The Prisoner (1968)

During last weekend’s live stream, I was astonished to find that my viewers didn’t know about “The Prisoner,” the 1968 BBC TV show starring Patrick McGoohan that turned the spy genre on its ear. Episode 1 is an amazing piece of work. Once you start watching, you can’t stop. The rest of the episodes are hit-and-miss, and some of them are a complete mess. The first season was never finished, and McGoohan had to rush out a sort-of-ending to meet the BBC cancellation date. The final two-part episode is even more surreal than what you see here. It’s kind of like “Magical Mystery Tour.” Pure paranoia and weirdness. You owe it to yourself to see The Prisoner.


The Prisoner - Arrival by tvchannels

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A. I. is a terrible movie

After drawing Gigolo Jane for a customer the other day, a character from the movie “AI,” I got curious about the movie, so I downloaded a torrent. I avoided the movie when it was in theaters (2001), because I never saw anything that made it look interesting, and I know from experience that Spielberg makes terrible movies.

So I watched the torrent. OH MY GOD, WHAT AN AWFUL MOVIE. This is seriously one of the worst movies I’ve ever suffered through. Ill-conceived, poorly executed, deadly dull in all of its interminable 2-and-a-half hours. Just AWFUL from beginning to end. I was never once entertained, and I never for any instant cared what happened. (Roger Ebert loved it. Go figure.)

The first scene is so uninspired and boring, just so flat and dreary, it was all I could do to keep my finger off the stop button. The scene actually ended with the mad inventor referencing Genesis. THE BIBLE. Spielberg, you uninspired boob!

Gigolo Joe, played by Jude Law, is a waste of a character. He has no reason to be there. Nothing interesting or surprising or NECESSARY ever happens to him. What little hint of a story he brings with him is never resolved. And Jane? She passes Joe in the street and says hello. THAT’S IT.

Every moment of this movie screams at us that Spielberg is trying to be Kubrick, and he fails. Long, painful silences, the thing Kubrick was so good at, the thing he could do with STYLE… you ain’t got it, Steve! And Kubrick didn’t need a NARRATOR, either. Filmmakers who know how to tell a story don’t need narration. Spielberg has to explain everything to us, because he can’t tell a story with film.

It’s not just the stylistic direction, I also have problems with the very concept. You have a robot that’s “programmed to love?” It’s creeping you out? There’s an easy fix for that. TURN IT OFF! Call tech support to come pick it up! Jesus, you idiots, I’m supposed to feel SORRY for you? I’m supposed to feel ANYTHING for you??

And then there’s the end of the movie. I found myself saying out loud, “What is this bullshit?” No really, it was SO HOPELESSLY STUPID.

And what was that freaky sequence of unexplained visuals in the scene-before-last? Did he actually see duplicates of himself? Did he really talk to his inventor? Was any of that supposed to be real? Once again, Kubrick could get away with that surreal shit. BUT THIS WASN’T KUBRICK.

Seriously, the whole Pinocchio thing has been done, done and done. You want to see a story about an unloved robot? It’s called Astroboy. As clumsy as it is, episode 1 tells the same story in less than 30 minutes, and they did it 40 years earlier. (With a catchy theme song. Another thing AI doesn’t have.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYSfncB4peU

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'Catching Fire' was worth the wait

I just saw Catching Fire, and I was IMPRESSED. How often do you see me write that? I'm always disappointed with movies, but not this time. I didn't read the book, so I had no idea what was going to happen. It was REFRESHING not knowing. I mean, most movies I can predict scene for scene, they're just so unorginal. Although it was certainly formulaic, it wasn't what I expected, and that's a good thing. I really liked Catching Fire, and I recommend it.

Keep your eyes on Johanna. I did.

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Venture Bros. season 5

I haven’t been seeing or hearing any rants and raves about the new season of Venture Bros, so I googled it. Turns out the season premiere has been available online FOR FREE since the beginning of June! What gives?? Why all the silence?

Anyway, I watched it on Amazon-on-demand (not crazy about that particular service, but it’s FREE), and it was pretty good! Again, why hadn’t I heard about it??

