Withnail & I

Probably the most profound line ever written in regard to Withnail & I describes it as being "as deep as you want it to be or as shallow as you need it to be.” I don’t know who wrote that, but I cannot discuss the film without mentioning it. Set in the final months of 1969, Withnail traces the antics of two out of work actors living in a filth-laden flat in Camden Town, London. To “escape all this hideousness,” they spend their time in booze and drug-addled hazes. With wits at an end, they head to the countryside to unwind for a weekend, never minding that they’re utterly ill equipped to deal with rural living. Along with the presence of Withnail’s Uncle Monty, and the possibility of a violent poacher, those are the film’s major plot points. In lieu of real plot, Withnail offers up two stellar leads in the forms of Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann, and the most infinitely quotable dialogue this side of The Big Lebowski And it’s got a following the size of the Dude’s to match – although most of them are British.

Marwood: “Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, and for once I'm inclined to believe Withnail is right. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.”

I’ve been a fanatic for this movie for over 15 years now. It’s in my Top Five, and I consider it my civic filmic duty to turn as many people on to it as possible, especially since it’s just barely a cult item here in the States. I’ve been pretty successful in my endeavors over the years, although I can’t give you hard figures as to whom, when and where. Even if it was just one person in my life, I’d feel good about it, because this is a film meant to be shared with people who need to see it. I don’t know if you’re one of those people, but I’ll do my best to convince you that you are.

Withnail: “You can stuff it up your arse for nothing, and fuck off while you’re doing it!"

Withnail & I is a situation, and anyone who’s ever been in an insufferable friendship can relate to it...

Read the rest of this Blu-ray review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Time Bandits

If you were a certain kind of boy or young teenager in the 80s, then there’s a good chance Time Bandits was a very important film for you. Sure, you loved Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Goonies, but Time Bandits was special in a different way because not everyone else was in on it; it was seemingly dismissed even by most adults (well, the ones I grew up around anyway). For many young people, it was our first introduction to the whacked out joys of Monty Python, even if we didn’t realize it at the time, as Time Bandits is not a proper Python film. But half of the six-man comedy troupe is involved in the picture, and so when we finally got around to discovering Python, we recognized John Cleese and Michael Palin from this film. Little did we know, though, that all of Python’s strange animations were the handiwork of the guy that directed this piece. Wasn’t it refreshing to not have every fact and figure at your immediate disposal way back then? You picked up information over the years while actively seeking it out. Perhaps, as Time Bandits hints, computers really are the playthings of Evil.

However, it’s also possible you were not a certain kind of boy in the 80’s, or that you’ve never even seen Time Bandits. If so, let’s lay it out there. One night, 11-year old Kevin (Craig Warnock) lies in his bed. Out of his wardrobe tumble six dwarfs on the run from God (who here is referred to as the Supreme Being). He’s their employer and they build trees for him. But they’ve stolen a powerful map from God, and now travel around through history, attempting to loot the past for riches. Kevin follows, and finds himself in all manner of incredulous situations, such as meeting Robin Hood (John Cleese) and conning Napoleon (Ian Holm) out of his wealth. At the same time, Evil (David Warner, in one of his best roles ever) watches over, secretly plotting his takeover of the world via the map, and eventually, an understanding of computers. Exactly what is The Most Fabulous Object in the World, and can the inept group of thieves procure it?

Read the rest of this Blu-ray review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Friday Night Lights: The Fourth Season

It isn’t often that a series reinvents itself so successfully that you don’t find yourself longing for the seasons that came before, but that’s exactly what happens with Season Four of Friday Night Lights. At the close of Season Three, Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) had lost his job coaching for the Dillon Panthers, and a case of redistricting left him in charge of a non-existent East Dillon team. Further, most of the kids we’d grown to know and love over the previous three seasons were headed off to college. It could easily have been the end of the show, and it would have been a perfect series of notes to go out on, had DirecTV, which saved the show and helped to give us that third season, not stepped up to the plate and signed on to help NBC co-produce two more 13 episode seasons. Thank you DirecTV, because Season Four may actually be the series’ best since its first. Of course, where Season Four ranks in this fine show’s history is probably irrelevant – what matters is that it’s yet another great batch of chapters in the ongoing story of the fictitious town of Dillon, Texas.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Crumb: The Criterion Collection

"Weird sex. Obsession. Comic books." That’s what the movie poster for Crumb said back when the movie came out in 1995. If you were trying to figure out a way to market this documentary at that time, those are as good of jumping off points as any, and yet there’s no question that Crumb is about so much more.

