Cynical Cinema

John Oliver has been just about the best contributor to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show for the last couple of years. With his British accent his words certainly (as he himself says) come with more authority than usual. And his bit last week on Alpaca Farming was sheer genius. John Oliver: Terrifying Times is an hour-long stand-up show from New York City featuring Oliver at his funniest. Well, for thirty minutes anyway. He tends to lose steam toward the end of the show.

Oliver’s first half, though, is brilliant. He talks about the Americans as the next racer in the world-domination relay race that is the world. The British handed the baton to America, and it will soon be America’s turn to hand it to China, who are the anchor leg as the world races toward Armageddon. It’s an absolutely hilarious take on the world and the politics that define it. He brings on Andy Zaltzman, a “scientist”, who does some brilliantly funny work connecting the dots between teen pregnancy and the invasion of foreign countries.

Toward the end, the show slows down, as Oliver begins to talk more about himself and his childhood. This is not his strength. But the first half hour or forty minutes make this DVD very much worthwhile, and the special features are solid. Clips of Oliver’s appearances on The Daily Show, and some more interviews with the hilarious Andy Zaltzman. John Oliver: Terrifying Times comes out Tuesday, August 19th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

In Season Three, Volume One of Perry Mason, out August 19th from Paramount Home Entertainment, Raymond Burr seems to really be hitting his stride. The 50th Anniversary Collection of Perry Mason came out a few months ago, a series of the “greatest episodes” of the series. And it was certainly a star-studded DVD collection - Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, and Bette Davis all make guest appearances. All of those episodes are good, but they are classic more because of the guest stars than because of the actual episodes themselves. For great Perry Mason episodes, look no further than this new DVD set.

Oh sure, there are standard TV-lawyer-drama set-ups in Season Three of Perry Mason. Like the case where Mason has to defend Paul Drake, his right-hand man. And the episodes that involve Mason defending models and beauty pageant winners. (”Beauty pageant” seems so quaint, doesn’t it? This WAS the 1950s, after all. Nowadays these clients would be high-class hookers and porn stars.) The one problem I have with this set is that it is only three discs. Assuming the second half of this season is of a similar length, then the entire third season of Perry Mason would be six discs. Why not put all six together? On one DVD set? I guess it’s just a money thing. But I want to watch more Perry Mason now!

Wayside School is a popular kids’ TV show based on a series of popular kids’ books of the same name. Season One of Wayside School comes to DVD today, August 19th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. The best thing about the DVD is that it comes with the first volume of the books, Sideways Stories From Wayside School. I started flipping through the book as I put on the DVD, and before long I was completely engrossed. Thirty two-page stories from Wayside School, each one about one of the students on the thirtieth-story classroom at the school. You see, the school was supposed to be one floor, with thirty classrooms, but because of a design flaw, it ended up being thirty floors, each with one classroom…anyway.

The TV show features some Grade-A voice talent. Nancy Cartwright (voice of Bart Simpson and Ralph Wiggum, among others) does Maurecia, Mrs. Jewls and Dana. Phil LaMarr (famous from MAD TV) does the voice of Mr. Kidswatter, the principal. Other well-known voice actors include Tara Strong, Jason Marsden, and Terry McGurrin.

By the time I finished the book, I realized I had barely been paying attention to the TV show itself, and two episodes had already gone by. So I began paying attention. Where the book deals with each child in the classroom equally, the TV program focuses more on a few students, like Todd who is always getting into trouble, and Maurecia, who wears a helmet and roller skates at all times. The books are incredibly charming and ridiculous in a kid-logic sort of way, and the TV show comes close to capturing that spirit of silliness and twisted mayhem that the books do so well. With the packaging of Sideways Stories From Wayside School along with Wayside School: Season One on DVD, this is a great pickup for anyone with young kids.

Season One of Transformers: Animated hits DVD today, August 19th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. It picks up right where Transformers Animated: Transform and Roll Out left off a few months ago. Transform and Roll Out was really the first three episodes of this series, episodes that you actually don’t get with this DVD. Five Autobots - Ratchet, Prowl, Bulkhead, Bumblebee and of course Optimus Prime - have found the AllSpark, which is some kind of big deal for Transformers, and they have stashed it safely on Earth. And they now live in Detroit. While in Detroit, they must do battle against numerous foes. Not only do evil Decepticon robots occasionally show up to attack them and snatch the AllSpark, but since their arrival on Earth, they have been enlisted several times to do battle against human comic book Supervillains as well.

Which means that although there is a story line to Season One of Transformers Animated, it is really told in just four episodes. And the other fourteen episodes are filler. Stand-alone episodes where the Transformers fight guys made entirely out of acid, and learn to play Twister. Finally, we get to the end of the season, when Megatron (the leader of the evil Decepticons) manages to trick a friendly Earth scientist into helping him rebuild his own body…ah, I won’t ruin it for anyone. But truly, there are only four episodes you need to watch. Episode 4, episode 6, episode 15 and episode 16. If you want to watch the episode about the guy who dresses up as Robin Hood and robs banks, or the one where Bumblebee stars in a WWE-style event against a human on tons of steroids, then go ahead and watch them all. Otherwise, I have just saved you seven hours.

