could come onto a big American production and class up the place.  I remember when he was in discussion for a Batman/Superman movie earlier in this millennium, and I thought "Oh, he might be a decent choice."  But looking back on his IMDB profile, he's totally a Ridley Scott, he's an above average, populist movie maker.  He's not an auteur like an Aronofski or Anderson (Paul Thomas or Wes) with a distinctive, trustworthy voice.  He's just a guy who makes mid-to-high budgeted films with big name actors.  Looking at his work from the past while, Poseidon, Troy, The Perfect Storm, Air Force One, Outbreak and going back to the early 1980's not one of these films could be considered anything truly artistic.  I guess just having an exotic name and Das Boot under his belt (a notorious television mini-series set on a submarine which I remember fondly as "the non-English show with the dicks" [full frontal male nudity that is] that my dad watched and had recorded to videocassette when I was a kid.  I never watched it, because the tone of the piece unsettled me).

When I popped in Enemy Mine, and the opening title cards announced Petersen as director, I was hopeful that this would be more than a largely forgotten 80's sci-fi story.  None of my geek friends throughout the years have ever spoken fondly of this film, and really, outside of long-time curiosity, I've had nothing pushing me towards seeing it.  I have a soft spot for pre-CGI sci-fi, and was doubly hopeful for a unique 80's-style sci-fi experience... but the opening space dogfight sequence was absolutely dire.  Not only does it look worse than Star Wars -- which, really, very few films ever lived up to the craftsmanship of that series -- it looked worse than most sci-fi TV shows that preceded it.  How does a major motion picture in 1985 look worse than Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rogers from five years earlier?  The models looked like models, the starfield they were operating in front were terrible, the costumes (and performances) of the actors were not even laughably bad.  It's ridiculous how terrible it looked and there's no excuse for it in a post-Star Wars era.

The crux of the film finds an solitary Earthman and an enemy alien pilot both trapped on a desolate planet with environmental and native animal hazards.  They soon realize that they need to put their hatred towards one another aside and cooperate for protection.  An unlikely but undeniably strong domestic partnership forms.  The Dracs are hermaphrodites and the alien gives birth to a baby Drac but dies shortly thereafter leaving the human to raise the child on his own, taking his tolerance for Dracs to the next level of parental love, and protecting the child from the threat of slave mining.  Despite the terrible special effects, the clunkiness of the execution, and the always predictable nature of the story, there's a heart to the film which makes it watchable, but it never comes off as anything more than, say, an extra-length Outer Limits episode.  Both Louis Gossett Jr. and Denis Quaid commit to what their doing, and it saves the otherwise terrible production from being a direct-to-video, mostly unwatchable product.  I think if you make this with a bit more of a love story between the human and the masculine hermaphroditic Drac, it would be a far more interesting picture.

3 Short Paragraphs: World War Z

2013, Marc Forster (Stranger Than Fiction, Quantum of Solace) -- cinema

OK, let me get this out. This looks like a good movie -- its well shot, its built around skilled actors and performances and has exciting locales. You get the reminiscences of Contagion, obviously for the plague elements, but also the intrigue and suspense of military movies like Green Zone and The Hurt Locker. That it also smacks of The Bourne Identity is not surprising as that was the intention of the original screen writer, J Michael Straczynski. But the obvious meddling of producers and financiers in re-writing the script (it was not even finally accredited to JMS as anything other than story) is so heavy handed, I came out wondering what the point of the plot really was. After a while, I realized that half the production staff must have played the stellar zombie video game, Left 4 Dead, as they were almost rebuilding key scenes from that movie, minus the mutated creatures. Combine that with the plot holes you could enrage a tank through, I gave up trying to see the movie for what it was supposed to be and just settled in on it being badly, badly done. I could watch it for its decent crafting but that was it.

I also have to get out that I was not too bent out of shape that this was not going to be the book. The book is a series of remembrances, during interviews. They are over a vast swath of time and geography with countless characters. That is not a movie, but JMS at least attempted to capture the feel of the book, along with some key moving scenes, but hinged it around a character who would travel the world -- Brad Pitt's Gerry Lane. That was a good idea. But as production steamrolled on, all aspects of the book were dispensed with. There are the occasional reference, here and there, like those that pop up in mockbusters but nothing smacks of the original story. Sure, there are zombies and it is happening world wide, and that is about it.

The zombies themselves were impressive in a predatorial fashion, more like a hive mind of bestiality than zombies. Other than a few hints that it was difficult to put them down, we don't even really see them as the undead, more just infected people, like 28 Days Later. That is OK, but for the use of zombie and zeke in the movie. And PG-13 ?!?  Seriously?? All zombie attacks take place off camera or in the blurry distance?!?! The ant piles are fun to look at but lose their appeal, considering they were the main element of the trailers.