Cynical Cinema

If a line like “that’s not my ringtone” scares you, you might enjoy One Missed Call.  Then again, if “that’s not my ringtone” scares you, you really need to watch The Exorcist.  Or Alien.  Or Night of the Living Dead.  Because you are missing out on life, I think.  Cell phones are, try as they might in this film, not scary.  They are not even slightly fearsome.  They are just cell phones.  At best, they’re irritating.  The premise in the movie is that people are dying.  As they tend to do in horror movies.  Before they die, they get a voicemail message on their cell phones from the person who just died.  But it’s their own voice!  And that voice is scared.  And screaming.  And the message is dated at the exact time and date that they are scheduled to die.  Now, if you heard yourself say “if only I could get my head screwed on straight” at the exact time you’re scheduled to die, wouldn’t you really, REALLY avoid using that phrase?  Just a thought.

So these people know they’re going to die, but of course the main character can somehow figure out the mystery of where this evil comes from and why these kids specifically have been targeted.  None of it really makes any sense.  As Shannyn Sossamon gets the ear of sympathetic cop Edward Burns, the two of them are racing against the clock because you see…she got the call too!  Which leads to a final showdown in an…abandoned hospital.  Come on people.  Let’s stop using abandoned hospitals as creepy locations in horror movies, shall we?  Has the concept not played itself out by now?  How about an abandoned 4-H club, or an abandoned cardboard box factory?  We’re done with hospitals.  At least I am.  Then the final FINAL scare, because you know that there has to be another twist and another scare and another death before it’s all over.  Blah blah blah.  This is a remake of the genuinely chilling Japanese film of the same name, directed ably by the Japanese horror master Takashi Miike, who is one of the best in the world.  This film does not live up to his standard.

At least the star of the film is attractive, in a  Denise-from-the-Cosby-Show sort of way.  Shannyn Sossamon is gorgeous, and has a great story - one that is far better than the one in the movie.  She was discovered by a Hollywood casting director while DJing at a Hollywood party.  Figuring she looked a lot like Angelina Jolie (and she does - she is a cross between Jolie and Lisa Bonet from the Cosby Show), she was thrust into a starring role opposite Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale, a film that was designed to make stars of both actors.  It worked for Ledger in a big way, although the film itself didn’t fare particularly well.  And it worked a little for Sossamon, who next got a star turn in 40 Days And 40 Nights with Josh Hartnett.  But since then, she has been working in low-rent horror flicks like this one.  Don’t rent this or buy it or glance at it for free.  Instead, here are some pictures.  Who does Shannyn Sossamon resemble more?  Angelina Jolie or Lisa Bonet?

John Cusack can do clever dialogue in his sleep.  And at the beginning of 1408, he does.  He and Samuel L. Jackson engage in a very intelligent exchange, through which they both appear to be phoning it in.  You see, Cusack is a ghost-story-debunker, and Jackson is a hotel manager whose hotel has a demon room.  Room 1408.  Jackson does not want Cusack to stay in that room, but Cusack insists, and cannot be persuaded otherwise.  Sam Jackson and John Cusack will never suck, they are both too good for that, but their performances here are average at best.  Jackson is good, however, when he begins to warn Cusack away from the room.  His delivery, while matter-of-fact, is decidedly unsettling, and he gets better as the scene goes on. 

And the movie gets better as it goes on.  It’s based on a short story by Stephen King, which is nice and succinct and interesting.  But the movie expands on that short story in a big way.  And good thing too, because the story, while quick, to the point, and fun, would have made a fairly lousy movie, and the resolution would have been pretty trite and boring on screen.  For those of you who have read the story, rest assured.  It does NOT end the same way.  And it doesn’t develop the same way either.  The only thing the book and the movie have in common is the beginning.  Cusack is a writer, who has given up what looked to be a very promising career as a brilliant writer to churn out a bunch of low-rent ghost-story books about haunted castles and hotels and such.  And in the course of his research, he happens upon the Dolphin hotel, where 56 people have died in room 1408 since the hotel opened.

What happens next is not so much a ghost story as it is a bizarre, horrific acid trip for Cusack.  Describing what goes on would be pointless, since much of it is meaningless, a lot of it is boring, and very little is actually scary.  But there are some freaky moments, and frightening ones, that involve Cusack himself.  A tense moment on the ledge outside the hotel, and another tense claustrophobic scene in the air ducts above room 1408.  In the end, the creepy vibe and the actual scares come from Cusack himself more so than from his surroundings and the happenings in the room.  And as such, the movie is decent because Cusack himself is decent.  At times he just doesn’t seem cut out for the terror-acting, and at other times his bemusement turns to alarm which turns into fear in a very believeable progression.  As Cusack goes, so goes 1408.  He’s decent, the movie is decent.

The idea of Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson acting together in a movie is an appealing one. Two titans of the movie world now come together in a buddy comedy about two guys who want to do everything they’ve never done before they die. Still appealing. They skydive and drive race cars. This is starting to get less appealing…The Bucket List is a half-way decent concept with some truly amazing actors, but it just doesn’t work. Yes, Freeman and Nicholson are terrific together, and they both do what they can with the material they are given. But great acting does not make up for poor writing. The poor writing is most obvious when the narration begins. Morgan Freeman, with his wonderful voice is of course the narrator, we would assume from beyond the grave. And somehow, this reminded me most of The Shawshank Redemption, the last movie I watched narrated by Morgan Freeman. (Well, March of the Penguins, too. But he didn’t star in that.)

And clearly The Bucket List has absolutely nothing in common with The Shawshank Redemption, except for Morgan Freeman. But I was constantly aware, every time Freeman began talking, that he was in a sub-par movie. He and Nicholson end up together in the hospital in adjacent beds, and become friendly with one another. Freeman is a career mechanic with a large family - wife, kids, grandkids. Nicholson is a bachelor billionnaire, and he owns the hospital. He has a toadying assistant, played by Sean Hayes (that flaming guy from Will and Grace), who gives a pretty solid performance. In fact, Nicholson’s relationship with Hayes is far more interesting and well done than the one he has with Freeman.

Soon after meeting, both Freeman and Nicholson are diagnosed with terminal cancer, and given six months or a year to live. So they break out of the hospital and go on a round-the-world trip to do everything they ever wanted to do before they “kick the bucket”. Hence - The Bucket List. At least Nicholson scoffs at the title, mocking it’s cutesy nature. And at the very least they get the old-guys-doing-extreme-sports thing out of the way early on. Get it - they’re skydiving, but they’re old! That in itself is supposed to be funny. It isn’t. What then follows is scene after scene of the two of them talking about life, ruminating on existence atop the pyramids, the Great Wall of China, beside the Taj Mahal, and so forth.

The basic premise of this movie, as it so obviously will be from the start, is that the journey the two undertake will change them profoundly. Freeman will get a chance, through Nicholson and his money, to experience a world beyond that which he has lived his whole life. And Nicholson will learn, through Freeman, the value of human kindness and love for one’s fellow man. This will of course lead to a heartwarming scene where Jack sets aside his rich-guy, arrogant maniac pride, and visits his estranged daughter. Now, it might seem as though I am giving away the ending here, that this is a spoiler. But it’s fairly obvious right from the start that this is what is going to happen. I knew this from watching the trailers.

In the end, The Bucket List is worth watching only for Freeman and Nicholson. The two of them are just magnetic, and they are well worth watching in just about anything. And The Bucket List is just about anything. It is a poor movie, it is badly written and so painfully obvious throughout, but people are going to watch this because of the names at the top of the marquee. And those names really do make it almost worthwhile.

Jumper (5/10):  The always-wooden Hayden Christensen teams up with the will-work-for-beer-nuts Samuel L. Jackson in a film about a guy who “jumps” through time and space.  It’s not terrible, but….

