Slightly better than "Surviving the Game", Not as fun as "Gymkata"

I should probably admit that I'm not that huge a Joss Whedon fan, despite the fact that, in theory, he's everything I like wrapped in one geeky package. Comic book fan? Check. Innovative twists on sci-fi and horror, which acknowledge and update trappings and gender roles? Check. Weird sense of humor? Check.

But I've only seen a few episodes of "Firefly" (which I liked), no Buffy or Angel at all. I've never read his run on X-Men, and I haven't watched "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog". So keep that in mind when you get to the next part:

I think "Dollhouse" is okay. But I don't think it's going to be great as long as Eliza Dukshu's the lead.

The second episode just revealed the empress as naked, if you will. She's called upon to encounter different versions of herself during a drug-induced freakout. And my god, if it wasn't for the dialogue/costume cues, I wouldn't be able to tell which version was a mind-erased doll and which supposed to be a living being. Her only method for showing confusion is to walk in a weird stagger and shake her head from side to side.

I mean, I guess there might be some point to having someone as blank as Eliza Dushku play a character whose entire existence is projected onto her by other people. But I don't care about her plight or view her brainwashing as that bad a thing, which is incredibly problematic for this show.

And you know, when Harry Lennix is on screen, kicking butt and being morally troubled, or when Tahmoh Penikett's cute next door neighbor hits on him, or when the meta-plot is getting revealed, I'm engaged and enjoying myself.

But then Eliza Dushku is called upon to show some range and the show falls apart for me. My only hope is that Whedon has some master-stroke planned that is supposed to play off this. But so far, I'm a doubter.

I mean, when your "Most Dangerous Game" episode leaves me saying "eh", you should realize your show has a problem.

Boll-ing Alone: Uwe Boll Watch

It's been a long time, I know. I promise I'll break radio silence more significantly soon.

However, I am watching Uwe Boll's House of the Dead right now. And despite the fact that there are so so many things wrong with this film (as you would expect when CLINT HOWARD is your third billed star!), the following has to take the cake.

Jurgen Prochnow, a gun-smuggling ex-Armed Forces fishing boat captain, has just finished up an exposition dump/flashback about a "crazy Spanish padre" being banished to the New World for his inhumane experiments and he utters the following lines (verified by the English subtitles):

"The Spanish were trying to falling the sands into the limeys. They never made it back to the garrison."

House of the Dead, a movie that doesn't even make sense on a line by line basis!

Mo' money, mo' existential crises

You know, I think I know which song represents America's current mood, the mix of strange hopefulness and fear, of schadenfreude and bitterness.

"Whatever You Like" by T.I.

It's  a song about a handsome, charismatic stranger sweeping you off your feet and giving you everything you could ever want. The lyrics explicitly say that you'll never need to depend on anyone else, totally cut loose from the world around you. 

This song is made even more complicated by the video (which I can't find on Youtube at the moment), which posits the whole thing as a dream sequence, ending with the heroine resuming her duties at a demeaning fast food job with a free-loading boyfriend. T.I. positions himself as a man to make your dreams come true, but he won't actually act on that ability. The whole thing reminds me of the Mr. Show videos for Three Times One Minus One, in which the R&B duo's appearances are sentimental wish-fulfillment for the group, with the object of desire shoved back into her tragic life at the end of each video.

On top of this, on the album Paper Trail, "Whatever You Like" is sequenced to follow "Live Your Life", whose lyrics exhort people to live their life and not chase money or wish for a different life. Doesn't this sum up the great contradiction of the modern American dream? We all want to be an amazing unique success, but with that success conferred by shortcuts or outsiders and expressed in the most conformist ways.

And don't get me started on the cover versions. Weird Al's parody is a fairly straightforward transformation of T.I.'s melodramatic sentiments into a low-rent absurdity that ends up representing people's imagined fearful definition of the new "luxury". [I recently saw a Target ad which proclaimed a 19 dollar Target tie the "new power suit" and a vial of sunless tanner as the "new vacation". So our desires are transferred to acquisition, just on a more pitiful level striving to mimic the rich who can afford the real items. Why not establish our own ]

Meanwhile, Moby issued a cover version [see January 14th entry] that turns it into a piece of neurotic Euro-trash duet a la "Southside" or late '70's Iggy Pop. Our narrator sounds bored with his wealth and luxury, with the limitless opportunity paralyzing him. His relationship with his partner occasionally rises into some simulation of passion, but then pulls back from the emotion, finally sliding into inertia. They pull each other into a quicksand of meaningless sex and expensive liquor. The claims of "long as you got me you won't need nobody" sound desperate, as if each fears the other will abandon him/her for a meaningful life. It's luxury as a suicide pact, a downward spiral of consumption that will end in either spiritual or financial bankruptcy.

Yay, America!

"I just got tired of running..."

Journey Into Fear [1943, d. Norman Foster, starring Joseph Cotten, Dolores Del Rio and Orson Welles]

Journey into Fear was Welles' attempt to close out his RKO contract by writing and producing it simultaneously alongside The Magnificent Ambersons. Since Welles put in uncredited work as a writer (the screenplay is attributed to Joseph Cotten!), along with acting in it, there seems to be the assumption that he also helped direct it. Having not read Hello, Americans yet, I want to withhold judgement. It is odd how self-effacing this film's credits are. No production or writing credits, and Welles gets billed last on the opening credits (without even so much as a "And Featuring"). He gets billed below a nightclub magician in only one scene! Makes you wonder if Welles was trying to wash his hands of a disappointing film or if the studio was trying to punish their prodigal son.