Seven hours that you would spend, as I did, wondering how the character Prowl managed to, while growing up on the planet Cybertron, acquire ninja skills. Or how come the Decepticons are necessarily evil? The only way this appears to be determined is simply because they keep referring to themselves as evil. All we really know about them is that they hate Autobots and want to fight them. And they seem to be meaner when they fight. That’s about it. There are dozens of supporting characters who show up for one episode at a time, only to be killed off at the end of that episode, who then show up later having only been “presumed” dead. There are dozens of characters who don’t make sense. Like the “bounty hunter” transformer who shows up on Earth to collect the bounty on the head of Optimus Prime. But…how is he the only transformer in the world who knows that the Autobots are on Earth? If the Decepticons sent him to collect the bounty, why wouldn’t they just invade themselves in order to get to the AllSpark? Ah, so many questions with this show. Most of them best left unasked.

This series IS better than Transformers Cybertron, in that it makes a little more sense. A little. And it doesn’t have an opening theme song that drives through my brain like a white-hot railway spike. But this may be considered “faint praise” at best.

White Tuft: The Little Beaver is a Canadian film about White Tuft. Who is a little beaver. As The Little Beaver in English, and La Riviere Aux Castors in French, it’s a family-friendly film that comes to DVD August 19th from Alliance Films. White Tuft is a beaver with an odd white tuft of fur on top of his head. He lives in the Canadian woods, and has to deal with all kinds of wildlife around him. In the tradition of The Bear and Born Free, cameras follow this little beaver around as he makes his way through the world, and then voices are added afterward to make the story appear more like a traditional narrative. In this case the voice belongs to Colm Feore, the consummate Canadian actor.

And while The Little Beaver is certainly entertaining, and a pretty cool movie for nature lovers and families, it doesn’t quite live up to the quality of, say, The Bear. Near the beginning of the film, White Tuft’s dam is destroyed by bears, and he has to make his way through the world, a journey which includes several high-intensity encounters with a pack of wolves, and some charming moments as he befriends a young lynx. But the narrative is what lets this movie down. I like the idea of a narrator taking us through this interesting story. And I like the idea of telling it like it IS a story, and not just a nature documentary. But don’t start attributing emotions to the beaver. Don’t start telling me that the wolf attack is bringing back painful memories of his own father’s demise. This story has enough drama already, without human characteristics being overtly inserted into it. Why not just tell us how White Tuft has never been able to approach girl-beavers since Brown Belly ditched him at senior prom? Come on.

That being said, I really did enjoy The Little Beaver. It really is well-filmed and interesting and remarkably family-friendly. But you may as well watch with the sound off. It’s the only way to thoroughly enjoy it.

On Tuesday, August 19th, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing three DVDs in the Growing Up Animals series. Growing Up Wildcats contains four hour-long episodes about baby…well, wildcats. Although “wild” cats might be the wrong word to use. You see, the four episodes centre around baby lions, baby tigers, baby cheetahs, and a baby black leopard. But none of them are wild. The lions have been rescued from abusive owners near San Antonio. The tigers have been bred in captivity at a wildlife refuge in Texas. The cheetahs are from a wildlife breeding ranch in South Africa. And Edie Falco (of the Sopranos) hosts the special episode about the rare black leopard, also bred in captivity.

Not that this is a problem - each of the cats in these programs relies on their human benefactors for survival. So it isn’t exactly like watching animals growing up in zoos. But after a while, I found myself really wanting to see these animals grow up in the wild. I wanted to see how cheetah parents raised cheetah cubs, not how humans raised cheetah cubs. In the end, this is basically like watching one of those shows about babies on Lifetime Network. Only, the babies grow to be 600 pounds and could conceivably eat people. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that tiger babies are far cuter than human babies.

Growing Up Safari is one of three DVDs released by Alliance Films on Tuesday August 19th. These DVDs are part of the Growing Up series from Animal Planet, a series that follows the development of young animals from infancy to the point where they are re-integrated with their adult populations. Growing Up Safari follows the story of young rhinos, hyenas, zebras and giraffes as they grow up. These four animals are certainly not as cute as those on the Growing Up Wildcats DVD. Rhinos are kind of cute, because as babies they’re just so strange looking. But hyenas have a bad rap simply because they’re pretty ugly creatures, baby zebras look exactly like adult zebras, only smaller, and baby giraffes are so gangly and awkward that it’s hard to consider them cute. It’s also hard to use the word “cute” to describe something that comes into the world seven feet tall.

Also ruining the “cuteness” factor for the giraffe - the fact that after it’s unceremonious introduction to the earth - a drop of ten feet to the ground - it is then covered, head to toe, in a life-giving but certainly disgusting waterfall that consists of like sixty gallons of giraffe afterbirth. There was something about seeing this that I found…disconcerting. As in all the other Growing Up DVDs, we see death, birth and disasters befall these tiny animals, and at times the series can really tug at the heart strings, as when we see the caregiver of a young hyena named Homer have to deal with the loss of his young charge. But again, I watch these episodes feeling like I’m not really learning much about the animals themselves, but more that I am learning about the people who raise them. Which is still interesting, but not as interesting as the animals are.

