FilmMonthly » lewicky.andrew

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

lewicky.andrew — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 00:16:12 +0000

William S. Burroughs was, arguably, one of the most interesting figures of the 20th Century. I will freely admit that he was a major influence on me – I read most of his novels in my formative years, devoured Ted Morgan’s 1990 biography Literary Outlaw, and even wrote a play about Burroughs’s little misadventure in Mexico in 1951, in which he put a bullet in his wife’s head – an incident which, ironically, he always claimed is what made him a writer in the first place.
So, it was with great expectation and excitement that I received a copy of William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, Yony Leyser’s 2010 documentary about the father of the Beats, the godfather of punk, a man who has had more influence on pop culture and the world you live in now than you would ever suspect. I’m glad to report that this Burroughs fan-boy was not disappointed by the documentary. In fact, if you’re a fan of Burroughs, this is an absolute must-own piece of his legacy. If you’ve never heard of him, then this is the perfect primer and introduction. True, the film mostly deals with Burroughs after the incident event in September 1951. If you’re fan, you already know the story of his early years. If you’ve never heard of him, here is all you need to know and more.
The documentary is divided into rough chapters, covering the Burroughs phenomenon, starting with the simplistic sketches of the man as Beat Pioneer, then gradually deepening, through his literary work, his relationships, his 80s renaissance as the Eminence Gris of the Punk Rock world, and his later years in Kansas. But it’s clear from the beginning that Burroughs was the original outsider artist, unapologetically a gay junkie from his literary beginnings. Although Gore Vidal published his famous gay novel, The City and the Pillar, in the late 40s, the big difference was that Vidal’s novel treated its anti-hero, Jim Willard, with a sort of arm’s-length disdain. Willard never admits to being homosexual, despite what happens to him in the novel and, ultimately, he suffers the required fate of gay characters of the era – self-destruction. In Burroughs’s work, everyone is self-destructive, but everyone is also liberated.
What also sets this documentary apart is the sheer breadth of material and interview subjects. Leyser had access to a wealth of Burroughs archival footage, including interviews and home movies, and the obligate talking heads are famous in their own rights – John Waters, David Cronenberg, Peter Weller (who also narrates), Patty Smith, Iggy Pop, Amiri Baraka, Jello Biafra, Laurie Anderson, and Genesis P-Orridge. Central to the narration, though, is James Grauerholz, who came to Burroughs as a fan-boy, then spent the rest of Burroughs’s life as his lover, secretary, literary executor and, quite possibly, the man who kept him alive as long as he lived, which was well into his 80s. This is perhaps the greatest irony of all – that this junkie addict who did everything possible to kill himself managed to outlive most of the original beats, and quite a few of the original punks.
The DVD presentation itself is beautiful, and Oscilloscope Laboratories is a distributor worth keeping an eye on. Bonus features are extensive, including deleted scenes, Burroughs home movies, pieces on his artwork and visit with Sonic Youth, and much, much more. Also, I wouldn’t ordinarily gush about DVD packaging, but the presentation itself is amazing. Made of recycled materials, and yet avoiding the feel of cheap, the single DVD is presented in an 8-panel fold out with slipcase that includes gorgeous artwork, and bonus interviews with Richard Hell and David Byrne. All around, it’s a classy presentation worthy of something that the Criterion Collection would put out, but without their hefty premium price tag.
So, summary. If you love Burroughs, you need this. If you’ve never heard of him, you should have, and this is the perfect place to start. We lost him nearly fourteen years ago. William S. Burroughs: A Man Within brings him back to his well-deserved place as a pioneer and a visionary – every criticism he had of American society from 1951 until his death is still weirdly, appropriately accurate, and they need to be heard again. And again.

The Seekers Guide to Harry Potter

lewicky.andrew — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:30:25 +0000

Dr. Geo Athena Trevarthen, who teaches at the University of Edinburgh, developed and teaches a course on the symbolism in the Harry Potter series of books, and Reality Entertainment has now released a direct-to-DVD version of her lessons. Keep in mind that this documentary is not affiliated in any way with JK Rowling, Warner Bros., the books or movies – but that its creators probably believe a bit more in the literal magic in the Potter series than the average muggle reader or film-goer, and this is its downfall.
There is some interesting information presented here, particularly Trevarthen’s analysis of how Rowling has filled the books with various arcane symbols and archetypal themes, and it is interesting. Unfortunately, what we get is maybe twenty minutes of information rattling around inside an eighty minute box, and the whole production is extremely pretentious and entirely too self-important. This might have been interesting had the producers chosen to just film Trevarthen in the lecture hall – she does have some charisma, and clearly knows her material. Instead, we get a minute or two of Trevarthen, followed by absolutely laughable footage of her twirling a sword around in the highlands, or by some interminable time-lapse footage of the streets of Edinburgh, or some equally meaningless and overwrought visual drivel accompanied by an annoying new-agey soundtrack. It’s a shame, because Rowling wrote the books while living in Edinburgh and, while Trevarthen spends a little bit of time pointing out places that may have inspired locations in the books, it’s not enough.
This is one case where I suspect that the book is better than the movie, and from what I can gather (I haven’t read it) Trevarthen’s book is probably worth a look. This DVD adaptation, however, is not.

