Day Three Hundred and Five - MLP:FiM: Season 3, Episode 7, "Highwaaay to the Danger Zone!"

Halloween's over, Mons(sters) are asleep... time to post Ponies!

Yes, friends, now that our Couchbound Spooktacular of a whole month of Twin Peaks (plus weekend horror flicks) has finished, two things are self-evident. First, I can watch whatever I want (WOOHOO)! Second, it's been a decent while since I've watching any My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and I think it's about time that I changed that.

Today's episode is a cute little Rainbow Dash centered episode that's a sendup to Top Gun.

It seems, after years of pining for the Wonderbolts and trying to show off at every event she could, from the Best Young Flyer Competition to the Grand Galloping Gala, she's finally of either the age or skill level (or both) to join the Wonderbolt Academy.

Of course, that doesn't mean things will go smoothly for our spunky overachiever. While she's there, she ends up playing second fiddle to another egocentric pegasus named Lightning Dust and, though Rainbow Dash is eager to excel and push her limits, Lightning Dust's antics begin to cause RD, the other cadets, and even the Mane 6 harm.

While not the most humorous of episodes, the lesson is fairly poignant and it's nice to have RD making the connections for herself without having to have it spelled out for her by Twilight and the rest of the Mane 6. In fact, it should be noted that RD has to actively push against the example given to her by her commanding officer, Spitfire, to do the right thing. Sure, it takes being knocked around a bit and a possible gruesome end for her best friends (who come to Wonderbolt Academy to hand deliver a care package), but it's still Rainbow Dash comprehending the moral herself and standing up for her principles, even if it might cost her the thing she wants most in life, being a Wonderbolt.

There a few decent moments of comedy, though, mostly centered around Pinkie Pie and her obsession with getting a letter from RD (who is obviously too busy to write). I love how insanely codependent she is, in a non-Fatal Attraction sort of way. It really is the cutest bit watching Pinkie constantly open and close her mailbox, hoping a letter will miraculously appear via quantum tunneling or some such.

I also want to make special note of a few of the other cadets and background ponies. Not only is there another appearance of the roided out pegasus, Snowflake, with his trademarked "YEAH," but there are also two cameo ponies in the form of Manerick (Maverick from Top Gun) and Whiplash who is a Tom Skerritt pony (also a Top Gun reference), if I don't miss my guess. While not as cute as the Big Lebowski ponies during the bowling bit during that Cutie Mark Crusaders episode, it's still a nice nod to the adult audience of the show.

The ending is a little weird in that Wonderbolt Captain Spitfire does a stereotypical "you've got what it takes" speech and rewards RD for doing the right thing as a leader, stripping Lightning Dust of her rank as Leadpony but not resolving things with Lightning Dust in the standard "everyone learns a lesson, even the villains" way. Instead, LD is just led off in shame and there's no hint as to whether she's been demoted or completely kicked out of the program. A bit ambiguous and that annoys me.

Still, while not the best episode, by far, it's still a decent watch in its own right... especially for Pinkie's antics and a strong show of character by Rainbow Dash.

Man, I'm glad to be done with Twin Peaks. It's been so long since I had a real, honest choice of what I wanted to watch for the blog. Sure, it's probably telling that I instantly went for Ponies as a balm for my soul, but I don't care! I mean, c'mon... PONIES!

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Fifty-seven - The Naked Gun, "Is anyone ELSE here sleeping with this man's wife?"

While it's fairly safe to admit that, when the series wore on, the humor got stale, the villains trite, and the gags less than fresh, the original Naked Gun still brings it home and is definitely the best of the three. There's just something about the way it remains innocent and not too self-aware and winking at the audience... something that it overdid in its sequels.

Nominally set in Los Angeles, the home of the Police Squad series that spawned it, The Naked Gun begins with a cold opener in Beirut where the leaders of the enemies of America are all conveniently in one room. Where Hot Shots played it safe and only went after Saddam, TNG manages to corral Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeni, Idi Amin, Gaddafi, and Gorbachev into a Star-Spangled fantasy sequence of American Kick-Ass Exceptionalism... where Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) pummels them mercilessly for plotting against us.

USA! USA! USA!

It's a farce, but also a sign of the times as Cold War fears were beginning to fade in the era of Glasnost. (It's also hilarious that, when Frank runs out of Dictators to beat on, generic white guy stuntmen in cheap suits begin to show up).

Anyways, past the cold opener we're treated to OJ Simpson getting nearly murdered as many ways as possible, almost as if it were a comedic recreation of the Death of Rasputin (or Vigo the Carpathian). I must admit, it feels a little cathartic in light of his track record in later years.

