Day Two Hundred and Twenty-five - Prophets of Science Fiction: Phillip K. Dick, "Why on EARTH did they make those 'dramatizations?'"

As a writer, myself, and a big fan of Science Fiction in general, seeing this Science Channel documentary show up as a recommendation by the mysterious Algorithms, I have to admit that my interest was a little piqued.

Having watched the episode covering Phillip K. Dick, though, I must say that I was very disappointed.

To its credit, the doc gets a fairly wide spread of authors, filmmakers, and actual engineers, scientists, and theoreticians to comment on the man and his body of work. Attention is given to his mental stresses in addition to his far-seeing predictions concerning robotics, memory, technology, and alternate realities.

That part is just fine. Well, for the most part, I think.

What is really annoying, though, are the cheap dramatizations of him both as a child and as an adult, particularly as a paranoid stoner living in Southern California.

You can kind of choke back the laughter in the early bits that cover the possible invasion and ransacking of his home, but the moment they get to the "he opened his house to miscreants" bits and the fake beards and terrible wardrobes (not to mention the horribly melodramatic acting) come into play, I honestly couldn't take the doc seriously anymore.

I guess, going into the documentary, I was really hoping for an examination of his methods and messages in terms of the practical process of his writing... something that I probably shouldn't have expected. Really, the only mention of his writing process comes in the form of the wacky I Ching device he apparently used to work in his "alternate universe" stories, which makes him seem more like a loon than a creative writer.

Maybe it's my own fault for expecting more than a bare bones analysis that was played for sensationalism instead of insight. I mean, it's not like the doc was directed by Ken Burns or anything, but still.

Disappointment was definitely the theme for my feelings concerning this episode of Prophets of Science Fiction. I think that I'll hang on for one more (in particular, the one that focuses on Robert Heinlein), but after that I have a feeling that I'm going to wash my hands of the series.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Sixteen - Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill, "In heels, no less!"

I'm going to come right out and say it now (in case you get bored with my gushing)... this has to be the greatest comedy set that I have ever seen.

Now, to be fair, I've seen it before, as Eddie Izzard is my favorite standup comedian and Dress to Kill is my favorite set of his... I own it on DVD and force my friends and occasional girlfriends to watch it at least once a year. In the case of the occasional girlfriends, it's my first pick for the inevitable "Movies on the Couch" date which crops up around two or three dates in. I have no idea if this fact moves up the timing of their decisions to eventually stop dating me.

We may never know.

Even so, it is very much available on the Stream and is just as grand a performance here as it is on DVD. I only wish I had been there when it was recorded.

If you don't know him (or, perhaps only recognize him from his film and television roles where he's not in a dress and "tarted up a bit"), Eddie Izzard is a transvestite who brokers really intelligent humor that spans the gamut of human existence. Fashion, Sex, History, Language, it's all there.

I particularly love him because he owns his alternative lifestyle without necessarily banking on it. While, yes, his transvestism is a major part of the act, it's not played gratuitously, nor does he fawn over himself. Instead, he has a very humble but confident demeanor that is both self-effacing and unapologetic.

This particular set was filmed in San Francisco and it's hilarious to hear all the hissing at the beginning of it, a bit of heckling that he smartly defuses without losing the audience. I find the feat very impressive due to the fact that he makes quite a few claims about the alternative lifestyles in a town that's very touchy about said lifestyles.

Now, fair warning, it's a long set... clocking in at six minutes shy of a full two hours! But, every single bit of it is engaging and entertaining. From puberty to the druids to the British Empire... Clinton's impeachment to Speed to The Great Escape, it's all hilarious, if a bit dated.

I mean, c'mon, the set is almost fifteen years old at this point, it's going to be a little dated.

I've watched tons of standup specials on Netflix (though, I've only reviewed a few)... and this is still the only set where I'm so deliriously happy that he comes out for an encore... mostly in French, I might add... and done in such a way that even a big dumb American, like me, who hasn't had a lick of French since elementary school, can still follow along (for the most part, as I still don't get the Monty Python in French bit).