“The Event” (2010)

lewicky.andrew — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 23:59:03 +0000

I never became a fan of Lost or 24, the former because something in the style and the characters put me off from the beginning; the latter because it was too gleeful of a fascist wet dream with no moral compass at the center. The Event (NBC Monday nights, after my current favorite show, Chuck) is clearly intended as the heir-apparent to the above two shows but, if the pilot is any indication, will incorporate all of the action and intrigue of 24 with the WTF? factor of Lost. Not to mention that most of the characters are just a lot more likeable.
It’s impossible to discuss the opening of the show without tossing spoilers around left and right, so be warned: HERE BE SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen the pilot yet and don’t want it ruined, stop reading here and come back after you’ve watched.
Okay.
So…
Just us now, the ones who don’t mind the spoilers? Good. The Event begins with a bang, literally, as we’re thrown right into the middle of chaos via a news crew camera. Something is going on. Something big and nasty, and we have absolutely no idea what, except that it is clearly disastrous. Nuclear bomb? Incoming asteroid? 2012 arrived early? This teaser leaves all of those possibilities open before we jump back in time twenty-three minutes to meet Sean Walker (Jason Ritter, seen as Jeb Bush in Oliver Stone’s W), who is rather ignominiously rousted from an airplane restroom by a flight attendant because the plane is about to take off. We keep returning to Sean on the plane throughout the episode – did I mention that, as we first see him, it becomes clear that a buttload of Federal agents are racing desperately to the scene to stop the plane? To the writers’ credit, my first thought watching this was, “No way. If the feds wanted that plane stopped, it never would have left the terminal.” How and why it was able to do so is shown to us later on.
The entire pilot keeps flashing back and forth between the moments leading up to the apocalyptic event at the opener and pivotal moments – days earlier for Sean and his (almost but not quite yet) fianceé, Leila Buchanan (Sarah Roemer, Disturbia), months earlier for Simon Lee (Ian Anthony Dale, The Bucket List), who is also desperately trying to stop the plane but, by episode’s end, we don’t know whether he’s working against Sean or with him.
Along the way, we meet the President, Elias Martinez (Blair Underwood, Madea’s Family Reunion), he of the Hispanic name but Obama-esque casting, made doubly strange by a vice president, Raymond Jarvis (Bill Smitrovich, Seven Pounds) who is physically more evocative of Dick Cheney than Joe Biden. Then again, certain elements of the plot can’t help but evoke both memories of 9/11 and certain people’s claims that that event was an inside job. In any case, the President has decided to make an announcement, coming clean over a very, very classified matter (he had to obtain the files through unknown means himself), much against the advice of the Vice President and the Director of the CIA (a wonderfully creepy Zeljko Ivanek (“Heroes”)). This story line eventually collides – almost literally – with Sean and Simon’s stories, as we return to the (little “e”) event from the opening, only to learn that this is not the (big “E”) Event of the title.
Like all good serial dramas, the end of the first episode leaves us with lots of questions, but also lots of clues as to what the answers might possibly be. I still find myself wondering –
1) Was Simon Lee trying to stop Sean Walker from stopping the hijacking pilot on the plane, or trying to stop the plane itself? I’m still not sure which side he’s playing on, but there’s plenty of evidence both ways.
2) The plane is able to take off because its transponder suddenly shuts down and air traffic control loses radio contact. While reminiscent of what happens at the finale to keep the plane from being shot down, the two incidents actually have conflicting intents. And why were the VP and CIA Director conspicuously absent at the end, triggering the Secret Service to suddenly evacuate the First Family? I suspect the shut down at the airport was an inside job, while the sudden disabling of an Air Force fighter jet was… an outside agency, shall we say?
3) Why is the family of the hijacking pilot killed? To give him no reason to live, hence the willingness to carry out a suicide mission? There’s just over a week gap between this incident and the airplane. Was he perhaps set up to believe that his target was responsible for the murders?
4) Who are the 96 secret prisoners the President wants to release, how long have they been in captivity, and where did they come from? This is the most evocative line of questioning of all, since it seems pretty clear by the end that “The Event” refers directly to the answer. Foreign terrorists? Aliens? Time travelers from the future? All are possibilities, the latter two bolstered by the sudden disappearance of the rogue passenger jet just before it hits its target. Since the prisoners we have met seem quite human, although their accents are a bit off and unidentifiable, time travel does seem a viable option and, not that I think this is what happens, but it would create a wonderful strange loop if the vanished airplane wound up in the past and the 96 prisoners were always, in fact, the passengers on that plane. Big reason to vote against this option, though – Sean is on the plane and he’s one of the leads. Making him a prisoner in the past wouldn’t give him a whole lot to do. All we do know is that a diving passenger jet suddenly vanishes, so there is some advanced technology in the works here.
5) Who kidnapped Leila, and why? More importantly, why go to all the trouble to set up the classic “Vanishing Wife” situation, and erase any record that she and Sean were ever registered passengers on a Caribbean cruise ship? Is it the work of the same people who killed the pilot’s family, just taking care of a loose end? Or, rather, was she kidnapped in order to provide disincentive for the pilot to crash a plane? Are the couple they meet on the cruise, after Sean rescues the woman from the ocean, innocent bystanders just interested in a little old-fashioned four-way fun, or – since neither Leila nor the other boyfriend were able to go scuba diving, conveniently sending Sean away for a day – were they in fact the ones who carried out her kidnapping? Earn trust, separate couple, distract, kidnap. Who else on the ship, after all, would Leila willingly walk away with, except for one of the two people who have become her and Sean’s BFFs so quickly?
I’m sure there are more questions and possible answers. If anything, The Event makes it fun to play this game. This is a series in which things are not what they at first appear to be, and alliances, motives, and needs shift and morph as we jump back and forth in time. I suspect that answers to some of the above questions will come quickly. I hope that each episode brings just as many intriguing questions, without flying off into ridiculous land.

