MotionPicturesComics will be dark next week, as I head to Chicago to enjoy some New Years festivities.  

We’ll be back on Monday, January 5th, with new cartoons and lots more fun stuff.  I have a lot of movies and DVDs that I’ve seen recently that I can’t wait to tell you all about, and I’m also going to get in on the fun of putting together some “Best-Of” year-end lists of all the things I’ve seen and enjoyed in 2008.

There’s lots ahead for Motion Pictures in 2009, so thanks for being with us — and be sure to tell all your friends!

Have a great New Year, everyone.

I first saw this terrific German film a number of years ago, and for quite some time now I’d been eager to check it out again.  The copious amount of snow that fell this past weekend was as good a reason as any!

Released in 1999, the story of Run Lola Run is pretty simple:  Lola (Franka Potente) is a young woman who has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks, or something very bad will happen to her boyfriend Manni.  Through some great camerawork and a little visual trickery, we follow Lola as she makes a mad dash through the city streets in an effort to some-how, some-way, come up with the money.  

This is a film with a lot on its mind — particularly some deep questions about chance, fate, and destiny.  But with the exception of a bit of a pompous voice-over in the opening minutes, the film chooses to explore those issues through what is pretty much non-stop, pulse-pounding action.  As noted above, the camera-work is very sharp, getting the viewer viscerally involved in Lola’s run through the city without making one too nauseous, Blair Witch style.  The pulsing soundtrack helps, too, as do the occasional switches into frenetic animation.  The film is very well-edited, as all of the above is somehow mixed together into an energetic yet easy-to-follow whole.  Coming in at a lean 81 minutes, there’s not a moment of fat to be found here.  (In terms of pace,the short Run Lola Run is sort of the polar opposite if Once Upon a Time in America, which I reviewed yesterday!)  

The way the film plays with time is fascinating.  I won’t spoil any surprises, but there are some clever twists in the way the tale unfolds.  I also really love the fast-paced “and then” montages, in which the film will occasionally pause to show us, in a quick series of shots, the differing ways in which the lives of several of the people who Lola encounters might unfold, based on the vagaries of chance.  As I wrote above, this film has a lot on its mind.

All of this would fall down, of course, were Franka Potente not so compellingly winning as Lola.  Clever and resourceful, yet right on the edge of total desperation, this is a star-making role.  Potente has gone on to appear in the Bourne movies and The Shield, but I don’t know if she’s ever been better than she is here.

One final note:  Be sure to watch this film in the original German with subtitles, as opposed to the dreadful English over-dub!  You’ll thank me, believe me.

I love trolling the discount bins at Newbury Comics and other stores that sell DVDs, because you never know what sort of fun treasures you’ll find for very little money.

Case in point:  I recently came across Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America.  I had heard of this film but had never seen it, so I looked the DVD over.  An over three-hour gangster epic, starring Robert DeNiro and James Woods?  Sign me up!

Originally released in 1984, Leone’s sprawling tale covers about 50 years in the lives of a group of Jewish friends, from their days growing up on the streets on the Lower East Side, to their rise through the ranks of the New York City underworld to, of course, the eventual tragedies that usually end these sorts of crime stories.  The film was received poorly upon its release in the States, probably because the studio took Leone’s lengthy epic and severely truncated it — not only cutting out enormous swaths of footage but also removing Leone’s intricate narrative structure of flashbacks within flashbacks, and instead presenting the film linearly.  This DVD presents a restored version of Leone’s 229 minute cut (although the disc’s special features refer to extensive additional footage that Leone considered “essential” and yet was not included in this version).

Although he might portray the least convincing on-screen Jew since Elijah Wood in Everything is Illuminated (although that’s not a knock against Wood’s powerful performance in that vastly underrated movie!), Robert DeNiro creates a fascinating character in his portrayal of the man nicknamed Noodles.  Throughout his life, Noodles struggles to balance his sharp intelligence with his more violent impulses, and his ambition with his limited worldview.  Time after time, most of Noodles’ choices are defined in association with, and sometimes in contrast to, his close friend Max, played by James Woods.  From their very first meeting as kids, the two share a tight bond as well as a fierce rivalry, and much of the power of Once Upon a Time in America comes from the examination  of their relationship over the course of their lives.  

Just as New York City was a major character in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (about which I wrote yesterday) so too is the essence of New York  an important element in the tone of this film.  The gorgeous sets and locations, combined with Leone’s direction, create a compelling picture of old New York.  The film’s title puts one in the mind of a fairy tale, and perhaps this film’s picture of life in the Lower East Side has equal footing in both reality and fantasy.  (Having not lived there during the time-period of the film, I can’t really say for sure!)  But either way, the image of New York that Leone creates is a beautiful, haunting one.  Much has been made, in books and in films, about the positives and negatives of life in the Jewish areas of the Lower East Side, and Once Upon a Time in America manages to present both aspects.  On the one hand, the movie seems to be rather nostalgic about life in those neighborhoods, showing, for example, how the entire community shuts down so that everyone can head to shul.  On the other hand, the main characters of the story are the young boys who feel disconnected from that community and so turn to other, less legal pursuits, as their life’s work.

