Day Ninety-seven - The Thirteenth Floor, "Do simulated people go to simulated college... or are they just simulated to have had an education?"

I hate to say it, but it's hard to take Craig Bierko seriously as a lead in a film, especially this one. He's had one or two decent supporting roles, but, sadly, hasn't had the greatest career.

The Thirteenth Floor came out right about the same time as David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (which I've always pronounced "X-is-TEN-zee") and follows a similar, well, "existential" premise. I mean, it literally leads off with a quote from Descartes, so, you can kind of feel the pretension from the get go.

It seems that a computer research firm in Los Angeles (that apparently only employs three people) has made a breakthrough in virtual reality. After six years of tireless effort (about the time it takes to produce a AAA video game title), they've managed to recreate 1937 Los Angeles and can dive into it for up to two hours of time.

Unfortunately, though, for Armin Mueller-Stahl, this breakthrough is worth murdering over. That's where Craig Bierko comes in. The protege of Armin's character, Craig--whose character is named Douglas Hall--has to find out why someone would want to kill his mentor... and he's the prime suspect.

In order to catch the killer, Douglas has to dive into the machine and interact with the simulated Los Angelenos, a few of whom are starting to suspect that all is not right with their world.

The Thirteenth Floor is an interesting premise and I think it would work great as a short story (apparently it was based on a novel)... but, as a film, it falls flat. The police investigation (run by Dennis Haysbert) comes off only as a vague threat and Douglas' romance with his dead mentor's daughter, Jane Fuller (played by Gretchen Mol), is utterly lacking in chemistry or believability.

It's a cute attempt, but the pieces fall into place far too easily and the ultimate climax fight and resolution is full of plot holes and convenient hand waving.

I especially hated Haysbert's Detective McBain and his inexplicable realization about what is going on. Even with the evidence he had concerning blackouts, it's hard to believe an off-screen conversation with Jane is enough to convince him.

Sadly, I cannot see Cronenberg's entry from that year, which starred Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh in a many layered VR murder mystery. I have somewhat fonder memories of it, but it's not on Netflix.

To be fair, The Thirteenth Floor is an okay film, but it doesn't rank all that high in the quality department and certainly doesn't live up to its pretensions. At the very least, the ending credits have one of my favorite Cardigans songs of all time, Erase/Rewind.

But, could someone PLEASE tell me, though, why these machines have to literally swap minds between the player and the simulation... you'd think there would be safeties in check that wouldn't allow simulations to jump up the ladder and take over someone's body if their player died in the game.

Yeesh.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Ninety-six - Stephen Fry's 100 Greatest Gadgets, "Look! Even Fry can make VH1-style crap docs!"

Alright, yes... I'm a Stephen Fry fanboy.

I find his debate footage intimidating, love his documentary where he tours all 50 American States, and pretty much adore every film role he's ever done. While his early television work with Hugh Laurie doesn't really thrill me as much as it does the rest of the internet, I still enjoy it to a decent extent.

The same cannot be said for the 100 Greatest Gadgets special.

To be sure, I wasn't kidding in today's title... this two part special that counts down Fry's favorite gadgets of all time feels exactly like an episode of 'I <3 the 80's" but swapping out "gadgets" for a specific decade. Most of the segments are all minute long mini-features that montage promo and demonstration shots of each particular invention in its various incarnations set to brief, vapid interview monologues with mostly generic British television personalities.

Swap out Breakfast Presenters for American Comedians and it's just another day block on VH1.

It's also annoying that some of his favorite gadgets are decidedly obscure UK tchotchkes from across the Empire like the ZED-X, a British designed game station from the early 80's (as opposed to the more famous and recognizable Atari 2600) or the Australian invented electric sandwich press.

Not exactly the freaking WHEEL, now are they... though, to be fair, I only watched the first hour so perhaps the wheel IS on his list, I just haven't gotten that far yet.

I can't say I'm all that happy with the weight he gives some inventions over others... I have no clue why the Aibo is even on this list, let alone the Sodastream (which is apparently used to make cheap, fake champagne). It's nice to see the Can Opener made it, but the Curling Iron? And above the Scissors, no less?

This is a crazy, arbitrary list that combines both useless junk and actually practical devices in a mish mash of pedantic interviews from useless Brit Icons (not to include Mr.Fry). If I had to see one more "Presenter" title as an interviewee's job description, I was going to scream.

