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All reviews - Movies (1273) - TV Shows (91) - Books (1) - Music (166)

Sweet Bird of Youth

Posted : 11 years, 8 months ago on 2 August 2012 09:23 (A review of Sweet Bird of Youth)

Despite recycling most of the original Broadway cast for this film adaptation, Sweet Bird of Youth misses the demented melancholia of the work by grafting on a sappy, unnecessary Hollywood ending. This is a pity for several reasons, highest amongst them is the stunningly high caliber of work that each of the actors brings to their roles, no matter how large or small.

Of course, when you’ve got actors like Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Ed Begley, Shirley Knight, and Madeleine Sherwood. Newman in particular always seems to grasp the correct vibe and tone of Tennessee Williams’ language and style. His laconic drawl, mesmerizing eyes and general good-ol’-boy looks (admittedly of the very pretty, seemingly inhuman Hollywood variety) are used effectively to turn us into dark emotional corners and guide us through disturbed sexual acts. Page plays the great screen star and fading beauty, while she always makes you believe she was once an intoxicating screen presence and grandest star around, she never really sells us on the sex symbol part. No matter, she’s electrifying as the egomaniacal cougar who is hanging by a thread to sanity so long as she imagines her career is over. Begley and Knight are a father-daughter with ties to Newman’s past, and Sherwood is the shrill, vain, greedy mistress that Begley has kept for decades.

All of the tropes and basic elements are ripe for the picking, but they’re never let off the leash. And, yes, some of it is downplayed thanks to the Production Code standards of the time, it almost doesn’t matter because it seems to be so sad and the musicality of the language to be so right. Then we reach the end, which trades in a literal castration, for a small bit of disfigurement and a runaway happy ending. Way to totally miss the point on the work as a whole, and go against everything we have seen in the preceding events leading up to the rushed and hurried climax.


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The Storyteller

Posted : 11 years, 8 months ago on 31 July 2012 01:22 (A review of The Storyteller)

Oh Jim Henson, you’re one of the few people whose brain I would love to have had a chance to live in for a brief period of time. The colors and musings of your creative imagination must have been something truly wondrous to behold. The various TV shows, movies and stage shows prove only one thing: you were endless creative, artistically adventurous and a true visionary.

Rather than relying upon tried and well-covered ground with stories like Snow White, Rapunzel, and all the rest of the Grimm’s brothers most well-known menagerie, The Storyteller dips into darker, more obscure tales in the Grimm’s oeuvre. Tales like Hans the Hedgehog, Sapsorrow, the Three Ravens and the Soldier and Death explore the even darker terrain of these tales with reoccurring themes of bodily mutilation, greed, Christian iconography, and sexuality. Disney’s Westernized and anemic versions have their charms (and are at their best when tipped over into the crazy psycho-sexual brutality of their villains), but pale in comparison to the ripe, hypnotic and full-blooded approach to the stories taken here. No twist of the original texts appears to have altered (there’s roughly 200+ canonical tales, so figure me if I have this detail wrong), which helps distinguish this TV show about fairy tales from other equally enjoyable ones like the self-aware Faerie Tale Theatre or the revisionist multicultural take of Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. This grounds the tales in their European settings and gives them a distinct essence and flavor for each tale.

The commonality between all episodes, aside from John Hurt’s lovingly rascal and playful performance as the Storyteller, is the sheer amount of visual inventiveness and imagination on display. A basic episode, and for argument’s sake let’s use the episode “The Soldier and Death” as our example, features Hurt’s narrator and an anthropomorphic dog talking about something which reminds the storyteller of the fairy tale we are about to witness. Sometimes the story begins before us as a totally separate scene, but more often, it unfolds as a piece of background begins moving – a figure in the window, something in a painting, a transition from one object into another. This free flowing merger between the reality of the storyteller and theater of the fairy tale is quite lovely to behold. If nothing else, it reminds us that our basic myths have a tendency to be spun out of and greatly influenced by our reality.

But back to the myth, obviously there is a soldier and death involved, but there’s also a group of miniature devils who look like pocket-sized versions of the medieval era’s common perceptions on a demonic appearance. Sure, the design of the devils could leave something to be desired, but death looks like a Cabbage Patch Kid that’s been starved, slightly melted and incapable of sleeping for vast periods of time. Shrouded in a black cape and hood, this specter of death looks like no other version I’ve ever seen before. And numerous episodes feature this kind of left-field interpretations of their mythological characters. One of my personal favorites was a river creature that looks like a humanoid catfish merged with a frog and some kind of prehistoric creature from “Fearnot.”