Thriller (1960)

lewicky.andrew — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:43:44 +0000

During the first Golden Age of Television from the late 40s through early 60s, the Anthology Series was a very popular format, having been a natural adaptation of previous radio forms. Half- and one-hour programs would bring together a different cast for a different story every week – The Kraft Television Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse, Playhouse 90, and so on. A popular sub-genre of the form was horror/suspense, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which ran for ten years from 1955, The Twilight Zone, from 1959 to 1964, and The Outer Limits, 1963 to 1965.
Somewhere in the middle of all that appeared Thriller, an hour-long anthology series hosted by horror film icon Boris Karloff, quite possibly as an answer to Hitchcock’s sudden TV fame five years earlier. There was a big difference between the two, though. Hitchcock started his series just as he was also reaching the height of his fame as a director, coming off of Rear Window and To Catch a Thief, and yet to give us Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho. Karloff, on the other hand, hadn’t made much more than B movies since World War II, and was yet to see a minor comeback working with Roger Corman and narrating How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
The contrast in purpose is nowhere more obvious in the typical openings and closings for each show. In Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hitch offers a laconic monologue (brilliantly written for him by James B. Allardice), tailored to the evening’s story, with frequently macabre humor mixed with jokes at the sponsor’s expense. At the end of each episode, he would return for a brief recap. With Thriller, however, it feels like Karloff and the writers were phoning it in, and he just showed up to collect a paycheck. The openings invariably follow this form: brief clip from a suspenseful moment in the episode; Karloff steps in front of the footage to speak a few words about the story, assert what kind of story it is “or my name isn’t Boris Karloff” (hilarious in itself, since he was born William Henry Pratt); follow with introduction of tonight’s cast over their images (actually, a nice touch), ending with “This, my friends is a… Thriller…” There are no outros other than the closing credits. (The theme songs are equally enjoyable in their own ways, though, with the use of Gunoud’s “Funeral March for a Marionette” in Hitchcock iconic, while Stanley Wilson’s Thriller Theme, especially in the closing version, is a perfect example of space-age cocktail tiki ambience that is quite well orchestrated, especially in the restored version that accompanies the motion menus at the start of each disc.)
Beyond being a very well-done series, Thriller also serves as an interesting time capsule of its era, with nice surprises in the cast as various newcomers or minor character actors pop up long before they became much better known – Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!) in his leading man days, Rip Torn (Dodgeball) as a smug heir in a haunted house, Richard Chamberlain in his pre-Dr. Kildare days, Ursula Andress just before she exploded onto the screen as Honeychile Rider in Dr. No. Indeed a glance at the cast list reads like a “who would be who” of 60s and 70s television – Robert Vaughn, Marlo Thomas, Natalie Schafer, Mary Tyler Moore, Cloris Leachman, Elizabeth Montgomery and Marion Ross, among many others. Karloff himself even pops up in an episode as a fake psychic whose powers suddenly seem to become real. Through it all, the horror does not come so much from things that go bump in the night, but rather from the dark depths of the human psyche which is, frankly, a lot scarier, because it’s real.
So, a warning: if you come to the program as a Karloff fan, you’ll be disappointed, since his involvement is so minimal and unvaried (except as noted above). However, if you’re a fan of taut and intriguing thrillers with excellent casts and better-than-average character development, then this Thriller is most definitely worth your time.

Surprise, Surprise

lewicky.andrew — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 01:29:05 +0000