The Bucket List (3/10):  I know for a fact that this is terrible.  Because I watched it.  And I’m fairly angry that I did.  Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are great together, but the movie around them is abysmal.

The Other Boleyn Girl:  Scarlett Johanssen and Natalie Portman, together?  In the same movie?  Awesome…but then I also thought The Black Dahlia was going to be great with Scarlett Johanssen and Hilary Swank.  And it sucked.

Fatal Contact (6/10):  Hong Kong Kung-Fu, with some decent action scenes.  Underground fights are nothing new to the world of martial arts movies, but these are decently filmed and the movie is surprisingly moving.

Witless Protection:  Larry the Cable Guy.  The witness protection program.  Ugh.

Crusing Bar (3/10):  Some of the worst subtitles I have ever seen on a movie.  Get this only if you are francophone.  Even then, I wouldn’t really recommend it.

Smiley Face:  The always-entertaining John Krasinski and Anna Farris team up for a comedy where a girl gets really stoned and walks around.  There might be more plot but…who cares.

Comedy Central’s Home Grown (5/10):  A series of vignettes, skits, and full episodes of Comedy Central programming that are predicated on the idea that people who smoke weed like nothing more than to watch other people doing the same.

The Grand:  Woody Harrelson is a gambler.  Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) co-stars.  Everyone wins.  Or doesn’t.

American Gangster Season Two (9/10):  Real-life African American crime figures get biographical, documentary treatment in an excellent show from BET.  Ving Rhames narrates.  Season Two includes the guy who inspired The Wire, and Frank Lucas from the movie American Gangster.

Timber Falls:  Young hot girl goes to the woods…there’s evil in the woods…stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

The Odd Couple Season Four (6/10):  A solid TV show before all the odd-couple I’m-clean and you’re-dirty jokes ran out.  They are beginning to run out in season four.

The List:  Dangerous blood oaths in the confederate army lead to dangerous doings 140 years later.  Malcolm McDowell is somehow involved.

The Fugitive Season Two (7/10):  It would have been nice to see more continuity and continuing story lines, but the episodes themselves remain as good as ever.

Alive or Dead:  Horror movie involving hot girls and a school bus.

Hawaii Five-O Season Four (6/10):  This show was ridiculous, but stands up as a campy and hilarious blueprint that actors like David Caruso have used to their advantage in later years.  Dated, cheesy, but loads of fun.

Also out:

Impy’s Island
The Signal
The Planet
Super High Me
Wieners

          When Fatal Contact opens, Jacky Wu Jing, touted as the next big thing in Asian kung-fu movies, is performing with a painted face in a sort of Chinese Cirque Du Soleil stage show.  He is Hong Kong’s Kung Fu champion, but must make ends meet during the off-season.  When he is approached by some gangsters to fight in an underground-boxing gambling racket, he turns them down.  He doesn’t want to participate in anything illegal, and he doesn’t want to fight anyone he doesn’t have to.  But he is starting a relationship with a girl performing in the stage company with him, and she manages to convince him, remarkably easily, to show up at this underground fight and join up.  There is a lot of money to be made, see, and right away we know this girl is the femme fatale that will lead him down the garden path to destruction. 

          The thing is, I don’t think we’re supposed to know that.  I think we are supposed to be surprised when, later in the film, we discover her true motives.  So I think in this case it is just bad handling on the part of the director, telegraphing the final act in the first one.  The main portion of the movie takes place in this free-for-all illegal fighting operation, one we have seen many times in many similar movies.  Ong-Bak, Unleashed, Bloodsport, the list goes on and on.  And in every one of these movies, the set-up, denouement, and payoff are virtually identical.  Except in Fatal Contact.  The ending is rather surprising.  But I’ll get to that in a minute.  The bulk of the action is taken up with this fighting in the ring.  And although it’s pretty good fighting, it doesn’t really leap off the screen and grab you by the stones the way it does in Ong-Bak, or even Cradle 2 The Grave.  It’s just well-done, decent one-on-one kung-fu. 

          There are two things that are very good about the middle part of Fatal Contact.  First of all, Jackie Wu Jing looks like a nine-year-old.  Which means that we are constantly identifying with him as a kung-fu expert who is still somehow out of his element.  And secondly, this isn’t one of those contrived, cage-with-spikes modern-gladiator fight-to-the-death type illegal fighting operation.  It’s more like one of these would really look, just a space cleared on a floor above a bar, with wooden chairs pushed aside and a guy at a desk with a calculator and ledger book taking bets.  It gives this operation more of an air of authenticity than any other similar operation in other movies.  Most of which look like they are channeling the spirit of Mad Max and the Thunderdome. 

          Also, the other fighters.  Wu Jing doesn’t have to fight bigger and bigger guys as time goes on, or meaner and meaner fighters.  And there is no final, in-the-ring showdown with the bad guy of the piece.  Which is a refreshing ending to a movie like this.  However, the ending doesn’t really work.  I don’t want to give it away, because Fatal Contact is worth watching, but the ending to this movie is remarkably incongruous with the rest of the film.  It’s like in the middle of a Dean Koontz book, the story takes a 90 degree turn and becomes a Shakespearean tragedy.  What?  And to be fair, the end IS surprisingly moving, given how badly it jars with the rest of the film.  And more than that, at least it isn’t expected and obvious.  There’s a greenhouse roof there - I wonder if that guy’s going to go through it and die…oh.  He doesn’t?  Really?  Hm.  How unexpected. 

          There are two other major problems with Fatal Contact.  First, there is a character played by Ronald Cheng (a Hong Kong pop singer).  He is Wu Jing’s friend and confidante, and his character seems to be growing through the whole movie.  We learn halfway through that he is in fact an incredible kung-fu master, maybe even as good as his friend.  But then…nothing is done with it.  When his character departs the scene, toward the end, we wonder why he was ever in the movie at all!  And the resolution at the end of the movie takes SO long to happen!  We already know what they reveal really slowly, and a lot of it, as I said earlier, was telegraphed from the first scene in the movie! 

          All in all, Fatal Contact is fairly decent, and any serious fans of Hong Kong Kung-Fu cinema will not be disappointed.  It does have a surprising (and surprisingly powerful) ending, some good fight scenes, and a pretty cool star in Jacky Wu Jing.  Wu Jing is being labeled the “next Jet Li” (at least by Dragon Dynasty, the Hong Kong distributors of the DVD), and in fact he actually makes specific reference to that during the film.  But for casual martial arts fans and action movie lovers alike, this one can be skipped.  You’re better off with some other Dragon Dynasty titles, like Flash Point, Hard Boiled, Dog Bite Dog, or The City Of Violence.  Fatal Contact comes out in Canada courtesy of Alliance Films tomorrow, June 10th. 

          “Cruising Bar” is a French Canadian movie from 1989 that comes out on DVD tomorrow, June 10th, from Alliance Films.  It’s a film by Robert Menard that stars Michel Cote in four different roles.  All four characters are heading out to the bars in an attempt to pick up women.  One is a self-centred obnoxious yuppie named Charles, one is an annoying stereotypical nerd named George, another is an irritating sleazy married auto-parts dealer named Gerry, and the last is a mulletted junkie loser named Patrick who is broken-hearted over his breakup with his girlfriend.  So…there are the four main characters - Patrick, Gerry, George and Charles.  These are the names that appear on the English subtitles.  However, the names the characters are given on-screen, in French, are Jean-Jacques, Gerard, Patrice and Serge.  Do the subtitle people really think that English audiences can’t understand French names? 

