Walkabout

If cinema, at its core, is a visual art form, then Nicolas Roeg’s debut feature Walkabout is surely one of the greatest examples of filmmaking. The screenplay, written by Edward Bond, was allegedly only 14 pages long, and yet the movie has a 100-minute running time. It isn’t hard to believe that tidbit once you see the movie, as the dialogue is sparse, and yet it has the power to hold the viewer in its grip as effortlessly as something written by David Mamet. The characterizations, of which there are really only three, are as rich as the breathtaking scenery, which, when it comes down to it, is probably the real star of Walkabout.

The story begins with a father taking his teenage daughter (Jenny Agutter) and much younger son (Luc Roeg) into the Australian outback for a picnic. But something is wrong with the man, and while the girl sets up the lunch, the man pulls out a gun and starts firing at his children. They take cover behind some rocks, and soon enough the father just loses it altogether, douses the car in gasoline, sets it on fire and then takes his own life. It’s a horrific sequence, made vaguely palatable by today’s standards, only because we hear stories like this all too often on the news. Or perhaps that simply makes it more relevant. The girl does a good job of convincing the boy that they must go on ahead without their father, and that “he’ll meet them later,” as the boy doesn’t really understand what happened. And so the girl and the boy (we never do learn their names) are stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no idea how to get home or how to survive.

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Doctor Who: The Vampires of Venice

I was sold on “The Vampires of Venice” (not “Vampires in Venice,” which is what I mistakenly called it at the close of last week’s recap) by its beginning – well, its second beginning, since there are two. In the first, we are in Venice of 1580 and Guido (Lucian Msamati) has brought his daughter Isabella (Alisha Bailey) before Signora Rosanna Calvierri (Helen McCrory). He wants for her to be a part of Calvierri’s school, so that she can have a better life. Since we’ve all seen plenty of Doctor Who at this point, we know this isn’t going to end well for Isabella, and since we’ve seen the previews we also know that Calvierri, as well as her son, Francesco (Alex Price), are vampires (or are they?). So there’s precious little that’s surprising or of interest about Beginning #1, although the sequence ends with a lovely little smash cut from Isabella screaming to Rory (Arthur Darvill) screaming at his stag party, which is Beginning #2, and the point at which I was won over. The two beginnings are also the jumping off points for what end up being the episode’s A and B plots, but more on that later.

Ah, the stag party! Drunken friends, cardboard cakes and the clichéd sound of “The Stripper” wafting through the proceedings. The Doctor may rescue the human race from all manner of grotesque alien creatures and life threatening situations, but this is the first time he’s rescued a human from this occasion that’s grotesque in an entirely different manner. From the moment Matt Smith pops out of the cake, he’s bloody brilliant, simply because he chooses to play it straight, in what’s a thoroughly absurd setup. Many actors would’ve mugged and tried to add to the already ridiculous situation, but Smith (or perhaps freshman Who director Jonny Campbell?) allows the scenario to happen around him, and in the process the joke becomes about five times funnier than it has any right to be. I’ve been trying to figure out for weeks now how to explain precisely what it is about this actor in this iconic role that I find so very appealing, and this scene offers up the best example yet of why this guy is the perfect Doctor for his time. Smith’s very much the anti-Tennant, which isn’t to bag on Tennant, but the series really needed this kind of change coming off Tennant’s tenure, and it’s a decision that’s shaping up to be the best one Steven Moffat made for his inaugural season.

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thirtysomething: The Complete Third Season

Jerry Stahl is a great writer who once upon a time had a very rough time of it while trying to write TV scripts in Hollywood. He became addicted to heroin and watched his career and life quickly spin out of his control. He mapped out these experiences in a grimly humorous tell-all called “Permanent Midnight,” which was later made into a rather tepid movie starring Ben Stiller. One of the shows Stahl worked on during his days and nights of near oblivion was thirtysomething. Here are a couple paragraphs from the book detailing his thoughts on the show:

“By the time I hit thirtysomething, I had this bad habit of spraying a bloody jumbo Z on the tiles of whatever TV show toilet I happened to be shooting up in. Kind of like an intravenous Zorro. It was my way of saying ‘Just because I happen to be here, writing an episode of thirtysomething, that doesn’t make me ONE OF YOU REEBOK PEOPLE!’