There are three Growing Up DVDs being released on Tuesday, August 19th, from Alliance Films. They are DVDs from an Animal Planet series that features young, cute animals as they are raised from infancy by humans. Often they are orphaned, and left alone, or perhaps they come from abusive owners and needed to be rescued. The three DVDs, Growing Up Safari, Growing Up Wildcats and Growing Up Arctic are pretty much interchangeable, except that the wildcats are cuter and the safari animals are more interesting. But the best of the three DVDs is Growing Up Arctic. Partly because there may be no creature on Earth cuter than a baby penguin - unless it’s a baby seal. And both those animals are featured on the disc. Also featured are the polar bear (also terribly cute) and the walrus (not so cute, but awfully darn cool).

These are some of the only episodes that take place at zoos - the penguins are hatched at the Oregon Zoo, the polar bear cub is given a chance at life at the Toronto Zoo, and the walrus baby grows up at the Indianapolis Zoo. The baby seal isn’t at a zoo, however, as it gets nursed back to health at the Alaska Sea Life Center. Growing Up Arctic is the best of the three DVDs in that it’s slightly more interesting than the others. But, like the others, it’s just cute, and that’s about it.

I’m a big fan of Cillian Murphy’s.  Since the excellent 28 Days Later, he hasn’t made a single bad movie.  Lucy Liu, on the other hand, has starred in exactly two good movies in her life.  Shanghai Noon and Kill Bill.  Well, make that three good movies.  Because Watching The Detectives is pretty good.  Murphy and Liu have terrific chemistry together, and the script is clever and quick without being overly nerdy.  And this is the type of movie that could easily become terribly nerdy.  You see, it’s about a movie nerd.  And movies about movie nerds tend to be made BY movie nerds, and they become so self-referential and obscure that they can be enjoyed only by OTHER movie nerds.  But thankfully, Watching The Detectives manages to be accessible to regular people as well!

Watching The Detectives, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the works of Elvis Costello, is a song about a woman who, well, watches detectives.  She’s a femme fatale who enjoys messing with people, causing mayhem and then sitting back and watching the results.  “She’s filing her nails as they’re dragging the lake”.  We think at first that it is Cillian Murphy who is “watching the detectives” in this movie.  He is a movie nerd, running a local video store (much like the store in Be Kind Rewind, in that it specializes in hard-to find VHS tapes).  He is watching the world go by, without getting actually involved.  He spends all his time with movies.

Then Lucy Liu blows into his life, turning it upside down.  Her charismatic and on-the-edge craziness snap him out of his daydream of a life, and soon he finds himself breaking into other video stores, facing down the FBI in his back room, and getting into crazier and crazier adventures.  And after a while, we learn that it isn’t Murphy who’s “watching the detectives”, it’s actually Lucy Liu who is the character from the song.  And as Murphy falls for her more and more, and his life spirals more and more out of control, we begin to question her motives, much like we would if we were watching a film noir, like the type Murphy is so obviously into.  But as the movie gets sillier and sillier, it remains very watchable and interesting, thanks mostly to the performances of Murphy and Liu.  Watching The Detectives came out August 5th from Peace Arch Entertainment.

Yes, The Love Boat has returned to DVD, on August 12th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Season One, Volume Two comes out on that day, and boy, was it worth the wait!  It turns out there are twelve episodes on Volume Two, on four discs.  And I know what you’re thinking - why not just throw the whole thing together into one glorious Season One Package?  Well, it turns out that if Paramount had done so, it would be too much Love Boat for just one person.  As it stands, there are many reasons to pick up Season One, Volume Two.  Here they are:

Kathy Bates
Leslie Nielsen
Pearl Bailey
Shelley Long
Monty Hall
Annette Funicello
Frankie Avalon
Pat Morita

I have chosen all those whose names I thought might be sought-after by completists.  Like, if you have every single movie Pat Morita has ever done, all the Karate Kids, Bloodsport III, Karate Dog and all the others, and you find out that Pat Morita appeared on the Pacific Princess Overtures episode of The Love Boat, then you would want to complete your collection, would you not?  You see, this is why I gave Season One Volume Two one more star than I did Season One Volume One.  Because I have a particular affinity for Kathy Bates.  For further guest stars, please check out the links at the bottom.  Oh - but be warned.  Annette and Frankie appear in separate episodes.

Smart People:  Juno’s Ellen Page stars with Thomas Haden Church, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Dennis Quaid in a movie about…smart people.  Who are not so smart at life.  This cast could make this film excellent.

Rogue (6/10):  A killer crocodile goes on a…killing rampage.  And if you watch it knowing full well that it is tongue in cheek, it is very enjoyable.  And bloody.  Not for young kids.

The Art of War II:  The Betrayal:  Wesley Snipes is still making movies!  Well…even though he’s in prison, his movies are still being released.  Like he’s Tupac!  This is a sequel to an absolutely dreadful movie.

Muhammad Ali:  Made in Miami (8/10):  A PBS documentary on Ali’s formative years in Miami.  A must-have for Ali fans and boxing fans, and worthwhile for others as well. 

Meet Bill:  Aaron Eckhardt plays a guy who is a complete wimp, a doormat.   But with the help of a lingerie sales girl and a young boy, he begins to regain his self-confidence.  Making him…two face!  Also stars Jessica Alba, who irritates me, and Elizabeth Banks, who doesn’t.

The American Mall (1/10):  An MTV musical.  And it’s even worse than that description.  Painful, painful, painful.  Skip it.

Felon:  Val Kilmer and Stephen Dorff star in the story of a basically good man who gets sent to prison and has to room with a heinous mass-murderer.  And…hilarity ensues?  I’m just kidding.  They’re serious.