          Apparently, no.  Even the title, “Cruising Bar”, gets a bizarre translation into English on the DVD box - why not call it “Cruising Bar” in English as well?  It’s already an English title.  But it gets “translated” to “Meet Market”.  Which is odd, but not as odd as the subtitles themselves.  Not only are the actual names of the characters changed, so is virtually everything else.  The yuppie snob meets a woman who says quite clearly (in French) that her name is Louise.  It shows up on the screen as “Julie”.  A bartender offers him an O’Keefe.  The screen says Coors Light.  A woman tells him she runs 160 kilometres a day, to see if he’s paying attention.  The screen says 90.  Fifteen years becomes sixteen years.  And the actual French dialogue is quite a bit different than the English subtitles, and if you understand French, you’re way better off switching them off altogether.  It’s like someone created the words on the screen with the sound off.  It’s two different movies. 

          As the movie goes on, we see the yuppie being obnoxiously yuppie, the nerdy guy being irritatingly nerdy, the sleazy married guy being over-the-top in his sleaziness and his married life, and the junkie being an annoyingly desperate loser.  It’s great that Michel Cote can play all four characters so convincingly (it really did take me a long time to realize it was the same actor in all four roles), but they are all so annoying that it grates.  Do they really have to ALL be such obnoxious over-the-top caricatures?  And really, although there are four stories going on at the same time, we really don’t care at all about any of them, because we don’t like any of the characters.  The yuppie goes to a snob bar.  The nerd goes to a punk bar (remember, this movie was made in 1989 - 1989 “punk” was a cartoon in itself).  The sleazy guy hits a sleazy low-rent motel bar, and the junkie with a mullet goes to a regular disco. 

          The only story that’s compelling even a bit is that of the poor, put-upon nerd who just can’t get it right as he moves from the punk bar to a country bar where they won’t let him in.  But even the bars are stereotyped as badly as the characters.  He ends up in a gay bar, and the stereotypes come flying out.  One thing I absolutely hate in movies is the idea that a guy who gets turned down by even the ugliest women in the world, because of his appearance and personality, will be hit on by gay guys.  Like the idea is that gay guys will try to sleep with absolutely anything where women would never go.  Don’t gay guys have standards too?  Not only that, but the most offensive stereotype shows up at the end, when the big, tough, muscled biker gay guy shows up, and chases the nerd around the room, presumably to have sex with him against his will.  And the big “payoff”?  The grand finale, the punch line of the movie?  Gay rape.  Get it?  Hahaha, he isn’t even gay! 

          But the night ends badly for everyone.  Gerard’s wife shows up (in disguise) at the bar he’s cruising, and he unwittingly picks her up and takes her to the room he’s rented for the night.  Again…hahaha.  Only this time the camera doesn’t show us, the viewer, her face ever.  Are we to believe that we, the people watching, would recognize her, while her own husband wouldn’t?  At any rate, there isn’t much to recommend this film.  It’s Canadian, Michel Cote flexes several of his acting muscles, and…there is a guy with a terrific Joe Dirt mullet.  Other than that, I got nothing. 

          What is it with stoners?  Everyone I know who is into weed as a way of life seems to feel like they’re a part of some giant club that’s secret but totally exclusive.  Every time they decide to toke up, they want to listen to Bob Marley and Peter Tosh  and Cypress Hill, like they somehow, all of a sudden identify with these people because they too smoked weed.  What?  Drinkers don’t do this.  When I’m having a few beers, my taste in music doesn’t change.  I don’t all of a sudden want to hear Janis Joplin any more just because she was a drunk.  And in fact, I almost never want to hear the Doors when I’m drinking, because I would rather be happy.  In fact, when I drink, very often I listen to Peter Tosh.   

          And nowhere is this more evident than with movies.  If you ever walk into an apartment, and it is thick with smoke and a distinctive smell, guaranteed the movie on the TV is one of these: Half-Baked, Reefer Madness, The Big Lebowski, Harold and Kumar, or any number of Cheech and Chong flicks.  That’s it.  Apparently, for most, getting high means that you are totally in the mood for sitting around and doing nothing and watching others get high and actually do stuff.  And if you fall into that category, Comedy Central’s Home Grown is for you.  It comes out tomorrow, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s all about the weed.  Sketches, skits, clips, and actual full shows from Comedy Central’s mostly-impressive roster of shows.  Pretty much every mention of drugs from Comedy Central over the last two years is crammed onto one DVD. 

          This includes full episodes of the always-excellent Sarah Silverman Show, the not-so-great TV Funhouse, the solid Root Of All Evil, the hit-and-miss Reno 911, and the bizarre but funny Strangers With Candy.  The Sarah Silverman show contained here is the one where she walks around in blackface the whole episode to “see what it’s like to live as a black person”.  All of which is staggeringly politically incorrect, and decidedly funny.  The reason this episode makes it onto the “drug disc” is that her two gay friends, Steve and Brian, get incredibly high on medicinal marijuana and freak out some.  It is the best episode featured on the disc.  The TV Funhouse episode is a Christmas episode, where all the puppets drain Doug’s spinal cord, synthesize the fluid inside, and get wasted on Christmas Cheer.  That one is pretty lame.  Skip it, unless you’re too wasted to use the DVD remote. 

          The Root of All Evil - one of the best new comedy shows on TV, features Lewis Black as a judge deciding which of two things is the Root Of All Evil.  Like, Dick Chaney vs.
Paris Hilton.  Or, in this case, Weed vs. Beer.  Which is hilarious.  The
Reno 911 episode is all about the cops trying to get to Burning Man to do a drug sting, but makes it onto the drug DVD because there is also a marijuana sting at a head shop.   The episode has moments, but there’s a bizarre freaky-hooker thing that goes nowhere and some pretty lame jokes.  And Strangers With Candy, which is a show that never really got airplay here in
Canada, gets on just because it’s always in some way about drugs.  It’s a TV show about a 46-year-old woman who has lived through a 35-year drug and prostitution binge, and is now picking up her life where she left off, as a freshman in high school.  This episode sees her making drugs to become friends with the popular girl in school, and killing her with those drugs.  This show was recently made into a movie which was pretty great, and at least that’s available in
Canada.  Also called Strangers with Candy - recommended by Cynical Cinema! 

          After the episodes, there are sketches from other shows.  Three from the Sarah Silverman show, two sing-along karaoke segments from Drawn Together (also recommended by Cynical Cinema - and do people who are high like karaoke?), three Crank Yankers and Viva Variety.  The best sketch on the disc comes (of course) from Chappelle’s Show, because all the best sketches of the past five years come from Chappelle’s Show.  It’s an amazingly smart and hilarious send-up of Show Business in general, all within a six-minute sketch.  He takes on a movie role (with Susan Sarandon) in his Lil’ Jon character.  He endorses a breakfast cereal.  But the funniest bit of all is his send-up of MTV Cribs, that show where viewers get a tour of the most ridiculous, painfully overdone mansions in Hollywood, always owned by some rap star who has managed to become so rich, so fast, while still being so stupid, that they will spend 4 million dollars on (in this case) a White-Panda-Fur-Coat. 

          Then there are the extras.  Just bizarre stuff, that I guess Comedy Central feels are ideal for the stoners.  In point of fact, stoners will watch anything and think it’s fantastic, so maybe that was the thinking that went into this.  There is a halfway decent comedic parody of those Canadian Hinterland Who’s Who spots, about spiders on drugs.  There are three short animated films from The Animation Show (reviewed last week by Cynical Cinema), including the gory and bizarre “Rabbit”.  There is a documentary piece, made in 1971 about marijuana.  All of this makes sense.  The stoner crowd that I know absolutely LOVE to watch programs ABOUT weed while they’re high.  Why?  Who knows?  This is why they watch Reefer Madness, which is really just a dreadful nonsense movie.  I think it’s because stoners can’t really have a conversation about anything BUT weed, because they have no actual knowledge.  So watching programs about weed with other stoners allows them to seem really smart about at least one thing.  “Whoa, man!  Did you see the size of that bud?  You gotta plant it in goat manure facing Southeast to get buds that big!  Duuuuuuuuude.” 