If I have a complaint about the film, it is its length.  Now, I have no problems with a long movie — if fact, I find that I tend to prefer the epic scope of a good three-hour film!  But Once Upon a Time in America is a film that sure takes its sweet time in telling its story.   The first 30 minutes are particularly challenging.  It is apparent that the film is opening with what is, in fact, the end of the story, so an attentive viewer will have no doubt that flashbacks are coming.  But it takes quite some time — almost a half-hour! — for those flashbacks to arrive, and for the real story of movie to begin.  There is also a somewhat punishing early sequence that involves the ringing of a telephone overlaid over a variety of images.  The idea is that the sound of the phone ringing reminds DeNiro’s character of a pivotal decision that he made earlier in his life, and that is our entry-point into the flashback structure of the film.  In theory, a terrific idea.  In execution, we hear that damn phone ring over and over again for long minutes on end, and it’s rather tough to sit through!

But once the film takes us back to meet young Noodles and Max up to no good on the streets of New York City, the movie kicks into gear.  The storytelling remains, shall we say, leisurely paced, but I quickly found myself caught up in the story of Noodles, Max, and their friends.  There is a fine collection of actors in supporting roles: Elizabeth McGovern as Noodles’ life-long love Deborah, Danny Aiello, Joe Pesci (though don’t be fooled by the prominent listing of his name on the DVD box art — he’s only in one scene!), Tuesday Weld, and others.  I should also mention a very young Jennifer Connelly, who gives a great performance in one of her first on-screen roles as Deborah in the early flashback scenes.  (Viewer morality alert: there’s one risque moment involving young Deborah that — whew! — the special features clarify involved another (older) actress’ bum.)

In the sub-genre of American gangster movies, there are some towering works that this film does not equal.  Nevertheless, it is a compelling addition to that fine group of films.  If you enjoy a good crime story, and if you have some patience (and a comfy couch), there’s a lot here to be enjoyed.

My father recommended this film to me, years ago, and from the first time I watched it I knew right away that he was right on the money in declaring it to be a masterful work.

Made in 1974, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three stars Walter Matthau as New York City transit chief Lt. Garber, called upon to deal with the unprecedented hijkacking of a subway train (the titular Pelham One Two Three).  Robert Shaw leads the armed men who have perpetrated the heist and seem to have planned for every possible eventuality.  What follows is one of the great cinematic battle of wits, as Matthau’s Lt. Garber struggles to figure out just what the criminals’ goals are and how he can prevent what seems to be a perfectly planned crime.

There are a number of movies in which New York City figures in, almost as a main character, and The Taking of Pelham One Two is certainly one of the most notable.  In so many little ways, the film captures the feel and personality of the city.  It is a magical combination of the actors (both the large number of people with speaking parts as well as all the background players), the dialogue (and the accents with which the dialogue is spoken!), and the sets… along with that special something about the personality of 1970’s film stock that puts us right into the middle of the beating heart of New York.  Personality is a good word, because it is precisely by setting of this heist story in the specific locale of the New York City subway system that the movie gains its distinct personality.  I didn’t live in the city in the 1970’s, but after spending two hours with this movie I feel like I did.

Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that the film’s star is Walter Matthau.  His Lt. Garber is the quintessential New Yorker — world-weary and bedraggled, yet possessing of an incredible stubbornness that just won’t permit him to allow Robert Shaw to get the best of him.  Matthau is phenomenally compelling — a flawed man (he is shockingly rude and condescending to a group of Japanese visitors early in the film, and there is also an amusingly awkward encounter with an African American Police Inspector) and yet extraordinarily likable.  Equally compelling is Robert Shaw as Matthau’s opponent (referred to only as Mr. Blue). Mr. Blue is intense, intelligent, and very dangerous.  Watching his plan unfold step by step, the audience races along with Lt. Garber in trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three  isn’t a terribly well-known film from the ’70s, but it’s one of my favorites.  Check it out!

There is a lot of terrific comic book work being published these days. Last month I spent a lengthy post discussing Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. Allow me, today, to bring a few other high-quality series to your attention:

All Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely – The idea behind DC Comics’s All-Star line was to allow today’s top creators to tell stories with the big DC heroes without worrying about current continuity issues. And so we have been blessed by this twelve-issue take on Superman (currently collected in two volumes) which manages to be retro (capturing a lot of the weirdness and silliness of Superman comics from the 50’s) and also very modern (in terms of the sophistication of the narrative). As a reader, you know you’re in for something special on the very first page of the very first issue, in which Morrison and Quitely manage to capture everything you need to know about Superman in four simple panels. As for the series’ story: Lex Luthor realizes that he’s getting older and so had better get serious about finally killing Superman. You’re best-off if I don’t tell you anything other than that, except that you should feel safe in the knowledge that, freed from the regular comics’ continuity and the need to leave all the toys in the same place that they found them, Morrison and Quitely are able to tell a story that involves real change for all the characters (no super-amnesia kiss to be found here) and that does not back away from the end that the first issue seems to be suggesting. In so doing, they are able to, at least for me, really get to the heart of the character of Superman. Brilliant work.

