Silent night, Holby night… December 25, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Telly Tat , add a commentMany of you probably know that I am something of a fan of the British medical drama series Casualty. These days, the show is sometimes so bad that I wonder why I don’t pack it in, but the two-part Christmas special that ran last night and tonight reminded me why I still tune in every week. These episodes were written by Barbara Machin, the creator of the excellent Waking the Dead and one of the show’s regular writers when it was at its peak, and she managed to deliver something that I’d thought the show was no longer capable of: cutting-edge, intense drama (as opposed to the soap we tend to be served up). It was like stepping into a time machine and going back a decade or so to when the show was of a consistently high standard and something that was unmissable television rather than the schedule-filler it so often seems to be now.
The concept itself is something that I’m sure has been done before in countless other shows, but nonetheless felt fresh and unique. Essentially, it told the same story from the perspective of three different characters, one after the other, with the focus shifting each time it was replayed, allowing the audience to see things that hadn’t been apparent before. Obviously, having every episode play like this would be pointless, which is what what really pleased me was the quality of the drama itself. Characters who had, for months or years, been stuck in the background or were written completely out of character, came to the forefront and seemed like their old selves again. I never expected this show to ever again amaze me and have me absolutely gripped, but I have no happily been proved wrong. This was not just the best episode of Casualty in years but one of the finest television programmes I’ve seen all year. I am, quite literally, stunned.
Mann oh mann December 12, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Reviews, Technobabble, Movie Watching, Telly Tat , 2 commentsThis morning, I received a review copy of the HD DVD/SD DVD combo of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice courtesy of DVD Pacific. I’ve never seen the 80s TV series on which the film is based, so I really didn’t know what to expect.
All I can say is that I’m glad this was a review copy and thus something I didn’t have to pay for, except with the two hours and twenty minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. Miami Vice is an incoherent mess, an eyesore and assault on the ears. It’s one hundred and forty minutes of Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx slicking back their hair and/or adjusting their shades as they swagger around various seaside locations with their jaws firmly set and their designer shades glinting in the sunlight. The plot feels like your average 45-minute cop show stretched out to beyond the normal length of a feature film, while the characters are nothing more than mere archetypes who spit out corny dialogue and offer us glaring insights into their tedious and insincere emotions.
Style-wise, the film is all over the place. Mann shot it using a combination of traditional 35mm and 1080p high definition. Some of it looks fine, but the night scenes look absolutely vile, filled with obnoxious amounts of digital noise. Meanwhile, a whole lot of scenes have what can only be described as a motion blur effect, presumably the result of shooting the footage interlaced and then deinterlacing it for the final transfer. Mann used similar techniques on his previous film, Collateral, and they were just as bad there. If this is the future of cinema, I think I’d prefer to remain in the past. Oh, and the camerawork is dreadful, too: I get that Mann wanted to convey a sense of urgency, but when your viewpoint is jittering all of the place, Blair Witch-style, I feel ready to vomit rather than being drawn into the action.
Simply put, this is the worst film I’ve added to my HD collection thus far. A 3/10 is, I feel, extremely generous. Not recommended. The disc itself, however, is very good, with an array of extras that I’ll no doubt have to plough through and a solid transfer that does the best it can with the uninspiring quality of the source materials.
There’s only one Sydney Bristow December 5, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Reviews, Telly Tat , 2 comments
Half-way through the fifth and final season of Alias, the entire show had to be put on hold in order to accommodate the pregnancy of star/producer Jennifer Garner, resulting in a shorter than usual run of 17 episodes. The compressed length, in addition to having to write the first half of the season around Garner’s ballooning stomach (fairly straightforwardly, the writers had her character become pregnant too), not to mention the fact that creator JJ Abrams was busy directing Mission Impossible 3, should have spelled disaster for the show… But they didn’t. Indeed, after a thoroughly disappointing fourth season, Alias Season 5 is a welcome return to form.
Due to Garner’s pregnancy, the first half of the season necessitates something of a change of format, given that the show’s mainstay was always the sight of Sydney Bristow performing energetic stunts in exotic attire. To compensate for the increasingly chair-bound Sydney, the writers draft in a bunch of new recruits, one of whom, Rachel Gibson (Rachel Nichols), finds herself in much the same situation that Sydney was during Season 1. As such, despite signalling something of a departure, Season 5 also recalls the old glory days, with the wide-eyed, naive Rachel serving as a suitable stand-in for the increasingly worldly-wise Sydney. The best of the new characters, however, is the feisty French criminal Renée Rienne (Élodie Bouchez), who ends up helping Team Alias out on several occasions. I would happily have watched an entire show centred around Renée (a spin-off would have been great), but unfortunately the writers make little use for her, and she drops out of the show some time before the end.