I could go on and on and on all night about how much I adored this show, how each episode was so smart and a wonder to behold. But I think that I have made my case and rambled on and on quite enough to prove these points.


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The Tick

Posted : 11 years, 8 months ago on 31 July 2012 01:21 (A review of The Tick)

Sometimes you stumbled across a show and you think, “This is too smart, weird, wild and wonderful to last.” And you’d be right.

Behold, The Tick.

Sure, the Tick had been given the televised treatment once before in the form of a Saturday morning cartoon (an ironic turn of events considering that the Tick was created both as an underground, self-published comic and a parody of the superhero genre as whole), but that show allowed us to witness the dare doing and action scenes. That show made it clear that the Tick was a loveable goof, a childlike mental case who meant well and saw the world in black and white.

This show positions the Tick as a nuisance in a world where superheroes exist, are no big deal, and, in fact, have regulations and standards to uphold. Hell, they can even be assigned super-villains to square off against to sharpen their skills, improve their popularity, and, I assume, try to create a relationship like that comic readers see in Batman and Joker or Superman and Lex Luthor. In this way, the Tick seems almost like an anarchic figure who finds no feat (or evil, in his mind) too small or great for him not to try and defeat.

It’s a delicious and bizarre world to visit. And it’s a shame that it only lasted for nine episodes, because it cultivates such unique characters and fully expands them. Since this is live-action, most of the money has clearly got into sets and costumes. Action scenes and special effects are kept to a minimum, and that’s actually for the better given this group of ragtag and borderline incompetent heroes.

They’re a shallow bunch, prone to committing acts of heroism not because they find it to be their true calling, but because it’s a great way to achieve fame, wealth and status within The City’s upper society. And they’re frequently completely, totally, and utterly hilarious to watch. Like the guest spot from Ron Perlman and Patrick Breen as a super heroic duo who also have an abusive, slightly homoerotic relationship. It’s like the worst secret thoughts we have about Batman and Robin are being spewed out in front of us. It’s also blackly funny, and probably one of the best moments in the entire show.

Equal parts character-based black comedy, an examination of superhuman psyches in miniature, and a parody of superheroes and their genre conventions, tropes and motifs, The Tick was a show destined for a premature cancellation. If only TV was a more just medium. Over a decade of Two and a Half Men, but nine episodes of The Tick and twenty-two episodes of Pushing Daisies, sometimes it all just feels like a cruel joke.


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The Storyteller: Greek Myths

Posted : 11 years, 9 months ago on 2 July 2012 04:18 (A review of The Storyteller: Greek Myths (1990))

It kept the side-kick dog and the overall concept from the first incarnation, but it changed around everything else. And yet it remained a glorious, witty, beautiful show that didn’t last long enough. I’ve always been a fan of Jim Henson and his studio, and The Storyteller series is amongst the best work his studio has put out (whether dealing with fairy tales or Greek myths).

Although this second incarnation doesn’t quite have the same kind of appeal as the first one. At only four episodes, the watermark and pressure for maintaining a high artistic quality is nearly unfathomable. And, really, only one episode takes a major dive into mediocre/almost-bad territory and that is “Orpheus and Eurydice.” That the two leads in this segment never generate any chemistry is one part of the problem, but the other is that so much of the wit and imagination and creativity on display in any of the other episodes is in such muted quality here as to be nonexistent. Luckily, this episode occurs second and the following two return us to the former glories.

Michael Gambon is less playful as the storyteller than John Hurt, but his gravitas works much better for Greek mythology which was more concerned with bloodlines, acts of violence, sexuality and humanity-versus-divinity than the fairy tale set (although there can be/is a tremendous amount of overlap). Brian Henson returns as the main puppeteer/voice of the dog, and the series continues to get an astounding assemblage of British acting talent with Derek Jacobi and David Morrissey being just two examples. While The Storyteller may be the slightly better version of the show, Greek Myths more than holds its own with a limited number of episodes, but the same high artistic quality.


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Spider-Man Unlimited

Posted : 11 years, 9 months ago on 26 June 2012 01:41 (A review of Spider-Man Unlimited)

A loose continuation of [Link removed - login to see], Spider-Man Unlimited jettisons most of the continuity built up around the character and his incredible stable of villains for a fish-out-of-water story by placing him within an alternate-Earth. This version of Earth is run by the High Evolutionary and his Knights of Wundagore, a group of characters who hardly resemble the team of antagonists presented in this series.