Caroline In The City Season One (6/10):  An early, slightly less irritating Sex And The City, that is surprisingly decent.

CJ7:  Could be very good.  Stephen Chow, director of the excellent Kung Fu Hustle, directs and stars in the story of a father who can’t afford a toy for his son, and picks one up out of the garbage.  It turns out to be a magical toy from outer space.

Dave’s World Season One (4/10):  Harry Anderson stars in a sit-com that’s exactly like every other sitcom ever made.  But he IS coming to Ottawa to do stand-up at the ex on Friday.

The Secret:  David Duchovny and Lili Taylor star in a movie about a mother who transfers her soul to the body of her teenage daughter so she can remain close to her husband.  Could be really incestuously creepy.

South Park Complete Eleventh Season (8/10):  One of the funniest seasons yet, with some of the best episodes yet.  The Easter Bunny episode is an absolute must-see.

The Baker:  A professional hitman is living on the edge…ah, whatever.

Also out:

Dick:  The Devil Dared Me To
Fast Track:  No Limits
The Killing of John Lennon
The Wire:  Complete Fifth Season
DC Super Heroes:  The Filmation Adventures
The Duchess of Langeais
Forget About It
Roxy Hunter and the Mystery of the Moody Ghost
Toopy and Binoo:  Toopy Goes Bananas
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation

Next week:

Street Kings
Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day
Camp Rock
Dexter:  The Complete Second Season
Gossip Girl:  The Complete First Season
Prom Night
The Scorpion King 2:  The Rise of a Warrior
The Babysitters
Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Complete First Season
House:  Season 4
The Deal
Her Best Move
The Riddle
Iseeyou.com
Voice
Diana:  Last Days of a Princess

Muhammad Ali: Made In Miami is a PBS documentary that comes out today, August 12th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. It deals with the Greatest’s time in Miami, which was really the place which was the starting point of his career. He went there to train with Angelo Dundee, the man who would be his trainer and mentor throughout his career. The movie talks about the racism that Ali (then Cassius Clay) and other black men had to deal with in the city. It takes us through his Miami years thoroughly and compellingly in a packed sixty minutes.

His first title fight with Sonny Liston, when Clay sounded off in interviews before fighting the world’s most dangerous man. “Ain’t he ugly?” He asks. And he ends up being right on the money, when Liston tries to blind him as soon as he starts losing the fight. Liston has come from prison, where he was as feared as he is in the boxing ring. But the one guy no one in prison (even Sonny Liston) wants to fight is the guy who’s squirrels-in-the-banana-house crazy. And Cassius Clay, with his boastful, over the top interviews and afraid-of-nothing personality, came off as certifiable nuthouse material. And Liston, in the end, succumbed to that intellectual warfare for which he was definitely not prepared.

The movie goes on to detail Clay’s relationship with Malcolm X, the split that occurred in the Nation Of Islam, and his casting off of his “slave name” to assume the moniker of Muhammad Ali, a name bestowed upon him by Elijah Muhammad as a way of pushing Malcolm X further out of the Nation. The movie continues through Ali’s second fight with Liston, the one where many boxing historians think Liston threw in the towel, and of course goes right up to his refusal to fight in Vietnam. An incredible document of the most important athlete the world has ever seen, Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami is more than worth picking up on DVD.

I’m watching American Mall right now and my brain hurts. My whole body hurts from being so tense in the ball into which I have curled myself. There is no word I could use to describe this movie other than “painful”. This is a film brought to DVD today, August 12th, by Paramount Home Entertainment, who I don’t hold responsible for this, and by the producers of High School Musical, who I DO hold personally responsible for my current state of agony. This travesty to popular culture is referred to as “a 2008 MTV Original Musical Movie”. Which begs the question for me:

Who, exactly, is the MTV target audience? Judging by The Hills and A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, it is vain, airheaded twenty-something high maintenance bimbos who care more about their hair and their last date than they do the war in Iraq and the state of the environment. That is, if they have heard of Iraq. Or the environment. Judging by Cribs and My Super Sweet Sixteen, it is vain, airheaded seventeen-year-old high maintenance bimbos who care more about the latest shade of nail polish and how cute Zac Efron looked on that Rolling Stone cover than they do about the presidential election or health care policy. Judging by the abundance of Ashlee Simpson and Hilary Duff shows, it’s vain, airheaded 12-year-old high maintenance bimbos who care more about High School Musical and the cute guy who’s friends with their older brother than they do about their grades or any constructive extra-curricular activities.

And judging by The American Mall, their audience is a bunch of bedridden, shallow, airheaded seven-year-old future sluts with the collective IQ of a potato. There is one character in this movie who uses the phrase “wait - backspace!” at least six times. The only movie in the world more idiotic, with a worse message for young girls, is Bratz. The only movie ever made that is more formulaic is Busty Backdoor Babes Volume 112. (Volume 111 actually featured one girl who was NOT a babe - surprise! And that makes it more unexpected and original than this garbage.) And there may not be another movie experience more painful than this one. Well, discounting any movie “starring” Paris Hilton.