To add to the monotony are the countdown slides which feature a rotating cast of the lists' actual inventions numbered to keep track of where one is in the program's trip down Fry's ghastly gadgets. The gimmick wouldn't be so annoying if they didn't reuse them every five or so. You'd think they'd be able to spring for this sort of insert based on every gadget, but no.

Sad. Boring. Ineffective. LCD.

The final straw for me, I think, was when the entire segment on the Walkie Talkie revolved around stock footage of the Royal Wedding that everyone went gaga over a while back.

I mean, honestly, what the heck is the point of showing footage of the motorcade and Kate and whatshisface's nuptial reveal as part of a feature on radio communicators? Oh, the 5000 police organized using them? Whoopdeedoo! Show them using the Walkies, not lingering shots on some pretty little thing marrying into figurehead status.

The Brits and their Royal obsession. Yeesh.

I can't really recommend this cheesy little pseudo-doc whatsoever, even if it is hosted by the esteemed Stephen Fry. I'll stick it out for the second episode to see where he goes with it, but I have the almost certain feeling that this will never again darken the door of my Netflix queue.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Ninety-five - Justice League: Season 1, Episodes 1, 2, and 3, "We go from Bruce Timm's Batman/Superman to THIS?"

To say that the Justice League cartoon started off on shaky legs is a bit of an understatement, I think.

Hot off of the Bruce Timm era of Batman: The Animated Series, which returned the animated DC universe to glory after years of cheese and fluff with the likes of Superfriends and Scooby-Doo teamups, Justice League promised to keep the feel of the late 90's cartoons.

It did this, in part, by retaining Kevin Conroy and Tim Daly as the voice actors for Batman and Superman respectively. That alone guaranteed a return audience as they were fan favs from their respective series.

Unfortunately, the production team wasn't quite sure how to bring DC's top team together without things getting awkward. It tries by lampshading everyone with a pair of tights coming together to back Clark and Bruce up via an off-screen telepathic suggestion by J'onn, the Martian Manhunter, in a similar way to how he reached out to Clark throughout episode 1.

I'd almost believe it, but we never see J'onn make contact with the other Supers we were treated to with brief sequences early in the episode, Wonder Woman and Flash, for their little intro bits. I find this to be very lazy writing on behalf of the team.

There's also the problem of the enemies being too strong in the beginning and too weak at the end. This happens several times in later episodes, but it's never more obvious than here and in the next mini-arc with the Manhunters.

All throughout episodes one and two, we're shown just how indestructible the shapeshifters who destroyed Mars are... even so much that Superman cannot easily deter them. Then, all of the sudden, most of the destruction they've wrought has been reduced to a tiny area around their factories (when it was city-wide just a few minutes previous) and they're vulnerable to just about everything... and this is BEFORE it's revealed that they're SUPER-vulnerable to ultraviolet radiation.

Let me tell you, that's an amount of cheese that even I find hard to swallow.

Graphically, I'm not all that pleased with the subtle stylistic changes they made for both Supes and Bats. The cowl's ears in particular and Clark's sunken cheekbones really annoy.
 
Eventually, once the series morphed into Justice League Unlimited and started telling smaller, more personal stories instead of grand, multi-episode punch fests, I really started to enjoy it... especially when they went with the minor leaguers like The Question. But we'll get there eventually.

For now, I can't really recommend these episodes for anything other than backfill for JLU... and that's a bit sad. They didn't even have Lois Lane doing the reporting on the invasion! Ugh.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Ninety-four - Samurai Jack: Season 1, Episodes 1, 2, and 3, "My god... the ARTISTRY!"

When Samurai Jack came out on Cartoon Network over a decade ago, I was instantly a fan. Already enamored with anime in general and the live action samurai dramas, seeing the styles fused with a dystopian cyberpunk future and American animation sensibilities under the direction of CN's golden boy, Genndy Tartakovsky, I was hooked from moment one.

Now, after ten years, to revisit it, I find myself even more in love... and oh so glad that Netflix has picked it up (though, as with other series in the new licensing deal, it's only the first season).

The first three episodes of the series are effectively its pilot in three parts.