I don’t recall what exactly it was that drew me to Crumb 15 years ago, as I was only tangentially familiar with Robert Crumb’s art, having spent countless hours in various head shops – many of which still stock R. Crumb comics to this day. It may have been the “David Lynch presents” tag that is attached to the film. As director Terry Zwigoff explains, Lynch literally had almost nothing to do with the film; by the time he’d seen Crumb, it was practically finished, so there wasn’t much he could do for it – except add his name, which Zwigoff jumped at, simply because he knew that it would bring many more people out to see the picture. It’s entirely probable that I was one of those people. Of course, the reviews at the time could also have gotten me into the theatre, as the movie was being hailed all over the place, and with good reason: Crumb is, simply put, one of the great documentaries. There are far more important documentaries out there, sure, but few offer up the same amount of sheer entertainment value as Crumb. This is likely only true, however, if everything the man is about doesn’t offend your potentially delicate sensibilities.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

A chat with Lenora Crichlow of Being Human

The lovely Lenora Crichlow is mostly unknown to U.S. audiences, unless of course you’re a fan of the BBC America series Being Human (Saturdays at 9PM). Crichlow plays one third of a trio of roommates comprised of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. The striking actress [dis]embodies the latter - the spirit of Annie Sawyer, doomed to an afterlife of making tea and wearing the same eternal grey outfit. And yet in Crichlow’s performance there’s hope for something better, as Annie tries to make it in a world she shouldn’t even exist in, alongside her two best friends. Lenora took time out in between shooting Season Three and heading off to Comic-Con to talk to Bullz-Eye about what sets Being Human apart from other supernatural fare, the ongoing progression of the concept, and her phantasmagorical Uggs.

Lenora Crichlow: The thing is, Being Human does just what it says on the cover. In most of these vampire shows and werewolf shows – supernatural shows in general – there’s some kind of, at the essence of the show, a real celebration of their supernatural selves. The vampires and the werewolves are really glorified (although I haven’t seen Twilight) and I think Being Human’s stance is struck so differently because it actually comes from a place where the ultimate for these characters would be to be human again. Every single supernatural issue that comes up can quickly lead back to something within the human condition. Even though it is a supernatural show, it just gives the whole thing layers. The characters of Annie, George and Mitchell were originally written without being a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire, so the characters are very fully developed. It has a huge amount of comedy in it, it has amounts of angst, mystery and drama, but at the heart of the show I think you’ve got three very well-rounded human characters, which is something that whether you’re into sci-fi or not you can tap into and relate to. I love the show and I love being in the show and I think as an actress it certainly gives me a lot more to play with when I can bring everything I play with Annie right back home and right back down to earth, and you know, sort of grounded in some sense of reality. I don’t know how good I’d be at being too much out there. As fun as it is, it really does ground the show – the fact that they’re all trying to be human. That’s the show’s selling point and uniqueness.

The above is an excerpt from a much longer interview I did with Lenora. Read the entire piece by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Rhoda: Season Three

Rhoda was an incredibly successful series during its first two seasons. It was, in fact, a top ten show, going so far as to best its parent series, Mary Tyler Moore, in the ratings. And yet, as I understand it, the writers found it difficult to write for Rhoda (Valerie Harper) as a married woman. So at the start of Season Three they made an incredibly radical move for the time – they separated Rhoda from her husband, Joe (David Groh). Audiences were appalled, I guess because in 1976 those kinds of things just didn’t happen on TV. The ratings plummeted. Presumably, producers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns didn’t care, because the couple, despite some attempts to make it work, never got back together. And you really have to admire that kind of brashness on the part of Brooks and Burns, don’t you? It was probably a first that something of this ilk was explored on primetime American TV – and if it wasn’t, it had to have been the first time something like this happened to a beloved lead character whom the audience had, between the two series, known for six years.