Adapted from Travis Michael Holder’s play of the same name, Surprise, Surprise does not stray very far from its theatrical roots in this film adaptation directed by Jerry Turner, but that’s a good thing. In maintaining a somewhat static shooting style, the emphasis remains on the characters and relationships, which is exactly where it should be. There are more emotional fireworks and pyrotechnics on display here than in any half dozen James Cameron or Michael Bey 3D epics, and at probably less than a thousandth the price. The pay-off to the audience, though, is priceless. This is an hour and a half with a collection of truly likeable, if flawed, characters, as they deal with several unexpected events while trying to live the lives they thought they had, on the way to finding the lives they really needed.
We begin with a wonderful scene between Den Jorgensen (author Travis Michael Holder, “Dr. Sigmund Winston” in a series of internet films, and well-established stage actor) and gal-pal Junie Hannah (the amazing Deborah Shelton, ”Nip/Tuck”), and the chemistry between the two actors sets the tone for the rest that is to follow. I don’t know whether Holder and Shelton met on set, or have known each other for years, but here it truly feels like two veteran actors who have been through the wringer and around the block together, with volumes spoken in what is not said or in the friendly insults that are fired off in overlapping dialogue. This is important, because Holder’s script manages to give us a lot of exposition between these two without it feeling like it is. We become voyeurs in an intimate, non-PC, no limits conversation between two old friends, and are pulled into this world from word one.
This scene is important because we learn (no spoilers here) that Den is 1) a big time TV star, 2) has been in a relationship with a younger man for slightly less time than he’s been a big TV star, and said younger man is not a star-fucker, but loves him for whom he is, 3) has managed to keep his shit out of the tabloids, but has also been living a deeply closeted life in his Malibu Mansion with said younger man, 4) said younger man, Colin (John Brotherton, ”One Life to Live”), a rather successful dancer in his own right, was in an accident that has left him in a wheelchair and, although physical therapy will likely restore his ability to walk (though not to dance), he has fallen into depression and refused to do anything to help himself.
It’s quite a lot of heavy lifting for a very funny gal pal scene to cover, but it does the job. Then, after we meet Colin and see that he and Den truly are in love, what seems to be the titular “surprise, surprise” comes into the picture as sixteen year-old David Blythman, Jr., aka David Jorgensen (the amazing Luke Eberl, Letters from Iwo Jima), arrives at Den’s door to announce that he is, in fact, Den’s son. While a somewhat mind-blowing revelation, Den does the math in his head, and realizes it isn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility. He has his mind further blown when David’s grandmother Winnie (Mary Jo Catlett Sponge Bob Square Pants), enters to inform him that the studio has always known about his relationship with Colin, despite Den’s paranoid fears that his character would have been killed off of the show the second any of the suits got wind of his real life.
That’s the set up for the pitch, and the rest of the story just knocks it out of the park. A good analogy: Surprise, Surprise is like walking into a swimming pool from the baby steps. Everything seems shallow and glib at first, but the further you go, the deeper you get. By the end of it all, the characters have grown, revealed themselves to each other and us, and have learned. Perhaps the biggest surprise in this regard is Eberl’s David, who starts out as an annoying, self-centered, mumbly-mouthed, know-it-all sixteen year-old (we cheer when his grandma smacks him one early on) and ends things on a strong, wonderful note of emotional and personal revelation and vulnerability that is quite earned and not arbitrary at all.
Eberl’s performance and transition is amazing, but that’s true of all of the characters here. Shelton does an amazing job as Junie Hannah, a former sex kitten when that was the only option for Hollywood starlets, who reveals that her apparent shallowness is more a career move than a reality, and Mary Jo Catlett – whom I guarantee you will recognize on sight even if you don’t know her name – really needs to be the next Betty White in about fifteen years. Hollywood needs more loveable grandma types, and Catlett is nothing if not totally loveable.
As for our main couple, Brotherton’s Colin does make us believe completely that he is truly in love with Den, while Holder’s Den makes us believe that Colin could be completely in love with him. And, further credit to Holder – he absolutely resists the “I wrote this, I’m the star” vanity angle. If anything, Den is the (cough) straight man to the rest of the cast – everyone else gets their huge emotional moment, while he does not. If anything, it feels like his leading role is underwritten – not necessarily a bad thing. (Although, to be fair, I’ve seen him on the boards in LA, and the man can act his ass off.)
Finally, for the obligatory man-candy, Jesse C. Boyd (The Craving) pops up in a towel for a major plot device but, ultimately, while Surprise, Surprise does have gay characters in it, I would hardly characterize it as a gay film. To do so would be to pigeonhole it as something it’s not. What it is is this: an involving, engaging, entertaining, wonderful story of a handful of people learning the definition of the word “family”, and learning to move beyond their own expectations of how they have defined themselves. It’s also a multi-generational story, with someone to relate to for everyone from 15 to 80. All of that, plus it ends on a scene of emotional dynamite that I dare you not to have strong feelings during.
Surprise, Surprise is now available on DVD.

The Rosslyn Frequency

lewicky.andrew — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 00:25:05 +0000