A fast and loose interpretation of the Spider-Man mythos isn’t a real problem, but the series never really seems to be escalating to anything in particular and was cut short before any kind of payoff could be achieved are. But before it was cancelled, Spider-Man Unlimited provided Man-Wolf with his animated debut, gave Spider-Man a pretty cool looking new costume, and upgraded the powers of Venom and Carnage. It’s an amiable show, and the animation (while incredibly inconsistent) is nicely atmospheric and stylized. It was clear that the makers were piggy-backing on the success of [Link removed - login to see], but it has enough charms of its own to be worth a cursory look on Netflix.


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Spider-Man: The Animated Series

Posted : 11 years, 9 months ago on 26 June 2012 01:38 (A review of Spider-Man: The Animated Series)

Nostalgia plays odd tricks on the brain. Sometimes a TV show stands out in your mind as the pinnacle of a character’s non-comic book existence. Sometimes you remember a show being intelligently written and filled to the brim with cameos far and wide, a show that dug deep into the mythology of its character. Spider-Man: The Animated Series is not exactly that show.

Don’t get me wrong, the show adapts freely and liberally from the comics, but it doesn’t always do so successfully. Compared to how interesting and still engaging Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men remain, two shows that shared the same Saturday morning lineup with this one, this iteration of Spider-Man feels weak and anemic in comparison. But what it does right, it does really right.

Chief among the things that the series did right was Christopher Daniel Barnes’ vocal work as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He strikes the right balance between everyday workingman’s blues and sarcastic superhero. The reoccurring guest stars from far and wide in the Marvel universe was also a nice touch, some characters are developed and utilized far more successfully than others, but seeing Spider-Man team up with the likes of Iron Man, Doctor Strange, the X-Men, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, and numerous others is a real treat. And it did something that fellow Marvel-related animated series X-Men did around the same time, it created storylines that would take their sweet time to develop, some would go on for only a few episodes, while others would build for the duration of a whole season. Things that would happen in the finale of one season would be one of the major story arcs in the next season.

And now for the negatives….

While many storylines were adapted from the comic books and given full room to breathe and grow in an organic way, others were rushed through and sloppily resolved. Carnage immediately springs to mind, as he is quickly introduced and killed off with quick succession. The same could be said of the team-up storylines – Dr. Strange’s in particular is unbelievably corny and wince-inducing, seemingly slapped together to force in dispirit story ideas.

I normally try to be fairly nice to a Saturday morning cartoon’s animation style, especially if it’s an older show. That kind of rapid pace means that not every episode will be up to standard, and sometimes shortcuts will be necessary. But Spider-Man cuts so many corners and exaggerates so much of the proportions that it begins to look thrown together. Episodes clearly recycle footage with little attention being paid to what the circumstances are; action scenes with the Lizard are the worst offenders as they clearly reuse footage from the series premiere – an episode mostly taking place in darkness and in sewer systems.

And the fact that Peter Parker looks even more muscular and gigantic with his shirt off than in uniform is beyond preposterous. This was a common problem with all superhero cartoons in the 90s, bigger meant better for all male characters. Even Dr. Octopus, normally a short and pudgy character, was given a six-pack and biceps as big as his head.

Don’t get me wrong, I still hold a very fond place in my heart for this show, but it’s not the show that I remember it being. I remember a smarter, better drawn, more consistent series. It’s not the worst offense to happen to Spider-Man, but it’s not the definitive adaptation of the material that I had once thought it was.


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Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends

Posted : 11 years, 9 months ago on 26 June 2012 01:38 (A review of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends)

Sure, there’s a large element of kitsch involved, especially in the earlier episodes of the show, but it’s just so damn likable. You try to say something bad about this show. It may not be a perfect show in the conventional sense, but the sense of humor and fun that it has in exploring the Marvel universe makes it feel remarkably close to perfection.

It’s a Saturday Morning Cartoon, in the best and purest sense of the word. It takes action, adventure, comedy and a true sense of fun and good times and mixes them all together. Sure there are plot holes abound – why do these heroes live with Aunt May? When did she suddenly own such a nice place in downtown Manhattan? Why is Firestar’s dog randomly anthropomorphic depending on the story/joke? (The episode where her dog uses kung-fu to take down the bad guy and save the heroes/day is the most preposterous and over-bloated episode of them all, containing no less than roughly seven guest stars.) You’re not supposed to dig too deep with a show like this. Just sit back, eat your cereal and enjoy a time when heroes weren’t constantly weighed down with everyday issues and constantly stranded in real-world situations.