Because whatever role Welles had in the film's direction, his stamp is all over the film. His regulars fill out the cast, his mistress Dolores Del Rio gets top billing, there are visionary experiments with sound design, and the visual design is stunning.

So now to dispense with a plot summary. Joseph Cotten is the whiniest American naval gunnery expert ever and he's America's man in Turkey, helping the Turks rebuild their navy. I wonder if it was because none of his co-workers could stand him that he got this plum assignment. The upshot is, now he's the Nazi's number one target in Turkey since any replacement would take months to arrive. After a failed assassination attempt, Colonel Haki (Orson Welles), head of Turkish intelligence, all but forces him onto a dirty freighter at gunpoint, since the Nazis are expecting him to leave by train. Unfortunately, it seems like there is at least one German agent upon the boat with him, and given the eccentricities of his fellow passengers, Cotten's chances of pegging the right passenger for a Nazi are pretty unlikely.

First of all, this has to be a very dispiriting film to watch from an acting standpoint. Whereas most of Welles' other projects show an ability to cast to type, if not cast greats. Unfortunately, Joseph Cotten shows none of the ability that he showed in Citizen Kane or later in The Third Man. He's a whiny stuffed shirt for most of the picture, who manages to make even the most reasonable reactions come off as insufferable.

Meanwhile, Welles puts in a sleepwalking performance that relies mostly on his imposing bulk and a passable (for the 40s at least) Turkish accent. This despite the fact that the type, a possibly corrupt authority figure who is sympathetic mostly for his cleverness, is one that Welles would continuously return to. Here though, he's mostly trying to hit his mark, and it's hard to blame him since he was doing two films at once.

The rest of the cast is just kind of "meh", except when they become annoying. As for Dolores Del Rio, she is attractive, but she possesses little sex appeal and I see no threat of her successfully seducing Cotten. 

Then too, the tone of this film is weirdly inconsistent, veering between fish out of water comedy and tense thriller. Cotten's character seems as threatened by his lack of a topcoat as by the fact that Nazis are after him. By the final half hour, though, JiF almost feels like some nightmarish fantasy where xenophobia and paranoia are inextricably mixed and Cotten's inability to simply go from point A to point B becomes an existential crisis.

Because the elements of design, plot and direction in the film take on a life of their own and the flat acting fades into the weird dream reality of the movie. Sound blots out important information from both characters and audience. Turkish and German dialogue is left mostly untranslated. Cotten's stalkers on board turn out to be friends or mere mischief makers, while a pleasant acquaintance turns out to be the man plotting his death. There is an entire sequence devoted to Joseph Cotten's inability to find a convenient place to hide his gun, and another, upon his subsequent loss of it, on his inability to find another. Even the voiceover narrative, a letter written with the tone of a man talking from beyond the grave, turns out to be composed after the climax of the film.

There is also a very vague allegorical level here, with Cotten's well-meaning but befuddled researcher becoming a two-fisted man of action when his way of life is threatened, and while it is set up, Cotten's unlikeability and a lack of real emotion in the film undermines the message.

Certainly, Journey into Fear is no Touch of Evil or even another The Stranger. It lacks the ambition of any of Welles' later work, and yet fails at what little it aims for. At the same time, it suggests the idea of Welles as an unpretentious b-movie maker, who might have produced more satisfying work and not burned out so spectacularly.

I'm 5 years behind my time...

Oh my god, Deadwood is an amazing TV show. Only just finished watching the fourth episode in the first season, and everything about it: the plotting, the script, the acting, the mise-en-scene... amazing.

But there's no danger/it's a profession, a career/ though we could be erased/ with just a word in Cardinal Wolsey's ear

So I'm watching Henry VIII, enjoying it but feeling somewhat underwhelmed (feels a little bit like it was assembled from bits and pieces of other history plays) by both the actual play and the performances.

But then, towards the end of Act III, the actor playing Cardinal Wolsey (Timothy West) just blew me away. For most of the film, he's underplayed the part, coming off as scheming and manipulative. Then his former servant Cromwell comes to visit him after his arrest. At first, Wolsey plays at the penitent great man, rehabilitated and ready to return to society (Nixon comes to mind as a good example). All very weighty and eloquent.

And then Cromwell says that he'll serve the king, but he'll keep his prayers for Cardinal Wolsey. And for the first moment in the play, we see Wolsey as vulnerable. The text bears out this interpretation: the language gets simpler and there are a lot more pauses and breaks. West keeps it understated, but you suddenly see his sadness. He's spent his whole life raising and destroying people based on his needs, and he only now realizes the power and beauty of friendship.

It lends an amazing power to his closing lines: "Had I but serv'd God with half the zeal/I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age/ Have left me naked to mine enemies." Rather reminiscent of the Kissinger quote about how much Nixon could have accomplished if someone had loved him. Just an amazing moment of empathy that staggers me as a would-be actor and writer.

This wooden Oooooh this is awful!

For discussion: Is King Henry VIII Shakespeare's worst play? If so, produce one memorable quote or moment. Cite specific productions as needed.

(I just started watching the BBC version produced by Cedric Messina and thought, "it's a bad sign when your prologue all but says, go elsewhere if you're looking for fun.")