Film: David Lynch's Dune

Dune recently passed through the HBO rotation and it met the five-year qualifier.

So I watched it again with something approximating fresh eyes.

In part because starting with its theatrical release (the $2 cinema, when such things existed) and then over the years, I'd bet that the theatrical cut (that is, the one with Lynch's name still attached, thus the title) is the version I've seen many fewer times than the extended, "Alan Smithee" cut, which incorporated production sketches, a new opening prologue narrator, and sundry footage additions.  On the strength of the idea that an "extended version" must have improved on an infamous box-office bomb, it ran continually as something of a television event on UHF stations for much of the 90s.

And initially, it seems like an improvement somewhere.  The theatrical cut was roundly pilloried as being "incoherent," though as it was in a pre-internet era I assume that most of the incoherency charges came from viewers with no relationship to the novel.  Still, the film is not the book, and it should be able to stand on its own, so there was some hope that an extra forty or so minutes would make Dune a passable entertainment.  On subsequent viewing, however, the seams begin to show.  Right away, the revised voice-over verbatim and artlessly exposits information that the characters themselves later exposit, and introduces characters with descriptions that both match verbatim, and in some cases, nearly immediately follow in dialogue.  That the additional footage still follows the basic shape of Lynch's film makes the Alan Smithee cut ultimately no more viable an adaptation. 

TV: Miami Vice, S1 D2

Episode 7: No Exit

Sensational worlds collide in No Exit, whose villain of the week is the inimitable, just slightly pre-Moonlighting Bruce Willis.  Unfortunately, he's the villain of the week in a solidly early-Vice formula outing: a street-level stakeout-cum-shakedown (with a Phil Collins score) begins a ladder climb toward big fish arms dealer Tony Amato.   Amato is, alas, being trailed by the FBI, who immediately claim jurisdiction so Amato can lead them to a supply of stinger missiles.  At a mere $7500 apiece, they're priced to move even in 80s dollars (today, the CIA would buy them back for about nine times that; but black market price is about 200k.  Thanks, internet).

Complicating all of this counter-terrorism, there's a third party threatening: Amato's wife Rita, who's seeking an end to her abusive marriage.  Rita's plight begins comedically enough with a TV-trope shove into the pool which ruins her expensive, charity-benefit-suitable dress and inspires some decidedly network-friendly epithets that seem hilariously mild to a cable viewer of today: wife-beating Tony Amato is a pig, lower than dirt, and scum.

Luckily, this prompts a wired Rita to seek a hitman, and Sonny is able to ride in to save her, blowing his cover immediately but promising her that Tony is about to go away for a long, long stretch.

No Exit is a product very much of its time, both in TV history and the early days of a series still putting its pieces together.    As with many in the ladder-climb Vice formula, the pacing deliberately moves us step by step while further relying on expository dialogue to ensure clarity at every turn. For example, the establishment of the bugs in Amato's house takes a large portion of an act, something that would be elided today even on a low-information-viewer broadcast procedural.

Of course, like the last jurisdictionally-sensitive case, Amato's needed scum; and when the feds remand him from the MTV cops, Rita conveniently arrives just in time, leading to a second vintage Crockett "No!" on a freeze frame as we hear the shot.

Pros: Gives some field time for most of the cast.
Cons: The return of Tubbs' Jamaican accent, soft R&B scoring the beating/assault scene.


Then: B
Now: B-


Episode 8: The Great McCarthy

Saving big $$ on music rights since 1984.

Izzy, the white version of Noogie (the two recurring CIs eventually team up in later episodes to get themselves in wacky-shifty streetwise trouble) gives the squad an entrance to a new ladder, a supplier with a taste for racing boats; a novel way of mixing business and pleasure in south Florida.

As the boys wheedle into the titular McCarthy's good graces, the series lingers on another aspect of its formula. Last week, Crockett received the extracurricular time with Rita; this week Tubbs gets another chance to cuckold a kingpin.  So far, the older, jaded Sonny's romantic side-quests have left him frustrated, while young hothead Rico not only scores but, worse,  has a distressing tendency to fall a bit.

