the good old days

I haven’t really enjoyed the movies since they introduced Spock’s half-brother and visited God. I kept going, of course, because I was a Star Trek fan and it’s what you did; but even that couldn’t get me out of the house to see Insurrection or Nemesis. And hearing that Sylar was going to be Spock didn’t really make me eager to see a re-imagining of the original crew with fresh young faces.

But then a few Trek-fan friends started talking it up, and so I got kinda excited, and since the semester’s over it seemed a great opportunity to leave the kids in daycare and go see a movie over lunch.

And oh my.

It was everything I could want a Star Trek movie to be. It had a some huge gaping plot holes, critical errors, ridiculous deus ex machina, a water turbine in the engine room (I imagine that’s the first thing Scotty upgrades…) and other silliness; in other words, plenty of fodder to complain about with other fans. But it had scenes where Kirk doesn’t get the girl. And it had a surprisingly plausible explanation for why they think they can reboot the franchise with entirely different actors playing the original characters.

The saddest thing is that Captain Pike still ends up paralyzed, although at least he doesn’t end up in a packing box able to communicate only by saying “BOOP” (yes) or “BOOP BOOP” (no). In many ways Star Trek was ahead of its time in 1970; this was not one of them. For a wheelchair “operated by brainwaves”, that thing was extremely pathetic.

You really ought to go see it if you enjoyed Star Trek. If it’s not your thing, then avoid it; you’ll just be seeing a movie with too many lens flares, not enough camera stability (presumably to make the CG look better), and lots of inside jokes you won’t understand. But from this post, you can probably see it IS my thing, and I would be a grateful recipient of a tricorder if you’ve got one to spare.

It’s not so easy to find somebody who doesn’t already know the twist at the the of The Empire Strikes Back.  So it was a real treat when cleanser and I sat down yesterday to watch the movie with our five-year-old daughter.  Honestly, I’d looked forward to watching this film with my kids since before they were even born.

When I saw Empire, during its original theatrical release, I was only two.  But I still recall my father leaning over toward me and saying, “Whoa!” when Vader revealed his secret.  Everything else from the first viewing was a blur; I had only vague memories of the battle in the snow and Yoda, but the climax I still recall with perfect clarity.

Cleanser was dubious about whether the film might be too scary for our daughter, but she’s watched (and loved) scarier things.  In fact, she’s pretty idiosyncratic about what scares her.  Cleanser was really worried about Luke losing his hand, but it hardly phased our daughter.  At first, the five-year-old was a bit leery of watching, although she’d loved the first film.  She knew this one was somewhat scarier, and was being very cautious.  But once we situated her on my lap, with a blanket to hide under, she was ready to go.  As I expected, she never used the blanket for more than a second or two; her desire to see what was going on always won out over any fear.

I thought the extended light saber duel might freak her out, but she never looked away from the screen.  When Vader pronounced, “No, I am your father,” her eyes widened.  She was silent for few second, then said, “Wow.”  After a few more moments’ consideration, she asked, “Why did he say that?” but her mother told her she should just watch.  Through the extended final escape from Cloud City, she was shaking—not with fear, but with raw excitement.  It was a real treat to see my little darling so completely enthralled by something that I myself really enjoy and can remember seeing when I was little too.

During the credits, she just sat there for a while, thunderstruck.  I was a little worried that it had been too much for her.  When I asked her if she’d liked Yoda, at first she was unsure.  What she really wanted to talk about was whether Darth Vader could really be Luke’s father.  I told her that she’d have to watch Return of the Jedi to find out, and I asked her again whether she’d liked Yoda.  Well of course she had!  He was a muppet alien!  And she started talking about all the other things she’d liked, like the space slug, and how the Millennium Falcon landed on the star destroyer; and  pretty soon, she was asking her mother if she should watch the sequel the next day.

Most of Patrick Troughton’s tenure as Doctor Who is lost forever.  While many of the once-missing episodes of the show from the 1960s have been recovered, the trickle of rediscoveries has slowed to one or two per decade, and there just can’t be that many more intact episodes floating around.  For this reason, the world may never see a complete presentation of “The Faceless Ones,” which is really a shame.