I’d been somewhat led to understand that the material suffered as a result; surprisingly, that’s not even remotely the case. With Season Three, “Rhoda” remains at least as strong as in its previous seasons, if not a little bit a cut above. In my previous reviews of this series, I’ve made mention of how poorly written Joe Gerard’s character is, and it’s worth repeating. It’s a shame, too, because David Groh is a fine actor, who got saddled with lame material to play, and the events of this season certainly don’t do Joe any favors. The first episode of the season is called “The Separation,” and the show doesn’t waste any time getting down to business. It begins with Joe playing passive-aggressive games involving the couple buying a house which Rhoda desperately wants.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Doctor Who: The Big Bang

And so we come to yet another season finale of the greatest science fiction series ever created. This is the recap I’ve been both anticipating and dreading writing in equal parts since first seeing “The Big Bang” some weeks ago; anticipating because of how much I adored this finale, and dreading because there’s no way I can do it justice in a mere recap. It’s not even an issue of space or time (or is it?), it’s a matter of the story, as well as the 12 episodes prior to it, being too dense to dissect thoroughly. You’ll have to forgive that this doesn’t resemble a recap proper, and I instead ramble on about other issues.

I didn’t go into “The Pandorica Opens” and “The Big Bang” expecting a whole lot, conditioned as I am on Russell T Davies’s extravagant-yet-ultimately-lightweight season finales. Don’t get me wrong, they were most always a great deal of fun, but they most always left me somewhat wanting – excepting Season Three’s Master trilogy, although I’m not sure that’s in line with popular opinion. Oh, and “The Parting of the Ways.” Wait a minute…I loved most of his finales! But I often felt as if they didn’t go as far as they could. Part of the way through the current season the Pandoricrack, as I’ve come to call it, started to annoy me, and I began not so much resenting the thread, but rather simply dismissing it – assuming that whatever it was about wouldn’t be terribly thrilling. It turned out to be not only thrilling, but strange and deep and stimulating. This was Steven Moffat’s trademark “Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey” taken up to 11. (Maybe next year will go to 12?) This two-part finale forces viewers to go back and reexamine most of the season, and that isn’t something that can really be said for the Davies finales, which isn’t to imply they’re inferior. More on that later…

Read the rest of this recap by clicking here and visiting Premium Hollywood.

Being Human: Season One

A TV series that in a one sentence pitch can be most easily described as “a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost all live together in the same house” must surely be a comedy, right? Well yes, and no. Being Human certainly has comedic elements, but they’re rarely of the “yuk-yuk” variety. It is in fact difficult to pigeonhole the series with a label. Is it horror? Comedy? Drama? It’s all those and probably more. And lest you think it’s schizophrenic in its presentation, that’s hardly the case. Being Human juggles all of these labels so efficiently that it probably deserves a new category all its own.

Now this isn’t to imply that Being Human is a work of pure genius, just that it’s adept in its mission. A massive stumbling block for me, that may afflict plenty a potential viewer, comes from the vampire and werewolf angles. Straight up – I am utterly sick to death of vampires and werewolves. Between True Blood and Twilight alone, you can’t turn on your TV, go to the multiplex, or even log onto Facebook without being inundated by both fang and full moon. Where were all these people when I stood proud and alone at the age of 10 in the school playground, boldly proclaiming my admiration for Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr., only to be heckled by my peers? Must these concepts be littered with ample doses of sex and romance in order to attract the masses? Apparently so. Being Human uses a bit of that as well, but not nearly as much as you’d expect from a series featuring vampires and werewolves, and its primary focus is instead on the building blocks of an unlikely kinship between its three protagonists.

Read the rest of this Blu-ray review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens

From the very first scene, “The Pandorica Opens” is an ominous piece of work. France, 1890. Vincent van Gogh (Tony Curran) writhes in mental torment, presumably in the last days of his life. It appears that he actually did paint another piece, and it’s somehow tied to the Doctor. After the Doctor and Amy left Vincent at the close of “Vincent and the Doctor,” the Time Lord asserted that “we definitely added to his pile of good things.” Maybe they did, but it appears they added to his pile of bad things, as well. The implication even seems to be that by introducing Vincent to his universe, the Doctor may have played an inadvertent role in the artist’s suicide. Dark stuff indeed. But what is the painting? Bam! All of a sudden we jump to London in 1941 and we’re with Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) and Professor Bracewell (Bill Paterson), who now have the van Gogh painting. Bracewell insists that it’s Churchill’s job to deliver the art. Bam! A containment facility in 5145. River Song (Alex Kingston) is on the receiving end a phone call from Churchill meant for the Doctor. Swiftly she makes an escape thanks to the hallucinogenic lipstick. Bam! The Royal Collection, still in 5145. Presumably we’re back onboard the Starship U.K. and the van Gogh painting waits for River, having been added to the collection by Churchill 3200 years prior. Liz Ten (Sophie Okonedo) makes a reappearance. Bam! Still in 5145, River blackmails an alien dealer into giving her a vortex manipulator. Through this series of efficient sequences, it’s as if Steven Moffat is asking, “Have I got your attention now?” He most certainly does.