Which isn’t too say that all of the episodes feature no sustenance to feed upon. The episode that flips the script, ever so slightly at first, guest stars Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Magneto has taken hold of a prison and kept everyone hostage, threatening to detonate a series of nuclear bombs unless his Brotherhood is freed from captivity and it’s up to our heroes to take him out and make sure both the prisoners and guards are released safely. They may not have gotten his animated form down pat, or even remotely consistent, but his essence is perfectly adapted. It’s this introduction of darkness around the edges of the simplistic story lines that starts to make the show great.

By the time we get to the three episode second season, which each episode dedicated to retelling the origins of the main characters, we’re accustomed to taking some sour medicine with our generally sugary treat. The reoccurring character of Videoman in particular takes on a darker, more somber and sadder shade after his first introductory episode (which is nothing special). There’s something at stake with these characters after the first dozen or so episodes. Not only do we care about them, but they clearly care about each other. And that’s the thing that makes the show so great. Sure cameos from Captain America, Black Knight, Namor, and the X-Men are a lot of fun, but it’s the heart at the center of the show that makes it so rewarding.


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Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes

Posted : 11 years, 9 months ago on 26 June 2012 01:37 (A review of Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes)

The best stories and adaptations of the Fantastic Four remember one thing: it’s about family. Sure, there’s (comic book) science, aliens, wormholes, gamma rays/radiation that aren’t anywhere near as deadly as they should be, Pym particles, unstable molecules, and a host of other science-fiction silliness, but that’s not what has sustained readership and interest in the story after all these years. It’s the fact that at the end of the day, they’re a family bonded both by blood, friendship and the unfortunate accident which turned them into genetic anomalies.

Sometimes the plots rely too heavily on action and not enough on the characters to carry the story through. Any of the various episodes with Dr. Doom encounter this problem, and his very characterization is both too outlandish and problematic too offer much of a threat. I don’t think any televised or filmed version of Dr. Doom has perfectly capture the cold, icy malice, detachment, disdain, bourgeoisie sensibility of the character. This, like a few others, dips him into bombastic villainy in which he loudly proclaims his might and menace upon the world without actually backing it up. One of the greatest villains in all of comic books should not be treated like some garish loudmouth with more than a hint of BDSM robot pimp in his wardrobe (that last part may be more specific to this series).

And the plots dip too far into kid-friendly zones at the expense of more compelling character interactions and human drama. Sure, Johnny Storm is a cocksure, arrogant, hot-head, but did they have to make him so whiny? Making him look like a model from Corbin Fisher wasn’t a bad idea though. With the notable exception of Dr. Doom, most of the remaining character models are quite nice, and the animation is smooth and stays on target. Certain liberties taken with Namor, the Mole Man, and other villains actually improve and update their looks, especially Namor’s more complete body armor makes more sense and looks a million times better than his speedo with a golden belt.

The animation does tend to go too far into Japanese anime territory several times, but it mostly occurs with Johnny Storm and the Thing. And, thank you to the creative team for NOT making Susan Storm dressed in a skimpier outfit for no discernible reason, and for also not keeping her out of the action sequences. She frequently more than holds her own, and proves to be a valuable asset to the team throughout the series. When she disappears for a period of time, it’s not hard to see why the rest of the team mourns her possible death so deeply.

I would hesitate to call this the greatest interpretation of the Fantastic Four, because who knows what new cartoons or movies are currently in the works, but out of the prospects we’ve had thus far, it certainly seems like the safest bet. Infinitely better than the 1994 series, and in a whole different galaxy than the awful film adaptations, Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes is an amiable good time. It puts the correct emphasis on the familial aspects of their mythos without skipping the grandiose action/adventure/science-fiction/fantasy elements.


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UltraForce

Posted : 11 years, 11 months ago on 23 April 2012 01:17 (A review of UltraForce)

There’s clearly two shows at work in UltraForce: one is a second-rate X-Men knockoff that spends far too much time with Prime, a genetically created character who bares a strong resemblance to Captain Marvel, and the second is a more intelligent and darker show that bubbles underneath the surface. The show never reconciles which one it wants to be, and since it only lasted for thirteen episodes, it never got the chance to grow and figure itself out.