The story begins when the TARDIS lands unexpectedly on an airfield, and the crew, frightened by an approaching plate,  scatters.  They stumble on the body of a man—a man murdered by a mysterious charter flight pilot.  The Doctor, an intruder himself, tries to convince the airport authorities that something serious is afoot, but initially no one wants to listen.  Two of his companions appear to be brainwashed by the villains, but by the end of the third episode (the second one being missing), the Doctor has made a strong case that there are extra-terrestrials present at the airport, involved in a most nefarious scheme.

The mystery plot is very well done; of the classic Doctor Who episodes that I have recently viewed for the first time, these were easily among the best.  Much of the first episode (and some of the third) was filmed on location at London’s Gatwick Airport, out on the runways amidst the planes.  Perhaps because of the expense of this location shooting, the special effects in the first half of the story were minimal.  There were no rubber aliens, no weird lights, no technology more advanced than sleeping gas and hand-held electrocution guns.  And this works—because in a story about aliens hiding themselves on Earth, the invaders really should be stealthy.  In later episodes (the full story ran six parts), the Doctor and Jamie would have reached the alien mother ship and seen the true “faceless ones” unmasked; it’s impossible to know whether these would have worked as well as the first half of the story, which is really too bad.

This seems to be the first story in which Jamie really takes over as the Doctor’s dominant companion, a changed which I welcomed.  The other travellers at the time, Ben and Polly, seem to contribute little to the stories, except needing to be rescued.  I especially don’t like Ben, but that may be partially a product of his dumb haircut.  After being taken over by aliens, Ben and Polly seem to fade away in this story, before eventually departing at the end of the lost final episode.  (This leaves the Doctor at the end with just a single male companion, a very unusual situation.  One character in this story was written as a possible new female companion, but the actress declined a recurring part, although she did play Queen Victoria in “Tooth and Claw” four decades later.)  Seeing these snatches from the second Doctor’s tenure, one also gets to see Jamie’s own character development, from a superstitious Jacobite to a savy time traveller.

My daughter has a tendency to pick difficult birthday themes. When she turned three, she wanted Hello Kitty and trains — easy separately, difficult combined. This year, her fifth, she wants Batgirl. Think for a moment about how easy it is to find Batman paraphernalia for kids parties, then think whether you’ve ever seen Batgirl… well, at least she didn’t pick Manbat or Poison Ivy.

Sadly, I can’t put this video clip on a cupcake. (ZZLONK! ZLOPP! You’ve gotta love the Adam West Batman.)

The best part is neatly hanging up her jacket before going out to fight thugs.

Until today, I thought I liked the Marx Brothers.  My first exposture to Groucho was reruns of You Bet Your Life, which I saw occasionally as a kid.  My father complained that show wasn’t really that funny, since Groucho ad libbed most of the jokes.  However, I loved it, and since then, I had always enjoyed occasional Marx Brothers movies and television shows.

Until today, when I watched Horse Feathers.  It wouldn’t be fair to say Horse Feathers isn’t funny; it does have its moments.  However, the first scene left cleanser and I aghast.  It wasn’t offensive or tasteless, just profoundly unfunny.  Ten minutes of Groucho spewing dopey one-liners, with occasional words from Zeppo, impluasibly cast as his son.  I was counting the seconds until Harpo and Chico showed up.  Then Groucho and Zeppo burst into song.  Did you know Groucho’s famous quote, “Whatever it is, I’m against it,” was a song?  Neither did I.  I wish I still didn’t.

The plot, such as it was, involved Groucho taking over as president of Huxley college (run, naturally, by pompous blow-hards) and trying to assemble a school football team to beat rival Darwin.  (If there was supposed to be a joke about Charles Darwin and his bulldog, Thomas Huxley in this, I didn’t get it.)  He accidentally hires Chico and Harpo, who are ordinarily bootleggers, ice delivery men, and Harpo a dog catcher.  Hijinx ensue, since the two must pose as college students to be eligible to play.  The other thread of the plot involves Zeppo’s relationship with the college widow.  Never heard of the college widow?  She’s a young, sexual temptress who pulls virile young students away from their studies and the chaste search for knowledge—and she’s been a “forgotten trope” for at least half a century.  By the time of Horse Feathers, the idea was already outdated, and maybe parodying it came across as funny back in 1932.