The first tells the origin story of how a nameless young samurai is forced to flee his homeland, which is represented through its art and architecture feudal Japan. It's hard to pin down which period, exactly, as it seems to exist in this sort of nebulous time that includes art, spirituality, and mythology that cover many eras.

As the young boy flees, he progressively travels from continent to continent, training with many different warriors, scholars, and tradesmen from almost a dozen different cultures... from horse-riding in the Arabian deserts to calligraphy in sight of the pyramids to archery and axe-throwing in what look to be an England and Russia of antiquity.

Each region and culture is artistically distinct and seem lovingly crafted to challenge the viewer first by presenting folk stereotypes and replacing them with innocence and goodwill as well as strength and determination. It's like watching the folk tales of our forefathers come to life and combine to imbue the young hero-to-be with the attributes of all the world in order to combat the supernatural terror that is the series' villain, the demon Aku.

Over the course of those first twenty minutes we are given what has to be the SINGLE GREATEST TRAINING MONTAGE in the history of motion picture storytelling. In terms of art, pacing, relevance, culture, and emotional range and sensativity, I have never before and probably never will again see its like.

If it weren't for the fact that it ends on a cliffhanger that leads to a complete shift in genre, I would say the first episode is a masterpiece. In many ways, it is... but it must be taken as merely a part of its whole, which continue in episodes two and three.

At the end of the first episode, with the now adult samurai confronting, and almost defeating, Aku, a last second bit of treachery rips the man out of time where he is flung to the distant future. The series then becomes a sci-fi dystopian epic genre deconstruction where the Wandering Samurai trope is relocated to the flexible story boundaries of a future Earth.

Here he can fight aliens, cyborgs, and robots (sometimes, all three!) and befriend talking dogs while making enemies with three-eyed go-go dancers. With anything and everything past and present to draw from thanks to its far out setting, Samurai Jack (as his far-future admirers dub him) becomes the insert through which the viewers explore both period samurai drama and every historical and speculative trope under the sun.

I have no doubt, had the series not been cancelled after four seasons, that Samurai Jack could've plumbed the myths, art, and tropes of every real and imagined culture our poets and scholars have created.

What's more impressive is just how well done both the art and direction are. What could've been a cheesy as hell Hanna-Barbera adventure production from the sixties and seventies, like Space Ghost or The Heculoids, was instead a collaborative effort of tremendously talented artists, writers, and directors who let the art tell the story instead of using it simply as a medium to prop up cliched jokes.

That's not to say that there aren't familiar gags and one-liners to draw in the occasional bit of silly, but the majority of the series is art and myth.

When it comes to the voice work, I particularly love Mako Iwamatsu's rendition of Aku. Drawing from his grasp of the ancient mystic-type character that he was certainly familiar with via his role in the Conan series, Mako imbues Aku with such gravity, menace, and cackling glee that, even as I'm rooting for Jack, Aku remains my favorite villain of all time.

On the whole, the only criticism that I have for the series is that it doesn't remain true to it's wandering samurai premise... relying on the comedic value of its side characters and extras to lighten the mood too much. I think this could have been done without the Dexter/Powerpuff-styled goofiness.

Still, in spite of this mild weakness, Samurai Jack is one of the greatest animated series I've ever seen and certainly surpasses both its cartoon and live-action competitors. I only wish a proper send-off episode could've been created to either give Jack his deserved vengeance or send him off into the sunset to travel without our witness.

If you have any love for art, style, martial arts, and science fiction... you will love Samurai Jack (or, should, anyway). I definitely recommend it to any and everyone. It's a masterpiece of stylistic and genre fusion.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Ninety-three - Under New Management, "Low Rent Wiseguy Romance? Meh."

There seem to be two basic ways to make gangster movies: go as dramatic as you can and make a serious piece that traverses the ups and downs of The Life (The Godfather, Traffic) or make a weird sort of redeeming comedy where Dons are laughably flawed and everything's a joke to contrast with the murder and mayhem (Analyze This, Gun Shy).

Under New Management is definitely the latter.

Set in Brooklyn with a neighborhood gang of made men who are on their last legs, crime-wise, UNM takes the premise of the squeeky-clean adopted son of the group, who never new his uncle and his friends were mafiosi, and making said pretty boy the new Don with the aim of taking the two-bit hoods and turning them legit.