The main message of this movie, as I understand it, is that a lovely young girl works at a mall for her lovely young mother. Who looks to be seven years older than her daughter. She has been accepted to university, but she isn’t excited about it, because she wants to be a rock star. And who doesn’t? But she meets a guy - who also wants to be a rock star! Amazing coincidence! And they fall in love! (With him listening to her through a wall, and singing along, and peeping through windows, like an uber-creepy Phantom of the Opera.) But will mom understand that she doesn’t want to go to college? Or that she can become a rock star overnight if the right person just happens to walk by? Will she and her new love form the band that will set the world on fire? OF COURSE THEY WILL.

There are several supporting characters. The star girl’s shallow slutty friends, and the star guy’s lazy stoner friends. Then, there is the Evil Bitch Girl who runs the mall even though she is clearly sixteen years old. Her daddy owns the mall, and she walks over people, and she just wants daddy’s approval and she hates everyone else and she’s so horrible! She’s going to tear the happy couple apart! She’s going to close the good girl’s store! She’s going to…drive me absolutely insane! But she’s not the only one. Every character in this movie is either painfully ordinary or agonizingly irritating. Every scenario is cliched and stupid. And the musical scenes? Enough to make me suffer skin failure.

If you pick up The American Mall, you will be willingly subjecting yourself to the 100 worst minutes on DVD this week. And if your young daughter specifically asks for it, that is great. That will indicate to you that she is already careening down a terrible path, and it’s time to do some serious parenting. She’s headed for almost certain disaster in life, and you might actually have time to stop it. Here’s step one. Don’t let her rent this movie. Rent Brokedown Palace instead and make her watch it. Step two is up to you.

Harry Anderson is coming to the Super Ex here in Ottawa on August 15th. He’ll be hitting the Super Stage at 8:00, doing his stand-up comedy act, which is quite funny. I can only assume this is part of a tour he’s on to promote the First Season of Dave’s World, out on DVD August 12th from Paramount Home Entertainment, which is not-quite funny. And it’s not-quite good. There are two things that I look for in a TV series on DVD. One is originality. Is this series something I have never seen before? Does it feel like something interesting? Or is it just the same old characters in the same old situations? And secondly is relevance. Does the series stand up over time? Is it contemporary? Can I watch it now and not feel like I’m mired in 1993?

And the answer to both questions, in this case, is no. Dave’s World is just not relevant or original. It has moments, and Harry Anderson is genuinely a funny guy. But he still plays the same character played by Ray Romano on Everybody Loves Raymond and Kevin James on King of Queens and so many other guys on family comedies. The lovable, foolish dad whose wife is gorgeous and smart and way above what his standards should be. That wife, also a cliche, is played by DeLane Matthews, who is gorgeous and smart and totally usual. His friends are Ken (Shadoe Stevens), who is a player obsessed with his hair, and Sheldon (Meshach Taylor) who is obsessed with his ex-wife. Then there are the peripheral characters like Ken’s ditzy secretary and the cute little kids who…go to school…and eat.

In short, there is absolutely nothing about Dave’s World that doesn’t feel like a pale imitation of something that we’ve all seen a thousand times. This is what sit-coms did for a long time. They would find a popular, funny stand-up comedian, and then they would cram him into this exact sit-com template, and see if it flew. What they never understood was that it was the supporting cast that meant everything. Seinfeld was genius because all three supporting cast members were unique and original. Everybody Loves Raymond was made that much better by the presence of his gigantic brother Robert, a totally unique sit-com character. Dave’s World has none of that. And so it isn’t that good. It’s barely mediocre.

Do check out Harry Anderson when he comes to town on August 15th. But skip Season One of Dave’s World when it comes to town August 12th.

I was very surprised when I started watching Caroline In The City. That show was actually GOOD! Like, funny and witty and GOOD! Why did I remember it differently? Was it because my mom watched it, and I assumed everything my mom watched was lame? Perhaps. Although I think it is more likely that it was a romantic-comedy-TV show, and that in itself was enough to drive me nuts when I was eight and this show first hit the air. Eight year olds HATE romantic comedies. But the show was actually GOOD. It’s no classic, but it certainly exceeded my expectations.

Lea Thompson is Caroline, a cartoonist who writes a syndicated comic strip (Caroline In The City). For all intents and purposes, she is the Sarah Jessica Parker character from Sex And The City, only with a comic strip instead of a column. In fact, this show is virtually the same show. There are two main differences. One is that there are two women and two men in the central roles, instead of four women. And the other is that Caroline wasn’t as painfully self-satisfied as Sex. Where Sex seems to believe it is incredibly clever, and telegraphs it’s “smart” dialogue from miles away, Caroline seems a little less smug. Of course, Caroline is flawed, and obsessive, and neurotic and flaky. All the characteristics of…every central character in every sitcom ever.

The other characters are all played by good actors too - Eric Lutes as Del, her on-again-off-again boyfriend who is (like so many characters in so many sit-coms) obsessed with his hair. Amy Pietz as Annie, her across-the-hall neighbour (a common sit-com character) who is (like so many other sit-com characters) a total slut. In fact, the only character who doesn’t come across as though he came from a sit-com- character stencil kit is Richard, played by Malcolm Gets. Caroline’s colorist, he is the one person in this series that elevates it from totally run-of-the-mill to being actually good. The closest character I can think of to Richard in any other sitcom would be Matthew (Andy Dick) in Newsradio. But then, Richard is Matthew with a hard edge, a bitter personality, a caustic wit and a scathing vocabulary. OK, he’s nothing like Matthew. He just looks a little like Andy Dick in this series. (Sorry, Malcolm Gets).