For a series that's quickly established a flashy visual style, McCarthy's direction is a terrible disappointment; in a one-two punch, the episode just falls apart.  First, Tubbs' romantic interlude with the moll of the week Vanessa is both abrupt in appearance and turgidly executed, with two minutes of passionless kissing set to muzak.  Then comes the much-anticipated speedboat race, scored by unlikely series music from Steppenwolf -- possibly used for song length --  8+ minutes filmed in long-distance shots with little urgency; there are so few cuts it not only feels at odds with the song, it makes the ultra-high stakes powerboat race dull.  Compared with even the slightly lax editing of the opening credits, the speedboat race is laughably bad to a modern viewer.

Equally bad direction cripples the wrap-up, where Tubbs' latest conquest is implicated in an tangential, early-act murder. When he's forced to arrest her, this riveting, episode-closing exchange takes place.  If this reads like tv-cop self-parody, it sounds even worse:

Tubbs: I'm a cop. I've gotta take you in.
Her: You... can't do it.
Tubbs: Yes I can. I've got to.

...and scene!

Pros: Continues developing the supporting cast of the Vice department.

Cons: Who have trouble arresting a milquetoast philosophy professor/coke dealer. The vice department's talent drop-off from the frequently overmatched Sonny and Rico is breathtaking.

Then: B-
Now: D-

Episode 9: Glades

Do you feel lucky, hick?

For the first time on this disc, we get a story unconnected to established Vice formula, though one fans of the A-Team might find familiar.  A key witness goes missing into the backwaters, and our heroes must pursue.   Perhaps tooling up to an Everglades pisswater in Crockett's Ferrari is not the best solid for a sport-fisherman cover, though rather than just killing them -- or worse, going the full Deliverance -- the gladesmen just abandon them to the elements.

Soon the boys have found their quarry, but to bring him back to town they'll need to lead the swamp-folk rabble in a raid against a crew of Columbian pot-smugglers to rescue the man's nine year-old daughter. It ends with a brief gun-on-hostage sequence that, when I was eleven, was one of the most bad-ass things I'd ever seen, an NBC-level Dirty Harry moment.  Back then, TV cops never shot the bad guy in the head while delivering a pithy supposition about involuntary muscle responses to traumatic injury.

That well's a little dry now, but at the time: whoah.

Pros: Tubbs' Howard Cosell imitation.
Cons: 80s just-say-no morality: You filthy, lower-than-the-lowest... pot smugglers! How dare you!

Then: A-
Now: C+



Episode 10: Give a Little, Take a Little

An elite clee-entele!

While Crocket and Tubbs follow up a stash-house tip from Noogie* and then get caught in a contempt charge trying to protect a CI witness it's the sex-trade side -- the supporting cast -- of the Miami-Dade Vice squad that draws the A story this week.

A slumming, mystery-accent-afflicted (is he south american? english? drunk?)  Burt Young is top-of-the-ladder villain, a ruthless pimp responsible for the entire gamut of flesh-peddling. He initially balks at Gina's grand-a-throw, presumably five-until-noon rate but soon she's the newest mare in his stable.

Then Gina balks at the idea of actually having a pimp/whore relationship.

This turn in the episode has disturbing implications that Gina has never been placed in such a position before, and that her cover as a streetwalker is just some party-girl dress-up game. Some of this is certainly of the era, but as a viewer today, it's nearly unfathomable that the cast of police officers are universally shocked at the turn of events; this is not after all, Orlando Vice.  And the situation has no time to breathe: almost as quickly as it's elided -- the assault happens during an ad-break, and no account is ever given -- the police get the upper hand by catching the guy that Young later sends to kill Gina, and she gets to come back to arrest him.



* Our guys basically threaten the stashkeeper at gunpoint to open his door, and find the contraband without a warrant. The case would last five minutes in court even without Locke..

Pros: Stuffed with other recognizable guest stars, from Lenny Dohlen to Terry O'Quinn.  Gina and Sonny's I-shot-someone-in-the-head-today support group.

Cons: Burt Young, letting it all hang out.

Then: B
Now: C

Film: Just One of the Guys

I saw this film a couple of dozen times in the 80s, thanks to HBO. If you were to ask me about it then, I'd have rated it somewhere around a B minus. It wasn't anywhere near the major leagues with the Hughes films (even lesser Hughes, like Weird Science, with which it shares formula), but on the other hand it was far better than other teen films in HBO's short list for heavy rotation, crap like Mischief or Fraternity Vacation.  The early Tom Cruise film Losin' It is approximately on Guys' level of quality.