There are a few bum notes, and one of these is the third new major character, the moody agent Thomas Grace (Balthazzar Getty). To put it bluntly, he isn’t interesting, and a rather pointless subplot involving his dead wife distracts from the main points of interest, and seems to have been developed before the writers were aware that they wouldn’t be getting another season. Elsewhere, several of the show’s mainstays are becoming rather repetitive and predictable, including the is-he-or-is-he-not-evil Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), who has been kept around for so long and has changed sides so many times, and yet always given another chance, that it’s got to the point of being ludicrous. By far the worst mistake, however, is
*** SPOILERS ***
the apparent death of Sydney’s fiancé, long-term regular Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan). In the first episode of the season, he is pumped full of lead and, shortly afterwards, pronounced dead. Several episodes into the season, however, it is revealed that he has in fact been secretly alive all along, in hiding for his own safety, and that Sydney’s apparent grief has been nothing more than an act. This plot twist is ridiculous even by this show’s standards, and, in my opinion, was engineered after the fact only to deal with the outbreak of fan anger after he was killed off.
*** END SPOILERS ***
Otherwise, though, this is a fine season. It’s not as good as Seasons 1 and 2, but it’s a major improvement on Season 4. Alias was always one of the most impressive-looking shows on television, and this one is no exception, with slick cinematography and a single Los Angeles back-lot standing in convincingly for every location from Cambodia to Siberia. Unlike so many shows, Alias goes out with a bang, and manages not to disgrace itself as it does so.
Pelts: an Argento/PETA co-production December 3, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Reviews, Telly Tat , add a comment
It’s no secret that I didn’t think much of Jenifer, Dario Argento’s first episode in the Masters of Horror anthology series. Actually, that’s something of an understatement: I thought it was phenomenally bad, dethroning The Phantom of the Opera from its position as the worst thing he’d ever directed. Its problem, for me, was that it could have been directed by anyone - and by that I don’t mean that it didn’t “look like an Argento film” (whatever that means), which is what the episode’s defenders invariably try to twist my words into. Rather, it was the sort of bland, anonymous point-and-shoot affair that any semi-competent director for hire could have pulled off. Basically, if it hadn’t said “a film by Dario Argento” at the start, virtually no-one would have paid it a blind bit of notice, making the decision to fly Argento over from Italy to direct it a rather pointless endeavour. Jenifer was more a vehicle for its star/writer Steven Weber than for Argento, making the decision to market the episode around Argento’s name rather than Weber’s disingenuous at best, downright dishonest at worst.
As such, I was prepared for more of the same with Pelts, his contribution to the show’s second season. My expectations were so low that I couldn’t possibly have been disappointed, and as such it’s perhaps not entirely surprising that Pelts is better than I expected. Certainly, it’s still pretty clear that Argento is slumming it, calling “cut” and “action” and picking up a pay-cheque for his efforts, and it’s still pretty near the bottom of the barrel as far as his impressive filmography goes, but it’s nowhere near as embarrassing as Jenifer. Heavily flawed, sure; ultimately pointless, of course; but this time at least there are a few hints to suggest that a filmmaker with actual talent is behind the lens.
The plot, this time, is somewhat more suited to the tastes of Argento, a vegetarian who has owned several cats and believes we should be doing more to protect the rights of insects. Basically, a poacher (John Saxon, who previously appeared in Argento’s classic Tenebre - that’s two big names slumming it) and his dimwitted hick son butcher a bunch of raccoons (or “coons”, as they call them, in one of the script’s less than subtle racism allegories), with an eye to making a tidy profit on what they both agree are the finest pelts ever seen. Junior bashes in Papa’s head with a baseball bat, however, prior to mashing his own face in one of the loathsome pair’s own gin-traps. Enter Jake (Meat Loaf - yes, Meat Loaf), the furrier to whom the pair intended to sell their goods. Seemingly unconcerned by the two dead bodies in front of him, Jake pockets the pelts and, stricken by their beauty, plots to make the finest coat known to man - with an eye to convincing his favourite lap-dancer, Shanna (Ellen Ewusie), to let him fuck her in the ass (I’m not making this up).