It seems Nordberg (Simpson) stumbled onto one of arch-villain Ludwig's (Ricardo Montalban) criminal plots and Khan wanted the bumbling officer rubbed out. Unfortunately for Ludwig, it only puts Frank and the Police Squad onto his trail. This leads to an investigation where Frank meets the love of his life... who is played by Priscilla Presley, a wholesome secretary who is inadvertently caught up in Ludwig's plot to kill Queen Elizabeth at a baseball game.

It's all silly fun laced with innuendo, sight gags, and pratfalls... not quite the loving send up to Noir that Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was, but also not a soulless, dime-a-dozen parody movie of the likes that have been churned out the past twenty years or so. It's hard to imagine how anyone survives in this universe, where airbags cause cars to careen wildly on their own and alleged real life murderers can survive dozens of shots (and burns and a bear trap).

I really love Ricardo Montalban... he's always a good villain and had a tremendous sense of melodrama, always playing it straight even when he delivered the hammiest of lines. And, as ever, there's always something to be said about Leslie Nielsen. From Forbidden Planet on up to his late career (which was almost all comedy and parody), Nielsen had the greatest of deadpan faces and his timing was always the best.

Rest in peace, the both of you.

Quick shout out to George Kennedy, whom we last saw on Couchbound in Charade. He does a terrific job as the Captain playing the pseudo-straight man to Drebin. I love the bit at the state dinner where Frank picks his pocket and an innocent party goer is accused of sleeping with the Captain's wife!

All in all, The Naked Gun is classic Zucker Bros. comedy while they (and their regular players) were in their prime... something that's more than a rarity nowadays. It's not as great as, say, Airplane... but it comes pretty close. And, man, that death scene for Montalban at the end? It just slays me. Especially when the marching band starts playing "Louie, Louie."

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Fifty-five - Psych: Season 6, Episode 11, "REDRUM!"

I think it's pretty safe to say that today's pick is due purely to the influence of one dear friend and the fact that she was posting about the Dual Spires episode of Psych recently and both she and her Twin Peaks-obsessed partner were helping me out during Student Rush.

So, thank you for that, Melanie.

Onward to the review... in which James Roday and Dulé Hill (in their alter egos of Shawn and Gus) recreate moments of Stephen King's The Shining with the help of Louis Gossett, Jr. and Timothy Omundson (Lassiter). It seems that Lassie, feeling the need to become a more respectable adult at the prospect of his jailhouse girlfriend getting out of prison in the near future, has bought a condo that might just be haunted and it's up to Shawn and Gus to go all Ghostbusters on the place.

Of course, just like everything else in Psych, not all is as it seems.

It's great to see Lou Gossett again, even if he is looking a little haggard in his old age. He doesn't quite pull off the kooky caretaker role that Scatman Crothers did in the original Shining, but it's nice to have him guest in an ode to King's horror classic. To be honest, I almost didn't recognize him, he's changed that much over the years (I'm more used to him in his Officer and a Gentlemen/hollow-cheeked motif).

As for the episode, itself, for the most part it is so very, very fun. Sure, I could live without the silly engagement ring melodrama, especially since Juliet seems to be in earshot for part of it... so she probably has picked up a few hints as to what's going on, while not giving herself away... but all of the sendups to The Shining never fail at making me crack a smile, if not outright causing laughter. I especially liked the small details like the black and white stills that were direct homages to Jack in the Overlook's vintage photos.

Some of the references were a bit over the top, like the mirror sequence or Lassie attempting to hack through a door with his cavalry sword while Gus screams like Shelley Duvall, but they were still entertaining and their hammy nature is kind of the point. They're there to link to the material, not directly recreate the actual horror. It's fun and games, not scream and shout... well, for the audience, anyway.

I also really liked the small moments with recurring character Woodie (Kurt Fuller). The shuffleboard bit and the furry joke were quick, painless, and well worth the effort. His buddy-buddy relationship to Shawn and Gus make for another great foil that annoys Lassiter... which is always good in my book.

You know, now that I think about it, the only thing that really bugs me about the episode is the five-minute cameo by William Shatner (reprising his role as Juliet's father). It seems tacked on to the engagement ring melodrama and takes up such a small portion of the episode that I honestly can't understand its necessity other than for padding the episode's trailer ("Look who's guesting THIS week on Psych!"). More than a bit disappointing from that perspective... especially since nothing gets resolved.

Overall, I think that Psych will perpetually just be a guilty pleasure for me. It's cheesy reference humor that is cannily self-aware and fun, but not really all that high in the quality department. I mean, for film and television buffs like my friends and I, it's great stuff... but, objectively speaking, it'll never win any awards (aside from maybe a Peoples' Choice).

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Twenty-two - Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, "It's always the Nazis... unless it's a dame."