          And then - the most bizarre feature on this disc - a full episode of “The Joy Of Painting”.  This is that TV show that ran on public-access TV in the 80s, that has somehow become a sort-of remembered part of our culture.  Bob Ross, in a half hour, paints a painting that is remarkably good, and teaches the people at home how to do the same.  He has an enormous afro, and he talks in the most obnoxiously soothing voice ever.  And yes, a voice CAN be obnoxiously soothing.  It’s not an oxymoron.  Anyway, there is an episode of THIS show on the Comedy Central Homegrown DVD.  The disc seems aimed at the aged 17-30 demographic, all of whom would be completely unfamiliar with this show.  And is this really a favourite of stoners everywhere?  Who knows.  Who cares?  Stoners, after all, will watch anything and everything.   

          And there is a lot of anything and everything on Comedy Central’s Homegrown DVD.  Everything for the wake-and-bake set, anything for the chronic, and only a small amount for the rest of us.  It’s worth picking up as a sort of guide to Comedy Central, an overview of the talent on their roster, but only the potheads could enjoy the whole thing.

          American Gangster, the movie, was a great film that did very well behind the acting skills of Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas and Russell Crowe as Ritchie Roberts.  American Gangster, the TV show, is a terrific program that does extremely well behind interviews of the real Frank Lucas and Ritchie Roberts.  And many others like them.  Season Two comes out this coming Tuesday, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s a fascinating documentary series.  It examines the most notorious African-American gangsters, from Frank Lucas and Bumpy Johnson to the Philly Black Mafia.  It also, less often, tackles criminals who would not, by strictest definition, be called “gangsters”.  Serial killers like the
Washington, D.C. snipers, and bank robbers like Chaz Williams. 

          The series is narrated by Ving Rhames, and while he doesn’t have the classic Robert Stack or Morgan Freeman narrator voice, he DID play Marsellus Wallace.  And when Marsellus Wallace says the word “gangster”, it certainly conveys a substantial amount of authority.  And the series is very well done.  Extensively researched and very thorough, almost all the principal players, including the criminals themselves when possible, become interview subjects in the show.  An incredible amount of time must be spent digging these people up for the TV program., but it’s certainly worthwhile.  American Gangster doesn’t shy away from the horror and the violence caused by these criminals, and as such never seems to be glamourizing the crime, just relating it in every imaginable detail. 

          It’s awfully interesting to see the real Frank Lucas and the real Ritchie Roberts relating their stories, which so closely mirror the recent American Gangster movie.  Denzel Washington actually appears in the episode himself, talking about Frank Lucas, who consulted a lot on the film set.  Also interesting is the story of Melvin Williams, a
Baltimore gambler with a genius IQ who managed to build up a massive heroin operation, and became one of the inspirations behind the HBO show The Wire, which is now over but available on DVD.  The director of the show appears in the American Gangster episode, and Melvin Williams himself, it turns out, appears on The Wire.  (For fans of that show - he plays that compassionate church deacon guy - a role FAR from his real-life persona.) 

          American Gangster is a terrific show about horrific acts and terrible people.  (And some who aren’t all that bad.)  Ving Rhames adds that terrific extra touch to make this one of the best documentary series on television today.  And Season Two features enough familiar names to be really compelling all the way through.

          When watching The Odd Couple, it strikes me that Tony Randall’s character, Felix (the tidy one), suffers from some kind of debilitating personality disorder.  Jack Klugman’s character Oscar (the messy one) is just sloppy and crass.  But Felix is desperately in need of a psychiatrist.  He’s the kind of guy you now see on Dr. Phil or Oprah, crying about how his family left him because of his germophobia and his obsessive compulsive antics.  And then Dr. Phil would send him to some boot camp for weirdos where he would have to lick a garbage can lid and bathe in maggots and miraculously emerge a cured man.  In the show, however, his life with his slovenly roommate Oscar is his only exposure to squalor, and he’s NEVER going to get better that way! 

          The premise of the show is that Oscar is a slob, and Felix is a neat-freak and a snobby sissy, a prototypical Niles Crane.  This was enough of a comedic premise to carry Neil Simon’s stage play for two hours in 1965.  It was enough to hold up the terrific Walter Matthau - Jack Lemmon movie in 1968 for an hour and forty-six minutes.  And apparently, it was enough to sustain the TV series for six seasons, beginning in 1970.  Even after the series was over, the premise lived on, as though spurred by some kind of never-ending desire the world over for sequels.  But by then, the idea had run its course.  In 1982, there was a “New Odd Couple” show that aired on ABC for less than four months.  Apparently, at the time, the humour from the Odd Couple concept had been completely used up, because this new show, in the 13 episodes it aired, actually used EIGHT scripts recycled from the show in the 70s. 

          Then there was that disastrous Odd Couple II, a truly dreadful 1998 sequel to the original movie, thirty years later, that saw Matthau and Lemmon in their last role together.  Apparently, whatever I’m-neat-and-you’re-sloppy jokes hadn’t been used up in the movie and the original TV series had been used up to make Grumpy Old Men.  Anyway, that doesn’t matter, because I’m talking about the DVD box set of Season Four of the Odd Couple here, and the joke well had not yet run dry.  It comes out tomorrow, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s still funny.  Klugman and Randall are terrific together, they have great chemistry, and the guest stars respond easily to the timing of the lead actors.  But the episodes are interchangeable, each one follows the exact same story arc as the last, and it really is one of the early cookie-cutter TV comedies.  You see, Felix is uptight and obnoxious, and we laugh at him.  The end.  

          The best episode on Season Four of The Odd Couple is the one with Bobby Riggs, the tennis star.  Riggs was very famous at the time (1973) as a chauvinist, who challenged female tennis players to games.  His match against Billie Jean King in 1973 is still one of the most famous tennis matches of all time.  (For those of you who are not aware of the match, Riggs lost to King in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.)  Riggs was also famous as a hustler and a gambler, and when he shows up in The Odd Couple, he plays himself as…a hustler, a gambler, and a chauvinist.  And he sucks in Oscar and Felix in the best episode of the season.  Other guest stars this season include Dick Clark, Jaye P. Morgan, Hugh Hefner and Let’s Make a Deal host Monty Hall.

When last we left Richard Kimble, “The Fugitive”, at the end of Season One, Volume 2, http://blog.rogersradiointernet.com/cynicalcinema/2008/05/10/there-actually-was-good-tv-once-the-fugitive-season-one-volume-two-810/  he was holed up in a house with two crazy odd-couple friends who were shielding him from the long arm of the law.  The net was closing in on him as the cops had set up roadblocks and a search party in his area.  And then…he escaped.  I was kind of hoping for a cliffhanger ending to that first season, but I guess they didn’t do that in the old days.  They just figured that people would continue to watch if they made a good series.  And they DID make a very good series.  I would call it refreshing if a series did it today.  But this one is from the mid-sixties, so I don’t know what to call it.  I guess I just thought it was nice. 

          But this lack of cliffhangers and continuing story lines becomes a bit of a problem in Season 2.  It was great in Season One when each episode stood on it’s own.  It set up the premise of the show wonderfully, David Janssen was brilliant as Richard Kimble, and the writing was great.  So, OK.  Now you’re in the second season, and the whole premise of the show has now been set up.  Kimble has been wrongly convicted of murder, but managed to escape thanks to a disastrous train accident on his way to death row.  Now he is on the run from the law, searching for the one-armed man who is the real killer.  But now that I’m into this second season, I want more story.  I want to follow his hunt for the one-armed man, and I want to root for him as he gets chased by the law.  The whole premise of the show is one that screams for continuity between episodes, but we still get one-offs, all season long. 