The film’s most impressive moments come during the opening titles, which are set against moody shots of the furrier’s various pieces of equipment, most of them dripping with blood. Argento certainly lays on the gore thick and fast here, some of it successfully, some of it not. Of the various extended death scenes, the best is that of a seamstress who sews up her own eyes, nostrils and mouth (nearly all of the deaths are self-inflicted). Less impressive is that of a man who tears out his own innards: it’s just the same Z-grade schlock peddled by Troma, only with more convincing effects. Likewise, the cinematography, by Attila Szalay (who also shot Jenifer), is highly variable: the scenes in the strip-club are the best, with copious amounts of red, blue and purple back-lighting that at times manages to evoke that of Suspiria, albeit greatly toned down; many of the exteriors, however, look flat and lifeless, with Jake’s visit to the poachers’ hut looking as bad as Jenifer in terms of lack of imagination. By and large, though, this “film’s” look is a massive step up from that of its predecessor.
Script and acting are another story, however. The plot was adapted by first-timer Matt Venne from a short story by F. Paul Wilson. I’ve not read the source material, but I can’t imagine it being particularly inspiring, given that it’s essentially just a series of grisly suicides, seemingly stemming from coming into contact with the pelts. As such, you can find the same themes of transferral and infection of the mind that are present in Jenifer if you want to attach an auteurist reading to these episodes - personally, I don’t. These are not “Dario Argento films” in the traditional sense, given that he receives no writing credits on them, instead seemingly having picked his favourite from a list of pre-existing screenplays. The performances, meanwhile, verge on embarrassing. Meat Loaf chews the scenery like nothing on earth, screaming, slavering and stomping around with a face that could curdle milk, while even the reliable John Saxon struggles to make anything of his one-dimensional role. The characters are all flat in the extreme, as it happens, and Argento, presumably realising he wasn’t going to get anything approaching a decent performance out of Ellen Ewusie, instead has her spend the bulk of her screen-time with her breasts out. Oh, and there’s a good old-fashioned gratuitous girl-on-girl sex scene too - the Masters of Horror team presumably think that this sort of thing, in addition to gallons of karo syrup, can be considered “pushing the boundaries”, but it all reeks a little of desperation. The two women look so uncomfortable during their sex scene that it’s hard not to feel sorry for them.
I don’t really have much else to say. It’s better than Jenifer, but once again it uses the Argento name to market a generic, poorly-written splatterfest that any number of no-name directors for hire could have pulled off. The Argento of old would have been able to direct this sort of thing blindfolded and with one arm behind his back, but at least there are a handful glimpses of the old spirit, even if they are present here in a greatly dumbed down form. Pelts is ultimately really just a means to an end - apparently it is thanks to his Masters of Horror work that The Third Mother is being made at all. Them’s the breaks, I guess, and, as such, I’m willing to accept half-baked Argento if it ultimately leads to some sort of a return to form. 5/10.
Veronica Mars, take two November 26, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Reviews, Telly Tat , add a commentFollowing on from my previous post, I ploughed through the remainder of Season 2 of Veronica Mars last night and this morning. And my opinions are largely unchanged: the same strengths and weaknesses that I outlined last night remained till the end. A more detailed explanation is in order, however.
The show is set in the (imaginary) small town of Neptune, home of dodgy millionaires and their snotty children, as well as the less well-off. The show looks at this “class divide” from the perspective of Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell), a teenager who used to be in with the popular crowd until a series of unfortunate happenings resulted in her being ostracised by her so-called friends. She and her parents ended up becoming virtual social pariahs after her sheriff father, Keith (Enrico Colantoni), put the blame for the murder of Veronica’s best friend, Lily (Amanda Seyfried), on her father… sorry, all these relationships are really complicated. Mrs. Mars ran off, Keith lost his job and ended up making a living as a private investigator, and Veronica, no longer on the in-crowd, helped him out.
That was Season 1. As Season 2 begins, the previous year’s various cases have been wrapped up. Lily’s killer (I’m not saying who, for those who haven’t seen Season 1) is behind bars, and Veronica has managed to regain much of her cred with the in-crowd. Tensions between the haves and the have-nots are at an all-time high, though, and Veronica finds herself stuck right in the middle. She soon has other problems to contend with, though, including a bus full of children from her school hurtling off a cliff for seemingly no reason… a bus that she should have been on. Did someone want her dead, and did it have anything to do with the events of the previous year?