This documentary from the apparently badly misnamed Reality Entertainment is almost unreviewable. It falls firmly into the center of that genre of New Age woo writing of the “This must be true because I said it is” variety. It has a long heritage, stretching back to people like Erich von Däniken and his Chariots of the Gods, in which he “proves” that aliens landed on ancient Earth because a Babylonian carving of a deity has a circle around its head that looks like a NASA-era space helmet so, dammit, it must be a space helmet, this deity must be an alien, Q.E.D. Zecariah Sitchin was also a purveyor (or perpetrator) of the same with his The Twelfth Planet and other books, in which he “proves” (because he says it is so) that Sumerian writings demonstrate that Planet X, or Nemesis, or Niburu, comes back to the inner solar system every 3,600 years to wreak havoc. Hey – the sun is actually a fluffy pink unicorn, because I say it is, and you can’t prove me wrong.
Fundamentalism of any sort is bad, although American society tends to only ascribe fundamentalism to conservative movements, particularly Republicans and Christians, with the Muslims dragged in for good measure. It’s easy to spot fundamentalist conservatives. They’re the ones having their teabag parties and claiming that President Obama was not born in the US, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Likewise, fundamentalist Christians make themselves obvious when they will not budge in their belief that the universe is 6,000 years old and when they applaud every time a doctor who has done a few abortions is shot on the doorstep of his clinic. As for fundamentalist Muslims, they like to ignore 99.9% of the Qu’ran, and blow Christian shit up.
However, there is also leftwing fundamentalism, and its hallmark is the rejection of anything that comes from any sort of authority. Sometimes, this is good – as in when they’re rejecting conservative fundamentalism, and arguments only based on “because we say so.” On the other hand, it, too, can be as dangerous as the other kind of fundamentalism, especially when it comes from a rejection of the scientific authority of “we have examined all of the evidence, and have determined that this is probably so.” This is called anti-science, and it does have real world consequences – for example, there was a recent outbreak of mumps in the Bronx because too many parents refused to have their children vaccinated after drinking the woo Kool-Aid of the long since discounted idea that vaccines cause autism. They don’t. But not getting vaccines causes a lot more people, particularly children, to get infected – and die – than otherwise would.
An even greater sin committed by New Age Fundamentalists, however, is to have a half-assed grasp of science, completely misinterpret theory, and spin it off into meanings it never had, and The Rosslyn Frequency is no exception as, like What the #$*! Do We (K)now and The Secret, it latches onto quantum physics, ascribes to the macro world that which is only possible in the micro world, and spins wild and ridiculous theories out of their asses. Like conservative fundamentalist religion, which says that if you believe in an invisible being without evidence you will be rewarded later, liberal fundamentalist religion says that if you believe in an invisible force without evidence you will be rewarded now.
Hm. Not such a big difference between the two when you put it that way, is there?
The Rosslyn Frequency is essentially one long talking head interview with some Scottish author I’ve never heard of, who pontificates on a building in Scotland and all of the New Age woo energy fields or portals to other worlds or whatever it is he says is there (because he says it’s there) without any counterpoint or actual evidence, all of it tarted up with cheesy computer graphics that look like they were done strictly with consumer-level software. In fact, a quick Google search of one of his earliest contentions – that Rosslyn Chapel was built as a copy of Solomon’s Temple – is almost immediately disproven: “Rosslyn Chapel bears no more resemblance to Solomon’s or Herod’s Temple than a house brick does to a paperback book. If you superimpose the floor plans of Rosslyn Chapel and either Solomon’s or Herod’s Temple, you will actually find that they are not even remotely similar.” (Mark Oxbrow and Ian Robertson, Rosslyn and the Grail.)
This alleged documentary just keeps getting more and more laughable, as an “experiment” in the chapel involves bringing in two married couples who are “psychic mediums”, and then spins off into complete stupidity as the talking head “explains” concepts in astro and quantum physics, gets them completely wrong (hint: the “steady-state theory” does not mean that everything that exists now has always and will always exist), and tops it off by confusing an endothermic process with entropy. In fact, if he’d checked, he would have known that an endothermic process is anentropic by its very nature. Oops. I think that understanding involves math and science, and there’s nothing resembling either to be found here.
But, hey – let’s not befuddle the New Age gang with anything as confusing as actual laws of science. Kirk Cameron and his banana are utterly ridiculous, and most people with IQs above room temperature can see that. The New Agers should be seen as just as ridiculous, but why it’s completely okay for someone like Madonna to suddenly discover Kabalah, or Jenny McCarthy to think she is an expert in biology, or anyone over the age of five to believe in astrology, and not be laughed out of the room is beyond me.
The Rosslyn Frequency isn’t even worth a rental, but if you do wind up with this pile of excrement in your DVD player, do yourself a favor and turn it into a drinking game. Every time the narrator elevates an assumption to the level of truth, take a shot. You’ll be plastered in the first half hour. And you’ll thank me for being too wasted to watch the rest.

Midgets vs. Mascots (2009)

lewicky.andrew — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:56:41 +0000