Maybe I did overreact, tweaked by that nasty, subconscious realization I just couldn’t shake: I was perfect for the show. The horror! Because I had the wife, the home, and there was probably a baby on the way. And some part of me wanted all that. I hated admitting the extent to which I could relate to the very things I considered most despicable.”

Now, I’ve never succumbed to heroin addiction, but I’ve been around a few blocks a time or two, and after watching three full seasons of thirtysomething, I can relate to Stahl. The kinds of lives these people lead aren’t what most people in my circle envisioned when they were young, and yet these are the sorts of lives that most of us inevitably end up living. Maybe we dream of climbing the mountain, but few of us ever actually get around to doing it. I should stop myself before I slip and fall into a full-on, Harry Knowles-esque recount of the first 30 years of my life, and just get on with the fucking review.

Read the fucking DVD review for the third season of thirtysomething by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye. (P.S. I really do like this show.)

Doctor Who: Flesh and Stone

Now I’d had a little bit to drink – OK, a lot to drink – before I watched “Flesh and Stone,” and when it was over I swore it was the best episode of new “Who” ever. Upon sobering up, I watched it again. It was not the best episode of new “Who” ever…but it was still pretty damn great, and certainly both parts of this story combined make for one helluva sterling example of what makes the new series tick. Indeed, from now on, when I want to turn somebody on to this show, it may very well be through this two-parter.

I’ve written before about my theories of “Who” cliffhangers, which essentially boils down to “the resolve is rarely as good as the hang.” In this case that probably still holds, but Moffat came awfully close to equaling the hang by delivering a way out of an impossible situation that was surprising and fun. I’m not sure it made a whole lot of sense – the destruction of the gravity globe gave them an updraft? They must make this shit up as they go along (of course, how else do you do it?). The shifting of the camera turning around to show the group on ceiling was gorgeous and great little reveal. But the save is short-lived, and the Angels are restoring themselves via the power of the Byzantium. Everybody follows the Doctor into the ship, and once again, the camera has a lot of fun here – the shot of the Doctor standing upright as Amy looks down the hole at him.

Octavian: “Dr. Song, I’ve lost good Clerics today. Do you trust this man?”
River: “I absolutely trust him.”
Octavian: “He’s not some kind of madman then?”
River: (beat) “I absolutely trust him.”

Then the story shifts into an action flick.

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Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora

The classic range of Doctor Who DVDs is in a weird area right now. Much of the good stuff has already been released, and so plenty of the mediocre material is currently making its way to the silver platter. There’s still a number of great stories that have yet to see the light of day, but since the goal is to finally get all of it out there and available within the next three or so years, the great ones are becoming fewer and farther between. The idea is to keep people interested in the range by not just releasing all the good stuff at once, and having some duff stories left over at the end that few will care about. “The Masque of Mandragora” is unquestionably one of the great ones, and an essential add to any serious Who DVD collection.

It begins with the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) wandering around the TARDIS corridors, engaging in delightfully witty banter. They come across the secondary console room, which is designed much darker and more intimate than the usual one; it’s covered with wood panels and has a considerably smaller console in the center. Before long, the ship lands, and they find themselves in a whacked-out void covered in giant crystals known as the Mandragora Helix. A ball of Helix energy attacks and they hightail it out of there, but little do they know, the energy has hitched a ride.