1985, by Mark Millar and Tommy Lee Edwards – 1985 was a big year for Marvel Comics, with the publication of their huge inter-company cross-over, Secret Wars. I began collecting comics right around that time, and I was a Marvel zombie, so the feel and tone of the Marvel Comics adventure stories from those years really holds a powerful nostalgic allure for me. What does that have to do with this six-issue mini-series? That sensation of immersing oneself in the magical world of Marvel Comics in 1985 is something that Millar and Edwards really channel in this work, but I won’t spoil it by telling you exactly how. I will tell you that 1985 is set in the “real world.”

We are introduced to young Toby, a boy who hasn’t had the easiest childhood (parents divorced, etc.). Things start getting much worse for him when he sees a Marvel comics super-villain, The Red Skull, standing in the attic window of a mysterious neighbor’s house. Now, despite what that very short synopsis might lead you to believe, this is NOT the story of a young boy imagining things to escape from his sad life. No, it’s a tale about wonder, about heroism, and also about the love of comic books. It is a transporting, magical story, and I loved every page. (A snazzy collection of this series will be available soon.)

The ClanDestine, by Alan Davis – When I was in high school, one of my favorite comic book writer/artists, Alan Davis, launched a new title for Marvel Comics. It was called The ClanDestine, and it was about a family of extremely long-lived, super-powered individuals. There was an element of the “super-hero” to this tale, and it was set firmly within the Marvel universe (featuring guest appearances from Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, etc. etc.). But right away from those first few issues I could tell that there was something special about the series. Although no-one draws a super-hero punch-up better than Alan Davis — and there certainly was a lot of great action on display in the series — Davis’ ClanDestine seemed to focus more on the characters. Through the stories, readers were able to enter the world of this weird, argumentative, mysterious group. I enjoyed all of the mysteries seeded in to the series: questions about exactly who these people were, where they’d come from, and what they’d been up to over the decades and centuries. Unfortunately, after only eight issues, the title was cancelled. (Well, actually, Alan Davis had a falling-out with Marvel editorial and left the series. Marvel attempted to continue his series without him, but even as a kid I was wise to that and so avoided picking up issue #9 written and drawn by other people. I guess most everyone else did, too, as Marvel ended the series only a few issues later.) The ClanDestine popped up about 2 years later in a two-issue cross-over with The X-Men, written and drawn by Mr. Davis, but if that was an attempt to reignite interest in the series I guess it failed because that was that for the ClanDestine.

And so I was shocked, but quite delighted, when this past year Marvel and Alan Davis released a new 5-issue ClanDestine mini-series, picking up right where the original issue #8 had left off all those years ago. There is some exposition added in for new fans, although I would imagine anyone reading the new mini-series without having read the older work (which Marvel has recently collected in a nice new edition) would be rather lost. But who cares about them! I was just thrilled to be able to enjoy a new ClanDestine adventure, continuing the story I had thought was over for good. (A collection of this new mini-series, subtitled Blood Relative, was just released last month.) It is a fun tale, not overly serious but still a real page-turner. Some lingering questions from the original issues are addressed, although when I got to the last page it was clear that there was still a lot more story yet to be told. The solicitation for this new mini-series advertised it as the first of a SERIES of mini-series. I hope that is the case, and that Mr. Davis is hard at work on the further adventures of the ClanDestine was I write this now… I’d really prefer to not have to wait another decade and a half before the next installment.

I love movies, and I am fascinated by politics, so it’s no surprise that I am always up for a good political movie.  And make no mistake, Ron Howard’s latest film, Frost/Nixon, is a very good political movie.

Adapted by Peter Morgan from his own play (which attracted notice in London in 2006 and on Broadway in 2007) and directed by Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon details the May, 1977 interviews of former president Richard M. Nixon by British TV personality David Frost.  

Right away the movie gains points in my book by allowing the two leads from the play to reprise their roles.  Michael Sheen, who came to many movie-goers’ attention (including my own) portraying Tony Blair in The Queen (also written by Peter Morgan), creates a compelling portrait of David Frost.  Sheen’s Frost is an intensely likable, charismatic man who has achieved great success but who we can see hungers for something more.  At first that is just his quest to nab the next Big Fish for an interview subject, but over the course of his efforts to make the Nixon interviews happen, we see that morph into a search for something a little more serious.  Then there is Frank Langella as Mr. Nixon.  Believe it or not, I first encountered Langella in a terrific three-episode guest-starring role in the second season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  His intense gaze and deep voice were gripping, and I was quite intrigued, subsequently searching out many of his other performances.  His films don’t always interest me but as an actor he seldom disappoints, embodying roles as disparate as Perry White in Superman Returns or William Paley in Good Night, and Good Luck.  Langella’s Nixon is the polar opposite of Sheen’s Frost in terms of appearance and temperament, but he is a powerhouse.  The moments when the full force of his personality break loose are an incredible thing to watch.