Of course, they have to make serious bank to peaceably retire from "the Five Families" without getting ventilated, and the FBI has a suitably attractive female agent  (and a not-so-attractive, bumbling, male agent) trying to take the newcomer and his crew down while doing her best not to fall in love with the pretty boy, but such is the way things go in comedic gangster films.

Or so the movie expects us to believe.

The film is patently ridiculous. You never, ever get the feeling that anyone in a black hat is really a criminal... just guys in a community theatre troop acting out mob characters. It's all plastic and fake. Never once do I feel real menace from these guys. They're just a mostly pudgy collection of stereotypes.

The same can be said for the hot, Irish-Catholic lady cop. Her entire claim to heritage is a referance to a Claddagh ring and a Gaelic catchphrase that becomes a key sticking point for her relationship with the would-be Don... and said phase is both stupidly awkward and overused. Their courtship is puerile and formulaic, they have nothing that really challenges them, together or apart, and their resolution is stupid. Seriously, it plays like the writer had lost anything to say so he just repeated earlier jokes and faded out on an instant, unexplainable resolution.

And, that's pretty much how I could describe the rest of the movie.

The side characters, the overall plot, the crisis... all low rent and boring. Attempts are made to have plot points and characters show up for important bits later, but they're all paint by numbers and forced.

Production-wise... at best, the cinematography is on par with a cable procedural and the editing is even far below that. The locations are overused and ill-suited. It is very obvious how tiny a budget this production had and they use it without any gusto.

Under New Management isn't the worst film I've seen all year, but I certainly cannot recommend it to anyone. If it manages to make its way onto your queue, I recommend dropping it as soon as possible.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Ninety-two - Ronin, "Masterless Spies Chase the Ultimate MacGuffin."

There was a phase of Robert De Niro's career in the late nineties/early 2000s where he was taking those "aging action hero" roles like Heat, 15 Minutes, and The Score. In every instance he particularly personified that sort of "two-days to retirement" kind of grizzled cop/criminal who was just trying to make it through one last job before his luck runs out.

That's definitely the case again here with Ronin.

The film opens on a cafe that De Niro's character, Sam, is casing before he goes inside. Within are quite a few suspicious looking characters including Jean Reno, Skip Sudduth, and Natascha McElhone. In short order, we see evidence of Sam's trade and tradecraft, making sure the situation he is walking into is tipped a little bit in his balance.

It's brilliant, subtle exposition with barely a wasted action or line.

After a brief moment of tension, the scene shifts to the warehouse home base for the first act and we're introduced to the rest of the caper's players, Sean Bean and Stellan Skarsgård.

I really like the ensemble that director John Frankenheimer has assembled here. These are all great character actors (with the exception of maybe Skip Sudduth who isn't terrible, but doesn't really have presence) from across Europe and America.

Jean Reno and Stellan Skarsgård particularly make me happy. Both can play either the menacing outsider or the affable friend with pretty much the flick of a switch and it's great to see both of them slipping in to their roles.

I was a little disappointed that Sean Bean ducks out after the first act, but what he was there for was great and heavy on the smarm.

The one pick that didn't quite gel for me was Natascha McElhone. She's a fine actress, and a singular beauty to boot, but she never really fits either as the team's nominal leader/organizer or chemistry-wise with De Niro (the two of them get sloppy makeouts in act two and the conflict between them in act three is key). There definitely should have been someone else in that role, but no sense crying over spilled whiskey.

Wait... I always cry over spilled whiskey.

Anyway, Ronin is a great example of a MacGuffin driven plot. All of these mercenaries are after one thing... a silver case. No one knows or cares what's inside of it save the team's mysterious backer (Jonathan Pryce) and their competitors. The entire film revolves around capturing, keeping, and selling the case... and it changes hands quite a few times over the course of the movie.

While the gunplay is a little outmoded (I can't help but laugh at the blood squibs nowadays), Ronin also features one of the greatest car chases ever put to film. While the second act chase through Nice is alright, the third act Paris pursuit puts most other sequences to shame. Michael Bay wishes he could create dynamic chase sequences like this (so much so that he almost recreates them in The Island and Transformers... at least, in my opinion). The only examples I have that are better are in Bourne and Bond films.