My final recommendation is for you to WATCH THIS... IMMEDIATELY... with a quick shout out to my dear friends Todd and Tina for introducing me to Eddie's comedy a decade ago.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Eighty-two - The Hunt for Red October, or "Ford might be a better Jack Ryan, but he cannot beat this ensemble."

Both the books that Tom Clancy writes and the movies made out of said books have one thing in common (you know, aside from the fact that they tell the same stories)... the earlier, the better. Patriot Games was good, Clear and Present Danger not so much, and The Sum of All Fears... yikes! The Hunt for Red October was, and still is, the definite cream of the crop when it comes to Tom Clancy films.

While I do love Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan, as he has much more charisma and believability for the character than Alec Baldwin, The Hunt for Red October is, by far, the best of all the Clancy movies. There are several reasons for this, but it is primarily due to Sean Connery, Sam Neill, and the rest of the Red October's crew.

Set during the height of the Cold War, The Hunt for Red October tells the tale of the defection of the command crew of a state of the art nuclear missile submarine build for the exclusive purpose of a devastating first strike. Both the book and the film bank heavily on Cold War paranoia and brinksmanship, and play it up seriously, without all the laughable ham-fisted BS you'd usually see out of an 80's war flick (think Red Dawn or Miracle Mile).

I really like the feel of every moment in the subs, whether it was in the Red October itself (where we spend most of our time), the sonar room and main deck of the Dallas, or the tight confines of the bridge of Stellan Skarsgård's attack boat, each feels claustrophobic and genuine. This is especially true when you take in all of the props and set dressings. The Russian subs all have this air of old world class mixed with stark utilitarianism while the Dallas feels high tech and open. Even the lighting is used to great effect, the Russians all reds and yellows, the Americans all blues and tans.

What really sells the movie, though, are the actors. 

Like I said, I preferred Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan, but Alec Baldwin does a pretty good job. While I cannot believe Gates McFadden as his doctor wife (luckily, she's only there for a scene), Alec and his interactions with his American compatriots (James Earl Jones, Scott Glenn, Jeffery Jones, Senator Fred Thompson) all ring true.

Sean Connery, though, dominates this movie. He is every inch a command officer and acts it. Proud, stoic, decisive. In his opening minutes, he is mysterious... then, when he deals with his Political Officer, we see he can be brutal even as he is calm and thoughtful. As the movie progresses, we can definitely see the character that leads men and earns their devotion.

I also like both Sam Neill and Tim Curry as counterpoints for Connery, the former a true first officer and the latter duty-bound doctor. Both play their roles tremendously well. You don't feel a hint of deception from Curry even as his character wrestles with the conflicts of his orders and duty (granted, it's a small role, but he does it so well) and Sam's portrayal of Borodin makes me believe it... especially as the screws begin to turn and he starts losing his composure.

To be honest, this is how Cold War films... or any war film... should be done. John McTiernan and his crew put together an excellent piece that had great acting, fine attention to detail, and only one or two hiccups (which came in the form of a few awkward ADR moments). 

Yes, it's very pro-USA, but it didn't shy away from portraying both our military and our government as human and fallible... nor does it make the Russians out to be your stereotypical Red Menace. The closest we get to a commentary on the evils of Communism comes in the form of the political officer and his blasé invasiveness and the general purpose of a boat like Red October. Everything substantive about the film is just the cat and mouse game, not the politics.

I can definitely recommend The Hunt for Red October to just about everyone. It's solid filmmaking and storytelling and was an impeccable first entry for the franchise. A pity the follow up films didn't have the same oomph (even if Ford was a better Ryan).

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Eighty-one - High Anxiety, or "I don't know if Hitch would be proud... but I am."

The Seventies were the golden era of Brooks films... Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, and High Anxiety.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love History of the World, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood:Men in Tights, but there's just something about the Seventies' ensembles and rough sets that made the films feel more like grand stage productions. There was just something about them that tickles the nostalgia bone as well as the funny one.

High Anxiety, when compared to Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, is probably a little weaker, but is still pretty funny... especially if you're a fan of Hitchcock's thrillers.

Me? I love'em.

To Catch a Thief is probably one of my favorite classic films of all time and there's a special place in my heart for Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder.

Set in a mental institution that eminent psychologist Dr.Richard Thorndike (Brooks) is just taking over, the movie follows a murderous conspiracy that Thorndike eventually uncovers and becomes the target of over the course of the film.