I was surprised and intrigued by  the way the film was structured as a faux documentary, continually cutting back to the actors, in their roles, being interviewed as we would expect to see in a real documentary.  I have not seen the original play, so I can’t speak to what changes or adjustments were made in crafting the film.  But as a film, it is compelling.  Frost/Nixon is a very talky movie, but that is not a weakness.  I am always enraptured by films that are able to create dramatic tension from simple conversations.  The pay-off in this film is not an action sequence or a stand-off with guns — it is when these two men finally sit down and talk.  

I should also mention the rest of the impeccably cast supporting roles, in particular the three men who help Frost prepare for the interviews.   Matthew Macfadyen (Tom Quinn, the original lead of MI:5, and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice) plays Frost’s producer and main ally, John Birt.  He connects Frost with two investigative journalists in order to prepare him for the interviews: Oliver Platt (who is always wonderful, for me most notably when he played Oliver Babish on The West Wing) as Bob Zelnick, and Sam Rockwell (who first caught my attention in Galaxy Quest and has since been relentlessly entertaining in films like Heist, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and the criminally underrated Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) as James Reston Jr.  This trio brings a lot of energy and humor into what could otherwise have been a rather dour film, and they’re delightful.  

Political films have to walk a fine line between making a statement and being entertaining.  That’s no easy task, but Frost/Nixon does a fine job of it.  There is nothing exactly revelatory here, but it is a fascinating peek into a potent political show-down.  Worth your time.

One of the first full-season-of-a-TV-show DVD sets that I ever purchased was Season 1 of The Larry Sanders Show, released back in 2003.

After having risen to prominence as a stand-up comedian in the 1970’s & 80’s, Garry Shandling became a fixture of late-night television as a regular guest host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.  In 1985 he created It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which ran on Showtime through 1990.  (I have heard that It’s Garry Shandling’s Show is a magnificently bizarre, surreal adventure in television, although I have never seen a minute of it.  I live in hope of an eventual DVD release!) 

In 1992 Shandling created The Larry Sanders Show for HBO.  Sanders was a sharp satire of the world of late-night comedy which Shandling knew so well, and was notable for including various celebrities (actors, comedians, and musicians) in each episode, poking great amounts of fun at their public personas.  The show was also notable for its look, which mixed footage shot on video (the segments of the show which chronicled Larry Sanders’ late-night talk-show) with footage shot on film.  Nothing like this had ever been done for television before.

The comedy is powerful and brutal, and revels in awkward moments and painful situations.  (In this way it can be seen as a direct forerunner of the original British version of The Office.)  And yet, the beauty of the show is that you can’t help but fall in love with the show’s central trio: the neurotic Larry Sanders, the clue-less and self-absorbed side-kick Hank, and the fiercely loyal and astonishingly profane Artie, the show’s producer.  A great number of talented comedians and actors also did great work in supporting roles: Janeane Garofalo, Penny Johnson (Sherry Palmer on 24 and Kassidy Yates on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Jeremy Piven (Entourage), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe on 24), Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Scott Thompson, Wallace Langham, and many many others. 

I discovered The Larry Sanders Show fairly late in its run.  My parents taped many of the episodes of the last few seasons for me when I was away at college.  So I was thrilled when Season 1 was released, as I finally had a chance to watch the earlier episodes that I had never seen.  I quickly devoured the 13 episodes on the set, and waited patiently for the release of season 2.

And waited.

And waited.

No other season of The Larry Sanders Show has ever been released on DVD.  The information I have been able to find on-line seems to indicate that there is an issue with the exorbitant cost of licensing all the music featured on the show.

What we have gotten, though, is the release, last year, of a pretty spiffy “best-of” collection: Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show, featuring 23 episodes selected from the show’s six seasons.  The shows are well-chosen, featuring some of the real highlights of the series, including my two favorite episodes:  “Everybody Loves Larry” in which Larry suspects that David Duchovny (The X-Files) has a crush on him, and “My Name is Asher Kingsley” in which Hank decides to covert to Judaism. 

The set is also replete with extras, including a terrific, lengthy documentary about the production of the series, and tons of interviews with various people involved with the show.  The most interesting (and also bizarre) extras on the disc are a series of conversations between Garry Shandling and a number of different members of the show’s cast and notable guest-stars.  Mr. Shnadling had apparently not been in touch with most of these people since the end of the show, and decided to use the production of the DVD to reconnect with them, and film what happened.  The result is unlike anything I’ve ever seen on a DVD.  The conversations are fascinating, intimate, and often extremely awkward and uncomfortable.  There is a breakfast with Sharon Stone that I felt like I needed subtitles to help decipher the complex dynamic between the two.  I should also note Shandling’s long conversation with Jerry Seinfeld.  This is the least awkward of all the interviews, as Shandling and Seinfeld appear to be old friends who see one another regularly.  Their free-ranging conversation about comedy and their old TV shows is a gold-mine of interesting tidbits, particularly for someone like me who holds both The Larry Sanders Show and Seinfeld up as shining examples of TV greatness.