I want to love Steve Martin and Carl Reiner's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, but I find I can only like it.

As a high concept parody of Film Noir, DMDWP is a fun send up to the old detective movies of the black and white era, even going so far as to feature direct cameos from a dozen or more Noir films with high profile actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Veronica Lake, Ingrid Bergman, Vincent Price, and more.

It's hard to call them true cameos, though, as they're really clever little pastiches of scenes ripped directly from films like Notorious, White Heat, and The Lost Weekend. While the composites and cuts that bring Martin's character Rigby Reardon together with these classic film stars in their own pictures are often noticeably rough, they're still well enough done to only prove a minor distraction.

Sadly, what proves to be a major distraction is the scriptwriting that tries to tie the dozen or more mystery films from yesteryear together with DMDWP often leads to flat and random jokes about stale bread or fake names.

I think the worst for me was when Rigby tumbles into White Heat with James Cagney. While it was mildly funny to see Martin in drag trying to fake as Cagney's mother, the movie swiftly takes advantage of the prison break in White Heat and Cagney shouts out the wrong name. Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember the new name being lampshaded at all by Martin and it's forgotten in the heat of the moment by a quick cut to Rachel Ward and the third iteration of her "bullet sucking" gag.

Like many detective films, the story meanders wherever it wants to, only more so thanks to the device of the classic film inserts. Each time, it returns the audience to the main plot and the dangerous romance between Martin and Ward to maintain some semblance of continuity, but thanks to both the confusing film devices and weakly arcing narrative, it never feels cohesive or whole.

But that's a part of the joke, too, as many pulp detective novels and films had silly twists and superfluous characters that fluttered in and out of the stories they had brief moments in. I like that meta quality, but it never really lets the film settle into something great. The concept dominates the film instead of supporting it.

Still, as cheesy as it gets overall, I did really enjoy seeing Martin and Reiner (along with third writer, George Gipe) string all this disparate scenes from film after film into one cornball of a Noir sendup. I just wish it was a strong as yet another Noir parody... The Naked Gun.

Unfortunately, lot of these movies have been forgotten over the past fifty years, even though they star some of the greatest (or most recognizable) actors of the century.

To be honest, I had never even heard of The Bribe, but I suddenly want to track it down to see the real story by Vincent Price's Latin American misadventure... and the same goes for Lana Turner in Johnny Eager and Joan Crawford in Humoresque.

Back to the film at hand, though, at the very least DMDWP makes me laugh quite a bit and at odd times. It takes the essence of Film Noir... crime, violence, and thinly veiled sexual tension... and works with the style to make trope jokes that hit well enough.

When you make your movie title into a Chekov's Gun, though, you really should deliver on it more than a single third act line.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Two - The Venture Bros.: Season 1, Pilot, "See, this is what happens..."

...when you watch a crap ton of Jonny Quest and smoke a lot of weed.

But, really, that's a good thing.

Done in the style of the old Hanna-Barbera adventure cartoons from the 60's and 70's, Venture Bros. definitely emulates those awkward, super-science boys shows in all the right ways while lampooning their faults with obvious plays, puns, and reversals.

Focusing on the Venture family, where Dr.Venture is an obvious analog to Dr.Benton Quest and the boys are a cross between the eponymous Jonny and Frank and Joe Hardy from, you guessed it, The Hardy Boys mystery novels. Race Bannon is replaced by the rage-prone Brock Sampson (voiced by Patrick Warburton) who only seems to get amped about sex and violence.

While the series as a whole draws inspiration from just about all things geeky and counter-culture from the past fifty years, from David Bowie to Marvel Comics, the pilot itself only carries a few such references (like the obvious Reed Richards/Mr.Fantastic clone).

There are also a few key design and character issues that never made the transition to the series proper, the most noticeable being the latent sexuality that Dr.Venture subtly exhibits towards an uncaring Brock.

While the regular series definitely paints Dr.Venture as a failure at life and love, there's never any sexual tension between he and Brock save for this one episode... though they are the effective parents of the boys in the form of hetero life-mates.

I don't know if the network wanted to tone down the idea of Doc Venture lusting after Brock, even though the show was firmly rooted in their racier Adult Swim block, but the idea was transferred, instead, to VB's actual Jonny Quest analogs, Action Johnny and Race Bannon who are implied to have had some sort of loving relationship. But that is a conversation for another day when talking about the rest of the series, not the pilot.

The pilot itself is fun, even if some of the jokes run a little too long or have uneven payoffs, like the "we don't have a mom" silence or the ninja's paraphilia. It's easy to see why the series was picked up and it does improve over time. Let's just say that, despite its flaws, there was lots of potential in this pilot.

Also, Hookers, Supervillains, and Violence.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~