And there are like FIVE MORE episodes available for $3 each! Seriously, I want to know, WHY HADN’T I HEARD??

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Pacific Rim? No, not for me.

I briefly considered seeing Pacific Rim tonight (mostly out of boredom, because I always regret going to movies), but then I watched the trailer again. So boring. So unimaginative. So DULL. Everything is a bland, uniform gray. The robots are just piles of undifferentiated junk. And GRAY. Even the monsters are GRAY. Every scene, every line of dialogue, every sound effect is lifted directly from some other work. I'm hearing explosions from DOOM, for christ sake. (Why is GLaDOS in there?? It's not making me laugh, it's making me mad.) Of course there's the dull WHOOOMing sounds that pass for music these days. Even the TITLE is dull. "Pacific Rim?" Lifeless and dull.

Del Toro is such an overrated director. His movies are dead dull, and derivative to the point of plagiarism. This movie looks awful. Infuriatingly so. I'm not wasting money on this rip-off. Congratulations, Hollywood. You've made giant robots and monsters DULL.

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World War Z?

I went ahead and saw World War Z yesterday, and it was entertaining enough. The plot was the same as any plague-genre movie. I mean EXACTLY the same, scene-for-scene. The differences were in the details and the scale. Several things happened that I didn't expect, which alone is interesting. I haven't seen "zombies" animated in such huge numbers before, or with such unique collective movement.

The movie changed sharply half way through and became a different film. New plot, new cast, everything. It's like it was two episodes of a mini-series stapled together. The transition scene was entirely unbelievable, too.

It ends just as you would expect, with one guy having one brilliant idea, which could never really work, but which immediately results in a "cure" that is sent all over the world next day, in exactly the way medical discoveries never happen.

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13th Warrior

I watched 13th Warrior last night. Really interesting film with a really poor ending. It looked like they didn't shoot enough footage, so they cobbled something together with whatever was on the cutting room floor, stretching it with slow-motion. What a shame.

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Stay away from Hotel Transylvania

Pathetic.

I had some time to kill while I was downtown yesterday, so I went to a nearby theater, and the next movie starting was Hotel Transylvania.

What a PATHETIC waste.

Thoughless, story-less, talentless, directionless… just sad, wasteful and PATHETIC.

Unoriginal, tired, devoid of effort, cynical, and NOT ONCE funny.

The first scene was entirely devoted to poop, piss and farts. The final scene had Dracula rapping. This shit would have been old 20 years ago.

I didn’t know who made this garbage until the end credits. If I’d had any idea it was Adam Sandler, I would have chosen to sit on a park bench for 2 hours. And shame on you, Genndy Tartakovsky. Shame.

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HUGO —
I was going to write a review of the movie "Hugo," but then Kevin Drum did it for me. Pretty much word-for-word what I was going to say.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/12/half-hugo-good-movie-which-half

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'Walking Dead' just saved itself —
(There may be spoilers here, so read at your own risk.)
Last night, I saw the latest episode of Walking Dead, and I have to say, "Wow."

I've read the comics from the beginning, and it's always held my attention. That's rare. So when the TV show came along, I was more than a little skeptical. Can you blame me?

I waited until weeks after the first season was over before watching the whole thing. I have to say I liked it. They bottled the "feel" of the comics. I did NOT like the final episode, though. It didn't resemble anything from the comics, and it was out of place with the rest of the show. It was too "Resident Evil" for me. And the A-Team action scene at the end? Don't get me started.

Again, I waited a while before starting the second season. And again, it was good. Better than good, actually, with some amazing moments. The surgery scene and Carl's seizure were so well-crafted, they made me a little sick. Zombie gore is passé. Easy. Making me care about a character? That's hard.

But then, last week's episode fell flat for me. The clumsy attempt at a pro-life message was typical Hollywood and very disappointing. Almost lost me there. And I was getting tired of the current story arc, which seemed to be going nowhere.

Then came episode 7. Wow. I didn't see it coming. I love it when that happens. I'll keep watching.