In other words, it was a reasonable time-killer when, like Ferris, you had a computer instead of a car.

As with much of the genre, the intervening years haven't been very kind to it, though Guys does rate a mildly endorsing footnote in most studies of 80s teen cinema. I hadn't much thought about it in years, but ended up seeing it again when it became part of Netflix streaming (truly, the HBO heavy rotation of today).  I was pleasantly surprised to see the film offered some interesting subversions of the teen genre, but still overall the story never escapes the trappings of its b-list pedigree.

Like my original film entry Red Dawn, there's not much about JOotG on the interwebs, so here it is, punishing me for not thinking about it for a decade or two.  There's clearly enough meat on these bones if someone were to remake it today.

TV: Miami Vice S1, Disc 1

Original series title: Gator Cop

Miami Vice stands as one of the most enduring sensation shows, existing as much as a time capsule as entertainment.  Its sensation cred hangs very much on the surface elements: Miami locations, shot with MTV-derived visual vocabulary and soundtrack,* all populated by the definitive mid-80s look.

Novel visuals alone rarely keep the viewers tuned in; Vice's viewer retention came entirely from its solid fundamentals.  While the name of reputed auteur EP Michael Mann is synonymous with the series, the show's creator, Anthony Yerkovich, is more important to the longevity of the series, having brought a resume full of Hill Street Blues credits to Miami.  Yerkovich's presence makes the ensemble of vice cops a capable foundation on which to hang all of the zeitgeist-snaring speedboats, ferraris, and perpetual five o'clock shadow.  This helped the series easily endure annual batches of new cop shows that mimicked its surface, but never grasped its substance.

TV: Moonlighting, S1

That arch Moonlighting wit!

One of the textbook sensations, a midseason six-episode order that so caught the public imagination with its (groan) Girl Friday repartee-heavy take on Hart to Hart that it became a monster hit, reviving Cybill Shepherd's career and launching Bruce Willis to mega-stardom.

Then it ran into production delays, writing strikes, and the inevitable creative wall when resolving romantic tension between leads.   And all of this took a mere four years...

TV: The OC, S1 Disc 7

 The closing of season one is a triptych that could almost get boiled into a three-hour TV movie, as the wedding of its two principal villains provides a better excuse for the "event of the week" scenes.   If the OC is the story of Ryan Atwood, the finale provides ample closure for nearly every major character; as at the first season's halfway mark, it provides a nearly perfect jumping-off point for the show. 

On a second look, it's certainly mine.

TV: The OC, S1 Disc 6

Welcome to disc six, wherein the series' already-rapid dispensation of plotlines accelerates further.  With seven episodes left, we'll see four characters exit, three relationships end, AND a wedding.

Episode 21: The Goodbye Girl

More factually, it's Goodbye Girls, as we bid farewell to the love triangles of the Cohen boys, and we close out the Sandy-Cal corruption.  Everything's wrapped in the formula OC structure where things climax in a posh affair at the Cohen home, as Widmore is feted as Newport's Rich Guy of the year.  Can a posh poolside event end without someone being knocked into the drink?

TV: The OC, S1 Disc 5

It was with this disc that I had to look ahead, and to my disappointment, find that there's 27 episodes in the OC's interminable first season. Rough sledding.



Episode 17:  The Rivals

Escalating his suicide-sympathy game from last time, Oliver has finagled a transfer into Harbor, where he has further finagled an exact duplicate of Marissa's schedule.  This completely unhinges Ryan, who immediately launches a nighttime b&e on the file room to get a look at Oliver's past.   When this turns up nothing he can use, Ryan steals Oliver's oh-so-emo letter from Marissa's locker, which, when discovered, naturally, forces them to break up. 

TV: The OC, S1 Disc 4

 With episode thirteen, the OC embarks on its second half.  At this point, it honestly seems as if they weren't expecting to get renewed.