If you are a fan of the show, this DVD is worth checking out.  As for me, I will continue to hope that eventually the many remaining unreleased episodes of this classic TV show will eventually see the light of day, either on DVD, blu-ray, or whatever the format after that winds up being.  Hope springs eternal!  Maybe someday I’ll also get Andy Richter Controls the Universe on DVD as well…

Among my very favorite DVD sets are Peter Jackson’s extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Being a fanatical LOTR fan, it is a delight to have longer versions of the films that incorporate action, character moments, and lots of other fun details drawn from the books.  The LOTR extended DVDs also boast some of the most comprehensive and enjoyable extras I have ever seen – detailed, feature-length documentaries that cover every aspect of the making of the films, from the casting to the production to the music to the editing to the guys who made the chain mail for all the elvish armor.  Just fantastic stuff, and it gives us a wonderful peek into the experiences of all the talented craftsmen and women who toiled on the LOTR films for over half a decade.

Because of that, and because I enjoyed Peter Jackson’s King Kong more than most, when the extended DVD set of King Kong was released over two years ago (in November, 2006), I of course picked it up right away.  However, for some reason, it subsequently sat unopened on my DVD shelf.  I’m not sure why that is.  Maybe it’s because the thought that a longer version of Kong was rather daunting?  As I wrote above, I really loved Jackson’s remake of Kong, but even I must admit that the film (clocking in at 187 minutes) was longer than it needed to be.  Even from the comfort of my own couch, the idea of pressing play on the 201 minute version was, I suppose, not something I was in a terrible hurry to do.

But I did finally sit down to watch the extended version of King Kong this weekend, and let me say I was delighted.  Unlike the Lord of the Rings extended editions, this is not a complete re-working of the film.  The changes are actually rather minimal, mostly consisting of a couple of additional hideous encounters on Skull Island.  If you didn’t like King Kong in its theatrical form, this new version isn’t going to change your mind.  But for me, watching Kong I right away remembered every reason why I had enjoyed the film so much when I saw it in theatres.

Anyone who knows anything about this Kong remake knows that it was Peter Jackson’s dream since he was 9 years old, and that love pores off of every frame of this film.  The movie is a fantasy, a fairy-tale of the best kind, and the terrific score and the sumptuous visuals right away sucked me in to the world of 1933 New York and the story being told. 

There is no question that it is too long, and I do feel that Jackson’s love for the material blinded him to the necessity to make some tough editing choices to tighten things up.  But, to me, this version of King Kong is spectacle of the best kind.  The visuals of this film are so over-the-top astonishing as to boggle my mind.  The Brontosaurus stampede in the middle of the film would be the show-stopping action set piece of any other film, but here it is just a prelude to such sequences as the incredible extended Kong-versus-three-T-Rexes fight, Kong’s rampage in NYC, and of course the final confrontation atop the Empire State Building.  But forget the action sequences, and consider all the other visual wonders to behold in nearly every scene.  I am hard-pressed to find any shot in this film that isn’t a visual effects shot.  From the wonderful visions of old New York, to all the time spent at sea on the Venture on its ill-fated voyage, to all of the adventures on Skull Island, the film is a glorious assemblage of visual effects eye-candy.  Jackson took the team whose skills had been honed on the LOTR films and pushed them even further here, and the combination of sets, costumes, matte-paintings, miniatures, digital set extensions and CGI character work creates a full-realized world straight from Jackson’s imagination to our eyeballs.

All this talk of visual effects, and I haven’t even mentioned Kong himself!  That is how effortless and incredible the Kong visual effects are – these talented folks have brought to life an incredible creature, and it all works so successfully and feels so real that you hardly think of Kong as a visual effect!  The moment where Kong laughs at Ann, who has been demonstrating her vaudeville routines in a desperate attempt to stay alive, is a true wonder.  Just astounding work.

And the DVD is just as thorough and interesting as the LOTR ones were.  King Kong might be the most well-documented movie of all time.  Between the hours and hours of production diaries that were released on-line during the films’ production and post-production (and collected on DVD by the Peter Jackson’s Production Diaries set and disc two of the theatrical version of King Kong’s DVD release), I had thought there wasn’t anything more to know about the making of this film.  But this extended DVD contains over three hours of additional material, and it is fascinating and terrifically engaging.  The effort extended by so many people to bring this story to life is really something.

How is the extended version?  I had expected that most of the additions would be character-building stuff added on to the first part of the movie.  But that is not the case.  The film is almost unchanged until the Venture arrives at Skull Island.  At which point several sequences are added, most notably an encounter with a whole host of vicious, nasty critters in a swamp.  (Interestingly enough, the character stuff in NYC and on the Venture that I had expected would be what was added to this extended version are, instead, most of what make up the over 40 minutes of deleted scenes included on the disc.  There are a lot of interesting moments to be found, but all of which were cut for good reaspn.)  The additions that were included in the extended cut aren’t bad – they don’t really slow the film down – but nor are they essential or revelatory in any way.  For a film as long as Kong was originally, I have a feeling the theatrical version will be the one I’ll prefer to revisit in the future. 