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Doctor Who: The Curse of Peladon & The Monster of Peladon

The bulk of Jon Pertwee’s first three seasons as the Doctor saw him exiled to Earth, but occasionally he’d find himself with a working TARDIS that whisked him away to another planet for the duration of a story. Such was the case in “The Curse of Peladon,” a sort of sci-fi Shakespearean mystery, which sounds like a pretty oddball collection of genres to cram together, and as a result the story is indeed fairly bizarre – sometimes in a good way, and sometimes not.

The backwards planet Peladon is attempting to join the Galactic Federation. David Troughton (son of Doctor #2 Patrick, as well as a guest star on the new series episode “Midnight”) plays King Peladon, who’s all for Peladon spreading its wings and becoming a galactic player. But others, such as the stodgy High Priest Hepesh (Geoffrey Toone) object, and feel Peladon should hang on to the old ways. Hepesh warns that if the plan moves forward, a curse will befall the planet, and the sacred creature Aggedor will return to wreak havoc and kill, kill, kill. The Doctor and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) arrive in the midst of all this, and are mistaken for the delegates from Earth, a confusion which they use to their advantage. Also present are delegates from Arcturus, Alpha Centauri, and Mars – the latter represented by the Ice Warriors, who previously had a villainous two-tale stint during Patrick Troughton’s era. Soon enough people start dying, and Aggedor returns. Are the Ice Warriors behind it, or is somebody else plotting behind the scenes?

Read the rest of the DVD reviews for "The Curse of Peladon" and "The Monster of Peladon" by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Doctor Who: The Time of Angels

After being so thoroughly underwhelmed for the past two weeks, “The Time of Angels” almost leaves me speechless. I wish I could just write, “Man, that was so fuckin’ cool” and be done with it, since anything I’ve got to say isn’t going to make it any cooler. With this episode, we’ve finally gotten to material with major promise – probably even beyond promise, but since it’s only part one of a two-parter, everything could fall apart in the second half. But man oh man, what a setup!

The opening sequence – which begins with a man tripping balls – sets the stage for a whacked-out adventure. He’s been dosed with hallucinogenic lipstick by River Song (Alex Kingston). Was the field he was standing in part of the hallucination, or was it a part of the spaceship Byzantium? Clearly River has been up to something on the ship, but we don’t find out what that is straight up. 12,000 years in the future, the Doctor (Matt Smith) is showing Amy (Karen Gillan) a museum, and pointing out all the objects he’s had in hand in saving, which is really quite funny, and vaguely romantic, but mostly just boastful and stodgy on his part, especially since what Amy really wants to see is an alien planet. They come across an ancient home box on which some Old High Gallifreyan is written – it amusingly says “Hello sweetie.” The Doctor steals the box from the museum, which leads him to a rendezvous with River right outside the Byzantium. River, on the run from powers that be, releases an airlock and flies straight through the waiting, open TARDIS doors, and lands on the Doctor. The Byzantium flies away, and River issues a single order: “Follow that ship!” It’s an exhilarating start and very James Bond-like, directed by Adam Smith with precision and thought, as is the rest of the episode.

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Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks

“Daleks. I sometimes think those mutated misfits will terrorize the universe for the rest of time.”

Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor, following yet another skirmish with the cockroaches from Skaro, uttered the above quote near the end of his reign as the Time Lord. If he’d known then that he’d still be dealing with them in his Eleventh incarnation, he may well have decided to forego his impending regeneration, and just gone ahead and called it a millennium. Many “Doctor Who” fans would likely have sympathized with him had he done so. Having been writing these recaps for five years now, I am exhausted by Daleks as well. What else is there for me to say about them that I haven’t already said, or hasn’t been said by countless others time and again? And yet here I am, once again backed into a corner by some angry pepperpots demanding that I find something fresh to say on the subject. Of course, if the series can’t be bothered to do so, I don’t really see why I should, either.