I’ll give creator Rob Thomas and his writers credit for one thing: they know how to capture the audience’s interest. Whatever flaws the show might have, it has a very addictive quality. There are always unanswered questions, meaning that there’s always something to entice you to go straight to the next episode as soon as the current one finishes. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, upon which this show was clearly quite heavily modelled, it follows a conventional structure of most episodes having their own self-contained cases, with a couple of larger mysteries being played out over the course of the season’s 22 episodes. The “cases of the week” vary in terms of quality, but most of them do a commendable job of trying to do something unexpected… although not always successfully. The main case, meanwhile, has a decent line-up of potential suspects, including both new and old characters. The complex relationships between the various characters, meanwhile, provide ample scope for secrets, lies and intrigue, even if the soap opera elements to tend to become a little unbelievable in their complexity.
What doesn’t work, though, is that I really struggle to relate to the characters, understand what they see in each other, or even like the majority of them in the slightest. Veronica begins the season in the arms of the obnoxious Logan (Jason Dohring), before promptly ditching him for her previous boyfriend, Logan’s best friend Duncan (Teddy Dunn). By the end of the season, she’s back with Logan again. (See what I meant about the ridiculousness of the soap elements?) Logan is the sort of creep that you’d actually cross the street to avoid, making Veronica’s attraction to him decidedly implausible, while Veronica spends most of her waking hours being so sarcastic to everyone she comes into contact with that it’s a wonder she has any friends at all. Of all the regular characters, the most likeable is Keith Mars, with Colantoni’s performance being by far the best on the show.
There are also some rather irritating continuity issues, with character developments and plot threads being introduced in one episode, only to promptly be forgotten for extended periods. Early in the season, for example, Veronica’s friend Wallace’s (Percy Daggs) estranged father shows up, and various events lead to father and son eloping together. Wallace is out of the picture for several episodes, before promptly returning, and the business with his father, and his disappearance, never being dealt with. In Buffy, or other US shows I enjoy like Alias, you generally get the sense that everything that happens to the characters is working towards some sort of master plan, or at least that they are adding to their life experience and allowing them to develop, even if only in minute ways. With Veronica Mars, that sort of long-term planning doesn’t seem to exist, at least not to the same extent.
Broadly speaking, though, I can understand why this show has so many ardent followers, and I certainly enjoyed watching both seasons (I’ll probably pick up Season 3 when it comes out on DVD, but it doesn’t appear to air in the UK and I’m not obsessive enough to be motivated to download the episodes as they air in the US). It features the same cheery, irreverent take on film noir that Buffy did with horror, and as such, I can see it appealing to the same crowd. The second season even features appearances by Alyson Hannigan and Joss Whedon himself, while Charisma Carpenter is featured on a more extended basis.
DVD telly fun November 25, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Telly Tat , add a commentMy copy of the R2 UK DVD of the fifth and final season of Alias arrived today. Given the excellent image quality of its predecessors, I’m expecting big things in the technical department, although I am a little wary as to the quality of the episodes themselves, given that (a) Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy had to be written around, also resulting in a shorter season of only 17 episodes rather than the usual 22, and (b) Season 4 was a huge disappointment, barring the enjoyable but ludicrous two-part finale.
In any event, I won’t be watching it until I’ve finished Season 2 of Veronica Mars. I’m about two-thirds of the way through that now, and my verdict, so far, is that, if you’ve already seen Season 1, it’s very much more of the same, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the plus side, the various mysteries are generally well-plotted, and the longer arcs that snake their way through the entire season are enough to keep you tuning in - this is definitely a show that’s very “moreish”. On the negative side, I still find myself getting irritated by the fact that major plot developments and characters are introduced, only to be unceremoniously dumped and not picked up again till later. (In one episode at around the middle of the season, for example, Veronica and her father have a major falling-out, ending with her saying he won’t ever be able to trust her again. Next week, they’re bestest buds again.) I also tend to find that the vast majority of the characters are vaguely unpleasant at best, and downright despicable at worst, while the least offensive character, Mac, is hardly ever around.
Still, I shall persevere, and I’m certainly not finding the experience of watching it unpleasant. On the contrary, I always find myself eager to find out what happens next, and end up watching “just one more” episode. Hopefully I’ll be able to deliver my final verdict on the season in the next week or so.
Man to Man with Dean Learner November 11, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Telly Tat , 1 comment so farAnd once again it’s shit. By my count, that’s two complete duds, one mediocre and one slightly amusing.