And I am sure that I will be revisiting it.  Yes, Peter Jackson’s King Kong is an indulgent movie.  But goodness, how great would it be to see some other filmmakers create as indulgent a piece of work as this!! Jackson’s success with the LOTR films, combined with the advances of effects technology, enabled him to create exactly the film he wanted, unbound (or at least, barely bound) by technical or budgetary limitations.  The result is, for me, a true visual epic and a phenomenally enjoyable experience.  I really haven’t seen a lot of movies like this one.  And since, at home, I can pause the flick several times to go to the bathroom, my major complaint is ameliorated. 

For the record, the dead Bond girls in today’s cartoon are (from left to right): Paris Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies, killed in her bed by the assassin Dr. Kaufman at the behest of her media mogul husband Elliot Carver; Miss Anders from The Man with the Golden Gun, shot by Scaramanga with the titular golden gun; Corinne DuFour from Moonraker, the personal assistant and pilot for the villainous Hugo Drax, hunted down by Drax’s vicious trained dogs; Aki from You Only Live Twice, killed when an assassin drips poison down a cord from the ceiling onto her lips (I hate when that happens); and of course the unfortunate Jill Masterson from Goldfinger, who might have the quickest sex-to-death time in all of the Bond movies as she suffocates after being painted gold from head-to-toe.  All of these lovely ladies befell their fate after (and as a direct consequence of) sleeping with our man 007.  Rough.

I first saw Citizen Kane in college, during a fantastic class called Film Architecture (one of the best classes I had in college).  I’ve seen it several times since then, and while I wouldn’t list Kane as my favorite film of all time, I certainly understand why many consider it to be the greatest film ever made.  It is a magnificent piece of work, and seeing Kane instantly made me an enormous fan of Orson Welles.  Last month I had the great pleasure to watch two Welles films on DVD, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Touch of Evil — Made in 1958, Touch of Evil was written and directed by Welles, and he has a major role as police Captain Hank Quinlan.  In the opening moments of the film, a man places a bomb in a car driving across the Mexican border into the United States.  When the bomb goes off on the U.S. side of the border, high-ranking Mexican narcotics official Ramon Miguel “Mike” Vargas (played by, believe it or not, Charlton Heston) and his young American wife (Janet Leigh) quickly get swept up in the investigation and a tangled web of dirty cops, drug dealers, and a lot of other nastiness.

Visually and technically, the film is a masterpiece.  The dynamic camerawork is astonishingly inventive for a film made 50 years ago.  The movie opens with one of the most famous shots in film history, a long tracking shot (3 minutes and 33 seconds) that starts with a bomb being placed in the trunk of a car and then follows the car’s slow drive down streets and across the border, paralleling Heston & Leigh’s walk across the border.  The camera constantly pulls in and out to follow both the car and the couple, making sure the viewer can follow exactly where they are in relation to one another, and charting their progress through a Mexican border-town and across the border.  The soundwork here is also magnificent, as we hear an interwoven stream of sound with the levels shifting from moment to moment, allowing us to catch snippets of music from the street, the car’s radio, and Heston and Leigh’s conversation as well as their interactions with various others such as a border guard they pass.  

Although that opening shot is the most famous, there is an even longer, more impressive uninterrupted sequence in the middle of the film, in which Welles is interrogating a young Mexican suspect.  Over the course of this shot we witness a lengthy interrogation, with characters moving around the house and coming in and out of various rooms.  The drama is so good that you might not realize the stunning camera work, but once you realize what is happening the effect is staggering.  And it all builds to a dramatic moment where the viewer and Heston come to a shocking realization about Welles’ Captain Quinlan.

But Touch of Evil isn’t notable just for its technical wizardry.  It is a relentlessly entertaining film.  The story is a tense, taut mystery, with the suspense and anxiety levels kept at a pretty high level from start to finish.  Welles steals the show as the sad, corpulent, complicated Captain Quinlan (by the time the film is over, you realize that the movie is really, in many ways, his story), but we shouldn’t overlook Heston’s work.  It is sort of silly to see him cast as a Mexican, but this is a star performance by Heston in his prime — he is intense and charismatic, dominating every scene he’s in.  Then there is Janet Leigh, who is also a lot of fun as a tough, strong dame who is nonetheless put through a shocking amount of hell over the course of the film.  This is an astonishingly grim film for a movie made in 1958!!  

Touch of Evil is one of the most powerful American films noir, relentlessly entertaining from that amazing first shot right through to the famous last line (in my humble opinion, an even better last line than the one that ends Casablanca).  If you’ve never seen it, you owe it to yourself to check it out.  