          But of course, those one-offs are still very good.  Season Two of The Fugitive begins with Kimble looking for help from a superstar lawyer played by Ed Begley.  By the way - here’s a hilarious excerpt from a review of this DVD set at  www.tvshowsondvd.com  - or, at least I thought it was hilarious.“15 episodes that include guest stars like Ed Begley (father of Ed Begley Jr.)” Hmmm…no kidding, eh?  But you KNOW nothing is going to come of it, because each episode ends the same way it begins - Richard Kimble is on the move and on the run.  Anyway, the season moves along at a brisk pace, one episode at a time.  In the end, it is compelling TV, but it isn’t the kind of thing where you want to watch several episodes in a row.  Although, that is more than I can say for most television.  One at a time is enough, which means you can watch all fifteen hours of Season Two, Volume One of the Fugitive on fifteen different days, over the course of the next three months, which should be just enough time for Season Two Volume Two to come out.  Volume One comes out tomorrow, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

          One of the worst things you can say about a TV show or movie from the 70s or 60s or even the 1930s and 40s is that it feels dated.  That it doesn’t stand up over time.  That what was once considered classic is stuck, mired, in it’s own era, completely lacking the ability to maintain it’s relevance in today’s world.  And then, every now and again, being “dated” can actually be a good thing.  Such is the case with Hawaii Five-O, a show which may be the classic show that holds up the least over time.  And I love that about it!  It is so cheesy and mired in the seventies that it becomes hilarious to watch.  The Fourth Season of Hawaii Five-O comes out tomorrow, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. 

          Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett must be the most hilariously dated screen character available on DVD right now.  His hair is glorious, in a 1970s pre-Flock-Of-Seagulls sort of way.  This is the most dated hair on TV, next to MacGyver’s mullet.  His delivery is painfully cheesy, the one-liners and the tough guy talk are a cross between Clint Eastwood and Don Johnson, which just doesn’t work.  Well, any more, I guess.  The tough-guy showdowns between McGarrett and the big evil bosses (especially the wooden yet enigmatic Wo Fat, played by Khigh Dheigh) are ludicrous but SO entertaining.  It’s pretty clear to me that on CSI:
Miami, David Caruso is channeling 70s-era Jack Lord.  And for some reason, people still love that show, while I think David Caruso is hilariously over-the-top.  The legacy of the ludicrous cop.  A funny one, I think. 

          Also awesomely dated is that famous theme music.  One of the most familiar tunes in the world, I had never seen an episode of Hawaii Five-O, I couldn’t have identified the theme correctly in any way, but as soon as the first episode started up there it was.  This one’s up there with Bonanza as probably the greatest most recognizable theme music in TV history.  Another hilarious part of the show - prototyping the David Carusos that were to come - is that Steve McGarrett seems to be the only character on the show.  Oh, they’re a team, McGarrett and the other guy…played by James McArthur…what was his name?  Oh yeah.  Danno!  A guy who exists simply as a reason for Lord to utter the line “book ‘em, Danno”.  I’m certain this series was intended to be extremely serious in it’s day, but it has now become so campy as to be awesome.  Watch it next time you’re about to get into CSI:
Miami and look for the comparisons.  Then again, many people don’t get the humour in CSI:
Miami either, so perhaps they’ll watch this and be very entertained.  I know I was.

I have always found the phrase “popcorn movie” to be perplexing.  Why are certain movies referred to as “popcorn movies”?  It seems as though the phrase has come to mean big, massive-budget, mostly brainless summer-blockbuster-type films.  I think the people who came up with the name had this idea:  People who go to these movies shut off their brain for two hours.  And people who shut off their brains eat popcorn.  Ergo, people who go to these movies eat more popcorn.  This must be the path of the logic that goes into the name “popcorn movies”.

But then you have to think - why do people who turn off their brains eat more popcorn?  Does temporary stupidity cause you to want popcorn?  And perhaps it does.  After all, nothing in the world gets a bigger price markup than movie popcorn.  It costs the movie theatre about 10 cents to make a large bag of popcorn, which they sell for seven dollars.  That is a 7,000% markup.  Does anything else get marked up that much?  Other than movie theatre soda and cotton candy?  Yes.  Summer blockbuster movies.  Let’s take, for example, this year’s Iron Man.  The screenplay for this movie might have cost an awful lot - say, $500,000.00?  Maybe.  Who knows, I couldn’t find out how much Jeff Vintar and Stan Lee were paid, or how much Jeffrey Caine was paid for the re-write.  So I guessed high.  And then the budget for the movie is $135,000,000.00.  That is a markup of 27,000%.  Even more than popcorn!  And that is the standard here.  For the most part, summer blockbusters are very thin on script and very large on effects and action and so forth.

And some are even good.  Really, it’s what a director and cast do with a script that makes the movie.  But this markup, I believe, is the real reason these movies are referred to as “popcorn movies”.  Ten cents worth of story and seven dollars worth of flash.  And as the movies move on into sequel after sequel, the markup gets higher and higher.  You might shut your brain off when The Incredible Hulk starts this summer.  You will then go to purchase popcorn, now that your brain is off.  But next year, when you go to the theatre to watch The Incredible Hulk Goes To Anger Management, you may have to shut your brain off before you buy your 15 dollar movie ticket.  And three summers from now when you attend The Incredible Hulk’s Long Slow Painful Stay In Rehab, you may have to shut off the ol’ brain before even watching the trailers.  Of course, by then, movie tickets will be thirty bucks and popcorn will be forty-eight dollars.

Semi-Pro (6/10):  The type of comedy Will Ferrell can do in his sleep, and sometimes does do in his sleep.  The supporting cast is good, although the comedy and story are very thin.  The film has a heart and a historical relevance that make it watchable.

The Eye:  Jessica Alba in a horror remake of yet another Asian frightfest.  Not only has no film since The Ring come close to living up to it’s Asian original, this one also stars Jessica Alba.  Ugh.

Meet The Spartans:  Likely to be the worst movie of the week, and perhaps of the year, Meet The Spartans is done by the same people who did two of the worst movies of all time, Epic Movie and Date Movie.  Steer clear.

The Take:  John Leguizamo and Tyrese Gibson star in a movie about an armored truck driver who survives a hijacking.  Seems like a decent plot, but looks like it could go stupid-Rambo in the second act.

Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour (8/10):  There isn’t enough actual comedy, but this behind-the-scenes look at a cross-country 30-day 30-city tour hosted by Vince Vaughn has some great moments and shows comedians at their essence.  A great watch.

Flawless:  Demi Moore and Michael Caine plot to heist diamonds at the London Diamond Corporation in the 60s.  Could be an excellent heist picture.

Mama’s Boy:  Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) is thirty and still lives at home with his mom, Diane Keaton.  Funny stuff happens.  Judging by the horrible movies with this same plot over the past few years (Failure to Launch, I’m looking at you) and judging by the terrible decisions Diane Keaton has made recently (Mad Money, Because I Said So), this could be a giant pile of crap.  Or not.

The Bronx Is Burning (8/10):  ESPN mini-series about the New York Yankees and their contentious run for the World Series in 1977.  Mixed in with the baseball is the Ed Koch race for mayor, the Son of Sam, and the violence that existed in NYC that very hot summer.  A great watch for baseball fans and non-fans alike.  John Turturro plays Billy Martin, and Oliver Platt is George Steinbrenner.