Surprisingly, “Victory of the Daleks,” written by Mark Gatiss, is drenched in promise at its start. Surprising not only because all ground concerning the Daleks seems so thoroughly trod at this point, but also because the last thing Gatiss wrote for the series, “The Idiot’s Lantern,” was a forgettable misfire. The idea of subservient, benevolent Daleks isn’t a new one. It was first explored in Patrick Troughton’s first story “The Power of the Daleks,” but since that serial was junked by the BBC ages ago, only the most hardcore of fans are going to care about this. For all intents and purposes the idea is new, or at least new to us. And the show has a field day with the notion for about ten minutes. Professor Bracewell’s (Bill Paterson) Ironsides are going to win the war against the Nazis, and they’ll serve you tea as well. Just the notion that the Daleks will become this story’s Inglourious Basterds is a fun one, since the Nazis are what the Daleks were based on in the first place. With “Victory of the Daleks,” on some obscure meta level, the entire concept of the Daleks has seemingly come full circle.

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Dallas: The Complete Thirteenth Season

After giving fairly middling reviews to the last several seasons of Dallas, one thing I wasn’t expecting from this penultimate collection of episodes was some of the strongest material the show’s offered up in a good long while. With Season Thirteen, the powers that be managed to create one of the very best seasons of the latter half of the series, although it goes without saying that you can’t please all the people all of the time. There are always going to be folks who’ll instantly dismiss the last two years of the series based solely on how few of the original cast members remain. At this point, the show is down to only five major characters that’ve been around since the show’s inception – J.R., Bobby, Cliff, Miss Ellie, and Lucy. But Clayton’s been such a fixture on the series for a long time now, and it’s only fair to include him as well, so let’s bump that up to a half dozen.

In addition to the new characters of Cally Harper Ewing (Cathy Podewell) and Carter McKay (George Kennedy) that were introduced in Season Twelve, here we’re given an additional two major players in the forms of James Beaumont (Sasha Mitchell) and Michelle Stevens (Kimberly Foster); the former is the illegitimate son of J.R., and the latter is the sister of April (Sheree J. Wilson).

I know, I know – hackneyed phrases like “illegitimate son” make it sound as though Dallas is scraping the bottom of the soap opera barrel. But you can take a well worn cliché and do nothing with it, or you can take that same cliché and do something with it...

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Falcon Crest: The Complete First Season

Amongst the ‘80s power soaps Dallas, Dynasty, and Knot’s Landing was the seemingly far less famous Falcon Crest, although the show had a lengthy run that spanned the entire decade. Instead of oil – the business of the two big D’s – Falcon Crest used the wine industry as its centerpiece. Set in the wine country of northern California, about an hour away from San Francisco, the series unveils the saga of the Gioberti family, who’ve been in the business of growing and harvesting the grape, as well as making and selling the wine for probably a century.

At the head of the family is Angela Channing (Jane Wyman), the cold, manipulative businesswoman determined, at any cost, to hold on to her empire. She has two daughters – Julia (Abby Dalton) and Emma (Margaret Ladd) – as well as a grandson, Lance (Lorenzo Lamas), who does Angela’s unscrupulous bidding. There’s also Jason Gioberti (Harry Townes), Angela’s brother, but we’ll come back to him shortly.

On the other side of the family is Jason’s son, Chase Gioberti (Robert Foxworth), an airline pilot and Vietnam vet who lives in New York City with his journalist wife Maggie (Susan Sullivan) and their kids, college-age Cole (Billy R. Moses) and high school senior Vickie (Jamie Rose). Chase has little interest in the wine business, and hasn’t even spoken to his father in years. All that changes when a tragedy occurs at the Falcon Crest vineyards.