Really, upon watching this show again, I realized it shouldn’t be good. It should be trite, painful and run-of-the-mill at best. But with Richard holding down the fort, and the better-than-average actors playing the other cliched parts, Caroline in the City is actually good. Seriously. The First Season comes out today, August 12th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

South Park recently came out with a DVD release of their Imaginationland trilogy, three episodes from Season Eleven that were crammed together on DVD as though they were a full-length movie. I took issue with Imaginationland because it sucked. As a full-length movie it sucked, and as three individual episodes it sucked. Those three episodes are a part of South Park: Season Eleven, which comes out on DVD today, August 12th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. In that review, I suggested that the creators of South Park may well be running on empty. That the well has run dry for them. And, in recent seasons (and the Imaginationland trilogy) this looks to be true.

However, Imaginationland is only three of fourteen episodes in Season Eleven. Of the other eleven episodes, there are two bad ones, six good ones, and three classics. Worth skipping is the Hillary Clinton episode, which is juvenile and painful. You see, apparently just doing offensive things to Hillary Clinton is in itself funny…although the end of the episode is almost worth it, to hear Cartman explain how his intolerance of Muslims saved America. A solid moment in an otherwise mean-spirited and stupid episode. The other bad one is a silly, juvenile and unfunny episode about Mr. Garrison (now Mrs. Garrison) discovering that he (she) is a lesbian and fighting to save a lesbian bar. There just isn’t anything smart or funny in that episode at all.

The good ones involve a Night of the Living Dead spoof involving the homeless, an outbreak of lice at the school, an episode where Stan’s dad says the “N” word on Wheel of Fortune, a spoof of King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters that involves Stan’s dad competing with Bono for the crown of “who took the world’s biggest crap”, an episode about the Guitar Hero phenomenon, and one about a list the girls have made at school that ranks the best-looking boys. All of these are very good, smart, and worthy inclusions in the South Park oeuvre.

The three classic episodes, however, are so much better. The episode where Cartman pretends to have Tourette’s Syndrome in order to swear as much as he likes, whenever he wants to, is fantastic. He attempts to turn his “courageous” battle with Tourette’s into an appearance on national TV, where he can go on as much as he likes, and as offensively as he likes, about Jews. Mostly to enrage Kyle. Not only is it a reasonably accurate and (considering it’s South Park) sensitive portrayal of actual people with Tourette’s, but it’s also a good satire of media culture, and funny all the way through.

The second classic episode involves Cartman playing a practical joke on Butters that backfires in a huge way. While Butters is asleep, Cartman takes a picture of him in a compromising position, to show people that Butters is “gay”. But the picture would more accurately paint Cartman as gay, and he begins to lose his mind trying to find the picture, thinking that Kyle has it and is planning to show everyone. Meanwhile, Butters’ parents, thinking he is exhibiting gay tendencies, pack him off to a camp for bi-curious youngsters to have him “fixed”. This episode is a fantastic skewering of the Christian panic over homosexuality, and also involves some terrific Cartman moments.

And the other classic episode, the best on the disc, is the one where Stan starts to question Easter. This is something I myself have questioned many times. What, exactly, is the connection between Jesus dying on the cross, and being resurrected, and rabbits and eggs? Painting eggs and chocolate rabbits and the Easter bunny are even more removed from the religious reasoning for Easter than are Santa Claus and Christmas. In this episode, Stan’s questioning of Easter uncovers a vast, Da Vinci Code - style conspiracy involving the Vatican, the American Christian League, and a shadowy secret society that protects the secret of Easter. This episode, (I don’t think I’m giving too much away here) also involves the funniest killing-of-Jesus scene in TV history. Although, I can only assume it’s the only killing-of-Jesus scene in TV history.

Five terrible episodes, six good episodes, and three fantastic episodes make this DVD, like the series itself, hit-and-miss. But overall, it’s still a hit, and it has not thrown in the towel. The three classic episodes alone make this DVD a must. South Park: The Eleventh Season comes out on DVD today.

Dark City is a dark movie.  Amazing, eh?  Go figure.  But the filming is dark, the scenery is dark, and for that reason I found it very confusing when I first watched it.  It was really difficult to follow the action and to figure out what, exactly, was going on.  I still enjoyed the movie, and I realize that it was intentionally obscure and difficult to follow.  But the constant darkness ended up, by the end of the film, being oppressive.  And the action scenes don’t need to be so difficult to follow.  Which is why a movie like Dark City is one of those movies for which Blu-Ray was created. 

I recently picked up Dark City on Blu-Ray from Alliance Films, when it came out on July 29th.  It is a remarkable movie from Alex Proyas, the director of The Crow and I, Robot, about a city that never sees the sun, and it’s controlled by a mysterious shadowy group of pale-faced men in trenchcoats who mess with the inhabitants in some kind of bizarre science experiment.  The story is decent, the action is decent, but it’s the setting and the atmosphere that make this movie fantastic.  Everything about this movie, even Keifer Sutherland’s over-acting as a weirdo doctor, is unsettling.  Jennifer Connelly, who plays a nightclub singer, is sultry, sexy, smoking hot, and still - unsettling. 