Cloris Leachman plays the villainess, Nurse Diesel, who pulls the strings of her fellow conspirators with a stiff countenance and iron will... especially Harvey Korman's Dr.Montague who is under her S&M sexual spell. It's a familiar role for Korman as he plays it similarly in Blazing Saddles and History of the World, just with varying degrees of perversity. I find that funny considering how he's also associated with the only mildly subversive Carol Burnett Show.

Madeline Kahn is here as well, playing the Hitchcock damsel in distress, her father being held against his will at the Institute while Diesel and Montague charge outrageous fees from his estate. Eventually she stumbles into Thorndike's arms and the two proceed to hatch a plan of action to save her paterfamilias and manage to fall in love, cinema style (without much effort).

Though the premise of High Anxiety is silly and its implementation is slow and clunky, nevertheless there are dozens of really good bits in the film.

I particularly love Harvey Korman's routine where he acts like a werewolf behind Brooks' back to drive a patient, who used to have nightmares that the monsters were coming to get him, stark raving mad in order to justify his institutionalization.

There's also a really funny "old jewish couple" routine with Brooks and Kahn as they try and sneak past airport security. Sure, it stretches credulity something fierce, but it's still fun in that sort of standup act fashion that Brooks is known for.

The sendups to classic Hitchcock films, like the shower scene in Psycho, The Birds recreation in Golden Gate Park, and the Vertigo climax (set in the Institution's tower instead of an old Spanish Mission's belfry) are all relatively faithful without being too heavy handed. I especially liked the shower scene... despite it getting a sloppy setup, it delivers pretty well with the high pitched screams of the bellboy and the final joke about his tip.

While not a laughfest, per se, thanks to the pacing issues, High Anxiety is certainly enjoyable. I'd rank it higher than Dracula Dead and Loving It, The Twelve Chairs, and Silent Movie, but lower than most of the rest of Brooks' catalog.

It's definitely worth having in the Netflix queue and is good to revisit whenever you're in the mood for that classic Brooks' comedic fun.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Sixty-eight - School Ties, or "The 90's called... it wants its teen hearthrobs back."

My parents took me to see School Ties in theaters.

I don't know if they did it as a kind of preparation for sending me to a Catholic private school (which never happened) or to broaden my horizons more as I'd never really dealt with religious discrimination before. At least, not obviously.

Being an Army Brat, I'd had plenty of exposure to all sorts of folks from all sorts of both religious and cultural backgrounds. One thing about the Army in the 80's and 90's... it was definitely a huge melting pot.

It also helped that I got kicked out of the Catholic school that my sister was already going to down the highway. I was just in kindergarten and already had problems with the catechism classes. It forced my parents to ship me across the wire to the local public schools close to the base which were 99% African-American.

If I hadn't woken up to religious discrimination thanks to the wide variety of families on base, I certainly learned about racial tensions early.

But, enough about me... this post is about School Ties.

Starring Brendan Fraser and many rising male actors of the era (Chris O'Donnell, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck), School Ties tells a very simple story about the religious and class divide that, to a certain extent, still pervades American society.

David Greene (Fraser) is a top quarterback that a prestigious private school headhunts, in his senior year, to help them beat their bitter arch-rival in football. In order to entice him, they offer him an academic scholarship (though, he still has to work as a table server to pay for his other expenses). He accepts, though his coach recommends, without actually saying it, that he hide his Jewish heritage.

It's a choice David makes that works quite well for him as he assimilates into the WASPy elite (see, even I'm guilty of bigotry) of the school. That is, of course, until he is outed by his academic and love rival, Charlie Dillon (Damon).

The movies main themes hit me hard as there isn't a week that goes by where I don't hear someone say they "totally jewed" somebody or "don't be queer."

I'd like to say that I always fight the good fight and confront such nonsense... and, I do try to make my feelings known, but more often or not, instead of seeing it for what it is, the bigots I run into just offer excuses or blow it off and I become a bad guy for pushing the issue.

I don't think I got the full extent of what was happening the first time I saw School Ties. Revisiting it on Netflix, however, everything was as plain as day.