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Doctor Who: The Beast Below

After gushing over the season premiere last week, it pains me to find “The Beast Below” is lacking. One element of the episode I found to be a huge letdown, and one that’s critical to the story is “the children,” and I had a bad feeling about this as soon as the episode started in a classroom. Now it’s not necessarily that the children angle of the story is sloppily plotted, it’s that I’m annoyed by Steven Moffat’s ongoing insistence at using kids as pivotal elements in his stories. I realize that last week I went on and on about how magical the stuff was between the Doctor and the young Amelia Pond – and make no mistake, it was – but with “The Beast Below” I found myself instantly bored with the angle. Of the four stories he crafted during the Davies era, three of them involved children to one degree or another, and the first two stories of his own era have now featured children.

My problem with this is that even though Doctor Who is a family series, and that children are a large part of the viewing audience, that doesn’t mean children must be a component of the narrative. It becomes doubly irritating when you’ve already got a lead character who acts like a kid much of the time anyway. Somebody might argue that they’re used as audience identification figures for younger viewers, to which I say balderdash. For 26 years Doctor Who hummed along quite nicely, rarely making anyone younger than a teenager part of the storyline. Kids, I believe, are perfectly content to watch adults on the tube and in film. They don’t long to see other children involved in these types of adventures. Somebody else might argue that Moffat uses children in order to help adults find their inner child. I can actually buy that more than the former proposed argument, but it needs to be used sparingly and smartly, and hot on the heels of the young Amelia Pond is hardly sparing, and the climax of “The Beast Below,” which hinges on crying children doesn’t strike me as particularly smart.

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Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges has seemingly lurked on the edges of superstardom his entire career. Time after time, movie upon movie, he’s been turning out great, flawless performances since his feature film debut in The Last Picture Show nearly 40 years ago. Along the way, many of his contemporaries rose to far greater fame and fortune, and plenty of them on half the talent. But there’s something intensely admirable about this man who stayed out of the limelight, honing his craft year in and year out, seemingly content just to have a career at all. He’s hardly got a widespread fanbase, and yet every fan who is devoted to his work is bloody rabid about him (and I count myself as one of the most rabid). Every one of those fans will name a different performance of his that’s their favorite, and each will explain precisely why it’s his best. And they’ll all be right, because with Jeff Bridges, there are no bad performances. Even when working with weak material, he can be counted on to make the most of it.

He’s arguably the greatest actor of his generation, and has never really sold out in the ways that all too many of those contemporaries have found themselves doing in an effort to stay relevant or make a quick buck. Occasionally, he’ll turn up in some Hollywood blockbuster, like Iron Man, and yet even these roles manage to seem as thoughtfully played as when he’s given a true character to dive into. Finally, after all these years, Bridges has been shown some long overdue respect by his peers, who awarded him a Best Actor Oscar for his work in Crazy Heart.

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Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour

It feels like it’s been forever since Steven Moffat was announced as the new showrunner and Matt Smith as the new Doctor. It hasn’t been, of course, but well over a year in both cases is nothing to sneeze at. For some fans, the anticipation has been damn near excruciating. Another very vocal minority had little interest in the continuing adventures of the Time Lord without David Tennant steering the TARDIS. And yet another group – perhaps the most important, due simply to the fact that they comprise a huge segment of the viewing audience – were understandably nervous that a new Doctor alongside a new head honcho might lead to a series that was somehow lesser than what had been seen over the past five years.

I’d like to believe that everybody was as utterly intoxicated by “The Eleventh Hour” as I was, but that’s probably wishing for too much. On the other hand, I can’t really see that it offered up anything that would possibly alienate audiences – not even in the form of the new Doctor, who’s not such a drastic departure from the antics of Tennant so as to drive viewers away. Indeed, the differences between Eccleston and Tennant are far more tangible than the divide between Tennant and Smith. All that said, Smith definitely has something of his own going on, and whatever that “something” is will most certainly grow as the season progresses. Both Eccleston and Tennant each took about a half season to find their Time Lord groove; Smith found it by the end of his first episode. I was wholly won over by him upon his delivery of “I am definitely a mad man with a box,” which was followed by an uneasy cackle that seems to imply this Doctor is not quite as right in the head as his recent predecessors.