The Onion Movie:  This might just be the funniest movie out today.  The Onion newspaper and the onion online are fake-news masters, with some of the funniest writing around, and they have assembled a hilarious cast, which will be terrific if they don’t take themselves seriously.  But can Steven Seagal really not take himself seriously?

Weeds Season Three:  Pot-dealing soccer mom is back for third season.  Mayhem and laughs will ensue!

Mannix:  Season One (4/10):  Mike Connors is very good as Mannix, a private detective who works for a giant corporate firm doing battle against a giant corporate crime empire, but the whole show feels very dated.  May have been good in the 60s, but it just doesn’t play today.

Normal:  Three strangers struggle for control as they confront their roles in a tragic accident some years earlier.  Stars Carrie-Ann Moss.  Could go either way.

The Animation Show Volume 3 (7/10):  Although it is hosted by Beavis and Butthead, and put together by Mike Judge, this collection of animated short films is more artistic than crude.  Solid viewing for the art-film people.

Also out tomorrow:

Amateurs, The			American Crude
	Andromeda Strain, The			Chansons D’amour, Les
	Entrance, The			Go Diego Go!: Great Gorilla!
	Kinky Killers			Rescue Me: The Complete Fourth Season
	VeggieTales: Lessons from the Sock Drawer			War of the Living Dead

          Just putting Will Ferrell in a comedy means a few things.  First, it will do decent bank at the box-office at worst, and massive bank at best.  Secondly, even if it sucks, it will feature a few great laughs somewhere in the film.  And Semi-Pro has both.  A decent bank at the box office for a crappy comedy, and some seriously great laughs in an otherwise crappy comedy.  Will Ferrell is Jackie Moon, a one-hit-wonder singer with a song called “Love Me Sexy”, which is kind of funny, but not as funny as it should be.  He made enough money with that song that he is able to buy a team in the fledgling American Basketball Association, the Flint Tropics.  The team is playing in a tiny market, to few fans, and Ferrell is constantly dreaming up bizarre promotions to get more fans out to the games.  Since this is a second-rate basketball league, he is also able to play on the team.  As the owner of the team, he can decide this for himself, and he does. 

          The rest of the team doesn’t seem to resent this, however, because they really don’t care about their careers or the game.  They just want to be minor-level local celebrities, which gets them the occasional free beer and every now and then gets them laid.  Which, for them, is good enough.  They do have a substantial talent on the team, however, in Clarence “Downtown” Withers, a Dr. J type player who changes his name before just about every game.  And when it is announced that the
ABA is going to be merging with the NBA, and that the top four teams in the league will get to join while the others will fold, the Tropics all of a sudden have something to play for.  Inclusion in the NBA, which is everyone’s dream.  So Ferrell hires a loose-cannon ex-NBA player (Woody Harrelson) to help get the team over the hump. 

          In the meantime, he keeps devising these crazy promotional schemes to draw people to the arena to watch the games.  These schemes provide the bulk of the laughs in the film, especially the scene where Ferrell wrestles the bear.  This scene (to start out, anyway) is remarkably underplayed by Ferrell, and really works.  So do a few others, but overall the movie doesn’t.  It doesn’t work because it doesn’t do anything.  It doesn’t go anywhere, it just muddles it’s way through a story we’ve all seen a thousand times - an underdog misfit team decides to play well, and fights their way to glory…with hilarious results.  And in doing so, they throw in a bunch of used-up sports movie cliches from Slapshot, Major League, Bull Durham, and a host of other sports comedies that are much better than this one. 

          In the end, I would actually recommend this movie, because the few laughs that are in there are very good, and because Ferrell, Harrellson and Andre Benjamin (who plays Clarence Withers) all do extremely well with the thin comedy they are handed.  And also because, on some level, this movie is interesting, historically.  Semi-Pro actually seems to feel some empathy and some reverence for the
ABA, which merged with the NBA in 1976 and saw the Spurs, the Nuggets, the Pacers and the Nets join the big league.  And although Semi-Pro seems to think that just having an afro in the 70s is funny, it still manages to find some kind of a heart under the poorly executed comedy.  Not a great movie, but not Ferrell’s worst by a long shot.  Semi-Pro is being released tomorrow, June 3rd, by Alliance Films.

          Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show comes out June 3rd from Alliance Films, and is a must-watch for any aspiring stand-up comedian.  Not only that, it’s a should-watch for the rest of us.  Although Vince Vaughn has never been known as a stand-up comedian, he clearly loves the art, and decided to take four stand-up guys (no pun intended) on a 30-day, 30-city tour of
America.  Comedians Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Brett Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco form the bulk of the nightly show, and Vaughn hosts with the help of some surprise guests each night.  And although some of the guests are not exactly surprises (like Jon Favreau), others truly are (like Dwight Yoakam).  Each of the guest stars does a little skit with Vaughn on stage, and some are terrific.  

          One of the best bits in the movie involves Favreau and Vaughn and Justin Long (Live Free or Die Hard, and the Apple-vs-Mac commercials).  Favreau of course famously wrote Swingers, which launched him (and to a lesser extent Ron Livingston) to stardom, and Vaughn to superstardom.  In Swingers, just in case you’re a guy and somehow, amazingly, have not seen Swingers, Vaughn was the man.  The ultimate cool guy, the one character in a movie that every dude wanted to be.  Every guy wants to be one of two characters.  Either John Wayne in
Rio Bravo, or Vince Vaughn in Swingers.  Sometimes both.  Anyway, Favreau decides to prove how easy it would have been for anyone else in the world to play that same character, and he gets Long to read the lines, right there on stage.  Long’s impersonation of Vaughn in Swingers is, to quote a phrase, “money”.  It ranks up there with either Kevin Pollack or Jay Mohr doing Christopher Walken.  Considering it was off-the-cuff and spontaneous, it’s fantastic. 

          But for the most part, this film is about comedy, and the four main guys who do the tour.  It’s not just joke after joke, although their on-stage acts are filmed and we get to see an awful lot of that.  But we also get to see behind the scenes, on the tour bus with five guys living in close quarters for a month.  And we get to see comedians and their real reactions when they bomb, when they get heckled, how sensitive and paranoid and insecure some of them really are.  We also get to see them with their parents, and we understand how accepting parents must be of a career choice like “comedian”.  (Especially Ahmed Ahmed’s Muslim mother and father, who were initially the least supportive of his career choice, but now are the funniest parents on the tour.) 

          The tour was taking place in the middle of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, and had to be bumped and rescheduled and moved around to accommodate the victims of that disaster.  The guys tour a trailer park that is housing displaced families, and brings the hurricane evacuees out to see the show.  There is a lot more going on in this film than just a bunch of jokes and inane behaviour on a tour bus, and that’s a good thing.  It’s far better and more interesting to see these guys for who they are, to hear their real thoughts, than it would be to just see an hour and a half of standup from a tour.  That being said, however, I was hoping for more of the standup comedy itself on the special features.  I wanted to see the full show of these guys, especially John Caparulo, who I found very funny.  And although there are a few extra skits and a little more comedy buried in the special features, the entire shows aren’t there. 

          A minor complaint, however, since the film itself was not designed to be simply comedic, and works extremely well.  This is a very entertaining, informative, interesting and of course funny show, a funny and captivating group of guys, and a fascinating film experience.  Whether you’re a stand-up fan or not, a Vince Vaughn fan or not, or a documentary buff or not, pick this up.  It’s worth it on a lot of levels.