Early on, even as the characters were starting to gel in a rich and fertile storytelling ground of upper-class high school with one or two resulting love triangles, behind the scenes on the OC the writers were quick to pull the trigger on all sorts of dramatic complications whether needed or not.   This brought in and then quickly cashed out subplots or characters such as: Jimmy's legal troubles, Sandy's hot co-worker, Kirsten's fondness for the grape, Cal dating Julie, Theresa, Luke's dad,  and now the double-barreled  drama of Oliver and Haley.  In the sense that a pilot episode sets the tone for the series, the OC's first season laid out in miniature almost every trope it would encore for the next three years.

TV: The OC, S1 Disc 3

 Disc three finally establishes the series' status quo, as the Cohen boys begin their year at their posh private school.  It also begins a four-episode plotline on the elder Cohen side of the fence, one that will naturally come to nothing...

TV: The OC, S1 Disc 2

If the first four episodes were about delaying Ryan's change of address,  the purpose of the next few episodes is todelay Ryan's change of Facebook (Friendster?) status.

TV: The OC, S1 Disc 1

     In looking for a new Teen Sensation following the departure of the (mildly) beloved 90210, Fox took a fresh slant on white, privileged socal teen angst.  It captured the imagination of the time, but began showing its age right on cue at season three.  Despite attempting to refresh the character base (and as part of that,  blatantly Henry Blake-ing one of the original core cast), the fourth season was its last.

Sensational

Producing television is a cutthroat business; ridiculously so.  There are simply too many shows on an ever-growing number of networks who are vying for fragments of a too-small and constantly shrinking audience.  With every variable of a potential series scrutinized and worked -- usually to a breaking point --  managing to somehow get your series' pilot produced happens only from surviving incredible and stupid odds.  Or the fix is in.

The Hollywood pitch meeting scene, where studio execs try to dangle fresh meat in front of their bosses has become a reliable, eyerolling bit of comedy shtick in the burgeoning genre of behind-the-scenes entertainment.  Those My God, what a stupid idea. No idiot would greenlight that dog! punchlines are of course fictional pitches written by employed, professional writers and meant to draw a knowing laugh.

The contents of actual pitches are usually worse.

TV: Battlestar Galactica: miniseries

It was interesting to cut from the end of the run right back to the start, without review of the connective tissue -- particularly the first two full seasons -- where the sketches of characters presented here came to life.  It's helpful to see now, when you can dismiss some of the missteps, knowing which  of the weaker avenues were destined  for abandonment.

TV: Battlestar Galactica Classic, Disc 6

Episode 19: Baltar's Escape


Here we learn the disadvantages of keeping all your defeated enemies in one place.  Baltar, the Borellian Nomen, and the Easties make a simultaneous escape.  Baltar assumes his intimate knowledge of the Colonial society and his winning, self-aggrandizing conversational ability will ensure the Alliance treats him as well as the Cylons did.  After they commuted his execution, anyway.

Angry Tigh is the best!

Coinciding their jailbreak with the Quorum's latest example of why-the-civilian-government-knows-nothing,* the escapees momentarily hold the council, Adama, and other notables as hostages pending their escape.  Naturally, a desperate, some might say crazy rescue plan succeeds brilliantly, recapturing a hapless, furious Baltar but allowing the Easties to escape -- because the Galactica is tracing them back to their base.

TV: Battlestar Galactica Classic, Disc 5

Episode 16: Murder on the Rising Star


This is the final fleet-centered single episode.  The premise sets up quickly: Ortega (Frank Ashmore, genre b-list player; best remembered as Martin in the original V, or as navigator Victor Basta in Airplane!) a taco magnate and never-before-seen lifelong rival of Starbuck, who turns up murdered shortly after a conspicuously public series of confrontations that begin on the Triad court.   That he was murdered by Starbuck's surely pilfered weapon leads to a very speedy trial.

As is usually the case in SF legal dramas, one of the other characters, regardless of their expertise, takes over as the defense.  Here it's Apollo (is this the origin of Lee Adama's legal aspirations?), who also assumes the role of private dick.  Investigating Ortega's background since the flight from the Colonies, he uncovers a Perry Mason-suitable web of intrigue.

TV: Battlestar Galactica Classic, Disc 4

Episode 13 & 14: War of the Gods

Putting the distasteful memories of Fire in Space far behind us, we find everything back to normal. The Galactica is repaired, Adama is healthy, and the fleet's moving into a new quadrant of space.  Perfect fodder for a classic WoRP opening.   For a change, the patrol includes absolutely nobody of consequence: only the C-list duo of Jolly and Bojay, who is now the new Greenbean.  When glowing sphereoid UFOs buzz the patrol lazily and move out of range instantly, it's cause for concern.