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Icons of Suspense Collection: Hammer Films

When one hears the name “Hammer Films,” usually the first thing that leaps to mind is the production company’s Gothic horror output of the ‘50s and ‘60s. The connection is no doubt made with good reason, as much of that material has stood the test of time, even if most of it’s never really been given its proper cinematic due. The number of pictures Hammer was behind stretches well into the triple digits, which is an astonishing feat for what was then the equivalent of an independent studio. This new collection offers up a sampling of some of their non-horror output, by presenting six films spread across three discs from the realm of suspense. Easily, the highlight of this set isn’t actually a suspense film at all – it’s really more of a sci-fi piece called These are The Damned, but since it’s presented as the final film on the set, we’ll leave it for the end of the review. Half the movies on this set really work, while the other three leave something to be desired to varying degrees. These are some pretty obscure titles, and prior to this set, they’ve never been commercially available on DVD here in the States.

Read the complete breakdown of this DVD set by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

The six films contained in the set are Stop Me Before I Kill!, Cash on Demand, The Snorkel, Maniac, Never Take Candy from a Stranger, and These are The Damned.

Young Sherlock Holmes

Nearly 25 years before Guy Ritchie gave Sherlock Holmes the slick Hollywood treatment, Steven Spielberg, Barry Levinson, Chris Columbus and Henry Winkler did much the same with Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation. Much like everything that carried the Amblin logo during the ‘80s, the results were rip-roaringly charming, and not entirely unlike Spielberg’s far more famous Indiana Jones flicks from the same time period. The movie didn’t do especially well at the box office, but went on to become a home video staple in the years that followed. Perhaps its biggest mistake was in placing the word “Young” in the title. It made the film sound as if it were aimed at children, which it isn’t necessarily, as evidenced by its well deserved PG-13 rating. Like the Ritchie film, this isn’t based on anything written by Conan Doyle himself, but rather it’s a fevered inspiration of Conan Doyle’s ideas.

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The Prisoner

With the successful revival/reinvention of shows like Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica in recent years, a reinterpretation of the ‘60s cult phenomenon The Prisoner seems like a no-brainer. Indeed, it’s something that had been bandied about for years (long before such projects became the “it” thing to do), so such a development was an inevitability. If you’re a fan of the original – as am I – it’s virtually impossible to sit through this new miniseries version without playing compare and contrast along the way. However, this DVD was my second experience with this mini, and this time around it was somewhat easier to try to forget about the original and take this version on its own merits. The problem is that it isn’t any easier to swallow the heaping mounds of hallucinogenic madness this serves up, even when taking the brilliance of the Patrick McGoohan version out of the equation. Both versions are akin to acid trips, only this new one is, metaphorically speaking, missing all the pretty colors.

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Rhoda: Season Two

It isn’t often that DVD producers listen to consumer reaction, or at least it doesn’t seem terribly common. Last year, Shout! released the first season of Rhoda and it was an atrocious presentation. Well over half of the episodes suffered cuts, and the audio and video quality were more often than not dodgy at best. (Indeed, in hindsight, I was generous in giving it three stars.) People complained, and it seems Shout! wisely listened. Season Two is presented in its entirety, uncut and remastered – and boy, the difference is truly a night and day affair.

Remember how perfect the first season of Mary Tyler Moore looked – back when Fox actively gave a shit? This is nearly, if not as good. The colors are bright and beautiful and the ‘70s fashions jump right off the screen and into your eye sockets. The picture is crisp and clean, and the sound is likewise really nice – well, about as nice as a sitcom from 1975 can possibly sound anyway. In any case, major props to Shout! for not covering their ears and intoning “La la la la la la…” when faced with disgruntled fans. Maybe someday they’ll even see fit to go back and give Season One a proper makeover.