I’m a fan of guilty pleasure films, and did enjoy every cringe-worthy moment of all the Jackass movies, so when I saw the title Midgets vs. Mascots, I was looking forward to a politically incorrect gag-fest in which grown adults act like a bunch of bored fourteen year-old boys and get into all kinds of ridiculous trouble and cause endless mayhem at their own expense, flying without a safety net or a script.
Unfortunately, as becomes apparent almost from the beginning, Midgets vs. Mascots is a mockumentary, scripted, planned, and faux. Not that this is a bad thing – it just altered my expectations and actually made them somewhat higher. It’s a simple formula: unscripted guerrilla gross-out video (paging Steve-O), low standards for enjoyment. Scripted ersatz gross-out film, higher standards. Midgets vs. Mascots lands somewhere between the two points. Obviously, since we’re watching actors and not assholes, the cringe factor is nowhere near as high. On the other hand, since we’re watching actors, and not assholes, the need for narrative is much higher.
Midgets vs. Mascots does deliver on the story, setting it up with a simple but compelling premise. Famous Dallas little person and team mascot “Big Red” Bush is dead, and he is eulogized in a wonderful cameo by the Hedgehog himself, Ron Jeremy. Bush was a pioneer in producing midget porn, and fabulously wealthy. Hence, after death, he cannot help but give his useless douchebag son and his third wife a little bit of a challenge – each of them will create a team with five members, his son heading the midgets and his wife the mascots, and the two teams have thirty days to complete thirty challenges. Whichever team wins splits five million dollars, with another five million going to the winning coach. The whole thing will be overseen by Bush’s erstwhile Chinese servant, Deng Mann (Akie Kotabe, Lost Angels). Premise set, it’s off to the auditions, then let the games begin.
The story proceeds apace, following the formula of competitions interspersed with fake “behind the scenes” moments. And, despite moments that would have made a Pink Flamingos era John Waters green with envy over what the filmmakers pull off, in the post Borat age, it all seems rather tame. Even with simulated midget porn, a bit of furry yiffing, various farts and sharts, a gallon challenge that ends with probably not simulated puking, midget-on-midget forced sodomy, and almost but not-quite incestuous pegging, the film manages to be surprisingly good natured. We are not meant to revel in the characters’ pain and suffering, but rather to feel sorry for them because of it, which is no mean feat in a film of this nature.
Yes, there is a story and actually a positive message when all is said and done, an immoral story with an ultimate moral. And you have to admit that, visually, the whole proceeding is ridiculous – in a good way – from almost the beginning. Come on – we have a quartet of little people (joined by Gary Coleman, who insists he’s one of them, although they deride him as “The Shaq of little people”) up against full-grown adult men who are never without their mascot costumes. And these are some weird-ass mascots. Gator and the Spartan make sense in a football team way, but I can’t imagine what teams would have a Taco or a Bunny as mascots. The fifth member of the team, Sheriff, is pretty normally dressed as a cowboy from the neck down, but is burdened with a giant head, and makes for some of the best sight gags in the movie. The head, of course, never changes, but it is amazing to watch how physical comedy and emotional situation give the impression that the head is as expressive as Meryl Streep chasing an Oscar. On top of that, when the head finally does come off, it’s the best reveal of the film, and makes total sense in a very weird way.
The cast is very game, with Coleman a stand-out playing the National Enquirer stereotype version of himself – surly, bitter, and combative. Chicago Bulls stalwart Scottie Pippen makes a cameo as himself, and you’ve never seen anything quite like a nearly 6’8” NBA two-time World Champion in mortal combat with a handful of little people. Imagine Ewoks trying to do a take-down on Chewbacca.
So, verdict time – worth seeing? If you’re looking for a way over-the-top gross-out fest, sadly, no. Re-watch Jackass or search YouTube for anything with Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius or Bam Magera in it. Looking for well-crafted, well-written, moving, Hollywood fare? Definitely skip this. Looking for party entertainment that you can pop into the DVD player when every one is stoned and in a silly mood? Then this is exactly the ticket – there are enough OMGWTF moments (sometimes literally) to keep a party crowd laughing until they shart, and sometimes that’s all you need.
So, caveat emptor. Midgets vs. Mascots might have been the title of something far more outré, but by the end of it, the filmmakers have us truly caring about both of the titular M’s, which probably works against them. They may have aimed for the crotch, but they hit the heart instead. Oops.
Midgets vs. Mascots is now available on DVD.

“The Prisoner”

lewicky.andrew — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:30:19 +0000

I haven’t read a lot of novelizations of movies – probably a couple in middle school for whatever my latest blockbuster favorite was – but, generally, those (and most novelizations) were just an adaptation of the original film treatment or shooting script, hacked into prose form by a hired gun. If you’d seen the movie, then reading the novel wasn’t much different than reliving the film, with only occasional forays into un-shot backstory or deleted scenes, a famous example of which is from Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the book, we learn that Indiana Jones took his long ride on the German U-Boat by using his whip to tie himself to the periscope. This was a detail probably wisely omitted from the film.
That said, at the time of its American run, the late Thomas M. Disch, hardly a hired-gun hack, wrote the novelization of Patrick McGoohan’s groundbreaking series “The Prisoner”, and the end result has been re-released as a tie-in to the recent AMC miniseries based on the same – although the differences between the three are enormous, the only common thread being that they concern the adventures of a man known only as Number 6 who wakes up as a prisoner in the Village, which is run by Number 2. Number 6 wants to escape, Number 2 wants him to convert and conform, and everything races toward the identity of the mysterious but inevitable Number 1.
Of the three, McGoohan’s original series is the keeper, a unique undertaking that will never be equaled, and certainly cannot be bettered. The AMC miniseries was, frankly, a complete mess that missed the point of McGoohan’s vision by a hundred miles. (Hint: McGoohan’s was all about individual freedom versus conformity for the sake of imaginary security. The AMC version was all about… well, let’s just say that there were way too many holes in the plot.) I’m a huge fan of “The Prisoner”, and was very excited at seeing a modern take on the concept but, despite the presence of the always fabulous Ian McKellen, perfectly cast as Number 2, I barely made it through the first AMC episode before cringing and realizing that the producers had turned diamonds into crap. It only got worse from there, and I wanted to punch the screen when the finale did not involve a showdown to the death with Number 2, a trial by Ideals and then a journey down the hall and up the spiral staircase to finally meet Number 1.
In reading Disch’s take on “The Prisoner”, I had the same misgivings in the early chapters. Our Number Six was kidnapped from London and wound up in the Village, to be sure – but it was not the famous title sequence kidnapping from the series, the Village seems the same but different, and the world seems even more alien than the tropical-isle vacation resort mess from the AMC adaptation. I was ready to give up on this version as well, and then suddenly Disch waltzed me into familiar territory as Number Six meets Number Two (at least, via video), and the feeling of the old series returns. In fact, key elements from several well-known episodes make up the main plot of the novel, and the method to Disch’s madness becomes clear to any fan about a third of the way in. The novelization is actually set in the aftermath of several episodes from the series, but are told in the way that Number 6 would perceive them, given Number Two’s penchant for brainwashing and other dirty tricks. While deviating from the TV version, Disch actually immerses us more deeply into it, and the middle section of the book feels like what we expect – defiant Number 6 out-playing the chess masters at their mind-games for his own ends.
The conclusion to the book is even more different to the series than the beginning, and you’ll just have to go with it to completely enjoy Disch’s work. If you’re married to the alternate interpretation of the dialogue from the opening of McGoohan’s “The Prisoner” – “I am Number 2.” “Who is Number 1?” “You are Number 6” – then you’ll be a bit disappointed. I have to wonder, though, whether Disch was constrained from revealing the ending of the series, since I think the book was originally published during its initial American run. And, to be fair, he does pull a sleight-of-hand that somewhat does live up to the revelations of the original finale.
Unlike most “done for the money” quickie novelizations of films and TV shows, Disch’s interpretation is real Science Fiction, and quite literary as well – a key plot device near the end involves Number 6 directing a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, in which the lies and deceits of the play echo the lies and deceits of the book’s characters, the whole thing an elaborate distraction reminiscent of The Great Escape, and one for which it does help to brush up your Shakespeare. While the whole enterprise is enormously off-canon – the equivalent, perhaps, of a Star Wars novelization in which we find out that Luke’s father is actually Uncle Owen Lars – we still get Number 6 battling the dark side, with perhaps an even greater sense of alienation than in the original series.
If you loved McGoohan’s “The Prisoner” and the AMC series, then you’ll be the most tolerant fan of the book, and it is worth a read – although the claim on the cover that this is the basis for the AMC series is pure marketing and bears no resemblance to reality. If you loved McGoohan’s “The Prisoner” and hated the AMC series, then you’ll definitely appreciate Disch’s work, since it manages to deviate from the source while still being reverent. This is more than I can say about the AMC mess. Skip that modern remake, but indulge in the original’s contemporary re-write. It’s a good read, and does manage to take you back into McGoohan’s world through the filter of a different mind – which, come to think of it, is the ultimate meta-commentary on the series.
Be seeing you.
“The Prisoner” is available from Amazon.com.

