Author: Ross Ruediger (Page 6 of 16)

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XV

July 10, 2009 /

Do “Mystery Science Theater 3000” fans engage in fierce debates over who was the better ringleader – Joel or Mike? And if so, does it ever get ugly? A little bit of MST3K (as the cool cats refer to it) has always gone a long way for me. I’ve never been able to grasp how this gimmick lasted for as long as it did, since it requires 90-plus minutes of your time for each installment; while the concept of heckling bad movies is novel, you still have to sit through the bad movies. Often times the fare would be considered unwatchable if not for all the slings and arrows lodged in the direction of the movie screen. Of course I realize that’s the whole point of the thing, but if the gimmick isn’t working, as is the case about half the time with MST3K, it can be a torturous way to watch a bad movie.

The latest set from Shout Factory collects four more installments, from different eras of the series. Judging by these episodes, Mike would unquestionably win the proposed fan debate, as neither of the Joel offerings are anything to write home about. “The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy” comes from very early in the series, and it’s just terrible. I swear I didn’t even laugh once. “The Girl in Lovers Lane” is somewhat better, but the difference is negligible. The third offering, “Zombie Nightmare,” is an absolute scream – everything that this show ever did well is encapsulated in their lambasting of this terrible ‘80s film featuring Adam West. The final entry is called “Racket Girls,” and while not quite the standout the previous title is, it’s still pretty good stuff, although you’ll be able to safely slip off to the bathroom from time to time, and likely not miss anything special. Regardless, MST3K has such a devoted following, I can’t imagine fans of this show will be satisfied until every single episode is available on DVD, and therefore my stick in the mud antics carry very little weight whereas this series is concerned.

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Lookin’ To Get Out!

July 5, 2009 /

Honestly, there was nobody more excited than me by the prospect of experiencing a “lost” Hal Ashby film. He directed some of the best – “Harold and Maude,” “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo,” “Coming Home,” and “Being There” and when it was announced that Jon Voight had discovered a longer cut of this nearly forgotten Ashby offering that he felt placed it among the greats, there was reason to get one’s hopes up. Unfortunately, it is not one of the greats. It’s not terrible by any means, but it’s also not comparable in quality and vision to any of the aforementioned films. Voight stars as a fast (but not smooth) talking gambler who’s in over his head. He and his buddy, played by Burt Young, head to Vegas (where else?) to fix their situation. Once they arrive, they meet an old friend of Voight’s (Ann-Margret), and he may be the father of her child. Is it just me, or does all of this sound old hat? With some tweaking, it didn’t have to be.

The biggest problem with “Lookin’ to Get Out!” is not the hackneyed premise but, rather, the execution of it. The entire affair is dialed far too much in the direction of comedy, and the laughs either aren’t funny or just don’t work. For instance, there’s a wacky chase through a casino that kicks off the third act that’s painfully overlong and soaked with a dreadful ‘80s synth track (as is much of the film). If the whole thing had just been shifted into a slightly more dramatic direction, it likely would’ve played much better, as is evidenced by the few scenes where Voight gets to play some genuine pathos. His work is generally pretty good here, even if the material isn’t, and it’s certainly a much different Voight than we’re used to seeing. (Keep an eye out for the screen debut of a very young Angelina Jolie in the film’s final scenes.) It’s difficult to recommend to anyone who isn’t a student of Ashby, and yet, despite its problems, fans of the maverick director could do a lot worse than to at least check it out.

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Wallander

June 26, 2009 /

There are two bold strokes with which “Wallander,” a BBC produced crime series, is painted that set it apart from most other TV fare. The first is its intoxicating, borderline hallucinatory photography, which will grab your attention in the opening frames. A girl pushes her way through a golden field of crops carrying a plastic container of liquid. A car, driven by Kurt Wallander (Kenneth Branagh), speeds down the highway toward a farm. He pulls up and the farmer points to the field. “She’s out there.” He hands Wallander a pair of binoculars. “You see her?” Wallander makes his way through the dense field of yellow. The closer he gets, the more frightened the girl becomes. When he’s but a few feet from her, she opens the container and douses herself with gasoline, sets herself on fire, and explodes in a ball of flame. Wallander’s jaw hits the ground. He cannot believe what he’s just witnessed. Later on, when one of his fellow detectives suggests moving on from the suicide, since there’s no real crime involved, Wallander himself explodes, “A 15-year-old girl sets herself on fire and you don’t think it’s a crime!?” It’s something of an uncharacteristic moment for the normally subdued man, who keeps his emotions bottled up inside. Indeed, the only time his feathers ever seem to ruffle is in matters of pursuing justice.

But back to the photography. The entire opening sequence is bold and filmic, as is much of “Wallander.” The series is shot with the Red One, a digital camera with a sensor that, according to Wikipedia, “has about the same active area as a 35mm film frame masked to the 16:9 aspect ratio, allowing the same depth of field to be produced in conjunction with lenses designed for 35mm film.” In other words, this camera manages to make some damn pretty pictures – stuff you wouldn’t expect to see in a BBC produced show. It’s possible that at times the cinematographers even go a little overboard, but they probably had so much fun experimenting with the camera they should be forgiven such indulgences.