In the TARDIS, Amy (Karen Gillan) ponders the wedding ring, while the Doctor (Matt Smith) hatches a plan to take her to the oldest planet in the universe to see the oldest piece of writing, which is chiseled onto a cliff face. The TARDIS doors open and the translators show that the words as “Hello Sweetie.” Bam! Britain, 102 AD. The TARDIS arrives in front of a Roman army, and Amy mentions that Roman soldiers were her favorite topic in school. A soldier, whose face is smeared with lipstick, mistakes the Doctor for Caesar and takes the pair to see Cleopatra, whom River is impersonating. Finally we get to see the painting, which shares its name with this episode, and it’s a vision of the exploding TARDIS, painted exactly as we’d imagine van Gogh would paint such a vision. (Surely poster prints of this will be available for fans to hang on their walls any day now? I know I’d buy one.) Finally, seven minutes into the episode, we get the opening credits.

And thus begins what’s easily the most ambitious setup for a season finale the new series has yet done. “The Pandorica Opens” is positively cinematic in scope, direction, editing and, of course, writing. These setup installments were never this good in the Davies era, and it’s almost a shame it isn’t the season finale proper, as it would be an unbearable, months-long wait to see the resolution to everything this episode does. It would be the Doctor Who equivalent of Part One of “The Best of Both Worlds,” which ended the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In fact it’s somewhat strange that Doctor Who – a show infamous for its end of episode cliffhangers – has yet to end a season on any kind of serious hang (stuff like regenerations or Donna suddenly appearing in the TARDIS doesn’t really count). The feeling I got watching “The Pandorica Opens” is the exact same feeling I got while watching the last 20 minutes of “Utopia” from Season Three – only this thing kept up that level of intensity for nearly a whole hour.

Read the rest of this recap by clicking here and visiting Premium Hollywood.

Doctor Who: The Lodger

Each season of the new Doctor Who has one or two “experimental” episodes – stories that just don’t feel like anything that’s come before. Thus far, most – if not all – of these stories have been successes. “Boom Town,” “Love & Monsters,” “Blink,” “Turn Left,” and “Midnight” have arguably been highlights in each of their seasons. It’s noteworthy that all but one of those was written by Russell T. Davies (and of course the one that wasn’t, “Blink,” was written by Steven Moffat). Davies seemed to be giving himself chances to think outside the [police?] box, and do something radical and different with the series on each occasion. I’m still not sure whether “Amy’s Choice” (which, like this one, was also directed by Catherine Moreshead) should be lumped into this group, but surely “The Lodger” is oddball enough to add to the list. So how does it stack up?


Well, it’s worth pondering why the story was made in the first place. For starters, it was very likely a chance to save some money. Aside from the episode’s climax, most of this tale is just people involved in seemingly everyday situations. But I think maybe there was more to it than just saving cash. Aside from “Boom Town,” the aforementioned stories were all designed to give the lead actors breaks. Given that this was the inaugural season of a new era for the show, it probably would have been a risky move to write the Doctor and Amy out for the bulk of a story, so instead what “The Lodger” does is remove Karen Gillan for most of the episode, while allowing Matt Smith the chance to chill out and just banter with James Corden (Gavin & Stacey) for an hour. Oh, and he also gets to play football, but since Smith has a history with the game, that probably wasn’t too taxing for him – the guy looks like he had a blast in that scene. Yes, for those of you who don’t know, Matt Smith once upon a time had dreams of being footballer, but a back injury led to him taking up acting instead.


Read the rest of this recap by clicking here and visiting Premium Hollywood.

