Friday Night Videos

What the heck. In honor of the settlement of the Broadway strike, I offer up one of my favorite Billy Joel songs. Enjoy!



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Kenny Rogers & Sheena Easton

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Battlestar Galactica: Razor

Talk about a failure of imagination.

For an hour and a half, I felt that old Battlestar Galactica magic. You know, that gritty, in-your-face adrenaline rush that made seasons 1 and 2 so good. Seeing the classic Cylon Raider ships in action was a blast. I almost laughed out loud when we got a peek at the interior, and saw the three Cylon pilots--the third of which was gold. A gold Cylon. In every incarnation of Galactica toys, there's been a gold "Cylon Centurion Commander" figure, but up until this point, there hasn't actually been one in the TV shows (to the best of my knowledge, and I've obsessed about such things). I've never been much a fan of the computer animated centurions in the ongoing series, and have to say I liked the classic centurions better as actual costumes. They just looked fake here. But it was still good to see them again.

What wasn't good to see was Apollo being emasculated again on the command deck. This was the first solo mission of the Pegasus under Apollo's command, so what do we get? Adama tagging along and countermanding Apollo's orders at the first opportunity, then giving a mealy-mouthed rationale that nobody's orders were wrong and we should all be happy that things wrapped up for the best. And Apollo, as always, swallows his idiotic idealism and slinks away with his tail between his legs. And Ron Moore wonders why Apollo is the least popular character on the show?

What bothered me the most, though, is how a tense, engaging episode wrapped up with a bloated, turgid slog through the final 30 minutes. The payoff for the whole movie was a decrepit old man in a pool of snot saying "It's happened all before" and "Kara Thrace is the agent of apocalypse" or somesuch metaphysical mumbo-jumbo? The whole point of this stand-alone movie was to foreshadow the final season? I'm sorry guys, but when you make a stand-alone movie, I feel it should... I dunno, maybe stand alone?

The final season of Galactica may indeed be a good ride, but all indications are that the writers are far too enamored of this ad-hock prophecy/predestiny they've concocted and aren't paying attention to the little things--such as, oh, fans switching channels in droves--that might clue them in to the fact that they've really gone off in the wrong direction with this.

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As promised...

My review of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is now online at RevolutionSF.

Midway through Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Molly Mahoney, played by Natalie Portman, explains to the eponymous Magorium that as a child, people marveled at her potential as a classical pianist -- but now that she's an adult, people are still waiting for her to fulfill that potential. That, in a nutshell, sums up Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium -- a movie with its heart in the right place, but one that never quite lives up to its promise.

I mention in the review that I believe many of the film's flaws can be traced to the fact that Zach Helm is a first-time director. Here's an example that really stood out for me, but just wouldn't fit into the review:

Early in the film, one of the opening scenes, in fact, shows Natalie Portman's character playing the piano, attempting to complete her first concerto. Portman can play the piano. She learned several years ago for a role. So far, so good. Except... Helm frames the scenes as if he's covering up the fact that Portman can't play. He moves the camera in on her face, with the bulk of the piano hiding her hands. Then he does a close-up of her hands, so that you can't see who they're attached to. Then he frames the scene from the side, with the piano, again, hiding her hands. It looks for all the world like the standard filmmaker's trick of disguising an actor's musical inability... and it's very obvious. Which is mind boggling, since a signature tic of the character is to "air piano" songs with her fingers throughout the film. It's not until the end of the film, when she's paying "Jennifer Juniper" in a piano lounge, that there's a long establishing shot that clearly shows her actually playing. And then it's right back to the "hide the hands" mentality. I've never claimed to be any kind of compositional genius, but several better shot structures suggest themselves even to me. All I can think of is that Helm framed them this way because that's the way he most often sees piano scenes set up in movies and television. Which is, to my mind, a error of inexperience.