Of course, the plot is just an excuse for gags.  As usually seems to be case, Harpo is the funniest.  He manages to pull all sorts of crazy stuff (including a candle burning at both ends) out of his coat.  Chico is funny too, although his dumb Italian persona I tend to find a bit tiresome.  Groucho is awful; I enjoyed Zeppo’s scenes more.  Of course, Chico and Harpo get to show off their piano and harp skills, as they always do in these movies.  Not as universal, nor as much fun to watch, is Groucho strumming on a guitar.

The climax comes when, having failed to kidnap the opposing teams’ (illicitly purchased) star players, Harpo and Chico rush onto the football field and carry the game away.  The climax features the four brothers riding into the end zone on a garbage chariot.

Horse Feathers has some funny moments, but it is far, far from the Marx Brother best work.  Groucho’s shtick falls flat, making it a lot harder to overlook his dumb sexist jokes.  I don’t expect I’ll ever watch this film again.

In the early days of Doctor Who, nearly half the stories were “historicals,” in which the TARDIS would carry the Doctor and his companions to an interesting period of Earth history.  However, these episodes were not particularly popular, either with the show’s cast and crew or with the viewing public.  (Sadly, because of their relative unpopularity, few of these stories have survived.)  After a few years, the format was dropped; only one piece of purely historical fiction was produced after 1967.

However, “The Time Warrior,” the first story of Doctor Who’s eleventh season, saw the Doctor and a new companion traveling back to the middle ages.   The twist was that there were other time-traveling aliens in the middle ages as well.  That twist wasn’t new for the show; it went all the way back to “The Time Meddler” with the first Doctor.   But only with “The Time Warrior” in1973 did it become a standard Doctor Who format, which it continues to be up through the present day.

“The Time Warrior” introduced a new enemy—the Sontarans—and a new companion—Sarah Jane Smith.   The Sontarans remain popular foes, although I’m not terribly partial to them.   Their first two appearances are quite good, however.   Linx, the Sontaran officer who crash lands near the evil Irongron’s castle, is quite scary.  Even though Kevin Lindsay, the actor playing him wears a mask (or sometimes two), he manages to do a lot of real acting, and Linx seems like a genuine character.  He’s an arrogant warrior from a clone race, but he’s not an emotionless android.  His shiny black and silver space armor inspires awe, in both the medieval brigands he allies himself with and the viewer; it is at once elegant, yet obviously threatening.  And unlike many Doctor Who costumes, it doesn’t look at silly or dated, so it could be reused essentially unchanged in the new Doctor Who episode “The Poison Sky.”  (I am not particularly fond of “The Poisoned Sky,” however.  Nor of “The Invasion of Time,” in which the Sontarans try to take over all planets and all times in possibly the most mishandled Doctor Who story of all time.  I would like to able to attribute the decline in the quality of Sontaran stories to Lindsay’s untimely death—the man who played the villain in the first two Sontaran stories obviously took the part quite seriously, despite the fact that he was playing an alien warrior in a rubber mask—but I really have nothing to back up that theory.)

However, while the Sontarans are hardly my favorite aliens, I would have an easy time making an argument that Sarah Jane was the best companion Doctor Who ever had.  She was certainly the most popular, with two spin-off shows of her own (a quarter century apart)!  Elizabeth Sladen’s performance (although she says that she was mostly just playing herself) is one of the things that makes the eleventh and twelfth seasons of Doctor Who its best (or maybe second best) period.  Certainly, Sarah Jane Smith was a world apart from the pathetic, ineffectual, and rather stupid Jo Grant, whom she replaced.  The show had been, by this time, four years without a regular male companion, and the producers may have wanted to make the next female companion stronger than the milquetoast Grant.  In her debut story, Sarah Jane refuses to make coffee for the Doctor, advises Irongron’s serving women to rise up and assert themselves, and never sits around waiting to be rescued.

Although I definitely liked this story, both the first time I saw it decades ago and again much more recently, I have to admit that the details of the plot are not all that memorable.  Linx crashes in Norman England and takes up with the bandit lord Irongron, who is warring with a more noble neighboring lord.  He kidnaps some scientists through time, and the Doctor pursues the captives in the TARDIS, taking Sarah Jane along by accident.  What follows is characters running back and forth between the two medieval foes’ castles, good guys getting captured and rescued, and several short battles.  Some of the battles are in typical medieval fashion, while others feature robots, muskets, and stink bombs, all provided by the more technologically advanced characters.  It’s mostly just an excuse to have fun, with some swords and arrows and one scary alien.