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Dark City — 
Yesterday, I watched this weird-ass 1998 movie called Dark City. I remember the year it came out Roger Ebert picked it as the best film of the year, and I was so incredulous, I went and rented it. I found it memorable, but certainly NOT the best. I remember Kiefer Sutherland's performance was REALLY bad, and I remember noticing there was a very distracting crazy music soundtrack that never stopped playing. I also have a strong memory of thinking Jennifer Connelly looked awful.

Watching it today, my impressions were much the same, except Jennifer Connelly looked fine. I don't know what I was thinking back then. Kiefer Sutherland was still terrible. I mean REALLY awful. What the hell was he trying to do?? Just bad, bad acting.

For those of you who don't know, Dark City belongs in the same category as The Matrix and The 13th Floor. It's a bit more plausible than the other two, though, and I give it that consideration only grudgingly. The idea of the world and everything in it being entirely simulated or a giant hoax is just not a premise I can suspend enough disbelief for. At least in Dark City almost everybody can tell something is very wrong with the world. They're not stupid.

I see similarities to a bad old anime movie called Megazone 23. Also, there's a scene that's almost identical to one in Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer. If you've seen both movies, you'll know which scene I'm talking about. (Beautiful Dreamer, by the way, is excellent! I recommend it highly!)

You should give Dark City a look, but don't go into it expecting a great movie.

While reading about Dark City, I kept seeing references to City of Lost Children, which was unknown to me. So I downloaded it. After looking at the first scene, I'm hooked. I'll let you know...

***

'Captain America' is Good! —
I've been consistently impressed with the new series of Marvel movies, and Captain America lives up to the expectation. Not the greatest movie in the world, but I enjoyed it and I'm glad I saw it. They did a few unusual things that pleasantly surprised me, which by itself is noteworthy. If I had made the movie, though, I would have gone full-on WWII patriotic. "Stars and Stripes Forever" would have been my main theme. There were a few rousing moments here, but mostly not.

The Red Skull certainly LOOKED great, for a change! There wasn't much of a fight between him and Cap, though, and I don't know where they're going with the whole 'cosmic cube' thing. My own history as a comics collector is closely tied with the cube, and I can already see them failing to capture the grandeur and the terror of it. They've already gotten its origin wrong.

My other complaint, as might be predictable, is the lack of homage to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. They created Cap in the 1940s. Stan Lee and Marvel had NOTHING to do with it. Diehard collectors won't be able to miss a smiling tribute to Jack's 1976 'Bicentennial Battles,' but of course it's lost on the average viewer. Simon and Kirby are buried in the end credits. You have to look for them. Stan, of course, gets his cameo.

Other tidbits for collectors include the Howling Commandos, Bucky Barnes, Arnim Zola, the vibranium shield, and even a sighting of the original Human Torch. (No Submariner, though.) I also noted that audiences have finally learned to sit through the credits. We were greeted with usual "stinger" at the end, but it was different this time. Just a commercial, really.

Tommy Lee Jones was a hoot!

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Thor was GREAT! —
I already Tweeted and FaceBooked, but I wanted to say it here. I really enjoyed it! The few people I've seen who didn't like it seem to have one thing in common: They wanted ALL ASGARD and no story. PLEASE, guys! 2 hours of CGI fight scenes would have been AWFUL! Ughh!

I've been pleasantly surprised with how good the Marvel movies have been, and I find myself looking forward to the next one. This, I'm sure, is a recipe for disappointment. I can't help it, though. My inner nerd is showing.

When the first "stinger" scene showed up at the end of The Incredible Hulk, I was astonished, and happily so. They were obviously setting about making a Marvel Universe in movieland, and being a Marvel fan as a kid, I was... intrigued. And already they've made it so you have to see the previous movie if you REALLY want to know what's going on! I love it!

Those of us who were smart enough to sit through the credit this time know what's coming next. IF we're Marvel readers, that is.

I have a question, though: What did YOU see in the briefcase? My friends and I agreed: It was empty. But we could GUESS, and we were right. I've seen cell-phone photos online, and astonishingly, SOME people saw something else entirely. Are there different prints circulating the theaters? Or was it only visible to the 3-D audience??

Tell me what YOU saw!