And everything about that atmosphere and the setting comes through twenty times clearer and freakier with Blu-Ray.  What was already a really cool, strange, creepy movie is just that much cooler, stranger and creepier.  It was already very good, but on Blu-Ray it verges on classic.  Now we just wait for Terry Gilliam’s Brazil to come out on Blu-Ray as well.

Nim’s Island:  The fantastic Abigail Breslin stars with the hit-and-miss Gerard Butler and the formerly-fantastic, now hit-and-miss Jodie Foster in a fantasy story for children.

Doomsday (4/10):  If you have never seen The Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome, The Last Boyscout, Braveheart, Waterworld, Mission Impossible or Terminator, Children of Men, 28 Days Later or Outbreak, then you may really enjoy this movie.

The Counterfeiters:  A highly-anticipated foreign release that got some Oscar love.  German movie about concentration camp prisoners who were forced to counterfeit British money and documents.

Starship Troopers 3:  Marauder:  There have been three Starship Troopers movies.

Tai-Chi Master (8/10):  A terrific mid-nineties kung-fu movie starring Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh.  Very, very good.

Watching the Detectives:  Cillian Murphy and Lucy Liu star in a movie based on the title of an Elvis Costello song.  He is a film-noir buff who gets lured into a real film-noir world by femme fatale Liu.

The Executioner’s Song (9/10): A classic TV movie, shown in two parts in 1982, that has been condensed a little for this “director’s cut” release.  Tommy Lee Jones is wonderful as a killer who insists upon being executed.  True story.

Queen Sized:  Nikki Blonsky plays an overweight high school student who campaigns for prom queen despite the mean kids.  You might remember Nikki Blonsky from Hairspray, where she played an overweight high school student who appeared on a dance show despite the mean kids.  There will likely be more of these until Nikki Blonsky becomes too old to convincingly portray a high school student.

Star Trek The Original Series:  Season Two (6/10):  William Shatner leads a cast of over-actors into Enterprise-themed battles with Klingons and their ilk.  (The klingons look nothing like the new ones.)  This is the season with the fabled (for some reason) Tribbles episode.

Duck:  Yet another movie about dystopian Los Angeles.  I am so SICK of dystopian Los Angeles!  Why can’t someone make a movie about dystopian New York, or something?  Oh, right.

Back At The Barnyard:  When No One’s Looking (7/10):  A TV series for kids based on the moderately successful movie Barnyard.  The TV series is much better than the movie.

Triloquist:  Two teen orphans go on a murderous crime spree across the country with their ventriloquist dummy.  Comes from Dimension Extreme, so it could well be very gory and bloody.

Also out:

Ben Ten Season Four
Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Guest
My Brother is an Only Child
The Wager
The Pledge
The Unwinking Gaze

Next week:

Smart People
The Art of War II:  The Betrayal
CJ7
Meet Bill
Felon
The Secret
The Baker
Rogue (6/10)
Dick:  The Devil Dared Me To
Fast Track:  No Limits
The Killing of John Lennon
South Park:  The Complete Eleventh Season (8/10)
The Wire:  Complete Fifth Season
DC Superheroes:  The Filmation Adventures
Dave’s World:  Season One
Caroline in the City:  Season One
The American Mall
The Duchess of Langeais
Forget About It
Roxy Hunter and the Mystery of the Moody Ghost
Toopy and Binoo:  Toopy Goes Bananas
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation

Rhona Mitra is magnificent. She is gorgeous, tough, a good actress and…well…gorgeous. And yet, she has really not been the superstar many had predicted she would become. In the last few years she has had bit parts in horrible movies like The Number 23 and good ones like Shooter. And she has starred in one movie that really, really sucked, Skinwalkers. It seems to me that Doomsday is a movie designed as a star vehicle for her, so she can become the next big hot movie star. But it may never happen for her. For the first half hour watching this movie, my girlfriend kept asking - “is that the girl from Underworld?” and I had to say no, that’s Kate Beckinsale. Or, “is that the girl from Van Helsing?” And I have to say no, that is also Kate Beckinsale. You see, Rhona Mitra does indeed look a lot like Kate Beckinsale. And that actually is a problem.

It’s mostly a problem because she is basically playing Kate Beckinsale. In Underworld and Van Helsing. And even that would be fine, if Doomsday wasn’t ripping off so many movies itself. Doomsday comes out today, August 5th, from Alliance Films. It’s basically Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome crossed with The Road Warrior crossed with Mission: Impossible crossed with Children of Men. With some medieval cliches thrown in. The movie starts with a virus that is killing thousands of people in Scotland. The military shuts down basically the entire country, and builds a wall around it. Trapped inside are the people and the virus, left to die horribly on their own. Of course not everyone dies, and when the virus (the “Reaper” virus - straight out of Blade II?) re-appears, the government must send someone into the quarantine zone to find a cure.

That someone is Rhona Mitra, who takes her all-star Mission: Impossible team into the walled-off area. Very quickly, they run afoul of a gang of baddies straight out of Mad Max. There is no real reason for these bad guys to attack them, but this is where the story has to go. The spiky hair, the motorcycles, the buses, the carrs, the lunatics, the face-paint and the evil women and men create many scenes out of the Road Warrior, including some crazy high-speed chases on the abandoned highways. Now, I’m not one of those people who searches for inconsistencies in movies so that I can complain about them. So when one leaps out at me, it has to be a pretty big error on the part of the continuity people. If you’re in a high-speed chase in a luxury sports car, and a bad guy coming the other way smashes a giant hole in your windshield with a bat, and then you drive that car through a bus that then explodes as you come out the other side, your windshield should really not still be intact. This is something they really should have noticed. I mean, I did.