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Monk: Season Eight

Normally in a review like this – one written about the final season of a series – I’d say, “This isn’t the place to start if you’ve never watched [insert show title here] before.” But with Monk, there isn’t any real reason why you shouldn’t. You’ll “get it” even if you start watching with this DVD. Of course, the show was on the air for eight seasons, so chances are you’ve already been exposed to some of it, somewhere along the way. You may even be like me – someone who’s only watched the show intermittently over the years. If so, then you know the basic premise of the obsessive-compulsive detective, and the ongoing backstory of how the murder of Monk’s wife Trudy caused him to cave in as a human being. In this final season, Monk finally solves that most important and personal of cases, but more on that later.

Monk is never going to go down as one of the great cop series of the ‘00s – not in a decade that produced fare like The Shield and The Wire. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of the most reliably entertaining series of the decade. It’s the TV equivalent of comfort food, and there aren’t many shows you can say that about anymore. Now there’s one less. Likewise, Tony Shalhoub is never going to garner the same kind of critical respect bestowed upon actors like Michael Chiklis and James Gandolfini, because his performance was more often than not played for comedy, and that’s a huge shame, because if you see enough of this series, you begin to know that his work is every bit as calculated and driven as the Bryan Cranstons and the Jon Hamms; all this despite three Emmys, which goes to show that awards probably don’t mean all that much.

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thirtysomething: The Complete Second Season

Imbibing in the second season of thirtysomething brought me to a minor revelation: I like this show because it makes me love a group of characters who, on the surface, I feel I should dislike. The reason? These people are dirty, or rather, there’s nothing clean about their lives. After thoroughly digging on Season One, I was interested, but not exactly eager, to check out the winding road it would continue to go down. If you picked up Season One and didn’t care for it (it’s hard to believe anyone would outright hate it), then there’s nothing here that’s going to change your mind. On the other hand, you may have viewed Season One and thought, “OK, that’s enough. I’ve sifted through the time capsule once and there’s no need to go for seconds.” You’re probably right. If this was just enough for you on the first round, why bother with another helping? My TV-watching life wouldn’t have suffered any irreparable damage without seeing Season Two, and yet there’s no denying that once again the show sucked me in. thirtysomething is good writing and acting, and while there’s no shortage of either on TV today, you can never have enough of both.

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Alice in Wonderland (1966)

With the impending release of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland we’ve been inundated with press releases of DVDs for what seem like nearly every version of the Lewis Carroll story ever put to film. It’s all being released or rereleased on DVD due to the awareness of the new film. The one I jumped at – due to a combination of the cast, its reputation, and its unavailability in the U.S. – was this take which was made for BBC television in 1966. To be sure, this version owes more to feature film than BBC TV. Burton may think he’s redefined Alice, but he’s wrong. Surely nobody’s ever explored this story the way Jonathan Miller did 44 years ago – nope, not even the porn musical from the ‘70s with Kristine DeBell. Admittedly, I’ve yet to see Burton’s movie, but come on…

There’s little that’s jolly or wondrous about this take, and yet that very approach makes it a wonder to behold. Shot in crisp black and white (which on this DVD is nearly spotless), the story unfolds like some kind of dream from Ingmar Bergman, or perhaps even more like a nightmare from David Lynch. While all the hallmarks of the Carroll story are present, their execution is mostly unexpected. The most glaring omission is the absence of talking animals and childlike wonder. There are no elaborate costumes or walking cards or giant mushrooms here, yet it remains a work of utter fantasia. Alice (Anne-Marie Mallick) sees the White Rabbit (Wilfrid Brambell, Paul’s grandfather in A Hard Day’s Night) and follows him into a dreamy state that has no singing flowers, or Tweedledum or Tweedledee – after all, that duo first appeared in Carroll’s sequel, so they’re not part of this action. It’s a loose interpretation of the events within the first book. If you know the story, you really don’t need a recap. If, for whatever reason you don’t know the story, then this DVD is probably not for you. It’s for people who’ve seen version after version of the same story but are seeking something different.

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