Whether it was the prayer that Alan Greene (Ed Lauter) offers to his son as he leaves or the perhaps not so subtle disdain that Headmaster Bartram (Peter Donat) offers young David as he tries to celebrate passover alone and in secret in the school's chapel, everything that was hidden by my innocence in '92 was laid bare now.

I think what angered me the most about the mentality shift when David is outed as Jewish in the third act is just how readily everyone assumes the worst about him. It's as if everything he had done, everything he had proved about himself as a student, an athlete... as a human being... goes out the window thanks to stereotypes and deep cultural prejudice. It's one of the things that I love about America, that we strive not to be this way... but it's also one of the things I hate, because it manages to be perpetuated.

Even here, in this town, which is, itself, a melting pot of many cultures, Anglo, Latino, and Native, do we still have it... where fire alarms are pulled to disrupt LGBT dances and folks decry "drunk indian" jokes as only harmless stereotypes instead of racism.

I want School Ties to be a required part of high school curriculum, just as much as I want kids to see Bless Me, Ultima and Schindler's List and Babel... and Dead Poet's Society... and Cloud Atlas.

Back to the film, itself, there's great pacing and good focus on the leads and their conflicts. Perhaps not enough time was spent on the side characters, who would eventually decide David's fate when he gets embroiled in a cheating scandal with the film's Iago character, Charlie, but it's still a great film.

Overall, I would very much recommend School Ties. It shows how far we've come and how very much further we have yet to go.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Forty-six - Biloxi Blues, or "For some reason, my memory told me this was Cadance."

For the longest time, I thought this and Charlie Sheen's 1990 film, Cadance, were the same movie.

It's weird. I remember seeing the poster for Biloxi Blues hanging in the extra panels of those mall map kiosks at Southlake Mall in suburban Atlanta, and I remember Charlie and Laurence Fishburne doing their bit with the chain gang song, and that's it.

In my memory, the two were one and the same.

Of course, I was tremendously wrong.

For one thing, Biloxi Blues is a film adaptation of Neil Simon's coming of age stage play where a New York Jew goes through basic training. Not to say that Cadance isn't an alright film (I probably won't find out any time soon as it's not on Netflix), but Biloxi has a better pedigree when it comes to its author (I say that with no intended slight to Gorgon Weaver).

For another, while Charlie probably has more notoriety and a wider movie catalog, the 80's were Matthew Broderick's time. Be it Project X, Ferris Bueller, or Wargames, you cannot say that it wasn't his decade.

This entry into his filmography is decent enough, but is really rather lacking in comparison. Especially to Ferris Bueller. Granted, it's better than Project X, but at least in that film I was able to go goo-goo over a young Helen Hunt (she's still a fox, by the way... or, was the last movie I saw her in, As Good As It Gets).

Anyways, back to Biloxi Blues.

A sort of ensemble film, where a group of fresh recruits to the Army at the tail end of WW2, with Broderick as its main focus and narrator, Biloxi is a tale of "America, The Melting Pot," as the core six all come from different places and have a hard time coming together as a unit and as friends.

Of course, it doesn't help that Christopher Walken is their drill sergeant and takes an instant disliking to both Private Jerome (Broderick) and his fellow Jewish compatriot, Epstein, who is an odd fellow to say the least.

I like Chris Walken's character, but I never really feel a sense of menace from him, not even towards the end of the film where he confronts the two New York misfits in a drunken stupor where he is brandishing a gun and threatening their lives.

To be honest, I couldn't tell if he was homicidal, suicidal, both, or neither and just joking. The entire sequence of scenes during the climax and falling action felt more like a somewhat boring, somewhat disingenuous dream sequence.

Really, Walken had nothing on R.Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, but maybe I shouldn't compare the two.

I did feel that the homosexuality subplot could've been handled better... and the romance between Daisy and Jerome was limited to montage and one dance scene that really should've dominated (or at least had parity with) the entire second half of the film, but oh well... it's Simon's play. Can't fault him for his artistic choice.

I just would've done it different.

It's an interesting commentary on America in the 40's, multiculturalism, and sexuality, but really fails to deliver on its key conflicts. I wanted more from Walken, but such is life.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~