Life on Mars (UK Series 2)

lewicky.andrew — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:30:54 +0000

My review of the first series of Life on Mars is elsewhere on this site. All I can really say about the second series is that it takes off from the high point built to by the last episode of the first, and never lets go.
The basic set-up is simple. Detective Chief Inspector Sam Tyler botches up an investigation. His secret (because he works with her) girlfriend Maya possibly falls into the hands of a serial killer. During an inattentive moment, Sam is the victim of a car accident, and winds up transported in time from 2006 to 1973. Or maybe he’s in a coma in the future and imaging it all. Or maybe he’s always been in 1973, and is just insane. This central question is left unanswered in most of the second go-around, although as follow-on to the finale of the first series, Sam is suddenly meeting more people from his “present” in this past, and getting more definite messages from the future, beginning in the first episode, when he receives a phone call (Sam is constantly being contacted by the future through electronics) and, for the first time, the party on the other end of the line can hear him. This device becomes a runner for the second series, nowhere more harrowing than when he is contacted by his future girlfriend, Maya, simultaneously confirming that she survived the future killer and breaking up with him because he is a non-responsive coma patient. Never mind that, while this contact is going on, he is desperately trying to save a young woman who reminds him a lot of Maya from being caught up in a drugs case largely driven by the blatant anti-immigrant prejudice of the police force circa 1973 although, as with most of the cases in this series, first impressions are rarely correct.
This is nowhere more evident in the tour-de-force fifth episode, which opens with a brilliant recreation of a 70s British kids’ show, Camberwick Green – “Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play. But this box can hide a secret inside. Can you guess what is in it today?” That secret turns out to be a stop-motion puppet version of Sam Tyler (John Simm, ”State of Play”, who we learn has been out of commission for three days. Apparently, his doctors in our present have inadvertently given him an overdose of speed in an attempt to wake him from his coma, and he goes back to work hallucinating like crazy as his fellow cops are confronted by a blast from the past – someone has kidnapped an innocent man’s wife and daughter, demanding the release of a teenage criminal convicted of killing his girlfriend. Racing against the clock, Sam has to learn what he missed in the past three days, then convince his colleagues to pay attention to the details and look closer. His hallucinatory point of view provides a brilliant framework in which we see the same incidents via the points of view of different fellow-officers, each time with a different nuance, a different reality, a different possibility, and what seemed an absolute certainty at first – seventeen year-old Graham Bathurst (Adam Beresford, Looking for Eric) raped and murdered his fourteen year-old girlfriend – becomes less and less certain. It’s a marvel of acting and direction and, had this been an American series, would have been the clear Emmy contender among the bunch. A nice touch at the end is that, even as the ambiguity of who killed the young girl lessens, what’s happening to Sam becomes less certain. He may have been over-medicated by his doctors, or he may have been drugged by hippies during a recent bust when they saw the cops coming and stashed their acid in various drink bottles on the scene.
There really isn’t a bad episode in the bunch, and the tone remains letter perfect, a balance of the producers’ intended recreation of a good old 70s cop show a la “The Sweeney”, with a science fiction twist and a fish out of water story. The main ensemble continue to create believable, likeable characters – even when some of them (particularly DCI Gene Hunt (the wonderful Philip Glenister (“State of Play”) is doing very unlikable things. This time around, even the blithering Neanderthal Ray (Dean Andrews, Kandahar Break) is featured in an sympathetic storyline, and well-meaning but socially awkward Chris (Marshall Lancaster, ”Coronation Street”) begins to grow up, finally looking toward Sam as a mentor instead of a joke, finally earning a poignant hero moment of his own. Even Annie Cartwright (Liz White, Vera Drake) finally gets to turn in her plonk uniform, promoted at last by Sam to be one of the boys, even if she is a girl and the 1973 mentalities cannot get over that little detail. Still, she fully holds her own against them all, the kind of woman who defends against the as-of-yet undefined concept of sexual harassment by harassing back and getting over it. Her character may have the biggest balls of any of the five principals in the series.
Going into series 2, the producers knew that this would be the end – this was their intention, not wanting to stretch things out for too long – and so this second visit to Life on Mars has an incredible momentum, racing toward the solution to the mystery of what’s really going on with Sam while complicating and developing the relationships between the characters. By the time we get to the final episode, the stakes are sky-high, not letting up even as we get to the end, which is inevitable, fitting, logical and surprising. (And yes, by the end, the title of the series makes complete sense, and we figure out where Hyde is. Maybe.)
If you’re a fan of series 1, this is a must-see. If you’ve never experienced life on Mars, you will definitely want to grab both series and watch every episode, then go back and do it all again to see what you missed the first time. Like Patrick McGoohan’s 60s classic “The Prisoner”, Life on Mars creates a unique and enigmatic world, then mines it for everything it’s worth in sixteen breathtaking episodes.
Life on Mars series 2 is now available on DVD.