NOTE: There's already a couple of correct answers posted here, but in other forums, I see people making incorrect guesses. This brings up a good point: For people who have ONLY seen the movies and never read the comics, it's just a mystery. But for those of us who grew up reading Marvel, there's only ONE thing it could be...

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Hollywood Always Shits on Dick —

They do it every time. They take a Philip K. Dick story and make a movie that doesn't resemble it. I just saw Adjustment Bureau, the new Matt Damon movie, and I wasn't impressed.

A couple of review quotes I read beforehand summed it up nicely, I think:

• "If Frank Capra directed The Matrix."

• "A conversation starter for idiots."

And I would add:

• "How many times can you spot the microphone in the shot?"
  

Yeah, really... it was THAT unprofessional.

The problem with adapting Phil Dick stories is that they're usually really short and only meant to introduce an idea, and often they're just jokes, the hope being that you'll realize it's dumb to contemplate the implications because it's pointless. And we can't dismiss the fact that, like every writer of his ilk, Dick was writing mainly for the money. Enjoy it, but don't tell me it's DEEP. Cause it ain't.

Especially if you change it.

Just go read Dick's stories, okay?

P.S. - Dear movie-makers: Emily Blunt is lovely and appears to be a strong young actress, so you really oughtta give her some professional makeup attention. I mean, when the big pivotal scene arrives, I should NOT be thinking, "Oh, she doesn't look good." And the bruises on her arms shouldn't be the most memorable part of ANY scene.

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Megara —
I was watching Disney's Hercules last night. I'd forgotten how good that movie is. Megara has got to be my favorite Disney heroine (after Jessica Rabbit)!

Anybody who's familiar with the movie will know exactly what she's saying in this screen cap!

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'Megamind' was good! —
I wasn't planning on seeing Megamind at all. I never saw a preview that made me want to see it. Dreamworks makes bad movies, and Will Ferrell makes TERRIBLE movies, so I didn't see how this could possibly be any good. But when people I knew started giving it good reviews, I decided to give it a try. And you know what? It was GOOD! I mean, ACTUALLY ENTERTAINING! I laughed a lot! There were lots of little things I didn't expect, which is always good. So, I have to say... I recommend it!

The movie starts with Megamind falling to his death. His solution is brilliant! NOT something I would'a thought of! Hee!

***

'Predators' was pretty good! —
I was pleasantly surprised! The first half hour was just a rehash of the original movie, with the cast of Lost thrown in. But then it got pretty interesting. I liked it!

I do have to complain, though, that there were a couple of important points in the movie when the CGI looked like something out of Xena or Buffy. Seriously? You gotta spend your money on the interesting parts, guys!

But I still liked it!

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They Done Bo Peep Wrong —
I saw Toy Story 3 tonight, and the more time goes by, the more I have to say about it. (There are spoilers left and right here!)

ONE: As I've said before, and I'm sure I'll have to say it again, the modern 3-D effects are impressive, even subtle and beautiful at times, but they contribute absolutely nothing to the movie. They just don't. I had to pay extra for the 3-D. It's not worth it.

TWO: Disney is now doing to their theatrical movies what they've been doing to their home videos for years. Over the last decade or so, we've all become accustomed to bombardment by commercials before the movie. Not just movie trailers, COMMERCIALS. For cars, soft drinks, TV shows, even the military... and often the very SAME commercials we've already seen on TV. But the one thing that's never changed is that after we see the "And Now Our Feature Presentation" bumper, the movie we paid to see actually starts. Well, tonight I saw something different. After the bumper, there were MORE commercials for other Disney movies. And they were in 3-D. They were not separate reels like the other previews, they were part of the feature. Just like every Disney VHS tape and every Disney DVD, where you can't skip or fast-forward through the commercials, the theater can no longer choose to go without previews. They are attached to reel 1. That's Disney.

THREE: The short cartoon called Day and Night was very interesting and innovative. This was one instance where the 3-D effect was used creatively and integrated into the very concept of the film. The characters were drawn in a throwback style reminiscent of the flat minimalism of early television or UPA animation. Their body outlines acted as 2-D portals through which we could see living 3-D worlds. It was very effective and impressive. Leave it to Pixar to create something new. The action of the film was sometimes risque and violent in surprising ways, again like animation of an earlier era. Very much worth seeing.