At the end of the first episode, I noticed in the credits that the man providing the arrow shots in the story (including the one that eventually slays Linx), Hal, was played by Jeremy Bulloch.  This led to a number of jokes later in the story . For example, when Hal was dragged before the wicked Irongron:  “Look m’lord! We’ve captured Boba Fett!”  A scene where Boba Fett got a bit too frisky with one of the serving women was shot but never used, which might be just as well.  (And incidentally, Boba Fett is not a clone.)

Finally, this episode was noticeable in that it must have a had a real budget.  The sets were well constructed and dressed, although by no means perfect.  The costuming and props (especially Linx’s spacecraft) were interesting and creative.  And there was plenty of material shot on location at Peckforton Castle (which was built only 160 years ago but is a remarkable-looking recreation of a twelfth century fortress).  For once, and quite pleasingly, the production values were worthy of the show.

I know it’s better just forgotten, but perhaps you remember the hideous 2012 Olympics logo. We all thought it was clearly from the 1980’s — I mean, just look at it!

Turns out that we were wrong. It may be from the future after all. Look at this Dalek font:

Of course, it is also possible that graphic designer was unconsciously working from fond memories of watching the Daleks take over London and mind-control the entire population, when he was young back in 1964. That’s an even worse image for the Olympic Games than something “inspired by graffiti” and “aimed at the internet generation.”

Although, as a Dr. Who fangirl, I would be endlessly amused to see the parade of athletes like this…

TRON is the story of Kevin Flynn, a rogue computer programmer who gets pulled into the digital world he helped create.  There he meets other programs, written by his friends and enemies, in a world controlled by the sinister Master Control Program.  Together with TRON, the electronic creation of Flynn’s sometime romantic rival Alan Bradley, he goes after the MCP.

I remember a time in the mid-1980s, when TRON was (after Star Wars) the most popular piece of science fiction entertainment around.  And while Kevin Flynn does not enjoy the universal name recognition of Luke Skywalker, there are still many references to TRON in the popular culture.  I was surprised to see a commercial released in 2006 featuring the distinctive imagery and odd color scheme of the film.  To a younger friend of mine who didn’t recognize the commercial as a direct allusion to TRON, it simply evoked an impression of being being “electronic,” because the style of the movie is now so closely associated with computing in our cultural consciousness.

You might worry that TRON won’t have aged well, but it stands up pretty nicely.  Computer animation has come a long way, to the point where companies can animate nearly photo-realistic human faces.  TRON took computer animation in another direction.  Since computer graphics couldn’t be used to produce anything even approaching reality, the filmmakers used them to produce a completely alien world, and they did a marvelous job.  Actually, most of the movie’s animation was done conventionally, with a legion of cel painters, who worked to match the computer animation style.  Partially, this was done as a matter of necessity; the world didn’t have the manpower needed to animate everything digitally; essentially every electronic animation company in America was employed in the making of TRON.  I don’t know whether they also preferred to have some ordinary animation included for stylistic reasons, but looking at the film now, it was definitely the right decision.  The one real weakness of the computer graphics is its paucity of detail.  There are great, broad surfaces which are perfectly smooth.  It’s a nice effect, in moderation, but the scenes that are completely computer animated get to look rather plain and boring if they aren’t broken up with other formats now and then.  The conventional animation is very nice in that it’s often hardly noticeable as animation.  The live action scenes inside the computer were filmed in black and white on stark black sets; all the color—the off flesh tones of the programs and the buzzing circuits on the walls—was painted in by hand.  And despite the generally seamless integration, there are no scenes that contain both live action and computer animation.

This film is noteworthy in that it has two essentially co-equal heroes:  Flynn and TRON.  Flynn is the viewpoint character—the human transported in the electronic world—and he saves the day several times.  But the real action hero is the security program, TRON.  In the real world, TRON is capable of halting the execution of any program that is communicating outside the system without proper authorization.  Inside the mainframe, he’s a somber superhero, blasting away his enemies with his energized code disc.  (For whatever reason, I always found Bruce Boxleitner’s line as TRON receives his final code update from his programmer Alan—also played by Boxleitner—”This the key to a new order.  This code disc means freedom!” particularly affecting.  I can’t have been alone in my reaction to that scene, since the corresponding image of TRON holding his disc aloft was used extensively in the film’s promotional materials).