The second item of note is the fact that the show is in English. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if not for the fact that the show is set and filmed in Sweden, all of the characters are Swedish, and most noticeably, anytime any written language is shown, such as newspapers or e-mails, the words are in Swedish. But everyone in the series speaks English, and with a British accent no less. This took some time to get used to, but after a while the viewer is forced to submit to the gimmick, and it manages to somehow seem a mildly brilliant construct on the part of the producers. I kept thinking back to the early scene in “The Hunt for Red October” where all the Russians were speaking Russian until the picture subtly shifts and they all speak English; “Wallander” simply doesn’t have the shift. It’s a brave leap of faith that could easily have been avoided by tweaking the tales a bit, and simply setting them in England. Clearly the people involved in the making of this series have enormous respect for the source material, a series of hugely popular books by Henning Mankell, the “master of Swedish crime fiction” who, it turns out, is married to Ingmar Bergman’s daughter.

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Land of the Lost – Season Three: Enik the Dick

June 5, 2009 /

The third and final season of “Land of the Lost” is often considered the ugly, misshapen, redheaded bastard stepchild of the series. Indeed, if the 13 episodes of which it consists were the only “Land of the Lost” ever created, the show would have been long since forgotten. But it’s worth mentioning that the initial impetus for doing this three part retrospective came from the desire to come to the defense of Season Three, and try to give a little bit of respect to the episodes that are routinely shunned even by the people who display their love of this show as a badge of honor.

Season Three again saw shifts in the production team, and even more noticeably, in front of the camera. As I understand it, Spencer Milligan couldn’t reach an amicable contract agreement and so he abruptly left the show. With his departure came new lyrics for the opening credits:

Will and Holly Marshall
As the earth beneath them trembled
Lost their father through the door of time
Uncle Jack went searching
And found those kids at last
Looking for a way to escape
From the Land of the Lost

Uncle Jack replaced Ranger Rick, and he was played by Ron Harper, best known to genre fans as astronaut Alan Virdon in the TV series incarnation of “Planet of the Apes.” He was a true uncle, rather than a father – instead of being preachy and bestowing wisdom, he was more often than not a man of action; a guy trying to get things done. I like Ron Harper, and if there’s a reason I’ve got some love for Season Three, much of it’s due to his presence. Would Spencer Milligan’s Rick have been as believable in many of these situations? Likely not. He’d accrued too much info during his time in the Land for these stories to work. In contrast, Uncle Jack was experiencing this madness through fresh eyes, and so he was more accepting.

Behind the scenes, Jon Kubichan and Sam Roeca took over as producer and story editor respectively, and between the two of them, they scripted the majority of the season. Their vision of the series was quite the departure from the two seasons that came before. Nearly everything – including the iconic elements such as the Sleestak, the Pakuni and the ubiquitous dinosaurs – got a major overhaul.

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Land of the Lost – Season Two: “Mysterious Forces”

June 3, 2009 /

Before jumping into Season Two, allow me to discuss the “Land of the Lost” movie for a bit. As you might glean, I’m a pretty hardcore fan of this show. Yes, believe it or not, we do exist; “Land of the Lost” has a small, but fervent cult following. The last thing fans of this series ever wanted to see was a comedy send-up of the premise. No, most fans had minor dreams of someday seeing a big-budget, sci-fi movie created by people that took the concept as seriously as David Gerrold did back in the day. But, alas, that did not happen, and instead we’re getting a movie that’s likely closer in tone to some of the other Krofft properties, rather than the one it’s actually based on.

All that said, any amount of money that can be made by this movie must be positive for “Land of the Lost” as a brand name, and if the movie does well, you never know what the future might hold. Personally, I’d like to see the movie do so well that somebody decides to greenlight a new version of the series for Sci Fi, which would be the obvious network for it to end up on (indeed, Sci Fi has even been running “Land of the Lost” marathons as of late). I mean, really, how many steps away from “Primeval” – an enormous success for ITV in England, as well as here in the States on BBC America – is a serious version of this concept? So if you’re a fan of the series, don’t be so quick to skip the movie, simply because it isn’t what you envisioned. Grab some friends and a few beers and head out to the movie theatre this weekend, because the future of “Land of the Lost” probably rests in the obnoxious antics of Will Ferrell. (That is, admittedly, a sentence I never in my life thought I’d have to type.)

Now back to your regularly scheduled breakdown of Season Two of “Land of the Lost…”

David Gerrold left the series after the first season, and so a new story editor was hired in the form of Dick Morgan, who’d written such Season One offerings as “Album” and “Follow That Dinosaur.” Clearly Morgan had a lot of respect for what Gerrold had laid down, but it seems that he perhaps didn’t have a big vision of his own. (In all fairness, this is an unfair supposition on my part; as with any TV show there are many fingers in the pie, and who’s to say who’s to blame?) Part of the problem with Season Two is that it frequently tries to expand on ideas from the first season, often without success. This isn’t to say that the season isn’t any good; in fact, you’ve got to be a bit obsessive about the show in order to notice a big difference from the first season…but, then again, that’s why I’m here sharing my insights with anyone who cares to listen.

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