Doctor Who: The Time Monster

Given that there was such a dearth of new Jon Pertwee releases over the last couple years, the classic Doctor Who DVD range has more than made up for the oversight this year. Between the outstanding “Dalek War” box set and the middling “Peladon” stories, it’s been quite the ride for fans of the Third Doctor (although there are numerous great Pertwee tales that have yet to make it to the silver platter). Somewhere in between the aforementioned concepts resides the final story of Season Nine, “The Time Monster,” which, for a series that so heavily relies on both time travel and monsters, is either a brilliant title or a stupid one.

The Master (Roger Delgado) is using the alias Professor Thascalos at the Newton Research Unit at Cambridge University. He’s experimenting with time via an ornate crystal and a machine called TOM-TIT (alright, have you got the giggles out of your system?). TOM-TIT stands for Transmission of Matter through Interstitial Time, which is more impressive than the acronym. What is Interstitial Time you ask? It’s the bit that comes between “now” and “now,” or so the story explains. Somewhere in this hazy netherworld exists creatures called Chronovores – time eaters, an idea which was years later explored by Paul Cornell in the new series episode “Father’s Day.” Apparently, the winged, starkly white Chronos is the strongest of them all, but what does any of this have to do with Atlantis? Quite a bit, or so it seems, since the last two episodes of this six-parter take place in the doomed, mythical city.

There’s an awful lot going on in “The Time Monster” (probably too much) and the entire Atlantean subplot should’ve been scrapped altogether, but then there wouldn’t have been enough story to fill all six installments. Regardless, take the mythical stuff out of the equation, and you end up with one of the series’ more complex meditations on time. Each episode offers up some new zinger or angle through which the ideas are explored. Granted, some of it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and the ride isn’t altogether cohesive, but it’s a ride nonetheless. The team of regulars seems to be having quite a bit of fun at this stage of the Pertwee game – sometimes maybe even too much, as this story has a few unnecessary comedic flourishes, and yet there’s nothing that ever really damages the overall integrity (such as it is) of the goings-on.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Doctor Who: The Horns of Nimon & Underworld

Following producer Philip Hinchcliffe’s nearly perfect era of Doctor Who was never going to be an easy task for anyone, but it fell upon Graham Williams to take the job. His three years on the series are pretty uneven, but that’s not to say that he didn’t occasionally produce a gem here and there. Here are two stories from his era that together are a pretty good representation of its highs and lows. Both were released in the U.K., along with “The Time Monster,” in a box set called “Myths and Legends.” The set was named as such because the three stories have ties to classic myths, but really it was just a mildly clever way of boxing up three stories that consumers would have little interest in buying individually. Here in the States, the box has been nixed, so we’re allowed to pick and choose as we like.

In “The Horns of Nimon,” the TARDIS crashes into a space freighter carrying some precious cargo to the planet Skonnos. Apparently, the Skonnon Empire has seen better days, and so one of its leaders, Soldeed (Graham Crowden), has struck a deal with a strange, horned creature called the Nimon, who resides in a labyrinthine power complex within the planet. In exchange for teenagers from the nearby planet Aneth, the Nimon has promised Soldeed that it will help him restore Skonnos to its former glory. And what self-aggrandizing despot wouldn’t go for a deal like that? The Doctor (Tom Baker), Romana (Lalla Ward) and K-9 (voiced by David Brierly for Season 17 only) discover the Nimon isn’t being entirely up front with Soldeed, and intends to take over the whole of the planet when the time is right. Naturally, the two Time Lords can’t allow that to happen.

Read the rest of the DVD review for "Nimon" along with the review for "Underworld" by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Doctor Who: The Space Museum & The Chase

Before moving on to the stories themselves, let’s go ahead and get the ugliness out of the way, because there’s no point in dancing around the septic tank with a bouquet of flowers. For perhaps the first time on DVD, a Doctor Who story is being presented in an edited form, and it’s got nothing to do with anything other than copyright issues. The edit occurs in the first episode of “The Chase.” The Doctor (William Hartnell) has acquired a device called the Time Space Visualizer, and as its name suggests, it’s basically a TV that can tune into any event in time and space. First the TARDIS crew checks out Abraham Lincoln, then Queen Elizabeth chatting up William Shakespeare, and finally they watch the Beatles perform “Ticket to Ride.” Or rather they used to, because the Beatles segment has been edited completely from this disc. This isn’t the first time the Fab Four have caused problems for the Who DVD range, but the last time, in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” it was only their sounds that had to be edited out, or replaced as it were. No such luck here – two minutes of story is just plain gone.