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Piling on

I've seen something this past week that really ticks me off. And it has to do with the movie Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Not the film itself (more on that in a bit) but rather the reviews of it. To date, I've seen exactly one positive review of it, by MSNBC's Alonso Duralde (although fellow MSNBCer Courtney Hazlett gushes about it in passing). Everything else has been negative. No, negative isn't the right word. "Scathing" would be soft-pedaling it. The reaction to this film has been so unabashedly hateful and venomous that I am pretty much dumbfounded. Now, there's nothing wrong with a bad review if it's honest. But somewhere along the line, it turned into a contest--how to out-rip the competition. From CNN to Ain't It Cool, the reviews generally consist of escalating variations of "suck suck suck suck suck suck DIE!!!!" They generally spend their time coming up with various denigrating insults for the film without actually saying anything substantive about the film at all, and quite often don't even bother to get the name of the film right. To clarify: There's no way to tell if they actually saw the movie at all. The kicker for me came this morning when I found a column listing the 10 worst movies of all time because of Mr. Magorium, but then the author admitted he hadn't actually seen the movie, and wouldn't ever see it because it was so bad. Even though this is the kind of whimsical film he usually enjoys.

Huh?

I saw Mr. Magorium this weekend. I didn't fall in love with it, and really have to question the objectivity of those two writers from MSNBC. I also didn't hate it. It's a film that tries really hard, but doesn't quite pull off what it's attempting. The performances of Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman are inconsistent at best. The main child actor does a better job than Jake Loyd did in The Phantom Menace, but that's about it. Jason Bateman is awesome in what should've been a throwaway role. It's not a funny movie, per se, but it is clever and amusing. Most of the problems, I feel, stem from the fact that there's a first-time director at the helm, and he's out of his depth.

It's not a good movie, but it's not terrible, either. At best, it's okay, at worst, mediocre. That may well be damning it with faint praise, but it's a hell of a lot more honest of an assessment than most other reviews circulating out there. My full review should be up on RevolutionSF shortly, so I'll post the link when it goes live.

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This blog's readability level

Because everyone else is doing it, and I'm a good little lemming.



Really, what else would you expect from a blog titled "Gibberish?"

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Friday Night Videos

Last night while I was driving home, Bob Seger's "We've Got Tonight" started playing on the radio. Now I like a good deal of Seger's material, and think this is a fine song. But even though I normally frown on remakes, in this instance I really, really think the remake does the original one better. When Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton took their version to the top of the country charts in the early 80s, they showed how simply performing a song as a duet could dramatically affect the impact of a piece. Even listening to Seger's version, I always hear in my head how it should be a duet. Another song that I feel the same about is Billy Joel's "Until the Night" off the 52nd Street album, but to my knowledge, nobody has ever covered that one, much less done it as a duet. But I digress.

No proper MTV-style video exists for the Rogers-Easton "We've Got Tonight," but I haven't let that stop me. In 1983 Easton has a television special, "Sheena Easton: Act I," featuring an array of performances by her as well as duets with Kenny Rogers and Al Jarreau. It also featured Easton's now-vanished Scottish accent (which I always found endearing) as well as her performing Billy Joel's "The Entertainer," sans the verse "Played all kinds of palaces, laid all kinds of girls." And yes, I did own "Act I" back in the day, on Betamax, no less. So enjoy this slice of music history.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Fixx.

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The Wild Wild West

I got a review copy of the season 3 DVD set for the Wild Wild West yesterday. Hoping that it held up as well as I remembered (it's been years since I'd seen it, sandwiched between Land of the Giants and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea on Saturday afternoons), I watched a couple of episodes with my brother.

We couldn't stop laughing.

There aren't really any jokes in the series, per se. Not your standard setup and punchline, nor are there many obvious one-liners. But the storylines and situations are so audacious, the characters so unflappable and over the top that you just sit there thinking "I can't believe they just did that!" And I mean that in the best way possible. If you're only familiar with the abominable Will Smith movie, do yourself a favor and pick up one of the season sets, or at least add it to your Netflix queue. It's brilliant.

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