When the entire patrol disappears after being overrun by an enormous, flying,  crystalline cross (subtle!), it's cause for alarm!

TV: Battlestar Galactica Classic, Disc 3

Episode 9: The Young Lords

The second of Starbuck's solo adventures.  Ambushed on patrol, he crashes on the swampy planet Attila, where the last human family wages a guerilla war against a Cylon garrison that occupies their former home, an Olde Tyme castle.  The robots have the numeric advantage, and Starbuck is hobbled by wounded leg, which gets no help from being dragged through a swamp.  He's captured quickly, but faster than you can yell "Wolverines!" Starbuck is freed by Kyle, the unicorn-mounted leader of the resistance.

TV: Battlestar Galactica Classic, Disc 2

Episode 4: The Lost Warrior

So far, Galactica has been splurging on high-budget set pieces.  Part of this was due to the initial plan of the show being a series of TV movies, and budgeted accordingly as they prepared for shooting.  Now, with a very expensive series underway for a full-season order, we see the start of stretching a dollar: light visual-fx reworkings of old westerns on standing pieces of the Universal backlot.

TV: Battlestar Galactica Classic, Disc 1

After Star Wars proved action-oriented SF was bankable, every studio began turning over rocks to see what they could hurry to market. One of these was a little trifle Glen Larson had created years before, taking a premise from the 1968 book Chariots of the Gods? blended with a healthy dose of Mormon scripture: Adam's Ark, about the remnants of humanity searching for a new home.

He dusted off that treatment,  shot it with what People magazine termed "Lorne Greene and a sexy young cast," -- there's publicity one can't buy --  and hired Star Wars vet John Dykstra to supervise the fx.  Its 3-hour premiere was a legitimate tv event, and the series was solidly in the top-20 during its only season in 1978.

TV: Caprica: Pilot

As a prelude to Battlestar Galactica month, I'm trying something new here: a review of the pilot for the forthcoming spin-off, Caprica.

Since the episode will not be airing in 2009, I'll keep plot details light.  

TV: Jonny Quest, Disc 4

Episode 22: The Quetong Missile Mystery

The police in Quetong have summoned Dr. Quest to investigate mysterious goings-on in the nearby wetlands, where ninjas have been assailing the unwary to cover for, yes, missile launches by a rogue element in the pseudo-Chinese government.  Following the usual JQ outline, the boys are abducted.  Race and Benton (with the latter doing most of the shooting!) easily infiltrate and destroy the operation.

--

TV: Jonny Quest, Disc 3

Episode 15: Turu the Terrible

The team's chartered a Disney tramp steamer in upriver South America to search for a vein of pure Trinoxite, a metal vital to the space program.  Unfortunately,  the deposits lay deep in the land of Turu, a man-eating Pteranodon who squawks like an Andean condor and is kept as a pet for half-mad wheelchair-bound Kurtz.  He's used Turu to enslave the local natives for mining the Trinoxite, thinking it to be silver.

TV: Jonny Quest, Disc 2

Episode 8: The Robot Spy

This is the quintessential Jonny Quest episode. Anyone who half-remembers the series will recall this episode's titular robot above and beyond everything in the series except maybe Jonny himself. The spy is a terror against conventional arms, though Dr. Quest's experimental para-power ray brings it down.

Pros: The boys are pretty much sidelined throughout the episode.

Cons: Depends on Quest's ignoring the obvious Trojan Horse. Further, Zin's aircraft and voice-controlled spy are cooler inventions than the project he's attempting to steal.

TV: Jonny Quest, Disc 1

JQ is an old favorite, obviously.  It always seemed to hold up better than much of its 60s Hanna-Barbara brethren, and since it's been the requisite five years since I watched the DVDs, I thought it'd be a good breather series between one-hour shows.

Given its age,  you have to be prepared to accept the cold-war morality of the series, and endure heaping helpings of annoying comedy relief in the form of Jonny's dog, Bandit. 

At thirty minutes per episode, there're few plot points to "unpack," particularly when many episodes are regrettable variations on the Scooby Doo formula, so I'll be keeping these brief.