One final note:  Touch of Evil was famously taken away from Orson Welles during the editing stages, and re-edited into a shorter, more linear form by the studio.  After screening the film, Welles wrote a 58 page memo to the studio listing everything wrong with their edit, and what he would do to bring the film into line with his original intentions.  The memo was ignored, but 10 years ago during the early rise of DVD, a group of filmmakers (including master editer Walter Murch, who worked with Francis Ford Coppola on The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now) recovered Welles’ memo and much of his original footage from the studio vaults and re-edited the film as per Welles’ instructions.  That is the version that was released to DVD in 1998, and recently re-released in a phenomenal 50th Anniversary Edition, and that is the only version of the film worth watching.

The Third Man — While not quite as magnificent as Touch of Evil, British director Carol Reed’s 1949 film The Third Man is still a towering work of cinema.  American author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in post-war Vienna to stay with his friend Harry Lime.  When he arrives at Lime’s hotel, he discovers that his friend has just been killed while crossing the street.  What at first seems like a senseless accident soon seems to Martins to be something much more, and the story begins.

The film was shot on location in Vienna, and the real, ruined cityscape gives the film a distinct feel quite dramatically different from all the other films of the time shot on a studio back-lot.  Much has also been written about the film’s atmospheric, black and white expressionist cinematography, as well as the unique zither score by Anton  Karas, both of which help to give The Third Man its unique identity.

But as with Touch of Evil, none of that would amount to much of anything if the story wasn’t so much fun to watch unfold.  The mystery of the life and death of Harry Lime unfolds with fascinating complexity, as Martins learns more and more about his friend, and his questions about his death only multiply.  You have to wait quite a long time for Orson Welles to enter the movie, but once he does he is astounding as usual.  His monologue to Martins while at the top of Vienna’s famous ferris wheel (the Riesenrand, thank you wikipedia) is just phenomenally good.  (This “cuckoo clock” speech is a famous one, and rightfully so.)

It is easy to dismiss old films like these as being slow, stagey, and uninteresting.  But after watching these two classics I bet you’ll have a whole new appreciation for the filmmakers of 1958 and 1949.  I know I did.  Check ‘em out!

I suppose I have high standards for the TV shows that I watch.  Is that a bad thing?  I don’t watch TV casually.  I don’t sit down and flip around to find something that looks interesting.  There are a bunch of shows that I watch, and I watch them religiously — every week, every episode.  That’s how I watch TV.

Why am I talking about this?

Well, I decided last week that I think I’m done with Heroes.

Much has been written in the past few months about the show’s creative decline.  Entertainment Weekly wrote a scathing cover story about the show’s woeful third season, and (possibly in response) two of the show’s head writers (co-executive producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander) were unceremoniously canned. 

I certainly agree that the third season has been dreadful.  But let’s be honest with ourselves — the show was never really that good to begin with.

I resisted watching Heroes throughout its entire smash-hit first season.  There was something about the show, from all that I had seen and read, that just seemed off to me.  I got the sense that the show’s creators were a little embarrassed that the show was about super-heroes.  Sort of the way J.J. Abrams seems to be trying to get non-Star Trek fans to go to his new Star Trek movie by proclaiming to everyone that he’s not a Star Trek fan, I read a lot of interviews and articles where the Heroes cast and crew kept saying, “come watch us, we’re not just about tights and spandex, we’re really a drama!” or “we’re really a character study!” or “we’re really a mystery!” or something else like that.  

But when the first season came out on DVD, after so many people I knew encouraged me to give it a try, I finally gave in.  And I must admit there was something there in that first year.  The show was silly and astoundingly derivative (of other movies, of other TV shows, and especially of LOTS of great comic book stories), but there was still a goodly amount of entertainment to be found.  I enjoyed the continuity — the cliffhangers that ended each episode were fun, and it was neat how the season really attempted to tell one long, interlocking story.  And the production values were, for the most part, pretty impressive for a weekly TV series.  We got to see a lot more super-hero action than I had expected.

But the holes started to show even towards the end of that season.  Much has been made of the first season finale, which many felt was anticlimactic after all that had been built up over the year.  Characters who had spent many episodes working their way towards the confrontation in Kirby Plaza got taken out of the action almost immediately (like the time-traveling Hiro, who got zapped away to feudal Japan).  And the tragic ending that should have been the culmination to the year’s worth of stories was undercut by an ENORMOUS plot hole.  The heroic Peter Petrelli, who has absorbed everyone else’s powers, needs to be flown out of the plaza by his brother, Nathan, before he loses control of the atomic energy he’s absorbed and explodes.  Except, um, if Peter has absorbed everyone’s abilities then that should include his brother Nathan’s flying ability, so why didn’t he just fly himself out of there??

Things went further south quickly in the strike-shortened second season.  The writers tried to turn back the clock, narratively, once again scattering all the characters (who had spent most of the first season finding one another) and introducing a LOT of new characters who were confused by their powers just like everyone else had been at the start of the first season.  Fans complained about the slow pace, and the way all the new characters meant that many of the popular characters from the first season got little-to-no screen time.  Series creator and show-runner Tim Kring actually issued an apology to fans that pretty clearly pinpointed all of the second season’s flaws and stated that, once the strike ended, season three was going to fix all that.