Civilization behind the wall has devolved, and of course half of it has devolved into Mad Max, run by a madman named Sol. The other half, run by Sol’s father Kane (Malcolm McDowell), is at war with the Mad Max crew. When Mitra escapes her capture at the hands of Sol, she ends up captured by Kane. Who lives in a medieval castle on the other side of the quarantine zone. HIS people don’t have punk haircuts and face paint and facial piercings, but they DO dress up in knight’s armour and feudal costumes. And of course, they enjoy watching gladiator combat. And of course they send in Mitra to engage in said combat. And of course, being the bad-ass that she is, she wins her fight against the crazy soldier in chain mail with a giant mace.

Doomsday is certainly not for children - there are some awfully gory scenes. And it also isn’t for animal lovers. Rabbits, cows, all kinds of animals get squished, crushed, blown up, and shredded. But the biggest problem with the movie is the blood and guts and gore. It’s the fact that nothing in the movie is original. At all. The only thing this movie has that I haven’t seen in another film before is Rhona Mitra’s ass in tight pants. And while that is a magnificent original feature of Doomsday, it doesn’t make up for the trains and buses and motorcycles from the Road Warrior, the characters from Thunderdome, the gladiator movie cliches, the blood spatter on the screen and futuristic vision from Children of Men, the Gimp from Pulp Fiction, and finally, amazingly, a scene ripped off from The Last Boyscout! Mitra at one point really, honestly, channels Bruce Willis in The Last Boyscout. “If he touches me again, I’ll kill him where he stands.” Not joking.

Then again, Doomsday is not awful. It actually takes the best parts of each movie it rips off, and Rhona Mitra is good about taking off that bulky suit and getting into her tight workout clothes right away. Mitra deserves to become a star. She is spectacularly gorgeous and a very good actress. But this isn’t the movie that will make her that star. The movies that make people stars are the ones that are original. Doomsday will not do for Mitra what Underworld did for Beckinsale. And it won’t do what Mad Max did for Mel Gibson, or Die Hard for Bruce Willis. At best, it is a solid indication of what she can do and who she can become. And at best it’s a reasonably entertaining movie for people who have seen very few other movies in their lives.

When I first started watching Rogue, the killer-crocodile movie out next Tuesday, August 12th, from Alliance Films, I was struck by the beauty of the scenery. Later, I was amazed at the quality of the filming. The killer crocodile is actually fairly realistic. Most of these killer-monster movies have a really cheesy, blue-screen monster that looks nothing like a real sabretooth tiger, or mammoth, or whatever it is. Or, they’re massive-budget, Jurassic Park type films with super-realistic monsters and dinosaurs. And Rogue falls somewhere between Mammoth and King Kong in terms of realism. Which is a pleasant surprise. The cinematography, the realism of the monster itself, and the fact that you can actually SEE it throughout the film make Rogue stand out from other cheesy schlocky monster movies.

And yet, the script is very much the same as other monster movies. At the beginning, the crocodile eats a big wildebeest. And then a bunch of tourists venture into it’s habitat. There are scared ladies who panic and freeze and put everyone else in danger. There are bad guys who get eaten by the beast, thereby saving the tourists from further irritation. There are stupid men who push little girls out of the way to go first in escaping and of course meet their well-deserved fate. There are smart guys and tough chicks and smart chicks and tough guys and kids and a dog. I bet that the dog, the kid, the smart guy and the tough chick are the ones who are left alive at the end of this movie…I was wrong. I won’t tell you which one dies, because I actually want people to watch this movie.

I couldn’t figure something out throughout the film though. There was so much cheese in it, and so many silly cliches, that I couldn’t tell whether it was just standard monster-movie idiocy or whether they were trying to be ironic and lampoon the monster movies of the world to a degree. The crocodile’s jaws make funny noises when they snap shut. Like that sound jar lids make when they are opened for the first time and that little freshness-seal button pops up. There is a LOT of blood, and some pretty gruesome death scenes. And of course there are all the characters who come straight from other monster movies. And I didn’t really know until the movie was already over. In the final credits. The song playing during the final credits - “Never Smile At A Crocodile”.

Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile
Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin
He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skinNever smile at a crocodileNever dip your hat and stop to talk awhileNever run, walk away, say good-night, not good-dayClear the aisle but never smile at Mister Crocodile
You may very well be well bred
Lots ot etiquette in your head
But there’s always some special case, time or place
To forget etiquette
For instance:
Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile
Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin
He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skin
Never smile at a crocodile
Never dip your hat and stop to talk awhile
Never run, walk away, say good-night, not good-day
Clear the aisle but never smile at Mister Crocodile

You know, from the Peter Pan soundtrack. And then I finally knew - it really WAS meant to be ironic! This was the big wink at the end of the movie that proved the film makers’ intentions. The movie was supposed to be cheesy and silly. And I would let people watch the movie and figure this out for themselves, but I assume that most people turn the DVD off for the credits. And as such they may be left with the confused feeling I myself had until I heard that song. So here’s what I suggest. Watch Rogue. Enjoy this movie. And take it all with a grain of salt. A grain of highly-entertaining, totally brutal and fun-filled salt.