After the computer graphics, the film’s greatest innovation was the way the actors were used.  Each of the key members of the cast (and a few minor members as well) plays two roles.  They each play a programmer in the real world and “on the other side of the screen,” a program the first character wrote.  In TRON’s case especially, the program seems to be a better version of his creator—as if Alan Bradley had imbued his greatest achievement with only the purest extract of his own essence.  In reality, we expect any complicated piece of software to reflect some of the idiosyncrasies of its’ creator, but TRON takes that to another level.

Boxleitner’s dual performance is impressive.  Jeff Bridges as Flynn (and KLU) is interesting, but he has always seemed more energetic and physical than his part called for.  He certainly doesn’t come off as a stereotypically nerd.  David Warner, as the villains, does very well.  All three of his characters—Ed Dillinger, command program SARC, and the dreaded Master Control Program—are clearly driven by, more than anything else, fear.  It’s very interesting when, during the climactic encounter, after TRON has dispatched SARC, the MCP reveals its raw and pathetic terror.  Unlike the other programs, the MCP is not human enough to seem worthy of my pity, but that may make the scene more effective, since the huge, inhuman, ultimate evil (who has made even its human creator its servant) is finally revealed as weak, petty, and small.

Supposedly, there’s going to be a sequel to TRON coming out in 2011.  Personally, I think making a sequel is probably a mistake.  The original film is so iconic; adding a new chapter would be very difficult.  I also can’t see how the could replicate the distinctive look of the original with today’s computer graphics.  I may have criticized the sometime lack of detail, but adding textures to every surface will merely make it seem disconnected from the original.

The Thing is, in my view, one of the ten best science fiction films ever made.  The reason for this is that it has a truly sophisticated science fiction plot.  There are many movies where human heroes face off against terrifying and/or horrifying aliens, but few tap into human emotions as basic as those in The Thing.  The movie tells the story of a band of antarctic researchers, who face off against a shape-shifting, all-devouring alien—the modern incarnation of the Wendigo.

The Wendigo is a moster from Algonquin folklore.  Every prescientific culture had its bogeymen.  Some were inhuman ogres, like the Wendigo or vampires in the Balkans.  Other groups, such as the Azande or the Fore, recognized only human sorcery.  These bugbears had some general characteristics, as they were invoked to frighten unruly children, but each typically also personified some of the very particular fears of its native culture.  Life for the Algonquins was hard, especially during the colder months.  Although food was plentiful in the northern Great Lakes region in summer and fall, the bands often found themselves hard pressed in winter.  But their greatest cultural fear was not of death from starvation or exposure, but from cannibalism.  The Canadian wastes were harsh and uncaring, but the very amorality of Nature made them less horrible than the men who might, under conditions of privation, become beasts.

The Wendigo was the spirit of the cold lands and of cannibalism.  A hunter who turned on his comrades for food was believed to have glimpsed the monster and come under its spell.  The Thing translates this primordial fear into modern language—the villain is an alien instead of a malignant tundra spirit—but the basic situation, of a small group of men cut off from the world, battling against something that can take them over and force them to devour their companions, is the same.  To better capture this atavistic fear may have been the reason that the film was given an entirely male cast.

The cast is generally good.  Aside from Kurt Russell, the denizens of the antarctic outpost are played by a crop of familiar yet not distracting character actors.  They display a natural range of responses to the crisis they face, some portrayed with more skill and diversity than others.  Wilford Brimley manages to be effective as everything from earnest scientific investigator, to dotty old man, to horror that has no name.  In some ways, Russell, as the star, may be the weakest character—not because he isn’t believable, but because he seems too much like the “designated hero.”

The only other film I can think of that is comparable to The Thing is Alien.  In fact, the success of Alien got people interested in re-making The Thing From Another World, which was a pretty good alien invasion movie, but the producers felt the 1951 audiences wouldn’t appreciate the sophisticated science fiction storyline of “Who Goes There,” the novella on which the movies were based.  So the original film lacked the story’s main plot element, which the 1982 re-make restored.  What Alien and The Thing have in common is that they capitalize on different but equally primordial human fears.  And what makes the two movies so scary is that these archetypal fears manifest themselves through creatures that are utterly alien.  Their malevolence can be part of their essential makeup, because they are so emphatically inhuman.

