Change Your Image
dude-2
Reviews
Mother's House (2011)
Just like when I was a kid watching scary TV...
I was privileged to read the script before shooting started and I immediately flashed on:
One Step Beyond. Boris Karloff's Thriller. The Twilight Zone. The Outer Limits.
And a passel of other scare-the-pants-off-of-you-just-before-you-have-to-go-to-bed shows i grew up with...
It could have been an episode of any of them.
Reality slowly starts to unwind for the 2 protagonists and picks up speed dramatically near the end. And you kind of start to get the idea a ways into it but by then it's too late for either of them, or you, to turn back.
Reality reassembles itself and it's not pretty...
See it if you can and if you can't, find a way.
Quantum Leap (1989)
It was OK until i got it...
I give it a 5 for this reason: Betrayal.
I loved the show until i figured out it was someone's descent into sci-fi sanctimony. I confess that I had always wondered just how history "went wrong" and I felt ashamed that it took me so long to get it. Sam did not correct what "somehow" went amiss in history - he corrected his messing it up in the first place. When he leapt back he immediately cause the problems recorded in Ziggy's memory banks which were in reality just a record of all of Sam's dalliances in the past. Later came the bastard notion of what caused it all, "the evil leaper" but what in reality was just Sam's innate god complex at work. Sam's leaps caused all of the problems which he went to solve and thus fueled his ego's assumed role of savior. Poor Sam. Lucky us that he fixed his messes. And the only thing which saved the show for me was the last episode which further propelled Sam into delusional god-hood. The portion where he fixed his worst mistake: Beth and Al - THAT made it all worthwhile. The part about the leaps getting harder and Sam choking up should have made me throw a tomato at the TV but since he restored the lives of Al and Beth, my 20" Bell+Howell color TV which I inherited from my Grandmother (rest her soul) was spared the assault. I see the show as the ultimate case of Munchhausen's Syndrome. Just call me House.
Tin Man (2007)
This is NOT a re-imagining...
...rather, it is a direct sequel which you will not realize until almost the end...everything looks stylized and re-imagined but when you discover the truth, you find that NOTHING has changed save the perspective of the viewer - US.
In the original, the viewer is actually Dorothy Gale and her interpretation of the wonderful world of OZ - the interpretation of an impressionable teen-aged girl aswirl in fantasy and longing to see some color in her life (whether she realized it or not). We see that movie through her eyes, not our own.
This "version" is what we see from an adult perspective with the apple-green glasses removed and the plain truth of another world full of magic, misery, wonder and grime.
I was not a GREAT fan of the original (actually the 1939 edition, there are several earlier attempts before it) but i am now - this movie made it a well-rounded experience - from childhood to adulthood.
And it is exceptionally acted, scripted and executed.
I await the DVD!!!
Night Stalker: Timeless (2006)
In case no one noticed...
This episode is an homage to the second night stalker movie, "the night strangler" starring Richard Anderson as the killer and wally cox as the researcher who clues kolchak into the history of cases similar to the one he is working on now...
every so-many years - i think it was 21 in the original movie - a killer takes several young healthy (mostly women) victims and harvests their pituitary gland to use its legendary essence to prolong his life...
Stylish and nostalgic episode which makes me long for more of both the original series and this one.
As it is, i am nearing the end of the DVD set containing the entire new series and i am getting sad - they should have had a bit more patience before canceling it. Just like "firefly" the networks did not see mega ratings within minutes so they summarily dumped it for what probably were more lurid sex/violence and hipness (undoubtably aimed at that all important 20-something demographic).
Sad - but i CAN watch them again and maybe have a little Kolchak party someday - i now have all of the Kolchaks ever made and am quite delighted regardless of their untimely demises.
Night Stalker (2005)
This IS the night stalker
I absolutely loved and still love Darren McGavin's Karl Kolchak, the 2 movies and the series...
This is the same and different and that's fine - it does what i want it to - it entertains me and keeps me wanting more...
The new Battlestar Galactica cured me of wanting exactly the same thing if something is remade...to be sure, i want it to have the essence and the spirit of the original and the names and the motivations and the settings and the conflicts and the surprises. This has all of them and i write this after only seeing the pilot (i bought the DVD's as soon as i found out about this short lived gem).
Stuart Townsend is wry, witty, vulnerable, personable and passionate...he does not wear the $40 dollar blue "suit-thing" McGavin wore but he does dress kind of non-descript and not terribly stylishly and he DOES drive a Mustang (not a convertible, but NOT the ungodly crime foisted on the car buying nostalgics of the 80's when Ford THOUGHT it had reintroduced a classic - remember New Coke?) and he (as well as the car) IS driven like McGavin's Kolchak...
One thing i wanna know though - why is his name spelt with a C instead of a K?
Sin City (2005)
Oh, my...
...the kind of movie i dreamed of seeing since i was a kid (a wee bit of time ago) - all the way up to actually seeing it when it finally arrived this year. The best adaptation of a comic to date by a wide margin.
Damn.
The blend of real life, comic, film noir, black and white, color, Dashiell Hammett, Dark Knight on the art side and Bruce Willis (in a roll made for him), Josh Hartnett (who despite being prettier than most celebrity girlfriends is a great actor), Jessica Alba (unharmful to the eyes), Brittany Murphy (ditto), and Mickey Rourke (in the roll no one else on EARTH could have played) on the craft side...
Not that ANY thing or one in this movie isn't a child of, work of, or slave to...art.
Damn.
The West Wing (1999)
Well, if I can't get a white house like this in real life...
and i CAN'T and know it, I can at least have one in fantasy. Thanks to Aaron Sorkin, who can be as in love with his dialog as he darn well wants, for giving it to me. And thanks for the ones who took over when he left for not gutting it like new management does inevitably at your favorite restaurant. And here's to speaking REAL, REAL fast...and here's to making sure I have at least 10 lines in my comments though for the life of me I don't know why that should be necessary as (with the righteous exception of a Sorkin script) it should be a blessing to have brevity and a crime punishable by High Fines and Missing Free Beers to have the contrary...perhaps a need to pretend to the level of critic as they too are given to verbosity but, perish, never pomposity...and so I end as the Chief Justice did - in verse, for better or...
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Does anyone else remember the shoeshine boy in New York?
Insanely funny film!!! I saw it when it first arrived in 1974 and i SWEAR i saw a scene which i have not seen since - on TV, DVD (deleted scenes section), or VHS/Beta. To wit, when the train sequence mirrors itself in transylvania (after the New York sequence) Fronkensteen sticks his head out of the train and asks a little german shoeshine boy if this is the right station or something and the little boy replies "Ja!" (german)and then "...would you like a shine?" (english) to which Fronkensteen does a double-take and then says "no". The double take is there because of the previous instance of the shoeshine boy on the New York station platform otherwise it does not make sense (i.e. it ain't funny). I realize there is a lot of non-sequitur humour in the film but i do not believe this is one of those instances - that scene is GONE! Does anyone else remember it????