          Spike Lee made a fairly lousy movie a few years ago.  It was called Summer of Sam and starred John Leguizamo and Mira Sorvino, and it pretty well sucked.  It was all about New York, in the summer of 1977, when Son of Sam was terrifying the people.  And although it was a fairly bad movie, it did one thing very well.  That being the fact that the movie didn’t really focus on Son of Sam at all.  Oh, he was there, killing people with his pistol, and showing up now and again.  But the movie dealt with a bunch of young people doing a bunch of stupid young-people things while the killings just happened to be going on at the same time.  It was a nice device to put the serial killer in the right perspective.  People talked about it, they worried about it a little, but it existed on the periphery.  And a new TV miniseries called The Bronx is Burning does the same thing.  It will be released tomorrow, June 3rd, by Alliance Films, and it’s all about the New York Yankees in the summer of 1977. 

          Now, before I start my review, I must state, for the record, that I am a Red Sox fan.  A big fan.  And I therefore am against everything Yankees-related.  However, I still enjoy John Goodman as The Babe, and I still cry at Pride of the Yankees, and I really enjoyed this miniseries.  I can still revel in the successes and the history of the enemy.  I would love to see an interesting documentary on Rush, or a fascinating retrospective on Coldplay’s career, such as it has been.  And it was with great pleasure that I watched the behind-the-scenes 1977 Yankees season.  Some great actors came together for this ESPN special series, including John Turturro as oft-fired and oft-rehired Yankees manager Billy Martin, and Oliver Platt as oft-insane Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.   

          Now, I must say it’s a bit tough to watch Platt’s Steinbrenner, because he seems to be channeling the “George Stenbrenner” of Seinfeld fame.  And every time he talks, or makes a big speech, I’m always a little surprised when the camera turns away and George Costanza isn’t shaking his head and waving his hand and walking out of the room.  The combustible and crazy relationship between him and Martin forms the dramatic centre of the series, but there are other story lines at play here as well.  The friction between Reggie Jackson and the rest of the team, particularly Thurmon Munson, is a big one.  And then there are the
New York-in-1977 stories that set the Yankees story in context.  The Son Of Sam.  The devastating power blackout.  The hotly contested mayoral race.  And the fires and looting and violence that plagued the streets of the Big Apple that year. 

          Steinbrenner comes off as the villain of the piece, with his craziness and his impossible demands and his need to control everything that goes on within the organization.  Turturro’s Martin, in an odd way, despite his lascivious and fractious behaviour and volatile temper, therefore becomes the hero of the show.  And Reggie Jackson, although in real life his transformation may not have been so dramatic, is the person who grows the most over the course of the season and this six-hour miniseries.  Now, I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying the Yankees won the World Series in 1977.  I think most people who were alive at that time know this.  And those who weren’t, like me, also know this if we are baseball fans. 

          Although me, being a baseball fan, and having six hours to watch, I would have liked to see a little more baseball.  I would have liked to see more players than just Munson and Jackson and Bucky Dent.  I was hoping to learn more about Catfish Hunter, Ron Guidry, and Dock Ellis (who is of particular interest, because on June the 12th, 1970, pitching for the Pirates against the Padres, he threw a no-hitter while completely bombed on LSD.  See - fun baseball stuff.)  Also fun stuff - Graig Nettles, who was with the Yankees that year, said in 1977 “the best thing about playing for the New York Yankees is that you get to see Reggie Jackson play every day”.  Nettles (played by Alex Cranmer) is barely mentioned in the series, but
Jackson is portrayed excellently by Daniel Sunjata as he really was.  More of a Star than a great player, a larger-than-life sports figure.  While exceptionally talented and passionate about baseball,
Jackson was always more of a Star than he was a great player.  He was the Joan Crawford of baseball. 

          But what makes The Bronx Is Burning great is that you don’t need to be a baseball fan to appreciate it, (although it helps), and you don’t need to be a New Yorker either.  You don’t need to have lived through it, and you don’t need to know anything about the city, the summer, the team or the sport to enjoy it.  The actors are very good, the dynamics on the team are believable and rarely stray into the realm of cheesy re-enactment, and the characters are well drawn.  And the Ramones-intensive soundtrack is both awesome and a-propos.  The
Bronx is Burning comes out June 3rd, from Alliance Films, and it is worth the trip to the video store.

          When The Animation Show starts, the first character you see is Butthead.  The second is Beavis.  And while they are not involved in the show itself, and are merely hosting it, you get an idea of what the show is going to be right away.  As my Grade 8 science teacher, Mrs. Walsh, used to say - rude, crude, lewd and socially unacceptable.  The Animation Show Volume 3 is a series of sixteen short animated films, packaged together, that comes out June 3rd courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment. 

          The first short film is called “rabbit”, a bizarre but about two kids who seem intent on murdering small animals.  Everything in the short is labeled.  When they pass a tree, the word “tree” appears beside it.  When they eviscerate a sheep, you see the word “sheep”.  The proceedings are presided over by a tiny little golden “idol”, who has some sort of magic powers, turning a cage into a pie and things of that nature.  He seems to be the god which these children worship, and is convincing them to perpetrate these heinous acts.  And…that’s about it.  Eventually the kids get eaten by bugs.  It’s weird and creepy, but pretty effective. 

          The second one is a strange live-action style animated bit called “City Paradise” about a Japanese swimmer living in a big American city.  The third is called “Everything Will Be OK”, about a stick drawing named Bill and his life.  Again, weird, but it is hilarious and very smart.  I’d go through all the shorts, but there are sixteen and it would be boring.  So I’ll just say this.  Not all the shorts are crude, not all of them are offensive, and not all of them make sense.  In fact, most of them make little sense, but few of them are offensive.      Some of the highlights are “one d”, where the entire world goes about it’s business in one dimension, so sticks talk to sticks and they get into other sticks to drive them to work…all this amid an alien invasion.  Also fun is “learn self defense”, a very short bit about a guy learning self-defense through cheap shots.  Not very good, but fun. 

          Most of these short films are good, and although you get a certain amount of the violent and the belligerent and the profane, that isn’t really what the Animation Show is about.  Really, it’s about art.  Short films, almost by definition, are artsy.  Simply because people make them solely with the intention of creating something cool.  No one ever sees a short film, so you can do whatever you want with it - it isn’t like some major studio is backing you and you need to turn a profit.  I’d be surprised if any short, ever, turned a profit.  But I’m also too lazy to look it up and see if one has.  So this means that when watching The Animation Show, you’re watching stuff that was made by a film maker with the sole intention of doing what he or she wanted, not what he or she thought you wanted to watch.  And if you like actual art, and you’re interested in short bursts of artistic expression, that makes it a wonderful collection.  If not, you can skip this.  And go rent The Lion King again.

          “Mannix” was a TV show from the 60s and 70s.  It seems to be one of those shows that was a success in its time, but it really doesn’t hold up today.  You see, it’s a detective show.  And there have been so many detective movies over the years, and detective TV shows, that for a film or show to cut through and maintain any kind of relevance in today’s world, it has to be something really special.  Think of Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, or Eastwood as Dirty Harry, or yes, even Peter Falk as Columbo.  Each of those characters was so unique and so interesting that people will watch Columbo, Sam Spade, and Harry Callaghan for years to come.  Season One of Mannix comes out today, courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment.  But I would recommend picking up the Dirty Harry Ultimate Collection instead, it also comes out today.  And comes with a free police badge! 

          Detective Joe Mannix is played by Mike Connors, who does a good job.  He has a Johnny Cash late-60s haircut, and looks and talks a lot like the Man In Black.  He is tough and implacable, and direct, and determined and smart.  And he always gets his man.  But then, haven’t we seen that a thousand times before?  He’s not as implacable as Sam Spade, not as tough as Harry Callaghan, less determined than Philip Marlowe, and not as smart as Columbo.  So he exists on this second-tier, forgotten rung of the Private Eye ladder from that era, who just doesn’t measure up to Mike Hammer, let alone the truly classic detective characters on TV and in film.  No knock against Connors here, he was just written that way. 