At this point, I still haven’t said that much about the film.  I have to admit, I hesitate to give things about this film away.  The Thing may be one of the scariest films every made, and I still remember seeing it for the first time, when I was five.  (That’s right, I was five years old.  I won’t show the movie to my daughter until she’s at least ten, but I never scared easily.  Even so, The Thing was one of only two films that ever gave me nighmares.  Yet I’m glad my parents took me to see it at the drive-in.)  The film has surprise after surprise, and some of its twists are among the most memorable movies elements I’ve ever seen.

One of the things I will talk about is the special effects.  The alien models are truly disgusting, red and brown and dripping with slime.  Some of the scenes still make me queasy.  And everything, except for some matte paintings was done at full size, in the studio.  This lends the effects a gritty realism that might otherwise be lacking in a film with such an exotic story.  There is deleted model shot on the DVD version; it was to be part of the final confrontation between Russell’s McReady and the the Thing.  It ended up not getting used, because it wasn’t deemed to be up to snuff.  I agree with that decision, but I wish they had been able to animate a slightly better model, becuase it really would have added to the climax.

This week’s review straddles the line between television and film.  It’s about The She Creature, a hardly classic science fiction horror flick that was featured on Mystery Science Theature 3000, elevating it to the Classic Nerd Television category.  To be honest though, I’m thinking about branching out into classic sci-fi films anyway; check this space next week for the best movie ever made about the Wendigo.

I must admit up front that I have only seen the MST3K version of The She Creature.  Since the MST format necessarily involves cramming a film into about seventy-five minutes of screen time, substantial cuts usually need to be made.  Of course, the B-grade movies that are MST3K fare tend to be shorter than other feature films, which is an advantage.  But sometimes, there are quite obviously scenes missing.  Other times, there has still probably been some trimming, but the plot is too disjointed to be able to tell what was left out.  The She Creature falls sqaurely in this category.  From the very first scene, the story meanders to and fro, before finally arriving at a vaguely comprehensible finale.  So there’s plenty for Mike, Tom Servo, and Crow to make fun of.

The plot involves a maleficent hypnotist, Dr. Carlo Lombardi (Crow builts a Tickle Me Carlo Lombardi prototype), who regresses the female lead into her past lives.  Unfortunately, while he’s showing off this remarkable trick, another of her past lives–an anthropomorphic lobster thing (think Admiral Akbar’s evil mother in law)–rises (possibly invisibly, but maybe not) out of the ocean to destroy.  Lombardi may or may not be in control of the monster’s depredations.  It’s hard to tell, and frankly, who cares?  With all this going on, conflict naturally ensues, until the bullet-bra-ed hypnotic subject falls in love with a skeptic, who gives her the strength to break free from Lombardi’s control.  And Lombardi dies.

The acting is, as you might expect, terrible–with one notable exception.  As we were watching The She Creature (which we’d seen numerous times before, albeit not recently), cleanser noted that the “Hobbit” butler in the film was the same man who starred in Just Imagine–El Brendel.  She had heard of him as a Swedish vaudville star, but in fact, his full name was Elmer Goodfellow Brendel, and he was as American as John Wayne.  Half German, half Irish, he was from Phildelphia, but made his fame as a Swedish dialect comic, often appearing with his wife, the equally Hobbit-ish Flo Bert.  (With their short stature and well-honed husband-and-wife shtick, they really would have been perfect for a proper version of The Fellowship of the Ring.  Since the woman-lobster can turn invisible, there are also lots of jokes about The One Ring from the Satellite of Love Crew.)

Brendel is obviously a talented comedian, and it’s too bad that he didn’t land more leading roles.  Doubtless his height was a major impediment for him; to this day, short male actors have a harder time getting work in Hollywood (although it’s less of an issue for comics).  More serious may have been that he got his initial break doing ethnic comedy.  (He actually started out German, based on his own paternal heritage, but switched to Swedish during the Great War.)  He was typecast as “Ole,” and maintained the Swedish shtick even when it was superfluous to his parts.