There's also a great cameo by Michael Lonsdale, whom most Americans would probably only know from Moonraker as the villainous Drax. While the movie could have done without his history lesson the meaning behind the film's title "Ronin," it's a well done bit of exposition that cuts to the heart of De Niro's character and is a knowing wink at the third act twist.

Plus, any Western film that presents Japanese Folklore and History fairly straight without the ham and cheese of ignorance and nose-tilting gets my vote 100%.

If you like taut caper films with just the right amount of violence versus intrique, Ronin is probably a great film to check out. Just be warned that, on Netflix, the French and Russian subtitles are missing and there are several key scenes that aren't in English. You'll either have to know the languages, rely on context cues, or flip the closed captioning switch in Netflix's options to get the dialogue. 

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~ 

Day Ninety-one - Fireplace For Your Home: Episode 1, Crackling Fireplace, "If only my monitor could transfer HEAT."

If you live in an apartment, odds are that you probably do not have a fireplace, and that is a shame.

When I was sharing a condo with my sister about a decade ago, we rented a similar styled unit to the one our parents owned in the same complex roughly five years before that, which happened to be lucky enough to have a fireplace.

Unfortunately for us, the owners and property managers never wanted us to actually USE said fireplace. Perhaps it was due to insurance reasons or anti-fire spite or (my guess) because of the giant beehive that had decided to nestle deep inside the chimney that neither of the responsible parties wanted to root out.

I think my sister and I were robbed, really.

Luckily, if you're in the mood for mildly pleasing fire imagery without the important benefits of warmth and smell, then Fireplace For Your Home is right up your alley.

The episode begins with a fire already in progress.

Due to the evenness and compartmentalization of the flame at the beginning, it's obvious that the producers used a concentrated firestarter instead a regular kindling stack, but hey... that's Hollywood for you.

Neatly stacked, split logs of what appears to be pine with approximate thicknesses of three to six inches burn with a clear tall flame. The wood appears to have been seasoned a least a month due to the lack of visible smoke you would typically have from wet wood, but not long enough for the sap to have made itself known around the cuts in large veiny dribbles.

You can certainly tell that the logs have retained their sap, though, due to the wonderfully regular snaps and pops that sound every few seconds when the flame licks a ripe pocket of their micro-explosive goodness. This is a key feature of Fireplace For Your Home that boasts of its realism. There are no foley effects here as many of the crackles are accompanied by real sparks and the occasionally ejected coal.

That's not to say there aren't a few drawbacks, though.

Visually speaking, while the fire progresses at a pleasing rate, I just cannot get behind how clean the hearth is. A real, lived-in fireplace isn't complete without a small ash bed underneath its iron cradle in which coals can safely drop and remain active, warm, and red... reflecting back heat to the fire's undercarriage and keeping the blaze fresh and spirited.

Perhaps more importantly, though, there's never any actual heat produced for you to enjoy. I'd say a good fifty percent of the benefit of a fireplace is in the warmth (the other split going 25/10/15 to smell, sound, and sight, respectively). Fireplace For Your Home is only light and sound, meaning that a good three-quarters of one's enjoyment of a fire is lost in the use of this program. For apartments without a fireplace, perhaps it provides something, but so much is missing that I find it hard to really like.

As far as the acting goes, well, it's hard not to laud the logs chosen for their role. They all burn with a steady, appealing luster that lasts decently well. It was as shame the producers cut them off at an hour as I'm sure the lot of them could've gone for at least another hour and a half... and, perhaps, could've lasted much longer with a supporting character introduction in the second act.

I think, aside from the heat issues, that my main beef is with the director of this feature. It's obvious that they had a crack special effects crew that knew what they were doing when it came to the pyrotechnics. I've never seen a clearer, more precise fire before. No, the non-temperature related problems with this feature are pacing and story issues. We never see the fire's inception and the film cuts off long before its natural conclusion.

So much for story arc.

Overall, I can only recommend Fireplace For Your Home for dinner parties. Without heat, it lacks the functionality necessary for either a quiet winter's afternoon on the couch with a book or steamy snuggles with one's significant other.

And I can definitely say that you should stay away from its sequel. I was promised a Yule Log fireplace and was instead "treated" to a repeat of the EXACT SAME FIRE but with annoying holiday music drowning out the fire's crackles and snaps.

Lazy.

Lazy and horribly off-putting as it feels like a cash grab from whoever produced it when leasing the double feature to Netflix.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~