“The Christians” (1977)

lewicky.andrew — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:06:22 +0000

As improbably named writer-presenter Bamber Gascoigne (“University Challenge”) points out in a new introduction to his 1977 documentary The Christians, it is somewhat a product of its time, so the point to which the whole enterprise builds is not the current difficulties between the Christian and Muslim world, but rather the battle between believers and those Godless Communists in Russia. After all, this was years before St. Reagan descended from heaven and personally knocked over the Berlin Wall while Pope John Paul Jr. joined Lech Wałęsa in battle to kick Papa Joe Stalin’s ass (cough cough). Okay, that last sentence is highly inaccurate. But The Christians is a product of its era, which makes it almost as much a time capsule of the attitudes and insecurities (and bad fashions) of over thirty years ago as it is a history of one third of the so-called “People of the Book” over the course of almost two thousand years.
Gascoigne makes it clear from the beginning that this thirteen hour documentary is not the history of Christianity, but rather the people who follow that religion, and the premiere episode does a good job of showing a wide range of modern Christians, all presumably believing in the same deity but showing that belief in very different ways – from Chanting Ethiopians to an ancient patriarch in Jerusalem waving flaming torches; via a spirited gospel-singing congregation in the US to a drier-than-dust British sermon; through the Byzantine grandeur of a service in the USSR to modern Africa, which feels very much like the US; to a joyous dancing procession in Luxembourg to a morbid Spanish parade featuring the grim-reaper leading a cast of skeleton-clad dancers whipping a Jesus stand-in down the Villa Dolorosa.
With the modern stage set, Gascoigne takes us on a more-or-less chronological journey documenting how an obscure, not well-liked minor cult within Judaism went on to become a dominant world religion and, at various periods, the chief persecutor of its own mother religion. What distinguished it at the beginning was the idea – unheard of at the time – that people could have a personal connection with an unseen god via a dead and resurrected messiah called Jesus. Rejected by orthodox Jews of the time (although the Romans did the dirty deed), what became Christianity survived underground – frequently literally – until a faltering Roman Empire looking for a unified religion cobbled together bits and pieces of at least three, held a contentious conference in which Jesus was not the only contender for new figurehead of the state religion and, voila – hated cult became one with Emperor and Empire and the western world was changed forever.
If you know your History of the Western World, there’s not a lot new here. But if you’re like most Americans and snoozed through those classes, then The Christians is worth a look as a reminder that a religion that close to 80% of Americans in 2009 claim to follow did not drop magically out of the sky (or St. Paul’s pen) in one piece, all the rules intact, all parties in agreement. In fact, the saga is as much about in-fighting between adherents of various tenets – and creators of new ones – as it is the story of Christianity’s struggle against its opponents and oppression of non-believers.
Where The Christians shows its age is in the pacing. The world of 1977 moved much more slowly, after all, and Gascoigne does not hesitate to stop the narrative in order to observe. Sometimes it works, as in a stunning montage of Renaissance art, influenced by religion but embracing a very physical and sensual world. More often than not it doesn’t, as when watching the minutiae of daily life among Christians in an African village, or a group of monks in Asia minor. It sometimes feels as if Gascoigne has had to pad episodes in order to fill the full time alloted.
Still, it’s well worth the educational value and, as always, Athena presents the series in a beautiful package, complete with supplemental booklet summarizing each episode, offering further information and asking thought-provoking questions. It’s ideal for the classroom, or for parents who want to challenge their kids and offer them something better to watch on DVD than the latest Transformers movie or the latest season of One Tree Hill.
The Christians is available on DVD now.