FOUR: And here's the meat of the review. Bo Peep was gone. Just gone. In the first movie, she was the love interest, and Barbie wasn't there. In movie two, Bo was there, but a lesser player, and Barbie had a cameo. Today, Bo is gone and Barbie is the heroine of a major sub-plot. Her own separate movie, really!

Throughout the film, the toys stressed over and over how they could not be separated because they were "family," they needed to be there for each other. The ONLY reference to Bo, however, was a single line. "Some of us didn't make it... like Bo." An afterthought.

Here's what I remember reading about the last movie. Pixar had approached Mattel about making Barbie the love interest for the first movie, but they declined, not understanding the brilliance of Pixar and the huge hit they were about to create. Pixar invented Bo Peep as a Barbie analog. For the sequel, Mattel had to eat crow and ask nicely for whatever they could get. Pixar gave them a cameo, but made it clear that Barbie was NOT a major player.

And today... I don't know what happened. All the toys acted like Barbie was one of them and always had been. While I was watching the film, I didn't think about it, I just enjoyed it. But afterward, it started to sink in. Something changed. Bo was pointedly written out. Barbie was redacted in.

Oh, she was FUNNY! Her scenes were some of the biggest laughs of the movie, especially her scenes with Ken. (Cue Gary Wright's Dream Weaver.) Yes, Ken was there, and it was hilarious. "You ascot-wearing pink-noser!" says Rickles Potato Head. "You're not a toy, you're an accessory!" Brilliant! Merciless!

But there's a bad taste in mouth now. They done Bo WRONG!

FIVE: Where were the songs? I remember the other movies having good songs.

SIX: Was it me? Or was there something... how can I say it... oddly sexual about Jessie this time? I like Jessie, I think everybody does. But she's NOT sexual. When she was introduced in the last movie, it was with a sigh of relief (a least on my part) that we saw a non-romantic character, just another toy with owner-abandonment issues, another symbol of Pixar's unswerving dedication to doing-what-the-story-needs-above-all-else. She's Woody's partner toy, not relationship material. They went out of their way to design Jessie with no shape at all, just a flat cloth bag. She's NOT Barbie, and deliberately so.

But when Buzz turned on his Spanish language circuits, and became a sort of aggressive, romantic bullfighter who couldn't resist pawing at Jessie... she RESPONDED! It was weird. And funny. I don't know if I liked it.

SEVEN: What county landfill has an incinerator that's built like Dante's Inferno? The world of Toy Story, aside from the living toys, is starkly realistic. The whole dump scene was too much.

EIGHT: Chuckles!

NINE: Bonnie, the toys' new owner, is something special! This is what Pixar does best. They can make you cry at will. And they DO.

Even with all this philosophizing, I recommend TS3. Go see it! Support good movies!

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Waitress —

I watched a strange little movie last night called Waitress, from 2007, starring Keri Russell. Not at all the sort of thing I'd normally watch. I don't remember why I picked it up, honestly. I'm glad I did, though. It's one of those quirky little independent comedy/dramas that seem to come out of thin air and somehow be REALLY good. There were parts of the movie where I was seriously ready to turn it off, but there were also parts where I was laughing out loud really hard.

One of the major plot-lines involved a situation/outcome that I would usually interpret as intolerably "Christian pro-life," but in this film it didn't strike me that way. I don't know why, really. Maybe the rest of the film was just too good.

The thing that floored me most was when Andy Griffith appeared suddenly as the cantankerous old restaurant owner. If he was in the opening credits, I totally missed it, so it was a complete surprise for me. I love it when that happens. And he was funny all the way through the film.

In case you need some incentive to bother with it, that guy from Firefly is also in the movie. What's his name? Nathan Fillion, yeah.

And you should read the WikiPedia about the writer/director, too.

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Xanadu 2 —

Just a little joke... it happened while I was drawing live online tonight. Heh.

If you've never seen Xanadu, GO GET IT. It's the greatest of the worst movies ever made. And it's a MUSICAL!

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