Now admittedly, if you’ve never seen the episode before, it’s highly unlikely that you’d even notice something was missing. But for those of us who have seen it? The pain! “The Chase” isn’t all that great of a story to begin with, and now it’s got one less item to add to the list of positives. For years, I’ve always thought of this story as “the one with the Beatles.” Now it’ll be known as “the one that they edited.” It’s hardly an important scene, and it doesn’t affect the story, but it was rather charming and had a couple nice lines of dialogue, particularly when Vicki (Maureen O’Brien), the girl from the future says, “They’re marvelous, but I didn’t know they played classical music.” To add insult to injury, as I understand it, it’s entirely possible this could’ve been avoided altogether if certain fans hadn’t gotten into a tizz when this disc was announced and made a stink that pretty much amounted to “Are they going to cut the Beatles scene?” According to a post Steve Roberts of the Restoration Team made some time ago on a message board, if they’d simply kept their mouths shut, it probably would’ve slipped through the cracks and nobody would’ve been any the wiser. Sometimes it actually pays to keep quiet. On to the stories…

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Warehouse 13: Season One

As someone who loves science fiction, it’s unfortunate that I’ve got an almost irrational resistance to programming on Syfy. It goes all the way back to their brutal treatment of Farscape, and while logic tells me that Battlestar Galactica should have made up for that misstep, I still find it hard to trust the network to this day. Or maybe it’s just that most of their programming sucks, and is aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Needless to say, I skipped Warehouse 13 when it was on last year, and once I started watching this set I assumed I had made the right decision, as the first four or five episodes (out of 12) aren’t much to write home about. The warehouse in question is located in the hinterlands of South Dakota. It houses a seemingly infinite number of artifacts from history – artifacts that inexplicably contain strange and unique powers (you’ve seen it before at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the beginning of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). For instance, Edgar Allen Poe’s quill makes whatever it writes happen, while Lewis Carroll’s mirror contains the spirit of an evil Alice.

There’s a schlubby caretaker named Artie Nielsen (the always great Saul Rubinek), who in the 90-minute pilot enlists the aid of two Secret Service agents, Pete Lattimer (Eddie McClintock) and Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly), both of whom are far too attractive for their professions. Their job is to trek across the U.S., hunt down artifacts, and bring them back to the warehouse – but not before getting in all manner of trouble first. There’s also the owner of Warehouse 13, the mysterious Mrs. Frederic (C.C.H. Pounder), who instills fear with her steely gaze, as well as Leena (Genelle Williams), a quiet, possibly psychic woman who runs the B & B where the Warehouse employees reside, which is one of the show’s stranger narrative moves. Why can’t they just get apartments, like normal people?

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor

If somebody asked me to make a short list of my favorite writers and/or directors working today, Richard Curtis isn’t the first person who’d leap to mind. He might not even be the fifth. Despite that, I count myself as a big, big fan of his stuff, going all the way back to Blackadder, and right up to his most recent work, Pirate Radio, a movie which didn’t do well at the box office and got some fairly tepid reviews upon release. Like Curtis’s Love Actually before it, I suspect Pirate Radio (or The Boat That Rocked, for those of you in the U.K.) will go on to become a favorite of many, many people, because it’s an utterly charming, daffy piece of cinema that doesn’t want to do much more than entertain the hell out of you for a couple hours. And that it does. When it was announced that Curtis would be writing an episode for this season of Doctor Who, naturally I was interested in the prospect, but if I’m being totally honest, I didn’t expect all that much from it, and even less so once it came out that it would be about Vincent van Gogh.

For starters, Curtis has no track record writing science-fiction or fantasy (at least not the type one thinks of when bandying about such terms), and while it seemed gratifying to have such a high profile writer onboard, nothing in his works indicated that, with only 45 minutes to play, he’d likely create anything more than an amusing romp. Perhaps it was less Curtis himself, and more the new series having a pretty bad track record when it comes to tackling historical figures, regardless of who’s writing them. In fact, they typically seem to end up…amusing romps. Probably the best was the first one, “The Unquiet Dead,” which featured Charles Dickens, and from there they’ve kind of incrementally gone downhill. I didn’t think the formula could get much worse than “The Unicorn and the Wasp” with Agatha Christie, but along came “Victory of the Daleks” with Winston Churchill to prove me wrong. So imagine my surprise upon discovering that Curtis trashed my expectations by creating a deep, lovely, tortured thing of beauty that reduced me to tears. I have really got to start trusting this guy. His name is a stamp of quality no matter what “they” say.