          And it’s the writing that makes this show seem terribly dated when you watch it now.  Mannix works for a company called “Intertect”, a massive private-detective company.  Which was something that apparently existed in the sixties.  There are virtually no cops in the shows, and although there are very often some heinous crimes, like murder, Mannix doesn’t call the cops for backup, he calls his boss.  And regardless of how many bad guys there are, his boss showing up with a gun forces them all to drop their guns.  Which means that Mannix and the boss, played by Joseph Campanella, are so bad-ass that the two of them are able to surround and outnumber ten bad guys at a time.  And “Intertect”?  Sounds a lot like a company name that is created for a punchline in a modern comedy.  Like “Initech” in Office Space.  And the bad guys always come from something that is cryptically called “the syndicate”.  It is never explained what this “syndicate” actually is, we just take for granted it is a large and powerful evil criminal enterprise.  But then, Joe Mannix is not James Bond. 

          In every episode there is a hot babe.  Almost always a blonde.  And in every episode, there is a femme fatale character.  Usually the blonde.  But Mannix is usually too smart and perceptive to fall for their traps and charms - I guess because he saw the exact same woman every week for seven years.  Your radar would be up after that.  The opening and closing credits are irritating, with this mosaic-style fade-cut where a bunch of squares appear on the screen to make a big picture.  Which would be fine if they didn’t do it every single commercial break as well.  And the theme music is sparse, and really short, which would also be fine if it was just for the opening and closing credits.  But they use it as a sting, as a car-chase theme, as dramatic pause music - always the exact same tune!  Through the whole show!  It’s annoying!   

          The episodes have titles that are hit-and-miss, some of them hilarious.  Skid Marks on A Dry Run.  Warning: Live Blueberries.  Coffin For A Clown.  Funny stuff.  There is always a bevy of hot women walking around Intertect, showing up as secretaries and office runners and so forth.  Which makes me think the casting agent for this show was getting laid a lot on the side by promising walk-on roles to every hot woman who crossed his path.  And even if the bad guys are NOT from “the syndicate”, they still seem to have hired thugs for some reason.  All this means that every single episode of Mannix is exactly the same as every other episode of Mannix.  And that makes the first season tough to watch all the way through - 24 one-hour episodes, the main difference in each being that the hot blonde is played by a different actress. 

          Now, there is one awfully cool special feature on the DVD worth mentioning.  Clips from the “Hard-Boiled Murder” episode of the TV show Diagnosis Murder, where the entire cast of Mannix was reunited for the show.  And by that I mean Connors, Campanella and Peggy Fair, who played Mannix’s secretary.  One of the first African-American women to have a regular role on a major TV series, Fair was very good, but she didn’t appear until Season Two.  So really, there is almost no reason to pick up Mannix Season One.

The Canadian Conservative government has decided that they are the best judges of art and proper taste.  They are trying to pass a bill called “C10″, a bill that would give them the power to approve or deny tax credits for Canadian artists depending on how they, the government, through a committee, saw that art.  Federal Heritage minister Josee Verner says: 

“We are far from censorship here. We are just putting forward an intention from our government and (from) the former Liberal government just to make sure that we will take fiscal measure to make sure that the Canadian taxpayers’ money won’t fund extreme violence, child pornography or something like that.”

The change to the Income Tax Act (Bill C-10) would allow Verner, or a government committee, to deny tax credits to productions deemed offensive and “contrary to public policy.” Members of the Canadian film and television industry have criticized the possible amendment for threatening to deplete Canadian production by casting doubt over its financing.  But although that is the immediate concern, in the long run it could be the least of their worries.  Famous Canadian actors and film makers like Sarah Polley have spoken out against this bill because of censorship.  And although Verner may well believe what she says (or maybe not - she is, after all, a politician), there is something amiss here.  This is a government who under Stephen Harper has stated, almost implicitly, their desire to control the media.  They have been closed-mouth in dealing with the media to such a degree that most Canadians don’t really know their policies on anything.  Which, in effect, is an attempt to censor that media.  So if you are willing to practice indirect censorship with newspapers, what is to stop you from practicing direct censorship once the ability falls into your hands.  And if C10 passes, that ability will be squarely within the power of the Tories.

Now, of course you say - I don’t want my tax dollars going toward child pornography or extreme violence!  And of course, you are right.  But when has this been an issue before?  When has a film director approached the government, hat in hand, asking for a grant so he can make his blood-and-guts child porn epic?  And when has he been approved for this grant?  It has never happened.  So why pass a bill to prevent something that has never happened from happening, unless it is the first step toward censorship?  And although it may irritate us that something like the remake of Prom Night gets a tax break in Canada, preventing that isn’t what the bill is designed to do.  The definition of “offensive material” and “material that is contrary to public policy” seems deliberately vague.  What does that mean, really?  Well, the problem is that it could mean anything.  And it won’t prevent making movies that are lousy, but rather those that are edgy and interesting and perhaps designed to provoke.

The latest example is the movie “Young People F***ing”, a movie which caused a lot of controversy when some prominent Conservative employees were offered free tickets to the screening, resulting in at least one firing.  Can you imagine the Conservatives firing someone because they accepted a free ticket to an advance screening of Indiana Jones?  This is why the whole thing smacks of censorship.  The reason these tax breaks for Canadian art exist is that it is in the best interests of Canada to support our homegrown talent.  (It’s also one of the reasons Graham Greene and Gordon Pinsent still get work.)  But this bill will be counter-productive in a big way.  Not only is it a slippery slope toward the government telling us Canadians what we can and can’t watch, and what is suitable for us, but it will also drive film makers out of Canada.

One of the scariest parts of this bill is the part that says the tax credits for these projects, if they are deemed offensive by these arbitrarily defined guidelines, will be pulled after the projects are completed.  That means if a Canadian film maker wants to push boundaries, and make something daring and provocative, he or she must wait until the project is done to see if the rug will be pulled out from under them.  Sure, you’ve made something artistic, but this committee says it’s “contrary to public policy”, whatever that means, and they take from you the money you needed to get this film done in the first place.  So now, you can never make a film again, because you are massively in debt.  And what kind of bank will finance a loan for a project which may well make it to completion and then have everything taken away, to the point where it can no longer be distributed or have the capacity to make any money?

The government should support homegrown artists and talent.  But they should not dictate how.  This would be like the City of Ottawa cutting an ownership group a tax break so they can bring the CFL back to Ottawa.  The new football team comes in, revitalizes a community, brings in great revenue, is run exceptionally well, and generates money for the city.  More money than they would have made through the taxes they waived.  And then, three years in, as the new team is about to embark on it’s first playoff run, the city all of a sudden reverses it’s decision on that tax break, demands the team pay four million dollars in taxes immediately, and basically forces them out of the league.  (A stretch? - I don’t know, it IS Ottawa City Council.)  And why?  Because they didn’t sign Jason Clermont when they had the chance, and they benched Damon Allen down the stretch.  Or maybe because your star linebacker was caught drunk driving.  Or some such thing - By the way, I assume if Ottawa ever has another CFL team, Damon Allen will come out of retirement to be the QB at the age of 57. 

OK, football digressions aside, the point here is that there are already controls in place to prevent truly offensive and heinous movies and TV shows from being made with the help of Canadian tax dollars.  We will not, ever, as taxpayers, be on the hook for child porn.  There is no reason for this bill except to exert one more facet of government control over Canadians.  And if it causes Canadian artists to censor themselves for fear of losing funding, or worse, to be ruined when everything is taken away, or worst of all, leave Canada completely to ply their trade in another country without such dangerous policies, then we, as Canadians, have all lost.