The team breakdown on UltraForce dangles dangerously close to carbon-copy ripoffs of team members from X-Men, in both singular characters and overall concepts, Justice League and The Avengers. This is a problem only because so many of the voice actors from earlier incarnations of the latter series of comics show up in this show. They do little to differentiate their voices so a character like Pixx easily reminds one of Jubilee in look, manner, attitude, age, and relevance to the team, even if her powers are different. I’m surprised they didn’t get sued, until you realize that Marvel bought up the Malibu franchise around the time the show went into production.

You see, instead of calling many of these characters mutants, they’re being dubbed “Ultras.” The difference doesn’t amount to much and much of the show just reminds us of how much better and with more maturity X-Men handled so many of these topics, storylines and character types. But every once in a while the show will head into a darker path, like whenever we delve into Prime’s backstory (which is far too often and frequently convoluted) and discover that he’s the product of genetic manipulation by an incredibly fucked-up group of mad scientists and an alien-vampire-demon thing. Or Lord Pumpkin, who is as stupid as he sounds, getting various teenagers addicted to a steroid/drug/mutant-power-giver concoction that he cooked up.

These dark storylines and the villains behind them never gel correctly. Lord Pumpkin is a foppish Victorian-era-meets-Al Capone looking gangster with a giant pumpkin head and hands that look like roots. They defeat him by extinguishing the candle in his mouth. Rune, the vampire-alien-thing, is a piss-poor variation of Morbeus from Spider-Man, who was tragic as often as he was deadly. The less said about the Ultron-lite NM-E the better. One of the many problems with UltraForce is that is there is no standout in their rogues gallery for these overly muscular he-man to engage in battle with. Female characters are drastically under-utilized, especially team leader Contrary and Topaz, who is Wonder Woman re-envisioned as a stranded warrior queen from a different planet.

It’s not awful, but it’s never anything outstanding. It’s a very 90s superhero cartoon and nothing more, complete with frequently off-model animation and a reliance upon a techno-rock/vaguely-industrial score.


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Spider-Man

Posted : 11 years, 11 months ago on 23 April 2012 01:16 (A review of Spider-Man)

There’s something utterly charming in how crudely these shows used to be animated. Before motion comics were ever thought of, there were shows like 1981’s Spider-Man, which is essentially animated in the same manner. Cheesy plotlines, bad voice acting and cringe-inducing dialogue abound. But I still liked it, mostly.

Spider-Man at least had the tendency to showcase the wall-crawler’s humorous side. And he frequently used science, of the dubious Saturday morning cartoon variety, to take down his adversaries. It’s also nice to see Dr. Octopus, the Vulture and various other rogues in his gallery looking appropriately schlubby, old or just generally like their comic book counterparts. (One of the things that bothers me about the 90s animated series is how frequently the characters were pumped full of steroids and made to look nothing like their comic counterparts.)

But the show did have a problem with investing us with memorable characters, larger story archs or any true sense of danger or stakes being at play. Storylines never continue from one episode to the next, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but that lack of continuity really hurts the show in the long run. You see, we’re never given any reason to care about any of the characters. The bad guys all kind of merge into one after a while, and most show up once and never return, so we only have their gimmickry to set them apart. As a comic book fan, I knew their histories, but someone new to mythos would be a little lost. We all know Spider-Man is going to win in the end, but the stakes could have been raised to make us care more about our hero, the villains, someone, anyone. A little history behind the whole proceedings would have gone a long way. The only episode which really tried this out was “Arsenic and Old Lady,” which had Aunt May under mind-control repeatedly trying to kill Spider-Man.

And if that episode write-up didn’t sound bonkers enough for you, how about the one where Mysterio takes over and controls much of New York through his disco (club and music) of murder? Or the one where Lizard hides out in the zoo, tries to take over the sewer to make it into a swamp, and breed his own army of reptilian and amphibious creatures to take over the city? For some reason the only repeating villains are Dr. Doom (who I associated far more often with the Fantastic Four, or being a general mass crossover-level villain) and the Kingpin, who is not a bad choice. Magneto also shows up for one episode, the animation on him is particularly awful, and the writer clearly had no clue on what to do with him. (Ironic considering that the episode “The Prison Plot” from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends did such a great job utilizing the character.) The utterly bonkers storylines are very family-friendly safe, which is kind of a nice change of pace after growing up with the dark/tortured run of super heroics in shows like X-Men or Batman: The Animated Series.

I think this high camp charm is what made me enjoy the show. It’s not perfect, or even very good, but it is amiable enough to spend some time with it. It also, mercifully, only lasted for one season of twenty-six episodes, so getting through it all isn’t too hard. Look for cameos from Captain America, Medusa, Sub-Mariner and Ka-Zar to add to the fun.


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