Vincent and the Doctor” is the new standard by which these types of stories will, or at least should be measured. I have never quite understood the point of the Doctor meeting up with famous figures from the past only so that we can laugh at them and their quaint, backwards ways, all while cramming in little in-jokes that play off of what we know about these people from today’s perspective. Curtis presents us with a fictitious riff on van Gogh that lays waste to the previous approach. His story demands that we feel for van Gogh and his problems, which in turn gives the episode a gravitas that’s lacking in stuff like “The Shakespeare Code,” in which young Will was little more than a smarmy Casanova. Curtis comes from a place that has a huge amount of respect for this artist, as well as understanding that van Gogh’s troubled history was a big part of what made him the artist he was. Curtis also wisely avoids tackling the infamous ear-cutting incident, which is something a lesser writer would’ve worked into the story by having the alien lob it off or some such nonsense.

Read the rest of this recap by clicking here and visiting Premium Hollywood.

Doctor Who: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

Last week I posted a quick update saying that I would wait until this week to write about both of these episodes, but that “The Hungry Earth” was a “very good setup.” Having had a week to reflect on that, I’m not so sure that’s the case, and yet I still think “The Hungry Earth” is a very or at least reasonably good episode, but perhaps not an effective setup for “Cold Blood,” unless you enjoy bait and switch. The tone and feel of “The Hungry Earth” is vastly different than “Cold Blood” (how about from here on out I refer to the episodes as THE and CB respectively?), and a fairly inconsequential amount of the information the episode delivers has much of anything to do with the second half. Probably the single most important bit that carries over from one episode to the next is the Doctor, Amy, and Rory seeing future versions of Amy and Rory off in the distance at the very start, but we’ll get to that in due course.

THE plays like one part spooky horror story and one part scientific fiasco. It’s a clear homage not so much to the classic series Silurians tales, but other stories from the Jon Pertwee era like “Inferno” and “The Daemons.” Heck, even the earth swallowing people up takes me back to Peter Davison’s “Frontios.” One of the things that I’ve really enjoyed about this season is the conscious decision to go for more rural settings, as opposed to the urban backdrops which so dominated the Davies era. It’s given the season a much different texture, and one that’s a welcome change, and you can’t get much more rural than the countryside, an old church and graveyard, and a tiny cast. In so many ways both THE and CB are perhaps the closest to classic Doctor Who the new series has yet produced, which I’m not entirely sure is a good thing, because trying to hammer an old formula into a new box is an often dicey proposition, and I quite honestly am not sure if it works all that well here. The best episodes of the new series have been the ones that did something with Doctor Who that we’ve never seen before, and if the new series has proven anything, it’s that it’s best to keep moving forward.

Read the rest of the recap for this two-parter by clicking here and visiting Premium Hollywood.

Nip/Tuck: The Sixth and Final Season

Only on Nip/Tuck can a character utter a line like “Dildo sales are down. It’s the goddamn economy,” and make it sound a perfectly reasonable thing to say. There are aspects I will miss about Nip/Tuck, and one of them is its ability to take the most outlandishly offensive situation and make it seem relatively normal, at least within the context of the show. But all good and bad things must come to an end, and Nip/Tuck, from Season Three onwards, was equal parts of both. The Sixth Season aired in two parts (with a month break in the middle), which at the time were marketed as Seasons Six and Seven. There is no Season Seven, but there is a 19-episode sixth season, and all those episodes are collected in this set. Through watching this block, however, it certainly seems like two different seasons. Confused? Annoyed? Allow me to elaborate and pontificate.

The first ten episodes are all but unwatchable in their awfulness. Not merely content to disturb viewers, these episodes largely depress as well, although it seems unlikely that was the goal. The flaccid economy, and its effect on the plastic surgery business, is stressed in the first episode, but what does it say about a show when such a topic is one of the bright spots? Sean (Dylan Walsh) is still dating anesthesiologist Teddy Rowe, who used to be played by Katee Sackhoff, but now resides in the body of Rose McGowan, which is a true “what the fuck?” soap opera switch, given that it’s hard to think of two actresses that are any less alike in both their method and appearance. Teddy slowly begins revealing her true, black widow colors as the narrative progresses, and on the camping trip from hell, Teddy’s shit hits the fan and splatters all over the place.