Unfortunately, things have gotten much worse.  Yes, the third season started in a much more exciting way than the slow second season did.  There was a prison break that set a lot of super-powered villains loose on the world, and we soon found out that they’re being lead by the long-thought-dead Arthur Petrelli (father to Nathan and Peter, two of the show’s main characters).

But hoo boy has the show gotten ridiculous.

Once again popular character are, for reasons that I cannot fathom, taken out of the main story on seemingly irrelevant digressions that seem like Kim-Bauer-caught-in-a-cougar-trap type time-wasters.  (Mind-reader Matt Parkman, one of the show’s most lovable characters, is banished to Africa.  Hiro, the show’s most notable break-out character from the first season, suffers amnesia and regresses mentally to a ten-year-old state.  And in the last two episodes Nathan, Peter, and the Haitian are for some reason involved in a conflict in South America???)

Characters are acting completely out of character for no other reason than to give us shocking twists.  Mohinder, probably the most morally centered character on the show, has become a vicious maniac.  The self-obsessed Nathan suddenly became a devout Christian (and then after about five or six episodes that new character trait suddenly vanished…) and, last week, abandoned his brother Peter in the jungle.  The lightning-wielding Elle gets herself captured and locked in a dungeon by Arthur Petrelli and his super-villain gang, then the next episode suddenly decides to join their group.  And I can’t forget Sylar, so creepy as the show’s main villain in the first season, suddenly becoming a good guy Company Man this season — and being ACCEPTED AS SUCH by pretty much every character except HRG!!

I could go on and on.  I could talk about the way that Peter forgetting he could fly in the season one finale was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of characters constantly acting stupid or forgetting things clearly established in previous episodes just to move the story forward.  (Like how Elle conveniently forgets that Sylar brutally murdered her father so they could make out in the last few episodes.)  I could talk about how the show constantly recycles its own plot devices.  (HOW many times has the show tried to wring some drama out of Claire being dead and then coming back to life??  HOW many times has a warning from a terrible future set story-lines in motion?  HOW many times have the characters had to track down a piece of Isaac Mendez’s prophetic art in order to discover a vital clue?)  

But while all of that makes my head explode, none of it is what has prompted me to drop the show.

Let me explain.  One of the many many new characters introduced in the second season was an Irish girl named Caitlin, who befriended the amnesiac hero Peter.  (And please don’t get me started on how much I hate amnesia as a plot device…)  Towards the end of the season, Peter accidentally teleported himself and Caitlin into a terrible dystopic future (have I mentioned there are a LOT of those on this show?), and accidentally abandoned Caitlin there when he lost control of his powers and snapped back to the present.  Since then, we have neither seen nor heard from Caitlin again, nor has she been mentioned by anyone.  By the way, that includes Peter, who was in love with her and who, you would think, would be pretty distraught at having lost her and, worst yet, abandoned her in such dire straits.

Now comes word from Heroes creator and show-runner Tim Kring that we will never see any resolution to that story.  Here is the excerpt from his recent interview:

After the long hiatus during which Heroes was off the air, Kring said, “We realized that going back to [Caitlin] nine and a half months later would have been insanity.” He felt that while there would “be some people asking about it, for most people it would have been a hard left [in the story].” When the fan asked if Peter would ever acknowledge Caitlin or express any grief over what seems to be her dire fate, Kring replied, “No, we passed it. We leapfrogged it.” He added that when the idea of returning to Caitlin was brought up, they asked, “Really? Are we going to risk that? We have enough stuff to [deal with].” 

You can read the full story here.

I can’t put into words how crazy this makes me.  The show asked us to spend an entire season investing in characters like Caitlin — and it’s not bad enough that we had to sit through the boring second season in order to do so — but now those stories are just being abandoned without any resolution??  Not only does this demonstrate an appalling lack of respect in the audience, it also shows a staggering lack of creativity.  OK, you don’t want to spent five episodes resolving a left-over plot thread from a second season that is best left forgotten?  Fine!  Just give Peter a few lines in one scene where he says that he tried to find Caitlin but, because the terrible future where he left her was averted at the end of season 2, he tried traveling forward but, because that future no longer exists, he couldn’t find her.  Or maybe have a scene where Hiro, the show’s main time-traveler, tells Peter that he tried traveling forward to find Caitlin, but he couldn’t for the reasons just mentioned.  Or something else like that!  I’m sure it can’t be that hard to write in some sort of resolution to this massive dangling thread, without having to use multiple episodes of story.  That the writers can’t be bothered to do so tells me that I shouldn’t bother spending time investing in their show.

By the way, in case I had any doubt about the buffoonery of the writers, Mr. Kring last week had to issue yet another public apology to Heroes fans, this time because, elsewhere in the interview that I excerpted above, he called many of the fans of the show dipshits.  I am not kidding.

Good luck with your show, fella!  Me, I’ll be clearing some time in my TV-watching schedule for the soon-to-be-returning Lost and Battlestar Galactica.