And one must wonder how many viewers the show lost in that block. How many people failed to come back to the show in January for the final nine episodes? I’m willing to bet plenty, which is a shame because, believe it or not, after years of excess, Nip/Tuck managed to deliver a nicely restrained, oftentimes poignant batch of episodes to close out the series. The story picks up a few months after the first ten in the set, and Sean and Christian are going to pick up a lifetime achievement award. Only after they receive the award does Sean discover that Christian bought it via a hefty donation, at which point Sean goes ballistic. And from there, the season peels one layer of the onion away after the next, dissecting McNamara and Troy’s friendship and partnership, all while providing endings for every other character on the show as well (most are surprisingly happy, some a little warped, and in one case we lose a character altogether).

Read this entire DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Seventh Season

It’s almost hard to believe that Curb Your Enthusiasm has been a comedy staple for 10 years. After all, it spends far more time off the air than it does on, and the number of episodes produced to date is only 70 (although we’re getting yet another 10 in 2011). Back at the start of the decade, who would’ve guessed that the adventures of one bald asshole would outlive other HBO staples like Sex and the City, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under?

At the close of Season Six, Cheryl had finally kicked Larry to the curb (ahem), and the displaced Katrina victims, the Blacks, had moved into the David homestead. Everything seemed perfect, and once again, a Curb season ended with a sense of finality about it. Where could the joke possibly go from there? It would’ve been easy enough to start Season Seven with the Blacks gone from the show, and out of Larry’s life, explained away by a couple lines of dialogue between Larry and Jeff. But the show doesn’t take the easy way out, and instead the first two episodes showcase his attempts to get Loretta (Vivica A. Fox) out of his life for good. When she’s diagnosed with cancer, he crafts what seems to be a foolproof scheme, which in the end of course fails. Lucky for Larry, a series of contrived misunderstandings involving “Vehicular Fellatio” lead to the swift exit of Loretta and the rest of the Blacks, save for Leon (J.B. Smoove), who doesn’t really seem to care that his family has moved away. And thank goodness for that, because we really, really like Leon. As far as I’m concerned, he and Larry can end up in a rest home together, should this series ever end.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Doctor Who: Amy's Choice

Here we are, more or less mid-season, and as someone who’s recapping this block of episodes week in and out, as well as someone who’s been deconstructing this series for years now, I’m frankly a bit flummoxed by Steven Moffat’s inaugural year. It’s starting to feel as if the season is only going to make total sense once it’s over and done with. Some time ago, long before the season began, Moffat was saying that he wanted the season to be referred to as Season One, rather than Season Five, and that’s starting to make a whole lot more sense. Aside from the occasional references to the past, everything about this year feels as if some kind of reset button has been hit, and yet it remains difficult to watch without bringing the baggage of the last five years into the equation, even though I’m fairly certain Moffat would prefer that we didn’t. I mean, it’s hard to picture a character like Mickey Smith, for instance, fitting into any part of this narrative in any kind of believable manner, and yet you almost want somebody like him to turn up in a scene just to remind you that you’re still watching the same show.

I continue to want to compare this material to stuff from seasons’ past, and yet this nagging feeling keeps telling me that’s just an unfair thing to do. I wonder if Moffat’s even got some kind of grand master plan that extends beyond this block of 13 episodes? None of this means I’m not enjoying the season, just that it’s a much different kind of enjoyment than what I’ve become accustomed to during the Davies years, which began feeling predictable about three years in. Say what you will about this season, but, at least at this stage, it is most certainly not predictable. In some ways watching this season is as disorienting as the predicament in which our heroes find themselves in this week’s episode. As viewers, we’re experiencing a new reality of the series, while we keep thinking back on what we came to know prior to this season’s start. Which is the real “Doctor Who?” The Davies or the Moffat era? Both, or maybe neither? I’ll likely elaborate on all of this further during the final recap of the season.

Read the rest of this recap by clicking here and visiting Premium Hollywood.

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.

Read the rest of this Blu-ray review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.